Let's All Go to the World's Fair

9:15Josh Clark:A guy dancing on an artificial leg, shooting his pistol in the air, chewing tobacco.

9:20Chuck Bryant:Yep, that's exactly right. I love it. So, yeah, this is obviously a huge hit. It actually made money for the organizers, which was not the case for all the world's fairs to come. But because of that, a lot of people around the world were like, hey, I want to get in on this. And Paris said, we're first. There was one in Dublin. There was one in Cork. There was one in Munich. There was one in New York, but really everything kind of moved over to Paris when they said, we're taking over here.

9:52Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. I mean, the other ones were legit World's Fairs. I think the one in New York in 1853 through, I think, November 1854. That was a long one, July to November.

10:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

10:03Josh Clark:The exhibition of the industry of all nations. In that case, they did okay, but they were, like, clearly copied the Crystal Palace. They built their own there in Bryant Park. but they lost money. I think the first U.S. one to make any kind of hay was the one in Philly in 1876, right?

10:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that was the Centennial Exhibition where the typewriter was invented. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone. There was also the largest steam engine ever, which apparently still holds the record. It was a 700-ton steam engine called the Corliss Engine. It took 65 railroad cars to deliver it to the exhibition in Philadelphia. And when they turned it on, all of the machines at the World's Fair came to life because they were all being powered by that steam engine in the center of the whole place.

10:54Josh Clark:That's a pretty fun little knock your socks off moment.

10:57Chuck Bryant:It is pretty cool.

10:59Josh Clark:Like everyone's standing around. Well, I guess it was still, it wasn't powering lights at the time, was it?

11:04Chuck Bryant:No, not yet.

11:05Josh Clark:Okay, because we're, yeah, that happens. It's coming, everybody. It's coming, yeah.

11:09Chuck Bryant:But this whole thing, it really, I mean, and it attracted 10 million people, and it was a big one. So I guess I got ahead of myself. Paris hadn't come yet. I'm just really excited about Paris taking over for some reason.

11:20Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, they took over in a big way. They hosted eight of them between 1855 and 1937. And a lot of theirs, like most other nations when they hosted, the government kind of really hosted. In America, it was a lot of, like, corporate entities from the beginning along with the government. But Paris really took it to a political sort of apex by like Napoleon really was showing off in the first and second ones. Like, look how great I am and look at all the great things I've done. The third one, I think, in 1878 was like, hey, you know, we're doing fine. We've recovered from the Franco-Prussian War and all this internal violence of the Paris Commune.

12:03Josh Clark:And like, we're still doing great. Look at us. Yeah. Yeah.

12:07Chuck Bryant:I mean, that was a big part of those European ones, like you said. The Paris ones also, more charmingly, had fountains. Like, almost all of them had a really cool fountain, and a lot of those fountains are left over. There was one from 1889 called the Fountain of Progress. And it is the first water feature to have electric lights inside that shined up from underwater, which to me is still quite impressive.

12:36Josh Clark:Yeah. Do you think when they debuted it, they were like, and we're going to have Jacques stand in the fountain while we turn it on. We're pretty sure it's going to work.

12:45Chuck Bryant:No one likes Jacques anyway, so don't worry.

12:47Josh Clark:Yeah. It all worked out for Jacques, though. No, but I'm still like, when I see a swimming pool light, I know it's housed in a thing, but I don't know. It all just vaguely makes me nervous.

12:59Chuck Bryant:It does, for sure. I get that. But the ones in the fountains, they never make me nervous. They just look so cool to me. Yeah, because you're not in the fountain. No, no. So it doesn't matter if it's like buzzing with electricity.

13:11Josh Clark:You ever been to Rome? Yes, I have.

13:14Chuck Bryant:It's one of my favorite towns.

13:15Josh Clark:You've seen that Trevi fountain?

13:17Chuck Bryant:I do. Is that the one with all the... Yes, I have.

13:20Josh Clark:Yeah. You didn't go to Rome and not see the Trevi Fountain. Right.

13:23Chuck Bryant:Yeah. It was pretty amazing. Yeah.

13:26Josh Clark:I think that has lights in it.

13:29Chuck Bryant:I'm sure it does.

13:30Josh Clark:Or at least around it. The thing was lit up. I was there at night and it wasn't dark.

13:33Chuck Bryant:I was there during the day, so I couldn't tell you.

13:36Josh Clark:Okay. I got you.

13:37Chuck Bryant:So one of the other things that happened at the 1889 Exposition Universelle was that the Eiffel Tower was debuted. And we talked about this in depth. We did a 2020 episode on the Eiffel Tower.

13:49Josh Clark:That's right. But just a couple of points as a refresher. It was a contest, about 100 entrants, and Gustav Eiffel won it along with his colleagues. And they proposed at the time what was going to be the, and it was, I think, the tallest building in the world at about 1 ,000 feet. And people, you know, the people of the world loved it, but the people of Paris did not like it very much, right?

14:16Chuck Bryant:No, they wanted to get rid of it, and it almost got torn down. I think in 1909 it came as close as it ever has, and they said, no, no, we're going to use this as a radio telegraph station. So people in Paris were like, all right, as long as it's serving some purpose, you know, because I can't remember who said it, but someone said that something that doesn't actually function can never truly be beautiful.

14:39Josh Clark:Oh, really?

14:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah, something along those lines, yes.

14:43Josh Clark:So like form over function, basically?

14:46Chuck Bryant:Function over form. Or function and form.

14:49Josh Clark:Function. Well, yeah, sure. Yeah. I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah, I think so. Oh, we are speaking in code now.

14:54Chuck Bryant:That's right.

14:55Josh Clark:It finally happened. They also had what was called a hygiene palace at that expo, which sounds super gross. Yeah, it does. But it was, you know, it was at a time, you know, it was 1889. So hygiene, you know, we're talking like life-saving hygiene, not like how to smell less. So they showed like hospital stuff, medical stuff, how to raise. They had real babies and showed like, here's how you raise a baby properly.

15:20Chuck Bryant:And then also speaking of babies, they made a full scale reproduction of the tower at the Madeline Hospital for foundlings, which is where in Paris, if you had a child, this is where you would leave it for somebody else to take over. If you didn't want the child. Yes, exactly. Right. But they even had like a model of a baby and everything. and I don't know why they chose to include that, but they did. I don't know. Maybe get the word out. I guess so because that was, yeah, they were trying to get the word out in the hygiene palace for sure.

15:51Josh Clark:It's interesting when you can look back at a thing like that and it can be both sort of the greatest thing and the saddest thing all at once, you know?

15:57Chuck Bryant:For sure, yeah.

15:58Josh Clark:Yeah.

15:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah, we should, yeah.

16:02Josh Clark:We should build one?

16:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Well, it's funny you mentioned that. I started one this morning. You can come over and help me finish it. Awesome.

16:12Josh Clark:That expo was very profitable. They made a ton of money on it. And I don't think we said at the beginning, like from the beginning, these World's Fairs, a portion of the money that they make on these has gone, or at least in the United States, has gone into funds that still help fund like industrial arts programs for students.

16:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that first Crystal Palace exhibition has a fellowship fund that helps people in industrial design get through grad school still today from 1851.

16:43Josh Clark:Should we break or should we talk about the 1900 Expo?

16:48Chuck Bryant:Let's talk about the 1900 Expo because just to kind of keep this contained for a second, basically these biggest ones, the ones that really made the biggest splash are still contained in Europe. Largely Great Britain and France.

17:03Josh Clark:Okay. All right. I agree. This one had the 1900 attracted 50 million people.

17:07Chuck Bryant:That's crazy.

17:08Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, these are 1900 people. Right. There's only like 60 million. Yeah. I mean, you can get 50 million people pretty easily together now in any given space. For sure.

17:18Chuck Bryant:It's like nothing.

17:19Josh Clark:But it was a big deal back then. And again, showcasing Paris as like sort of one of the leading modern cities. They debuted something pretty cool there called the Cinerama, which they still have these. They have one of these in Atlanta, the Cyclorama. In Atlanta is this kind of thing where you go in this sort of immersive theater experience where they have projections, but also paintings, and it's like a 360-degree screen. In their case, they simulated a balloon ride because it sounds like balloons were all the rage at the time.

17:50Chuck Bryant:For sure. They also had an actual balloon race, a long distance balloon race as part of the exposition. Yeah. That reminded me when I was reading about the Cineorama, when we did our Salt Lake City show that one time. Oh, yeah. Before the show, during the afternoon, I was walking around downtown Salt Lake and I ended up in like the main Mormon temple. And one of the things they have there as an exhibit is a, it's basically 300 degrees. It's not 360, but it is really close. Like high def movie screen that is right there in your face. Oh, cool. Of Brigham Young, like receiving the message from God.

18:31Chuck Bryant:Oh, wow. And it was so disorienting that I ended up like staggering out of there in the middle of it. Like I couldn't take it. It was just overwhelming.

18:40Josh Clark:The message or the 300 degree?

18:43Chuck Bryant:I guess a little bit of both, but I think more the more the whole 300 degree thing. It was the most immersive video experience I've ever seen by far.

18:53Josh Clark:Yeah, I'm wondering. I haven't been to the Sphere in Vegas, but I'm wondering if, I mean, it looks super cool, but I wonder if there is any sort of like, oh, boy, this is too much kind of feeling.

19:02Chuck Bryant:Probably. I mean, it's Las Vegas.

19:05Josh Clark:Yeah, that's true. It's all too much.

19:07Chuck Bryant:So one of the great things about the 1900 exposition came from the United States. It was an exhibit by American black scholars, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, who attended and basically said, here is all the progress that black Americans have made since the end of slavery. It sounds really cool.

19:26Josh Clark:Yeah, they had books. They had inventions. They had art. They had just straight up photographs of like, look, we have black nuns in the United States. We have black soldiers. We have black college students. and then apparently W.E.B. Du Bois was sort of the early USA Today because he loved making infographics. And he made infographics showing like their literacy rates were rising. They own taxable property. And these were from actual Georgians, I think.

19:59Chuck Bryant:Right.

20:00Josh Clark:And then also like, hey, our literacy is so good among black Americans. Like we're better than Romania and Russia at this point. Yeah.

20:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I went and looked at some of Du Bois' infographics, and they're really interesting. He came up with some really interesting ways to cram a bunch of data into one page visually. So it's worth looking up, especially if you like colorful things.

20:23Josh Clark:Oh, I do. And that is very USA Today. Shall we break now? Yes. All right. We will be right back after this.

20:33Chuck Bryant:Well, now when you're on the road, driving in your truck, Why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's Stuff You Should Know. Stuff You Should Know. All right.

20:58Josh Clark:All right, so we're back. Hey, everyone. We want to talk to you a little bit about Wayfair, because no matter what your aesthetic, whether it's mid-century modern, farmhouse, contemporary, eclectic, it doesn't matter because Wayfair is going to have something for you.

21:13Chuck Bryant:Yeah, Wayfair, they've got just what you need. And it's convenient, too, because they have a ton of different stuff to choose from, a huge selection of home decor items, and it's easy to find exactly what's right for you with their amazing search engine.

21:25Josh Clark:That's right. Whether you're starting a home project, you need, like, furniture upgrades or accent pieces or functional decor, or if you're just doing a spring refresh and you need some outdoor furniture, patio decor, maybe lighter bedding, Wayfair has got it all.

21:38Chuck Bryant:Yep, and thousands of five-star reviews help you shop with confidence. So find furniture, decor, and essentials that fit your unique style and budget. Head to Wayfair.com right now and shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair. Every style, every home.

22:01Josh Clark:Hey, listeners, let me ask you a question. When you're choosing a cola, are you making your decision based purely on taste or based on the brand that you think you like? That's the question at the heart of the Pepsi paradox.

22:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, this idea shows that when labels and bias disappear, people actually prefer the taste of Pepsi Zero Sugar. Pepsi's been demonstrating this since the original Pepsi Challenge back in the 70s when people at malls and grocery stores discovered that in blind taste tests, they preferred the taste of Pepsi.

22:26Josh Clark:Right, but it's not just some relic of the past. Last year, Pepsi revived the iconic Pepsi Challenge, this time with Pepsi Zero Sugar, and took the challenge across the country. When taste was the only thing that mattered in that challenge, 66 % of participants preferred the taste of Pepsi Zero Sugar over Coke Zero Sugar. And Pepsi Zero Sugar won every single market that the challenge visited.

22:46Chuck Bryant:So, let us take you back to that simple question that we posed at the top. Are you choosing the Zero Sugar Cola that you actually prefer? Or are you settling for the label that you think you prefer? Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today. You deserve taste. You deserve Pepsi.

23:08Josh Clark:You know what phone calls are always super important to me are the phone calls that I have with my mom. She's the only parent I have left, and I always look forward to those calls. Here's something you might not know. 2026 will mark the 150th anniversary of the first ever phone call. That took place on March 10th, 1876. And from the call that sparked it all to the first long-distance phone lines, the first line across America, the first line across the Atlantic, the first round-the-world call, the first commercial cell service, and the first 911 system, AT &T has been connecting people for 150 years in so many different ways.

23:43Chuck Bryant:So congrats on 150 years of connecting people, AT &T.

23:47Josh Clark:Connecting changes everything. AT &T.

23:53Josh Clark:World's Fairs Latin America is getting involved now I think this is after they had freed themselves from Spanish rule early 19th century they wanted to again show like hey we're doing pretty well not only were they sending factions to other World's Fairs like in Europe and the United States but Cordoba and Buenos Aires Argentina had their own Santiago Chile had their own And this was like between the 1870s and 1880s.

24:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah. At the time, there was a lot of tension, though, apparently between the country's boosters who were like, look at us. Like, we don't need Spanish rule. We're doing all this cool, interesting stuff and we're inventing all this stuff. And then others there were like, no, the point of this is to like sell ourselves as sources of raw materials.

24:41Josh Clark:Right.

24:42Chuck Bryant:In places where you can overthrow regimes to grow bananas more cheaply.

24:47Josh Clark:Yeah, I think that was a big point, right? Like, hey, we can actually make stuff here. We're not just to be sort of looted for what we can provide you. Precisely.

24:55Chuck Bryant:And then the people who made money from the country being looted, they were the ones who were like, no, no, no, we need to just show off how easily we're looted.

25:02Josh Clark:Yeah, exactly. There were, you know, speaking of looting, there were World's Fairs and places that were colonized at the time. There was one in 1883 to 84 in Calcutta. Kingston, Jamaica had one in 1891. Hanoi had one in 1902. And this was, you know, hey, look at the local culture, but also like clearly coming from the colonizer side, like, look how great they're doing thanks to us.

25:28Chuck Bryant:Right, exactly. Okay, so there were, like, they spread all over the world because they were so impressive and they really did bring a lot of attention and industry and business and exports from these countries that were hosting these things. Like, they were not just vanity projects. There really were big returns on them. And the U.S. got back in the game. I don't know if it was the first one after the Philadelphia one. It could have been. But far and away in the United States, the most famous World Fair was the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition. It was a pretty good World's Fair, if I do say so myself.

26:09Yeah.

26:11Josh Clark:And if you're one of the gazillions of people who have emailed us over the years to do one on the Chicago World's Fair and H.H. Holmes, the serial killer, we should probably do a standalone episode on that because this is just going to be a sort of a quickie on Chicago. and I know there's a lot more to it than this. So I guess that's me saying prepare to be disappointed a little bit. But more like a preamble to like there'll be a deeper episode coming because a lot of people have asked for this over time. It is, you know, mainly known for the fact that H.H. Holmes, serial killer, was kidnapping young women who traveled to that Chicago fair and had his murder castle in Inglewood.

26:52Josh Clark:And there was a great, great book called The Devil in the White City, which I still haven't read, but everyone said it's just amazing. It's by Eric Larson, and it's on the list.

27:01Chuck Bryant:As far as popular histories go, it is easily in the top five.

27:06Josh Clark:Yeah, man. I've got to read this thing.

27:08Chuck Bryant:It is so good. So readable. He does such a great job of putting you there. And it does cover H.H. Holmes and all the terrible stuff he does in depth, but it also covers the fair in depth. It was an amazing thing.

27:20Josh Clark:Yeah, so we're going to cover the fair not so in depth, but we're going to mention a few things for sure. This is where we got Cracker Jacks. This is where we got the dishwasher.

27:30Chuck Bryant:Sure.

27:31Josh Clark:This is where we got the modern zipper, which they called a clasp locker at the time.

27:35Chuck Bryant:We did an episode on that, too, in 2020.

27:38Josh Clark:That's right. What else?

27:40Chuck Bryant:The Ferris wheel came from the 1893 exposition, which very quickly after that became like a staple of world's fairs. And it was very appropriately designed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., who is from Pittsburgh. And the first one he designed was 264 feet tall, 36 cars, and offered a 20-minute ride in exchange for 50 cents, which is about$18 today. And you could see the whole dang fare from the top of that Ferris wheel, and it blew people's minds.

28:12Josh Clark:Yeah, I thought it was, when I was reading this, I thought it was interesting that they became a thing, but like more like a, or at least in the United States, more like a fairgrounds or a carnival thing. and just more recently, like the past like 15 or 20 years, I feel like, went back to this original idea, put like a huge Ferris wheel in a downtown city. Right. Just so you can like see stuff.

28:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And bear in mind also at the time, we kind of take it for granted now, but in the same way that you, the average person was not exposed to cutting edge technology and new ideas and awesome new products and stuff, people, people, especially in the Midwestern United States were not exposed to a view of 264 feet. Like, this is an extremely novel experience for most of the people who attended that fair.

29:00Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Atlanta's got one. You ever been on that one? No, I have not.

29:06Chuck Bryant:I haven't been on a Ferris wheel in a long, long time.

29:10Josh Clark:Yeah, you know, London has the eye. Atlanta has theirs. It's, you know, it was fun to take Ruby when she was little. But, like, there's no reason for you to go on it.

29:21Chuck Bryant:Okay. Good to know. Even the London Eye, have you been on that one?

29:25Josh Clark:I haven't been on that. But, hey, there's a Ted's Montana Grill right there. The Tabernacle's right there. So if you've got tickets to see a show at the Tabernacle, go eat at Ted's Montana Grill. Have a Bison burger. Check. Ride on the Ferris wheel, and then you've done it.

29:39Chuck Bryant:We're going to see Echo and the Bunnymen in May, so we'll ride the Ferris wheel then.

29:45Josh Clark:Remind me about that before it happens, because I might meet you there.

29:48Chuck Bryant:I just did. What?

29:50Josh Clark:No, man, that's in May. You got to remind me like three days before. I will.

29:53Chuck Bryant:Maybe we can ride the Ferris wheel together. You, me, you, me, and Emily. Oh, man.

29:57Josh Clark:Our Instagram would blow up. Would you believe it?

29:59Chuck Bryant:I think I just blew some people's minds by saying you, me, you, me, and Emily.

30:04Josh Clark:Yeah, people get that confused a lot. They do. This is way off target because we were just talking about something that reminded me of it. But I had a funny Simpsons reference last night.

30:14Chuck Bryant:Wait a minute. You're about to go on a tangent because those aren't allowed on our podcast.

30:18Josh Clark:Do you ever make a joke that you know no one else will get, but so it's really a joke for you?

30:23Chuck Bryant:Like 80 % of the time, maybe?

30:26Josh Clark:I was watching, or Emily was gone last night, so Ruby and I had a daddy-daughter night in which we usually, like, order cheeseburgers and watch, like, an action movie or something. Cute. And I showed her Speed last night. Uh-huh. And I cued it up, and I was like, you're going to love this. I'm not even going to tell you anything about it. And she was like, no, wait, will you at least tell me the name of it? And I went, it's called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down. And she was like, really? And I went, no, it's a Simpsons joke. And then she wouldn't just let it go. She had me explain the whole thing, which, you know, fell in deaf ears.

30:59Josh Clark:But it's one of my all-time favorite kind of Simpsons jokes. I don't remember that joke. It was Homer was describing a movie that he had just seen. And he was like, it's a bus whose speed couldn't slow down. Because if it had less speed, it would blow up. and the speed would cause it to whatever. And he said speed like eight times. And they asked him what the name of it was. He said the bus that couldn't slow down.

31:24Chuck Bryant:Man, that show just keeps on giving, doesn't it? I know.

31:27Josh Clark:Speed holds up pretty good too, by the way.

31:29Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah. Keanu Reeves' short hair is really great in that movie.

31:33Josh Clark:Yeah. He was hunky and it's like, yeah, it really, it was, I mean, it's so action-packed. It was great. I enjoyed it.

31:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Dennis Hopper is a bad guy. A crazed bad guy is pretty much timeless.

31:47Josh Clark:He's great. And I remember the bus stuff, but that's just the middle part. I forgot the whole first part and the last part, which was also tons of action.

31:54Chuck Bryant:I don't remember that.

31:55Josh Clark:Yeah. Go back and then watch it. We'll watch it before we go on the Ferris wheel.

31:59Chuck Bryant:We just did a mini crush. I know.

32:01Josh Clark:We did. Where are we? Oh, we're back at 1893 because that's where electricity really came in, right?

32:07Chuck Bryant:Yes. That was another big thing in Devil in the White City. they really went behind the scenes. I think there was a huge struggle between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison to get the contract to light the 1893 World's Fair and Westinghouse won. Yes. And he lit this fair up. Yeah. It was gorgeous. I didn't see it, but I read Eric Larson's description and it sounded just totally amazing.

32:34Josh Clark:Yeah, that sounds cool. That's also where Chicago really got a lot of its beautiful architecture that we love today. Yeah. with their neoclassical buildings. A lot of them were temporary at the time, and that's why they called it the White City, but it really influenced the design going forward to promote that Beaux's Arts style. Is that how you say it? Yeah. Thanks. And also, if you're wondering, like, did they do that at other fairs? We got Art Deco from the 1925 exhibit in Paris.

33:04Chuck Bryant:Yes, and a little traveler's tip here. If you ever find yourself in New Zealand, I think the northern part of it. Do yourself a favor and go visit Napier. It's a small town. I don't remember what part of New Zealand it's in, but you really can't miss anything in New Zealand. It's not that big. And it suffered an earthquake in, I think, 1931, and, like, the whole downtown was leveled. So they were like, well, what style is in right now? Oh, Art Deco. So they rebuilt their entire downtown in Art Deco. All these amazing different buildings in amazing different colors, and they have preserved it like perfectly.

33:39Josh Clark:Oh, man, I love Art Deco. I got to check that out.

33:42Chuck Bryant:Oh, yes. This is the Art Deco town, known internationally as the Art Deco town.

33:47Josh Clark:Had never heard of it. I thought you were going to recommend the River Tour, the architectural tour in Chicago.

33:52Chuck Bryant:I didn't take that one.

33:54Josh Clark:That sounds kind of cool, though. It's awesome. For like a big sort of large mass tour thing, it's really great.

34:01Chuck Bryant:Did Ferris Bueller go on that in the movie? Because I know he was on a boat at some point. or they showed people on a boat. I don't know if there's a shot of that or not. All right. Well, let's just say there is. Okay. But I did it.

34:14Josh Clark:Chuck Buehler did.

34:16Chuck Bryant:Okay. Oh, yeah. So that was 1893. Like we said, go read that book. You will not regret it. And then jumping forward a little bit, but staying in the United States, there was the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Have you ever seen Meet Me in St. Louis, Chuck?

34:34Josh Clark:No, I take it that was you that added that that was a terrible musical? Yes.

34:40Chuck Bryant:It was, like, I didn't want to be, I didn't want to exist for those couple of hours while I was sitting there watching this play. It's so dumb, and the music is so stupid, and everything about it is just terrible.

34:56Josh Clark:Where did you see this? At the Fox. Wow. So, like, a Broadway revival?

35:01Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And this period of American history, I just find creepy and I don't really like it anyway. You know, there's a lot of like sousaphone music and stuff like that. Okay. So, and this is like a whole thing set at that time. And it's just, it's not good, dude.

35:16Josh Clark:Wow. All right. Okay.

35:19Chuck Bryant:So don't see it.

35:21Josh Clark:Okay. Go see Hell's Kitchen instead or Operation Mincemeat.

35:24Chuck Bryant:Okay. But also there's a lot of misconstrued facts, I guess.

35:31Josh Clark:Yeah, this sounds like a bit of a, I don't know. I don't like the 1904 exhibit because they said, a lot of people say, like, that's where the hamburger came from and the hot dog and the ice cream cone. And some of that stuff is partly true, right?

35:46Chuck Bryant:Yes. Hot dogs were first served in buns at the 1904 fair, but hot dogs already existed.

35:53Josh Clark:Right.

35:54Chuck Bryant:Ice cream cone wasn't invented there, but this is the first place where a lot of people saw ice cream cones for the first time.

36:00Josh Clark:It sounds like a bunch of junk food.

36:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it definitely was. Cotton Candy was debuted at the 1904 fair. And I feel like there's a nice little twist to the inventor, don't you?

36:13Josh Clark:Yeah, he sold it as Fairy Floss. His name was William J. Morrison. And he was, in fact, a dentist. I think that's one of those little fun facts that people like to throw around. Absolutely true. But it was also Dr. Pepper debuted there, Jell-O, puffed rice cereal. It sounds just like a bunch of, like, American junk.

36:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, this is where a lot of it came from, for sure. And then also just, we might edit this part out, but just between you and me, the first electric plug and socket debuted there, too, which is pretty significant. But I want to give a little hat tip to Livia for explaining what an electric plug and socket does, which allowed lights and appliances to be safely attached to and detached from a central power supply. Oh, man. That's the dedication that we can expect from Livia.

37:03Josh Clark:And also, you can get way more in-depth information. We kind of did a whole episode that covered this kind of thing in 2019, our episode on human zoos and how awful they were. Right. But they had stuff like that here, like native villages, and that's in quotes, where they had very offensive sort of misleading exhibits about indigenous Americans and Filipinos and Africans. And yeah, just sort of a bummer of a World's Fair.

37:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they would basically be like, hey, let's take every single racist conception or misconception and attitude we have toward all these different groups and bring them to life. And that's exactly what it was. So, yeah, that was it was a good episode in that it was it explained it pretty well. But it was definitely a bummer of an episode for sure.

37:52Josh Clark:Yeah, but you could wash it all down with a Dr. Pepper. So what could be wrong?

37:56Chuck Bryant:That's right. And give somebody a big smile and like half of your teeth are missing.

38:01Josh Clark:All right. I think we're at our second break point and we'll talk about sort of the next wave of World's Fairs and then kind of the death of World's Fairs right after this.

38:10Chuck Bryant:well now when you're on the road driving in your truck why not learn a thing or two from josh and chuck it's stuff you should know all right

38:31Josh Clark:hey listeners let me ask you a question when you're choosing a cola are you making your decision based purely on taste or based on the brand that you think you like that's the question at the heart of the Pepsi paradox.

38:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah, this idea shows that when labels and bias disappear, people actually prefer the taste of Pepsi Zero Sugar. Pepsi's been demonstrating this since the original Pepsi Challenge back in the 70s, when people at malls and grocery stores discovered that in blind taste tests, they preferred the taste of Pepsi.

38:56Josh Clark:Right, but it's not just some relic of the past. Last year, Pepsi revived the iconic Pepsi Challenge, this time with Pepsi Zero Sugar, and took the challenge across the country. When taste was the only thing that mattered in that challenge, 66 % of participants preferred the taste of Pepsi Zero Sugar over Coke Zero Sugar. And Pepsi Zero Sugar won every single market that the challenge visited.

39:17Chuck Bryant:So, let us take you back to that simple question that we posed at the top. Are you choosing the Zero Sugar Cola that you actually prefer? Or are you settling for the label that you think you prefer? Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today. You deserve taste. You deserve Pepsi.

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41:16Chuck Bryant:So after World War I, World's Fairs became less common and less successful. I blame going off of the gold standard. Right. But there's still plenty that came along that you'll, if you know anything about World's Fairs, pay any kind of attention to it, you'll be like, no, there was Expo 67 in Montreal, or there was Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan. Yes, yes, we'll get to all those. But the general point is here is that they were less successful because people started to see radio, there were movies, or they started to listen to radio, movies became widespread and very popular. And then simultaneously to that, there were so many world's fairs to choose from, no matter where you were in the world.

42:02Chuck Bryant:You might be in a large area, a large city that has multiple world's fairs competing with one another in the same region, certainly the same country. That happened, and it became a bit of a mess. So this group called the Bureau International Expositions, the BIE, established in Paris, of course, they said, we're going to step in. We're going to start regulating these events. We're going to take this mess and we're going to mash it into a devil's tower plateau of mashed potatoes. We're going to create something coherent out of it.

42:35Josh Clark:Wow. Nice ref. Yeah, they established some rules. Well, the first rule was like, unless it's officially sanctioned by us, it's not even a world's fair. So you got to go through us. It can't be more than six months. You can't run these things for nine, 12 months. You got to have a theme, like get it together, everyone. Like a party with a theme is so much better. Sure. And since then, this was in 1928, there have only been 50 World's Fairs since, I guess they established in 1928, but 1931 is when they officially started sanctioning them. And there's only been 50 since then.

43:10Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah. Can you imagine some poor guy who's like, hey, this isn't an official World's Fair. Right. He wants their money back.

43:18Josh Clark:Yeah.

43:19Chuck Bryant:So after the Cold War started, these things, you kind of mentioned at the outset, they seem to be like different countries saying like, look at how great we are. That was a huge part of World's Fairs that were during the Cold War, especially between the American and the Soviet pavilions. Yeah, for sure. They were basically like, here's the stage where we can show the rest of the world how much better we are than you, Russia, and vice versa.

43:43Josh Clark:Yeah, absolutely. A little fun fact we got to throw in there. Do you remember the Montreal Expos, which are now the Washington Nationals in Major League Baseball?

43:52Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

43:52Josh Clark:That name came from the Montreal Expo that happened in 1967. Yep. It's a fun little fact. New York had a couple of big ones in Queens. They had one in 39 and 40. The World of Tomorrow was a big theme, and they debuted things like air conditioning, television, nylon stockings. Pretty good. They debuted a robot that smoked cigarettes named Electro, who had a robot dog named Sparko. And this was kind of notable mostly for, well, for those things, but also the fact that they were able to put a bunch of money into reclaiming Flushing Meadows and Corona Park, which at the time was a dumping ground for ash and just a really gross spot.

44:39Josh Clark:But, you know, when you fly, if you see Men in Black or you fly over it, it's where the New York Mets used to be, and you would see that big steel globe from Men in Black very famously. That was the New York World's Fair in 39 and 40.

44:55Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I looked at pictures of Electro, and he looks like a 1939 robot for sure. huge barrel chest and then like like he looked a little bit like mr roboto but a little less detailed in the face but he did smoke cigarettes i saw it it's nice one of the other things about world's fairs too is depending on what the world was doing like for example if they were about to enter a world war or were already embroiled in one it could make for some awkward stuff like Like Germany was going to open a pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair. And after they invaded Czechoslovakia, the rest of the world was like, no, you're not allowed here at this World's Fair.

45:36Chuck Bryant:The UK, Poland, Czechoslovakia, a few other countries that were already involved in World War II had pavilions there. And so like stuff that was going on in Europe was being reflected in the World's Fair.

45:48Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. We're heading back to Queens because I mentioned they had two there and they had their second one there in 64, 65. And this was a pretty big one, too. I think this is where that sphere came from, was the 64-65, if I'm not mistaken. This is where computers really made their first big go. IBM had a huge, they had like an acre, an acre-sized spot display. They had a, this is where Walt Disney really made a big splash, too. I think they debuted, it's a small, the literal, it's a small world ride there, which is pretty cool. And then if you've ever been to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando and rode or ridden the Carousel of Progress, that made its debut there.

46:35Josh Clark:That was GE, you know. And if you've ever ridden it, it's clearly like, hey, look what's going to happen not too far from now.

46:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And they did one for the state of Illinois, too. And I looked that up and apparently they created an animatronic talking Abe Lincoln, which I believe ended up giving rise to the Hall of Presidents.

46:56Josh Clark:one of the creepier things you can do at Disney.

46:58Chuck Bryant:It really is. One of the other things is that the 1964 World's Fair was so gee whiz, look at the future, that Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, was prompted to write an essay about what the World's Fair in 2014, 50 years in the future, would look like. And he got some right. He missed the mark a little bit. Like, for example, he got right that And robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.

47:31Josh Clark:That's certainly true. They're getting better now, but 2014 robots, the one I had, was not very impressive.

47:38Chuck Bryant:Did it smoke cigarettes, though?

47:40Josh Clark:It did. Well, it did. We did.

47:41Chuck Bryant:That's the key to a good robot. I had to have a smoking buddy. That's right. What else, Chuck? What else did he say?

47:49Josh Clark:Well, this one is interesting because it sounds like he got it just right, but just, you know, you'll have to hear the after. the afterward. He said that society will suffer mental, emotional, and socio-psychological consequences from our technology. And if you read that, you think, man, he nailed it in 1964, like right on the head. But he had a different take than that. He was like, no, that's going to happen because it's going to be like wall E, basically, where nobody works because robots are doing everything, and we're going to suffer from what he called enforced leisure, and everyone's just going to be lazy, and it's going to be awful.

48:27Josh Clark:And he said the most glorious single word in the world will have become work. That's cute.

48:33Chuck Bryant:He missed that mark a little bit for sure.

48:35Josh Clark:Yeah.

48:36Chuck Bryant:So the 1964 World's Fair was basically the last great World's Fair that the United States ever threw. There have been plenty of great World's Fairs since then, But as far as the U.S. is concerned, 64 was the last good one. 62 in Seattle, that gave us the space needle. It was called the Century 21 Expo. And 10 million people showed up. And this kind of showed the beginning of a trend of declining attendance in the fares that were thrown in America. Because this was about the time that Americans decided that we wanted to stop being informed.

49:15Josh Clark:Yeah, and you know, we're not bagging on any of these cities and any of their world's fairs. It's just sort of a fact that this is when attendance really started to wane. Some of them lost a lot of money. We love that space needle, but 10 million people, is it like two years later in New York, there were 56 million. And that brings us to New Orleans and the Louisiana World Exposition of 1984. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the world. Truly, truly deep down. I love New Orleans. But they put on a pretty shoddy World's Fair in 1984.

49:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I mean, it was really heavy on the New Orleans culture. Like, they have a lot to show off as far as that's concerned. The amphitheater there was designed by Frank Geary. The parts that were done well were just little magical spots, right? Yeah. But there were also lots of parts that were like asphalt and concrete thoroughfares that just kind of looked like just something you might stumble upon in a park in a small town at some point, like with the booths set up along each side. Some of the actual design structures and buildings were very, very bland. And then one of the main reasons they wanted to throw this was because they wanted to revitalize New Orleans as a town where you could just come outside of Mardi Gras, outside of Jazz Fest.

50:38Chuck Bryant:Like you can just come anytime and it'll be fun. So the riverfront that they were promoting was largely abandoned. It was pretty run down. And this is where they built the World's Fair area. So you could kind of see the reality of the area at the edges pretty clearly.

50:55Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, some of the stuff wasn't even finished. So this isn't just us, again, like with our opinions on things. Like when you have two massive alligator statues atop the Wonder Wall in Bayou Plaza and they're not done and along their backs, there's not even alligator scales and it's just the metal structure that was underneath. It's not great. It was unfinished. If you were from New Orleans and Louisiana, you probably had a great time. I imagine a lot of people had a great time, but Ronald Reagan didn't even go. I think the president almost always goes or had always gone to attend the opening.

51:34Josh Clark:Less than 10 million people went, and they lost a ton of money on it.

51:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and so to be fair, like this wasn't just New Orleans' fault. They were victims of this longstanding or this trend. Yeah, I guess it was longstanding by then of American attendance being pretty shoddy. Yeah. The Knoxville World's Fair, which gave us the Sunsphere, which is still around. I remember that one. That was held two years before. Epcot came along two years before, and it billed itself as a permanent World's Fair. Not fair. Nope. The Olympics were being held in L.A. that same year, and it was sucking a lot of the enthusiasm and energy over to the West Coast. Plus, Louisiana and surrounding states like Texas, where you would rely on a lot of your visitors to come from, their local economies just went in the toilet because the oil industry hit a huge bust time.

52:26Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, I think the organizers for the New Orleans Fair went bankrupt. They lost more than$120 million. creditors apparently allegedly got back eight cents on the dollar and it was it was such a bust that they canceled the 1992 world's fair in chicago um yeah it was it was not great no but

52:47Chuck Bryant:like we said that there have been plenty of um there were plenty of non-american throne world fairs that were outstanding one of the ones that frequently gets point pointed to is osaka in 1970 and this is about the time so Europe kind of kicked it off it spread throughout the world America did its best to kind of take over for a while and then it moved east the kind of the epicenter of where world's fairs are held moved to the Middle East and east generally more often than not these days and Osaka 70 seemed to kind of kick that off

53:22Josh Clark:yeah they debuted IMAX movies in 1970 in Osaka with a 17 minute film called Tiger Child I think the 2010 Expo in Shanghai, I think, has the record, right, of visitors, 73 million people, the largest of all time. So that's, you know, they're certainly not dead. I was wondering at some point a couple of years ago, like, what happened to the World's Fairs? And, you know, they're just happening in a big, big way in places like Shanghai. So it's not as much on my radar. And also, I think things like CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, and other sort of specific industry expos and trade shows have sort of dampened the appetite for these, don't you think?

54:06Chuck Bryant:For sure. But they are still around. Osaka is going to hold another one. I'm sorry, it held another one in 2025. There's one in Belgrade, Serbia, Belgrade. I can't remember which way you say it. That's coming in 2027. And then Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is, I think, the furthest out one that's already scheduled for 2030. So it's definitely still happening. I would like to go to one just to see what the heck's going on. I'd like to go to the Belgrade one.

54:31Josh Clark:Oh, that'd be cool.

54:33Chuck Bryant:And also just one other thing I want to just shout out, Expo 70 in Osaka, that is where Yumi's aunt and uncle met. Oh, nice. Yeah, I thought so too. He was a smoking robot. She was a showgirl.

54:49Josh Clark:Classic story.

54:50Chuck Bryant:You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right. Well, that's it, everybody. That's World's Fairs. I guess we'll see you in Belgrade in 2027. And until then, Chuck, I say it's time for listener mail.

55:05Josh Clark:That's right. We heard from a lot of people about our short stuff on the MacGuffin.

55:09Chuck Bryant:Oh, we're talking about this?

55:10Josh Clark:Which was pretty fun. I think it was kind of appropriate that we couldn't quite define it because it's quite hard to define. Okay, fair enough. But we heard from a writer-director, legit. Hey guys, I'm a writer-director from L.A. I thought I could share how I've always viewed the MacGuffin. When you're trying to develop a film plot, you might have a specific location or scenario that you want your characters to end up in. But sometimes you can't think of a natural way to get them there. So that's where you throw in a MacGuffin. In fact, if you're really in the zone while you're writing, you can use it as a placeholder even.

55:44Josh Clark:And say, like, the protagonist stops by the house to grab a MacGuffin only to find a dead body in the yard. One of the reasons it can be difficult to identify a MacGuffin from a specific movie is because the writer might be disguising it to avoid what could be perceived as lazy screenwriting. One of the more obvious examples is a character needing to find the secret map that leads to the treasure or the next clue. That is from Josh Beck, writer-director. And like I said, we heard from a lot of people. One was kind of funny. We heard from somebody who kind of said, I don't care what George Lucas says.

56:20Josh Clark:R2-D2 is not a MacGuffin. It's the plans that are MacGuffin because the person is never the MacGuffin. It's the object. And I had the great sorrow to write this person and say, I'm sorry to break it to you, but R2-D2 is an object. And not a person. I don't know. I know. It's true, though. Like, if the whole point to this writer's email was, hey, it's not the person, it's the object, it's like, well, an android isn't a person.

56:48Chuck Bryant:So I feel like then Josh backed you up that the MacGuffin is totally irrelevant to what you care about in the whole thing and that it's kind of like this thing that gets you to the thing that's the point. Which is basically what you were saying. Yes. Okay. Both the first time when you brought it up in some other episode and the short stuff. You stuck to your gun. So it sounds like you were right. But then all of those people out there who are like Maltese Falcon is the quintessential example of MacGuffin. that is just wrong then. That's not true. Yes, it's the point of the whole thing. Everything everyone's doing is centered around getting their hands on the Maltese Falcon.

57:28Chuck Bryant:Nothing else matters. There's no interpersonal stuff that really matters. That is the point of everything. So it can't possibly be a MacGuffin.

57:37Josh Clark:But is the Maltese Falcon itself important? Yes. Well, what? What does it do?

57:44Chuck Bryant:It gives you riches beyond measure.

57:46Josh Clark:Oh, okay.

57:47Chuck Bryant:It's like, yes, and it's irreplaceable. It's its own thing. It is not a MacGuffin. And I don't ever want to talk about MacGuffins again after this. I'm so sorry that I ever brought it up.

57:59Josh Clark:We also heard from a lot of people who pointed out the Big Bang Theory TV show thing where they say that Indiana Jones was a MacGuffin himself. Because if he was not a part of that movie, like, nothing would have mattered. like the the nazis would have opened up the ark and it would have killed them all and nothing would have changed but uh yeah i don't know about that because it ended up in his hands and ended up

58:25Chuck Bryant:in the storage but i don't know that's a huh i hadn't thought about that point wow that chuck lorry he's amazing yeah did i ever tell you about the time we were in los angeles and um it was the day after Charlie Sheen's meltdown and like the entire future of like that whole show was up in the air. We just happened to be in L.A. that one day and I just happened to be walking at the McDonald's that John Cryer happened to go to and started stress eating like a McMuffin in his Mercedes.

59:00Josh Clark:A MacGuffin. Now, I remember you telling me that story. That is incredible.

59:05Chuck Bryant:Think about the timing, all the different little things that had to happen to just bring me to pass to see that one guy whose issues were on the world stage right then. It was nuts. I hope he's doing better.

59:21Josh Clark:He's doing fine.

59:23Chuck Bryant:That was Josh who wrote in and thanks to everybody who wrote in about MacGuffins. We did get a lot of great emails from everybody so thank you. If you want to write us a great email, whether you're a writer or director, both, neither, doesn't matter. We want to hear from you. Send it off to StuffPodcasts at iHeartRadio.com.

59:43Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

59:59Josh Clark:If you were to try two zero-sugar colas with their labels removed and make the decision based on taste alone, do you know which one you'd choose?

1:00:06Chuck Bryant:Well, last year, Pepsi put that to the test for tens of thousands of people across the country in a revival of the iconic Pepsi Challenge. And the results were clear. 66 % of people preferred the taste of Pepsi Zero Sugar over Coke Zero Sugar. That's the idea behind the Pepsi Paradox. that when labels and bias disappear, people prefer the taste of Pepsi Zero Sugar.

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1:00:34Chuck Bryant:Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today. You deserve taste. You deserve Pepsi. We're always talking about how things work, and one thing that keeps your car running smoothly is regular oil changes. But life's busy, and the oil light always comes on at the worst time. Well, that's why there's Take 5 Oil Change. It doesn't just save time. It gives you control of your day back. You pull in, stay in your car, check something off your to-do list. No waiting room, no pressure. You're in and you're out in about 10 minutes. Oil changes include tire pressure checks and fluid top-offs, and the friendly staff explain everything and welcome you with a free water.

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