Let's All Go to the World's Fair

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a production of "I Heart Radio." (upbeat music) - Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and this is just us today.

Jerry's out on vacation. I mean, she's out of conference, and this is "Stuff You Should Know." - That's right. This is your idea, and something about it

“just smacks of kind of classic stuff you should know”

where we talk about it bygone era in a way. - And so yeah, we're talking about world's fairs today. The depending on where you are and the world you might call them international expositions, universal expositions.

You might just call 'em 'Expoes' if you're pressed for time. - Sure. - And I thought maybe Chuck, we would just do this entire episode in "Jibberish"

that only you and I can understand. - Yeah, that's a great idea. - This is the one.

We're finally gonna do it.

- All right, let's do it. - On second thought, let's not do it. - No, let's not do it. - All right, so, well, let's set the stage then, in plain English, it's hard to kind of understand now

because we live in a world and generally grew up in a world that if we didn't have internet when we were kids, we still had television, cable television, no less. Before that, generation's had radio. And then, yes, now today we can basically go anywhere

see anything, even stuff you don't want to see

“because everyone generally has access to the internet, right?”

- Yeah. - Before all of this, being exposed to new ideas, new things, seeing what the latest cutting edge stuff was, that was not a common thing for the average person. Like you just did not see that kind of stuff.

And that was generally the role that world's fairs played. - Yeah, it was that, and like every time I was reading about the different ones from the different nations, it was very much like, hey, look at how great we're doing. - Right.

- Yeah, I mean, obviously trying to spur commerce and trade and stuff like that, but a lot of it was sort of showing off. - It was showing off, it was showing off, like with all the technological prowess

and all the future ideas that are coming down the pike that each country was working on, there was lots of corporate exhibits, eventually. And it sounds to me like a cool place to have been. - Yeah.

- Like if I had a big list to pick from of stuff I could go time travel to, I would probably go to a couple of these. - Oh, all right. So Woodstock, the inauguration of Jimmy Carter

and the world's fair. - That's right. - Well, let's get into the history of the show. - Yeah, because they didn't start as world's fairs, if you wanna track the prehistory,

you gotta go to the National Fairs. - Sure. - England was holding these in the 1700s.

Barely, I think 1754 was the first real one

when the, what would later be the Royal Society for Arts, but before they got royal, I guess, they were just the Society for Arts. They had different shows and it was sort of like, I mean, this was the 1700s, so it was the technology

of the time was like, hey, look at this cool new loom or look at this new cool way we can press cider. - Yes, and there was this kind of this new idea called Industrial Arts, which was essentially designing and inventing new technology.

it was pretty cutting edge. And this was what laid the kind of the foundation for the idea of what a world's fair is all about, which is look at all the technological progress we're making.

I saw that it was essentially inextricably tied together with the Industrial Revolution. But that's really what kind of gave them the oomph needed. - Yeah, steam powered oomph. - Yeah, that's right.

- I guess not yet, but steam is coming, don't worry. France would get involved, they saw what England was doing where they're like, well, we can't let them best us. So they started holding theirs also in the late 18th century and both of them, again, were like marketing themselves,

sort of abroad, but also to their own people, like, hey, look at how great we're doing rest of France. - Yeah, you can feel good about being French. - Yeah.

- And France becomes like basically the apex

of world's fairs of their international expositions, but England kind of took the Crownback first. And Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who is of German ancestry or what we now call Germany, and who we have to thank for Christmas,

so thank you Prince Albert. - Oh yeah. - He hosted the great exhibition of the works of industry of all nations in 1851, and this was what basically everyone who knows about world's fairs,

knows anything about world's fairs, says this was the first world's fair. - Yeah, no one calls it the great exhibition of the works of the industry of all nations, except for us, because we're being technical,

because everyone calls it the Crystal Palace exhibition, because that's where they built the Crystal Palace. That was in Hyde Park, from May to October 1851, and they wanted a real, and you'll see this as a trend,

like they really wanted to knock people socks off when they arrive. And when you arrived at this kind of glorified greenhouse, in fact, it was built by a greenhouse builder named Joseph Paxton. But it was 18 acres of glass and iron and steel,

and it was created eight miles of display space, and it was super impressive. - Yeah, it was a real ringing ding, ding greenhouse.

“I mean, the 18 acre greenhouse is not easy to make, right?”

So yes, it knocked everyone socks off for sure. You said there's eight miles worth of display space inside, so it was also capable of holding 14,000 exhibits. - Yeah, man. - But half of them were from Britain,

and one of the reasons that Prince Albert wanted to do this is because he wanted to drum up interest in Europe, in particular, for imports from Britain. - He was like, hey, we got a bunch of good stuff, once you come over and see it,

and then you can place your orders on your way out the door. - Wonder if they could you really place orders? - You could have like, you think so? - Yeah, so there was about 560 exhibits from the U.S. and one of them was the Colt Repeating Pistol,

and I guarantee you could have been like, I wanna order some of those. Give me some right now, so I can shoot in the air and the crystal palace. - I bet you could have left there

with the Colt Repeating Pistol if you had enough money. - Probably, yeah. - Yeah, but I promise steam,

and that is that first one,

as where the steam engine was officially debuted, as well as the automated cotton muil for spinning.

“France, you know, I think you said U.S. had 560,”

France had 1760 exhibits. Then addition to the Colt Repeating Pistol, did you mention chewing tobacco? - I did not. - And that's where we debuted.

As a nation, hey, look what we've come up with. A chewing tobacco, which I imagine, we sold from indigenous peoples here. - Yes, but we really kind of Americanized it, the person running that booth

had to dance back and forth pumping its fist like a prospector the whole time. - And dance on maybe artificial legs, because artificial legs were debuted by the United States there.

- That's right, we really just had one exhibit, and they were everything compressed together. - Hi, dancing on an artificial egg shooting is a special in the air, chewing tobacco. - Yep, that's exactly right.

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. - 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. - Yeah. - 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, their own Bryant Park,

I think the first US one to make any kind of,

“hey, was the one in Philly in 1876, right?”

- 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 tons steam engine called the Coralist 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 the steam engine in the center of the whole place. - That's a pretty fun little knock your socks off moment. - It is pretty cool. I thought everyone's standing around.

Well, I guess it was still, it wouldn't powering lights at the time, wasn't? - No, no, yeah. - Okay, 'cause that happens, it's coming every money. - It's coming, yeah, but this whole thing,

it really, I mean, it attracted 10 million people,

and it was a big one. So I guess I got ahead of myself. Paris hadn't come, yeah, I'm just really excited about Paris taking over for some reason. - 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 corporate entities from the beginning, along with the government,

but Paris really took it to a political 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, and we're still doing great, look at us. - Yeah, yeah, 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, and there's 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. - Yeah, they think when they debuted it, they were like, and we're gonna have Jock stand in the fountain, while we turned it off, and we're pretty sure it's gonna work.

- No one likes Jock anyway, so don't worry. - Yeah, it all worked out for Jock 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.

- 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, 'cause you're not in the fountain. - No, no, so it doesn't matter if it's like buzzing with electricity. - You ever been to Rome?

- Yes. - It'll have. - It's one of my favorite towns. - You've seen that travy fountain? - I did do. Is that the one with all the, yes, I have?

- Yeah, that would be, you didn't go to Rome and not see the travy fountain. - Right, yeah, that was pretty amazing. - Yeah, I think that has lights in it. - I'm sure it does.

- At least around it, the thing was lit up, I was there at night and it wasn't dark. - I was there during the day, so I couldn't tell you. - Okay, I got you. - So one of the other things that happened

at the 1889 Exposition Universal was that Dyeful Tower was debuted. And we talked about this in depth. We did a 2020 episode on the iPhone Tower. - That's right, but just a couple of points

as a refresher, it was a contest about a hundred entrance. And Gustav Eiffel won it along with his colleagues and they proposed, at the time it was gonna be the,

“and it was, I think the tallest building”

in the world, it about 1,000 feet. And people, the people of the world loved it, but the people of Paris did not like it very much, right? - No, they wanted to get rid of it. And almost got torn down.

I think in 1909, it came as close as it ever has. And they said, no, no, no, we're gonna use this as a radio telegraph station. So people in Paris were like, all right, as long as it's serving same purpose, you know?

- Yeah, yeah. - Because I can't remember who said it, but someone said that something that doesn't actually

function can never truly be beautiful.

- Oh, really? - Yeah, it's something along those lines, yes. - So like, form over function, basically. - Function over form. - Or function and form.

- Function? - Yeah, sure. - Yeah, I think we're saying the same thing. - Yeah, the same thing. - Oh, we aren't speaking in code down.

- That's right, 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,

here's how you raise a baby properly. - And then also speaking of babies, they made a full-scale reproduction of the tower at the Madeline Hospital for found links, 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. - Yeah, it's exactly right. But they even had like a model of a baby and everything in it. 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.

- It's interesting when you can look back at a thing like that and it can be both sort of the greatest thing in the saddest thing all at once, you know? - I'm sure, yeah. - Yeah, we should, yeah.

- We should build one? - Yeah, well, it's funny. You mentioned that. I started one this morning. You can come over and help me finish it.

- Awesome. 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 fares,

a portion of the money that they make on these, his gone, or at least in the United States, his gone into funds that still help fund like industrial arts programs for students. - Yeah, that first crystal palace exhibition

has a fellowship fund that helps people in industrial design get through grad school, still today from, that's awesome, 1851, yeah.

“- Should we break, or should we talk about the 1900 expo?”

- 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 in France.

- Okay, all right, I agree.

This one had the 1900 attracted 50 million people.

- That's crazy. - Yeah, I mean, these are 1900 people. So, right, getting that many people in. - Yeah, I mean, you can get 50 million people pretty easily together now, and any given space.

- It's for sure, it's like nothing. - But it was a big deal back then. And again, showcasing Paris is sort of one of the leading modern cities. They viewed something pretty cool, they are called the Synorama,

which they still have these, and 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, 'cause it sounds like balloons were all the rage at the time. - For sure, they also had an actual balloon race, along distance, balloon races, part of the exposition. - Yeah.

- That reminded me when I was reading about the Synorama, when we did our Salt Lake City show that one time, 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 it's basically 300 degrees, it's not 360,

but it is really close. - Yeah. - Like high-deft movie screen, that is right there in your face. - Oh cool.

- Of Brigham Young, like receiving the message from God. - Oh wow. - 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.

- The message or the 300 degree, I guess it's a little bit of both,

“but I think more the whole 300 degree thing,”

it's interesting. - The most immersive video experience I've ever seen, by far. - 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. - Probably, I mean, it's Las Vegas. - Yeah, that's true, it's all too much. - 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. DuBois in 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. - 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. DuBois was sort of the early US day because he loved making infographics, and he made infographics showing like their literacy rates, we're rising, they were, they own taxable property,

“and these were from actual Georgians, I think.”

- Right. - 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, I've went and looked at some of DuBois' infographics,

and they're really interesting, like he came up with some really interesting ways

So it's worth looking up, especially if you like colorful things.

“- Ooh, I do, and that is very USA today.”

Shall we break now? - Yes. - All right, we will be right back after this. - Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck?

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“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 spares like in Europe in the United States, but Cordoba and Buenos Aires, Argentina,

had their own Santiago chili, had their own, and this was between the 1870s and 1880s. - Yeah, at the time, there's a lot of tension, though, apparently, between the country's boosters who are like, "Look at us, we don't need Spanish rule,

"we're doing all this cool interesting stuff, "and we're inventing all this stuff." And then others, they are like, "No, the point of this "is to like sell ourselves as sources of raw materials, "and places where you can overthrow regimes

"to grow bananas more cheaply." - 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, and then the people who made money from the country being looted, they were the ones who were like, "No, no, "we need to just show off how easily we're looted." - Yeah, exactly.

They were, you know, speaking of looting, there were world's fairs in places

There was one in 1883 to '84 in Calcutta. Kingston Jamaica had one in 1891, Hanway 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. - 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, they were really where big returns on them.

And the US 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.

- Yeah, 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 HH homes, the serial killer, we should probably do a standalone episode on that because this is just gonna be sort of a quickie.

- Yeah, on Chicago and I know there's a lot more to it than this.

“So I guess that's me saying prepare to feed to this”

disappointed a little bit, but more like a pre-amble too, like there'll be a deeper episode coming because a lot of people have asked for this over time. It is mainly known for the fact that HH homes serial killer was kidnapping young women

who traveled to that Chicago fair and had his murder castle in Engelwood and there was a great book called The Devil in the White City, which I still haven't read,

but everyone said it's just amazing

is by Eric Larson and it's on the list. - As far as popular histories go, it is easily in the top five. - Yeah, man, it has read this thing. - It's so readable, he does such a great job of putting you there.

And it is like it does cover HH homes and all the terrible stuff he does in depth, but it also covers the fair and depth. It's just, it was an amazing thing. - Yeah, so we're gonna cover the fair, not so in depth,

but we're gonna mention a few things for sure. This is where we got Cracker Jax, is where we got the dishwasher. This is where we got the modern zipper, which they called a class blocker at the time.

- We did an episode on that, too, in 2020. - That's right, what else? - The fairs 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 was from Pittsburgh and the first one he designed

was 264 feet tall, 36 cars and offered a 20 minute ride and exchange for 50 cents, which is about $18 today. And you could see the whole dang fair from the top of that fairs wheel and it blew people's minds.

- Yeah, I thought it was, when I was reading this, I thought it was interesting that they became a thing, but like more like, 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 fairs wheel in a downtown city. - Right. - Just so you can like see stuff. - Yeah, 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, especially in the Midwestern United States, we're not exposed a view of 264 feet, like this is an extremely novel experience for most of the people who attended that fair. - Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Atlantis got one, you ever been on that one? - No, I haven't been on a fairs wheel in a long, long time. - Yeah, you know, London has the eye. Atlanta has theirs, it's, you know, it's,

it was fun to take Ruby when she was little, but like, there's no reason for you to go on it. - Okay, good to know. Even the London eye, have you been on that one? - I haven't been on that, but hey,

there's a Ted's Montana Grill right there, the Tabernacles right there. So if you got tickets to see a show at the Tabernacle, go eat a Ted's Montana Grill, have a nice burger. - Check.

- Right on the fairs wheel and then you've done it. - We're going to see echo in the bunny men in May, so we'll ride the fairs wheel then. - Remind me about that before it happens, 'cause I might meet you there.

I just did. - Right, man, that's in May. You gotta remind me like three days ago. - I will. - Maybe we can ride the fairs wheel together.

You me, you me and Emily. - Oh, man, our Instagram would blow up. Could you believe it?

“- I think I just blew some people's minds”

by saying you me, you me and Emily. - And people get that confused a lot. (laughs) This is way off target, 'cause we were just talking about

but I had a funny Simpsons reference last night.

“- Wait a minute, what you're about to go in”

and tangent 'cause those aren't allowed on our podcast. - Do you ever make a joke that you know no one else will get, but so it's really a joke for you? - I'm like 80% of the time. (laughs)

- I was watching Emily, Emily was gone last night, so Ruby and I had a daddy daughter night in which we usually like order cheeseburgers and watch an action movie or something. - Thank you.

- And I showed her speed last night. (laughs) And I queued it up and I was like, you're gonna love this. I'm not gonna tell you anything about it.

- And she was like, no wait, we at least tell me the name of it. - And I went, it's called the bus that couldn't slow down. (laughs) 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, but it's one of my all-time favorite kind of Simpsons jokes.

- I don't remember that joke. - It was Homer was describing the movie that he had just seen and he was like, (laughs)

“- It's a bus who 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.

- Man, that show just keeps on giving to them. - No, speed holds up pretty good too, by the way. - Oh yeah, can you in a Reeve's short hair is really great in that movie? - 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. - Yeah, Dennis Hopper is a bad guy, a crazed, a bad guy is pretty much timeless. - He was great, and I remember the bus stuff,

but that's just the middle part. I forgot the whole first part in the last part, which was also tons of action. - I don't remember that. - Yeah, go back and then watch it.

We'll watch it before we go on the fair as well. - We just did a mini crush, I know, we did. Where are we, oh, we're back at 1893 because that's where electricity really came in, right? - 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. They 1893, World's Fair, and Westinghouse won. - Yes.

- And he lit this fair up in, it was gorgeous. I didn't see it, but I read Eric Larson's description,

and it sounded just totally amazing.

- 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 more 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 Bose Arts Style, to how you say it? - Yeah. - Thanks. And also, if you're wondering, like,

did they do that at other fairs? That's, we got Art Deco from the 1925 exhibit in Paris. - Yes, and a little traveler's tip here, if you ever find yourself in New Zealand, I think the northern part of it.

Do you 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 in earthquake, and 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.

- Wow. - These amazing different buildings, and amazing different colors, and they have preserved it like perfectly. - Oh, man, I love Art Deco.

I gotta check that out. - Oh, yes, this is the Art Deco town. No one internationally is the Art Deco.

- Wow, I had never heard of it.

I thought you're gonna recommend the river tour of the architectural tour in Chicago. - I didn't take that one, that sounds kind of cool, though. - It's awesome, for like a big sort of large, mass tour thing, it's really great.

- Did Ferris Bueller go on that in the movie, 'cause 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, Chuck Bueller did. - 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? - No, I take it that was you that added, that was a terrible, terrible musical. - Yes, it was, 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 is just no terrible. Where do you see this?

- At the Fox? - Wow, so like a Broadway revival. - Yeah, and this period of American history, I just find creepy, and I don't really like it anyway. - There's a lot of like sousafone music and stuff like that.

- Okay.

and it's just, it's not good, dude. - Wow. - All right, okay, so don't see it. - Okay, go see Hell's Kitchen instead, or Operation Mint's Meat.

- Okay, but also there's a lot of misconstrued facts, I guess, is he stupid? - 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, that's where the hamburger came from,

in the hot dog, in the ice cream cone, and some of that stuff is partly true, right?

- Yes, hot dogs were first served in buns at the 1904 fair,

but hot dogs already existed. - Right. - Ice cream cone was an invented there, but this is where the first place were a lot of people saw ice cream cones for the first time.

- It sounds like a bunch of junk food. - 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?

- Yeah, he sold it as fairy floss, his name was William J. Morris, 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, a gelo, puffed rice cereal, it sounds just like a bunch of like American junk. - 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-in socket debuted there, too,

which is pretty significant. But I wanna give a little hat tip to Olivia for explaining an electric plug-in socket does, which allowed lights and appliances to be safely attached to and detached

from a central power supply. - Oh man, that is best. - That's the dedication that we can expect from Olivia. - 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 Zoo's 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 a sort of a bummer of a world spare. - 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 'em to life." And that's exactly what it was.

So yeah, that was a good episode and that it explained it pretty well, but it was definitely a bummer of an episode for sure. - Yeah, but you could wash it all down with a doctor pepper, so it could be wrong.

- That's right. - And give somebody a big smile and like half of your teeth are missing.

“- 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. (buzzer) ♪ Well, now we're on the road ♪

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“- Listen to the sixth bureau on the iHeart Radio app,”

Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. - So after World War One, World Affairs became less common and less successful. I blame going off of the gold standard. - Right. (laughs)

- But there's still plenty that came along that you'll, if you know anything about World Affairs paying any kind of attention to it, you'd 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 Affairs to choose from, no matter where you were in the world. You might be in a large, air, a large city that has multiple World Affairs 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 gonna step in, we're gonna start regulating these events.

We're gonna take this mess, and we're gonna mash it into a devil's tower plateau of mashed potatoes. We're gonna create something coherent out of it. - Wow, nice ref.

Yeah, they established some rules,

but the first rule was like, unless it officially sanctioned

by us, it's not even a World's Fair. So you gotta go through us. It can't be more than six months. You can't run these things for nine, 12 months. You gotta 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. - Right, yeah. Can you imagine some poor guy who's like, "Hey, this is in an official World's Fair."

- Right. - Once they're money back? - Yeah. - 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." But that was a huge part of World's Fairs that were during the Cold War, especially between the American and the Soviet pavilions.

- Yeah, 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." - Yeah, absolutely, a little fun fact. We got a throw in there. Do you remember the Montreal Expose,

which are now the Washington Nationals in Major League Baseball? That name came from the Montreal Expose that happened in 1967. - Yep.

- It's 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'd be 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. - Yeah. - 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 fleshing meadows in Corona Park, which at the time was a dumping ground for ash and just a really gross spot.

But when you fly away, if you see men in black or you fly over it, it's where the New York Met's used to be. And you would see that big steel globe

That was the New York World's fair in 39 and 40.

- Yeah, I looked at pictures of Electro

“and he looks like a 1939 robot for sure.”

- Huge barrel chest and then like he looked, I a little bit like Mr. Robato, but a little less detailed in the face, but he does smoke cigarettes, I saw it. (laughing)

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 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. 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. - Yeah, for sure. We were heading back to Queens 'cause I mentioned they had two there

and they had their second one there in 6465.

And this was a pretty big one too.

“I think this is where that sphere came from.”

Was the 6465 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 size 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 needed to stay viewed there. That was GE, and if you've ever ridden it, it's clearly like, hey, look what's gonna happen not too far from now.

- Yeah, and they did one for the state of Illinois too. And I looked that up and apparently they created an animatronic talking a Blinken, which I believe ended up giving rise to the hall of presidents.

- Yeah, one of the creepier things you can do a Disney, really, it's.

“- One of the other things is that the 1964 World's Fair”

was so GE was looking at the future that Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer was prompted to write an essay, yeah. - Yeah, 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 robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. - That's certainly true, they're getting better now,

but 2014 robots, the one I had was not very impressive. - Did it smoke cigarettes though? - Well, it did, we did. - That's the key to a good robot. - Had to have a smoking buddy.

- That's right. - What else Chuck, what else did he say? - Well, this one is interesting, 'cause it sounds like he got it just right, but just, you know, you'll have to hear the after word.

He said that society will suffer mental emotional and socio-psychological consequences from our technology. And if you read that, you think, man, he'd nailed it in 1964, like right on the head, but he had a different take than that.

He was like, no, that's gonna happen because it's gonna be like wall E basically where nobody works because robots are doing everything and we're gonna suffer from what he called enforced leisure and everyone's just gonna be lazy and it's gonna be awful.

And he said the most glorious single word in the world will have become work. - That's cute. - He missed that mark a little bit for sure. - Yeah.

- So the 1964 World's Fair was basically the last great World's Fair that the United States ever threw. There've been plenty of great World's Fair since then, but as far as the US has concerned,

64 was the last good one. '62 in Seattle that gave us the space needle. I was called the Century 21xpo.

And 10 million people showed up

and this kind of showed the beginning of a trend of declining attendance in the fairs that were thrown in America because this was about the times that Americans decided that we wanted

to stop being informed. - Yeah, and we're not back in on any of these cities and any of their world's fairs is 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 isn't like two years later in New York, there were 56 million. - Right. - 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.

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 a, like a, to something you might stumble upon into a park in a small town at some point,

like with the booths set up along each side. - Right. - So the actual design structures and buildings were very, very bland. And then, the 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. Like you can just come in time and it'll be fun. So the riverfront that they were promoting

was largely abandoned 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. - 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 wonderwall and buy you plaza, and they're not done and along their backs,

there's not even, you know, alligator scales and it's just the metal structure that was underneath. It's not great, it was unfinished. They, you know, if you were from New Orleans in Louisiana, you probably had a great time.

I imagine a lot of people had a great time, but they, you know, Ronald Reagan didn't even go.

“I think the president almost always goes”

or had always gone to attend the opening,

less than 10 million people went. And they lost a ton of money on it. - Yeah, and so to be fair, like this wasn't just New Orleans fault, they were victims of this long-standing, or this trend.

Yeah, I guess it was long-standing by then of American attendance being pretty shoddy. - Yeah. - The Knoxville World's Fair, which gave us the sun's fear, which is still around that one.

- That was held two years before. Epcot came along two years before, and it build itself as a permanent world's fair. - Not fair. - Nope.

The Olympics were being held in LA 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 had a huge bust time.

“- Yeah, I mean, I think the organizers for the New Orleans”

Fair went bankrupt.

They lost more than 120 million bucks,

creditors apparently allegedly got back eight cents on the dollar, and it was such a bust that they canceled the 1992 World's Fair in Chicago. - No. - Yeah, it was not great.

- No, but like we said, there have been plenty of non-American throne world fairs that weren't outstanding. One of the ones that frequently gets pointed to was Osaka in 1970, and this is about the time.

So Europe kind of kicked it off. It spread throughout the world. America did it's 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 from to the Middle East in East generally, more often than not these days, and Osaka 70 seemed to kind of kick that off. - Yeah, they debuted IMAX movies in 1970, and Osaka with a 17-minute film called Tiger Child.

I think the 2010 Expo in Shanghai, I think that's the record, right?

But visitors, 73 million people, the largest of all time.

So that's, you know, there's certainly not dead. I was wondering, 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. - Right. - And also I think things like CES, the consumer electronics show, and other sort of specific industry,

expose and trade shows of sort of dampen the appetite for these. Like for sure, but they are still around. Osaka is gonna hold another one, I'm sorry, it held another one in 2025. There's one in Belgrade, Serbia, Belgrade.

Can't remember what you say. 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.

That'd be cool. And also just one other thing, I wanna just show it out, the 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. - Classic story, you got anything else?

- All right, well that's it, everybody. That's world's fairs, I guess we'll see in Belgrade in 2027, and until then, Trial Guy State's time for listen to mail. (phone ringing) - That's right, we heard from a lot of people

about our short stuff on the McGuffin. - No, we're talking about that, which was pretty fun. I think it was kind of appropriate that we couldn't quite define it, 'cause 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 LA.

I thought I could share how I've always viewed the McGuffin.

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 into McGuffin.

In fact, if you're really in the zone while you're writing, you can use it as a placeholder, even, say like the protagonist stops by the house, to grab a McGuffin only to find a dead body in the yard. - No.

- One of the reasons it can be difficult to identify a McGuffin from a specific movie, 'cause 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. R2D2 is not a McGuffin. It's the plans that are McGuffin,

because the person is never the McGuffin.

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 R2D2 is an object. - Oh, and not a person.

- No. - 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 is an a person.

- So I feel like then Josh backed you up that the McGuffin 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. - Is that what you were saying? - But the first time when you brought it up in some other episode and the short stuff, you stuck to your gun, and 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 McGuffin, 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, nothing else matters. There's no interpersonal stuff that really matters. That is the point of everything.

So it can't possibly be a McGuffin.

“- Is, but is the Maltese Falcon itself important?”

Like, yeah, well, what does it do? - It gives you riches beyond measure. - Oh, okay. - It's like, yes, and it's irreplaceable. It's its own thing, it's not a McGuffin,

and I don't ever wanna talk about McGuffins again after this. I'm so sorry that I ever brought it up. - 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 McGuffin himself.

- That's because if he was not a part of that movie, like nothing would have mattered, like the nazis would have opened up the arc and it would have killed them all, and nothing would have changed.

Yeah, I don't know about that, because it ended up in his hands and it ended up in the storage, but I don't know. - That's it, I hadn't thought about that point.

Wow, that check, Lori, he's amazing.

- Yeah. - Did I ever tell you about the time we were in Los Angeles? And it was the day after Charlie Sheen's meltdown and like the entire future of, like that whole show was up there. - Yeah, yeah.

- But we just happened to be in LA that one day and I just happened to be walking at the McDonald's that John Crier happened to go in and sort of stress eating like a McMuffin in his Mercedes. - A McGuffin, no, I remember you telling me that story

that is incredible. - Think about the timing, all the different little things that had to happen to just bring me the past to see that one guy who's issues were on the world stage right then.

- Yeah. - It was pretty good, not yet. So I hope he's doing better. - Oh, he's doing fine, good. - Well, that was Josh who wrote in and thanks to everybody

who wrote in about McGuffins. We did get a lot of great emails from everybody. So thank you.

“And 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 [email protected]. - This stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio visit the iHeartRadio app.

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