Will the Real Uncle Sam Please Stand Up?

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

African American History And Culture, American History, Exhibits, Dc, History, Science, Sidedoor, History Of The World, Society & Culture, The Smithsonian, Washington, Natural History, Pop Culture, Smithsonian, Exhibit, Tony Cohn, Zoo, National Museum, Air And Space, National Zoo, Art19, Museum, Postal Museum

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

He’s a symbol of patriotism, protest, and power. But behind the red, white, and blue is a real man—and a disputed American origin story. How did a real guy go from meatpacker to meme, to personification of a nation and, eventually, the most famous Army recruiter in history?

I WANT YOU… to listen and find out.

Guests:

Frank Blazich, curator of modern military history at the Smithsonian's National Musuem of American History

Kathy Sheehan, executive director of the Hart Cluett Museum in Troy, New York; The Redela County and Troy City historian

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:13.5	I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:28.6	If you go to Troy, New York, there's one guy you will see everywhere.
0:32.5	All of our garbage trucks have, have an Uncle Sam top hat on them.
0:35.3	What? And that guy is Uncle Sam.
0:38.3	We have Uncle Sam Bowling Lanes. We have an Uncle Sam health food store. We have, God, it's almost like so much that we pay attention to it.
0:42.3	And if you step into the Hart-Cluitt Museum in Troy, you'll find...
0:48.3	Little motorcycles with Uncle Sam riding on them, toys, and those little wind-up things and stuff like that. We have Uncle Sam's
0:55.7	cereal box, which is very cleverly placed next to the chamber pot because it's a very high-fiber
1:03.5	cereal.
1:08.6	Kathy Sheehan is the executive director of the museum, which is home to a lot of paraphernalia
1:13.9	honoring the character Uncle Sam, long understood to be a symbol of the United States government.
1:19.8	We also have this really, probably it's about four feet tall, stuffed doll that someone made.
1:27.2	On a scale of creepy to not creepy, where does this four foot doll rank?
1:31.8	It only scares you when you're going into the gallery and you forget that it's sitting in a chair with his legs crossed and you go, oh.
1:39.0	So why is this town in upstate New York so Uncle Sam obsessed?
1:44.5	Well, it actually is the... Why is this town in upstate New York so Uncle Sam obsessed? Well...
1:46.0	It actually is the official home of Uncle Sam.
1:50.7	Not the character, Uncle Sam.
1:52.7	The real Uncle Sam.
1:54.7	People don't know that it's based on a real person, and he lived here in Troy.
1:59.9	That's right.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Smithsonian Institution, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Smithsonian Institution and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.