August 16, 2025 • 44 mins
With 600,000 words and 3 million quotations, the Oxford English Dictionary is a massive tome. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but the first edition wasn't published until 1884. Compiling the dictionary was a Herculean task, and James Murray, the editor of the dictionary, put out a call for assistance. This early crowdsourcing strategy worked surprisingly well. Murray was particularly impressed by his most prolific and consistent contributor, an enigmatic fellow named Dr. W.C. Minor. So impressed, in fact, that Murray decided he had to meet the man in person. It's safe to say the meeting didn't go as expected.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, fellow Ridiculous Historians, friends and neighbors. I don't know
about you all, but this is one of my, uh,
maybe not favorite of our classic episodes, but it's one
that really stuck with me as a word nerd.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's a bit of a pet subject for you, Ben, wordery, etymology, oh,
wordsmith ory.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So say, we all KNOWL I know, we're both. We're
both big fans of reference works, etymology, weird word facts,
and the last word in uh. I heard it in
dictionaries here in uh. This language is the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We like to call it the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, we or the OED if nasty. But the thing is,
we started looking into the origin story here and we
found something that was just a roller coaster. Man.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, if you're a coaster and an etymology fan and
perhaps a bit of a wordsmith yourself, you're going to
really dig this one on the bizarre origin of the
OED aka the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. We're here, we're live, well,
(01:42):
we're recording this live. Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians.
My name is Ben. We are of course joined with
our super producer Casey pegram My Trusty co host Noel
is off on some lovely adventures on the other side
of the country, but will return very soon. Speaking of returning,
(02:02):
we are incredibly fortunate today to have our returning guest
host joining us, Christopher Hasiotis.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Thanks for coming, Man, Thanks for having me, Ben, thanks
for having me, Casey, Noel, wherever you are, whenever you are,
however you are, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yes, oh man, I can't wait until I hope we
can reveal some of the cool stuff that Nol is
working on.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
But what I really wish we're happening right now is
that we would talk about Nol not being here and
then anyone listening to this podcast would just slowly turn
around and he's standing right behind them.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Oh that's great.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
No, that's my dream. It's my dream. But it was
also it was Halloween recently, so maybe I'm still in
that mindset. I'm definitely still in that mindset.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Oh man, It's the most wonderful time of the year.
I love Halloween. Hey, what did you do for Halloween?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Dressed up as a woodland creature? I was kind of
Wolfe took the family around the neighborhood and did not
accept any candy because we've got a little baby who's
not old enough for candy yet. And I would feel
like a real bomb taking candy from the well, you know,
taking candy for a baby who couldn't eat it, under
the pretenses that it's really for me. And I'm grown man,
(03:14):
I can afford my own candy.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
There you go. That's that speaks highly. That speaks to
your character in a very complimentary way. We'll see your
candy ethics are on point. I think that's something to
be proud of.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I would have done the opposite.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
You would have just taken a baby around. Yes, yeah,
I did think, like maybe it would be fun to
push a stroller around the neighborhood, but with no baby
in there, and just be the person with an empty stroller.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Oh that's weird. That's weird, Christopher.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
But uh, it's not Halloween anymore, right, we should divest
these spooky thoughts from our souls.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Hey, I'm always so reluctant to give up the ghost
of Halloween. But you're right. Things move on progress. That's
the name of the game for the human spece, hopefully
in theory and Today's episode is something that I thought
would be fascinating for anybody who's a fan of words,
(04:10):
anyone who's a fan of writing. Today's episode is about
the strange origin of the Oxford English Dictionary. Now, this
is something that you and I in particular, have have
used pretty frequently over the years.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I have, Yeah, dictionaries of many kinds I think come
in super handy. Whether you're a professional writer, whether you're
an amateur writer, whether you don't really care about writing
at all, but you want to know what a word means,
you can look it up in the dictionary. It's a
great thing.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, And it's funny that you mentioned this because Noel
and I will often have conversations where one of us
is on a rant about something and then we decide
to use a word because it sounds particularly enticing, you know,
only to later, usually when it's just the two of
(05:00):
us hanging out, only for us to later go, Okay,
one of us needs to look that up and make
sure it means what we think it means.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
We're using the right meaning where you were saying it properly.
I mean, that's what the dictionary is for. But also
that's what Facebook is for too right and social media.
I think anyone who is anyone in the podcast world's
very familiar with mispronounced words. There's a lot of words
out there, and you might accidentally say something a little incorrectly.
(05:27):
But we rely on people like Ridiculous Historians the Facebook
group associated with this fine podcast to point out in
a constructive and critical manner, any foible, any misstep, any
misuse of a ward.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Aw. Oh man, you really put us on the tightrope here, man.
All right, well, let's give it a go. The Oxford
English Dictionary has been around for a long time, but
perhaps not as long as many of us would assume.
The work on the dictionary began, I guess in a
(06:04):
larger historical context is fairly recent. It began in eighteen
fifty seven.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, well that's when there was a call put out
for a collection of words, a definition of words spanning
the twelfth century to the present day. At the time.
Work actually didn't get underway though, until the late eighteen
seventies eighteen seventy nine, I believe, And it took five
(06:30):
years for the first volume of the OED, as the
kids on the street call it to be published.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Right right, and here we introduce our first character for
this story, a fellow named Professor James Murray. It was
a challenging assignment for Murray, who was the editor of
this of this dictionary. The way the process worked was
relatively simple. People would send in entries for words, and
(06:58):
the Oxford English Dictionary functions as what's called an historical dictionary,
meaning it will talk about the development of a word
rather than just its present day usage. So you'll see
a little bit of etymology in the dictionary.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
You'll see a lot of etymology. I mean, the thing
about the Oxford English Dictionary is it doesn't just give
you the definition of the word, right, it goes into
the history of the word. We said, the first volume
of the dictionary wasn't published until eighteen eighty four. I mean,
this was a lifelong pursuit from Murray and his team.
The final volume of the dictionary wasn't published until nineteen
twenty eight. That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, that's insane. And it took a lot of blood,
sweat and tears, because we have to remember it was
much more difficult to aggregate information back then, you know
what I mean. These people had to literally write this
stuff out, usually by hand and send it be a post.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah, a majority of us in the modern world, and
I would assume most of us listening to this podcast.
We live in a wealth of information. We have so
many things available to us, We have so much knowledge
available to us. But I think it's really, really, really
easy to take that for granted. Right, you just look
something up. But for you to look something up, another
(08:12):
human being had to have put that thing in a
place for it to be searchable in the first place. So,
I mean, imagine the task of speaking a language and thinking,
you know what, all these words we just said in
the past twenty seconds, I just used forty of them.
Let's catalog them, let's itemize them, let's label them. I mean,
(08:34):
this is it's a crazy undertaking. It's wild. You have
to define what a language is, what is inside the language,
what's outside the language. You have to talk to linguistics,
you have to talk to anthropologists, you have to talk
to authors and books and what's gobbledegook? Right, which is
that in the dictionary? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I believe the actually it is in there, isn't it? Yeah,
So that I think that's a very good way to
paint the picture here. Professor James Murray knew this was
going to be a huge, laborious, herculean effort. However, he
underestimated the enormity of the task. When they first agreed
(09:18):
to edit this new English dictionary, they thought, this is
going to take a decade, and this will probably be gosh,
I don't know, guys, around seven thousand pages long in
four volumes. Let's call it four volumes. But they ended
up with something much much larger. By the time the
final results are published in nineteen twenty eight, it's twelve
volumes long. It is comprised of four hundred and fourteen
(09:43):
eight hundred and twenty five words defined, and it has
almost two million citations employed to illustrate what they mean.
As Murray is working on this, he builds a corrugated
iron shed that he decides to call the Scriptorium, and
the Scriptorium houses him and his small team of assistants,
(10:03):
as well as this deluge of slips of paper that
have been mailed to them that are each you know,
an entry in the dictionary.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah, and this is all taking place in the UK,
So this is just one country, you know, right, This
is this isn't even trying to get the breadth of
global knowledge. I do really like the name scriptorium. I
imagine Murray having a rough day at home, maybe the
kids are being kind of a pain, and he storms
out of his house, slams the door, say I'm going
to the Scriptorium. I can't handle this. To the scriptorium,
(10:34):
to the Scriptorium.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I am just going to start saying that I am
going to find something to our office. I'm going to
label it the scriptorium. It won't be this studio that's
two on the nose, but I'm looking for his scriptorium.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Next time you shout, I'm off to the scriptorium. I'm
really excited to see all of our coworkers look around
bemusedly and confusedly and befuddledly. And but you and I
will share something. I'll know what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And you for listening in casey or you and this,
I'm totally in casey on the case, ladies and gentlemen.
So as as people are responding to this call, this
crowdsourcing of dictionary entries, Professor Murray begins to notice that
there's one shining star out of all of his correspondents,
(11:21):
the most prolific. The most consistent correspondent, the man who
was sent in more than ten thousand entries to this
developing dictionary a guy named doctor William C. Minor. All
that Murray knows about Minor is that he is a
doctor who is a surgeon. He lives in Crowthorne, in
(11:43):
the English countryside in Berkshire, and Murray reasonably assumes that
Minor must be quote a practicing medical man of literary
taste with a good deal of leto lethio.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I like, yeah, sounds like the kind of guy who
would send in entries to the dictionary the Dictionary Project.
Did they call it the Dictionary Project at the time?
I think they did. I mean, dictionaries existed before the OED,
so I think the word probably was out there.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And here's here's where we introduce our second character. Uh,
doctor William Chester Minor an American.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, so you've got this American guy who's contributing
to one of the pillars of the English language. What
do we know about doctor Minor.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Well, we know that, as you said, he does reside
in the UK. He was an American, not only an American,
but a surgeon. Not only a surgeon, but a veteran.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
A veteran, but he also had sort of a global background, right,
so he existed in a world where many languages were
available to him. His parents were from New England. They
were missionaries, and Minor was actually born in Ceylon, which
today is known as Sri Lanka. So he grew up
in the son of the son of Americans in a
(13:07):
former British colony. A lot of languages are kind of
swirling around him. He's in that miliu. He comes back
to the US and he ends up fighting in the
Civil War. M hm. He's fighting, but he's working as
a surgeon, right, So he's a he's a medical doctor.
He's in the Civil War. He experiences some horrific things,
(13:28):
as many people did, but it seems to have really
taken a toll on doctor Minor, on his mental health,
on his well being. Really rough stuff. I mean, he
was in situations where he saw sort of incendiary attacks.
He witnessed other soldiers burning to death. Yeah, this is terrible, Ben,
(13:51):
I don't know if you know about this, but what
doctor Minor was ordered to do to a certain deserter.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right, Yeah, it's it's a terrible story. So he served,
as you said, in various incredibly bloody conflicts, including the
Battle of the Wilderness in eighteen sixty four, which was
a bloodbath. The particular story we're talking about now concerns
an Irish soldier in the Union Army. Minor was told
(14:21):
to punish the soldier carry out his punishment by branding
him on the face with a hot iron with a
capital D for deserter.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah. So this was an Irish citizen who is fighting
for the cause of the Union, but decided he was
done with the battle, wanted to leave, wanted to leave
the army, was i asseemed captured, put in the brig
and Minor was ordered to brand this guy against his wishes,
against the wishes of both of them, I think.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And this haunts him, This affects him for the rest
of his life. At the end of the American Civil War,
he is still serving. He's in New York City for
a time. He spends a lot of his time living
(15:09):
in the CD underbelly of New York. If he's not working,
he's off in the Red Light District cavorting, having some
frolic time, right.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I mean, it's not uncommon for soldiers who come home
from war, to have a really rough time, to look
for solace in places they might not otherwise have in
the past, to have a hard time keeping things together,
to undertake risky activity, to i mean even to see
(15:39):
things that aren't there, to imagine a reality that doesn't
line up with the reality experience by the majority of us.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Absolutely, And by eighteen sixty seven, the Army is completely
done with his behavior. They find that it is unethical
and a moral so they transfer him to a remote
post and Florida, And we're gonna let's let's pause right there,
because Professor Murray doesn't know any of this. He doesn't
(16:07):
know anything about Minor's past. He only knows that the
guy has medical knowledge, seems to be living in either
retirement or he's relatively well off, and the guy has
a lot of time on his hands, and he loves words.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, so that's that's a little background about Minor and
and Minor is sending in these entries to the Oxford
English Dictionary Project to Professor Murray, and they seem to
be really great entries. They're really detailed, they're really varied,
they are voluminous, they are deeply researched.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
What Professor Murray did not know was that his most
faithful correspondent and contributor was writing to him from a
lunatic asylum where he was confined for committing homicide.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, that's that's the that's the strangest part of it,
And it sounds like something you could maybe have a weird,
nervous laugh about. But the story itself is quite tragic.
It turns out that doctor Minor was not in full
possession of his faculties.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, and at this point he had moved to London.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Right right, Okay, So he was diagnosed in eighteen sixty
eight as delusional and he was considered a suicide and
homicide risk. So with his consent, he was admitted to
the Government Hospital for the Insane and Washing DC and
officially retired from the US Army. In eighteen seventy one,
he was released and he visited his family and friends
(17:38):
and then bordered a ship to London, hoping that a
change of scenery would quote cure him. But his paranoia
followed him across.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
The Atlanta And that's a not uncommon treatment at the time.
I mean, we're back in the days before modern psychology,
certainly before modern psychiatric drugs and any sort of treatment
talked therapy, any sort of rehabilitation like that. I mean,
there's just a lunatic asylum or a change of scenery.
You know, maybe something different will be nice for him.
(18:10):
Maybe being in the United States is reminding him of
the horrors he witnessed. Maybe he's too close to the brothels.
Let's just let's send him to England.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, and his family had the means to support this
travel because it was an opportunity that many people at
the time could not have reasonably pursued. But the problem
was that his untreated mental condition began to worsen. He
was having delusions, he was having crazy mood swings, and
(18:44):
he was sinking deeper and deeper into paranoia. Particularly as
his condition escalated, he would become more and more fixated
on paranoid thoughts about people with Irish nationality due to
that horrible story you mentioned earlier when he had to
brand Guy in the face. He settles originally in a
place called Lambeth.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, and Lambeth Street is It's in London. It's kind
of a city neighborhood. And this, I think is the
point when we should introduce the next character in this tale,
this tragedy, if we want to call it a tragedy,
we're not the only ones, because this is what ends
up being called at the time, the Lambeth tragedy. George
Merritt is the next entry into this tale. George Merritt
(19:26):
is a working man. He takes a walk every day
to the Red Lion Brewery in London. And one day
he's taking a walk and he encounters doctor Minor.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And Doctor Miner, who is in the grips of a
mental episode, feels threatened right by George Merritt believes that
Merritt has broken into his room at some point and
shoots and kills George.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah, and this is this is where I you know,
I tried to find some newspaper reports from the time
and it's really unclear to me, and I think this
is just the case in reporting at the time. But
I don't know exactly whether Merritt was trying to enter
a door near where Minor was living, or if this
(20:14):
happened near the brewery or well. So the records show
that Merritt was shot in the back as he was
walking away from Minor, right, so Minor perhaps was in
his home experiencing one of these delusions and just burst
out onto the street and thought that the first person
he saw was the imagined culprit.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And of course the authorities become involved. There is a trial,
and during the trial the full extent of Minor's insanity
becomes revealed for the first time in public, and that's
part of what propels the Lambeth tragedy to the stage
of international news. Minor is eventually judged not guilty on
(20:59):
ground zones of insanity, and he is sent to be
detained in England's newest asylum, but they don't ever say
how long he's going to be there.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I think this is the sort of thing where, you know,
on the one hand, you can see this as a
unenlightened treatment. You know, he's not just put to death
for murder. You know, it seems like they're doing the
nice thing. They're sending him off to a place where
he can be away from people he might harm. But
there's an understanding that there's something not chemically operating in
(21:34):
the mind. It's maybe not entirely his fault, right, So
he's sent to Broad Moore, which is a place for
the criminally insane that sounds like a nice thing, but
the conditions weren't amazing. And people at the time, you know,
it's not like they were called patients. They weren't treated
as folks with a medical issue. These the people at Broadmore,
(21:54):
were referred to as criminals or as lunatics. Basically, you're
looking at it situation where you're put in a room,
the door is locked, and there's not a lot of treatment.
You're just removed from society. Minor did have his own cell,
and Minor actually had a second cell, right, so he
had two adjoining cells, the second of which was used
(22:15):
for his significantly voluminous collection of antiquarian books.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
That's right. He was living the high life, well compared
to other inmates or other patients. But they didn't call
him patients. They call them lunatics and criminals, right, Yeah,
So he had this extensive collection of books. He was
very well read person, and the American Vice Consul General
(22:43):
directly intervened to allow doctor Minor to have these amenities.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Right. Although he's in England and he had committed his
crime there, he's still a US citizen and a veteran
of the Union Army, so there's some consideration being given.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And he has correspondence as well. The entire time. He
has relationships with book dealers, booksellers in Oxford in particular,
and it is through this association that he hears about
the open call for submissions to what will become the
Oxford English Dictionary. And so a lot of this has
(23:24):
lost to history, but we can reasonably imagine what doctor
Miner's reaction was. It's not like he's gonna go travel anywhere.
It's not like he is living a super stressful life
full of deadlines. As recounted in a fantastic book called
The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder Insanity
(23:45):
in the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester, and.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
That came out in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yes, that is correct. As recounted in this book, Minor
saw this as somewhat of an escape, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
It's a way, it's a way to his body, maybe
in these four walls, but it's a way for him
to send his thoughts and his influence beyond his cell.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Absolutely, and it's a necessary escape, right. But he knew,
regardless of his stability at the time, he knew that
his submissions might run the chance of being rejected. Essentially,
he might not be able to play the game if
he revealed too much about himself. So he always signed
(24:31):
his letters the same way Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire. And that
means his identity remained enigmatic to everybody who's working on
the dictionary for years and years and years. Murray and
Minor never meet.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
No And at this point he kind of builds up
his own reputation, not based on who he is, not
based on the letters after his name. If he's a
you know, you don't have this weight of authority from
your job, from your name, from your class. This authority
that he gains with the OED project is based solely
(25:07):
on his work and through these submissions, I mean they
prove invaluable because he's got this collection of antiquarian books,
books that are out of print, books that are ancient,
books that are not widely used. So he's combing through
these books, he comes up with this massive index of
thousands of words. He defines them, he provides their use
(25:28):
in a sentence, which you know sounds like a spelling
be kind of thing, right, But that's how you know
what a word is, and the way you define a
word is to see how it's used. And if you
want to look at a word that you don't know
or that other people don't know, you have to show
how it has been used in the past. And that's
where his collection of books comes in, super handy.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, and eventually you'll hear a couple of different counts
of this. But eventually Murray decides that he has to
meet his most valuable contributor. And this comes to a
head in eighteen ninety seven. There's an event they're gonna
hold called the Great Dictionary Dinner, and Murray is very
(26:11):
much looking forward to meeting his mysterious again, most prolific,
most accurate correspondent. But the guy doesn't show up.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah. So, I mean they've been working on this dictionary,
they put all this work into it, They have all
these different contributors, they have people they rely on greatly.
I mean think of this as the you know on Wikipedia,
the people who have the verified accounts yelp, the super
or whatever yelp or you know, like he's one of
the insiders. And he's invited, we're told, and he doesn't
(26:39):
show up.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Right, And so Minor says you know what, I'm going
to be the change. I'm going to go visit this guy.
So he travels to broad More and he sees this.
We can paint the scene here. He sees this huge
Victorian mansion, and he's justifying those assumptions, right, they feel
like they're being very I was just okay.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Well yeah, I mean he'd never been there. The story
goes that he thought, so he had this address, and
so he thinks like, okay, like this must be where
a professor lives or a doctor, a medical man. Yeah,
a nice house. So he shows up and he sees
this massive institution. He says, huh, I thought I was
going to someone's house. This is an institution.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
I guess he's mailing me from his office.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Yeah, he's probably the director or something like that.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Right, So he so he started to realize things are
a little wonky, and he's just finding the most plausible
explanation he can for it. And like you say, Christopher,
he thinks, okay, well, this guy is a director of
this asylum. Because you could see the side. He knows
it's an asylum.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
No, yeah, and you know it may even have lightning
bolts in the background or that's how I imagine that
when you happen upon an asylum and that you didn't
know was an asylum. Yes, thunder and lightning.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
We've all been there, and it's the storm begins and
you have to stay there for the night.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Right, the strings start rising and the fog starts rolling in.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Are clear so not done with Halloween.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
It's in me forever.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
So he goes to This is a true story, folks.
He goes into the asylum. He meets the director of
the asylum, and he assumes that the director of the
asylum is the famous and mysterious Doctor Minor. No, says
the director, the doctor is an inmate. Would you like
(28:29):
to see his rooms, to which Murray Murray says yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, yeah, sure to paint a picture for listeners and
ridiculous historians out there. At this point, what Doctor Miner
looks like is a little wise and fully bearded. I
would describe him as sort of a cross between Dumbledore.
There's a little bit of Dumbledore and a little bit
of Gandolf. Gandalf the white not the gray, because he's
(28:58):
got this like massive white beard. It was like very professorial,
but very learned looking, but clearly has been kind of locked.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Up for a while, Yeah, and has very In Professor
of the Madman, he is described as having very gentle
eyes that make him somewhat resemble portraits of Monette, Yeah,
which I thought I thought was poetic and very kind.
We do want to say there is one indication that
Murray had some inkling of something being wrong with doctor
(29:29):
Minor because a visitor from America in the late eighteen
eighties had thanked Murray for his kindness to poor doctor Minor.
He didn't really know.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
He knew something was up, and that's something. But yeah,
if you either Winchester book, you'll find that there's that
story which we've just recounted, which is kind of the
summarized and popularized version of events. Winchester really digs into
that and kind of calls into question how true it
is and or how true it is. As you mentioned,
(30:01):
there's some question about what Murray knew and when and
the time of events. And this story did come out
at the time, and I think was probably kind of
summarized and popularized by newspaperman at the time.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah. Yeah, they were writing about as it was occurring.
We do know, however, that when they finally did meet.
They became genuine friends for a long time, and Murray
would continue to visit Minor at the asylum.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Again, this is the sort of it's the sort of
relationship built on words and work and trust built that way.
So you could consider it a nineteenth century catfishing if
you want, but I don't see it that way. You know,
they saw the value in one another. Murray valued the
knowledge of Minor, and I think this is also a
good lesson. I don't know that the lesson was taken
(30:50):
at the time, but I think for us looking back,
it's a really valuable way to see that people who
are incarcerated, people who have mental conditions, people who are
struggling with debilitation, don't lose their value either to themselves,
to their friends, or to society. You can have a
mental breakdown, you can lose an aspect of your personality,
(31:12):
of your life. That doesn't mean you've lost your intelligence.
It doesn't mean you've lost the knowledge you've accrued over
the years. Again, we can also, you know, I feel
like films like A Beautiful Mind or these these sort
of other films can romanticize mental illness too and say
that it's a that it's it's a struggle that's got
to be overcome. It's a tricky line. I mean, it's
(31:35):
it's a it's a messy thing to deal.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
With, absolutely, and sometimes there are no clear answers for
how best to navigate the situation, especially back then, and
it's it just speaks, It speaks so highly to Professor
Murray's character that he doesn't reject this guy. He sees,
as you said, Christopher, the merit of Miner's work, and
(32:00):
he continues to visit him. He says, you know what,
nobody's perfect, but this guy is great at assembling these citations,
hunting stuff down for him. We need to keep them
in the game. And he spoke very highly of Minor
for the rest of his life. In eighteen ninety nine,
he said, we could easily illustrate the last four centuries
(32:23):
from doctor Miner's quotations alone.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Yeah, I mean, his work was invaluable.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
His work was invaluable, and unfortunately his condition continued to worsen.
In nineteenh two, he began having delusions that he was
being abducted from his rooms at night and taken around
the world where he was forced to commit sexual assault
(32:52):
and because of this. During one delusional episode, he castrated himself,
which is a very messy thing. Luckily, you know, he's
a surgeon, so he at least knew enough new enough
to do it without killing himself, and his health continued
(33:12):
to worsen.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah, it's not the sort of thing that's going to
push your health into a better place.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
True, and Murray, his faithful friend, now not just a colleague,
begins a campaign on Miner's behalf and he says, this
guy's been locked up in here for decades. He's one
of the most important contributors to what I feel is
one of the most important books in the world after
the Bible. He's harmless. Can we let him out? And
so Minor is, by direct orders from Home Secretary of
(33:41):
Winston Churchill, released from the asylum in nineteen ten. He's released.
He's instantly deported back to the United States and he
lives at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, where he is officially diagnosed
with what at the time they called dementia praecox, which
was a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder that usually began in
(34:06):
the late teens or early adulthood. This term was gradually
eventually replaced by the term schizophrenia.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, so it's the kind of thing that he likely
was experiencing internally physically, and then was I don't know,
triggered or enhanced by his experiences in the war.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Right, exactly exactly. And in nineteen twenty doctor Minor passes
away in Hartford, Connecticut. He had been moved in nineteen
nineteen to a retreat for the quote elderly insane. James
Murray passes away in nineteen fifteen. And if you'll remember
(34:48):
from our earlier mention of the dictionary, the final results
of the Oxford English Dictionary were not published until nineteen
twenty eight. So neither doctor Minor nor Professor Murray ever
got to witness or direct, you know, they never get
to hold the book.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, their life's work. It literally was their life's work,
and they did not live to see it completion. I mean,
but that's the story of so many great accomplishments in
human culture. When you think about something like the Sigatta
Familia Cathedral in Barcelona that Gudi was working on it.
He died decades ago and it's still underway. You know,
(35:24):
it's I think it's admirable to think that you might
contribute something to human knowledge and to human culture, that
you will put a process in motion. And you know,
granted Murray, Murray thought it would just take a brief
period of time to wrap up this dictionary thing, put
a couple of words on a page, this that and
the other, and we're done. No, I mean we're talking
(35:45):
like it goes well into the twenties. But to set
something in motion that goes beyond yourself is something you know,
not a lot of us get to do. And learning
the stories of the people behind these contributions to society
is sovaluable because I mean you think about like the mathematicians,
for instance, the women who contributed to the NASA missions
(36:07):
that were written about in Hidden Figures and there was
a movie. Basically, it's super important for us to know
that everything we're talking about in history was accomplished through
human undertaking. You just got to decide to do something,
get past any structural roadblocks that are in the way,
but push forward, and I mean people can accomplish them
really great things.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, it calls to mind that old proverb, what is
it a society grows great when old men plant trees
who shade they know they shall never sit in Have
you ever heard that one?
Speaker 3 (36:38):
I haven't.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I like it. Yeah, it's and that's that's the kind
of inspiring noble thing. We know that the Oxford English
Dictionary is, in a very real way a guide post
for the entirety of the English language. And you know,
I think we misuse the world sometimes, but it's it's noble,
(37:01):
it's truly noble to be able to participate in something
of that that level of significance. And here's hoping that
we can all get a chance to create something like this.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
You know, that's that's a tall order, but we can try.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
What you don't want to. We're kind of dictionary with
me for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Do you tell me about your benefits? But what do
you what are you offering? Uh?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
You know, I I've got a I've got a special
on I guess special on Dorito's okay, because of my
relationship with Robert Evans on behind the Bastards.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Ben have you ever have you ever actually so, have
you accessed the ied digitally? Have you held a copy
of the book itself?
Speaker 1 (37:48):
I have?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah, I mean these things are massive, like the huge books,
so dense. The one now that are like the most
current one that was kind of set in stone in
the nineties has like five hundred thousand wars. I don't
know if you've seen this. Some friends of mine and
I a while ago gave a friend this as a
wedding present. But you can buy the entire Oxford English
(38:10):
Dictionary in a compressed version. So it's kind of like
the size of a big book, but it's it's in
two volumes, kind of hardbound, comes in a box, but
it's the whole thing in there. And it comes with
a magnifying glass. Yes, yes, yes, but it's so the
print is so small you've really got to get in there.
(38:30):
But it's it's all of it. I mean we're talking
like more than two million citations. Like, it's just it's
so dense.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
And the look that magnifying glass is not some cuty
marketing thing.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
You need it, oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
And I don't know how people will react to this story.
I'm fascinated by I find it inspiring, you know, and
I really appreciate what you said about mental illness not
negating somebody's value or their worth in the world. And
Chris there, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you
(39:02):
on this show this week. Thanks for coming back after
the first episode. I thought you might be done.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
No no, I stuck around this week, but yeah, if
you'll have me back, I'll happily be back. I do
want to mention one more thing about dictionaries just in general.
I think they're super cool, you know, and we talk
about these things that just sort of exist. But the
very first dictionary that we had in the English language
was put together in the sixteen hundreds, and it was
(39:27):
a product of cultural mixing. It was a product of
the Renaissance. It was a product of English incorporating so
many words from other languages, from French, from Latin, from Greek,
and from Hebrew. The first dictionary was really just a
guide to what at the time were weird words or
(39:47):
like a difficult one. So the very first dictionary is
back in the sixteenth and seventeenth century CE. They weren't comprehensive.
It was just like, Okay, everybody knows the words we use.
Here's a description of the hard ones.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
And I want to hear from some of the ridiculous
historians out there. Maybe you guys can comment on the
Facebook page because when I was growing up, when I
was using dictionaries, I always had that one friend who
would use the dictionary too to learn how to spell
a word, which always seemed crazy to me, because how
do you look up a word if you don't know
(40:23):
how to spell the word already. But I know, I know,
I'm not the only one who knows someone like that.
I think even in like in the in the Miracle Worker, right,
maybe someone in there uses the dictionary as a spelling guide.
But maybe maybe Keller herself. I don't know, but I
know I'm not the only one out there who's experienced this.
Does anyone out there do that? Or do you just
(40:44):
use it to define things? I've always used it to
define things.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
I've used it to define things. I guess you could.
You could use it to find the spelling word by
attempting to go through stumble through it. You've got to
getically yeah, get a guess pre autocorrect. So it's a
real pain man trying to look up words in English
Demander and Dictionary, just because of the different you know,
the idiograms versus the it's a whole thing. Yeah. So
(41:12):
I also want to add a request to ridiculous historians.
When this episode comes out, could you visit us on
our Facebook page and let us know some of your
favorite obscure words. We are enamored with strange, unusual and
anachronistic words, and it's no secret that the English language
(41:34):
is chock full of them. You know what I mean?
Do you have an obscure word that you like? Oh gosh,
I've been stuck in your head recently.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
You know. One of the nice things about working here
at How Stuff Works is you get to dive into
all sorts of weird stuff. And I did write a
piece for the website a year or so ago on
archaic insults, on words that we're insulting a while ago
and that today have fallen out of fashion. And I
think that was kind of brought to light by UH
(42:03):
by the time, our our president and the leader of
a certain nation on the Korean peninsula, where trading barbs
back and forth and U and people were like, what's
a dotard? And so so we decided to investigate not
only that, but a bunch of other words like slumgullion. Yeah,
(42:24):
I'm drawing a blankets.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
The other hedge's probably one.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Perhaps perhaps perhaps, but anyway, I mean all of this,
it just amounts to words, words. Words. We can post
a link on the on the Facebook page rights Historians.
I'll post a link to that article. You guys can
inform yourselves. And that does it for me. I mean,
unless you need anything else from me.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
No comet hang out. Let's go, let's go, let's go
hit the scene. And as we said, our trustee co
host Nol is out adventuring. But Christopher, you mentioned that
you're hoping he's just directly behind somebody.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Wait he should I turn Nol?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Hey, Noel, how's it going?
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Well, Hey, you guys, It's it's me Nol. I'm in
Los Angeles, in the in the in my hotel room
in the Hollywood Roosevelt, which apparently is where Marilyn Monroe died.
I've been watching the Haunting of Hill House alone in
this creepy hotel by myself at night. I think I'm
still kind of on East Coast brain haven't quite made
(43:25):
the switch yet, so I've been feeling like I've been
seeing some apparitions hovering around this really bougie canopy bed
that I'm that I'm in laying in right now, in fact,
podcasting to you find people. I'm really glad that Christopher
was able to sit in and talk about the Oxford
English Dictionary.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Sorry if I sounded a little out of it, I've
been I've been working late nights and getting up early,
and as far as I'm concerned, I don't even.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Know what time it is right now.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
But godspeed ridiculous historians to you and yours and Christopher
and Ben, and I'll see you on the flip side
if I return and don't get murdered by ghosts in
the night.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
And that's it for today. Christopher. I hope that you
make this a habit. I hope you return to shed
some more light on some of these strange stories of
human civilization. And I let you off easy this time, pal,
but next time I'd love to hear some more weird
cover songs.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Ben, I can do it for you. Hey, Thanks Ben,
Thanks Noel, Thanks Casey, you guys listening out there. Thanks,
thanks for having.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Me, and we'll see you again next week.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, fellow Ridiculous Historians, friends and neighbors. I don't know
about you all, but this is one of my, uh,
maybe not favorite of our classic episodes, but it's one
that really stuck with me as a word nerd.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's a bit of a pet subject for you, Ben, wordery, etymology, oh,
wordsmith ory.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So say, we all KNOWL I know, we're both. We're
both big fans of reference works, etymology, weird word facts,
and the last word in uh. I heard it in
dictionaries here in uh. This language is the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We like to call it the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, we or the OED if nasty. But the thing is,
we started looking into the origin story here and we
found something that was just a roller coaster. Man.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, if you're a coaster and an etymology fan and
perhaps a bit of a wordsmith yourself, you're going to
really dig this one on the bizarre origin of the
OED aka the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. We're here, we're live, well,
(01:42):
we're recording this live. Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians.
My name is Ben. We are of course joined with
our super producer Casey pegram My Trusty co host Noel
is off on some lovely adventures on the other side
of the country, but will return very soon. Speaking of returning,
(02:02):
we are incredibly fortunate today to have our returning guest
host joining us, Christopher Hasiotis.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Thanks for coming, Man, Thanks for having me, Ben, thanks
for having me, Casey, Noel, wherever you are, whenever you are,
however you are, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yes, oh man, I can't wait until I hope we
can reveal some of the cool stuff that Nol is
working on.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
But what I really wish we're happening right now is
that we would talk about Nol not being here and
then anyone listening to this podcast would just slowly turn
around and he's standing right behind them.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Oh that's great.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
No, that's my dream. It's my dream. But it was
also it was Halloween recently, so maybe I'm still in
that mindset. I'm definitely still in that mindset.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Oh man, It's the most wonderful time of the year.
I love Halloween. Hey, what did you do for Halloween?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Dressed up as a woodland creature? I was kind of
Wolfe took the family around the neighborhood and did not
accept any candy because we've got a little baby who's
not old enough for candy yet. And I would feel
like a real bomb taking candy from the well, you know,
taking candy for a baby who couldn't eat it, under
the pretenses that it's really for me. And I'm grown man,
(03:14):
I can afford my own candy.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
There you go. That's that speaks highly. That speaks to
your character in a very complimentary way. We'll see your
candy ethics are on point. I think that's something to
be proud of.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I would have done the opposite.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
You would have just taken a baby around. Yes, yeah,
I did think, like maybe it would be fun to
push a stroller around the neighborhood, but with no baby
in there, and just be the person with an empty stroller.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Oh that's weird. That's weird, Christopher.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
But uh, it's not Halloween anymore, right, we should divest
these spooky thoughts from our souls.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Hey, I'm always so reluctant to give up the ghost
of Halloween. But you're right. Things move on progress. That's
the name of the game for the human spece, hopefully
in theory and Today's episode is something that I thought
would be fascinating for anybody who's a fan of words,
(04:10):
anyone who's a fan of writing. Today's episode is about
the strange origin of the Oxford English Dictionary. Now, this
is something that you and I in particular, have have
used pretty frequently over the years.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I have, Yeah, dictionaries of many kinds I think come
in super handy. Whether you're a professional writer, whether you're
an amateur writer, whether you don't really care about writing
at all, but you want to know what a word means,
you can look it up in the dictionary. It's a
great thing.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, And it's funny that you mentioned this because Noel
and I will often have conversations where one of us
is on a rant about something and then we decide
to use a word because it sounds particularly enticing, you know,
only to later, usually when it's just the two of
(05:00):
us hanging out, only for us to later go, Okay,
one of us needs to look that up and make
sure it means what we think it means.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
We're using the right meaning where you were saying it properly.
I mean, that's what the dictionary is for. But also
that's what Facebook is for too right and social media.
I think anyone who is anyone in the podcast world's
very familiar with mispronounced words. There's a lot of words
out there, and you might accidentally say something a little incorrectly.
(05:27):
But we rely on people like Ridiculous Historians the Facebook
group associated with this fine podcast to point out in
a constructive and critical manner, any foible, any misstep, any
misuse of a ward.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Aw. Oh man, you really put us on the tightrope here, man.
All right, well, let's give it a go. The Oxford
English Dictionary has been around for a long time, but
perhaps not as long as many of us would assume.
The work on the dictionary began, I guess in a
(06:04):
larger historical context is fairly recent. It began in eighteen
fifty seven.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, well that's when there was a call put out
for a collection of words, a definition of words spanning
the twelfth century to the present day. At the time.
Work actually didn't get underway though, until the late eighteen
seventies eighteen seventy nine, I believe, And it took five
(06:30):
years for the first volume of the OED, as the
kids on the street call it to be published.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Right right, and here we introduce our first character for
this story, a fellow named Professor James Murray. It was
a challenging assignment for Murray, who was the editor of
this of this dictionary. The way the process worked was
relatively simple. People would send in entries for words, and
(06:58):
the Oxford English Dictionary functions as what's called an historical dictionary,
meaning it will talk about the development of a word
rather than just its present day usage. So you'll see
a little bit of etymology in the dictionary.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
You'll see a lot of etymology. I mean, the thing
about the Oxford English Dictionary is it doesn't just give
you the definition of the word, right, it goes into
the history of the word. We said, the first volume
of the dictionary wasn't published until eighteen eighty four. I mean,
this was a lifelong pursuit from Murray and his team.
The final volume of the dictionary wasn't published until nineteen
twenty eight. That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, that's insane. And it took a lot of blood,
sweat and tears, because we have to remember it was
much more difficult to aggregate information back then, you know
what I mean. These people had to literally write this
stuff out, usually by hand and send it be a post.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah, a majority of us in the modern world, and
I would assume most of us listening to this podcast.
We live in a wealth of information. We have so
many things available to us, We have so much knowledge
available to us. But I think it's really, really, really
easy to take that for granted. Right, you just look
something up. But for you to look something up, another
(08:12):
human being had to have put that thing in a
place for it to be searchable in the first place. So,
I mean, imagine the task of speaking a language and thinking,
you know what, all these words we just said in
the past twenty seconds, I just used forty of them.
Let's catalog them, let's itemize them, let's label them. I mean,
(08:34):
this is it's a crazy undertaking. It's wild. You have
to define what a language is, what is inside the language,
what's outside the language. You have to talk to linguistics,
you have to talk to anthropologists, you have to talk
to authors and books and what's gobbledegook? Right, which is
that in the dictionary? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I believe the actually it is in there, isn't it? Yeah,
So that I think that's a very good way to
paint the picture here. Professor James Murray knew this was
going to be a huge, laborious, herculean effort. However, he
underestimated the enormity of the task. When they first agreed
(09:18):
to edit this new English dictionary, they thought, this is
going to take a decade, and this will probably be gosh,
I don't know, guys, around seven thousand pages long in
four volumes. Let's call it four volumes. But they ended
up with something much much larger. By the time the
final results are published in nineteen twenty eight, it's twelve
volumes long. It is comprised of four hundred and fourteen
(09:43):
eight hundred and twenty five words defined, and it has
almost two million citations employed to illustrate what they mean.
As Murray is working on this, he builds a corrugated
iron shed that he decides to call the Scriptorium, and
the Scriptorium houses him and his small team of assistants,
(10:03):
as well as this deluge of slips of paper that
have been mailed to them that are each you know,
an entry in the dictionary.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah, and this is all taking place in the UK,
So this is just one country, you know, right, This
is this isn't even trying to get the breadth of
global knowledge. I do really like the name scriptorium. I
imagine Murray having a rough day at home, maybe the
kids are being kind of a pain, and he storms
out of his house, slams the door, say I'm going
to the Scriptorium. I can't handle this. To the scriptorium,
(10:34):
to the Scriptorium.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I am just going to start saying that I am
going to find something to our office. I'm going to
label it the scriptorium. It won't be this studio that's
two on the nose, but I'm looking for his scriptorium.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Next time you shout, I'm off to the scriptorium. I'm
really excited to see all of our coworkers look around
bemusedly and confusedly and befuddledly. And but you and I
will share something. I'll know what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And you for listening in casey or you and this,
I'm totally in casey on the case, ladies and gentlemen.
So as as people are responding to this call, this
crowdsourcing of dictionary entries, Professor Murray begins to notice that
there's one shining star out of all of his correspondents,
(11:21):
the most prolific. The most consistent correspondent, the man who
was sent in more than ten thousand entries to this
developing dictionary a guy named doctor William C. Minor. All
that Murray knows about Minor is that he is a
doctor who is a surgeon. He lives in Crowthorne, in
(11:43):
the English countryside in Berkshire, and Murray reasonably assumes that
Minor must be quote a practicing medical man of literary
taste with a good deal of leto lethio.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I like, yeah, sounds like the kind of guy who
would send in entries to the dictionary the Dictionary Project.
Did they call it the Dictionary Project at the time?
I think they did. I mean, dictionaries existed before the OED,
so I think the word probably was out there.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And here's here's where we introduce our second character. Uh,
doctor William Chester Minor an American.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, so you've got this American guy who's contributing
to one of the pillars of the English language. What
do we know about doctor Minor.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Well, we know that, as you said, he does reside
in the UK. He was an American, not only an American,
but a surgeon. Not only a surgeon, but a veteran.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
A veteran, but he also had sort of a global background, right,
so he existed in a world where many languages were
available to him. His parents were from New England. They
were missionaries, and Minor was actually born in Ceylon, which
today is known as Sri Lanka. So he grew up
in the son of the son of Americans in a
(13:07):
former British colony. A lot of languages are kind of
swirling around him. He's in that miliu. He comes back
to the US and he ends up fighting in the
Civil War. M hm. He's fighting, but he's working as
a surgeon, right, So he's a he's a medical doctor.
He's in the Civil War. He experiences some horrific things,
(13:28):
as many people did, but it seems to have really
taken a toll on doctor Minor, on his mental health,
on his well being. Really rough stuff. I mean, he
was in situations where he saw sort of incendiary attacks.
He witnessed other soldiers burning to death. Yeah, this is terrible, Ben,
(13:51):
I don't know if you know about this, but what
doctor Minor was ordered to do to a certain deserter.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right, Yeah, it's it's a terrible story. So he served,
as you said, in various incredibly bloody conflicts, including the
Battle of the Wilderness in eighteen sixty four, which was
a bloodbath. The particular story we're talking about now concerns
an Irish soldier in the Union Army. Minor was told
(14:21):
to punish the soldier carry out his punishment by branding
him on the face with a hot iron with a
capital D for deserter.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah. So this was an Irish citizen who is fighting
for the cause of the Union, but decided he was
done with the battle, wanted to leave, wanted to leave
the army, was i asseemed captured, put in the brig
and Minor was ordered to brand this guy against his wishes,
against the wishes of both of them, I think.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And this haunts him, This affects him for the rest
of his life. At the end of the American Civil War,
he is still serving. He's in New York City for
a time. He spends a lot of his time living
(15:09):
in the CD underbelly of New York. If he's not working,
he's off in the Red Light District cavorting, having some
frolic time, right.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I mean, it's not uncommon for soldiers who come home
from war, to have a really rough time, to look
for solace in places they might not otherwise have in
the past, to have a hard time keeping things together,
to undertake risky activity, to i mean even to see
(15:39):
things that aren't there, to imagine a reality that doesn't
line up with the reality experience by the majority of us.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Absolutely, And by eighteen sixty seven, the Army is completely
done with his behavior. They find that it is unethical
and a moral so they transfer him to a remote
post and Florida, And we're gonna let's let's pause right there,
because Professor Murray doesn't know any of this. He doesn't
(16:07):
know anything about Minor's past. He only knows that the
guy has medical knowledge, seems to be living in either
retirement or he's relatively well off, and the guy has
a lot of time on his hands, and he loves words.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, so that's that's a little background about Minor and
and Minor is sending in these entries to the Oxford
English Dictionary Project to Professor Murray, and they seem to
be really great entries. They're really detailed, they're really varied,
they are voluminous, they are deeply researched.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
What Professor Murray did not know was that his most
faithful correspondent and contributor was writing to him from a
lunatic asylum where he was confined for committing homicide.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, that's that's the that's the strangest part of it,
And it sounds like something you could maybe have a weird,
nervous laugh about. But the story itself is quite tragic.
It turns out that doctor Minor was not in full
possession of his faculties.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, and at this point he had moved to London.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Right right, Okay, So he was diagnosed in eighteen sixty
eight as delusional and he was considered a suicide and
homicide risk. So with his consent, he was admitted to
the Government Hospital for the Insane and Washing DC and
officially retired from the US Army. In eighteen seventy one,
he was released and he visited his family and friends
(17:38):
and then bordered a ship to London, hoping that a
change of scenery would quote cure him. But his paranoia
followed him across.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
The Atlanta And that's a not uncommon treatment at the time.
I mean, we're back in the days before modern psychology,
certainly before modern psychiatric drugs and any sort of treatment
talked therapy, any sort of rehabilitation like that. I mean,
there's just a lunatic asylum or a change of scenery.
You know, maybe something different will be nice for him.
(18:10):
Maybe being in the United States is reminding him of
the horrors he witnessed. Maybe he's too close to the brothels.
Let's just let's send him to England.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, and his family had the means to support this
travel because it was an opportunity that many people at
the time could not have reasonably pursued. But the problem
was that his untreated mental condition began to worsen. He
was having delusions, he was having crazy mood swings, and
(18:44):
he was sinking deeper and deeper into paranoia. Particularly as
his condition escalated, he would become more and more fixated
on paranoid thoughts about people with Irish nationality due to
that horrible story you mentioned earlier when he had to
brand Guy in the face. He settles originally in a
place called Lambeth.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, and Lambeth Street is It's in London. It's kind
of a city neighborhood. And this, I think is the
point when we should introduce the next character in this tale,
this tragedy, if we want to call it a tragedy,
we're not the only ones, because this is what ends
up being called at the time, the Lambeth tragedy. George
Merritt is the next entry into this tale. George Merritt
(19:26):
is a working man. He takes a walk every day
to the Red Lion Brewery in London. And one day
he's taking a walk and he encounters doctor Minor.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And Doctor Miner, who is in the grips of a
mental episode, feels threatened right by George Merritt believes that
Merritt has broken into his room at some point and
shoots and kills George.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah, and this is this is where I you know,
I tried to find some newspaper reports from the time
and it's really unclear to me, and I think this
is just the case in reporting at the time. But
I don't know exactly whether Merritt was trying to enter
a door near where Minor was living, or if this
(20:14):
happened near the brewery or well. So the records show
that Merritt was shot in the back as he was
walking away from Minor, right, so Minor perhaps was in
his home experiencing one of these delusions and just burst
out onto the street and thought that the first person
he saw was the imagined culprit.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And of course the authorities become involved. There is a trial,
and during the trial the full extent of Minor's insanity
becomes revealed for the first time in public, and that's
part of what propels the Lambeth tragedy to the stage
of international news. Minor is eventually judged not guilty on
(20:59):
ground zones of insanity, and he is sent to be
detained in England's newest asylum, but they don't ever say
how long he's going to be there.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I think this is the sort of thing where, you know,
on the one hand, you can see this as a
unenlightened treatment. You know, he's not just put to death
for murder. You know, it seems like they're doing the
nice thing. They're sending him off to a place where
he can be away from people he might harm. But
there's an understanding that there's something not chemically operating in
(21:34):
the mind. It's maybe not entirely his fault, right, So
he's sent to Broad Moore, which is a place for
the criminally insane that sounds like a nice thing, but
the conditions weren't amazing. And people at the time, you know,
it's not like they were called patients. They weren't treated
as folks with a medical issue. These the people at Broadmore,
(21:54):
were referred to as criminals or as lunatics. Basically, you're
looking at it situation where you're put in a room,
the door is locked, and there's not a lot of treatment.
You're just removed from society. Minor did have his own cell,
and Minor actually had a second cell, right, so he
had two adjoining cells, the second of which was used
(22:15):
for his significantly voluminous collection of antiquarian books.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
That's right. He was living the high life, well compared
to other inmates or other patients. But they didn't call
him patients. They call them lunatics and criminals, right, Yeah,
So he had this extensive collection of books. He was
very well read person, and the American Vice Consul General
(22:43):
directly intervened to allow doctor Minor to have these amenities.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Right. Although he's in England and he had committed his
crime there, he's still a US citizen and a veteran
of the Union Army, so there's some consideration being given.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And he has correspondence as well. The entire time. He
has relationships with book dealers, booksellers in Oxford in particular,
and it is through this association that he hears about
the open call for submissions to what will become the
Oxford English Dictionary. And so a lot of this has
(23:24):
lost to history, but we can reasonably imagine what doctor
Miner's reaction was. It's not like he's gonna go travel anywhere.
It's not like he is living a super stressful life
full of deadlines. As recounted in a fantastic book called
The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder Insanity
(23:45):
in the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester, and.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
That came out in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yes, that is correct. As recounted in this book, Minor
saw this as somewhat of an escape, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
It's a way, it's a way to his body, maybe
in these four walls, but it's a way for him
to send his thoughts and his influence beyond his cell.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Absolutely, and it's a necessary escape, right. But he knew,
regardless of his stability at the time, he knew that
his submissions might run the chance of being rejected. Essentially,
he might not be able to play the game if
he revealed too much about himself. So he always signed
(24:31):
his letters the same way Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire. And that
means his identity remained enigmatic to everybody who's working on
the dictionary for years and years and years. Murray and
Minor never meet.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
No And at this point he kind of builds up
his own reputation, not based on who he is, not
based on the letters after his name. If he's a
you know, you don't have this weight of authority from
your job, from your name, from your class. This authority
that he gains with the OED project is based solely
(25:07):
on his work and through these submissions, I mean they
prove invaluable because he's got this collection of antiquarian books,
books that are out of print, books that are ancient,
books that are not widely used. So he's combing through
these books, he comes up with this massive index of
thousands of words. He defines them, he provides their use
(25:28):
in a sentence, which you know sounds like a spelling
be kind of thing, right, But that's how you know
what a word is, and the way you define a
word is to see how it's used. And if you
want to look at a word that you don't know
or that other people don't know, you have to show
how it has been used in the past. And that's
where his collection of books comes in, super handy.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, and eventually you'll hear a couple of different counts
of this. But eventually Murray decides that he has to
meet his most valuable contributor. And this comes to a
head in eighteen ninety seven. There's an event they're gonna
hold called the Great Dictionary Dinner, and Murray is very
(26:11):
much looking forward to meeting his mysterious again, most prolific,
most accurate correspondent. But the guy doesn't show up.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah. So, I mean they've been working on this dictionary,
they put all this work into it, They have all
these different contributors, they have people they rely on greatly.
I mean think of this as the you know on Wikipedia,
the people who have the verified accounts yelp, the super
or whatever yelp or you know, like he's one of
the insiders. And he's invited, we're told, and he doesn't
(26:39):
show up.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Right, And so Minor says you know what, I'm going
to be the change. I'm going to go visit this guy.
So he travels to broad More and he sees this.
We can paint the scene here. He sees this huge
Victorian mansion, and he's justifying those assumptions, right, they feel
like they're being very I was just okay.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Well yeah, I mean he'd never been there. The story
goes that he thought, so he had this address, and
so he thinks like, okay, like this must be where
a professor lives or a doctor, a medical man. Yeah,
a nice house. So he shows up and he sees
this massive institution. He says, huh, I thought I was
going to someone's house. This is an institution.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
I guess he's mailing me from his office.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Yeah, he's probably the director or something like that.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Right, So he so he started to realize things are
a little wonky, and he's just finding the most plausible
explanation he can for it. And like you say, Christopher,
he thinks, okay, well, this guy is a director of
this asylum. Because you could see the side. He knows
it's an asylum.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
No, yeah, and you know it may even have lightning
bolts in the background or that's how I imagine that
when you happen upon an asylum and that you didn't
know was an asylum. Yes, thunder and lightning.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
We've all been there, and it's the storm begins and
you have to stay there for the night.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Right, the strings start rising and the fog starts rolling in.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Are clear so not done with Halloween.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
It's in me forever.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
So he goes to This is a true story, folks.
He goes into the asylum. He meets the director of
the asylum, and he assumes that the director of the
asylum is the famous and mysterious Doctor Minor. No, says
the director, the doctor is an inmate. Would you like
(28:29):
to see his rooms, to which Murray Murray says yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, yeah, sure to paint a picture for listeners and
ridiculous historians out there. At this point, what Doctor Miner
looks like is a little wise and fully bearded. I
would describe him as sort of a cross between Dumbledore.
There's a little bit of Dumbledore and a little bit
of Gandolf. Gandalf the white not the gray, because he's
(28:58):
got this like massive white beard. It was like very professorial,
but very learned looking, but clearly has been kind of locked.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Up for a while, Yeah, and has very In Professor
of the Madman, he is described as having very gentle
eyes that make him somewhat resemble portraits of Monette, Yeah,
which I thought I thought was poetic and very kind.
We do want to say there is one indication that
Murray had some inkling of something being wrong with doctor
(29:29):
Minor because a visitor from America in the late eighteen
eighties had thanked Murray for his kindness to poor doctor Minor.
He didn't really know.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
He knew something was up, and that's something. But yeah,
if you either Winchester book, you'll find that there's that
story which we've just recounted, which is kind of the
summarized and popularized version of events. Winchester really digs into
that and kind of calls into question how true it
is and or how true it is. As you mentioned,
(30:01):
there's some question about what Murray knew and when and
the time of events. And this story did come out
at the time, and I think was probably kind of
summarized and popularized by newspaperman at the time.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah. Yeah, they were writing about as it was occurring.
We do know, however, that when they finally did meet.
They became genuine friends for a long time, and Murray
would continue to visit Minor at the asylum.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Again, this is the sort of it's the sort of
relationship built on words and work and trust built that way.
So you could consider it a nineteenth century catfishing if
you want, but I don't see it that way. You know,
they saw the value in one another. Murray valued the
knowledge of Minor, and I think this is also a
good lesson. I don't know that the lesson was taken
(30:50):
at the time, but I think for us looking back,
it's a really valuable way to see that people who
are incarcerated, people who have mental conditions, people who are
struggling with debilitation, don't lose their value either to themselves,
to their friends, or to society. You can have a
mental breakdown, you can lose an aspect of your personality,
(31:12):
of your life. That doesn't mean you've lost your intelligence.
It doesn't mean you've lost the knowledge you've accrued over
the years. Again, we can also, you know, I feel
like films like A Beautiful Mind or these these sort
of other films can romanticize mental illness too and say
that it's a that it's it's a struggle that's got
to be overcome. It's a tricky line. I mean, it's
(31:35):
it's a it's a messy thing to deal.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
With, absolutely, and sometimes there are no clear answers for
how best to navigate the situation, especially back then, and
it's it just speaks, It speaks so highly to Professor
Murray's character that he doesn't reject this guy. He sees,
as you said, Christopher, the merit of Miner's work, and
(32:00):
he continues to visit him. He says, you know what,
nobody's perfect, but this guy is great at assembling these citations,
hunting stuff down for him. We need to keep them
in the game. And he spoke very highly of Minor
for the rest of his life. In eighteen ninety nine,
he said, we could easily illustrate the last four centuries
(32:23):
from doctor Miner's quotations alone.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Yeah, I mean, his work was invaluable.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
His work was invaluable, and unfortunately his condition continued to worsen.
In nineteenh two, he began having delusions that he was
being abducted from his rooms at night and taken around
the world where he was forced to commit sexual assault
(32:52):
and because of this. During one delusional episode, he castrated himself,
which is a very messy thing. Luckily, you know, he's
a surgeon, so he at least knew enough new enough
to do it without killing himself, and his health continued
(33:12):
to worsen.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah, it's not the sort of thing that's going to
push your health into a better place.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
True, and Murray, his faithful friend, now not just a colleague,
begins a campaign on Miner's behalf and he says, this
guy's been locked up in here for decades. He's one
of the most important contributors to what I feel is
one of the most important books in the world after
the Bible. He's harmless. Can we let him out? And
so Minor is, by direct orders from Home Secretary of
(33:41):
Winston Churchill, released from the asylum in nineteen ten. He's released.
He's instantly deported back to the United States and he
lives at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, where he is officially diagnosed
with what at the time they called dementia praecox, which
was a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder that usually began in
(34:06):
the late teens or early adulthood. This term was gradually
eventually replaced by the term schizophrenia.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, so it's the kind of thing that he likely
was experiencing internally physically, and then was I don't know,
triggered or enhanced by his experiences in the war.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Right, exactly exactly. And in nineteen twenty doctor Minor passes
away in Hartford, Connecticut. He had been moved in nineteen
nineteen to a retreat for the quote elderly insane. James
Murray passes away in nineteen fifteen. And if you'll remember
(34:48):
from our earlier mention of the dictionary, the final results
of the Oxford English Dictionary were not published until nineteen
twenty eight. So neither doctor Minor nor Professor Murray ever
got to witness or direct, you know, they never get
to hold the book.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, their life's work. It literally was their life's work,
and they did not live to see it completion. I mean,
but that's the story of so many great accomplishments in
human culture. When you think about something like the Sigatta
Familia Cathedral in Barcelona that Gudi was working on it.
He died decades ago and it's still underway. You know,
(35:24):
it's I think it's admirable to think that you might
contribute something to human knowledge and to human culture, that
you will put a process in motion. And you know,
granted Murray, Murray thought it would just take a brief
period of time to wrap up this dictionary thing, put
a couple of words on a page, this that and
the other, and we're done. No, I mean we're talking
(35:45):
like it goes well into the twenties. But to set
something in motion that goes beyond yourself is something you know,
not a lot of us get to do. And learning
the stories of the people behind these contributions to society
is sovaluable because I mean you think about like the mathematicians,
for instance, the women who contributed to the NASA missions
(36:07):
that were written about in Hidden Figures and there was
a movie. Basically, it's super important for us to know
that everything we're talking about in history was accomplished through
human undertaking. You just got to decide to do something,
get past any structural roadblocks that are in the way,
but push forward, and I mean people can accomplish them
really great things.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, it calls to mind that old proverb, what is
it a society grows great when old men plant trees
who shade they know they shall never sit in Have
you ever heard that one?
Speaker 3 (36:38):
I haven't.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I like it. Yeah, it's and that's that's the kind
of inspiring noble thing. We know that the Oxford English
Dictionary is, in a very real way a guide post
for the entirety of the English language. And you know,
I think we misuse the world sometimes, but it's it's noble,
(37:01):
it's truly noble to be able to participate in something
of that that level of significance. And here's hoping that
we can all get a chance to create something like this.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
You know, that's that's a tall order, but we can try.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
What you don't want to. We're kind of dictionary with
me for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Do you tell me about your benefits? But what do
you what are you offering? Uh?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
You know, I I've got a I've got a special
on I guess special on Dorito's okay, because of my
relationship with Robert Evans on behind the Bastards.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Ben have you ever have you ever actually so, have
you accessed the ied digitally? Have you held a copy
of the book itself?
Speaker 1 (37:48):
I have?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah, I mean these things are massive, like the huge books,
so dense. The one now that are like the most
current one that was kind of set in stone in
the nineties has like five hundred thousand wars. I don't
know if you've seen this. Some friends of mine and
I a while ago gave a friend this as a
wedding present. But you can buy the entire Oxford English
(38:10):
Dictionary in a compressed version. So it's kind of like
the size of a big book, but it's it's in
two volumes, kind of hardbound, comes in a box, but
it's the whole thing in there. And it comes with
a magnifying glass. Yes, yes, yes, but it's so the
print is so small you've really got to get in there.
(38:30):
But it's it's all of it. I mean we're talking
like more than two million citations. Like, it's just it's
so dense.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
And the look that magnifying glass is not some cuty
marketing thing.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
You need it, oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
And I don't know how people will react to this story.
I'm fascinated by I find it inspiring, you know, and
I really appreciate what you said about mental illness not
negating somebody's value or their worth in the world. And
Chris there, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you
(39:02):
on this show this week. Thanks for coming back after
the first episode. I thought you might be done.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
No no, I stuck around this week, but yeah, if
you'll have me back, I'll happily be back. I do
want to mention one more thing about dictionaries just in general.
I think they're super cool, you know, and we talk
about these things that just sort of exist. But the
very first dictionary that we had in the English language
was put together in the sixteen hundreds, and it was
(39:27):
a product of cultural mixing. It was a product of
the Renaissance. It was a product of English incorporating so
many words from other languages, from French, from Latin, from Greek,
and from Hebrew. The first dictionary was really just a
guide to what at the time were weird words or
(39:47):
like a difficult one. So the very first dictionary is
back in the sixteenth and seventeenth century CE. They weren't comprehensive.
It was just like, Okay, everybody knows the words we use.
Here's a description of the hard ones.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
And I want to hear from some of the ridiculous
historians out there. Maybe you guys can comment on the
Facebook page because when I was growing up, when I
was using dictionaries, I always had that one friend who
would use the dictionary too to learn how to spell
a word, which always seemed crazy to me, because how
do you look up a word if you don't know
(40:23):
how to spell the word already. But I know, I know,
I'm not the only one who knows someone like that.
I think even in like in the in the Miracle Worker, right,
maybe someone in there uses the dictionary as a spelling guide.
But maybe maybe Keller herself. I don't know, but I
know I'm not the only one out there who's experienced this.
Does anyone out there do that? Or do you just
(40:44):
use it to define things? I've always used it to
define things.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
I've used it to define things. I guess you could.
You could use it to find the spelling word by
attempting to go through stumble through it. You've got to
getically yeah, get a guess pre autocorrect. So it's a
real pain man trying to look up words in English
Demander and Dictionary, just because of the different you know,
the idiograms versus the it's a whole thing. Yeah. So
(41:12):
I also want to add a request to ridiculous historians.
When this episode comes out, could you visit us on
our Facebook page and let us know some of your
favorite obscure words. We are enamored with strange, unusual and
anachronistic words, and it's no secret that the English language
(41:34):
is chock full of them. You know what I mean?
Do you have an obscure word that you like? Oh gosh,
I've been stuck in your head recently.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
You know. One of the nice things about working here
at How Stuff Works is you get to dive into
all sorts of weird stuff. And I did write a
piece for the website a year or so ago on
archaic insults, on words that we're insulting a while ago
and that today have fallen out of fashion. And I
think that was kind of brought to light by UH
(42:03):
by the time, our our president and the leader of
a certain nation on the Korean peninsula, where trading barbs
back and forth and U and people were like, what's
a dotard? And so so we decided to investigate not
only that, but a bunch of other words like slumgullion. Yeah,
(42:24):
I'm drawing a blankets.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
The other hedge's probably one.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Perhaps perhaps perhaps, but anyway, I mean all of this,
it just amounts to words, words. Words. We can post
a link on the on the Facebook page rights Historians.
I'll post a link to that article. You guys can
inform yourselves. And that does it for me. I mean,
unless you need anything else from me.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
No comet hang out. Let's go, let's go, let's go
hit the scene. And as we said, our trustee co
host Nol is out adventuring. But Christopher, you mentioned that
you're hoping he's just directly behind somebody.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Wait he should I turn Nol?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Hey, Noel, how's it going?
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Well, Hey, you guys, It's it's me Nol. I'm in
Los Angeles, in the in the in my hotel room
in the Hollywood Roosevelt, which apparently is where Marilyn Monroe died.
I've been watching the Haunting of Hill House alone in
this creepy hotel by myself at night. I think I'm
still kind of on East Coast brain haven't quite made
(43:25):
the switch yet, so I've been feeling like I've been
seeing some apparitions hovering around this really bougie canopy bed
that I'm that I'm in laying in right now, in fact,
podcasting to you find people. I'm really glad that Christopher
was able to sit in and talk about the Oxford
English Dictionary.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Sorry if I sounded a little out of it, I've
been I've been working late nights and getting up early,
and as far as I'm concerned, I don't even.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Know what time it is right now.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
But godspeed ridiculous historians to you and yours and Christopher
and Ben, and I'll see you on the flip side
if I return and don't get murdered by ghosts in
the night.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
And that's it for today. Christopher. I hope that you
make this a habit. I hope you return to shed
some more light on some of these strange stories of
human civilization. And I let you off easy this time, pal,
but next time I'd love to hear some more weird
cover songs.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Ben, I can do it for you. Hey, Thanks Ben,
Thanks Noel, Thanks Casey, you guys listening out there. Thanks,
thanks for having.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Me, and we'll see you again next week.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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