About this episode

The episode explores P.T. Barnum's complex and darker beginnings in showbusiness through the story of Joice Heth.

P.T. Barnum is famous to movie-going audiences as the charming 'Greatest Showman,' but the reality was far more complicated, and much darker. P.T. Barnum's very first foray into showbusiness was purchasing an enslaved woman named Joice Heth, whom he displayed as a public spectacle, promoting her a 161-year-old woman who once nursed George Washington. SOURCES: 'The Showman and the Slave' by Benjamin Reiss 'Medical Apartheid' by Harriet A. Washington https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-pt-barnum-greatest-humbug-them-all-180967634/ “P.T. Barnum and Africa” Bernth Lindfors  The Colossal P.T. Barnum Reader, edited by James W. Cook See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Topics covered

• P.T. Barnum
• Joice Heth
• showbusiness
• history
• enslavement

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