Ep. 841: Theodore Roosevelt on Love, Ladies, and Conservation

00:00:08
Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can’t predict anything. Brought to you by first Light. When I’m hunting, I need gear that won’t quit. First Light builds, no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at first light dot com. That’s f I R S T L I T E dot com. All right, man, We’re joined by ed O Keith, who’s got a new book, The Loves of Teddy Roosevelt. We’re gonna get into Teddy as a ladies man and a mama’s boy.

00:00:54
Speaker 2: God, that would have been a much better subtitle, Ladies Man, Mama’s Boy, instant bestseller.

00:01:01
Speaker 1: No, the Loves of the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, the women who created a president. And so everybody knows Theodore Roosevelt as the swash buckling you know, adventurer, which is a little weird, like like you know, he went all over hunting hundred in Africa, hunting across the West, became a rancher, wrote a book about ranching. Like people know him as this sort of like the most macho of presidents, the manly mannist of presidents. Right, you know you think of like you think of like President Trump growing up. You know, he’s got like gold stuff everywhere, and this guy was kind of comfortable in a cabin at times. But what you lose sight of. There’s a couple things you lose sight of with Roosevelt. One extraordinarily wealthy, Like in today’s world, him as an outdoorsman would be like a rich kid that like goes to boarding school and gets into Knowles, gets reel into like Knowles, and like spends his summers in Alaska. Yep, do you know what I mean That that’s like the contempt. And then you know, eventually he’s like a fishing guide or something. But he didn’t really come off through like redneck stuff.

00:02:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, he doesn’t depend on the guiding income. Yeah, it’s just a lifestyle.

00:02:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like that would have been Roosevelt, but he did it so well. And because of his conservation record, he’s sort of held as this like rugged individualist, but he has this very confusing background. And like one of the things that we’re going to talk about is this is a guy not shaped by grizzled old hunting and fishing uncles that live out in a shack somewhere. He’s like shaped by women in his life and like huge impactful relationships with his mother. So we’re gonna dive into that at ed O’Keefe. Edward O’Keefe, if you want to be official, we’re the first thing we’re gonna talk about. Soon as I do his introes, we’re gonna talk about this. So Edward O’Keefe is the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation, So we’re gonna kick off. I talk about that because this is a big deal over in North Dakota, the Presidential Library. Okeith recently previously spent two decades in broadcasting digital media at ABC News, CNN, and now This, during which time he received a Primetime Emmy Award for his work with Anthony Bourdain to Webby Awards. The Edward R. Murrow Award was that documentary about him No, the movie good Night and Good Luck, Good Luck. George Clooney had a play and a George Foster Peabody Award for ABC’s coverage of nine to eleven. So all that said, if he bombs today on the show, it’s not that he didn’t have the training in digital media to pull off a podcast appearance. He should kill A former fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, he graduated with honors from Georgetown University. All from all out of North.

00:03:58
Speaker 2: Dakota, North Dakota, it’s right, born and raised.

00:04:01
Speaker 1: Born and raised in North Dakota, went on to do all that. So currently lives in New York with his wife, daughter, and son. All Right, tell us about the library. Well, before we get into the book, let’s talk about the libary.

00:04:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, great, I mean, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opens on July fourth, twenty twenty six, two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America. Was that just like a coincidence, you know, I mean I started in this job October twenty nineteen, and but really yeah, yeah, And so it’s been a six year effort. We’ve raised almost four hundred million dollars to get this baby constructed. Oh man, Yeah, it’s a it’s gonna it’s ninety three acres. It celebrates Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation legacy. So looking you know, he looked one hundred years into the future, and conservation wasn’t even a concept, right, I mean it was an academic concept, but no politician had paid attention. When tr proposed his first conservation bill, the Speaker of the House literally said, there will not be one dime for scenery. That was that was the attitude. I’m sorry I heard that was the response right, because I seen her. He was like, what are you talking to?

00:05:07
Speaker 1: Real? I feel like I have heard that.

00:05:11
Speaker 2: That’s one hundred per century. The Speaker of the House when he proposed his conservation Mills said no way. I mean, I didn’t well, there wasn’t a counter argument. It was just that doesn’t make any sense. What are you talking about? So, I mean this, when he’s talking about the creation of the US Forest Service, when he’s talking about national doubling the park’s size, when he’s putting two hundred and thirty four million acres of land into the public trust, he is not just ahead of his time, he’s light years ahead of his time. He’s and so what we want to do at the TR Library is, you know, work with the local ranchers to graze the land. On the ninety three acres. We have a walkable roof where you can go thirty eight feet tall and look out at the sixty five million years of geologic history and the bad lands, and it’s filled four hundred thousand native plants, all from yeah, all from four miles around. We’ve been working on it for years, uh, you know, working with North Dakota State University to to bring those plants back, bring bring the pollinators, bring the bees, bring the birds back to this area, you know. And so you know, we want families to come and to hike and to bike and to horseback ride to the to the Presidential Library. You know, it’s really a place where we want kids to drag their parents, I mean, to get out in nature and do what tr did you know, to to find nature as your classroom, to be together as a family, to you know, celebrate the wondrous beauty of this national park, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the only one named for a person, let alone a president. You know, everyone else’s names for the library of the park. Stone’s throw, I mean you could. So there’s two. There’s a west wing and now the only east wing. That for We thought that was going to be a clever ode, but the only one now. And it’s a perfectly framed view of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, so you can literally you can see the park from US and US from the park seventy four thousand acres of backyard to go.

00:07:12
Speaker 1: Explore does that so it borders the park?

00:07:15
Speaker 2: It does. It gets the largest private philanthropic project adjacent to a National park in history. The previous was Saint Louis arch So we’re it’s a big effort. You know, it’s North Dakota is not a huge state. We’ve got people from all over the nation, all over the world who’ve contributed. Because tr I like to say he’s like a Rorschach test. What you see in him says more about you than it does about him.

00:07:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:07:42
Speaker 2: Right, And so Republicans, Democrats, Independents, people from all fifty states, twelve different countries. You know, we’ve been really blessed to have incredible support because of this person who’s so universally beloved for different reasons.

00:07:56
Speaker 1: That’s the thing I’ve mentioned a bunch of times is in given talks, there’s not a politician today that wouldn’t like to be favorably compared to Roosevelt.

00:08:08
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, he’s Josh Holly and Elizabeth Warren’s favorite president. Find me one other thing they agree on. I mean, he’s Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s favorite president. Is impossible to find another thing that they agree on. And so what we’re doing at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Libraries, we don’t want to tell you which version of TR you should love. We want you to get out in nature with your family. I’ll tell people what versions of Yeah, you can, but you know I’m the head of a nonprofit, so I can’t. Inside. We have an immersive, almost theatrical experience. I mean every chapter of TR’s life is crazier than the last. I mean if you if you wrote this story and submitted it to an editor, they’d reject it. Say like okay, all right, okay. I mean we can charge up San Juan Hill and we can have the adventure in the Elkhorn, But really we’re going to go to Africa and the Amazon. I mean, these are both going to happen in the same life. It’s just ridiculous, right, So we want people, especially kids, to immerse themselves in these stories. You know, when you’re in Roosevelt’s childhood, you want to reach inside a tree if you dare, you want to open a book and an extinct species of bird will fly out and join a wall of wonder. We want you to feel curious when you’re when you’re doing these things. We want to feel courage. We want you to feel the things that TR felt, so you can get in the arena of your own life and be the change you want to see in the world. Because that’s ultimately TR’s message is that if you want to be a part of a successful democracy, you have to participate. You have to be in there, you have to you have to fight for it. It’s not just going to happen. And whether that’s being on the school board or running for a local election. You don’t have to be President of the United States to make a difference, but you do have to get involved. And that’s the ultimate message of the TR Library.

00:09:57
Speaker 1: How they did they find you to do this? As you were North Dakota guy, it was crazy. How did you go from media to doing that?

00:10:04
Speaker 2: I’m still trying to figure that one out. So I was twenty years in the media. As you mentioned, I worked at ABC News. I worked with Tony Bourdain at CNN. Sadly, after Tony died, the show ended and I went to Harvard to basically try to figure things out, and I thought, you know, I want to do the types of programs that we did with Tony in streaming. You know, I thought what was so powerful about working with Tony Bourdain is that, you know, he could go to West Virginia and have a conversation with people who are totally and completely different than him, or he could go to Mumbai and gather them around the table, have a meal and a conversation and bring people together. I had more people talk about what they learned about the world from watching that Part’s Unknown than practically anything else I did in media. So I was really curious, like, how can we take that? You know. And at the time, in twenty nineteen, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple, et cetera. You know, they said we’re not going to do any news, We’re not going to do any live, We’re not gonna do any sports. Also said they’re not going to do any podcasts, They’re not going to do any right, not going to do short form video. Right, They’re doing all of it now in twenty twenty six, but in twenty nineteen it was like, Nope, they’re not going to do that. So that’s what I was at Harvard to kind of explores, we built ale that studio.

00:11:21
Speaker 1: We were never going to record, we were never going to do podcasts.

00:11:24
Speaker 2: Never right for both no videos? He said, no, that’s strict. Yes, well you you stuck to it, Stephen. That’s what I admire about you when you make a proclamation as you stick to it.

00:11:41
Speaker 1: So.

00:11:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I meet this group who’s trying to raise money for the tr Library. It’s been an idea for one hundred years since his death, and fits and starts in New York and North Dakota and other various places, never succeeded. And you know, I’m from North Dakota. I’m thinking about what to do with the rest of my life and my professional career. And I was researching a book which became The Loves of Theodore.

00:12:06
Speaker 1: Okay, so I was worn like Chicken or the Egg kind of deal. Yep, that’s not the perfect anough but yeah, yeah, I didn’t know if if your book came out of so you were already getting into tr Land.

00:12:17
Speaker 2: Actually, when you grow up in North Dakota, you’re just in tr Land. Tr is your hero, right. I mean, we we got Roger Marris, we got you know, we have Lawrence Well, I mean, come on. We got to give it out Phil Jackson.

00:12:31
Speaker 1: We got Phil Jackson.

00:12:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, there we go.

00:12:33
Speaker 1: We tried to get him on the show, remember that. Yeah, Yes, Nelix fished.

00:12:38
Speaker 3: He lives up in White here part of the time.

00:12:42
Speaker 1: I think if you’re listening, Phil, yeah, he probably is.

00:12:46
Speaker 2: He’s been following me pretty closely for twenty five years. So this is probably here.

00:12:50
Speaker 1: My list right now. Yeah.

00:12:51
Speaker 2: Probably mean he’s like.

00:12:52
Speaker 1: Well, that dude’s doing it.

00:12:53
Speaker 2: I’m doing now that Ed has done it. Yeah, I Phil Jackson will do it too. Oh that would be great, that would be I hope that happens for you. Yeah. So yeah, so the book came before the library. I mean I was in two very different mindsets. I’m in the twenty first century, you know, looking at could we do shows like Tony Bourdain and Parts Unknown in the Streaming Universe? And I’m sneaking away to the Houghton Library, where a big part of Theodore Roosevelt’s collection is held, and I’m exploring this story and I you know, I know the tr that you all know right from Mount Rushmore and this kind of chiseled, masculine, crazy, you know, adventurer and two things can be true at the same time that exists, right, that is him. But what I found remarkable is I’m looking at all these letters and every single decision that he ever makes, He’s asking his sisters or his mom or his wives for advice, and I’m like, where is I didn’t? Like, I didn’t. He’s kind of this the quintessential self made man. I mean, the person who has no doubts, who asks nobody else for their opinion on anything. Yeah, not true.

00:14:11
Speaker 1: It’s funny to think, like like Trump being like, I don’t know, Millenia, what do you think about Greenland?

00:14:19
Speaker 2: I mean, who knows history will show us history?

00:14:25
Speaker 1: I don’t know. Maybe someday there will be a book.

00:14:30
Speaker 2: Maybe Greenland really pissed her off, you know.

00:14:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe she plans that get them yep.

00:14:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that’s that’s what that was. The origin is I was thinking about what to do next. I’m researching the book on Theodore Roosevelt, and I’ve got this these roots in North Dakota and North Dakota stepped up by offering a fifty million dollar endowment contingent on the foundation’s ability to raise one hundred million dollars by the end of twenty twenty which seemed like a daunting task, but it got a lot harder when the pandemic.

00:15:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know so.

00:15:05
Speaker 2: But I was like, oh, look is if they have no money, no architect, no land, what a great prospect. I think I’ll dive in. My New York wife was really happy with me. She really thought this was a good career move. Yeah, she was so.

00:15:21
Speaker 1: But you guys haven’t it. You guys haven’t moved. Do you still have family North Dkota?

00:15:25
Speaker 2: I do, Yeah, my cousin’s, my brother, my uncle’s Yeah, my parents are there most of the year. Yep.

00:15:31
Speaker 1: So do you rent a place there now so you can be out for your work?

00:15:34
Speaker 2: I mean, since it’s a national prime, we like to say it’s a global project with your proud North Dakota roots. I mean I’m everywhere all the time talking to people about the project and doing a lot of fundraising. I mean, four hundred million and five years, you got to talk to a lot of people about what you’re doing and how you’re doing.

00:15:52
Speaker 1: It and all this is gonna.

00:15:56
Speaker 2: July fourth, July fourth, twenty twenty six. So yeah, So your question about was that intentional? I don’t think. In twenty nineteen, we thought, oh, you know, what would be a great day to open this point that time Randall you know fund in construction. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, I know at some point we said, hey, wait a second. You know, if we can be a part of America’s two hundred and fifty is celebration, that will bring a you know, national attention that we wouldn’t otherwise get. But also think about this, So Theodore Roosevelt was president at the nation’s one hundred and twenty fifth birthday. He is exactly between the declaration of independence at zero and where we are now at two hundred and fifty. So once again, tr makes you think about where are we going to be at America five hundred because right now the midway point of that point in our distant future. And I saw my.

00:16:58
Speaker 1: Kids something similar. Man, I was telling them, like, if the Earth’s cross solidified four billion years ago and the Sun’s going to burn out in four billion years, like it’s just the Earth’s in a midlife crisis.

00:17:10
Speaker 2: This is halftime.

00:17:11
Speaker 1: This is just this is like the crazy midlife crisis, exactly exact kind of mess. The monks they couldn’t really conceptualize four billion years. So then there are they’re like expecting any second. Expect a second offered the son to go.

00:17:27
Speaker 2: Well, they can go on Facebook and find a lot of people who believe the same. They’re gonna have some real good friends.

00:17:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s a good point, man, Like, yeah, he hit the halfway point. He’s the halfway And think about this, right, like, I never thought about that. So much is eerily similar to where we are now. Right, the economy is changing.

00:17:44
Speaker 2: You’re going from an agrarian to an industrial society. They think about men’s worth. I mean, the value of a man to a family was how much they could hunt, how much they could gather, how much they could farm, how much and right, and that suddenly comes well, how much are you worth? How much are you making? You have an industrial job? Right, You’re moving from a rural area to an urban area. Cities are developing. So immigration. Immigration was a huge issue in TR’s time, right, and then it was Irish and Germans and Italians and Chinese, and you know, it leads to one of the largest crackdowns in immigration in US history right right after TR’s time, where he’s a very welcoming presence and.

00:18:29
Speaker 1: The Italians they’ll never integrate they’re always going to put family in front of nation.

00:18:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, Irish need not apply, right, I mean, this was a very This has happened many.

00:18:41
Speaker 1: Times, the clan mentality of the Irish and technology.

00:18:45
Speaker 2: Think about technology. I mean Theodre Roosevelt’s born in eighteen fifty eight. There’s no electricity, there’s no cars, there’s no airplanes, there’s no submarines. He’s the first president to travel abroad while in office. He’s the first president to send a telegraph by why, He’s the first president to use a telephone in the White House, first president in a motorcade, first president in an airplane, in a submarine, and on and on and on and on the list goes. So technology is uprooting the way people feel about life. They’re scared because it’s moving so fast and changing so quickly. What is this going to mean? And here’s this person who says, I’m embracing this, It’s going to be okay. And he’s also one of the great naturalists of our time, so he knows to get out of the car and get on horse and get out into nature and have a tonic to all this technology that is changing everything in every way. Of American life. So he I mean, it’s all happening again. History doesn’t repeat. It rhymes.

00:19:52
Speaker 1: Totally off. So I want to get back into this, but just it’s just popping in my head. Where was he at in his career when he got shot?

00:19:59
Speaker 2: He was the X president. It was the bull It was like the bull Moose era Bull Moose. Definitely. Yeah, he’s he’s running against his his successor, Taft and Wilson. He’s an independent bull Moose progressive.

00:20:13
Speaker 1: And that’s when he got winged.

00:20:14
Speaker 2: Yeh, not winged. I mean, have you ever seen like we’re gonna have that? Those pieces they’ve never been we got so I’ve got so the only thing that saved t R’s life and he took a point blank shot right in the chest, and it was he had a double breasted suit. He had a speech about fifty pages long, doubled over in his breast coat pocket. And then the thing that really saved him, he had his eyeglass case that was still reinforced. And that’s the that’s the one.

00:20:42
Speaker 1: Seriously, yep, know about the eyeglass. I just thought he had like a book or something.

00:20:46
Speaker 2: No, No, it was all three items really combined to save that had.

00:20:50
Speaker 1: Been Lincoln because the Gettysburg address was so short. Dead it punched right through it, through it. Right, that’s why you should write long as long.

00:20:59
Speaker 2: That’s right.

00:21:00
Speaker 1: That’s right.

00:21:00
Speaker 2: So it’s crazy. So we’re reuniting these items for the first time. They’ve never been on display together.

00:21:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys got the eyeglass case.

00:21:06
Speaker 2: The eyeglass case, so the bullet who had the diameter of the bullet hole going in the front part of the case is very wide. I mean you’re like, oh, he’s dead, and then it narrows. You could see how much it narrows out the other side. It slowed it down. I mean, had it gone through at the velocity that it was intended at point blank range, he’s dead?

00:21:26
Speaker 1: Did you huh Randal, don’t bullshit me. Did you know about the eyeglass case.

00:21:30
Speaker 2: I did.

00:21:30
Speaker 3: I couldn’t have described the hole to you, but well.

00:21:33
Speaker 2: You got to come to Medor who had there. So the National Park Service had the eyeglass case, another park had the shirt. So it all got separated through the years and the revolver the gun is gone. And by the way, the assassin was stalking Theodore Roosevelt through several different speeches and looking for the opportunity to shoot him at point blank range. He had a dream, a vision that William McKinley, the president who was assassinated that allowed tr to ascend to the presidency, had spoken to him and told him that he needed to prevent Theodore Roosevelt from seeking a third term, that he was an illegitimate president, and then he had to be killed.

00:22:20
Speaker 1: Makes sense.

00:22:21
Speaker 2: I mean, they recently read.

00:22:25
Speaker 1: A dream.

00:22:26
Speaker 2: He came to him, a dream. I mean, but think about this too. Political violence, right, another thing that was a hallmark of TR’s time that we’re experiencing again. I mean, this is three presidents were assassinated in TR’s while he’s coming up through the system, I mean, including his the McKinley, who leads to him becoming the youngest president in history. I mean, this was unfortunately routine.

00:22:49
Speaker 1: You know, the dude that killed Lincoln shot Lincoln in a theater, yep, and then went and hit out in John Wilkes booth, went hitting the book depository.

00:23:01
Speaker 2: Hear me out. Okay, all right, okay.

00:23:02
Speaker 1: The dude that shot Lincoln shot him in a theater, and I think they caught him in a book deposit I’m not joking. Look at them. The guy that shot Kennedy. The guy that shot Kennedy shot him from a book depository. They caught him in the theater.

00:23:18
Speaker 2: You know that Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy, and Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln.

00:23:23
Speaker 1: Didn’t know that. Bag me up.

00:23:24
Speaker 2: Where’s your computer?

00:23:25
Speaker 1: Man?

00:23:26
Speaker 2: I’m flying by.

00:23:28
Speaker 1: Someone looked already knew about the glasses. Look up, where did booth get caught? Barn I could be strong, but check this out. When we were on we were just on live tour, ye and we’re doing a show in Dallas, and none of us knew this, Like we had like booked the venue. One of our guys, he’s hanging around somehow, he’s going to get a cup of coffee or something. Winds up out in front of the venue and he’s reading some sign and he comes bags like this is where?

00:23:56
Speaker 2: This is?

00:23:56
Speaker 1: Where Wald like we’re in the building where.

00:24:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it’s right next to a dispensary called Doobies.

00:24:06
Speaker 1: Everything changes. Lincoln was a.

00:24:08
Speaker 2: Big du right, Yeah, he was in the text. He shot him from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository and again is caught at a theater. So that’s probably what you’re right.

00:24:21
Speaker 3: He was caught at the theater.

00:24:22
Speaker 2: He was caught at a movie theater.

00:24:24
Speaker 1: Ye, my tip it in the theater.

00:24:28
Speaker 2: Oswald was caught in the theater. Lincoln was shot in the theater.

00:24:30
Speaker 1: And and if I’m not about where to catch booth.

00:24:35
Speaker 2: And at the movie theater to a rural a farm in rural North Virginia.

00:24:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, books.

00:24:45
Speaker 2: Storing book I get where you’re going.

00:24:49
Speaker 1: I think I’m just wrong.

00:24:50
Speaker 2: No, no, no, Lee, Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from the book deposit. It was was pretty close barn.

00:24:58
Speaker 3: Well, things are stored there.

00:25:00
Speaker 1: I think they were. They must have been having a lot of book Just trust me, listeners, that full of books.

00:25:07
Speaker 2: Maybe they started the fire with books they were getting. Yeah, that’s what I’m going to give you. That one depository they thought about depositor.

00:25:21
Speaker 1: Okay, we’re on track.

00:25:24
Speaker 2: There’s a great book about that, by the way, Manhunt James Swanson Twelve Day Manhunt.

00:25:29
Speaker 1: Never read it.

00:25:30
Speaker 2: By seeing it is I think it was turned into a series. I don’t know.

00:25:35
Speaker 3: I remember I can visualize the burning of the barn. Yeah, and the series on Garfields. Oh, that’s amazing.

00:25:42
Speaker 2: That’s Candice Millard, who also read The River of Doubt, which page for page that is, I mean that reads like a novel.

00:25:48
Speaker 1: And who was the hell Hound on his Trail? Was the guy that was the King Assassin? Was that what that books about? Yeah? Hell hound on his Trail or something? Yeah, you’re right either way. I want to get into our body here tr.

00:26:06
Speaker 2: Sickly kid, yeah, yeah, beyond real.

00:26:09
Speaker 1: Sickly, Okay, get into it. This forms like his like he has an intense relationship with his mom.

00:26:15
Speaker 2: Yes, the very first words of the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt are from the beginning, Theodore Roosevelt’s survival was very much in doubt. And I think this is the part that a lot of biographers miss. Is you, okay, he’s an asthmatic, sickly kid, but it led his mother to be extraordinarily protective of him, to keep him from going outdoors. It wasn’t just the asthma and the smog and the environmental devastation of New York in the eighteen sixties. It was her really thinking that legitimately he could die if he were exposed to too much. And so you know, here’s a.

00:26:51
Speaker 1: One because of like a bygone thinking like the miasma or is that like legitimate thing?

00:26:57
Speaker 2: It was legitimate thing. I mean he the doctors did not think he would live beyond four or five years old. I mean he he he from the beginning of his life learned that you need to will yourself through physical and emotional pain. And his mom, who’s often derided as having no influence over him, she is a charismatic Southerner, right, She’s from the Bullock family. She’s the inspiration for Scarlett O’Hara and Gone with the Wind. I mean she’s a character.

00:27:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ramball says, she dressed him up in little dresses.

00:27:28
Speaker 2: I mean they did that in the age that was Victorian She that was that, Yes, you would, you would, yes, but that was not uncommon.

00:27:37
Speaker 1: That’s fair, It was not uncommon. He put it out like it was on But no.

00:27:42
Speaker 3: It’s I mean I always thought it’s it’s this interesting. He’s not like growing up wearing buckskins and oh no, yeah, no, no, no he is. You said it, Stephen. I mean he’s from the elite of the elite society. He’s rich.

00:27:54
Speaker 2: There’s no reason for him to go into politics or to go out into nature other than at the time the doctors would give two different cures. For women, they would say, you need the rest cure, right, if you’re afflicted by something, go lie down in bed. For men, they would say, you need the West cure. Go west, go hunting, get out into nature, do something that will revive your spirits. But as a child, I mean MIDI his mother would literally massage his chest when he was having as asthmatic attacks and blood would come out. I mean that’s all.

00:28:29
Speaker 1: That’s how often that bad?

00:28:31
Speaker 2: That bad? I mean she he would have these recurring he remembers her remembers as a child having recurring nightmares where the devil would come in the middle of the night and steal him away. And I mean and the devil like.

00:28:44
Speaker 1: He’s like contemplating his own mortality.

00:28:46
Speaker 2: And yes, yes, And even when he gets when he’s twenty years old, he goes to a doctor at Harvard and the doctor says, you have you will not live past sixty, And he doesn’t. I mean, so he decides at that moment in his life he is going to live to the hilt. How old is he when dead sixty? He had just turned sixty. Yeah, I was that young, right, I mean it, you know, you hit me with all kinds of te arnists that I didn’t know about. That’s what I’m here for.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: Sixty I never really like. Yeah, that young.

00:29:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s kind of crazy to think of all he accomplished young, you know.

00:29:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is like, what do you expect, dude?

00:29:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean right, yeah, long life. Yeah yeah, So I mean Middy, Let’s start with mom, because you always have to start with mom.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: Right.

00:29:30
Speaker 2: She is a She’s a Southerner, she grew up in Georgia. She’s willful, She’s got this incredibly personality. Everybody she’s a great storyteller, right, so everybody knows that, like Middy is the one who will entertain you. And she’s got an incredibly refined taste. She marries a New Yorker, and she is in New York during the Civil War and brings her mother and her sister up from Georgia to live with the Roosevelts. So the Indo Roosevelt.

00:29:57
Speaker 1: She’s an abolitionist.

00:29:58
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, she was a. She was a She believed in the Confederacy should fly the Confederate flag. She refused to have her husband fight for the Confederacy because she feared he’d meet her brothers on the field of battle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she and she, I.

00:30:14
Speaker 1: Mean she didn’t want her brothers to do what.

00:30:18
Speaker 2: So Middy Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt’s mom and Eleanor Roosevelt’s grandmother was a Confederate through and through unreconstructed, but she so she forbade her husband, Theodo Roosevelt’s father from fighting for the Union. Okay, all right, So instead what he did he would meet her family exactly exactly, and so dastardly were his were her brother’s deeds that they were not granted general amnesty after the Civil War?

00:30:54
Speaker 3: Oh?

00:30:54
Speaker 1: Really?

00:30:55
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, they lived the rest of their life in Europe, in London and in Liverpool.

00:31:00
Speaker 1: Forest Bedford types.

00:31:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. No, they were the ones that figured out how to run the blockade so they would get supplies because the South didn’t have steel and didn’t have some of the things you’d need for munitions and creating rifles and bullets, and so they were sneaking all of that in very effectively from London to the South. And then one of them was thought to have been part of the financing of Lincoln’s assassination. Really yes, so I mean they weren’t just Confederates, they were devout confederates. I mean one of her brothers tombstones in Liverpool, says an American by birth and Englishman by choice. Really yeah, yeah.

00:31:43
Speaker 1: Did tr addressed that kind of stuff later in life?

00:31:46
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean you know this. He he was a Northerner who had his identity in the East with a Southern mother, who had this political identity in the West. Because of his cowboy and ranching days. He was the all America quintessential perfect candidate to kick open the door of what would become the American Century because he had something for everybody.

00:32:07
Speaker 1: Right. However, he did his mom die? Then?

00:32:09
Speaker 2: His mom died of the same day as his wife, February fourteenth, eighteen eighty four.

00:32:15
Speaker 1: So did she nineteen years after the Civil War? What was her attitude at that point?

00:32:22
Speaker 2: I mean she was, according to her son, an unreconstructed remain. Yeah, that’s your whole life, and think about it. So, I mean again, I bring up her mother and her sister both lived with the Roosevelts. So he’s growing Theodore Roosevelt’s growing up in a house with one brother, two sisters, his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt. He’s got a lot of feminine influences in the house, right, and his dad is off with Lincoln often because he can’t fight for the Union. He’s decided to lead an effort to take part of soldier’s earnings and convince them to send them back to their families because they would get paid and they were the primary earners. They were away from the house, and a lot of them would blow it party with the movies and exactly because they could die at any moment. But he was trying to convince him send this back. So this is amazing.

00:33:14
Speaker 1: I found what a complex scenario though, I was sort of like put a finer point on what a complex situation for Ti R’s mother. Yeah, where she’s got relatives trying to violate the blockade yep, and then she’s got other close family members like running around involved at an administrative level with running the Union war effort.

00:33:41
Speaker 2: Theodore Roosevelt grew up in a house divided, in a nation divided, and he learned from his parents that you can disagree without being disagreeable. You can you can be vitriolically opposed to one another, but you at heart need to love one another and it’s it’s a message he’ll harry his whole life. He really does learn that you need to find a way to bring people together to get the best political result that you want. He’s not a divisive figure in part because of his mother. I mean, when his father dies. So Theodre Roosevelt’s father dies. When tr is a sophomore in college, he’s only twenty years old. He had cancer and they didn’t know necessarily if it was going to be deadly, and so Theodore Roosevelt didn’t make it home in time to say goodbye.

00:34:31
Speaker 1: What kind of cancer?

00:34:31
Speaker 2: He had? Stomach cancer, and it was excruciating. His brother, Elliott, which is a whole other, fascinating dynamic, right Elliot in the competition that they had, Elliott is handsome and dashing and at first shows a lot more promise than Tr. And academically he’s a fabulous hunter. I mean, Elliott is. He’s like a sharp shooter. There’s stories of him shooting elk from two hundred yards away without I mean, and tr couldn’t do this. I mean tr had terrible eyesight. He had to practice, he had to work at it, he had to fight his way through everything he ever did and so all these family dynamics add up to who he really is. And you know, Midy, his mom teaches him two really important things. One how to tell stories and how to connect with people with empathy, big, big, big part of why he’s successful as a politician. And after his father dies, she sits him down, sits all the kids down, and says, you need to live for the living and not for the dead. If you do not live a life of purpose, you will dishonor the memory of your father. There it is, I mean, willing himself through physical and emotional pain and this great, big personality. Both of those things come from his mother. His father’s a great man, it can’t be denied. But the fact that he died at age twenty when Tiarra was twenty, really gave this outsize importance to his father in theodo Roosevelt’s memory, because his whole life he was trying to, you know, honor him and and be better than him in many ways, fulfill the life that he didn’t get to.

00:36:10
Speaker 1: Live now when he was a kid. Part of if you read about if you read about tr From as a conservationist, a big part of that narrative is that he developed this fascination with wildlife as a kid, where he’s he kind of becomes a hobbyist, taxidermist. He’s a naturalist. He’s engaged in study of wildlife. What like, to what extent is that going on under you know, to what extent is that going on with the awareness of his mother and what does his mother’s take on that? Is she supportive of that or does that stuff bugger?

00:36:46
Speaker 2: She’s extraordinarily supportive of likes it. I mean, even though she’s a bit of a germophobe. She you know, he stores mice in the refrigerator, and you know, he he’s got Roosevelt Museum of Natural History in his room. This is what we’re doing at the tr Library. We’re actually recreating his boyhood room, like his imagination, so taxidermy, you know, going to he does these. I’ve seen the collections at the Smithsonian’s extraordinary to see, you know, because he’s really a dedicated scientist, I mean conservationists then and now he’s hunting in order to study them. To understand. He’s always creating a series. Right, so it’s not just you get this thing like he hunted so much, like its ridiculous amount or the volume of his hunting. He’s doing it for scientific purposes, right, he needs one of each type in order to see the variations in them.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was like he was like in an era of cataloging exactly.

00:37:49
Speaker 2: And you could see that throughout his whole life. I mean he’s a very serious naturalist, even as a young child. You know, he’s not just you know, he’s not just hunting. He’s then doing the taxidermy, putting the scientific explanations is another source of tension with he and his brother. His brother would say, good lord, like, we’re on the hunt. Can you just live? Could you just have some fun Instead he you know, do catalog and the scientific names and the variations of the species. And you know, he’s a really I think but for meeting Alice Hathaway Lee, he probably would have become a naturalist or a scientist. I mean there were there were two reasons he didn’t in college. One, natural sciences were shifting from the outdoors into the laboratory and he didn’t want to be in a laboratory. He wanted to be out in nature. And two he met Alice Hathaway Lee.

00:38:41
Speaker 1: Uh, did you have a lot of girlfriends? Like when he’s a kid, Did you have Do people have girlfriends? He did not.

00:38:46
Speaker 2: He did not because he was a geeky naturalist in whose wake for meldehyde lingered. I mean, I mean, yeah, he had a stench. He had. He was an oddball. I mean the recollections of his college friends are pretty harsh. I mean, his first biographers literally just ignored all that and kept it out of the record because they would call him eccentric, half crazy. I mean, he lived alone in an apartment because who the hell would want to live with him while he’s got taxidermy and from elde hyde and all these dangerous chemicals that you’d use at the time. I mean, no, he did not have a lot of girlfriends up.

00:39:28
Speaker 3: Until up until he went to Harvard. That was his first time in a classroom, right, I mean, he had had private tutors up until then. Did he have as a kid, did he have much exposure to people outside of his family that were his of his cohort or is his experience in Harvard’s sort of his first.

00:39:48
Speaker 2: It’s a good question. I mean, because his uncles, his mom’s brothers were overseas. They take these great trips to Europe, right, and to uh, you know, to Egypt. Yeah, he did some collecting and he did a lot of collecting there, and his father would give him rifles for his birthday and for Christmas, and then they’d go on these I mean these long they were gone for a year, eighteen months, and that was his first exposure to the larger world and certainly the natural world. He meets, he’s got a he’s got this extraordinary relationship with Henry Davis may Not, who would be considered sort of his best friend in college and actually the namesake of mine not North Dakota. And they’re they’re constantly talking about like how to how to be a man, like how how to show your manliness and in this Victorian era, you know, and and they go out and they they they His first book, it’s not really a book, is the Birds of the aut around ACKs. So they spend the entire summer cataloging all the birds of the aut around ACKs and then publish a book of of their summer studies. I mean not you know, it’s not not exactly your normal activity for a wealthy defeat person of the time.

00:41:12
Speaker 1: Did did where did the primary what was the primary wealth on his father’s side, or on his mother’s side.

00:41:18
Speaker 2: They were both wealthy, but the big bulk of it came from his father’s side, So his father.

00:41:23
Speaker 1: So he was more loaded than his wife.

00:41:24
Speaker 2: Yeah he was. He was a partner in Roosevelt and Sons, but his real focus was philanthropy. He was the founder of the American Museum in Natural History. He was the founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He founded the first orthopedic hospitals. Yeah, yeah, this is what he did. His his grandfather, Cornelius van Check Roosevelt was loaded man. Well, but this is the only one that my kids remember because his initials are CVS. Like CVS the money came from CVS. I’m like it, Yes it did, but not the CBS you’re thinking of. That’s not where he got his money. He was one of the founding directors of Chemical Bank, which then became Chase Manhattan. That became Chase. That’s JP Morgan Chase today. So the Roosevelt family fortune still lives on in the form of JP Morgan Chase, with whom he had all kinds of battles and is another great story.

00:42:22
Speaker 1: Okay, so get into the woman and he met.

00:42:25
Speaker 2: He’s how old, So he’s eighteen, and there’s a really consequential year in Theodo Roosevelt’s life eighteen seventy eight. February ninth, eighteen seventy eight. He’s in his first year in college and his father dies someone unexpectedly. He doesn’t make it home to say goodbye. He never forgives himself, and he never forgives his brother Elliot, for not telling him that dad was going downhill. Then he goes home. And to your earlier question about did he have any girlfriends, he had one that he was very close with, who was Edith Carrow, his childhood neighbor and his homeschooled playmate. So his mother brought Edith into the fold of the family and at she was three years younger, same age as his younger sister, and everyone thought they were going to get married. Everyone thought, inevitably, when Edith comes of age at seventeen, which in the Victorian times you were eligible to wed, they were going to get engaged. Her birthday comes around.

00:43:18
Speaker 1: That wouldn’t have been unusual in those days that you would marry someone you were brought up around.

00:43:23
Speaker 2: Now be very common, very common expected, right.

00:43:26
Speaker 1: Because there was like family connections.

00:43:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Edith came from a family whose fortunes were falling and the Roosevelts were incredibly rising, so there was some tension. And Edith’s father was an alcoholic who lost control of the family business. She was a real independent, tough minded, you know, not going to suffer fools, gladly woman. And so August twenty second, eighteen seventy eight comes and they go for they go out picking water lilies, they go for a rowboat ride Oyster Bay, and so happens. They have an explosive fight and break up, and they never tell anybody what happened. They only talk about it twice the rest of their lives.

00:44:09
Speaker 1: I think you have to put the moves on her.

00:44:11
Speaker 2: Could be we need the Netflix adaptation of the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt to really speculate here, to out to find out what happened on August twenty second, eighteen seventy He loses his father, he breaks up with his girlfriend, and then he goes back to college. It’s his sophomore year, and he meets Alice Hathway Lee and Alice.

00:44:29
Speaker 1: And him and Edith are just done down.

00:44:30
Speaker 2: He’s like, who’s Edith, Where’s Edith? Like gone Like. He meets Alice. He goes on a mad two year pursuit. I mean, imagine being the object of Theodore Roosevelt’s affections, and he determines, I’m gonna marry you. Like that’s what it was. For two years. He gets a horse and he puts a horse in the stable. He rides the horse so often he lames the horse because it’s twelve miles to her home at Chestnut Hill from Cambridge. He gets a horse and buggy. Once he lames the other her original horse, so he can go there. Once he breaks the buggy, he walks. He walks over fifty times, twelve miles round trip to her house to see Alice. He is he’s so. He thinks that a fellow classmate, Charlie Ware, is trying to make the moves on her, so he challenges him to a duel and calls for French dueling pistols.

00:45:20
Speaker 1: Really, he yes, I want.

00:45:24
Speaker 2: To see Theeah.

00:45:27
Speaker 1: He was showing up. Yeah for sure, dude, I got I want to see the comedian Joey Diaz and uh years ago he was talking about how kids got it so easy now, like dating is so easy now with phones He’s like, when I was a kid, if you wanted to get your get your you know, get a hold of your girlfriend, you had to sneak under a window and throw gravel at him.

00:45:47
Speaker 2: That’s right. Yeah, Theodore Roosevelt had to walk twelve miles round trip to see his girlfriend. So she finally relents.

00:45:55
Speaker 1: She agreed she was being resistant at for her.

00:45:57
Speaker 2: She’s the most eligible bachelorette in all of Boston. I mean, to set the stage right, she comes from the Lee and Saltanstall family. There’s this old Boston toast, and this is good old Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, where the lulls talk only to the cabots and the cabots talk only to God. She’s a cabot, right, So like the geeky naturalist in whose way form meldehydelingers going for the most eligible bachelorette in Boston, no way, like not gonna happen. And she really, I mean, she puts him off for two years.

00:46:29
Speaker 1: And her family probably has a big saying this too.

00:46:32
Speaker 2: That’s where the sisters come in. That’s where her TR’s mom comes in. He decides, I’m not gonna win her unless she falls in love with my family. They have to find they have to see that the Roosevelts are pretty awesome. So he brings his sisters and his mom out to Cambridge, throws a party. They all love each other. Then they invite the Lees back to New York. And again that’s where it turns. She I think that Alice Hathaway Lee fell in love with his sisters and his mom as much as he did tr the idea of being a part of this incredible family. And she’s a spitfire. I mean, Alice is almost the same height as him, very athletic, loves to hike, loves to play tennis, you know, like imagining what his life would have been like. And in the four years that they’re together six years total, he writes his first major book, The Naval History of the War of eighteen twelve. He’s elected to his first public office. He goes to but quits Columbia Law school. If you’ve ever quit law school, you have something in common with tr He too, did not finish like he in his own words, he rose like a rocket, you know. So there’s a lot of historical speculation about what he ever been president had his first wife lived and I think unquestionably. So here’s here’s a stunning one.

00:47:48
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I don’t get that. I don’t get what you’re saying.

00:47:51
Speaker 2: Well, because she was written off in history as inconsequential that the best thing she ever did for tr was die. That’s really literally been written like that, like she was sort of from the elite society. She wouldn’t have you know, would he have ever gone west? I mean, there’s all kinds of counterfactuals about what.

00:48:13
Speaker 1: He would have settled into this like patrician, right, right, which doesn’t it’s not a rowboats all time. So I mean two facts they do. Yeah, so they are.

00:48:27
Speaker 2: She’s expecting their first child when he first comes out to the Dakota Badlands. I mean that’s that’s basically his trip before the baby’s born. And that’s when he invests fourteen thousand dollars half of his inheritance in cattle. He never owns land because it’s open range, but he invests a huge amount of money in cattle.

00:48:46
Speaker 1: And then how’s that giant? How’s that lining up with the idea that if she hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have gotten into all this stuff.

00:48:53
Speaker 2: It doesn’t, but that is a new take that The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt is the first book that really says Alice Athaway, Lee made tr part of who he is, and you have to in order to appreciate later off.

00:49:07
Speaker 1: Yes, or she’s been generally written off historically.

00:49:10
Speaker 2: Yes, very written off. Yes, like didn’t matter speed bump on the on the road to his inevitable success. I think losing her played an incredible role in him understanding the fragility of life. That you know, I’m I’m rich, and I’ve been elected to the New York State Assembly, and yet you know, my father, my mother, and my wife have all died in six years. I that is the moment it turns. He’s twenty five years old and all of a sudden he has a life wish. He starts doing things that you might think are.

00:49:54
Speaker 1: Crazy or yeah, I gotta have you back up. Yeah. At this point in his life, he’s a already done all that like Maine stuff, right, yep, Like hunting in Maine all the time.

00:50:03
Speaker 2: Yep. So when he when.

00:50:06
Speaker 1: He gets he gets married to Lee, and during that marriage he does his big trip out to North Dakota. Correct shoots the first buffalo he shoots. Correct, invests in cattle. Yes, as like an absentee cattleman. Yes, right, yep, okay, and then but line all that up with her death and explain how So comes to die.

00:50:28
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is this is an important part of the story. I’m glad you asked us to back up. So he got engaged on February fourteenth, eighteen eighty, Valentine’s Day. They announced it to the world. Four years later, they’re expecting their first child, and Theodore was a he was into numerology and things. He’s a bit of a super he was superstitious, and he so he believed that the baby was going to be born on the anniversary of their engagement, February fourteenth, Valentine’s Day. So he goes back to all but where he’s a New York State assemblyman on February eleventh, and he gets a telegram on February twelfth the next day saying the baby has been born and Alice is only fairly well, but it’s too late for him to go, so he makes arrangements to leave Albany and return to New York on February thirteenth. He gets a second telegram on February thirteenth. We don’t know what the telegram said, but his face goes ashen white, and he drops the telegram and literally runs from the New York State Assembly to the train station in Albany. Normally this trip would take two to two and a half hours. There’s a thick, dense fog that is descended over New York City, so thick that you cannot get a handsome cab from Grand Central Station. It took five and a half hours for him to take the trip from Albany to New York, all the while not knowing what awaits him on the other side. He walks the fifteen blocks through this fog to six West fifty seventh Street, where he told there is a curse on this house. Mother is dying and Alice is dying too. He runs up to the third floor. He holds Alice, his wife, in his arms, until one thirty in the morning, when he’s called to the second floor. His whole family is there and his mother Midi dies of typhoid fever. He goes back up to the third floor, holds Alice in his arms for eleven straight hours until two thirty in the afternoon. On Valentine’s Day, when she too dies of Bright’s disease, a kidney disorder that was exacerbated by the childbirth, he is devastated. He writes an x in his diary and says, the light has gone out of my life. And the next day he makes plans to not run for reelection and to head out to the bad lands of North Dakota, where he says to his family, I’m going to I’m going to the bad lands. What I shall do after that, I do not know.

00:52:57
Speaker 1: And what kid was that?

00:52:58
Speaker 2: That was Alice. They named her after the month. So she’s the first born and the last to die. She was born in eighteen eighty four dies in nineteen eighty and she was left in the care of his older sister, Bammy. So this is where Bami comes in. Bammy, his older sister, is like the political Svengali. She’s the one who she takes care of the baby for almost three years while he’s in North Dakota. She’s the one that reunites him with Edith and ensures he’ll get married again. She’s the one who sells the home at sixth West fifty seventh Street. She oversees the construction of Sagamore Hill. It’s Bammy that arranges for him to have a role in the Harrison administration as Civil Service Commissioner. Bammy says, you know, maybe it would be a good idea to come back to New York and be New York Police Commissioner. Bamy sets up the meeting that leads to him becoming Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

00:53:51
Speaker 1: I mean it’s like in those days, a woman wasn’t going to do those roles correct and you had like be like, she’s like fronting a guy, yes, because I can’t do it.

00:54:01
Speaker 2: She put it all.

00:54:01
Speaker 1: I would never be able to do.

00:54:02
Speaker 2: It all her, all her energy. So think of this. Eleanor Roosevelt said of Theodore Roosevelt’s two sisters, Bammy and Connie, if you wanted advice, you went to Bammy. If you wanted sympathy, you went to Connie. Because they were very personality is very, very different. Bammy was the one who, like she saw the political chess board. I mean t R was impetuous, emotional, very intelligent, but he could make missteps. You know, he could kiss people off. Bamy was the one who’s like, hey, you know who you need to talk to is this person or that person, or this is the job you need to go into next. She’s the strategist, you know, she’s the one convincing him. She’s convincing the McKinley campaign that he’s not a hothead. I mean, they don’t want to put him into the role of assistant secretary because of what exactly what happened that as soon as you know that war came, he left and became the hero of the war, you know. I mean, when he’s governor of New York, his sister Connie holds these breakfasts and they invite the political bosses in and they they’ve arranged this in advance, and at some point the boss is going to say, all right, and everyone get out. I want my time with the governor. And they said, well, certainly, my sister can stay. I mean, she she is but a woman, and she takes such an interest in my affairs. And so Connie would knit in the corner, listen to everything that they were talking about. And when they left, tr had somebody’d heard everything and he could talk it all through its move exactly. I mean, so involved was Connie in his governorship that Theodore Roosevelt said to his sister, haven’t we had fun being governor of New York? Hmm, man, it’s crazy.

00:55:42
Speaker 3: This is something that’s always I mean, it’s really this is fascinating because I’ve always had this curiosity about he’s such a headstrong individual and I don’t really there’s so many aspects of his life where you think this guy’s not really thinking beyond what’s in front of his face, and he’s just like, yeah, yeah, paunching at that whatever is in front of his face. But then this chapter of his life where he rises to the presidency, it’s like he he checks all these boxes and rises, you know, like it’s it’s it seems like a very different mindset is guiding him at that moment, as opposed to the guy who just goes out west to forget about.

00:56:19
Speaker 2: Randall that the secret sauce is daily and counting. It’s his sisters behind the scene saying, hold on, now, now you got to be here, Now you got to be there, Now you got to do this, Now you got to do that, and they support him, and Edith comes back into the picture, so the girlfriend that he broke up with on August twenty second of eighteen seventy eight.

00:56:36
Speaker 1: After putting the moves on her.

00:56:38
Speaker 2: Probably we don’t know.

00:56:41
Speaker 3: He no longer smells like formaldehyde.

00:56:42
Speaker 2: He’s yeah, by the way, just because I think you’re and your audience will appreciate this. When he marries Alice, the one thing he’s not going to be as a naturalist. I mean, she didn’t mind that he went hunting and was outdoors. She would go hiking and such with him. But that’s when he donates all of his childhood specimens to the Really, yeah, he says, she’s so. I can only I can only imagine the conversation be like, hey, you know what’s not coming with us to the new house. Do all all the taxidermy’s gotta go? But the bison. Interestingly, there’s only three photographs of six West fifty seventh Street, which was technically his mother, mother and father’s home, but he lived there for a while and that’s where the bison ended up. It was you can see it clear as day that that’s the bison that he shot in North Dakota, and then it some at some point moves to Sagamore Hill. Had to be bammy. I mean it’s in Sagamore Hill to this day.

00:57:42
Speaker 1: You guys can’t get your hands on that one.

00:57:44
Speaker 2: I you know, I feel like it. Maybe we could for a bit. It would be nice to bring it back home for a for a bit, but.

00:57:51
Speaker 1: It’s such a who’s the owner of it?

00:57:53
Speaker 2: The National Park Service. Yeah, so, short version of a long story. Edith out lives tr by thirty years. Several of her kids have died in World War One in World War Two, and Kermit is dead by that point, so there’s only two three if you include Alice or step daughter, and so they convince her.

00:58:14
Speaker 1: To one dies in the war and then later one kills himself.

00:58:17
Speaker 2: Yep, Theodore is the only.

00:58:19
Speaker 1: President I’m talking about tr kids. Yeah.

00:58:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, he’s the only president to have a son or daughter die in combat. Only president to have a son or daughter die in World War One and World War Two, only one of two fathers and sons to be awarded the Medal of Honor. I mean his like, the record of service and sacrifice in this family is off the charts. And they all did it. Ethel was a part of the American Red Cross. I mean the boys all fought, but the I mean the girls were involved too. Anyway, So they convince Mom Edith were.

00:58:49
Speaker 1: A long way from that kind of stuff nowadays.

00:58:51
Speaker 2: I mean, well, and the no blessed oblige, they had an obligation to fight, they actually felt. You know what’s interesting about t R’s rise back up as a rough rider is it’s the first time that the country fights as red, white, and blue again. It’s the first major battle after the Civil War. And so you think about, like, how did he I mean, yes, it was heroic, and he became the hero of that story. But he became the hero of the biggest war since the Civil War. He became the symbol of American unity and again has this Northern father, Southern mother, eastern political identity, and western ranch cowboy image. He’s like perfect, he’s central casting. By the way, the journalist who documents all of TR’s exploits in Cuba, Richard Harding Davis, introduced to TR by Bammy. Oh really yep, says you know what would be a good idea is if.

00:59:50
Speaker 1: Your kid and she’s like his pr agent.

00:59:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and Connie will do the same Connie when he’s in the White House. So Edith is very private, you know, she’s more circumspance. She’s universally known as a better judge of character. He doesn’t make a single appointment without talking to Edith. She redesigns the White House, puts her office next to his. I say in The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt that he’s in she’s in the room where it happened because she designed it that way. So she’s involved. But she doesn’t love the personal side of politic Actually she doesn’t have politics at all. I mean, when it’s over, she says, I’m so glad it is all over the presidency. But but Connie knows that if the American public falls in love with Theodore Roosevelt’s family, he’ll be more successful politically. So she’s the one that leaks the stories of Algonquin, the pony coming up to the second floor, the wrestling matches at four o’clock, the jiu jitsu in boxing in the White House. You know, she’s the one she eat this. Oh yeah, they’re gonna love it. I mean, it makes him personable. It’s like a crazy menagerie of a zoo and this big family and it. They’re fun and they’re active and they’re adventuresome. And she knows, I mean, she’s the one that leaks the story about Emily the snake. You know, Alice the daughter famously wears a green snake around her neck, and when they ask what’s with the snake, she says, well, this is Emily Spinach. And they said, well, who’s Emily Spinach? She said, well, I don’t like my aunt Emily, and I don’t like Spinach, so it’s Emily Spinach.

01:01:20
Speaker 1: So you were saying that Edith winds up being a good judge of character.

01:01:23
Speaker 2: She a better judge of character than Trundred percent. He’s exactly as Randall said, like, if he has a fault, it’s that he’s what serves him so well. His instincts can turn on him and not serve him well in a political arena because he’s very trusting of people. He likes everyone. He generally feels that people have good motives, and he he’s impetuous. He makes quick decisions and doesn’t think about necessarily the consequence. Edith is the opposite, right, She’s slow, she’s plotting, she’s calculating. She’s I like she’s described as parched. He has a he has a valet. I know, well, these the best the people that quotes that people really love is she she describes she describes her grandchildren. She says, I love to see their little faces, but I prefer to see their backs.

01:02:21
Speaker 1: You know, I don’t know why I make think of this. I’m talking about like your someone’s wife as a judge of character. Uh. Years ago, I used to hang out a lot of Like I used to hang out with more writers than I do now. Yeah, like, I used to hang out all writers almost And uh, one time, I’m not gonna say his name, but I had a certain writer over my house and we’re had dinner together and he leaves. My wife’s like, that guy’s never come back in this house again. And I kind of sat on that forever. And there day I told a mutual friend that story, and I told my wife, you know, I was telling him about what you said about his buddy. She’s just not happy that us share.

01:03:03
Speaker 2: But maybe she was right. I found coming that story was going to be in vincation.

01:03:10
Speaker 1: That’s the only time, dude, we’ve had some crazy people over our house, you know, all the time she’s ever said no, no, well that’s kind I don’t care what you’re right.

01:03:19
Speaker 2: Kind of the dynamic with Edith and tr like, she gave him a long leash, but when she pulled it in she was serious, right, Like it was like, hey, this, I’m not kidding about this one. For example, nineteen twelve, he’s contemplating running for president again. He’s constitutionally able to, and he’s pissed that he gave the reins to William Howard Taft. Everybody’s like, oh, tr you gotta do it, you gotta do it, you gotta do it. You’re gonna win.

01:03:43
Speaker 1: You got to do that again for people that don’t know this whole history.

01:03:48
Speaker 2: So Theodore Roosevelt in nineteen oh four, when he wins election in his own right, makes one of the biggest political Okay, well you want to back up.

01:03:58
Speaker 1: There so you don’t get bored. McKinley dies and and Roosevelt comes into office off the like that he’s the vice president. Yep, and the unexpectedly boom, there he is and says, he turns around and earns it on his own Yep.

01:04:11
Speaker 2: He wins elected office in his own right, which was his goal. I mean, he really felt like he was walking in a dead man’s shoes. Sure, and he made a lot of change, and that was very risky. He was convinced he was going to lose. It turns out to be a route one of the biggest political victories in US history in nineteen oh fourth.

01:04:26
Speaker 1: The same for Johnson, right, Like Johnson comes in yep, yeah.

01:04:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. I mean, so he comes in with the he’s got the wind at his back, and he’s not restricted to two terms, and technically he’s picked up part of the term of another president.

01:04:42
Speaker 1: So because because that wasn’t it wasn’t wasn’t codified yet. No, it was a tradition, but it wasn’t exactly So like FDR did three, So without consulting his wife, Edith, who’s in the room, far three, FDR did four.

01:04:57
Speaker 2: But he died very early into his fourth term. So he won four. Yeah, FDR overlearned the lesson that t R didn’t learn. He made up for for his his distant cousin’s deficiency.

01:05:11
Speaker 1: He’s not bound by turn bound, but he’s got like a term limit under mckintle. He’s got McKie and a half years does his own term.

01:05:19
Speaker 2: So he’s been president. He’s going to be president for seven and a half years. Been close than to two fold turn violated the norms to he would have been the first president to run for a third term, and but he almost he.

01:05:31
Speaker 3: Could sort of say I didn’t have a full first term.

01:05:34
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, yeah, and everybody thought he would. He gets up on election night and announces I will not stand for election in nineteen oh eight. He makes himself a lame duck. I mean, every and Edith was seen to WinCE, and Bammy was like, you got to take it back. I mean, you got to you got to say you that’s not true, that you maybe you will, maybe you won’t. What year did he make that announcement the election night nineteen oh four.

01:06:00
Speaker 1: So nineteen oh four, he says in eight, this will be my last, the same thing kind of well, and how’d that work out? Well? He tried again, and did.

01:06:09
Speaker 2: That work out? I mean, you know, you generally don’t make pronouncements that you’re not going to. I mean, I think the thing about tr is he says what he means, and he means what he says.

01:06:19
Speaker 1: Right.

01:06:20
Speaker 2: He’s a straight shooter, and so he’s he’s he’s observing the tradition. His heroes are Washington and Lincoln. I mean, he recalls as a child watching Lincoln’s funeral in New York, like he wants to emulate. Does he know what he’s.

01:06:33
Speaker 1: Going on that big ass Africa hunting trip.

01:06:36
Speaker 2: Well he he did that too, that’s true.

01:06:39
Speaker 1: And let me tell you why.

01:06:40
Speaker 2: He’s pretty pretty excited about that. Yeah. Yes, So he says he’s not going to run for reelection. All of the women in his life say, this is a disastrous decision.

01:06:49
Speaker 1: And it was.

01:06:50
Speaker 2: So it was the worst political decision he made in his life because he regretted it on because he was a reformer. He was a progressive. And I don’t mean in the sense of politics. I mean he was outside the system, right. He was pushing change, and he was pushing the boundaries of what was and what could be. I mean he he so once an agitator is out, they never letting him back in. I mean, Edith knew this, Bammy knew this. Like once you give up power voluntarily, you are never going to get it back. So he sits by. He goes on the African Safari for over a year. He’s getting reports about what’s happening back home. They’re not following your agenda. One of the big things was conservation.

01:07:35
Speaker 1: Did he did he pick Was he successful in picking his successor?

01:07:42
Speaker 2: Yes?

01:07:42
Speaker 1: Okay, so he hand hand picked indorsed and that carried the weight.

01:07:47
Speaker 2: It, yes, and it was an odd pick, so he could have won absolutely. I mean, it’s not even an entertaining counterfactual, like if Theodore Roosevelt had run in nineteen oh eight, he wins, he wins better. Taffy Taft, Oh boy, so not a name Brandy, Yeah, no, I mean he was he against William Jennings Bryan. I’m trying to remember if Brian anyway? He no, No, it wasn’t close, and tr regrets it. So fast forward. One of the issues being conservation, right he Taft doesn’t do anything on conservation. He decides, like, what are we doing this for? We’re I mean, he undos a bunch of some of the things that TR’s record includes in the two hundred and thirty four million acres part of them we’re coal reserves. He says, we’re not going to keep the coal reserves. We’re going to use him right now. And I mean, so these things start being undone immediately, and they irritate TR. He comes back and there’s a whole group of people saying, you know, progressive governor saying you should run. Edith is the only one who comes to him and says, put it out of your mind, Theodore, you will never be president of the United States again. Ouch. I mean, but she he saw it, She saw the chessboard, she saw.

01:09:02
Speaker 1: The political because the way the machine works.

01:09:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, they weren’t going to let him back. I mean, they weren’t going to chance the two parties. The sitting president was going to just step aside, and you were going to get the Republican nomination again. So he runs a primary campaign. He is the first. If you don’t like primaries, you got another thing to blame tr for because he invents them. He says, let the people rule. I know the political system won’t give it to me. So I’m going to go out to the people. And he starts campaigning, and he wins enough delegates to have the nomination, the Republican nomination. They get to the convention and just as Edith predicted, they deny him the nomination. They give it to Taft.

01:09:42
Speaker 1: He challenges his own hand picked guy, correct, yes in a primary thing, Yes, beats him in a primary.

01:09:50
Speaker 2: Yes.

01:09:51
Speaker 1: So here he is campaigning against the guy like he hasn’t followed through.

01:09:53
Speaker 2: My which has never been done in history, right, so this is very unusual. This is strange.

01:09:58
Speaker 1: But then the conventioneer’s revolt and handed to the sitting down.

01:10:01
Speaker 2: And part of the problem, not to get to arcane, is that there are other candidates running in the primary. There’s fighting Bob LaFollette from Wisconsin, who’s more progressive than tr and so the decision is, like Theodore Roosevelt doesn’t win the state of North Dakota in the nineteen twelve primary, you know he like so his strength is in the West and in the battlegrounds of the east. And you know, the battlegrounds are New York, right, It’s hard to imagine today, but that’s the battleground He never won another Southern state in his political career. After having Booker T. Washington to the White House, he was the first yes, yep, he’s a first president to have a black man dine at the White House, there were threats on his life. There was a senator who said nothing bad would have happened if a bomb would have gone off under the table, killed the President and killed Booker T. Washington. There was a fight that broke out in the Senate or when that senator made those remarks, tr banned that Senator, Senator Tillman, of a racist from the South, from ever coming back in the White House again while he was president. I mean, you know, so when I talk about political violence like it was real at the time. And so tr knew he couldn’t win the South. He had to win a combination of the East and the West. And so then he is the first president to embrace suffrage. He makes suffrage a part of his nineteen twelve platform. I was going to mention it earlier, just quickly rewinding. One of the biggest influences Alice had is his senior thesis in college. So Theodore Roosevelt writes a senior thesis when he’s graduating. He endorses suffrage. He endorses a woman’s right to own property. He endorses the idea that women could be doctors, lawyers, and judges. He says women shouldn’t necessarily take their husband’s name upon marriage. That should be their choice. Very progressive for eighteen eighty. That’s all Alice. And then when she eyes that kind of that light is.

01:12:01
Speaker 1: What’s my next paragraph?

01:12:07
Speaker 2: Right? I could keep some of the taxidermy. It’s like maybe my favorites and keep the bison, right, huh. Anyway, so he’s just very progressive platform.

01:12:18
Speaker 1: They pass when they pass and by and give it back to Taft.

01:12:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:12:21
Speaker 1: He then says screw y’all, yes, and does his independent bid the bull Moose party and all that.

01:12:27
Speaker 2: Yes. So here’s the key moment. Right, so Edith has said, no way, this is not going to happen. They go out for a horseback ride in Oyster Bay. A car starts and startles her horse. And she was a very accomplished horsewoman. I mean she she was a good rider. She gets bucked from the horse. She lands on her head, unconscious. I mean she has undoubtedly what today would be a traumatic brain injury. She’s out cold for several days. Yes. Yes, that is when Connie and Bammy work with seven progressive governors to publish a letter that encourages TR to run as an independent as a bull Moose, and t R says, I’ll throw my hat in the ring. My hat is in the ring.

01:13:16
Speaker 3: This is when I miss, you’re signed off on this.

01:13:22
Speaker 2: Right before the horse right, you were saying something is the horse was bucking you off. I think it was run. I think it was run. That’s what I heard. I heard Run Run is an independent. That’s what I heard. It’s too good to be true. That tells you anything about their dynamic that he had to wait till she was out cold to make the decision to run as a bull moose progressive. She’s so pissed that she gets on a trip to uh the Caribbean with her daughter Ethel and there’s reporters gathered where they’re bringing on their luggage and they say, you know, reporter says, you know, is is the president with you? No, he’s not coming on this journey. You know, is that a Is that a hat box? And they say, yes, that’s a hat box. They said, is that hat going in the ring? And she says, no, we left that one at home too. He said, I throw my hat in the ring. So they’re basically saying, like, you know that one, you want to go go talk to Teddy about hats in the rings. We’re going to go to the Caribbean and cool off. She was not happy, and she was and she eventually came around. I mean they all came around and helped him, and you know, then you have the assassination attempt, and for a brief moment it kind of looks like Holy cow, because he I mean, the man knew how to create a moment. He knew how to create a spectacle. And so he is shot. He delivers the speech for over an hour. He begins by saying, I don’t know if you know, but I have just been shot, and opens his coat and it is caked in blood. I mean, to this day, when you see the shirt at the Theodre Roosevelt Presidential Library, like the outline of the blood. He was bleeding, but he coughed into a you know, he coughed and he didn’t have any blood coming out of his lungs. So he said, you know, I’m going on stage, and they were like, this is you gotta get off stage. I mean several times they tried to interrupt him and get him to the hospital.

01:15:15
Speaker 1: People thought that that the fist pump after Trump got shot through the ear was bad ass.

01:15:20
Speaker 2: This is this is that nineteen And then he’s giving the speech still and he says and he says, you know, the thing that killed all these prior presidents who got shot was not the bullet. It was the surgery. It was the exploration looking for the you know, then they get gangreen or they get right. So he’s like, leave it in there. It’s fine. If it didn’t kill me, it ain’t gonna kill me. And so he doesn’t have surgery. And two weeks later he gives a big speech at Madison Square Garden and it’s like, oh my god, he’s going to win. You know, he could, he could do it. And there’s like a brief flicker of hope. But they split the vote, you know, taft In Roosevelt split the vote. Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, is elected. I mean, you think if he, if tr is elected in nineteen twelve, there’s a decent chance the United States does not get into World War One. I mean, he knew all of the leaders of all the countries that eventually got into World War One.

01:16:18
Speaker 1: God imagine too, that we wouldn’t be stuck in this bullshit two party system that we had lived under.

01:16:23
Speaker 2: Yep, he would. I mean he’s the most successful third party candidate in US history.

01:16:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine if that had happened and you wouldn’t have to do this dumb thing that we have to do.

01:16:35
Speaker 2: Well, it’s another reason I think he’s popular across the political spectrum is you know, when his own party betrayed him or he felt they weren’t doing what he thought should be done. He left it and he ran as an independent. I mean, you know what I just found out, dude, to this kind of surprising is this gives me an opportunity to bring up my honor ay PhD.

01:16:57
Speaker 1: Shoulder there. Oh wow, he’s got the big one. I was just reading that the press.

01:17:02
Speaker 2: The president is below that is it?

01:17:05
Speaker 1: The small one? The president, the university, that little dinky thing anyhow, just like a way, a way that I could flex. Yeah. Please. When I was there doing that, I had dinner a couple of times with the president of University Montana, guy named Seth Bodner, who’s a green bray. I was just reading. I had no idea. I was reading last night Bodner is resigning from UH is resigning from being the president of the University of Montana to launch a third party bid for Montana’s Senate seat.

01:17:42
Speaker 2: Wo wow. Well, you know it feels like I can’t.

01:17:47
Speaker 1: Which is a death sentence. Well, because you can’t.

01:17:52
Speaker 2: But you don’t have to win.

01:17:53
Speaker 3: You don’t have to win a majority, That’s right. I Mean, that’s the that’s the difference with the presidential election is like there’s a structural obstacle to a third party winning. But I think like a third party senator could I mean, there’s several.

01:18:09
Speaker 1: Ef it’s more plausible, but it’s just we just don’t don’t play that game.

01:18:15
Speaker 2: I feel like we’re going through a political realignment. I mean, what what we knew as a Republican when we were kids is now a Democrat. What a Democrat was is now more of a Republican.

01:18:27
Speaker 1: And it’s like the Republicans, like when I was a boy, you were free trade, yeah right, you were hawkish. Now it’s like you’re sort of like a protect you like protectionist. So there’s a fact there’s a pacifist wing, you know.

01:18:43
Speaker 2: And this this is what happens throughout US history is and it happened during TR’s time, right, there was a change in what a Republican was and and whether the Republican Party wanted to be that and what the Democratic Party who was, you know, aligned with with slavery. Right, I mean, they didn’t hold office on the federal level for what I mean, it’s until it was twenty five years, you know. I mean, so they were in the wilderness for quite a long time. Trying to restore their identity. And it’s really until FDR comes along and sort of steals the playbook from Theodore Roosevelt and says, hey, you know all those ideas that he was trying to convince Republicans to do, I don’t want the Democrats do them. I mean you think about the history of conservation, right, I mean it’s fascinating. It’s almost like there’s four phases. You’ve got this first phase where Theodore Roosevelt the first politician to really appreciate what academics we’re talking about in conservation, and then put it into legislative action. The federal government, state governments are going to do something related to nature and lands. And then you have FDR who picks up that baton and puts it on steroids. I mean right, I mean the CCC and the work’s probably Riss administration. And that’s just explodes into I mean, he’s probably one of our most underrated conservation presidents because so much.

01:20:08
Speaker 1: Else taking taking unemployed people, putting them big camps to do conservation work exactly right.

01:20:14
Speaker 2: And so that’s t r’s idea manifold forty times right. And then you now you’ve got these lands. Now you’ve got these agencies. Now you’ve got these rules and laws and regulations, and then there’s kind of an era of regulation. Right, there’s awareness of environmental protection and degradation and pollution, and that’s kind of your you know, Endangered Species Act and Nixon Nixon another great conservation is right, like it.

01:20:43
Speaker 1: Was almost over observed. We talked about it all the time, but like, uh, e p A, Yeah, the environment in Dangered Species Act. But what else came in under Republicans?

01:20:59
Speaker 2: All those in the in Nixon’s time. I mean, it was that was a flurry of pretty much all the federal regulations that you’re still dealing with. And so it kind of begs this question, is why I love the timing of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. It’s like, what’s old is new again. We’re at this crux point, We’re at this inflection, We’re at this midpoint where what is that fourth stage of conservation? What is the future of that conversation? You know, it’s one of those issues that shouldn’t necessarily be partisan or political. C forgets that way often, but you’ve had throughout history Republicans, Democrats, independents embrace this idea, and that’s one of the I mean, I think, like what the Reagan Library has done on defense, I feel like tr Library can do in conservation right, create a place of convening and civic conversation to bring people together to talk about these things, to have a I mean, every I’ve talked to so many different people of different political backgrounds, from different states and countries, rural, urban, you name it, and they all say kind of the same thing using different words. It’s the words that put them in different camps or sides or parties. And I don’t know, maybe it’s naive, but that thought of like an independent just he’s somebody that brings people together.

01:22:28
Speaker 1: She say that that Edith lived thirty years longer.

01:22:30
Speaker 2: Yes, he died thirty years look like for her fascinating because she never wanted to be at Sagamore Hill. On the anniversary of his death January sixth, she did.

01:22:47
Speaker 1: The original six Man.

01:22:48
Speaker 3: There’s a lot of eerie parallels here.

01:22:51
Speaker 1: I’m gonna get that wrong in the future and make it seem more like you’re.

01:22:54
Speaker 2: Gonna get You’re gonna Kennedy Oswald like Lincoln.

01:22:58
Speaker 1: That thing you he booked.

01:23:03
Speaker 2: Driving in Dallas. There was a book depository. There’s riots. It was crazy. She lived her best life.

01:23:13
Speaker 1: Was she public?

01:23:15
Speaker 2: She tried not to be. She would gather with you know, a lot of people would come up to Sagamore Hill, want to talk with her, want to remember tr She would go. She went on her own adventures. She wrote this fabulous book with Kerbitt, and her chapter is Odyssey of a Grandmother and she, I, Ca’m not gonna remember the I know right well, she but she kind of goes to that quote, like I love to see the little faces, but I prefer to see their backs. She traveled the world. She went to thirty forty different countries. She kind of became this global ambassador.

01:23:50
Speaker 1: She lived.

01:23:52
Speaker 2: She she it’s interesting because she lived as long. You know, she knew him for fifty seven of his sixty years. They met when he was three years old and they were married for about thirty years. So she lived without him as long as they were married and kind of had this amazing life and adventure. She I mean a lot of sadness too. I mean Quentin, her youngest son, died in World War One. He’s the only World War One soldier now buried at Normandy alongside his brother, Ted Junior, who died in World War Two. Kermit, as you mentioned, died by suicide. But they didn’t tell her. They lied. They said, you know, he died of a heart attack because I didn’t want I mean, so three of her sons died before she did. You know, she did endorse. So then you have Fdr who comes along in he runs for governor in New York. Then he runs for president in nineteen thirty two, and Edith comes out of her self imposed isolation and endorses Hoover. She and there’s a big split in family. Connye yep, yep. So Bami had died by this point. She died in nineteen thirty one.

01:25:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was going to ask if they remained like operators, like political operators, or if that passion was just under There was.

01:25:11
Speaker 2: A really fascinating dynamic between Connie the younger sister and Ted Junior. So, I mean, imagine being Theodore Roosevelt junior, like almost impossible. But he has a remarkable life. I mean, he runs for governor and he is unsuccessful. He’s taken down by the teapot Dome scandal, which it’s involved the Department of Interiors speaking of conservation. It was base, I mean boiled down in its greatest simplicity. It was the Secretary of the Interior selling oil leases illegally, and Teapot Dome was a place in Wyoming that had oil leases, and he was doing it off the books, and somehow Ted Junior, even though he really didn’t have anything to do with this, gets embroiled in the scandal. Eleanor Roosevelt campaigns against him. The Hyde Park and Oyster Bay branches of the family really begin to divide after the death of TR. FDR emulated tr loved him, I mean really modeled his whole career on his distant cousin. I mean, he was assistant Secretary of the Navy, He was governor of New York, He was in the New York State Assembly. He of course ran for president. I mean there’s a direct line. He even FDR cast his first vote for president for tr in nineteen oh four. Yeah, and when he was asked, well, why you know, because he’s a Democrat, why’d you vote for the Republican? And he said, well, I thought he made a better Democrat than the Republican. Pretty good, right, you kid.

01:26:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:26:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there’s a split in the family. Connie really becomes a public figure. She’s publishing books, she’s giving speeches, she’s she becomes the first woman to speak at the Republican National Convention. In nineteen twenty, a lot of people thought that Theodore Roosevelt was going to be the presidential nominee. He’d sort of made amends with the party. He said if he declined to run for governor of New York again, because he said, if I’ve got one last fight in me, it’s going to be for the presidency. In nineteen twenty. I mean, he knew he was sick, and of course the family knew he was sick, but it was a stunner when he died. I mean, he was the leading candidate for the presidential nomination in the Republican Party when he died, and I mean so much so that they were trying to soften his support out West and running hits, running, you know, negative campaigns already on him, trying to make sure that he wouldn’t succeed. You know, it’s it’s imagine what happens were he to live and win in nineteen twenty, you know, again, a whole different world. He gives us the last speech Theodore Roosevelt ever gave in his life is on November two, nineteen eighteen. It’s at Carnegie Hall in front of a mixed race audience. W. E. Du Bois is on stage. The educator and Theodore Roosevelt says that he endorses equality amongst black and white and says justice with me is not a mere form of words. I mean, had he won in nineteen twenty, he was going to take aim at Jim Crow forty five years before the Civil Rights Act. I mean this progressive tarn Again. I don’t mean it politically. I mean that he saw black soldiers fight alongside white soldiers in World War One, and it changed, he evolved, It changed his outlook. He was constantly like, what’s next, What’s the next battle? What do we as a country going to face? And he thought racism. I mean he was always anti peonage, he was anti lynching. He was very you know, he made some mistakes, some big mistakes. But the NAACP on his death ran an incredible memorial talking about how we have lost a friend. He was on the board of the Tuskegee Institute. He was on the board of Howard University. I mean you know, these are like things people don’t even like, how do you But it’s because he was so I don’t know, He’s like a man from the future sent back in time, you know, how he saw what our next battle was going to be.

01:29:18
Speaker 1: It’s interesting. It’s like during the height of the Wolkesters. I remember, like I sit on the board of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and like at the height of the Wolkester’s power, they were like pushing TRCP like disavow him. Yeah, what’s interest when you get into what some of his stances were in the twenties.

01:29:36
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we took possession of the equestrian statue that stood outside of the Yeah. Yes, yes, it is a safe and secure location in North Dakota. It will well, it’s the trick. It’s it’s one hundred and sixty eight thousand pounds sixteen feet yeah. Yeah, no, it’s not an easy object to move. So by the time we took possession, our plans were well in motion. We will do something with it. We will have it on public display at something. But I think it’s you’re not the first person off for that.

01:30:10
Speaker 3: Just get a dolly, but a new haul shouldn’t be a big deal.

01:30:14
Speaker 2: It was. That’s kind of the quintessential example, though, Steve. It’s excuse doctor Ranella. It is bronze, it’s hollow bronze, and the pedestal is enormously heavy. I mean, that’s a granite from Connecticut that’s considered park side.

01:30:28
Speaker 1: Can’t.

01:30:29
Speaker 2: I wish it were that simple, but but it’s the I. But it’s a quintessential.

01:30:34
Speaker 1: Example understanding of the complexity the wait.

01:30:38
Speaker 2: And it’s bisected. It’s actually so in order to move it out of the move it into the city in nineteen forty, it had to be bisected along the saddle.

01:30:49
Speaker 1: Let’s say.

01:30:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there’s some pieces that need to pay.

01:30:53
Speaker 1: You don’t even tell me the number. But hasn’t been appraised.

01:30:56
Speaker 2: There was an appraisal, yes, before we was a come in it significant significant, yes, yes, not insignificant, but it was. It’s a perfect example of what you’re talking about. Right. So Theodore Roosevelt dies in nineteen nineteen that there’s a there’s a fierce competition between Albany and New York City to be the site of the official New York State Memorial to tr and by this time there is a undoubtedly racist head of the American Museum of Natural History. I mean he’s he is working with Addison Grant, who’s talking about, you know, the theories that will eventually inform Hitler.

01:31:39
Speaker 1: And it’s not it’s not talking about our buddy Horna Day, are you.

01:31:42
Speaker 2: No, No, no, no, I’m not talking about Horna Day. No. No, no, no, not horna Day. No Horna Day. There’s a great book by Darren Lunde since there body.

01:31:48
Speaker 1: But no no, but Horneay did have a couple of little well it’s odd thoughts, not like this.

01:31:53
Speaker 2: This was yeah, this was like convening people to talk about racial hierarchy in right. And so he pitches the idea that the front entrance, this new entrance builds, build a new entrance. If you’ve been to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, you know the entrance is on seventy seventy seventh, right, So if you go, there’s an old entrance that’s been there forever. And the pitch was, let’s make a new entrance on Central Park West. This and it is it’s Boone and Crockett and the other’s four figures up top. There’s quotes from tr there’s quotes on nature and conservation. The family’s very involved in this. They win the competition to basically make the American Museum in Natural History the New York State Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt. And what’s fascinating about it is when they’re working with their family, Bammy, Connie and Edith, in particular, what do you want to be remembered. We want to remember him as a naturalist, we want to remember as a conservationist, and we want this entire memorial to reflect who his heroes were. So you know it’s Boone, Crockett, Lewis and Clark. Yeah he’s up, I mean, way up on the top. You really got But this is what slave owner well I mean. So then later the president of A M and H says, let’s I want We’re going to commission this statue. Theodore Roosevelt explicitly said statues do not test last the test of time. If there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s a statue of myself. I mean, one of the few things he didn’t want of all the honors that he got. And so it’s not.

01:33:29
Speaker 1: Can’t mean that it doesn’t live the test of time.

01:33:31
Speaker 2: Exactly what happened. I mean that sometime, at some point in the future, there’s going to be an interpretation that doesn’t meet the intent of it, of a its original creation.

01:33:42
Speaker 1: And that’s what he was getting at.

01:33:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, his that his legacy would be intertwined with something that he never had any part of. And that’s true. I mean, that’s what happened. That’s what I find like again, he’s like a man from the future sent back in time to say, don’t do this or this is what the next fight will be. I mean it’s eerie when you think of I mean, you know, nineteen oh seven, the economy collapses, he works with JP Morgan to create what will become the FED. Football is in danger. He calls the presidents of elite universities to the White House. They create what becomes the NCAA and save the game of football. You know, meat packing and meat inspecting are killing people. He’s the one who’s reading Upton, Sinclair and others, and he creates the FDA, right, I meant.

01:34:34
Speaker 1: Shore Bird Yep.

01:34:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, he creates Pelican Island, creates Pelican Island. You’ll love. In the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, there’s a special section in the presidency on his conservation legacy, and it talks about, you know, of course the land and the waters and the irrigation projects and everything. But there is a statue, a bronze statue that we are creating of tr and it’s a recreation of the famous image of him with his hand on the globe. And then and we have a pelican.

01:35:01
Speaker 3: But he said statues, I know, but we cheated.

01:35:04
Speaker 2: We’re gonna but we put we we did one that is a recreation of his of a photo. And then I think the grace note here is the pelican, because you know, if you know, you know, and if you don’t, that’s pretty good. And then it’ll be kind of a cool to see who discovers.

01:35:20
Speaker 1: That you’re you’re literary man, you might know the answer to this. What was Philip Roth’s novel? Was it the Plot against America? Does he do a novel where he imagines that Charles Lindberg wins?

01:35:33
Speaker 2: Charlesberg is so popular he runs in nineteen forty and wins, and basically sympathizer basically says, let’s make peace with Germany, let them take what they like.

01:35:42
Speaker 1: And that’s the plot against America. Yes, yeah, there should be there should be a novel. There should be a novel that that Theodore Roosevelt wins in nineteen twenty at fabulous.

01:35:52
Speaker 2: Right, it’s a it’s you know, he he was tired.

01:35:55
Speaker 1: He would be like a real happiness cut this out. You know.

01:35:59
Speaker 2: It was a strenuous life. Yeah, it was just you know, I don’t think he had the fight and the energy left in him, obviously since he was very close to death. But it is pretty extraordinary to wonder what would have happened. I mean that that’s the tr that I know. I mean, that’s in the loves of Theodore Roosevelt. I’m discovering this person that had great instincts and could make mistakes. But the real takeaway from me was, if we are all fortunate in life, we have mother, a brother, a sister, a friend, a colleague, somebody who picks us up and pushes us forward when we’re really down, and.

01:36:38
Speaker 1: Well I have someone that kicks me forward.

01:36:40
Speaker 2: Well that’s what you need sometimes, right, and tr was no different. I mean, he’s up there on Mount Rushmore. He seems kind of, I don’t know, inaccessible. He’s larger than life. Can’t you can’t meet these feats of strength and adventure and accomplish And I think what I appreciated in doing this research and building this library is that he’s he’s a little more like all of us than we realized. And maybe that’s a good thing. It makes you think you can do that too. You know, he had struggles, he had pain, he had setbacks, and there was an infrastructure. There were people there to keep him moving and make the right decisions and keep fighting for what he saw as right in the world. And you know, that’s what I think the ultimate lesson. He never deferred a problem to tomorrow. Right. He talks about this, especially with regard to conservation. This is for our children and our children’s children, for all those who will come after us. Well, there are a lot of problems that we’re kicking the can down the road on in America today. And I think, what if you can take one lesson from this person who attracts Republicans, Democrats and independents alike, it’s that you got to sit down and deal with the problems that are in front of you, or they are just going to reverberate through the generations. It’s one of the big lessons of his life.

01:38:11
Speaker 1: Man you’re the right man for the job to run that library. Hope, though, give you a chance to have like you know, when you walk around there’s like an old man like doing interpretive stuff.

01:38:21
Speaker 2: That’s my future.

01:38:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, like dress up like TV, you’re like wander around.

01:38:28
Speaker 2: And the story about nineteen round, he’s unbelievable.

01:38:34
Speaker 4: Talk to Manella about its way back in six if you just wanted by President Manella, whoa, I saw it coming before you did.

01:38:46
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, what but like U in all seriousness, man, what a situation you landed and like you know, I mean, I don’t know. I mean to have the book and to have the position and just be like all that and.

01:39:00
Speaker 2: The moment, the moment, I think I didn’t necessarily anticipate, No, but I mean it’s yeah. I mean I think we could all use a little more tr right now.

01:39:14
Speaker 1: You’re given to you’re bringing it right now, You’re.

01:39:15
Speaker 2: Going to bring it, and I think the nation needs it. I think the world needs it needs reminding of you know, do what you can with what you have where you are. You know, it’s a person is the best thing you can you know, in a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is make the right decision, the next best thing is the wrong decision, and the worst thing is nothing like again and again, his philosophy just reverberates in a way in the arena. I mean, one of the special experiences of the TR Library is going to be surrounded by that incredible paragraph in the arena speech. You know, it is not the critic who counts. And it’s fifteen feet tall, it’s nine feet you know, it’s nine feet high. It’s We’re going to have different voices different you know, one time you walk in it’ll be President Clinton or Bush, and the next time you walk in it’ll be you know, Leonardo DiCaprio or Lebron James. And and the whole idea is that you know, you then are asked, what what do you want to dare greatly to do in this life? You know, this one chance that you have to make a difference in the world, What do you care enough about to commit to action. So I’ve always thought that, you know, the past really teaches you about the present in order to make a better future. And so if we can look back to t R and understand a little something about our world and maybe just maybe bond together and make something better, then this will all have been worth it.

01:40:42
Speaker 1: You know, this is really inspiring too, because like me and Randall have been really struggling with whether we want to take on the task trying to learn how to make gas station hot dogs and deer meat, and sometimes it seems too daunting and they’re going to do it. But after you’re hearing this, now be the difference.

01:40:58
Speaker 2: In the world.

01:40:59
Speaker 1: You want the.

01:41:02
Speaker 2: Area you know, past six years just came to full fruition. Yeah, that you can get deer meat, hot dogs and gas stations is It’s not what I envisioned in twenty nineteen, But here we are.

01:41:15
Speaker 1: Someday when we figured that recipe out, you’ll be able to be like me. I make that happen. We have a Wyoming based company who is going to send us a SAM I guess we can just kick it.

01:41:34
Speaker 3: Aspired they were inspired by your show.

01:41:37
Speaker 1: Turns out there’s already someone in the arena. It’s not on the market, it’s just for us.

01:41:44
Speaker 3: They’re fans of the show.

01:41:45
Speaker 1: So are you going to be there? I mean you’ll obviously be present for the grand opening. I’m thinking about head of the grand What.

01:41:52
Speaker 3: Does the grand opening look like? Is there like a week of activity.

01:41:56
Speaker 2: I mean, should stay?

01:41:57
Speaker 3: Should people put it on their calendar.

01:41:59
Speaker 2: Well, we we have invited all living presidents to join us at the grand opening room. If they all join us, we won’t need fireworks, So that’ll be fun, we we. Well, let’s see, we’ve got Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden. This is four and then the current president five.

01:42:22
Speaker 1: What’s a normal amount of living presidents?

01:42:24
Speaker 2: That’s about I think I feel like that’s about what it is.

01:42:27
Speaker 1: It’s five. Just a great a year every year going back to the beginning, and how many we’re alive at that time.

01:42:36
Speaker 2: Okay, so we can blow the Washington zero yep.

01:42:40
Speaker 1: And then he’d be like, you know, on down the line.

01:42:42
Speaker 2: Yep, nobody came to his party. He was the only invited all the presidents, and we’re all here, yeah here, since you, since you clearly assassination conspiracy line, Every president from eighteen forty until Reagan in nineteen eighty either died or was killed in office every twenty years. Again, so every twenty years from eighteen forty to nineteen eighty, the president died or was killed in office. So eighteen forty, eighteen sixty, eighteen eighty, nineteen hundred nineteen twenty, nineteen forty, nineteen sixty. Yeah, and Reagan was shot but did not die.

01:43:23
Speaker 1: So you a curse. I’m going to hit you with a weird one.

01:43:26
Speaker 2: Okay.

01:43:27
Speaker 1: I saw into the writer Selena Zito, she just wrote that book. Butler, Yeah, bought the assassination attempt on Trump. She was like, we’re talking and she said, he’s not the first president to be shot in.

01:43:39
Speaker 2: Butler, Oh what seriously?

01:43:43
Speaker 1: Well, during the French like in the sort of like out like in the complications of the French Indian War, George Washington as a British rw military guy.

01:43:57
Speaker 2: Right, he was shot there. He was shot like right that county. I would not have put that together to get that one. And I believe, like you could the clothes that he was wearing, you could see where the bullets went through. I think that they were preserved. And there’s a crazy story about like just how close he came to being killed.

01:44:15
Speaker 1: That was in that county. They had had a meeting. We’d come in and try to tell the French what’s up, yep, And they had a little meeting and then they take off and they sent an assassin in his wake. I think I could be screwing it up. They sent an assassin in his waight to go take a pot shot at him. Yeah, yeah, I think it’s how it went.

01:44:32
Speaker 2: And that was the county coming up for that. That’s crazy.

01:44:36
Speaker 1: So it was bad. Where’s everybody where? The hell’s everybody in? Stay well, because you guys are in the middle of nowhere.

01:44:40
Speaker 2: We’re in the middle of everywhere, Steve, I don’t need to tell you center of North America.

01:44:49
Speaker 1: It’s gorgeous. That wasn’t meaning it as a hit, but there’s just not like a huge there’s not a huge urban area with thirty hotels.

01:44:56
Speaker 2: So there are seven hundred hotel rooms in the itself, and then in Dickinson, thirty miles away, there are over three thousand. And there’s camping, RV’s and clamping and all the things that have now become very commonplace around. Well, we’re going to hit a max for sure. I mean, so if the President visits, likely to be early in that that week of festivities, then we hope to have a couple of days where we’re really focused on a lot of the people that have made this possible. I mean, four hundred million dollars raise, we’ve got a lot of benefactors we want to honor, and we hope that July fourth will really be an incredible celebration, a community day. You know, we want as many people as we can to get up and see the site and see the museum. It’s going to be pragmatically challenging, logistically challenging, but we’re going to do we can.

01:45:45
Speaker 1: We also, I think I want to take my kids out there. I think I’m oh, yeah, man.

01:45:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it’s fabulous. It’s if not for the opening, then shortly thereafter because it’s a great place to get out into the National Park.

01:45:58
Speaker 1: You guys can touch off a couple of fireworks.

01:45:59
Speaker 2: On So we are going to do a drone show. We’ve got so that the folks that did I don’t know if you saw this Grace for the World on Hulu. They did an amazing concert and then above the Vatican they recreated Leonardo da Vici’s works as well as several images in drones. It’s stunning, Yeah, stunning, stunning. So we’re going to do like a fourteen to eighteen minute life of Theodore Roosevelt in the sky as a drone story. Really well, yeah, because in part we don’t want to burn down the building that we just built.

01:46:36
Speaker 3: But July July and then.

01:46:39
Speaker 2: I mean, I don’t need to. Let’s see what happens. Hey, we get to do it all again. Maybe we’ll inspire another deer meat discovery.

01:46:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do want to go to that. I mean, I’ve been kicking around going too. I hadn’t thought about the possibility. Bring them kids, prob go over. Reserve me a hotel room.

01:47:02
Speaker 2: Man, you know a guy. We can help you out, Doctor Rinella. We’ll make it happen. I’ll sleep in broom closets.

01:47:11
Speaker 1: Man. That was great having you on.

01:47:12
Speaker 2: That’s wonderful to be with you. Thanks for all you do.

01:47:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, you’re good. You’re a good kind of guest where you just kind of know the story in and out.

01:47:19
Speaker 2: Due, Well, I’ve been living it for six years, so you know, it’s just you. I gotta I gotta warn your listeners out there. They go down the tr rabbit hole. It’s very hard to get back out.

01:47:28
Speaker 1: It’s a deep pit.

01:47:29
Speaker 2: It’s deep. It’s a deep one.

01:47:32
Speaker 1: Well again, everybody, the lives of Theodore Roosevelt, the women, the loves. What am I saying? The look like I had like an in arguably you know fast the loves of Theodore Roosevelt, the women who created a president Edward O’Keefe Ryder, and what is the president CEO CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opening soon. Thanks for coming on man, great to be with you. Great appreciate it.

01:48:03
Speaker 2: Thanks so much,