In this final bonus episode of History Vs., Erin and Mental Floss fact checker Austin Thompson discuss the challenges and delights of tracking down the truth about Theodore Roosevelt—and bust some TR myths, too.
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History Verses is a production of I Heart Radio and mental Flaws. You often hear Theodore Roosevelt described as larger than life, which I think we can all agree is pretty accurate. And as with many other larger than life characters, there are plenty of myths and misconceptions surrounding tr some of which were encouraged and perpetuated by Roosevelt himself. As Kathleen Dalton writes in Theodore Roosevelt's A Strenuous Life, he sought to keep his inner life and less attractive traits well hidden. He also encouraged his friends and authorized biographers to tell an upbeat, socially acceptable, stiff, upper lipped version of his life. Many of his friends and biographers obliged him. Dalton goes on to say that the guardians of his story would edit or destroy letters they deemed embarrassing, and would even hide the family secrets to present a better picture of Roosevelt's life. A lot of his fact checking stuff is to do with his legacy. There he really intertwined because these myths and legends are such a part of the story. That's mental flass. Is fact checker Austin Thompson, who has been taking a magnifying glass to stories on Mental Flasses website and to our YouTube videos for years, and he looked at every script of this podcast too. He knows better than many how complicated unraveling the truth behind history can be. So for this final bonus episode of History Versus, I couldn't wait to get him on the phone to debunk some tr myths and talk fact checking one of the most famous figures in history. I found an absolutely brilliant nineteen twelve New York Times article about Theodore Roosevelt which was saying, if you had four experts who swore that he boiled his grandmother and hat her in the eighteen nineties, he would come back with documentary proof because she actually died of the eighties. Just a quick break, or to say that. When Austin was fact checking the script, he realized that he'd misremembered what the article said. It was actually twenty experts not for okay, carry on. If you have people who swear under oath that he had a meeting with Standard Oil at this date, he would come back with a dated photograph of him talking to a mother's congress. I think I d has to do with that he does come to the White House and all the history from a perspective of being a historian. So he knows that he's great. He knows his great, everyone's His entire life has been clear. He is great. He can produce dated evidence for anything you might say he did. I think it's because he wanted to control his historical view in a way that other people wouldn't. But nowadays we wouldn't think. Is that weird. When we were putting these episodes together, the general process went like this. I came up with the themes for each episode, then put together outlines that pulled together a ton of information around those themes. In each outline were sources, quotes, and beats that I wanted to hit, along with pieces of the interviews I conducted that I wanted to include. Then the writer, sometimes me, sometimes another Mental Falls staffer, would use that outline to write the script, which would go through an editing process where myself and members of the production team would weigh in and make tweaks, and finally, before I recorded, the script would go to Austin and he'd dig in, and I mean really dig in. Not only did he find errors, Hey I'm not perfect, but He would also nearly always find some new piece of information or interesting story that I want to include. As I was researching Theodore Roosevelt and looking at all sorts of things, two things that struck me about them that when we fact checking a lot easier. The other one made it basically impossible. He mythologizes, but you can get so much information about him from other sources that aren't him. Would be like, you spent five minutes with him ten years ago, you're suddenly writing a book the time I spent with Theodore Roosevelt, the family he's staying with in Germany, who's saying, oh, he's going to be president. That all exists independent of anything he did. So he is in control of his image to a certain extent. But there's such a world that you can pretty much verify most things he's saying. And then the other thing that makes it harder is the change that we've talked about is the changing views of Theodore Roosevelt. That's like if you read something from the nineteen tenth it is a different perspective than if you read something from the n It's lucky because with Theodore Roosevelt, we have so many of his primary documentar aation, but it's still really hard to sort of sift through all of that to say that was this person saying that about Vietore Roosevelt because this is actually how it is, or just because that was the prevailing view at the time. Also, socio culturally, we like to think of history is this great monolithic thing. It happened, and now we can just kind of go back and look at bits and pieces of it. We as a culture don't. I don't think we really like to view history is having trends, that there are differences in how history is being viewed from one day to another, one culture to another. We're not talked to think of history in that way. So when you're fact checking something like the podcast scripts, do you usually try to go for the primary documentation first, or in the case of Theodore Roosevelt, when you know that he did not like to write about things that were difficult, like, for example, he didn't include his first wife in his autobiography at all. Are you looking elsewhere when you're fact checking, Well, it depends on the thing. I mean, you know, he's there to tell a story, so as long as you read it, no wing read what he says, knowing this is the story he wants you to hear. Then I always like to go back to primary sources because there's just gave r so many of them, and as I said, so many of the people who even interacted with him briefly would be writing books about the events that happened. It is when you get into more sort of obscure, especially obscure leaders or figures in history, that it does start to really became I'm a problem of how much weight are you willing to put on the secondary source. I'm sure if you read some of my podcast suggestions, there are times when it will be really awkwardly suggested, saying this person said this, and that's because I mean, it's maybe true, but these other sources say it's aren't necessarily as strong. So we often go back and forth and play like a little bit of like is this okay? What do you think about this phrasing? Because we don't want to mislead anybody, right, we want to make sure that we're that we're being accurate. I have spent ages, like I don't even know how long, debating whether a single word is correct, because it's like it does make a difference Do you want to get into some myths now or do you do you have other thoughts? I think I don't think I've got anything else that I wanted to talk about the process of fact checking. It's just kind of like you go through documents and then you try to decide is this reasonable? Is this accurate? Does this person say what this person says? Is this person correct? Is this person citing some lost documentation that was found at the top of a monastery and how during Resbekistan and then be monastery burned down, So you're relying entirely on them. It's hard tr myths coming up after the break. In the course of making this podcast, we came across a number of tr myths and misconceptions, some of which we touched upon briefly in the regular episodes, and some we just didn't have time to get to. So we figured we'd finish up this season digging deeper into a few of them. And if you're going to take onto your myths and misconceptions, you might as well start at the beginning. Everyone knows that Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly asthmatic kid who, after a directive from his father, built his body to the point where he had cured himself of asthma. Right, well, not so fast. According to Door Roosevelt, that is what's happened. But there's a really interesting paper from a couple of years ago. The misunderstood asthma of Theodore Roosevelt makes meritical interesting. So it says, no, the as moment away when he was somewhere between twelve to fifteen, and that's about the age you'd expect the asthma to lighten itself up, even if he was doing absolutely nothing. As the paper notes, this phenomenon is well recognized by clinicians today but was unknown in Tears time. Looking back at Tiers inference, it is tempting to speculate about how his misplaced sense of accomplishment may have influenced his thinking about what else he might achieve if he set his mind to solving new problems. In reality, his asthma didn't fully go away, and in fact, it sometimes reared its ugly head later on in his life. When Edith was in labor Alice, his daughter Alice remarked something like the train and my father came in wheezing. As he rushed to be by her side. He had asthma attacks throughout his entire life, but they were not as bad. According to the article. At the time, and for all of Theodore Roosevelt's life, asthma was thought to be psychosomatic. The idea that they thought at the time asthma was psychosomatic, I think probably was a really big part of why Theodore Roosevelt wanted to proclaim himself as having cured his asthma. I mean, this is a guy who thinks basically every thing is weaker than he is. So if he's truly viewing that his asthma is entirely in his head, I can make sense to me why he would then pretend that it wasn't. That's my opinion on the matter. But yeah, okay, this is one of my favorites. So there is a photo floating around on the Internet in which Theodore Roosevelt is writing a moose. So did Theodore Roosevelt ever write a moose? Well, not that we know you spent a lot of you spent a lot of time in Maine. So but now the picture is definitely fake, But it was never supposed to be viewed as real. It was from a New York Tribune and if you just take the picture by itself, it won't manly. That's awesome, But the whole stick is cast writing an elephant, Theodore Roosevelt writing a moose, and Woodrow Wilson writing a donkey. It's for the president, and they were whatever the n version of photoshopped was onto the animal of the respective party. And then I can only imagine someone found a copy of that picture and Theodore Roosevelt manly and went with it. But I think it's kind of interesting about that picture, though, is since that was debunked several years ago, is there's a secondary myths that has since emerged that the New York Tribune made up that picture as a way to help Roosevelt. Where that's not true either that there's no evidence, I mean, yea, in the picture, Theodore Roosevelt is bigger than the other two, But there's nothing in the New York Tribune to suggest that it's being done to support Roosevelt at the expense of the other candidates. But it's just a sort of weird secondary myth that emerged after the first myth was debunked. It says a lot about the president by what kind of myths surround them as we go back. So George Washington, he's not telling a lie. Abraham Lincoln, he's beating three hundred people in a wrestling match. It's a myth, but we still want to attach because it's truthfulness and ruggedness on the frontier. Meanwhile, the great myths about William how it's taffed is he gets stuck in the bathtub. So it's I think it's says a lot about Roosevelt. The misconceptions, almost all of the misconceptions we're going to be going through, they have to do with how manly he is. He by force of will he punked his asthma. He wrote a moove, and I think that saizz a lot, not about Theodore Roosevelt, but about how our view of Theodore Roosevelt he shaped. So one thing that you will often see floating around it has to do with when tr was sworn in after William McKinley was assassinated. So tr was on vacation in the mountains. McKinley takes a turn for the worse. He barrels down to Buffalo to try to make it to the president's side. The president dies and TR is sworn in. In some guy's house in Buffalo on not a Bible. And so the myth is, or the popular conception is that tr is the first president who was not sworn in on a Bible. Yeah, most of those facts are fine until you get right to the end with the Bible back. The story is just that they were in such a rush they couldn't grabbed a Bible. But the guy whose house it was Amsy Wilcox. He commented later that there were there were modes of Bibles around the house. It just didn't occur to anyone to use the Bible because that was not the tradition in the area they were in at the time. So you do have earlier that definitely didn't do a Bible. John Quincy Adams says explicitly in his diary it was on a book of law. And then they there is sort of hit or mask who's on a Bible, because most people weren't explicit in recording that until later. So I think it's the interesting one is after Theodore Roosevelt, but Calvin Coolidge when he's inaugurated after the death of Harding, he to the exact same thing, that they had a Bible at hand, but it wasn't used because that wasn't the tradition of the area. So it just would not have occurred to anyone that, oh, yeah, we need to use this Bible until later. So, yes, Theodore Roosevelt was going in without a Bible. No, he wasn't the first. And despite what some seem to think, No, there's absolutely zero meaning to such a thing other than nobody thought of it half the time. But then you know, like when he was actually elected of his own accord, wasn't he sworn in on a Bible at that point? Yes, he wasn't making any point, it's just in upstate New York, they didn't use bibles in Nobody thought anything of it until afterwards, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's how you do it in the rest of the country. Okay, I have one more note here for something that, um, it's just a question mark. Tattoo question mark, And I feel like we have to talk about it because we've talked about it before. It's like cat choose and judicial recall. Those are the two stories I've been hoping to avoid. Okay, So the rumor goes that Theodore Roosevelt had a tattoo on his chest of the Roosevelt family crest, and it's everywhere but dot dot and I'll let you take it from there. Probably not, but maybe is that enough. So I spent I don't even want to think how long trying to figure out did he have a tattoo? And in the end, my guess is probably not, because there are clear descriptions of him doing things they're chested when a tattoo would have been notable, but nobody commented on end not being said, they might just not have commented on it. And there aren't many pictures of like a shirtless Roosevelt during this during the time period where he said to have the tattoo. I was really hoping that I could find his autopsy report, but turned out he didn't have enough, say after he died. So that's that's the kind of thing you have to Yeah. It just goes to show the lengths that you will go to to figure something out. Yeah. And so I then tried to trace the myth back and I don't think I was able to get the myth before the nineteen seventies, So there's like a fifty year gap where there's no mention of Theodore Roosevelt having a tattoo, then it just kind of appears, and I've never, despite lots and lots of looking, been able to close that gap. So that is not proof that he he didn't have a tattoo, but I'm pretty confident he didn't because, as I said, there were times when people are describing his bare chest and the tattoo would have been no are they and they didn't comment on it. Yeah, so we end where we begin tattoo question mark. Yeah, basically, are you sick of Theodore Roosevelt yet? No, I'm not sick of Theodore Roosevelt because he's just interesting. I mean, safely. It's such a good person for the first season of this podcast, because I'm thinking it's there aren't that many people who have reinvented themselves so many times. Most people are fairly consistent in their lives. Theodore Roosevelt, he was like never more than five six years at any one thing in his entire career, which makes him a very interesting person to research, and you just keep learning new things about him. I Mean, one of the things I find amazing about Theodore Roosevelt is that his entire life he just kind of he just kind of overshadows everyone around him. People at the time, we're saying William McKinley was essentially the next Lincoln. He was viewed as a truly great president. And now William McKinley, who yeh, he makes list of the most forgotten presidents. And that's because or Roosevelt is just this force of nature that everything around him is dimmed by his incredible head. Or Roosevelt miss yeah, a very bright light. A huge thanks to Austin Thompson for hopping on the phone to chat and for fact checking every episode of this podcast. I truly could not have done it without him. And with that, we're wrapping up this first season of the podcast. I have to be honest, we did not intend to stick with tr this long. We had initially planned to launch a new season in June, and then COVID nineteen happened and messed up all of our best laid plans. But I'm happy to announce that we'll be back in early one with a brand new season of the podcast, although it's going to be slightly different than what we did for this first season. First, we're going to be changing the name of this feed so that we can put all of our mental last podcasts here, though, we'll only be doing one season at a time, so don't worry, we won't be spamming you. Also, rather than bring you another season of History Versus, we're going to explore a different topic with a different host. But I promise it's incredibly compelling, and the host is someone you've heard on this podcast before, and there is a bit of a tr connection, so stay tuned. History Versus is hosted by me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was written by me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin. This show is edited by Dylan Fagan and lowbro Anti. For transcripts, photos, and even more about Theodore Roosevelt, check out our website and Mental floss dot com slash History Versus. History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.