Have you wondered what about The Greatest Showman movie portrayal of P.T. Barnum was honest-to-goodness real, and what was good old-fashioned Barnum humbug?

Since the debut of The Greatest Showman in late 2017, Museum director Kathy Maher has been on a veritable roadshow of appearances, from Bridgeport to Coney Island to Baraboo, Wisconsin, talking to audiences about the fact and the fiction of big-screen Barnum. It’s a fantastic opportunity to dig into the movie’s celebration of Barnum’s energy and ingenuity, and to learn more about the 19th-century America that Barnum inhabited.

And if you missed it in person, well, now (ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!) we’re delighted to share a condensed version of this talk for your very amusement: