Notes: This episode was originally commissioned for the fine, fine design and architecture podcast, 99% Invisible. Hear a shorter version (and discover more about said fine, fine podcast, here). Also note: 99% Invisible is produced by my friend, Roman Mars. Until he was modestly internet-famous, Roman’s image was nearly impossible to Google-image as you’d just get a bunch of Roman statuary.

The Footnotes: I read a bunch about Joice Heth but, it turns out, I really only needed to read one thing: The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum’s America by a dude named Benjamin Reiss. It’s pretty kick-ass.

The Footnotes: Since this episode was a total bear, I read a lot about and by Sidis while trying to wrestle it into submission. There’s a perfectly readable, proper biography called The Prodigy that’s out of print but probably at your local library. Turns out the Sidis fanatics (and they are legion) think the author is pretty harsh on W.J., but, you know, sure. To dive right into the deep end: run, don’t walk, to Sidis.net, a lovingly curated compendium of most things Sidis. Scans of many of his books and articles. Links to outside articles. It’s not one stop shopping, but it’s like the directory at the mall. Don’t be scared off by the fact that the web-design looks like someone clicked on the “Crazy Conspiracy Theory” template. It’s really well put together.

The Ephemera: If you do read some of his actual writings, Sidis comes off rather well. However singular and odd his interests and, I suppose, obsessions, are he writes clearly (he’s not raving) and he’s often kind of funny in a super-dorky way. “Notes on the Collection of Transfers” is unreadable. But that’s only because no one can care about transfers as much as the author does. I defy you to. But, that said, Sidis comes off like a genial, almost charming tour guide to the world’s most boring museum. It’s hard not to like the guy.

There’s a lot written about Weyman. The most fun things to read are the original newspaper accounts (there’s a fun one from the Milwaukee Sentinal on google books; you can find his obituary on NYtimes.com). But the most comprehensive thing I read was from a New Yorker profile from 1968 (which, incidentally, spends pages on literally psychoanalyzing Weyman).

You can read lots and lots about Minik Wallace. (So much so that I felt a little lame about doing it). There’s even a quite good American Experience documentary. However, special commendation has to go out to Kenn Harper, a First Nations author (I believe) from up Canada Way, who not only wrote the (seemingly) definitive Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of MInik, the New York Eskimo” and was the guy who got Minik’s father Qisuk’s bones repatriated. Amazing.

Most of the details in this one come from Pretty-Much-the-Greatest-Book-Ever, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert Caro. If you read only one thirty five year old, thousand-some-odd page biography of an urban planner this year, make it that one.