Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

This is a story about the birth of the teddy bear. It begins with one of the country's toughest presidents, Teddy Roosevelt.

When he was governor of New York, he'd have wrestling matches at the state mansion.

As president, he was a puncher, like an actual puncher, holding sparring matches at the White House.

A particularly bad jab to his head left him partially blind.

Oh, well, Teddy thought, that's boxing.

Teddy didn't just like to punch.

He liked to shoot.

Bears.

The bigger, the better.

In the fall of 1902, a year into his presidency, Teddy set off to Mississippi for a

bear hunting vacation. Today, there's only like 50 bears left in the whole state, but in Teddy's

time, Mississippi's dense hardwood forests and cane breaks were home to thousands.

Hunting dogs would chase them out into the open where hunters on horseback could take aim.

Those poor bears.

Anyway, Teddy's vacation was big news.

Newspapers breathlessly recounted his train ride to the wilderness and the roughness of his hunting camp.

The headline in the New York Times said, President in Camp, ready for bears.

Riding trousers, heavy leather leggings, blue flannel shirt, corduroy coat.

That's how the times described the president's preparedness.

But as any hunter knows, looking apart is not actually the point.

The point is to shoot and kill, to bag a deer, a bear, whatever. Hours and hours went by,

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