Freak show

[piano music plays] Ding.

All right, we got a special request for Today in Freak Show History coming up, and, uh, I think it was triggered by Taylor Swift's appearance at the, uh, the Emmys last night.

We'll get to that for Today in Freak Show History.

Also around to Say Something Nice, bring some positivity to the show around 7:25.

It's Mikey and Bob.

but Bob kept calling him Dick Wolf.

[laughs] It was so funny.

Can we hear that story for fr- Today in Freak Show History? All right.

Welcome to the Proper British History Podcast.

Today we dig into the curious world of Victorian freak shows and ask what they really reveal about exploitation and fame in 19th century Britain.

It all started with a curiosity that turned into a market.

In the late 19th century, Britain had this curious industry called freak shows, where people with unusual bodies were brought to audiences for a penny.

The first wave of these exhibitions was driven by local traveling fairs, but by the 1870s you could see more structured tented venues offering regular performances.

One of the most infamous figures was Joseph Merrick, a man whose birth defects were so severe that doctors debated whether he had an abnormal tumor or something far stranger.

But these stories also reveal that society's fascination with the other was fueled by colonialist rhetoric.

Human zoos and ethnological exhibitions were parallel in Europe and often linked to imperial domination.

He helped give us Sarah Paulson, and I think that alone is a great achievement because she is a fantastic actress.

I would have loved to have seen, since Matt Fraser, who played one of the sideshow characters in Freak Show and is a colleague of ours.

And is a

genius.

And he has a condition where his arms did not grow fully.

And he's a very, very tall, lanky... extraordinarily charming British man who had a great deal of success recently in New York with his partner, Julie Atlas Muse.

He was in Freak Show.

And if you recognize what I'm referring to and you've seen the series, I would have loved to have seen him in another horror story setting where that was just who he was.

Definitely go check out Nothing Man up on Mount Washington.

All right, we'll get to you today in Freak Show History.

Coming up next and your chance at Jonas Brothers tickets coming up around 8.30. It's Mikey and Bob.

Heat advisory again today.

All right, afternoon game for the Buccos, 12-35.

This afternoon at home taking on the Giants.

Let's get to a quick talkback message before we get into today in Freak Show history.

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Welcome to the 96.1 Kiss Morning Freak Show.

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It is Mikey and Bob.

Let's get to this talkback message here brought to us by the Pavement Group before we get to today in Freak Show history.

Hey, Long John, Lil Smokey.

There's the hastiness team.

But they had something else, and I don't think it's politically correct anymore, but they had the freak show.

We were just talking about this.

Oh, you were? Yes.

Same thing.

Yeah, they don't have that anymore.

Sometimes you get your own freak show on your way to the fair.

Yeah, depending on where you park and how bad traffic is.