Selects: PT Barnum: More Complicated Than You've Heard
Stuff You Should Know
iHeartPodcasts
4.5 • 82.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
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Summary
When your life is as outsized as the World’s Greatest Showman PT Barnum it’s pretty easy to - you know - gloss over the grimmer aspects when you turn it into an uplifting musical movie. But the way to understand a person is to look at them, warts and all. Josh and Chuck take a full accounting in this classic episode.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, everybody. Chuck here with the greatest show on earth. Rangling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, you say? No, stuff you should know the podcast. That's right. It's Saturday, and that means it's time for another selects. And this one is from May 2018. P.T. Barnum, colon, more complicated than you've heard. |
| 0:22.2 | And I picked this one, you guys, for two reasons. One, because I believe in this episode, |
| 0:26.7 | I predicted that Hugh Jackman would play the man in a movie one day, one of my two predictions, |
| 0:31.9 | along with Jared from Subway being a creep. And the other reason I picked it out is because |
| 0:36.9 | I finally saw the movie The Greatest Show on Earth recently with my daughter. And I didn't like it so much. I didn't think it was that good. So I'm sorry to anyone who had a part in that movie. My daughter loved it. My wife loved it. I just thought it was okay. But this episode is great. So I hope you enjoy P.T. Barnum, colon, more complicated than you've heard. |
| 1:00.3 | Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. |
| 1:10.0 | Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. |
| 1:16.0 | Hello. Hello. Hello. |
| 1:21.2 | Jerry's got a top hat on. |
| 1:23.5 | I know. I don't know why. She's trying to be all Mr. Monopoly. Or P.T. Barnum. Oh, yeah, I forgot he wore a top hat, allegedly. Oh, no, he did. I saw a picture of it. Yeah, Hugh Grant certainly did. Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman. Hugh Lorry. I think it's Hugh Lorry. That's who it was, yeah. No, it's Clive Owen. You're thinking of. |
| 1:48.4 | Yeah, Hugh Jackman, man. Where's that top hat like a champ? He does. I don't know how much you went on |
| 1:56.1 | the internet for this one, because this is a pretty comprehensive article. It actually was, yeah. |
| 2:01.7 | But the greatest showman really set the internet on fire man |
| 2:05.6 | and a lot of like it really brought out a lot of people saying like |
| 2:09.6 | whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa |
| 2:12.5 | yeah this is the the very definition of the word fantasy. |
| 2:20.6 | Yeah, it seemed like that movie can be best described as a musical whitewashing. |
| 2:26.9 | Mm-hmm. |
| 2:28.0 | In every sense of that word. |
| 2:29.9 | Yeah. |
| 2:31.8 | So let's destroy it. |
| 2:34.0 | Yeah, I mean, after reading this, I didn't think like, man, P.T. Barnum, what a complete A-hole. |
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