Hey, this is Prop from the hood, politics with Prop podcast. And this is what we do here. We take all these high, diluting political ideas and things in the news and explain it to you in the language that we all speak in. Just like, I don't know, take filibuster. Believe it or not, you already know what that is. Because if you got a mama that don't play no games, you've been filibuster in your whole life. Hey, mom, no. Listen, listen, listen, mom. Before you make your decision, what had happened was everything said after that is a filibuster. You just trying to stall her out to avoid the inevitable. Congress do it all the time. See, you already knew. So listen to hood, politics with Prop on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

It's a weird world out there, so lean into the weirdness with the stuff to blow your mind podcast. Explore the nature of dreams and how dreaming has influenced culture. Appreciate the deep strangeness of terrestrial biology, as well as purely imagined creatures that reveal much about human nature. Explore topics scientific, historical, philosophical, and sometimes monstrous on stuff to blow your mind.

Listen to stuff How to blow your mind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everybody. I hope you're having a great weekend. Chuck Bryant here, co-host of the stuff you should know podcast of what you are listening to. This selects episode comes from December 2018, and it's all about Dr. Seuss. Theator Geizel, Dr. Seuss: The Good, the Bad, and the ugly. Because if you talk about Dr. Seuss, you got to talk about it all. The books, the great stuff, and some of the not-so-great stuff. So check it out now if you'd like Dr. Seuss: The Good, the Bad, and the ugly. Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And this is the Dr. Soys cast.

Our final episode of this year.

2018, so long.

In the books. Dr. Soys.

Dr. Soys, that's right.

You know it's funny? Well, we'll get to that.

All right. Everything that's funny can wait. We're going to talk serious.

Dr. Seuss was an author of children's books.

He was so great.

And also Kind of racist.

Chuck, there's a lot of stuff in here. I wish I didn't know.

I know. I think we're about to ruin Dr. Seuss at the end of the year, right after the holidays. Right.

Yeah.

But Well, let's just talk about the man. Okay.

We keep saying Dr. Sois. Everybody knows him as Dr. Seuss, but apparently the correct pronunciation is Sois. The guy would know because Sois is actually his middle name. His name is Theodore Sois Geisel or Geisel. Is it Geisel or Geesel?

It would be Geisel. In German, you go with the second vowel.

So Theodore Sois Geisel.

Yeah. When I saw that, everyone basically was like, Seuss, until he eventually was like, Fine. I can't fight this fight any longer.

Well, they're like, We'll spell it differently then.

But that reminded me of Joe Thiesmann. Oh, yeah. The very famous story of the quarterback Joe Thiesman, who changed his spelling or his pronunciation to Thiesman to rhyme with Heisman, which I think is the story. I think that's true.

No.

No, I think that's true. Oh, really? Yeah. What do you think? That was just like an old football tale.

No, I'd never heard. I thought you were just being funny.

Oh, no, that really happened.

And that really came back to bite him in the rump when his thighbone broke open. He's like, I guess my knee would have busted if he had just kept it Theesman.

Oh.

Is that not okay? Too soon?

I don't know.

Obviously, once we get into Joe Thiesman, leg-breaking talk, we're talking about Dr. Seuss. That's right. Like I said, Theodore Sois Geisel, who is, I can't really think of a children's book author that is more widely known.

Maybe Charles Schultz.

Maybe. I think of him more as the comic strip guy.

Children's Book.

Sure. Children's Book. Yeah. Like, Judy Blum, sure. But I don't know if I'd call her Children's Book, Young Adult Tween.

Yeah, that was Y-A.

Children's Book. I guess the Berenstein bears, not the Berenstein bears.

Yeah, I would say that Teddy Geisel holds that distinction for sure.

At the very least, his work, his drawing is just immediately recognizable his style.

Yeah. I mean, that font, we use that font for our live Christmas show shirts.

Ixnay on the copyright, K.

No, it's not his. In fact, I looked it up. I was curious. I was like, what is that great font that he uses for his book titles? And I don't know what he used. He probably just hand drew it, I imagine. But now there are fonts called Sois? Dr. S-o-o-s font or grinched that you can gank that. Sure.

We did for our Christmas shirt. I haven't heard that word in forever. Gank? I think I was wearing huge Genco's the last time I heard the word gank.

He ganked my milk off my tray. I'm bringing it back.

That's the last time I use it, too.

Should we go back to the beginning?

Yes, back to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904.

That's right. March 2, as a matter of fact. Fellow Pieces, Dr. Sois was born, Teddy Geisel, and his grandpops had come from Germany in the mid-1800s Bought a brewery because they were good Germans. They knew all about beer.

And originally, get this, the name of the brewery was Komback & Geisel, and they locally called it Come Back & Geisel. I love that. Isn't that awesome?

In German, no less. Whatever that would be.

I think it'd be Komback & Geisel.

So he moved here, and it would end up becoming the Springfield Brewers Company, which his father then ran. And this is really like we even did a show on Prohibition, and it never really hit home to me. Some of the repercussions of that. I was just like, people can't drink. But I never thought about a family business just being shut down.

That was a good episode.

It was. But that's what happened, Prohibition came along. They had this successful brewery in their family. How was that? They were like, Sorry, you're no longer in business. Go find another job.

Because these guys? Yeah.

Yeah. Who were secretly drinking. Right.

So the The job that his father did get was eventually became the supervisor of the town's parks.

Yeah, cool.

There's a myth, an incorrect myth from what I understand. One of the parks had a zoo in it. A lot of people say that drawings of the animals were some of the first... At the zoo, were some of the first drawings that little Ted came up with. Not true? No. His father became superintendent of the parks when he was already a grown man. Oh, but did he- Well, not a grown man. He was definitely not a little a kid at the zoo.

Did he go to the zoo and draw animals, or is that all false?

I think it may be all false, but I'm making that part up. From what I read, he was grown enough that he wasn't a little boy drawing pictures of animals at the zoo, like people think. Interesting. Yeah. I thought it was as well. I love busting myths. I'm going to wear a beret from now on.

You should do a show. So World War I comes along, which I've been doing a lot of World War I reading lately with the- Really? Anniversary of the Armacist. Armacist?

Yeah, you got it.

Really interesting. I didn't know much about it.

It's a pretty serious war.

Man, brutal.

Everything I know about it is from the Wonder Woman movie.

Yeah.

I kid.

So they were German that the Geisels were, like we said. In the United States during World War I, there was a lot of anti... In fact, for a long time, actually, there was a lot of anti-German sentiment in the US.

They're like, We're not German. We just like beer a lot.

Yeah, they're all in beer. And her name is Geisel. It was clear that they were German. I get the feeling that he felt like he was picked on and laughed at, teased because he was German. Right.

So if you can't beat him, join him. Turn that same bigotry on to others, we'll find.

Right. So he starts at a very early age in high school drawing cartoons, writing essays, funny essays, satirical essays. And he started using a pen name very early on, maybe because he was German. And he just reversed his last name, and he became Theo Le Seeg.

Yeah, actually, one of my favorite books who Hooper Humperdink, Not Him, is written by Theo Leseeg.

Oh, really? Yeah.

Interesting. That was his first. I always thought this was a Dr. Seuss book, and then I saw this, and I'm like, It was a Dr. Seuss book. Wow. All right. Did you ever read that one?

I don't think so. What's it called?

Hooper Humperdink, It's not him. It's about this kid who's throwing a birthday party, and everybody's invited to the greatest birthday party you've ever seen in your life, except for poor Hooper Humperdink. I think he gets invited finally at the end.

Were your parents like, We should probably get Josh this and go ahead and get him ready? Pretty much.

There actually was a birthday party I wasn't invited to. Really? I was like, I'm Hooper Humperdink.

Oh, well, my deal was I wasn't allowed to go to boy/girl parties for a while.

But you were still invited, right?

Yeah, but that was even worse because I was invited and I was like, I had to say, no, I can't go because there's girls there.

Right. I got you.

I mean, how humiliating is that?

Especially in college.

Yeah. And they were like, what's wrong with girls? I'm like, I don't know.

Ask my parents.

They seemed great to me. They've not told me. They smell nice. All right. So he reversed his name, became Le Seeg, went to Dartmouth College. And like many famous humorists, I guess you could call them. Yeah, for sure. He He wrote for his college humor magazine. It was called the Jack-A-Lantern. Obviously. It was just like, really solidifies that college humor magazines really have produced some of the brightest comedic minds in this country over the years.

Yeah. Letterman, I think he worked at National Lampoons, didn't he?

I don't know if Letterman did. I'm almost positive either. I mean, Konan certainly did, the Harvard Lampoon.

I'm pretty sure Letterman did as well. At the very least, a lot of his writers did.

Sure.

Okay?

Fine.

Okay.

We'll settle on that, that version of the truth. But he got kicked off of the magazine staff when he was caught drinking on campus during Prohibition, which is awesome.

Yeah, but it wasn't for him.

What do you mean?

But he was like, Well, I want to be on the magazine staff. This is terrible. This is an unjust law.

Oh, yeah. Not awesome for him. Right. Yeah, I thought you meant he wasn't doing the drinking or something. Right.

This did nothing to cut his career off, though. No, no, no. He just adopted a new pseudonym.

Yeah, Sois.

Right. S-e-u-s-s, again. But he pronounced it Soys. Right. But he was the only person who did. So he did graduate from Dartmouth in, I think, 1926, which also further goes to show that he was... So if he graduated college in 1926, then his father's brewery wouldn't have been shut down until... I don't remember when Prohibition started, but he was Obviously not a young kid necessarily. Got you. Okay.

Drawing dumb animals. At the zoo.

At the zoo. But he went on to Oxford to, I guess, pursue a higher degree. I think he was going to be a teacher was his original intent. And he didn't like Oxford, but Oxford brought him to his wife, Helen Palmer.

Yeah, his first wife.

His first wife. And they met, and she actually had a really great influence on by saying, I think you are maybe going to be a better artist than a teacher, and pushed him toward that. And he ended up pursuing a career in art, largely because of her influence.

Yeah, and he did the student thing He worked on a novel, and he traveled around Europe, and he was with Helen, of course, this whole time. They eventually get married. And then he went to work for a magazine called Judge, drawing, once in, like political cartoons, humor cartoons. This is where he added the doctor to his name as a joke because he, I guess, did not get that doctorate degree or whatever he was pursuing.

No, he didn't. But later on in life, Dartmouth did bestow an honorary degree to make him an official doctor.

When are we going to get one of those?

I've been waiting a long time, Chuck.

And are they as worthless as I think they are?

Totally. Yeah. I mean, sure, you'll get the discount at Wendy's that they offer, but that's really the only perk, aside from saying, I'm a doctor.

Can you really call yourself that, though?

Sure.

Only chumps do that, right? You have to call me doctor now.

Dude, you will see me telling people to call me Dr. Clark. Okay. I'll be more personable. I'll be Dr. Josh, like a chiropractor.

I could see you going off and getting your PhD one day. No.

No? No. I want the honor to come in. You want the honor to come in? From Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

The backdoor version?

Pretty much. Yeah, I like it. The free version.

All right, so he got the doctor on the name, became Dr. Sois, and from then on, he never wrote under his given name again. He was always Dr. Sois from that point forward. Right. Should we take a break?

You can see me getting a PhD?

Yeah.

This late in my career?

Yeah.

This mid in my career? Sure. Am I like Natalie Portman or something?

Yes. All right, let's take a break.

Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much. Like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Katherine Nikolai, and you might know me from the Bedtime Story podcast, Nothing Much Happens. I'm an architect of Cozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone Stone is welcome, and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods, a favorite booth at the diner on a blustry autumn day, cats and dogs, unrescued goats and donkeys, Old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly, and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen stories from the Village of Nothing Much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What up, you all? This is Prop. I host a podcast called HubPolitics with Prop. I am a firm believer that if you grew up in some struggle or inner city in America, you understand politics more than you think you do. It's just not been translated in the language that you speak. I am here to translate it for you. For example, you know what a filibuster is? Yeah, you do. Because if you got a mama that don't play no games, you've been filibustering your whole life. Hey, mama, no. Listen, listen, mom. Before you make your decision, what had happened was when I came home, I was with Joe. You remember Joe from church, his mama in the prayer group with you? You remember Joe? So I took the chicken out like you said. I remember I took the chicken because you said take the chicken out. Do you remember I got an A on that math test? You remember I got that A? So I was going to take that out and then work on you filibustering. You're just trying to stop her from making an immediate decision. That's all filibustering is. And the Congress do it all the time.

See what I'm saying? You already know this stuff. So we take these seemingly complex high ideas and break them down in a way that you and me actually talk. So listen to HubPolitics with Prop on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

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Want to hear about how horses evolved to gallop entirely on their middle fingers and why some drawings show Julius Caesar's horse human feet? Or maybe about how some of the earliest experiments creating a vacuum in the lab were conducted by a guy who had the Batman symbol for a mustache.

Fans of the show tell us they like the vibe. We try to keep things cozy, relaxed, and open minded, but driven by curiosity and grounded in a skeptical and scientific perspective. On Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll hear everything from the story of how a 19th century inventor created a modified pipe organ that could speak English through a doll's head. Two, why mud dauber nests are stuffed like a filled pastry full of paralyzed spiders.

Explore topics scientific, historical, philosophical, and sometimes monstrous on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever You Get Your Podcast.

All right, Natalie. Nat.

I wish, right?

I bet Natalie Portman hates being called Nat.

You think?

She seems like the type of Natalie who would hate being called Nat. She said that's Dr. Portman.

Let's find out. She said that's Dr. Portman.

Natalie Portman, will you please get in touch with us and let us know whether you're cool with being called Nat or not?

Well, hey, since we're on that, big shout out to Mr. Mark Ruffalo.

He was basically the male Natalie Portman.

Yeah, he tweeted out our Navajo Code Talkers episode, which means that he's aware of this podcast, and we're a huge fan. So if you're listening, man, thanks.

Yeah, thanks a lot. That means a lot. Not just aware. He liked it. He encouraged people to listen to it. He wasn't like, steer clear of this piece of poop. Right. This is a good podcast is what he was saying.

Man, I remember when I saw You Can Count on Me for the first time.Oh, my God.That movie wrecked me.It.

Was such a good movie.Yeah. Not just the first time. Just every time you watch that movie, it's wonderful. It's really great.

So I have another show called Movie Crush, Mr. Ruffalo. Would I'd love to have you on. Hint? We'll just leave it there.

Okay.

All right, so. All right, here's what happens.

Okay.

Teddy Geisel starts doing ads.

Yeah.

And does quite well.

Yeah. I mean, if you're an ad illustrator, you basically do what you're told. The client says, This is what we want. He was the artist who, because of his distinctive style, his style is what the clients wanted.

Right.

So as an ad illustrator, he became nationally famous.

Yeah, which is crazy to think of now.

It really is. His first big break was for something called Flit. It was a bug spray. And if you look at the Flit ads, they have a picture of the Flit. And it was that old timey Tom and Jerry pump that couldn't be more poisonous.

Yeah, it posts out like a cloud of noxious smoke.

That formed like a skull and crosspones in the air, basically, right? That's what he was drawing stuff for. And he came up with a catchphrase because he wasn't just illustrating. He was also copywriting in these ads, and he came up with, Quick Henry, the Flit. And that just became a national catchphrase.

Yeah, like where's the beef?

Right. Like somebody's pestering you just to somebody else, Quick, Henry, the Flit. That's how I probably would have used it. So he became known for that. And then a second egg campaign made him even bigger.

Oh, right. So he did Flit for 17 years, dude, which is like I thought, yeah, sure. He did that for a couple of years. There's almost two decades of doing those ads. Made a lot of money, kept them nice and employed through the Great Depression. And then this one's even weirder. He went to work for Standard Oil, who had Esso oil and Esso gas. And this was Esso Marine, which was their boat oil. In 1934, he has this PR idea to create a fake Navy The Seuss Navy. The Seuss Navy.

Which is nothing. He just made it up out of nowhere to promote the Esso Marine oil.

Yeah, and it worked.

Yeah, because he basically drafted people into his Navy. He would draw famous figures, like say, Eleanor Roosevelt or something like that, dressed up in the Seuss Navy uniform or whatever. It became a thing. People wanted to be in it, so they would apply to be in it. Isn't that weird? I guess Esso would hold a party every year and just pull out all the stops. There would be this lavish Seuss Navy party.

You know what it's called? What? The Seuss Navy Luncheon and Frollic.

That sounds so like '30s.

They had 2,000 admirals, and they included among them, Vincent Astor and Guy Lombardo, famous band leader. And this is a Grabster article. As Ed put it, they were what you would call tastemakers today. Wealthy, influential Americans wanted to be in this fake Navy to go to this luncheon and frolic.

Right.

And he wrote these little Navy story booklets, and it, astonishingly, it was a big deal, and it actually worked. And when you look at them, they look like Dr. Seuss books. It's not like he changed his style.

No, no, no. That is the thing. He became famous and sought after for his style.

Yeah, exactly. And weirdly enough, he said that the only reason he went into children's books initially was because his standard oil contract didn't forbid it. That was some of the work that he was allowed to do on the side. Got He was like, It's not like I had a great thing for kids.

Well, he even said very famously multiple times that he didn't write for kids. He wrote for people.

And he also famously said, You have kids. I'll entertain them. Right. Yeah.

He didn't want kids.

Did not want kids. No.

And he never had them. So his wish came true. He was already pretty famous by the time World War II came around. And he actually volunteered to become a soldier. But he was sent to Hollywood to work at what was called Fort Fox.

Yeah, this was strange. I mean, I had heard of the Signal Corps.

Well, the Signal Corps is everything from code and code breakers. Oh, really? All the way to psychological operations.

Oh, I thought the Signal Corps was just the people that made documentaries and stuff.

This was a division within the Signal Corps. Got you. And so he was basically in this division with Frank Capra and some other screenwriters, actors. Basically, anybody who had anything to do with visual entertainment was put into this group in Hollywood on the Fox lot at what was called Fort Fox. And that's where he spent most of the war. Although there was a fascinating story about a time when he went to Europe because he had to go get approvals for a documentary he had worked on from all the high-ranking generals in Europe. So he went from headquarters to headquarters throughout Europe. And while he was in Luxembourg, he visited some of his friends, and he basically got the skinny, they think, on the Ghost Army. You know the Ghost Army where they had inflatable tanks? It was meant to make America's military look way bigger than it was. And these guys were running psychological operations. Well, Dr. Seuss was friends with some of the higher ups in the Ghost Army, and they think that they showed him on a map where to go to go see some of these. Well, in between the time he left and the time he got there, that was suddenly behind enemy lines.

Yeah, the Battle of the Bolge literally started. Around him.

Around him. While he was... Yeah. And he was like, I was just driving around thinking it was just hard to find friendly troops as part of combat.

Belgium sure is pretty.

But he ended up inadvertently spending three days 10 miles behind enemy lines during the Battle of the bulge and just barely made it out with his life.

Yeah, he was rescued by the Brits, but he would eventually become a lieutenant colonel in his short stent as a late 30-year-old. He was, I think, 38 when he first went in. Right. Which is really interesting piece of backstory.

Well, we left out a pretty big part of his formative years early on in his career was he wanted to have a say in the direction America took in World War II, and he was very much in favor of going to war against the Nazis and Japan and Italy. And one of the reasons why he was in favor was because he was extremely antifascist. He hated fascism. And he got a job at a liberal magazine, I think a newspaper actually called PM, that was founded in New York. And it was founded with the eye to basically call people out who are pushing other people around. It was a very liberal, very antifascist, very pro-World War II, although they didn't call it that at the time. And it was very anti-isolationist, too. And Dr. Seuss was drawing editorial cartoons, very political editorial cartoons, about seven days a week for this magazine. And he did some really good work in it, actually.

Well, yeah. And then in the army, he actually made films. He was making documentaries right alongside Frank Capra. He had one series of training videos called Private Snaffeu that were animated, but they were the work of Chuck Jones, actually. It's just so crazy about all this talent that's in the army producing these things at the time. But he went on to make live-action documentaries, one called Your Job in Germany, another called Our Job in Japan. Macarthur stopped the release of Our Job in Japan, and apparently, General Patty stormed out of a screening of one of the other ones, and I couldn't find the word, but it said he uttered one loud curse word.

Oh, you couldn't find it? No.

Did you?

It was B-S.Oh.

Okay.but he didn't say B-S.I was trying to think of what it would be. But he didn't say B-S. Sure. I was like, But one word, so it wasn't the F word unless it was just a very long, drawn out.

I don't have time for this.

All right, B-S. That makes sense. Yeah.

Which I don't understand. I don't know what the problem was. But they were both the our job in Japan or your job in Germany. Yeah. Where it's about occupation, post-occupation life in Germany or Japan and what we were supposed to do.

Yeah, you can watch your job in Germany on YouTube.

Yeah, and our job in Japan, too.

Yeah. So he recut those, basically, rewrote and recut those later on and retitled them, Hitler Lives and Design for Death.

No, he didn't. They were recut around him without his say.

Oh, no, No, he and his wife later got those films. Oh, really? And recut them and won an academy award. Oh, okay. Yeah.

I had read that a producer went and did some recutting against their wishes and made it way worse than they originally intended.

Oh, well, that may have happened. And then maybe they then later onRe-recut it?got the Oscar for their version. Right. I don't know. Okay. But we left out a lot, actually, because he was actually, had, previous to the army, had already written children's books. He went fully into the because of a ship trip that he took. In 1936-Let's walk it back a little bit. They went on a transatlantic voyage aboard the MS Kongsholme, and apparently the ship's engine had this beat, this hypnotic throbbing sound that just really stuck with him. It got into his head, and so he started composing rhyming couplets that match with this rhythm.

Kind of like... That's my SS Kong's Home impression.

All right. Well, it ended up being what's called anapestic tetrameter, which is what he would make his career on this poetic meter.

You know what that made me think of, Chuck? I've never heard those words together in my life, but no one ever taught me how to read a Dr. Seuss book. It's almost like we have some ingrained thing in our brain to read things in that rhythm or rhyme. You know what I mean? Or is it just that my parents read that to me and that's where I picked it up from? But who taught them? I don't know. Who taught anybody how to read something in rimes? It's just like you just know. It's pretty intuitive. Even when you're not reading it in the right rhythm, your brain realizes it and corrects you and you go back and reread it the right way. When you get to the next line, you're like, oh, wait, that's out of beat or whatever. You figure it out naturally. I wonder why we're geared toward that.

Yeah, it's funny, too, because I obviously read a lot of kids' books every night now, and some of them are great, and some of them just like, they'll do a word that doesn't quite rhyme, and I'm always like, come on, or they'll stuff too much in a line, and it's not graceful in the read. I'm like, Man, this is lame. Do better.

Orange and door hinge.

Hey, that's not bad.

Well, that's M&M.

Oh, okay.

He very famously can rhyme something with orange, which I found out because I think I said nothing rhyms with orange.

Well, everyone's He always said that because that's true.

Well, I meant it.

Door hinge. That's funny. He created a children's book on that anapestic tetrameter called, and this is a story no one can beat, that was later changed and published in 1937 as, and to think that I saw it on Mulbury Street, because he had an old friend that he ran into from Dartmouth that turned out to be a children's book editor at Vanguard Press.

I read an account of the story, and the person telling the story said, had he been walking on the other side of the street that day, he may have never become a children's author. It was that fateful. His friend from Dartmouth was a new children's book editor at Vanguard, you said? Yeah. And it was so new that he was looking for material. And Dr. Seuss happened to be walking around with the manuscript on him and just happened to be down there, and they ran into each other and this book got published, and that was the one where he first made his name as a children's bookwriter. You're right. And shout out to Stephen Barr, a book agent.

That's right. So this endopestic tetrameter is what he basically stuck with the rest of his career. He would alter it here and there, use other meters here and there. But this is where, as Ed said, that was his bread and butter. And it's very Walsh-like. You can count it off in three, four time. And it just was perfect for kids' books. Right.

And with that first kids' book, and to think I saw on Mulberry Street, apparently, it's about a kid named Marco who sees a horse and cart on his street. And as he's retelling it, it just becomes this bigger and bigger and more bizarre and grand thing that he saw. And this will come back later on in the episode.

Yeah. So he's writing these books. He's doing okay. His fourth book was called Horton Hatches the Egg. I think that's where we first meet Horton. But he wasn't lighting the world on fire. And then that's when he goes in the army.

Right. Let me tell you the story about getting caught in the Battle of the Bolge again. Here we go. So he makes it through World War II. He escapes with his life from the Battle of the Bolge. And when he comes out of World War II, he goes right back to writing books. And he wrote a few more in the '40s. I believe he wrote Yurtel the turtle, which I know is an allegory for Hitler. And he It was on record. Yeah, apparently, the early draughts of it, he had drawn a Hitler mustache on Yurtel, the turtle. It's about anti-authoritarian.

It's about authoritarian. Is that Hitler or Michael Jordan?

Does he have a Hitler mustache?

He did very famously in this one Haynes TV commercial, and everyone was like, Has someone not told him?

I didn't see that.

Oh, yeah. I'll have to show you pictures.

I have my head in the sand like I was Charles Lindberg or something.

Oh, that's a nice circular ref.

That was just for you and me. So he was writing some more, and he was selling thousands of copies every time he released a book. He was a known children's author. He'd already established his style as something that was pretty recognizable around the United States. But it wasn't until the mid '50s that things really changed for him. Yeah. Oh, wow, that is a Hitler mustache. There's no mistake in that.

It's a decision.

So I think in 1955, there was a book written called Why Can't Johnny Read? Right?

Okay.

And a guy named Rudolf Flesch, and I realized why we jumped over. We'll get back to it. Sure. I'm not ready for it yet. All right. A guy named Rudolf Flesch. Rudolf Flesch? Yeah. F-l-e- Was he a porn actor? That'd be a good one, though.

Yeah.

Rudolf Flesch. Yeah. You'd have to call yourself Rudi, too. Yeah. Anyway, Rudolf Flesch, he wrote, Why Can't Johnny Read? And it was basically like an indictment of the American public school system, the education system, and how we taught kids to read. And it was equally an indictment of Dick and Jane and the way that kids used to read or be taught to read was just basically, here are words on a page, memorize them. This is a red ball. This is the word red. Don't be an idiot.

Red ball. Say it. It's the worst way to teach kids stuff.

It is. And the guy in the article said, he wrote an article in Life later on, too. He said, who would be a great children's book author to teach kids how to read is Dr. Seuss. He hates kids. He's already writing books for kids. But if he just directed that toward actually teaching them how to read, kids would definitely want that. And it turns out that an editor, I think at Houghton Mifflin or somebody, wherever Dr. Seuss was writing at the time- Dunder Mifflin. Dunder Mifflin. You got me. He said, That's actually a pretty good idea. That's where we got the cat in the hat.

That's right. It was originally meant as a reading primer. I think there were-225. 225 words. Very famously, his editor bet him after that, that he could not write a book with only 50 words. He went, Take this book, Green eggs and ham- And shove it. And shove it, and give me my $50. That is supposedly true. His editor bet him that he could not do so. And that's where green eggs and ham came from.

Yeah, and it's 50 words exactly. That's right. At this point, he went from, Ed says, he went from being a well-known children's author to probably the best-known children's author in the world. Yeah. He He had shown, not only could he write fun, whimsical stories with the disguised moral lesson in the middle of it, too, with great illustrations and hand-drawn fonts and all that, he could actually teach the world's children how to read English, at least.

Yeah. And then from that success, he wrote that same year, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

That's a big year, man. Very big year. So Cat in the Hat and the Grinch is the same year, right? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, which is just amazing. And then in 1966, of course, we get the very famous TV cartoon adaptation, which people still love and enjoy today, including me. Oh, yeah. And he ended up being so successful that they gave him his own imprint at random house with his wife, Helen Palmer Geisel, who was, by all accounts, the woman behind the man. Oh, yeah. She was an author herself. She wrote quite a few books, one called, Do You Know What I'm Going to Do Next Saturday? To You. One called, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Right. Man, it's funny. Adding those two words just makes it threaten me. It's a horror novel. One called Why I Built the Boogle House, and one called I Was Kissed by a Seal at the Zoo. That sounds great. I didn't want to just wash over her because she was an author, and very sadly, she ended up committing suicide very late in life.

Yeah, within a couple of years of an affair that he had. Yeah. He'd apparently had multiple affairs. Her suicide note supposedly referenced this feeling that she'd been overshadowed by him in his career. Yeah. Like you said, she was very much the woman behind the man.

And I think expected to support him and all that thing. And she did.

She put her own career away so that she could handle his correspondence and business affairs. She was in charge of correspondence to sick kids that wrote them or entire classes. He was the artistic genius who just needed to be left alone so he could make these books every year. And she handled everything else. And ask somebody to put their career away so that you can have yours, it's a big thing to ask somebody. Yeah.

She was 69 when she... At a believe, I said committed suicide earlier. I apologize. I know we don't use that term anymore. We say now that she died by suicide. Right.

Because committed makes it sound like, Oh, my God, she committed a sin.

Yeah. People have written in about that, and we were both glad to be made aware of that. She was 69 years old and apparently also suffered from Gilliam Barre.

Gilliam Barre.

Syndrome.

Yeah, we got corrected on that some other time. That's how I remember.

Of how to pronounce it? Yeah. I mean, who knows why someone eventually takes that path in life. Could be a lot of factors. But October 23, 1967, she overdosed on medication.

After they'd been married for 40 years, too.

Yeah, man.

Shortly after that, he married Audrey Diamond.

Yes.

Geizel, who's his widow, who is, I believe, still alive and basically running his estate still.

Yeah, her name was Audrey Stone Diamond, but it was D-I-M-O-N-D. No, A. Oh, yeah. Which is interesting. I wonder if it's.

It's very efficient.

But yes, she became Soys, and he went, Just go ahead and get used to it. It's Seuss.

She's like, Really? I've always said Soice. He's like, I love you.

She had two daughters, and he said, I bet you they'd love boarding school. She went, Okay. She later on even said, this is a direct quote. She said, They wouldn't have been happy with Ted, and Ted wouldn't have been happy with them.

Yeah, he really did not want kids or kids to be around. He just liked doing the books that he liked to do.

It's pretty interesting.

So that 1957 year, that was a big breakout year for him. And that was the year that he became the Dr. Seuss that we see. But he kept writing for many, many years. I mean, up until his death in 1991, he apparently cranked out a book a year. Some of them over time took on much more progressive tones until he became the Dr. Seuss that we see today. So prior to that, though, in recent years, some people have said, Hey, you know, Dr. Seuss had some really racist bigoted stuff in his early work. And it's become this national conversation to figure out how to do this because everyone loves Dr. Seuss. Loves Dr. Seuss. There's nobody who doesn't like Dr. Seuss. But if you... Or his work, I should say. Sure. But if you start digging into, especially some of his early work, it It becomes problematic.

You want to take a break?

Okay. All right.

All right. Let's take a break, and we will take part in that national conversation right after this.

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All right, Chuck. So it's national conversation time. So Dr. Seuss, especially in his earliest work as Jack O' Lantern and Judge writer, the Humor magazine writer, a lot of his stuff was extremely racist. Yes. As Ed puts it, not just racist for the time, but monstrously racist stuff.

Yeah, like full-on blackface caricatures. It depicted African-American characters as lazy, as savages, have too many kids. He made jokes about slavery. There's one we can't even read on this show, but it's awful.

Yeah, right. He also, especially after Pearl Harbor, directed a lot of his creative energy toward making ugly caricatures of Japan and depicting Japanese and Japanese-Americans in really unflattering light, too.

Yeah, and apparently supported internment. You don't want to drag somebody through the mud. But if we're going to give a picture of the man, this is who he was earlier in his life.

Right. So Ed makes a really good point. I think Ed's a great American for the way that he handled this, too. He's saying that That if you look at his early stuff, he was a younger man at the time. And I think we should also say Ed qualifies us. None of this excuses anything. Sure. But look at the whole picture of the person. If you look at his earlier stuff, or his most racist stuff is when he was youngest. And his most progressive stuff that everybody knows and loves as Dr. Seuss is when the world was changing, too.

Yeah, it's not like in 1989, he was like, I'm I'm going to deliver, I'm going to serve up a good old racist cartoon.

Right, exactly. It's not like he invented sea monkeys or something like that, right? So he progressed with the world. And not only did he progress with the world and change his views to take on much more progressive stuff, We have themes like bigotry with the sneeches, is about discriminating against people and just how ridiculous that is, how people are actually people. A lot of people point to Horton, Here's a Who, as a bit of a mea culpa for his treatment of the Japanese prior to World War II and during World War II. The Lorax is obviously pro-environmentalism.

Yeah, he fully He fully changed one of his books altogether, an earlier version of- And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street? Yeah, it had the word Chinaman in there.

It was worse than Chinaman.

And he changed that to Chinese person in the publication of the book for future printings. Right.

So he definitely evolved. His work's evolved. He never came out and publicly said, Hey, I'm really sorry about all the racist stuff that I did earlier. By the time he died in 1990, I think that that really wasn't the way that the world was turning at the time. But he does seem to have evolved and changed with the times and did go back and revise some stuff that had crept into his work.

Yeah, and this has come to light more prominently in the past few years because there have been some book festivals and children's literature festivals that have either been boycotted or where they've tried to make him a little less prominent. The Cat in the Hat, I think, was used. Wasn't it like an official-Read Across America?

Right. He was the mascot for it.

Yeah. Did they officially remove the Cat and the Hat?

I think they backed a little bit away from the Cat in the Hat as a mascot, if not entirely. I think that Dr. Seuss's books are not the focal point of the Read Across America campaign like they were. Right.

And then last year, Melania Trump made the news when she gifted a library, some Dr. Seuss books, and the librarians refused that gift and said they are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.

I don't know that that all is necessarily true, is it?

Yeah, I think that might have been a little too harsh.

Well, I mean, if I'm wrong, I want to know. The only thing that I've seen that could be pointed to in his work-like his books.was the reference and drawing of the Chinese guy in his first book, and to think I saw it on Mulberry Street. I didn't see anything else. I saw some reference that maybe the cat in the hat was supposed to be blackface, but I saw that one place and nowhere else. It seemed to be his earlier work, not his children's books. And I didn't see any racist propaganda that was hidden in the books. If anything, the books that you would give a library, I don't know what title she gave, would have been the more progressive stuff.

Yes. She didn't go there and say, Here, look, here's the old Jack-a-lantern- Here's the really dirty stuff. College humor, racist cartoons. And yeah, to say that his work was steeped in racist propaganda when I'm talking about the children's books, I agree, it's not accurate. Right.

What I'm trying to figure out is, is that Librarian hip to something we don't know about or not? I'm very curious to know. If we didn't dig quite deep enough, I'm a little surprised because you know us. But I want to know if we're missing something there.

Yeah, for sure. I found an article where they were just asking a lot of professionals in children's literature what they thought about all this, because I'm a big dummy. I don't know how to figure this stuff out on my own. And Anne Neely, she's a professor of children's lit at Vanderbilt, said this, Just as every author or illustrator is, I think Theodore Geisel was a product of his time. We should not judge him by today's standards, but we must evaluate his books that we decide to share with children using today's standards.

That is a really great point. Yeah.

We cannot wallow in our own nostalgia when we make choices for the books we share with young children. There's simply too many outstanding books available.

Well, especially also if the books that we're raising our kids on, it's new to them. If it's If it is steeped in racist propaganda that we're not realizing we're sharing or perpetuating, then yeah, that shouldn't be the case.

And Ed makes the great point that in the 1920s and '30s, it was the exceptional American who broke out of that mold and was very progressive. And I wish he would have been one of those, but he wasn't.

Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons why there's such a cognitive dissonance when you find this stuff out is because that's what you think of Dr. Seuss based on his work, that he would be that guy, but he was human. His work is larger than him, is I think, what it is. And that's the case with just about everything, it seems like.

Yeah. I mean, I don't want this to taint your reading of how the Grinch stole Christmas this year.

Although another thing that he was called out on once was there was no female protagonist in any of his books either.

Again, a product of the time. Yeah. He was a man writing about little male characters.

But he went and created Dazy Headed Mazy after that. Right. Again, his books became more progressive further on in his career, and he handled things like segregation and discrimination, like with the Sneeches. The Butter Battle Book was a clear, glaring allegory for the Cold War and the Mutual Assured Destruction as Arms Race. A haunting book that ends without any resolution with both sides, the yux and the zeux, I think, with their bombs pointed at one another. It's not like, and they lived happily ever after. It's like, what's going to happen? And then his last book that he wrote and published while he was alive was, Oh, the Places You'll Go, which I had no idea, was published in 1990. Did you?

I didn't know anything about it.

So it was his last book that was published while he was alive. It's also his top selling book. So some One of these other books have been around for decades longer than Oh, the Places You'll Go. But Oh, the Places You'll Go is his top selling book because it's given to grads every spring. There's a new batch of graduates who get Oh, the Places You'll Go as a gift, and 10 million copies have been sold.

Because it's about your future and what to wait to. Is that the deal?

Yeah, just doing things and taking risks and trying stuff, and you can do it, and it'll be hard, and you're going to run into problems. But you're a good person, and you're going to make good choices. And I have a story about this. Oh, yeah? So last night, I was talking to Yumi, and I was just out of nowhere. I was like, Did you know that Oh, the Place You'll Go was only published in 1990, but it's Dr. Seuss's greatest selling book? And she just looked at me a little flabbergasted like, Why would you say that? I was like, Oh, we're doing a Dr. Seuss episode tomorrow. And she's like, That's really weird. I'll be right back. And she went into our bedroom and came back out with a copy of Oh, the places you'll go, and said- This has been under your pillow. She said, I was going to give this to you tomorrow for the last episode of The End of the World. Oh, wow. But I just happened to bring it up the day before. That's crazy. Yeah, I thought that was really surprising.

Man, how things work out.

But I read it as recently as last night. I'm like, this is an amazing... Even for Seuss, it's an amazing book. An article I read said that somebody said, You can tell that he knew this was the last book that was going to be published while he was alive, that he wanted this to be his swan song. Interesting.

Yeah. I would not be surprised talking about his more progressive views and catching up with the time if either Helen and or Audrey, as the women behind the man, weren't helping him along in that respect. Sure. And saying, Hey, get with it.

Oh, for changing his views? Maybe. I thought that as well.

I could totally see that.

Yeah, because if you think about it, Helen Palmer came into his life Yeah, I could see her having that influence on him. Yeah.

He passed away finally of cancer, September 24, 1991, 87. I remember this because that was a rough week. I was in college, and he and Miles Davis died about five or six days apart. Oh, really? I just remember being like, Man, this is one of those tough ones for dudes my age who were beboppers and children's book readers.

At the same time. I've got one last thing for you about Dr. Seuss. Do you have anything else?

I got one more thing, too. You first.

Okay, I'll go first. He was a voracious chain smoker. Oh, interesting. So much so that even back in the '50s and '60s, he knew he needed to lay off sometimes. So when he needed to lay off of smoking, he would take up a corn cob pipe that he kept turnip seeds in. And anytime he wanted to smoke, rather than light it, he would put a water dropper in there. And then when the turnip seeds started to sprout, he would go back to cigarettes. What? Yes.

I don't fully understand that. He would start a little seed pod.

Corn cob pipe with some turnip seeds. And then rather than light it, he would just put a seed dropper in and pop on it, but nothing was going on. It was all just mental or oral fixation. Then after about three days of doing this, the seeds would sprout, germinate, and he'd be like, Okay, I can go back to cigarettes now. So he'd take about three days off of cigarettes, and he used the crop of turnip greens as his indicator.

I thought you were going to say that that went on to feed the children in poor neighborhoods or something. Who hate turnips? Kids don't eat turnips. Turnips are great. I agree. I'm a root vegetable man myself. So my last thing, in 2007, a federal judge received a hard-boiled egg in the mail from an inmate in prison, protesting his diet in prison. The federal judge rendered a decision, and apparently it was worked up the ladder. I can't remember even what it was about, but he rendered a decision thusly, I do not like eggs in the file. This is Judge James Murehead. I do not like them in any style. I will not take them fried or boiled. I will not take them poached or boiled. I will not take them soft or scrambled despite an argument well-rambled. No fan I am of the egg at hand. Destroy that egg. Today, today, Today, today, I say without delay. And they threw him out of court and fired him because he was drunk.

Yeah. No, I don't know. Wow, I wonder what came out of that.

I don't know. It gave very little information about what the case was even on.

I know. The guy's like, No, really, this is a serious complaint. Please, you're focusing on the wrong thing. Someone help me. Oh, goodness. If you want to know more about Dr. Seuss, go research it. Make your own decisions about the man the work, all that stuff. Okay?

Agreed.

Since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

No, this is our last show of the year. No Listener Mail. It's just our time of the year to thank everyone here and here. Is this the end of 10 years?

Yes.

Or it's in the middle.

April is the beginning and end of the year.

Right. But the end of our calendar year, and we just thank everyone for hanging in for this long with us. It's amazing that we're still allowed to do this job.

Yeah, hang in there. It'll pay off eventually. Totally.

We're going to keep at it.

Forever.

Forever.

On a personal note, a very happy birthday to my dear sweet wife, Yumi. Happy birthday, Yumi. Happy birthday, Yumi. Thank you guys for being with us for yet another year. We'll see you next year, everybody.

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Hey, this is Prop from the hood, politics with Prop podcast. And this is what we do here. We take all these high, fluten political ideas and things in the news and explain it to you in a language that we all speak in. Just like, I don't know, take filibuster. Believe it or not, you already know what that is. Because if you got a mama that don't play no games, you've been filibustering your whole life. Hey, mom, no. Listen, listen, listen, mom. Before you make your decision, what had happened was everything said after that is a filibuster. You just trying stall her out to avoid the inevitable. Congress do it all the time. See, you already knew. So listen to HubPilot 6 with Prop on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

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