the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
130 - Freak Shows: From Sideshow Curiosities to Modern Media Spectacles with Anna Maria Sienicka - Part 4 of 4
What if the spectacle of the past is shaping the media and fashion of today? Join us as we unravel the beguiling narrative of freak shows, from their origins as sideshow curiosities to their influence on modern culture. Our journey takes us through the intricate dance of authenticity and performance, reflecting on anecdotes like Jack Black's lesson on recording's importance. We question if today's mainstream acceptance could strip these performances of their once subversive edge and what it means to be a "freak" in today's world.
Throughout the episode, we traverse the historical arc of freak shows, exploring their transformation into contemporary media spectacles akin to reality TV. With examples ranging from Donald Trump's spectacle-driven approach to the enchanting yet controversial acts of Dutch magicians Robert and Emil, we compare this provocative art form with traditional performance arts. Can freak shows be considered a unique artistic expression or merely a mirror of evolving societal norms?
We close with a thought-provoking exploration of the emotional landscape that freak shows inhabit. Through historical, literary, and philosophical lenses, we dissect the language of monstrosity and how physical differences evoke visceral reactions. From the evocative narratives of Victorian medical curiosities to the modern allure of extremes, we reflect on how these performances challenge identities and provoke empathy, leaving listeners to ponder the complex tapestry of human experience that freak shows continue to weave.
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Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to the way of the showman, where we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo and I will be your host and your guide along the way. And yes, it has been pointed out to me that the audio, particularly on yours truly myself, is not so awesome on the last few episodes, and that is all my fault. It's all my fault because I did not think ahead of time that this would be something that I needed to copy, I needed to record, and that is stupid, as Jack Black says in his thing, I don't know some obscure reference that I can't even remember. But always record, always record. Oh yeah, him and Kyle plays the greatest song of all time, and then they didn't record it because Kyle didn't press play. Always record. Oh yeah, him and Kyle plays the greatest song of all time, and then they didn't record it because Kyle didn't press play. So there you go. I didn't press the record here, but Anna had recorded it, but she had recorded it only to, you know, to have it, to take down what the nuggets of freak show wisdom or perspectives that I could offer her. So hers was not the main task of it was just to have the content, and that is what I'm offering you. I am offering you the value in the spirit of skateboarding, movies and whatnot. It's about the content and then the art comes out of the necessity and trying to capture the action of it.
Speaker 1:So we're delving in for the final of the four episodes where we are exploring Freak Show and we're getting to, I think, to the heart of it, of what it means. This space that emerges between a performer and his audience or her audience, that emerges between a performer and his audience or her audience. It is that thing that happens. There can take on many forms. It's like an organism, it's like a being in itself, and what we're exploring now is how can you be yourself in this spot? How can whatever is being presented trigger as many warnings and as many shocking insights as possible? Because we are exploring the art of the freak show and I hope that we'll take this as a warning Subjects including death and including venereal diseases, and race and gender and all these other things that has trigger warnings left, right and center, because at the center stage of the freak show, these are all the things that you can expect to see. So expect to be shocked, but with great heart, great heart.
Speaker 2:I've seen recently that in France we have also a resurgence of the appeal of the freak show aesthetic. For example, there was a fashion show by Jean-Paul Gaultier that was titled Freak Show. That took the bright colours, the vintage-style Americana look to put on the models and that really interested me because it's really a surface aesthetic that they are taking. And even though there is a resurgence of interest in the freak show, most performances are not completely mainstream. That does not mean that they are completely underground, even if some are. My question would be is there a risk for the freak performers, for the freak show to become mainstream and then lose its nature as something that is subversive, that's, something that is on the edge, something that is in the margins of what is acceptable, of what is normal, of what? If a freak becomes mainstream, does he cease to be a freak?
Speaker 1:I don't know, do they cease to be a freak? I mean, I think there is certainly something to be said for something that would maybe have been freaky before. Like one of the things was, you know, ripley's Believe it or Not would come out as the little cartoons, and one of those I remember from one of the books that I have about Ripley. They mention things that he wrote about in his cartoons which is not freaky or strange anymore, like the man who traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast of America without wearing a hat, which now is not so special, which now is not so special. So there are certain things that the boundaries of how one behave or whatever, like the prevalence of tattoos now, for instance, is like this, you know, of course, because not everybody who was a tattooed person in fact almost the absolute minority, only a very few was like Omi or Lizardman in America now, where a whole concept was done in tattooing famous example now of this. Most of the people were just having a lot of tattoos at the time and that's not really much easy to present as an act. Come and see the tattooed lady. I mean, if you do that you would actually be selling something else. If you have a gorgeous girl with almost no clothes on on which she has to have to show her your tattoos, and you can come into a tent with her and see there is more appeal here than just the tattoos, so we're in a different territory, almost so there is. But I think there will always be room for the freak. There will always be something which is freaky, whether it is not wearing a hat or it is.
Speaker 1:You know Jordan Peterson saying I don't believe in pronouns. It's like holy shit, this guy is crazy. We need to be. Why does he say it? Now? He's famous and there's like and it did that, and he did something crazy. It's like Is there a big difference between what he did there and Ozzy Osbourne saying I'm gonna bite the head off a bat and animal rights, and everybody goes it's like God, all this focuses on this thing. And then it's crazy for a while.
Speaker 1:And then, after a while, it's like and I think freak show will come in and out of fashion and Like Jim Rose was the biggest revival of freak show. What happened there? And yeah, so it became huge, but then some time went and that sort of passed away this. You needed to do something else to be to catch the main headlines or so. But that was the biggest freak show revival that had come and it did it within the rock and roll arena, which I think there is a strong relationship between rock and roll. I used to say when we did the Kamikaze freak show in the end of the 1990s I said we do shock and roll, it's the original rock and roll. Before people stood together in a room facing the stage being outraged at what the performer did and what they did, and people would faint standing up in the audience and scream. And all this, standing up in the audience and scream, and all this, this mode of being together. Before rock and roll existed it existed in the shock and roll of the sideshow.
Speaker 1:That there was something in this way of being human in a presentation there that is connected and I lost the train of thought again again because I get into the detail. What was the question? What was the specifics?
Speaker 2:I had something to say Is there a risk for the freak to become mainstream and to cease to be a freak?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in that moment the audience got satiated of that and sort of moved on. But also any extreme extreme, the more extreme any expression is meaning it's more nerdy or more specific, or so the general appeal will be less. Looking at contemporary classical music. When in this Gadamer talked about this in his on beauty, I I don't know what was his name, I can't remember the relevance of beauty or something.
Speaker 1:Anyway, then when you present a classical music concert, the contemporary classic of atonal, like not even Schoenberg, or or or, or, or, or or or or, or, or or or or or or or or or or or or, or or or, or, or or, or, or, or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or, or, or or or or or or or or or and back, because if you put only them on, almost nobody comes to see it.
Speaker 1:They don't fill the auditor in the way that it's very important that it happens. But that is also then a kind of niche, which is the atonal classical compositions on piano. Piano don't normally play in Royal Albert Hall, but the big symphonies does, but so it's there too. They have this entertainment aspect of it, or so, and so what I'm saying there is that the freak show is that it's another word for the freak show is the sideshow in American, and it is because it's another word for the freak show is the side show in britain, in american, and it is because it's the show that's on the side of the main attraction.
Speaker 1:Yes, when bonham and bailey's travel and it's the, it's the kind of thing where you also don't ask the question. When somebody says, and do you want to come inside here and see a lady take, she's gonna get undressed, then most of the time people go. Oh yeah, I understand what this is about and, yes, I am interested but.
Speaker 1:If somebody today say, hey, come along, somebody will be playing the guitar and gonna sing some songs, then you would, most of the time you'd go, ah, who is it? And if they go, oh it's a, it's paul mccartney. Then you'd go, oh, now I know what this is and maybe I'm interested. But if it's like, oh, it's uh, henry john and he's gonna play the music of paul mccartney, then maybe you go I'm not interested, or maybe you go that you are interested, whatever.
Speaker 1:But it's like it becomes about who does it yes, someone's going to swallow a sword, you don't go. Yeah, yeah, I do like sword swallowing, but who's the artist? Who's going to do it? This is only the connoisseurs which are interested in. So, in a way, then the freak show will always be a side show to the main attractions of it. But that does not mean that the spotlight can't move on and all of a sudden the freak or the freak show, the side show, becomes relevant. It becomes the main attraction.
Speaker 1:Can you say that? That's happened now with fucking Trump, like he's using it as a tool? People who take everything seriously and listen to everything. If you just spout shit, then they go oh, this is what he just said. This is what he just said, it doesn't actually really matter, he just said. And now he's moved on to something else. But you start questioning him about what did you say? About women or racism, whatever. It's like he doesn't actually care. I think like well, so there is no discussion to be had. So you can put the freak at the center stage and it might be outrageous or whatever, but at some point people grow tired of that if they only have one mode, because some people have their act. It's the eight minutes of perfection that they've traveled around and their whole life is this thing.
Speaker 1:Other people are artists so that when you talk to them they manage to, through the conversation or through the exposition, deepen your understanding and maybe respect and interest in their act by deep, by showing that there is depth to what you do, that you can place what you do into a context. How does it relate to other things? What are the themes you work with on all the sort of stuff that we do? So yeah, I I think that's if you that there are also like the as the freaks and take into the jerry springer shows and whatever it's like they played a role in in kind of freak show where it's like oh, I have three husbands, or like, or whatever I was like my husband is a transvestite.
Speaker 1:These are like it's maybe the topics of talk shows or so in the 80s, early 90s or whatever, but they all are like freak show things where some hillbillies from someplace are getting on there and then on he comes on and actually people are fighting in the studio. This is the kind of stuff that you could get tickets, sell tickets for freak shows for. So I think what is going to be freaky at any one time is Changing and when you put your. You sent the stage for a while then, like there was a like the one of the guys did, he win the win. The melody company. Like what is it called? It's called Eurovision song contest and he dresses in a dress and he has.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, he did one. I don't know which year, but yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is like Eurovision is very mainstream, but it's also it's very queer in its appeal as well, but still it's very mainstream as well. So so this is, in a sense, then, like a triumph, where this person is winning not because they have a beard and a dress, but because of their voice or whatever, which means that they can solve. I don't know I'm making this up and as I'm thinking about it, but I don't know, certainly not as an intention or whatever, and probably not why he won or whatever or she or they, but it was not presented as a freak act or so with any context in that thing. But if you did put a performer like that into a freak show, it would be very easy to present them a freak show presentation mode.
Speaker 2:And from all what we've said and saying that the freak show is like the sideshow, it's not the main attraction, it's a show that is always evolving. Would you say that there is something that is uniquely specific to the art of the freak show that is distinct from the art of the magician, the art of the clown, the art of the, I don't know the drug art, drag queen, drag kings, rankings, and like more broadly, do you think the freak show is its own distinct art or is it something that moves with with morality, with what is acceptable? That is what? Yeah, I think my, my question is do you think that there is, um, an art that is uniquely freak or that the freak show is its own distinct art? That is not to be confused with magician, the clown, even though, as we've said, they are intersections? They?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's always hard to make any kind of definition of something because it's always blurry lines and I believe that all of this is on a spectrum, just a boring answer. Maybe in 1940, the guy who never wore a hat could maybe be something that could be presented, or whatever which sort of points us to there is something about the nature of what belongs in the freak show the hook or the, the, the mode of presentation or the, what can we say? The, the, the, what kind of experience it is for it to be felt like in a freak show? Because you can put the freak show as it's gone and if you just have five beautiful guys and girls and anything between coming out and singing five songs and then at the end and each sings about the freak show, then it's not actually a freak show, it's about freak show. So there is something to the experience of encountering the other, or encountering what is then freaky and something that is not normal, something that pushes you and, just like in the freak show, there is the.
Speaker 1:One big separation is the, between the people who are self-made freaks and then there are the born freaks and there are things that you can do. That belongs in the freak show and there are ways to be. I mean, when you do something, you're also like being in a certain way, but I mean being as actually like the physical human body, so that and and there are similarities then between those those two things. And it has to. I think for me it has to do with a particular type of experience, so that I, few years ago because this, I watched this performance and the guy out in a sideshow tent like the classic old school style where the guy is standing outside and he's saying and what he was selling was, is that the man inside here?
Speaker 1:he has the ability to to see through someone else's eyes and he's on the inside and it does this.
Speaker 1:So it's, it's, it's this act of like thought transfer, or he can, he can see through my eyes or something, and then when you come inside then he gathers them up. We're all standing in a line and then we go inside and then on a sort of tall chair so he doesn't fall out like a baby chair for an adult sits a guy which, to all intents and purposes, is mentally different, is mentally different Watching some guy who's sitting and rocking, kind of like Rain man or something. And to go into this tent and I knew the performers and that but going in there and actually experiencing it, the shock and horror of the people who now stepped into a tent and no one said that this was going to happen. And then you come in and the guy who's there is like is it now Robert? Is it now we do? And then they put the blindfold on him and the people who go in. I have just just paid money to come in and see somebody who is mentally handicapped hmm, and it was, it is, it is shocking.
Speaker 1:And then they go and they do a magic act, a telepathic act, which is astounding. It's amazing like they and he holds objects and he can tell through and he's sitting rocking and doing this and can see anything, the objects that the others are holding and everything. Amazing, magic act. But it's two magicians and one of them plays the handicapped man and they have played at their brothers and I thought it's just a magic act. But the type of emotion that people felt when they came in and when you also sort of have this thing, the way that they talk, in a way that they behave like it's clear also that that they love each other or that they are, that he takes care of him and whatever, and this is what they do and what's their name?
Speaker 1:Robert and Emile Okay.
Speaker 2:Because I don't think I've heard of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's because they're magicians, 100% magicians. But they made this one act and they needed to practice it because they did it in FISM, the World Championship of Magic, and to practice this they needed to go and do it somewhere. And they had heard from someone else, who was also a Dutch performer, that was going back and forth and this was at the Adelaide Fringe. So they wanted to do this act many hundreds of times, be able to do that. So they did that there and the act was just 10 minutes long and then people come in and out. You could do two or three shows an hour and they just could practice it. And they had landed on this kind of presentation and it fitted so well within the Frigg show or whatever. So they tour every year in Holland, they're from Holland and this was just one act that they did and they can do it also just with the two of them.
Speaker 1:But it's, you know, this kind of mentalism. It's an I don't know if you know about this sort of stuff, but it's an unbelievably complicated and complex mode of coding. Complicated and complex mode of coding Partly through talking and also an elaborate, unbelievably elaborate way of coding without speaking. So the whole tent is in silence and the guy on stage is just telling what people are holding up in their hands and the numbers on the cards and how their letters are spelt and all this sort of stuff. So it's amazing. But my point was it's a freak show presentation. The feelings that you felt made it into a freak show. The experience of that is totally different than if it was two white middle-aged guys gone. Come on, guys, come inside, we're gonna show you how I can read his mind check it out.
Speaker 1:Check it out. That would be like a magic presentation or whatever, like entertainment or so. But so there's something there about the particular experience that comes where you're coming in and it feels forbidden it feels like it should be illegal, or is this like not that it should be legal, but you're going?
Speaker 1:is this legal? Or is it okay for me to look at this deformed person? Is it okay for me to look at somebody who is clearly not uh, with it completely right in the head? Whatever they call it like, this experience is is um scary, and I think that there's something that this mode of art, this mode of art we call, can call freak show, and if you then think of um franco b or so you can go, yeah, this is freak show, placed in art thing, me doing a dislocation act in an art venue or whatever, like you could say, this is the freak show act, but it's something more as well, because it's now in this other venue or whatever. But there's something about that experience that you go. There is a kernel of freak show in it. And.
Speaker 1:I think, then, that the freak show has to do with a particular type of experience, as in how it makes you feel and how. So I think that's what it is, more than that it's. If you do this, then that's because, done in the right way, the body suspension can be as far removed as the lock did it. It's a man hanging there and suspended on rocks for four hours and there's nothing about it that has the come on I've seen, there's no hyperbole, there's no blazing colors.
Speaker 1:It's got something else more ancient to it or so More primal. So I think, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that was my last big question, so maybe the last question would be do you think we should have talked about something we should have talked about, touched upon something to really grasp the essence of the freak show? A question that I should have asked, a subject that we should have talked about for me to understand the Frick performance, the Frick show, everything we've talked about, something that would be missing in our chat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nothing springs to mind now. Your questions were very comprehensive and I think I also swerved everywhere in what we were talking about. So it was really interesting and I don't know what things there's left to sort of talk about, because we have talked about what could possibly be started out as what is the new freak show thing or what is the freak going into the future or whatever. So because if it is true what I just said in the last question, that it's a particular type of experience, it's a particular mode of experience, of experience for an audience to have that makes it freaky because presented in the right way the women in Jean-Paul Gaultier's show. He came several times. He saw our show two times when we were in Paris and came backstage, so he liked these kinds of things. But some of these girls who come out there on that stage could, in the right presentation, be Human skeletons, which seems to be a feature of these things Because they're not normal.
Speaker 1:I just heard another, an artist talking in a different context and I don't know about I don't know Jean Paul Gaultier if he likes men or women, but he was making this claim he was a painter. He paints kind of like Rembrandt. There's a Norwegian painter called Obnerblom. He paints figuratively, like the old masters, like Rembrandt and Bruegel and this kind of, and he clearly then has an. He likes women who look like women, like normal, the normal human body, and what he paints and who he paints. All these artists are like that and that's how they looked when Rembrandt painted too.
Speaker 1:And he had some offhand comment and I thought it's interesting that he was saying that beauty ideal of the world today, and of fashion in particular, has been shaped by gay men. So all the women look like boys in this weird way, with small breasts and skinny and all like. And I hadn't thought of that before. Of what? Because of course there are men who are very in every inclinations and women do it too, but there is a prevalence of of people, of gay, and when you. So my point is then, if you present these girls in another way, like the man who never wore a hat and the woman who never ate the full meal, or whatever, because it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to be like that, because it's out of equilibrium with what happens if you live a normal what is normal, as in what most people do. So you can present anything if you find the right kind of angle on it.
Speaker 2:Do you have somebody to recommend to me that I should talk to, to see their art, to see their performances, to hear their perspective, someone that would be willing and somehow useful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you know, lizardman Eric.
Speaker 2:Sprague. Yes, I don't have his contact though.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, well, I only have it through internet, but I could probably put you in. He is a philosopher as well. He wrote about Wittgenstein. I think he's a very well-read and very thoughtful thinker and you know how he looks with his teeth and everything, and he's very deliberate in all of it with his grind teeth and he's tattooed as a thing and he's very deliberate in all of with his grind teeth and his tattoo.
Speaker 1:There's a thing and cuts, so he's another person that has has a lot or that has thought a lot and that is reading in these kinds of so things like that. So he's, uh, for this kind of stuff interesting to talk to. I think, uh, specifically about freak show and then I don't know about, because it depends on, like, as if you are like, this was like another freak show performer which just recently wrote a book his name. The book is called called Memoirs of a Sideshow Clown. Yes, I've heard of him. Yeah, so I did a conversation with him on my podcast recently. So he's thought about it a lot and has lived a life and is still living that life and identifies.
Speaker 1:He just went on America's Got Talent or whatever and they flew him over to do all the freak show stuff. So he is somebody who is currently strongly working as a freak show person and that has thought a lot about it, because he's just written a book and and they were doing another interesting project that escapes me. There's something that I just saw announced on they're making a movie. Oh man, it's a movie based on the same, on the same kind of stuff. So he's done lots of interesting things. Um, and he springs from on my podcast we talked about that of how his origin story as a sideshow performer comes a little bit from his brother committed suicide and and what that did. It's a very powerful story from his book or from his kind of of what that he felt like, that, that because he was also an artist and a musician and all that and what that felt like the obligation that he then took on from this of the. It's interesting. He could be another person that could be of interest to talk to. Who is?
Speaker 2:That's great, I'll try to get in touch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And if I can send a text to both of those and say that you, I would be very grateful, I would be very grateful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and maybe last question would be when are you coming to France, in Paris, specifically, so I can see you perform?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I hope it's going to happen, but nothing at the moment. Next year I've been working last year and then this year coming as well, I've been working with, such as today in las vegas, with their mad apple show at new york, new york. So I'm doing that twice and that's four months, and then I go for one six months, six weeks, to australia as well. So that's already more than five months, almost half of the year away.
Speaker 1:So the rest of it I try to do a little bit more locally. So my family, I don't want to be away from them, so this next year, but so I haven't. I'm not doing any seasons, but I'll keep you in mind if I'm going to Paris to do something. Oh, perfect, I realized as well. Like this was amazing. Did you record this?
Speaker 2:Yes, I have a recording like this was amazing did you record this?
Speaker 1:yes, I have. Uh, I have a recording. If you want, I can send it to you, because I was wondering, like, as we were going through here, I just went. This is a level of depth that almost never happens and I would, uh, would you be okay with this being a part of a podcast? If you're not, that's not that yes, yes, no problem.
Speaker 2:I don't know if my English is very understandable, because it's kind of rusty now.
Speaker 1:No, for the flaws of your language. Your ideas and your knowledge comes through unhindered by the flaws, in that if I had the capability, I could do it in French, but unfortunately I don't. All I say is well, I know how to say is you know the things from my act? But so it sounds like I know how to say a few things, but it's very little. After we could go back to Portugal if you could send me the recording it would be absolutely amazing because it's my podcast is.
Speaker 1:Also, I spend a lot of time just talking to a few particular people, and they're always just guys. So it would be absolutely extraordinary to have this conversation with you and to ongoing as well. It's amazing because I would love to do the same thing to you at some point, to ask you how you came to be interested in all of this. But I guess we've already been going for more than two hours, so that's almost like a separate thing, because it's it's really fascinating to me and I we don't have to talk about it now, because then I already know the answers. It's nice to discover it in the conversation, but but it's always really interesting and I feel like it's the because I talk a lot with jay gill, who is a juggler an artist, and we have talked about this concept of when you do that, juggling only elevates to become an art form.
Speaker 1:A part of that or with circus or whatever, is when it's treated by academics and when it's treated by critics, so that the critic who's writing in the paper actually has a context for it. So it's not just, oh, they juggled all the balls and all the rings and it was great, but there they go. Oh, this was an evolution of the art of juggling. Because of these reasons, this hasn't been seen since, and Rico Rustelli did this, or Michael motion did this and you, because the history of jugglers most people don't know, because they just go, oh, oh, it's all the same, it's just juggling. Yes, they threw the things, but maybe there is something completely different going on in there, for as much as juggling is just what the notes is to the music.
Speaker 2:Like now. It's very interesting in the academic world, but because it's, there is this tension between what is considered high art and also this very postmodern thought about everything being interesting, everything being potentially a subject of intellectual interest. So we have researchers like myself working on the freak shows. I have a very good friend who's working on the art of movement in video game, how you manipulate the joystick, how it is an aesthetic experience, and those are researchers that wouldn't be possible a few years ago. Of course, we have these very big researchers that were ahead of their time, like Bogdan, but now we have those who are very old school. What is true? Art, the paintings, the opera, the ballet. But there are also those freaks in the academic world as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, there is. I mean, I know someone who's taken a PhD in circus in Australia as well. I know a couple of people and I know one who's currently working on their PhD in Stockholm, also on the circus, specifically about juggling, but there's no real room for it within the academy and in that way, so he's somehow he's connected to the dance like it's and, and that means that the questions need to be formulated in certain ways, and, and, uh yeah, but it's interesting though, like in the and then in the academic world, to be studying freaks or even to be studying the joystick.
Speaker 1:The aesthetic experience of audio, of a video game interface is in the cells, is, in a sense, within in the academia. It's a freak activity, so maybe this meets them with horror. When you, when they go, would you do what you look? Oh, the topic that we didn't talk about, but we could maybe talk about it next time, was this idea of exploitation.
Speaker 2:Yes, I had a question actually about this the place of disabled.
Speaker 1:You did, and I talked about many other things, but I skipped it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, about the place of disabled people, like we were talking about Matt Fraser, that tries to reclaim this heritage of freakshow that was exploitation and to see why people willingly that are disabled go to the circus, go to the freakshow to become a freak, Because it seems counterintuitive that those were almost the same people that were exploded ages ago and now they're coming back willingly. So what's the appeal? That was his documentary film. I don't remember the name but it was extremely interesting at this level and I have a friend who is also a freak performer and she is disabled but it's not visible and when I asked her what is the place for disabled people in the freak show scene, she said people who are disabled, who are visibly deformed disabled, visibly different. They were like royalty in the freak show scene and I found this extremely interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it is because and maybe that is it that so many of these books are they they use this word monsters or so as well like there is a this line of monsters and and the human being which is born different, with additional limbs or attached to someone else, or there's something about that which is the the primal or prime example of the freak show art, this particular emotion that one gets when you are placed before Matt Fraser, even if he's just in silence going in, and then he takes his shirt off, so you can really see the flesh in this emotion which is what I was talking about when I talked about the going into the tent and you realize that you might be watching somebody who is mentally handicapped this feeling that you got this horror, fascinating thing, mystery, this, this. Why are they royalty? It's because maybe this is the quintessential evocation of this particular experience. It's the flesh that's born different.
Speaker 2:I'm very happy about this opinion because in my research, even though I talk about freak shows, I use mostly the word monster, which is obviously met with a lot of suspicion, a lot of moral judgment. Also Because for me there is something extremely important in the encounter with someone, that is, that he who is so physically different that it's a bodily experience, it's not projection, but it's as if we felt his or her body from the inside, like it pains us to see somebody who doesn't have an arm. At the beginning we think, oh, it's just a joke, he's hiding it behind. And then, oh, it's real. And we have, when we see that person, this crippling, almost anxiety that oh, it could happen to me.
Speaker 2:I feel like something is missing in my own body yeah that's why I use the word monster and also freak, to convey this, uh, this experience. But we, we can talk about it.
Speaker 1:Maybe, uh for the the conversation um, yeah's so interesting, but it's also it's, it's part of the to be able to access the experience of freak show, this particular experience that we've tried to articulate the word monster itself presenting themselves or somebody going in here, a living human monster, that person who comes out there. Now the language is offensive, yes, it's, and, and we use that language because it it helps evoke the freak show experience. We use the word freak or monster because already at this first encounter, just with a word before they come out, or even just when you're literally pointing at the person and saying this is a living monster, you are not allowed to say that this is not how it should work. So already, maybe just to call it that has some of this feeling.
Speaker 2:What is very interesting with this word monster is that if I say, oh, I saw a monster today, you have no way to imagine what I saw. It's purely affect it's. It means more how I feel, more than the person or the thing I have encountered. Yeah, it's more a description of my own feelings than a description of reality totally, and this is to a design, that heart of what that experience is.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is to me, it goes like philosophically, or if you want to back it up, becoming a monster, it's even in the process of me looking at, like he's describing in the book, the man, the black man from down the corner, who now performs in the freak show as the savage or whatever. He is becoming a freak by stepping onto that stage and wearing the funny hat or I can't remember what. He described him having probably a leopard thing or something, because it's usually pretty base level, but like so, he's becoming a freak or a monster in the experience of it, so that it's so interesting what you say, that it's an affectation. It's what is the freak experience or what is the specific thing about that separates freak show from everything else, and it is a particular kind of effect which is a particular kind of experience, and it's that might then mean, maybe, that certain people can have a freak show experience. That's something which others do not experience as a freak show experience.
Speaker 2:For me the monstrous experience to say can, couldn't be really defined as monstrous. But a human can be, not in the moral sense of the word, monster, but because if I told you I saw a monstrous insect, you wouldn't be able to recognize the teratological abnormalities unless you're very well versed in entomology. But maybe you are, I don't know. But when the monstrous aspect is on somebody's face that we spontaneously recognize as another human, this monstrous aspect becomes immediate, whereas for other objects we have to know that, oh, this part shouldn't be here, it's asymmetrical, so it's some kind of disability, might be monstrous, but for the human there is always something that is, oh, touches you, it's immediate, it's at the core of the intersubjective relationship yeah, yeah, that's I totally go.
Speaker 1:It doesn't need much. You could, of course, go. If you're born without arms and legs, then you immediately go. On is easy to see. But you're right, it's a disproportionate facial features. We can immediately recognize it.
Speaker 2:And you are like behind your own disability. Imagine someone who has a big tumor on the face. He's like, it's as if his face was behind the disability. That's why it's with very visible disabilities. It might be difficult for some people to encounter the person that is disabled because she is like, hidden behind her own difference. It's a problem to encounter the person. We encounter the disability, the monstrousness of that person, but the person is like left behind, so the the. We were hoping to encounter somebody else, but we just encountered that lump of skin on on his or her face and the person is behind the, and we have difficulties to connect to, to establish a relationship with this person, because we have to go beyond something that is so extreme on his or her face that it becomes difficult.
Speaker 2:One thing I wanted to touch upon, but of course I didn't have time you were talking about the encounter being a face-to-face, becoming a heart-to-heart, and that's just me with my philosophical background. But our encounter face to face made me think about Levinas, who is a french philosopher who theorized the face, and his definition of face is the exact opposite of well, not the exact opposite. But definition of faith is the exact opposite of well, not the exact opposite, but very far away of the faith of Goffman, who is like presenting faith how you socially present. For Levinas, faith is what is our own humanness, it's the nakedness of humanity. When you see face, it's like he was a very Christian philosopher. It's like an obligation to I mustn't hurt this other person, because it's what allows us to connect, to establish a relationship. This face, this vulnerability that is expressed in the face.
Speaker 2:But he also says this face is a metaphysical face. It's not the eyes, the mouth, the features. He says that to encounter someone, to encounter truly someone, you should have a discussion where you don't even notice the color of the eyes of the person because you're so into the relationship to you hear his or her voice and you're not. The physical body is not an obstacle to the relationship you're trying to build. So that's, I found it very interesting that you want to connect on a very bodily, almost level, very visceral level, with the audience. But by putting on a show, by putting a show, you present something that is very visible, something that is very material, something that is very, yes, very, very corporal, yes, very, very corporal. So the exact, the exact, um, exactly what levinas?
Speaker 1:would say, is not the true encounter, though. So that's very fascinating, yeah, and I do think that it's like when you are looking at a freak performance, or you are looking at my performance, which is a kind of freak performance, or you're looking at performance, or so it's, it's you need to look past the shockingness of it, or you need to look past the how funny it is with me or whatever, and then when you look at it, you go actually there's an art that has created this or so.
Speaker 1:But the interesting thing with a guy with a tumor on his face a hypothetical person is that it's such a good example because it's on your face. It's like it's a mask of freakness which you cannot take off, but the person is in there all the time and the the face of um levinat's face, the true encounter or so, and I guess that's like because goffman talks about presentation of self as if it's a, if it's a normal, if it's a, it's a predetermined thing that you can change, which it also is. You can come into a room and choose to behave in a certain way. You can go yeah, so you can hear me when I'm with my mother, I behave in one way and I went with my wife.
Speaker 1:I gave in another way and both are truthfully me, but that, the way that living not seem to talk about, it's more like it's the actual real person. But in for here, for the, for the person who is born different, or do you have the tumor that is on the face? This thing becomes a real obstacle because this thing, it's like it's in the mode of attention, it's like it's screaming at you yes, so it's very hard to see behind it. So, but still, that beautiful poem attributed to, to the oh man, what is it? It's to the elephant man, to joseph merrick, or where he says if, um, I should, I, I should have this ready anyway. But like, let's just take it from the David Lynch's movie of the portrayal of the elephant man, of how beautiful of a human being he is portrayed to be there and his aspirations, and he goes, and he said I would go from. In the poem that he says I'm glad, from paul to paul or I would do everything that I, that I could, I don't, I don't, I am not like this.
Speaker 1:If I could do anything to do, I would not fail in pleasing you, I would.
Speaker 1:I would want that, but I can't. But I am still in here and I am fully human and it is hard to see because it is hard to go through, to penetrate through it, and that, I think, is then this, uh, natural, not meaning it's a positive thing, but that it's like like racism and all these other things they go. Oh, it might be part of us or so, but that doesn't mean that we, that we as we evolve, don't want to transcend and get to put these terrible things behind us. And the same is encountering deformity or whatever, or the monstrous like we it's. It's almost impossible to see past it. Yet if you live within a different social context, when I performed with a short person who was with us, or with Baby T, who was the half man, half woman that we performed with, she played music and just having her come out, dressed as she was, with breasts, and the way that she manifested in and she just sat down and played, she played classical harp.
Speaker 1:And it was all freak show stuff. And then she comes out and does this and she played the theme tune for the Elephant man and I got to play the musical saw and we played this and she didn't need to do a freak act, even though in the end she did do some freak acts and so on but just having her there, that was enough acts and so but but just the, just having her there, that was enough, like it just, and it in a sense then lent credibility to me, who was the rubber man, and to the sword swallower and to john kamikaze who was doing the freak, the pain act like the prince of pain.
Speaker 1:he was called and it and, like you were saying that, the person born different. We had royalty there. We had a man who, in in the show, presented himself as a dwarf. That was the title of what. What he was used in in his mode of presentation. That was what it was, also a long time ago.
Speaker 1:So it wasn't within the freak show vernacular, just like you would call it a freak or a monster, like calling yourself a dwarf was part of it or whatever, like the having the two of them in there and then us called the kamikaze freak show, even though maybe it was the sword swallower and me and the pain man who did most of the freak show acts, these other two people lent us a credibility that you couldn't argue with when you walked into the television studio in Holland, because we were doing this and these people were here, you didn't need to say anything more.
Speaker 1:There's no argument now or like, and and this is the kind of authority that somebody born with blue blood, some a monarch which just comes in and then you cannot question it, because this is their birth and this. I'm sitting next to him, danny blackner, and and we are a freak show. Now he is there and he is in the show and he is on display and he claims that title and now it focuses the conversation in a way that it couldn't do, because I'm like, wow, what are you doing? A white guy with long hair and like, you look like a freak, but you look like you could also be hippie, kind of like. But so there is anyway. Now I divide. I I certainly slipped a long way, but it's interesting, the different, the different and the difference between face to face and heart to heart, and maybe the kind of face that then levinat levinas talks about has that little bit of the heart aspect of it, yes, in it.
Speaker 2:It's really a metaphorical face. That's not the true face, the physical, the one that has the eyes, the mouth, the features. It's really almost like the soul of the person, because for him it's a very Christian perspective. It's not to not be hindered by the body, to go beyond, to go past whatever physical appearance you may have. Might it be normal or might it be completely freakish. It really makes me think about what we've talked about fiction and reality. It makes me think about what we've talked about fiction and reality.
Speaker 2:It makes me think about a book, actually two books by Victor Hugo, one being Notre Dame, the second one being, I think in English it would be the Laughing man, and it has an incredible scene in both books. In the Laughing man, the story of this man that has this huge scar on his face that makes him perpetually smile, and in one scene he meets with a girl and she says to him oh, you have a marvelous mask, it's incredible, you're so looking, so out of this world. And he's saying it is not a mask. And she replies then you are terrifying. Yeah, yeah, wow. Really, the face that is deformed is like a mask, that something that shouldn't be here, something that hinders something that the true person would be behind. But it is so different that we have difficulty to go beyond this lamp of skin that's covering the humanity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and this feeling there then I think that is absolutely the freak show feeling Like I've been taking some poetry classes now, just on masterclass. You know this American thing and I listened to two different poets or so. So I'm thinking about it a lot and here we're, just this idea that poetry expresses when you're reading a poem. It's like it brings into being, perhaps, or points attention to, or makes into something a very specific kind of feeling, for instance, and it's because of course, you can have a love poem, but a poem can also be about nature, like Wordsworth, and so they say things about nature that makes you understand reality differently after you have read this poem and you've taken it in or so, so in in that sense, much like poetry is doing that. It's like the different kind of acts that you see within the freak show are refining these encounters with the other it and you're meeting the other within, because you feel like you say, you see the different flesh or you see somebody putting a pin through their arm and you can't help but your mirror neurons or whatever it is, and your empathy and everything just makes you actually kind of feel it yourself as well. In the way that I feel it when my daughter falls. I genuinely feel it, so that I get a physical sensation if we're teaching her to ride a bike or whatever, and then she falls and I can feel it so that I'm physically pained myself in a real, not metaphorical sense.
Speaker 1:And that thing when you are presented in and you're invited in in the right way, in to meet that person, and it and it works more the more you care about that person, about the performer, the more you actually make a connection, the more it's gonna pain you when they do, when they do it.
Speaker 1:If they come out and start on level one and they just go and they put it through, then it just you can't, you can't go any harder because you already put that thing. Now you can put through one more, you can put it through in another spot, but to go from not having done it, then for it to happen to someone that you care about, then it is all the more painful because you feel it yourself. So, in that sense, if you are watching something and it's clear to you, whether because they're born or through something they do, that this is an encounter with a monster, it's an encounter with a freak or with the other, then, as you feel it yourself, you are completely embodying the other and you are becoming part of it yourself, and you see that in a certain mode of presentation. I too am like that.
Speaker 2:That makes me think about all those performances I've met recently that say that their performances are so extreme with the pain act that the venue they perform are mostly venues adult only with BDSM scene. That's the only place where their act would be maybe not accepted but understood, because they put really, really painful stuff, like needles, in really delicate parts terrifying stuff, beautiful but terrifying. That's really the extreme part of the freak show. I think it's very recent this trend to go even more into the pain stuff, like in France. Like I have said, we do not have this tradition of extreme acts, it's more. The freak show was more like, of course there was exhibition, but mostly illusionists, magicians, fakirism, but not this American stuff, if I can say so.
Speaker 1:No, it's like you guys had the Grand Grignol.
Speaker 2:And that was even after the Frick show, because most of the French Frick Show, which was called the Entre-Sorts, it was at the end of the 19th century, it was the 1880 mostly, and it was a very specific scene.
Speaker 2:It was mostly national, even though there were American performance with Barnum coming in to France and other performance, but it was, it was very linked to well, that's for me, that's my own hypothesis, but it was very different from the American version because in the French freak show it was mostly always a joke, in contrast to the zoo humain, which was called the human zoo, which was more supposed to be real. So the people that were performing in the freak show, some were fake freaks, the others were real freaks, were fake freaks, the others were real freaks, but it was mostly light-hearted, whereas Human Zoo were an exhibition of people mostly from other races, french colonies, and it was more like those are true savages, those are the true monsters, the true Fricks, this murdered lady, of course it's kind of strange, but it's mostly lighthearted, mostly a joke, whereas this serious and moral aspect that we have today when we think of Frick Show was more introduced in the French zoo humain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really interesting. It's interesting that even within at that time there was the separation between the people who do freakish performances or yes, and it's like, oh yeah, she's got a beard, but she's a normal lady and she sings a song. I don't know like they would have some entertainment aspect to it, but like the human zoo would be like pygmies or or I don't even know if it's allowed to say that anymore, but that would be what they would be presented as or like or or aboriginals from australia or like and you. They would just often, I guess in those situations they would just more or less just sit there and you literally like the zoo animals of the time, you just go from cage to cage or enclosure and just look.
Speaker 1:They wouldn't necessarily do a normal performance, so, but maybe they would dance some local dances. But even if they were did some very interesting dance, maybe they would go not fit as well within the human sewer, needed to go on the stage, because if you actually, oh, they're aboriginals from australia but they also tap dance, then it belongs in a different place or whatever, somehow like the most raw, overpowering, hardcore, like in black metal version of the freak show feeling would be like the human zoo where it's just plunked in. It's just monster. There's no explanation. They come from here, you deal with it, it's just watch it.
Speaker 2:It's crazy okay, there was something very funny with the french freaks, because in america there was freaks are coming from over the world. It was a way to discover those strange, exotic places. But in France, of course, there were the human zoo and showing different parts of the world, the French colonies. Even though those people that performed in the French zoo, most of them, were assimilated to French society, there were no in quotation quotation, of course savages. Those were fake freaks, even though they were in the human zoo.
Speaker 2:But in France it was extremely funny because the freak show was some kind of national tourism, so people were sending postcards with a dwarf, with someone with a different disability, and they were sending like kisses from Savoy, and each region has its own Fricks and it was even considered in good taste to go see the Fricks. It wasn't high art, but it was something that people just did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, and this was so. What is it? 1818?
Speaker 2:Yes, like really early At this point. It was a very interesting moment in France because it was the beginning of photography, the beginning of clinical medicine. So representation, images of disability, of pathological dermatology, were absolutely everywhere, mostly in Paris there was a big medical scene. I don't know if you've heard of the Hysteria in France. There were shows where the mad women were dancing as a kind of way to process their illness. I haven't. That's incredible. End of 19th century, france is wow for this kind of things.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I mean, it's also you know, we know of the elephant man through Sir Frederick Treves' book as well like he wrote that account of him of where he comes in and is displayed to others like a human zoo. The physicians of the time would get monsters in and they would all just be displayed and everyone would sit around, like in the show, and look monsters in and they would all just be displayed and everyone would sit around, like in the show, and look at them and they would show what it was, or here's this and this is that, and they would just stand there and like which is described in in frederick treese's book on the elephant man, and it's portrayed in the movie, of course.
Speaker 2:So I guess it's like at the time physicians would also go to the freak shops to actually find absolutely there was um, physicians wanted to to examine the freak so they had to um, to pay the, the, the talk or the impresario of this whole circus to get a chance to examine the person that was performing. Because at some point it became a little bit immoral to see freaks. It was really frowned upon, it was even almost criminalized. So there was really a connection between medicine, official medicine, and freak shows. Like the talker was going to the universities to the physician saying, oh, I have a Siamese twins, if you want you can come examine. Of course you pay. And the physician coming to examine those, those performance.
Speaker 2:And also when they were giving lectures they were almost like talkers in in the university. There we have images, photographs of physicians showing the quote-unquote monstrous body and it's almost the same. The movement of the hands, like look at this, we don't hear them talking. I suppose they don't talk like talkers of the Frick show, but it's almost the same pose, the same. Yeah, it's really.
Speaker 1:That's true, it's um, there was a lot of a crossover, a lot of crossover, I think, between you. The performers would take on the ear of the professor or the doctor and they would have titles that's why I'm captain frodo within the freak show, having a title like captain or major or colonel or whatever. That was part of the deal. And to have a talker which could wear a white coat and show the pictures. And if you had a Siamese twin that you were presenting in your show and they came from the prestigious hospital or whatever medical institution to come to look at them, then the fact, then you could say that oh, and this has already puzzled, the professors and the physicians of the university have come multiple times to explore, to understand this anomaly, and you could introduce the fact that they would give you the credibility by paying attention to it and the photographs of them presenting it.
Speaker 2:You can mimic it and you gain respectability or whatever in the process so the talk was was um, sometimes called the doctor, like there was an itinerary circus exhibition in France and in Belgium after the exhibition of Dr Spitzner, and it was. They had a freakish teratological section but it was mostly a clinical pathology, not with real people but made out of wax and yes, and it was. It was almost not the same as the Frick show, but it was also a circus, almost a circus, a theatre going from town to town to present the monstrosity of the human body and it was the doctor Spitzner showing all those works pieces and it's incredible yeah, and that is a forerunner then of Madame Tussauds and of the American style, or maybe it existed other places too.
Speaker 1:But to sort of walk through a museum where there might not actually be any live exhibits but there might be actually be any live exhibits but there might be just pictures or artifacts or so that tell these stories, which also can be totally freaky, but of a different nature than, a much lighter nature than when you walk through there and if all of a sudden they're sitting a freak in there, a real living, all of a sudden they're sitting a freak in there, a real living monster in quotation marks then that would be like you would be shocked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like dr spitzner had a reproduction of the siamese twins um uh giacomo, uh tochi and uh I forgot his, the name of his brother um two young Italian boys that produced that inspired the book of?
Speaker 1:isn't that? Who is it that wrote this book?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry I interrupted you no, no, it's alright, but they had a works representation of the Siamese twins, the Tochi brothers, that were joined by the hip. I think. I'm not sure yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So they had also this freak section, but it was mostly disease of the skin that was particularly brutal to see, but also a whole gynecological section about, of course, giving birth, venereal diseases. So there was really this component of making people feel uneasy, Might it be through the monstrous body or through the sexual nature of some of the work species displayed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Spitzner. When was that Dr Spitzner?
Speaker 2:It was also the end of 19th century, Like I said, 19th century, end of 19th century in France. It was mad, it was incredible People in Paris I don't know if you've heard of it there was a huge fascination with death, with disease, with all those new inventions, new way of thinking. For example, La Morgue, which is the morgue, I think, in English, was a popular place to visit for people. Wow, Really, this decadent era in France was Like the kind of memento mori that was also.
Speaker 1:Yes, was that at the same time this sort of I don't know the movement of having the display of a skull at home or something?
Speaker 2:That was way before. That was mostly medieval, more like Renaissance. Ah, okay, and this was the movement was called decadence and it was going against moral codes, being in a sense of uneasiness, like people going into the end of the century, something that is going to end, a sense of something bad is going to happen, and that was incredible, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it happened. What we felt like when we were afraid of the millennium bug. When it goes it happens with every time when it's a big, when the year changes into another year, when people go a little bit crazy, I think the feeling, oh, something is different, everything is changing and decadence often comes with those. Yes, I mean both, I think, because maybe at that time there was also a flourishing in sectarian religiousness as well, because those often go together as well, like in one end of the society goes towards the decadence and in another way it will go towards extreme, extreme forms of religiousness as well. Yes, in that they're on two ends of the spectrum.
Speaker 1:And but that's that's incredible because at that time early, in 1800s, it would have been beyond shocking to go and look at anatomically correct wax figures of men or women with their sexual organs on display. And having seen what you can do with wax things it can be, it can be almost more shocking because it will be shaped in just the right way or so to be most gross and it's a really interesting that this happened. I didn't know and it's kind of like I I have and I for a long time I had been thinking that my sort of period of interest for a long time was sort of 1840 to 1940 and I've said that several times and thought that a lot of stuff, it's like the whole birth and the Colombian exposition in America with the first midway and all of this that, um, that this wasn't it. This was the time, and I didn't.
Speaker 1:Recently looked at the robert bogdan's book and I realized that he has a chapter, or at least a sub chapter in one of his, in the, in the first part of his book, talking about 1840 to 1940, which I might have just sort of gone in on that through that.
Speaker 1:But it's interesting that this is then older, like precursory to what he of course talks mainly about the American exhibits of what does he call it freaks and for me, and displaying human oddities for amusement and profit or whatever. So, but he's, but this is. This is then a strong precursor to it, because the only other precursor that I'd sort of read a little bit about, I mean, is the Time Museum, which sort of was also in that same time when Ford became what Barnum did with his Great American Museum, which was like the huge American version of it. There was the single small attractions, like what is described with the elephant man, of where you would go in and pay and it would just be him inside the shop front or whatever. So this is it. I didn't know about this in France.
Speaker 2:I just sent you one piece of my lectures I gave last year at the Sorbonne. I was just talking about the Spitzner exhibition and you have some photographs if you want to see them. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to look in the chat. Oh there, yes, there it came, wonderful. I will have a look at that for sure. There it came.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. I will have a look at that for sure. Sadly, I will have to go because I'm giving a lecture in the afternoon, so I have to eat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, great, it's been such a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Pleasure is all mine. Really thank you. It was really really lovely and so interesting. And if you want to have another conversation for, if you want to to have another conversation for the podcast or just to have a conversation all right, folks, that brings the freaky february to an end.
Speaker 1:We have had four episodes exploring freak show with anna maria sineka and I am so grateful for her reaching out and expanding my understanding of Freak Show. So many things I don't know. You go around and the Dunning-Kruger effect is strong everywhere. So I think I know, I think I have a good handle on it. And then I spend a few hours talking to a French philosopher and I am yet again reminded of how little I actually know. So if you haven't already, please subscribe. It's the best support you can do for the podcast. And until next time when we start exploring the great mysteries of the world, it'll be mystery. March will be what we're exploring with Jay Gilligan as we explore his infernal obsession with the Cirque du Soleil show, myster. So until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.