Welcome back to the deep dive. So we have a pretty
massive stack of research on the desk today.
Yeah, this one's a big one. And it feels a bit
like like we're trying to catch smoke with our
bare hands. We are tackling a figure who is,
I mean, arguably one of the most recognizable
names in American history. But somehow he's also
one of the most misunderstood. We are talking
about. Phineas Taylor Barnum. P .T. Barnum. Yeah.
And that name, it just carries so much baggage,
doesn't it? It does. You hear Barnum and you
immediately get this picture in your head. It's
top hats, red coats, elephants. The three ring
circus. Exactly. It's the greatest showman mythology.
Right. The Hugh Jackman effect is very strong
with this one. And we get this image of a lovable
rogue who just wants to put a smile on people's
faces. Right. But looking at the source material
we have here, I mean, his own autobiography,
struggles and triumphs, ledgers from his museum,
records from his political career. Which is surprisingly
dense. So dense. The reality is just, it's grittier,
it's more complex, and honestly, it's a lot more
interesting than the musical. Oh, absolutely.
That whole ringmaster persona, that's a tiny,
tiny fraction of his life. And it happened right
at the end. Yeah, he was an old man by then.
Exactly. If you only focus on the circus. You
miss the whole story. You miss this fascinating
evolution of a man who basically invented the
concept of modern hype. So that's our mission
for this deep dive. We want to look past the
grease paint. We want to understand the hustle,
the hoaxes, or humbugs, which is a word we are
going to be using a lot. A whole lot. The darker
side of his rise to fame. But before we get into
any of that, we have to clear the air. There
is one quote. Oh, yeah. Everybody knows it. If
I stop someone on the street right now and ask
them, what did P .T. Barnum say? What are they
going to say? There's a sucker born every minute.
Exactly. It's the ultimate cynical catchphrase.
It makes it sound like he just saw his audience
as, you know, walking wallets just waiting to
be fleeced. Right. That he was just preying on
people's stupidity. But here's the problem. And
it's a big one. He never said it. He never said
it. We checked the sources multiple times on
this. There is absolutely no evidence that he
ever coined that phrase. It was probably attributed
to him by a rival. And it just, it stuck. It
stuck because it fit the caricature. It fit the
caricature perfectly. Yeah. But if you actually
read his own writings, that whole sentiment,
it completely contradicts his business philosophy.
Which is so wild because that one quote is his
legacy for so many people. But his actual philosophy,
it was more nuanced. He wrote, and I'm quoting
here, I don't believe in duping the public, but
I believe in first attracting and then pleasing
them. And that distinction is crucial. It's everything.
Barnum didn't see himself as a common scam artist.
No. He saw himself as a provider of value. He
might use a humbug, a trick, an exaggeration,
whatever to get your attention, to get you by
the ticket. But once you were inside, he felt
this. This almost moral obligation to make sure
you were entertained enough that you left feeling
like you got your money's worth. So the lie was
just the marketing hook. Exactly. But the product,
the entertainment itself, had to be real. Precisely.
And to understand how he developed that philosophy,
we can't start with the circus. It's the wrong
place to start. We have to go way, way back.
We have to go to Bethel, Connecticut in 1810.
This is where Phineas Taylor Barnum is born.
And looking at his family background in the minutes.
Well, the apple didn't fall far from the grand
tree, I guess. His maternal grandfather, yeah.
Phineas Taylor. This guy was a massive influence.
Uncle Finn, he was called. And he wasn't just
some practical joker, was he? He was a pillar
of the community. Oh, very much so. A legislator,
big landowner, justice of the peace. But he was
also a notorious practical joker. And more importantly,
a lottery schemer. And we should probably give
a little context on lotteries here. In the early
1800s, they weren't like they are today, right?
They weren't all state -run. No, not at all.
They were often private ventures, sometimes used
to fund a new bridge or a church. But they were
also incredibly unregulated, rife with manipulation.
A gray area. A huge gray area. And Phineas Taylor
thrived in it. He taught young Barnum that you
could have official authority, you could be a
pillar of the community, and still... bend reality
a little bit. That combination is key, the respectable
trickster. And Barnum internalized that immediately.
So Barnum starts hustling really young. By his
early 20s, he's not just, you know, working on
a farm. He's got a general store. He's auctioning
books. He's running a statewide lottery network.
He had this frenetic energy, just always looking
for the next angle. But the venture from this
early period that really jumps out, for me at
least, is the newspaper. The Herald of Freedom.
He launched it in 1831. And the name. The Herald
of Freedom. It sounds so grand. But this wasn't
just a community newsletter about bake sales.
No. Barnum used this paper to go to war with
a religious establishment. You have to put yourself
in 1830s Connecticut. The church elders had immense
power, not just spiritually, but politically,
socially. And Barnum just... Takes them on. Head
on. He writes these scathing editorials attacking
them for what he saw as their hypocrisy, their
interference in politics. I can't imagine that
went over well. It went over terribly. It led
to multiple libel suits. And he was actually
prosecuted and imprisoned for two months. Wow.
The future king of family entertainment sitting
in a jail cell for libel. But the detail that
just tells you everything you need to know about
him, he didn't stop. He kept editing the paper
from his jail cell. He turned his own imprisonment
into content. He had a sympathetic reverend,
of all people, helping him smuggle the copy out.
That's incredible. It's a key insight into his
psychology. Bartum didn't fear friction. He realized
early on that controversy wasn't something to
avoid. It was something to monetize. If the town
is arguing about you, they're buying your paper
to read about it. That is a lesson he absolutely
carries forward. But we have to pivot now. He
moves to New York in 1835, and this is where
the story gets dark. Yeah. I mean, I want to
be clear for everyone listening that this isn't
the fun part of the story. This is sort of the
original sin of his career. It is. We're talking
about Joyce Heth. It's genuinely disturbing to
read about. So in 1835, Barnum gets the right
to exhibit this woman, Jace Heth. An enslaved
African -American woman. And she was blind, almost
completely paralyzed. It's just awful. And the
hook, the story that Barnum was selling. Was
that she was 161 years old. 161. And that she
had been the nursemaid to George Washington.
He claimed she was the first person to ever dress
the founding father. So let's just break down
the mechanics of this because it's so revealing.
Slavery was technically outlawed in New York
by then. So how could he buy her? He found a
loophole in the law. A nasty one. He couldn't
buy her outright, so he leased her services for
one year. For $1 ,000. $1 ,000 he didn't have.
Not even close. The sources say he had to borrow
$500 just to make the down payment. He went into
debt to acquire a human being as a business asset.
And he treated her like one. She was working
10 to 12 hours a day, right? Just on display.
Yeah, telling stories about little George and
singing hymns for paying customers. It was grueling.
grueling work for a woman who was clearly elderly
and extremely frail. And she died the following
year in February of 1836. And for most people,
that would be the end of the exploitation. But
for Barnum, it was just another opportunity.
This is the part that really made me just stop.
He hosted a live autopsy. He did in a New York
saloon. And he charged spectators 50 cents a
head to watch a surgeon dissect her body. Why?
What was the justification? The stated goal was
to prove her age scientifically, to settle the
debate that he himself had started. That is just,
it's grim. It completely strips away any of the
fun, lovable showman gloss, doesn't it? It does.
This wasn't just showmanship. This was a willingness
to commodify absolutely anything, even a person's
death. And the punchline, if you can call it
that, is that the autopsy revealed she was likely
around 80 years old. Not 161. The whole thing
was a fabrication. But this moment, it establishes
the foundation for his entire career. It does.
He learned that the public's curiosity was this
incredibly powerful force and that they would
pay to have that curiosity satisfied no matter
what the morality of it was. So moving on from
that very dark beginning, we get into the era
where... Barnum really becomes the prince of
humbugs. Right. And for that, he needs a venue.
He needs a headquarters. Enter Scudder's American
Museum. He buys this place in 1841. It's right
on Broadway and Anne Street in Manhattan, a prime
location. And he doesn't just want a museum.
He wants a landmark. And the way he transformed
this building is just a master class in marketing,
in physical marketing. He understood that in
a city like New York, you have to scream to be
heard. So he puts a massive lighthouse lamp on
the roof of the building. And you have to remember,
this is before widespread electric lighting.
So if you're walking down Broadway at night,
this massive beam of light is just, you can't
ignore it. It's stopping traffic. Literally.
And he puts these giant colorful paintings of
exotic animals all over the outside of the building,
flags on the roof. And he hired a band to play
on the balcony. Right. But the notes say he gave
them some very specific instructions. This is
one of my all -time favorite Barnum stories.
He hired a band and specifically instructed them
to play badly. Why on earth would he do that?
His reasoning was that if the music was terrible,
And loud, people walking on the street below
would be driven to buy a ticket and go inside
the museum just to get away from the awful noise.
That is diabolical. It's aggressive, weaponized
annoyance. But it worked. And once you were inside,
you were in the kingdom of Humbug. What kind
of stuff did he have? He had America's First
Aquarium. He had wax figures. He had the famous
Siamese twins, Chang and Eng. The real crown
jewel of this period, the thing that defines
his entire method, was the Fiji Mermaid. Ah,
the Fiji Mermaid, 1842. I think a lot of people
have heard of this, but the actual operation
behind it is what's so fascinating. It wasn't
just, hey, look at this weird fake thing. No,
it was a coordinated media campaign, a full -on
blitz. But what was the object itself? The object
was hideous. It was the upper torso of a juvenile
monkey that had been sewn onto the tail of a
large fish. It was probably made by Japanese
fishermen as some kind of talisman. Barnum leased
it from a guy in Boston. But he knew just putting
it in a glass case wouldn't sell tickets. He
needed a story. He needed hype. So he invents
a character. Dr. Griffin. Barnum hires an accomplice
to pose as this Dr. Griffin for the Lyceum of
Natural History in London, which, by the way,
was a place that did not exist. Of course not.
He has this guy check into a fancy hotel and
start discreetly showing the mermaid to influential
friends. Then Barnum starts planting stories
in the newspapers. He sends anonymous letters
to editors. Claiming that this amazing scientific
discovery is in town and the museum is trying
to get it. He manufactured the credibility. He
used the press to validate the hoax before the
public even laid eyes on it. He created a debate.
Is it real? Is it fake? The scientists are arguing.
So by the time he finally puts it on display
at the museum, people aren't paying to see a
mermaid. They're paying to see what everyone
is talking about. They just want to be part of
the cultural conversation. That sounds incredibly
modern. It's basically viral marketing, 1840s
style. It's the exact same principle. It doesn't
matter if the content is real. It only matters
that it's trending. And his justification was
that, OK, maybe you realize the mermaid is just
a stitched up monkey. But you also saw a thousand
other real curiosities in the museum. So you
still got your money's worth. The humbug was
just the advertisement. So while he's doing this
with objects, he's also still exhibiting people.
And this brings us to probably his most famous
partnership. Charles Stratton. Better known as
General Tom Thumb. And this relationship is a
really big turning point for Barnum. It changes
his social standing. So Charles Stratton was
a four -year -old boy from Connecticut who had
stopped growing. Barnum finds him, brings him
to New York. And bills him as an 11 -year -old.
Which, again, by our standards today, feels incredibly
exploitative. He's teaching a toddler to drink
wine and smoke cigars and imitate Napoleon for
an audience. Oh, it was exploitative, no question.
But unlike the Joyce Heth story, this did become
a genuine partnership. Stratton was a gifted
performer. And he and Barnum became very close.
And in 1844, Barnum decides to take this act
to Europe. This is a huge moment. This is when
Barnum decides he's done being just a hustler.
He wants legitimacy. He wants to be respectable.
And he aims for the very, very top. He wants
an audience with Queen Victoria. Which was an
incredibly audacious goal. I mean, the British
aristocracy generally looked down on American
showmen like him as, you know, crude and uncouth.
And he gets it. He gets it. Stratton completely
charmed everyone. and they managed to secure
an audience at Buckingham Palace. I was reading
the account of this meeting in the notes, and
the Queen's reaction is so telling. It says she
was amused but saddened. Yeah, that phrase does
a lot of heavy lifting, doesn't it? It perfectly
captures that Victorian tension around these
freak shows. There was this intense curiosity,
but also this sense of pity. a recognition of
Stratton's fundamental humanity. But for Barnum,
he didn't care about the pity. He cared about
the headline. General Tom Thumb Entertains the
Queen. That headline was a golden ticket. It
was a publicity coup. Suddenly, doors start opening
all over Europe. The Tsar of Russia, the King
of France. It legitimized Barnum in a way nothing
else could. He wasn't just the guy with the monkey
fish anymore. He was the man who had been invited
into the royal drawing rooms of Europe. And he
comes back to America a star. By 1846, the American
Museum is pulling in 400 ,000 visitors a year.
Which is a massive percentage of the population
at the time. He's rich. He's famous. But he still
has this chip on his shoulder. He does. Because
he knows the elites, the high society types,
still see him as a purveyor of low entertainment,
of curiosities and freaks. He wants to be seen
as a patron of the arts. And that insecurity
leads him to the single biggest financial gamble
of his entire life. The Jenny Lin tour. This
is a pivot that makes absolutely no sense on
paper. Jenny Lin was the Swedish Nightingale,
a massive opera star in Europe. But in America?
Virtually unknown. And Barnum himself was, by
his own admission, completely unmusical. The
notes say he had never even heard her sing? Not
once. Not a single note. He was betting his entire
fortune on a voice he had never heard. And the
offer he made her was insane. A thousand dollars
a night for 150 nights. Plus all expenses paid.
And Lind, who is a very shrewd businesswoman.
had a condition. She wanted the money up front.
She demanded the entire advance be placed in
a London bank before she set sail. So Barnum
has to scramble. He mortgages the museum. He
mortgages his mansion. He's borrowing heavily
from friends. I mean, if she flocks, he is completely
ruined. He's back to zero. But he wasn't just
selling a voice. He was selling a reputation.
He was selling the idea that he, P .T. Barnum,
could bring the highest form of European high
culture to the American masses. It was about
elevating his own brand. And the marketing campaign
he launched, he called it Lindmania. It makes
the marketing for the Barbie movie look subtle.
It was total saturation. He started a newspaper
war. He held contests for poets to write songs
for her. He manufactured so much hype that by
the time her ship docked in New York in 1850...
How many people were there? There were 40 ,000
people at the pier. 40 ,000 people for an opera
singer they had never heard. And another 20 ,000
surrounding her hotel. She was a prisoner of
her own fame before she'd even performed. And
this is where Barnum's economic genius kicks
in again. The demand for tickets is so high he
can't just sell them at a fixed price. So what
does he do? He invents the ticket auction. He
auctions off the first tickets to the highest
bidder. The very first ticket in New York went
for $225. In the 1850s. That's thousands and
thousands of dollars today. He created FOMO fear
of missing out before the term even existed.
And the tour was, of course, a massive hit. The
source material says Barnum personally netted
at least half a million dollars. Which in 2024
currency is nearly 19 million dollars. From one
tour. And Ginny Lind made a fortune too. A lot
of which she gave to charity for schools in Sweden.
But the relationship didn't last the full tour.
Why not? This is where you see that friction
between art and commerce. Lind eventually grew
very uncomfortable with Barnum's relentless aggressive
marketing. She hated the ticket auctions specifically?
She hated them. She felt it was blatant commercialism,
that it was pricing out the genuine music lovers
in favor of the wealthy who just wanted to be
seen. So they parted ways? Anicably. But they
did. She finished the tour under her own management.
But for Barnum, it didn't matter. He had proved
his point. He could sell high culture just as
effectively, if not more so, than he could sell
a humbug. So let's take stock here. It's the
mid -1850s. Barnum is on top of the world. He's
conquered lowbrow entertainment with the museum.
He's conquered highbrow with Jenny Lind. He's
fabulously wealthy. And he decides. I'm going
to be a serious businessman now. And this right
here is what leads us to what the biographies
call the Great Fall. It feels like a Greek tragedy,
doesn't it? The hubris. It really does. He decides
he's going to develop East Bridgeport, Connecticut.
turn it into this major industrial metropolis
and he invests everything in the jerome platt
company he wanted to be an industrialist yeah
a city builder but he got He got swindled. He
didn't do his due diligence and was tricked into
signing guarantees for the clock company that
made him liable for all of their debts. He was
signing blank notes, essentially. Pretty much.
And in 1856, the company went bust. And it took
Barnum's entire fortune down with it. He went
from being one of the richest men in America
to being millions of dollars in debt. He lost
almost everything. And the public reaction, it
wasn't exactly a flood of sympathy cards, was
it? No. The vultures came out. You have to remember,
for decades, the moralists and the highbrow critics
had looked down on him as this vulgar scam artist.
And when he fell, they cheered. Ralph Waldo Emerson,
the great philosopher, even commented on it.
He did. He said Barnum's bankruptcy showed the
gods visible again. Ouch. That is a devastating
burn. It's a slap in the face. Emerson valued
truth, authenticity, nature. Barnum represented
artifice and commerce. So for Emerson, Barnum's
failure wasn't just a business failing. It was
the universe correcting a moral mistake. It was
justice. Getting publicly dunked on by Ralph
Waldo Emerson has to sting. But this is where
Barnum really earns his reputation for resilience,
right? He doesn't just hide. No, he goes on a
lecture tour. And the topic of the lecture. The
art of money getting. The bankrupt guy is lecturing
people on how to make money. I mean, you just
have to admire the sheer audacity of it. And
people came to see him. They loved him for it.
And he also pivoted hard into the temperance
movement. He became a teetotaler and a very famous
speaker against the evils of alcohol. And Tom
Thumb helped him out, too. In a really touching
moment of loyalty, yeah. Tom Thumb was a grown
man by then, independently wealthy, and he went
on tour specifically to help Barnum pay off his
debts and get back on his feet. And this period
of ruin and rebuilding, it also coincides with
this huge shift in his politics. And this is
the part of the Barnum story that really surprised
me. The side of him most people have no idea
about. His political career. We think of him
as a showman, but he was a serious politician.
He was. And his evolution on the issue of slavery
is fascinating because it kind of mirrors the
evolution of the northern United States at the
time. Early in his life as a Democrat, he was
what they called a northern man with southern
principles. He even admitted to owning slaves,
didn't he? He did. During a period living in
the South when he was younger, he owned slaves
and he wrote in his autobiography about whipping
them. He was fully complicit in the system. But
by the 1850s, as the country is tearing itself
apart over this issue, he has a change of heart.
A huge one. He switches to the newly formed Republican
Party. the anti -slavery party of Lincoln. And
he didn't just switch quietly. He became a very
vocal advocate for abolition. He really did.
When he was serving in the Connecticut legislature
in 1865, right at the end of the Civil War, they
were debating the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
And Barnum gave this speech that's really quite
powerful. I have the quote here. I want to read
it because it's such a complete pivot from the
man who exploited Joyce Heff. He said, that God
has created and Christ died for is not to be
trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman,
a Turk, an Arab, or a Hottentot, it is still
an immortal spirit. I mean, that is a massive
distance to have traveled philosophically and
morally. He's arguing for the fundamental equality
of the human soul, regardless of race or origin.
It suggests genuine growth, but... And there
is always a but with Barnum. There's always a
but. We can't paint him as some progressive saint,
because while he was fighting for that, he was
also trying to police private morality. This
is the contradiction that is so hard to square.
Later, when he becomes the mayor of Bridgeport
in 1875, he runs as a moral crusader. He cracks
down on liquor sales, on prostitution. And, most
significantly, for American legal history. He
sponsored a piece of legislation in Connecticut
that prohibited the use of any form of contraception.
And that wasn't just some minor law that got
forgotten about, was it? No, that law, which
became known as the Barnum Law, it stayed on
the books in Connecticut until 1965. 1965. It
was the subject of the landmark Supreme Court
case Griswold v. Connecticut, which established
the right to privacy for married couples. So
Barnum's legislative legacy directly affected
privacy rights in America for almost a century.
It is such a strange duality, a man who expands
the world with his shows and fights for abolition.
but on the other hand, tries to restrict the
most private aspects of people's lives. He was
a progressive on race eventually, but a Puritan
on behavior. And during this same political era,
he faces even more disaster. His beloved American
Museum burns to the ground. Twice. Once in 1865
and then again in 1868. And the 1865 fire is
particularly interesting because it was almost
certainly arson. Started by a Confederate sympathizer.
Exactly. Barnum's very public, very vocal unionist
views and his support for Lincoln made him a
target. So, OK, the museum is gone. He's been
bankrupt. He's been a politician. He is now pushing
60 years old. Most people at this point would
call it a day. They'd retire to the porch. But
not Barnum. Barnum decides to start a circus.
And this is where the legend that we all think
we know finally begins. It's almost a postscript
to his main career, but it's the thing that became
his defining act. So in 1870, he launches his
traveling show. And then in 1881, he partners
with James Bailey. To form Barnum and Bailey.
The greatest show on earth. And that wasn't just
a slogan. They completely revolutionized the
industry. Before Barnum, circuses were these
small horse and wagon affairs. They were slow.
They were local. Barnum put the circus on a train.
He developed the whole system. the flat car system
for efficiently loading and unloading these massive
tents, all the animals, all the equipment. This
allowed them to hit major cities one after the
other rapidly. It turned the circus from a local
event into a national industrial scale operation.
And because he had so much capacity now, he could
make everything bigger. He invented the three
ring circus. Why three rings? What was the thinking
there? It was about the attention economy again.
Think about it. In a one ring circus, if they
have to change the set or, you know, clean up
after the horses, there's dead air. The audience
gets bored. Right. Barnum realized with three
rings, there's always something happening. Your
eye is always moving. If you get bored with the
jugglers in ring one. You can look over at the
tigers in Ring 3. It's sensory overload. It's
the TikTok scroll of the 19th century. You never
have a second to get bored or to think. That's
it exactly. A guarantee the audience felt they
were getting value. Look at all this stuff happening
at once. How could I possibly feel cheated? And
the undisputed star of this whole new show was
Jumbo. Jumbo the elephant. This was another one
of his huge media moments. He buys this massive
African elephant from the London Zoo in 1882.
Which caused a huge international incident. The
British public loved jumbo. Kids were writing
letters to Queen Victoria begging her to stop
the sale. The art critic John Ruskin wrote about
it. It was like a national mourning. And Barnum
didn't care. He loved the controversy. He thrived
on it. He capitalized on it. Jumbo mania swept
America. He sold jumbo hats, jumbo soap, jumbo
playing cards. And then, tragically, jumbo was
killed after being hit by a freight train. Which
is deeply ironic considering the train was Barnum's
great innovation for the circus. It is. But Jumbo's
legacy lives on. You went to Tufts University,
right? I did. Our mascot is Jumbo the elephant
because of Barnum. Exactly. Barnum was a trustee
and a huge donor to Tufts. He gave them $50 ,000
to start the Barnum Museum of Natural History
there. And this ties into his whole concept of
profitable philanthropy. OK, break that down
for me. Profitable philanthropy. It sounds like
a complete oxymoron. To Barnum, it was just common
sense. He believed you could do good works for
the community that would also conveniently help
your own wallet. For example, he spent a ton
of his own money beautifying the city of Bridgeport,
building parks, seaside boulevards, installing
gas lighting. Out of the goodness of his heart.
Because he owned most of the land. If the city
was beautiful and modern, his property values
went up. He was very open about this. He didn't
see a conflict between public service and private
profit. He thought they should go hand in hand.
It's cynical, but it's effective. Everyone wins,
but Barnum wins a little more. That is the Barnum
way in a nutshell. So that brings us to the end.
It's 1891. He's 80 years old. He's been a hustler,
a millionaire, a bankrupt, a politician, a moral
crusader, a global icon. How does a man like
that say goodbye? With one last perfect act of
showmanship. As he was lying on his deathbed,
he actually asked the Evening Sun newspaper to
print his obituary early. So he could read it.
He wanted to read his own reviews. He wanted
to know how the story ended. He wanted to see
how the world was going to remember him while
he was still around to see it. And his actual
final words? They weren't a prayer. They weren't
some profound message to his family. He turned
to an assistant. and asked about the box office
receipts for the circus that day. How much did
we make? Basically, yeah. The hustle never stopped.
Not for one second. Not even at the very end.
So when we look back at this whole life, it's
so easy to judge him by our modern standards.
I mean, the exploitation of Joe's head is just
unforgivable. The animal cruelty is hard to stomach.
But he also, he democratized entertainment. He
brought color and wonder to a very gray industrial
world. He was a perfect mirror for 19th century
America, wasn't he? He was ambitious, innovative,
obsessed with growth, and sometimes incredibly
cruel. He professionalized the art of hype. He
understood that the truth was often less important
than a good story, as long as the audience felt
they got their money's worth in the end. And
that brings me to the thought I really want to
leave our listeners with today. We look back
at those people in the 1840s, you know, lining
up to stare at the Fiji mermaid, that monkey
sewn onto a fish. And it's easy to think, wow,
how naive were they? How could they fall for
something so obvious? But then you look at our
world today. Exactly. We live in an entire economy
of influencers curating these perfect lives on
social media that aren't real. We click on headlines
that we know are exaggerated just because we
want that little dopamine hit of outrage or surprise.
We follow Internet drama that is so clearly manufactured,
but we do it because it's entertaining. We are
essentially living inside a 247 global Barnum
Museum. And Barnum's whole philosophy was that
these humbugs were justified. if the public was
entertained by them. So the question is, are
we really that different from those crowds in
1842? Are we the suckers for believing this stuff?
Or are we just willing participants in the show?
Because deep down, we prefer the entertaining
show to the boring reality. And it raises that
really uncomfortable question. Is it still deception
if you know you're being deceived, but you enjoy
it? Barnum would say no. That is a lot to chew
on. Thanks for taking this deep dive into the
life of the Prince of Humbugs. It was a pleasure.
We'll catch you on the next one.