March 10, 2026 • 52 mins
As the Fox sisters became global superstars for their purported ability to speak with the dead, the Spiritualism movement became both a social phenomena and a booming business. Yet along with the rise of true believers and performing psychics, an army of skeptics and investigators rose as well... and the questions they asked eventually brought the entirety of the movement down. Join Ben, Noel, Max and returning special guest Jonathan Strickland (aka The Quizster) for the second part of this special two-part episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Knock knock, knock. Let's hear it
for our super producer, Dylan the Fox brother Fagan.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Oh yeah, love love your barbecue. That's another very Atlanta centric.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Referend narrow casting.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Oh we are, we are. Indeed, that's Noel Brown. They
called me Ben Bullen. We're welcoming back, returning guest brother
of ours friend slash nemesis of the show, the one
and only Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist, And I gotta say, man,
you were so well behaved in the first part of
(01:09):
this journey, utterly mellow.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
I mean to be fair, you guys. Every day I'm
getting closer to being able to hold the other half
of the conversation around spiritualism, you know, from the other side.
So it's just kind of put things into perspective.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
There we go. It'll do that depending on who's leading
the seance.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah. No, I think if you have ridiculous references to
science fiction films I've never seen, then you know, hey,
this is probably legit.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
There we go. Yes, Previously on Ridiculous History. We explored
the oft untold origin story of what is called the
spiritualism movement, which became a huge deal in largely English
speaking countries in the nineteenth and twentieth century. So please
(02:04):
check out part one where we left you. Spiritualism was
skyrocketing in popularity. Three people named the Fox Sisters became
sort of harbingers and precedents for many other self described
mediums to follow. Maybe we start here, guys noll you
(02:32):
remember in part one Jonathan made this fascinating and disturbing
point about spiritualism kind of surviving through personal grief.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well, sure, and just how powerful and rife for manipulation
the experience of grief can be.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, I know it's silly to quote, like a streaming
TV series about these sort of things. That's so you know, trivial,
But Wanda Vision the MCU thing had a great quote,
or I think it's a great quote, what is grief
but love persisting? And you think about that persistent love
(03:18):
like it's a horrible thing to think about of someone
exploiting a person's love and their loss, and yet it
is such an incredible opportunity if you are of the
unethical or a moral sort.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, that's a really good point, Johnathan, because so often
we see love being weaponized and like honeypot type traps
for example, in you know, spy scenarios where someone will
prey on an individual's either romantic love or lust or
what have you. But you know, we heard so many
horror stories about people being manipulated through you know, false
(03:59):
showing affection, and this is the inverse of that, or
it's the other side of that. Because the love persisting
for an actual you know, a child or a sibling
or you know, a partner, you can just as easily
glom on and capitalize on that.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And we're at a stage in the United States history
mid nineteenth century where a massive event is going to
impact the entire nation. And compound this situation where feelings
are running super high and there is sadly the great
(04:38):
tragedy of thousands upon thousands of lives.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Right yeah, in one of the worst named wars ever,
the US finds itself divided in something called the Civil
War from eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five. Despite
being just a few years long. This it is a
terrible event for the nation. It's a real reckoning, so
(05:06):
many people die. This means that spiritualism doesn't just survive
during this period, it thrives. And it may sound ghoulish,
but as we pointed out here, families on both sides
of that war encountered heartbreaking losses of children, spouses, parents, friends.
So people want this explanation. We're desperately clinging to the
(05:29):
idea that our loved ones are not really gone.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
And I'm sure there are individuals who genuinely wanted to
give comfort to others, who were not trying to exploit, people,
who were actually attempting to make other families feel whole again.
But those few people with good intentions may have been
(05:54):
outnumbered by those who just saw opportunity to make some money.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Well said, And you know, since we're telling the truth
playing here, I can't help but draw a tangential comparison
to the way the pandemic lockdown was very good for
the podcast business.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
To the point where everybody had one, to the.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Point where everybody had one.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
People talking about boom time.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Hey, yeah, hey, y'all, do you remember do you remember
back when you started podcasting and the average person had
not even understood what a podcast was.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And there were dozens, maybe hundreds, but certainly not you know,
countless millions that we had. Yeah, absolutely immeasurable. That's funny though,
because boom time does imply sort of like everyone's making
you know, money handover fist doing this, and certainly that's
not the case with podcasting exactly because there's a lot
(06:50):
of them doesn't mean everyone's successful. But in the boom
time of spiritualism, there was certainly a lot of money
being made.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Absolutely, And it's interesting this differentiates it from so many
other spiritual or religious movements because during the boom years,
during the halcyon age of spiritualism, there was very little
in the way of canonical text or formal organization. Spiritualism
(07:18):
instead was more intellectual salon scientific pursuit stuff. You would
see publications in trades or in magazines. You would have
what we call trance lecturers who went on quite lucrative tours,
and then you would have the performances of mediums. There's
an interesting socioeconomic thing that occurs here as well. Spiritualism
(07:43):
is inherently tied to progressive causes that are inarguably really
good ideas, like the abolition of slavery or giving female
identifying people the right to vote.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, you cannot just wholeheartedly dismiss spiritualism as a mistake
or a bad movement when there are these other elements
that are involved. You know, it's one of those things
where getting that big picture look is important to have
(08:17):
a full understanding and appreciation of what the world was
going through, largely the English speaking world. As Ben has mentioned,
like the spiritualism was very much a prominent thing in
the UK and the United States.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Well, couldn't we lump in just things like fortune telling
and in tarot card reading and tea leave reading and
all that stuff kind of in this movement.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I certainly would. But I also am very good friends
with a witch identifying person, and so please don't let
her hear this episode.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Well no, But my point is that I don't think
there's anything wrong at all with people who do tararo
or oracle cards or you know, astrology or things like that,
because I don't know, I feel like you kind of
know what you're signing up for if you're paying someone
to read your cards or read your charts or whatever.
What we're talking about here is something that's much more
(09:09):
in the city predatory focused and predatory.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Predatory is a good word. Yeah, we know. For instance,
we'll give you one example of a very popular lecturer
around this time, right before the Civil War. There's a
person known as Cora Hatch or Cora L. V. Scott,
and I think her story really speaks to the baked
(09:34):
in prejudice of the time. So her audience would see
her and during her speaker time, she was a pretty young,
vivacious kind of person. So these audiences would show up
in the hundreds and they would say, look at this,
look at this absolute smoke show. How is she so
(09:57):
young and so beautiful yet speaks with such eloquence. In
other words, they expected her to be dumb as rocks,
and they because she did not sound knuckleheaded, they said, oh, well,
the only explanation.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Is that, uh, we're not wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Spirits are real and the smart guys are speaking through
uh this beautiful dumb person.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah. It reminds me of how some people use the
phrase well spoken, in a sense that when you hear it,
depending upon whom it's being applied to, your thinking you're
sounding kind of racist.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Did I just say that to you?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Like it's like, man, you sure talk talk good for
a woman You've never never articulated, You've never said that
to me, Ben, Thank goodness, but good on Cora Hatch though.
For I mean, there are certain aspects of society that
I'm totally okay with taking advantage of, and that's one
of them. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about me. There is like, yeah,
(10:59):
capitalize on all these dumb dums thinking that you're only
smart because there are spirits moving through you, you know,
like take take their money.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
It is. I mean, like we talked in the last
episode about how the Fox Sisters became kind of a
diversion and entertainment for the upper crust, and there is
a certain element of eat the rich that appeals to
me with that, Like it's not like they're preying upon
impoverished people who are grieving. If it becomes like a
(11:28):
parlor show, it's the people who can afford to go
that are.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Really Sadly though, as things like this get democratized and
more popular than you are going to start seeing people
that are trying to find their niche and that may
well be you know, taking from the less.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Are we talking about podcasts again, because maybe we.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Come on all right, we're moving on, all right, This
during this era, we also see very successful folks like
Asha W's or Paschelle Beverly Randolph, both of whom are
fascinating enough to be their own episodes. Essentially to Uh,
(12:10):
it's your earlier point about democratization and scale. If you
are the average American during this time, maybe you cannot
afford to go to a seance or to commission a medium,
but you cannot get away from conversations about this stuff.
It's similar to the success of television shows like Seinfeld, Friends,
(12:33):
Game of Thrones, or Lost. This is what people talk
about constantly.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I guess what I'm getting at, too, is like everyone
can't be the top dollar earning medium. There's got to
be some bargain basement ones coming into the mix, taking
advantage of different markets.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, you want to aim for the middle. You want
the media medium in order to really.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
You know, medium at large, medium at large.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
If you need to hear the rest of that joke,
you've heard the punchline already, but listen to the first episode.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Uh help.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Yeah, I was, yeah, I was thinking that that this
is that there were people who were suffering profound grief
who were preyed upon by unethical people. Who who saw
the opportunity there, right, uh, and in you can see
this also in other forms of supernatural occupations, like dowsers,
(13:36):
for example, where you have someone who has a definitive
need and someone.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Else's susters referring to the wielders of these special sticks
that could find you water, yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Or oil or you know, all sorts of different things.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Right, Like if you're in it's a little bit hand
in hand with snake oil type stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Well, again, like you've identified something that people have a
need for. And in the case of mediums, it's often
grief that you're looking to exploit, but there can be
other things too, Like let's say that someone passes away
and they were rumored to be in possession of a
(14:14):
great fortune, but no one knows where that is. Well,
now you have greed playing a part, right, And if
you have someone who's like, oh, I can give these
people hope that they can find this alleged fortune, they
can take advantage of that as well. So these are
things that we see repeated throughout history. The spiritualism movement,
(14:35):
I think is a great way of looking at it
in a sort of a microcosm of because it's so
well defined, but that same activity happens today where you
have people who identify, all right, let's go after the
basest instincts of humanity greed, fear, grief, which isn't I
would argue base, but same sort of thing. And by
(14:57):
targeting that, we know that people are more likely to
go along with whatever your scheme is.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Absolutely, you know, we see this then as now, same
as it ever was. As the old song says, we
also know that in the heyday of spiritualism, there, of
course there was constant talk, but constant talk is not
always inherently complementary. So even from the jump from way
(15:29):
back in the Rochester days, there were ardent critics of spiritualism.
Eventually their arguments I wouldn't even call them arguments, their
observations win out and they lead to the fall of
this larger movement. First off, the money is great. For
(15:50):
a second, I love that concept of tmuse psychics because
the Fox Sisters are harbinger and they are precedent. They
create an industry. They say, look, you don't have to
churn butter or whatever people are doing. You can just
be a medium, you could be a psychic. You can
make a living.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
They're almost literally the poster children of the spiritualist movement.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
One hundred percent dude. And so now we see a
old school capitalism thing happening the marketplace for mediums, and
I am trying so hard not to compare this too
much to podcasting. The marketplace for mediums becomes increasingly competitive
and everybody has to have their own sticky right.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
It's it's oversaturated, oversaturated.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
So now you are walking down the street in the
late eighteen hundreds and you're saying, well, I've got two dollars,
why should I go see this one lady who just
knocks on stuff and wraps like her ghosts communicate through counting.
Next Tuesday, there's another medium in town and her ghost
(17:04):
actually write stuff down on little cards.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, or this one down the street can produce ectoplasm
and you won't believe where it comes from.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
We were talking about this a little bit off air,
folks to decide whether or not ectoplasms should be its
own episode. We are a Peach thirteen show, so do yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yeah, Well we'll leave out what I'm referencing because it's
just it's not appropriate.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
I believe it was covered in a South Park episode
as well, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
There's also you know, just the fact that cheesecloth in
and of itself is kind of gross.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, yeah, But this idea of creating various effects so
that you can stand out among the other mediums, I
mean that it did become competitive where spectacle became an
an anticipation, an expected element of a medium session. Right.
(18:04):
You wouldn't if you were to just go to someone
who was just like rolling their eyes a little bit
and then speaking in a slightly different voice, it might
not impress upon you that it's money well spent compared
to going someplace where the table appears to levitate an
inch off the ground at one point, and other such
(18:25):
effects which became commonplace in these And that also became
an inroad for people who were thinking that sounds like
that's not real to be able to investigate and say.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
You got yeah, the people who have to be the
fun police and come in and say, look, I love
a show. You know, I love a good time dinner
in a movie. Who doesn't? But I do want to
know whether or not you are acting in good faith.
This is where we see concurrent with the rise of
multiple self reported mediums. We see the rise of independent investigators.
(19:07):
These folks begin to notice a troubling pattern. Whether or
not the mediums under question really believe they're speaking with
ghost fraud is widespread. You see stuff like the Saber
Commission of eighteen eighty four to eighteen eighty seven. It's
out a pen and it started posthumously by this big
(19:32):
to do over at you pen. His name's Henry Siebert.
He believes that spiritualism is real, and so in his
will he creates funding for this commission to investigate it.
And now where the poor boffins, the sons of Sebert,
if you will, who have to investigate multiple so called mediums,
(19:55):
get this. They found evidence, provable evidence of fraud in
every single case they examined.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, which makes you think that if mediums, if any
of those mediums were you know, legit, that Sebert himself
would have a lot to say.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Right. So, spiritualisms creating famous mediums, it's also elevating famous skeptics.
You know, Jonathan, you and Nolan Dylan and I were
(20:32):
chatting through our notes a little bit off air, and
we see that this investigation of spiritualism and its claims
also ruined some friendships and made some enemies like Houdini
and Doyle.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah, yeah, Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So
to set the stage a bit, both men had suffered
tragedy in their lives that drew them towards spiritualism. It's
just their journeys took very different paths, and Houdini's case,
he never really got over the loss of his mother.
When his mother passed away, it deeply affected him. And
(21:12):
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's case, his son Kingsley perished during
the Great War, so what we would now call World
War One, but back then they didn't call it that
because they were still optimistic. And so they both had
suffered great loss, and they both turned towards spiritualism because
(21:32):
it offered the possibility of comfort and closure. But Houdini
began to come to the conclusion that in every instance
that he saw, as far as spiritualism was concerned, it
was a matter of fraud, and Doyle still saw the possibility.
And the reason why this ultimately led to the dissolution
(21:56):
of their friendship is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his
wife Jeane, was a medium and offered to do a
session to contact Houdini's mother. Gene would do automatic writing,
which is where you're just moving a pen around on
paper and then occasionally it seems to scribble out words and.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And Houdini read what was written supposedly by his mother
through Gene, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's wife, and his conclusion
was that his mother was not very fluent in English,
but the message was written in perfect English. And so
there came this confrontation of Houdini saying this is balderdash
(22:44):
and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saying, that's my wife. And
the friendship never recovered. And then years a few years later,
Houdini famously got punched to death and and in the
good yeah, and they never, they never was all their
differences and so this was like a friendship of two
(23:05):
like greats in history. Like I think kids today, even
if they've never seen or read anything about Houdini, have
heard the name like it's and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Like obviously, Sherlock continues to have a massive impact as
like every four or five years we get a new
(23:25):
adaptation of Sherlock Holmes or some spin off or something and.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Don't they realize how popular those Robert Downey Junior ones were? Yeah,
they made gazillion dollars. Some of those adaptations are good,
Yeah they are, I mean, particularly the Benedict Cumber Batcher.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah. And then you have, you know, these two people
who were legitimate friends and then really had a massive
falling out over spiritualism. That to me is a fascinating story.
It's also I mean, it's been depicted in books and
plays and things like that. It's not something that's like
a bit of minutia. I think. I think people who
are an interest in this are aware of that particular
(24:04):
relationship and how it fell apart. But to me, it's
just one of those tragic stories of two people who
were really suffering and struggling with their grief, having profoundly
different experiences when they were seeking a way to process that,
and how that could tear them apart.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And to be fair, Whodini was pretty strident. Wudini was
slightly yeah, not making the point that we made in
our first episode of this series. We agree that everybody's
belief should be your own, as long as you don't
foist it upon others. Houdini, however, a few months before
(24:46):
he got punched to death, was so hardcore about this
skepticism that he went before the US Congress and he said,
we should criminalize fortune telling for hire. Anybody who pretends
to in any way, how to put it, unite the separated,
should be treated as a criminal because they are either
(25:09):
diluted or they are grifters. And you thought most of
them were grifters. It's a shame to see such a
great romance break up in that way. But it is spelling,
you know, the fall of the movement, because there are
countless allegations of fraud, not just allegations, but proof of fraud. Right,
(25:29):
We're finding how the actoplasma is produced. We're finding how
the table appears to move.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah, wet wedging the table between your toe and your
and the palm of your hands so that you can,
by lifting your foot make the table levitate. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, So it seems so basic to us now, but
we have to understand the people who believed in this.
They were no smarter nor dumber than anybody living today.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
So I want to give a couple points that I
think back up what you're saying. Like, first of all,
remember that a lot of the people who are seeking
this out were motivated to believe, right, because to not
believe is to give up hope. And as Noel pointed
out very well in our first episode, hope is an
incredible motivator, right, and to abandon hope is just such
(26:20):
a dark concept we don't want to really pursue that.
And another point is that even scientists today can be
fooled by these things. And you might think, well that
that seems weird, because you'd be you know, science is
meant to be rational and logical and approach this in
a certain way. But science also typically does not anticipate
(26:45):
that whatever you're studying is trying to fool you, right,
So it can Scientists can sometimes overlook cases of fraud
because in their usual operations there's not an actual attempt
to mislead taking place, Which is why I think a
(27:05):
lot of magicians actually are much better at uncovering these
things than scientists are, because a magician's job is to
fool people, so they know how this works. They know
how the operations work in order to fool some It's
why people like Pendelette and tell Her are so good
(27:27):
at that kind of thing. James Randy was really good
at that kind of thing. These are our people whose
whole existence was about fooling people, and so they know
the tools of the trade and they can recognize when
other people are using it not to entertain but to exploit.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I think that's a great point. And wait for it,
well said.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh, thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
So no, it's the perfect way to put this right.
We see, we see the motivations of the people that
we would call the participants or the rubs or the marks,
but we also see the blind spot of a lot
of potential investigators, and the nail in the coffin, or
(28:16):
if we want, the final knock on the seance table
comes when the Fox sisters go forward in public and say, Whoopsie, hey,
there's a prank. It got away from us. We were
making up the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
It was funny when we started, and then it quickly
got to a point where if we were to admit
that we were manufacturing all of this, we were afraid
of what would happen.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Just like Looper, just like Lucaett.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
In eighteen eighty eight, Maggie and Kate Fox travel back
to the Big Apple and there a reporter offers them
a pretty significant sum of money for the time and
says we'll give you fifteen hundred dollars if you expose
your methods and you give me an exclusive on the story.
(29:11):
This leads to the public declaration that I would argue
ultimately sinks the movement.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, mister money bags, I would argue fifteen hundred dollars,
it's still significant. I don't know about you, but I mean,
if someone were to offer me fifteen hundred dollars, I'd
be like, Okay, let's talk for sure.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
We're also not paying Jonathan to be here.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
That's true. I haven't been paid in so long, guys.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
So Maggie in particular, Maggie Fox appears at the New
York Academy of Music on October twenty first, eighteen eighty eight.
Her sister, her younger sister Kate, is in the crowd,
and there are like two thousand people here. This is
where Maggie or Margaret, if you want to know're a
(29:58):
full Christian. This is where she demonstrates how those knocks
and wraps occur.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
She produces it.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
By cracking her joints, and she says, wait, my sisters
do this as well.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah. I think the toes in particular because they were
you know, under the table, couldn't really see them.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yeah, this is where we find out that spiritualism isn't
all it's cracked up to be.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Dut dut du du dut yourself out, sirry nice.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
It was nice being here.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
So in in just the span of like almost less
than a year. In eighteen eighty nine, Maggie recants her confession.
She signs this letter and says, essentially, my bad for
cereal spiritualism is OMG, it's so real. I was doing
(30:52):
this for a different reason, but I'm back on the team.
We think that happened due to social pressure and do
to financial woes, because at this point in time, it's
a lot like It's a lot like your favorite singer
songwriter saying, guys, music is BS. It's like Tom York
(31:15):
coming out and saying, I think guitars are made up.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Anyone can play guitar, he would say, and then.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
He comes back, or Tom York in this example comes
back and says, ah, no, I'm kidding. No one can
play guitar but me, And it's very important exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
I mean, you know, again, at this point We're talking
about decades of the spiritualism movement growing and evolving, and
entire people's livelihoods depending upon it, or or families that
have sought some form of closure or comfort and then
to be told, oh, it's all based on a lie.
(31:51):
Like you could see where people would turn on her
for multiple reasons, whether it was driven by greed or
by emotion turmoil, and why she might feel the pressure
to recant her confession because to do otherwise she could
be in financial peril, physical peril. She could just feel
(32:13):
terrible that people.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
She could also be responsible for toppling the entire industry
and so many other people depend on for their livelihood. Yeah,
you know, God knows that could lead to some serious,
you know action. She could be attacked or yeah, no,
it's scary stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Can you imagine if she had a Twitter account, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
A one account. I don't recognize that name. Does that
even exist anymore?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
You mean x dot com? The everything at all? Right?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Anyway, speaking of cesspools, the damage was done. We do
know that the Fox sisters continued on in their own
ways to try to do tours, try to do consultations.
They never quite achieved their previous fame and mediums overall
(33:06):
psychics oracles as a practice. They were here before the
spiritualism movement, so they continued. There are a lot of
self reported mediums that exist today, but the spiritualism movement,
their Spiritualist movement itself, never recovered. Society moved on to
new obsessions, new interests, indeed, new moral panics, and so
(33:30):
far as we can tell, as we record Thursday, February
twenty sixth, twenty twenty six, no one has spoken to
a ghost that we know of, that we know of
or maybe ghosts are just like snooty to us, you guys.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, I mean like I love. I said in the
first episode that when I was in elementary school I
read up on all these things. I still love the
idea of ghosts and ghosts or are still some of
my favorite stories of all time ghost in the horror genre,
of which I am a major fan, ghost stories are
(34:08):
my absolute that's peak for me for horror. Like some
people love slasher movies, some people love gore movies. For me,
it's a ghost story. If it's a well made ghost story,
I am in and so it still speaks to me.
Even though I do not personally believe in ghosts and
have never spoken to one, at least not knowingly. Maybe
(34:31):
it overheard me, but I didn't know about it. And
I still love a good ghost story. I just don't.
I just don't believe in them.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I'm also a big horror fan, and I know you
and I have some philosophical differences in how much unfounded
belief we will allow into our lives. To you, I
would respond, Jonathan Strickland, aren't you already a ghost and
your body is just a house haunt?
Speaker 3 (35:00):
No, I'm just I'm haunting a meat sack if anyone
is curious. One of my favorite ghost movies is a
classic nineteen eighty ghost film, The Changeling with George C. Scott.
First two acts are incredible. The third act goes bananas.
But for the first two acts of that movie, I
(35:22):
could not be happier. The third act does get super
duper crazy, and I go with it because I've already
enjoyed the first two acts. But yeah, if you haven't
seen The Changeling, seek it out.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
I always confuse that one with The Yearling, which is
the one about the small horses.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Well, and there's also a movie called Changeling, not the Changeling, right,
So there's there's lots of things you can confuse it with, but.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I'll check it out. That's good, Yeah, we'll check it out.
We also have to we also want to end on well,
first off, folks, thank you for joining us, humans and
spirits alike. We wanted to end on one fair point
in the interest of objectivity.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
This is a.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Bit of a quandary. I think it's a pickle for
all of us. A real bag of badgers. So far
as we can tell, this movement was a bunch of
flim flam. But was it all bad?
Speaker 4 (36:17):
You know?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Like some of the most notable figures in the spiritualism
or spiritualist movement, they used their fame to advocate for
genuine social change. A lot of these most prominent people
were women in a society that would typically ignore them,
so they had a path to power by saying, look,
(36:39):
it's not me because you guys hate women. It's the
spirits who say that slavery is bad. It's the spirits
who say that everyone should vote. And somebody in the
back was like, are those spirits dudes? And she said, yeah,
I don't know. I think is something positive to take
(37:02):
from this, I.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Think so, I like overall I would if I were
to weigh this in the great balance of positive versus negative,
I think we come down on negative more than positive.
But the positives are pretty profound, right Like whether or
not it moved the needle, at least it was something
(37:24):
that was pushing against the needle, right, So I I
have a conflicted feeling about this, you know, again, having
that love since elementary school of ghosts and stuff, when
I was a teenager, I had a love of the
skeptical side of the equation, and that's kind of where
(37:46):
I developed my worldview of critical thinking and skepticism and
things of that nature. So, since this is post transformation,
it is hard for me to reckon with the positive
of spiritualism. But it is impossible for me to deny
that there there were such positive outcomes or positive messaging.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
And maybe this is where we leave it because we
have so much more to explore regarding the role of
science and the supernatural. Regarding of course, ectoplasm. Look that
one up. Maybe not on your work computer. Uh, Noel,
I've got to commend Jonathan. I think you can join
me here as well. Of this gotta commend Jonathan for
(38:37):
keeping it together for two episodes.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
No self control a little bit.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Damn it, It's time, gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
More recent listeners. We're sorry, I'm sorry, this is happening.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Welcome one and all to the most cringe worthy segment
in all of podcasting, as I the quizt match wits
gainst these ne'er do wells, Ben and Nole and Quinn.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Now, when you did that joke at the top of
the first episode, he was coming for us the whole time.
Now it's true.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
This is I was biding my time, as it took
just a mere three hours out of my day to
be able to do this.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Jonathan Strickland, ak the quistor, you son of a gun.
You've returned once again to ridiculous history. Does our old
game still whole?
Speaker 3 (39:40):
It does? I shall present to you four scenarios, three
of which are true and one which I made up seats,
and tis your duty to determine which of the four
is the false one. And in this case I have
given you the story is about skepticism, debunking, and belief.
(40:03):
So four separate stories that tangentially relate to the topic
of discussion, and you will.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
We're not doing this as video yet, but I just
want everyone to know that I have laid back like
I'm on a fainting couch, just to make sure that
I can, you know, deal with that.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Once we get to video, I'm going to get one
of those fancy lights so I get a nice dark
red on me when I.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Quizzed from underneath.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yes, yeah, we've also almost paid off that grandfather clock.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Nice that we have to use. Nice. Yes, you will
have three minutes to discuss amongst yourselves which of the
four is the false one. If you need all three minutes,
you may you may sniff out the false one right away.
I will admit this time it was because I was
so interested in the topic, I didn't spend that much
time crafting a really good one. So so spoiler alert
(40:56):
on that, and here we go Scenario number one. Lucian
of Samosata was an early, very early skeptic. He was
born sometime around one hundred and twenty five in the
Common era in Syria. He was known to be quite
the smartass, with works that contained heaps of sarcasm. Lucian
(41:18):
didn't shy away from calling out fraud and superstition and
His works include The Dialogues of the Gods, a collection
of satirical pieces about the Greek pantheon. But my favorite
target of his was Alexander, a Greek man who styled
himself a mystic and oracle. Lucian described him as a
fraud and thief. Moreover, he claims that Alexander would regularly
(41:42):
rile up his followers to go put the hurt on
anyone whom he identified as being trouble. Lucian's work exposed
Alexander as a false prophet, a label I suspect Lucian
would apply to all prophets. Scenario the second. In eighteen
thirty six, Edgar Allan Poe penned an essay titled Meltzel's
(42:06):
Chess Player. This piece set out to debunk the famous
mechanical Turk Device, an automaton that appeared to play chess.
It was originally built by Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kippelin
de pasmand a century earlier Johann well done, thank you.
Johann Wolffi wasn't really that interested in presenting his invention
(42:28):
as the genuine article, but after his death, subsequent owners
were not so scrupulous. Meltzel would present the device as
an actual chess playing automaton capable of winning most chess games.
Poe suspected that a person was inside the device doing
all the playing, though his reasoning was a bit off.
(42:49):
Poe believed that because the turk would occasionally lose again,
there had to be a human controlling it, because machines
would always play perfectly Scenario number three. Back in eighteen sixty,
Jules Vern wrote a novel titled Paris in the twentieth Century.
It was set in gay Paris in nineteen sixty one
(43:12):
century in Verne's future. It would not see publication until
nineteen ninety four, having been initially suppressed and then sort
of just set aside. In the novel, Vern poses that
technological advancements will strip away superstition in Paris, revealing beyond
deniability that there is no supernatural element in the world.
(43:35):
As a result of machines doing all the work and
Parisians having a clear view of reality, people are free
to pursue their passions and Paris becomes the nexus of
expression and creativity. Vern appears to argue that opportunists who
depend upon naive and gullible followers are a major hurdle
for progress. Now, scenario number four, how about a tale
(43:58):
of debunking the debunkers. In his collection of works titled
The History of Spiritualism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was quick
to dismiss skeptics and critics of the spiritualist movement. In
his introduction, he went so far to say, and I'm
paraphrasing here that Frank Podmore cherry picked data points and
(44:19):
facts to support a skeptical view of mediums and such,
while he called Joseph McCabe's work that was titled Spiritualism
a Popular History an absolute quote unquote travesty because of
McCabe's insistence that various practitioners were in fact fraudsters. Doyle
thus makes his bias undeniably clear in the introduction of
(44:40):
his work. It's a bit of a blow for those
of us who thought of Doyle as a champion of rationality.
Those are your four scenarios. Gentlemen. You may ask me
a question if you wish, you have to preface your
question with I didn't think this one through. Obviously, you'll
need to preface your question with is that a knock?
I hear the door? And then you can ask me
(45:02):
start your time.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Okay, I'm running to our grandfather clock that we spent
way too much of our budget on. Okay, timers started.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Slam dunked it? Ben, jeez, Louise, let's see. I need
a rehash of the first one. Frankly, yes, if that's okay,
hold on, God a knock? Is that a knock? Guy?
Here upon the close? Okay? Thank you?
Speaker 3 (45:30):
All right, so you'll your quick synopsis. You have an
ancient Syrian skeptic, Lucien of Sammasata, who debunked a man
named Alexander who claimed to be a prophet, and proved
or attempted to prove through various writings that Alexander was
just a fraud who got his followers to beat up
(45:51):
anybody who said otherwise.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Okay't ben, is that a knock? I hear at the doors?
Speaker 3 (45:56):
Mister Bolin?
Speaker 1 (45:58):
All right? Uh, question for you, Quizzles, is out of
these four scenarios, are is the fake one totally fake?
Or does it combine elements of truth?
Speaker 3 (46:13):
I mean there are elements of truth, but the central
point is fake.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Okay, No, I think it's number one. I think it's
number one too, but I do just want to take
a minute to say that I really appreciated some of
the I don't know the content of these having so
much in common with what's going on in the world
right now, Like the the idea of Poe criticizing the
mechanical turk and saying that it has to be you know,
run by a human. That's like what's going on with
(46:40):
those Tesla bots bartending in the like, you know, being
being remote control from the room bartenders.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Yeah, there was a whole events where you know, there
were these Tesla robots tending bar and being waiters, and
it was presented as though they were fully automatic or
fully you know, self sufficient, but they were in fact
being remote controlled by people from a nearby.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Ipedal robots that included them dancing on the dance floor,
and it turned out that they were just sort of connected.
It was like motion capture in a way.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Mm hmm, exactly. Uh. And then there was another one,
the Jewels Vern one really reminded me of a lot
of the things that are going on right now in
terms of I don't know, just automation of everything, and like,
do you think what was his perspective again that it
(47:33):
was good, Yes, that like it would, it would.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
That without without the burden of work, without the burden
of work, and having superstition stripped away, it meant that
we were free to pursue whatever passions we might have
and not have to worry about the drudgery of day
to day life or being misled by someone who's preying
upon our baser instincts.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
We talked about that recently, ben on stuff that I
want you to know, because the only way that works
is in this kind of utopia fied version of that
scenario where everyone gets paid some sort of universal wage
and able to persist or subsist without working. And the
scene that we are, Yeah, we're at a place now
(48:15):
where it's not really designed that way because the folks
that are benefiting are the ones that are rolling out
all this technology without really thinking it through very well.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
And we are time we're locking it in. Okay, three
one one number one.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Sorry, gentlemen, you have picked the wrong answer, for there
really was a Syrian skeptic named Lucian of Samosata who
really did debunk a prophet, a so called prophet named Alexander,
and in fact, the only reason we really know anything
about Alexander at all is because of Lucian's smartass writings
(48:54):
about him.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Okay, but the pole thing is true. The thing is
absolutely true, is absolutely true, I remember.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Although he may have also plagiarized some of his work.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
I mean, can I just say, though, that the Lucian
thing threw me because I just assumed that everyone believed
in every prophet back then. You know that, like, what
was the metric with which you would use to quote
unquote debunk a prophet?
Speaker 3 (49:20):
He was he essentially was saying that that Alexander was
preying upon people's desire to believe. He was saying that
he was he was builking people out of money in
order to tell them things they wanted to hear. And
he was very much a skeptic about everything, not just
this prophet. I mean, he, like I said, he did
(49:41):
write a work that was a satire about a dialogue
of the gods of the Greek pantheon that he just
used to point out the absurdities inherent in the mythology.
So he was all about bringing down belief systems. Yes,
which one was the false one? Jules vern So here's
(50:04):
the thing. Paris in the twentieth century is an actual novel.
It was written in eighteen sixty. It was well or
initially it was suppressed, and then it was not pushed
toward publication until nineteen ninety four. We didn't get an
English edition until ninety six. But that story is very
different from the one I described. In this vision of
(50:26):
the future, there is a largely automated society, but everyone's
working in things like factories. No one has any ambition.
Art does not exist. The main character is someone who
wishes to be a poet, but there is no place
for poetry in this future. That everything is very utilitarian
(50:48):
and pragmatic. There's no music, there's no poetry, and so
it's a very grim view of the world. But there
is quite a bit that's predicted that does in fact exis,
you know, things like internal combustion engine vehicles, for example,
a part of the landscape of this story. So the
(51:08):
reason why it was suppressed is that his agent felt
it was too much of a bummer to.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
Put it to print.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
It's never stopped us, but I'll tell you what this
is the opposite of a bummer. Well played and I'm
not going to stress you on a technicality, but you've
you've won the day for today, which means you must
return again as Jonathan Strickland or as the Quister. Personally,
I like the first guy A little bit more like fifty,
(51:41):
A little sour, a little sweet. You like some hide
with your jekyl.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
I do, well.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
Thank you so much for joining us, folks. Big big
thanks to our guest super producer, Dyland Fagan. Big thanks
of course to you, Jonathan, big thanks to who else,
who else?
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Well, geez Ben, We've got Rachel the Big spin a Glance.
We've got Chris Frosciotis and he's Jeff goes here in spirit,
and I do believe we have the rude dudes over
ridiculous crime.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
And thanks to you as well, Noel, you and all
the ghosts Lollo Meet.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Thanks to you too, Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Knock knock, knock. Let's hear it
for our super producer, Dylan the Fox brother Fagan.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Oh yeah, love love your barbecue. That's another very Atlanta centric.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Referend narrow casting.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Oh we are, we are. Indeed, that's Noel Brown. They
called me Ben Bullen. We're welcoming back, returning guest brother
of ours friend slash nemesis of the show, the one
and only Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist, And I gotta say, man,
you were so well behaved in the first part of
(01:09):
this journey, utterly mellow.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
I mean to be fair, you guys. Every day I'm
getting closer to being able to hold the other half
of the conversation around spiritualism, you know, from the other side.
So it's just kind of put things into perspective.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
There we go. It'll do that depending on who's leading
the seance.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah. No, I think if you have ridiculous references to
science fiction films I've never seen, then you know, hey,
this is probably legit.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
There we go. Yes, Previously on Ridiculous History. We explored
the oft untold origin story of what is called the
spiritualism movement, which became a huge deal in largely English
speaking countries in the nineteenth and twentieth century. So please
(02:04):
check out part one where we left you. Spiritualism was
skyrocketing in popularity. Three people named the Fox Sisters became
sort of harbingers and precedents for many other self described
mediums to follow. Maybe we start here, guys noll you
(02:32):
remember in part one Jonathan made this fascinating and disturbing
point about spiritualism kind of surviving through personal grief.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well, sure, and just how powerful and rife for manipulation
the experience of grief can be.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, I know it's silly to quote, like a streaming
TV series about these sort of things. That's so you know, trivial,
But Wanda Vision the MCU thing had a great quote,
or I think it's a great quote, what is grief
but love persisting? And you think about that persistent love
(03:18):
like it's a horrible thing to think about of someone
exploiting a person's love and their loss, and yet it
is such an incredible opportunity if you are of the
unethical or a moral sort.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, that's a really good point, Johnathan, because so often
we see love being weaponized and like honeypot type traps
for example, in you know, spy scenarios where someone will
prey on an individual's either romantic love or lust or
what have you. But you know, we heard so many
horror stories about people being manipulated through you know, false
(03:59):
showing affection, and this is the inverse of that, or
it's the other side of that. Because the love persisting
for an actual you know, a child or a sibling
or you know, a partner, you can just as easily
glom on and capitalize on that.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And we're at a stage in the United States history
mid nineteenth century where a massive event is going to
impact the entire nation. And compound this situation where feelings
are running super high and there is sadly the great
(04:38):
tragedy of thousands upon thousands of lives.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Right yeah, in one of the worst named wars ever,
the US finds itself divided in something called the Civil
War from eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five. Despite
being just a few years long. This it is a
terrible event for the nation. It's a real reckoning, so
(05:06):
many people die. This means that spiritualism doesn't just survive
during this period, it thrives. And it may sound ghoulish,
but as we pointed out here, families on both sides
of that war encountered heartbreaking losses of children, spouses, parents, friends.
So people want this explanation. We're desperately clinging to the
(05:29):
idea that our loved ones are not really gone.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
And I'm sure there are individuals who genuinely wanted to
give comfort to others, who were not trying to exploit, people,
who were actually attempting to make other families feel whole again.
But those few people with good intentions may have been
(05:54):
outnumbered by those who just saw opportunity to make some money.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Well said, And you know, since we're telling the truth
playing here, I can't help but draw a tangential comparison
to the way the pandemic lockdown was very good for
the podcast business.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
To the point where everybody had one, to the.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Point where everybody had one.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
People talking about boom time.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Hey, yeah, hey, y'all, do you remember do you remember
back when you started podcasting and the average person had
not even understood what a podcast was.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And there were dozens, maybe hundreds, but certainly not you know,
countless millions that we had. Yeah, absolutely immeasurable. That's funny though,
because boom time does imply sort of like everyone's making
you know, money handover fist doing this, and certainly that's
not the case with podcasting exactly because there's a lot
(06:50):
of them doesn't mean everyone's successful. But in the boom
time of spiritualism, there was certainly a lot of money
being made.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Absolutely, And it's interesting this differentiates it from so many
other spiritual or religious movements because during the boom years,
during the halcyon age of spiritualism, there was very little
in the way of canonical text or formal organization. Spiritualism
(07:18):
instead was more intellectual salon scientific pursuit stuff. You would
see publications in trades or in magazines. You would have
what we call trance lecturers who went on quite lucrative tours,
and then you would have the performances of mediums. There's
an interesting socioeconomic thing that occurs here as well. Spiritualism
(07:43):
is inherently tied to progressive causes that are inarguably really
good ideas, like the abolition of slavery or giving female
identifying people the right to vote.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, you cannot just wholeheartedly dismiss spiritualism as a mistake
or a bad movement when there are these other elements
that are involved. You know, it's one of those things
where getting that big picture look is important to have
(08:17):
a full understanding and appreciation of what the world was
going through, largely the English speaking world. As Ben has mentioned,
like the spiritualism was very much a prominent thing in
the UK and the United States.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Well, couldn't we lump in just things like fortune telling
and in tarot card reading and tea leave reading and
all that stuff kind of in this movement.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I certainly would. But I also am very good friends
with a witch identifying person, and so please don't let
her hear this episode.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Well no, But my point is that I don't think
there's anything wrong at all with people who do tararo
or oracle cards or you know, astrology or things like that,
because I don't know, I feel like you kind of
know what you're signing up for if you're paying someone
to read your cards or read your charts or whatever.
What we're talking about here is something that's much more
(09:09):
in the city predatory focused and predatory.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Predatory is a good word. Yeah, we know. For instance,
we'll give you one example of a very popular lecturer
around this time, right before the Civil War. There's a
person known as Cora Hatch or Cora L. V. Scott,
and I think her story really speaks to the baked
(09:34):
in prejudice of the time. So her audience would see
her and during her speaker time, she was a pretty young,
vivacious kind of person. So these audiences would show up
in the hundreds and they would say, look at this,
look at this absolute smoke show. How is she so
(09:57):
young and so beautiful yet speaks with such eloquence. In
other words, they expected her to be dumb as rocks,
and they because she did not sound knuckleheaded, they said, oh, well,
the only explanation.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Is that, uh, we're not wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Spirits are real and the smart guys are speaking through
uh this beautiful dumb person.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah. It reminds me of how some people use the
phrase well spoken, in a sense that when you hear it,
depending upon whom it's being applied to, your thinking you're
sounding kind of racist.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Did I just say that to you?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Like it's like, man, you sure talk talk good for
a woman You've never never articulated, You've never said that
to me, Ben, Thank goodness, but good on Cora Hatch though.
For I mean, there are certain aspects of society that
I'm totally okay with taking advantage of, and that's one
of them. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about me. There is like, yeah,
(10:59):
capitalize on all these dumb dums thinking that you're only
smart because there are spirits moving through you, you know,
like take take their money.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
It is. I mean, like we talked in the last
episode about how the Fox Sisters became kind of a
diversion and entertainment for the upper crust, and there is
a certain element of eat the rich that appeals to
me with that, Like it's not like they're preying upon
impoverished people who are grieving. If it becomes like a
(11:28):
parlor show, it's the people who can afford to go
that are.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Really Sadly though, as things like this get democratized and
more popular than you are going to start seeing people
that are trying to find their niche and that may
well be you know, taking from the less.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Are we talking about podcasts again, because maybe we.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Come on all right, we're moving on, all right, This
during this era, we also see very successful folks like
Asha W's or Paschelle Beverly Randolph, both of whom are
fascinating enough to be their own episodes. Essentially to Uh,
(12:10):
it's your earlier point about democratization and scale. If you
are the average American during this time, maybe you cannot
afford to go to a seance or to commission a medium,
but you cannot get away from conversations about this stuff.
It's similar to the success of television shows like Seinfeld, Friends,
(12:33):
Game of Thrones, or Lost. This is what people talk
about constantly.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I guess what I'm getting at, too, is like everyone
can't be the top dollar earning medium. There's got to
be some bargain basement ones coming into the mix, taking
advantage of different markets.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, you want to aim for the middle. You want
the media medium in order to really.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
You know, medium at large, medium at large.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
If you need to hear the rest of that joke,
you've heard the punchline already, but listen to the first episode.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Uh help.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Yeah, I was, yeah, I was thinking that that this
is that there were people who were suffering profound grief
who were preyed upon by unethical people. Who who saw
the opportunity there, right, uh, and in you can see
this also in other forms of supernatural occupations, like dowsers,
(13:36):
for example, where you have someone who has a definitive
need and someone.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Else's susters referring to the wielders of these special sticks
that could find you water, yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Or oil or you know, all sorts of different things.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Right, Like if you're in it's a little bit hand
in hand with snake oil type stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Well, again, like you've identified something that people have a
need for. And in the case of mediums, it's often
grief that you're looking to exploit, but there can be
other things too, Like let's say that someone passes away
and they were rumored to be in possession of a
(14:14):
great fortune, but no one knows where that is. Well,
now you have greed playing a part, right, And if
you have someone who's like, oh, I can give these
people hope that they can find this alleged fortune, they
can take advantage of that as well. So these are
things that we see repeated throughout history. The spiritualism movement,
(14:35):
I think is a great way of looking at it
in a sort of a microcosm of because it's so
well defined, but that same activity happens today where you
have people who identify, all right, let's go after the
basest instincts of humanity greed, fear, grief, which isn't I
would argue base, but same sort of thing. And by
(14:57):
targeting that, we know that people are more likely to
go along with whatever your scheme is.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Absolutely, you know, we see this then as now, same
as it ever was. As the old song says, we
also know that in the heyday of spiritualism, there, of
course there was constant talk, but constant talk is not
always inherently complementary. So even from the jump from way
(15:29):
back in the Rochester days, there were ardent critics of spiritualism.
Eventually their arguments I wouldn't even call them arguments, their
observations win out and they lead to the fall of
this larger movement. First off, the money is great. For
(15:50):
a second, I love that concept of tmuse psychics because
the Fox Sisters are harbinger and they are precedent. They
create an industry. They say, look, you don't have to
churn butter or whatever people are doing. You can just
be a medium, you could be a psychic. You can
make a living.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
They're almost literally the poster children of the spiritualist movement.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
One hundred percent dude. And so now we see a
old school capitalism thing happening the marketplace for mediums, and
I am trying so hard not to compare this too
much to podcasting. The marketplace for mediums becomes increasingly competitive
and everybody has to have their own sticky right.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
It's it's oversaturated, oversaturated.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
So now you are walking down the street in the
late eighteen hundreds and you're saying, well, I've got two dollars,
why should I go see this one lady who just
knocks on stuff and wraps like her ghosts communicate through counting.
Next Tuesday, there's another medium in town and her ghost
(17:04):
actually write stuff down on little cards.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, or this one down the street can produce ectoplasm
and you won't believe where it comes from.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
We were talking about this a little bit off air,
folks to decide whether or not ectoplasms should be its
own episode. We are a Peach thirteen show, so do yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yeah, Well we'll leave out what I'm referencing because it's
just it's not appropriate.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
I believe it was covered in a South Park episode
as well, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
There's also you know, just the fact that cheesecloth in
and of itself is kind of gross.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, yeah, But this idea of creating various effects so
that you can stand out among the other mediums, I
mean that it did become competitive where spectacle became an
an anticipation, an expected element of a medium session. Right.
(18:04):
You wouldn't if you were to just go to someone
who was just like rolling their eyes a little bit
and then speaking in a slightly different voice, it might
not impress upon you that it's money well spent compared
to going someplace where the table appears to levitate an
inch off the ground at one point, and other such
(18:25):
effects which became commonplace in these And that also became
an inroad for people who were thinking that sounds like
that's not real to be able to investigate and say.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
You got yeah, the people who have to be the
fun police and come in and say, look, I love
a show. You know, I love a good time dinner
in a movie. Who doesn't? But I do want to
know whether or not you are acting in good faith.
This is where we see concurrent with the rise of
multiple self reported mediums. We see the rise of independent investigators.
(19:07):
These folks begin to notice a troubling pattern. Whether or
not the mediums under question really believe they're speaking with
ghost fraud is widespread. You see stuff like the Saber
Commission of eighteen eighty four to eighteen eighty seven. It's
out a pen and it started posthumously by this big
(19:32):
to do over at you pen. His name's Henry Siebert.
He believes that spiritualism is real, and so in his
will he creates funding for this commission to investigate it.
And now where the poor boffins, the sons of Sebert,
if you will, who have to investigate multiple so called mediums,
(19:55):
get this. They found evidence, provable evidence of fraud in
every single case they examined.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, which makes you think that if mediums, if any
of those mediums were you know, legit, that Sebert himself
would have a lot to say.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Right. So, spiritualisms creating famous mediums, it's also elevating famous skeptics.
You know, Jonathan, you and Nolan Dylan and I were
(20:32):
chatting through our notes a little bit off air, and
we see that this investigation of spiritualism and its claims
also ruined some friendships and made some enemies like Houdini
and Doyle.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah, yeah, Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So
to set the stage a bit, both men had suffered
tragedy in their lives that drew them towards spiritualism. It's
just their journeys took very different paths, and Houdini's case,
he never really got over the loss of his mother.
When his mother passed away, it deeply affected him. And
(21:12):
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's case, his son Kingsley perished during
the Great War, so what we would now call World
War One, but back then they didn't call it that
because they were still optimistic. And so they both had
suffered great loss, and they both turned towards spiritualism because
(21:32):
it offered the possibility of comfort and closure. But Houdini
began to come to the conclusion that in every instance
that he saw, as far as spiritualism was concerned, it
was a matter of fraud, and Doyle still saw the possibility.
And the reason why this ultimately led to the dissolution
(21:56):
of their friendship is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his
wife Jeane, was a medium and offered to do a
session to contact Houdini's mother. Gene would do automatic writing,
which is where you're just moving a pen around on
paper and then occasionally it seems to scribble out words and.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And Houdini read what was written supposedly by his mother
through Gene, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's wife, and his conclusion
was that his mother was not very fluent in English,
but the message was written in perfect English. And so
there came this confrontation of Houdini saying this is balderdash
(22:44):
and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saying, that's my wife. And
the friendship never recovered. And then years a few years later,
Houdini famously got punched to death and and in the
good yeah, and they never, they never was all their
differences and so this was like a friendship of two
(23:05):
like greats in history. Like I think kids today, even
if they've never seen or read anything about Houdini, have
heard the name like it's and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Like obviously, Sherlock continues to have a massive impact as
like every four or five years we get a new
(23:25):
adaptation of Sherlock Holmes or some spin off or something and.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Don't they realize how popular those Robert Downey Junior ones were? Yeah,
they made gazillion dollars. Some of those adaptations are good,
Yeah they are, I mean, particularly the Benedict Cumber Batcher.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah. And then you have, you know, these two people
who were legitimate friends and then really had a massive
falling out over spiritualism. That to me is a fascinating story.
It's also I mean, it's been depicted in books and
plays and things like that. It's not something that's like
a bit of minutia. I think. I think people who
are an interest in this are aware of that particular
(24:04):
relationship and how it fell apart. But to me, it's
just one of those tragic stories of two people who
were really suffering and struggling with their grief, having profoundly
different experiences when they were seeking a way to process that,
and how that could tear them apart.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And to be fair, Whodini was pretty strident. Wudini was
slightly yeah, not making the point that we made in
our first episode of this series. We agree that everybody's
belief should be your own, as long as you don't
foist it upon others. Houdini, however, a few months before
(24:46):
he got punched to death, was so hardcore about this
skepticism that he went before the US Congress and he said,
we should criminalize fortune telling for hire. Anybody who pretends
to in any way, how to put it, unite the separated,
should be treated as a criminal because they are either
(25:09):
diluted or they are grifters. And you thought most of
them were grifters. It's a shame to see such a
great romance break up in that way. But it is spelling,
you know, the fall of the movement, because there are
countless allegations of fraud, not just allegations, but proof of fraud. Right,
(25:29):
We're finding how the actoplasma is produced. We're finding how
the table appears to move.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah, wet wedging the table between your toe and your
and the palm of your hands so that you can,
by lifting your foot make the table levitate. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, So it seems so basic to us now, but
we have to understand the people who believed in this.
They were no smarter nor dumber than anybody living today.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
So I want to give a couple points that I
think back up what you're saying. Like, first of all,
remember that a lot of the people who are seeking
this out were motivated to believe, right, because to not
believe is to give up hope. And as Noel pointed
out very well in our first episode, hope is an
incredible motivator, right, and to abandon hope is just such
(26:20):
a dark concept we don't want to really pursue that.
And another point is that even scientists today can be
fooled by these things. And you might think, well that
that seems weird, because you'd be you know, science is
meant to be rational and logical and approach this in
a certain way. But science also typically does not anticipate
(26:45):
that whatever you're studying is trying to fool you, right,
So it can Scientists can sometimes overlook cases of fraud
because in their usual operations there's not an actual attempt
to mislead taking place, Which is why I think a
(27:05):
lot of magicians actually are much better at uncovering these
things than scientists are, because a magician's job is to
fool people, so they know how this works. They know
how the operations work in order to fool some It's
why people like Pendelette and tell Her are so good
(27:27):
at that kind of thing. James Randy was really good
at that kind of thing. These are our people whose
whole existence was about fooling people, and so they know
the tools of the trade and they can recognize when
other people are using it not to entertain but to exploit.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I think that's a great point. And wait for it,
well said.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh, thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
So no, it's the perfect way to put this right.
We see, we see the motivations of the people that
we would call the participants or the rubs or the marks,
but we also see the blind spot of a lot
of potential investigators, and the nail in the coffin, or
(28:16):
if we want, the final knock on the seance table
comes when the Fox sisters go forward in public and say, Whoopsie, hey,
there's a prank. It got away from us. We were
making up the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
It was funny when we started, and then it quickly
got to a point where if we were to admit
that we were manufacturing all of this, we were afraid
of what would happen.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Just like Looper, just like Lucaett.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
In eighteen eighty eight, Maggie and Kate Fox travel back
to the Big Apple and there a reporter offers them
a pretty significant sum of money for the time and
says we'll give you fifteen hundred dollars if you expose
your methods and you give me an exclusive on the story.
(29:11):
This leads to the public declaration that I would argue
ultimately sinks the movement.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, mister money bags, I would argue fifteen hundred dollars,
it's still significant. I don't know about you, but I mean,
if someone were to offer me fifteen hundred dollars, I'd
be like, Okay, let's talk for sure.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
We're also not paying Jonathan to be here.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
That's true. I haven't been paid in so long, guys.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
So Maggie in particular, Maggie Fox appears at the New
York Academy of Music on October twenty first, eighteen eighty eight.
Her sister, her younger sister Kate, is in the crowd,
and there are like two thousand people here. This is
where Maggie or Margaret, if you want to know're a
(29:58):
full Christian. This is where she demonstrates how those knocks
and wraps occur.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
She produces it.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
By cracking her joints, and she says, wait, my sisters
do this as well.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah. I think the toes in particular because they were
you know, under the table, couldn't really see them.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yeah, this is where we find out that spiritualism isn't
all it's cracked up to be.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Dut dut du du dut yourself out, sirry nice.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
It was nice being here.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
So in in just the span of like almost less
than a year. In eighteen eighty nine, Maggie recants her confession.
She signs this letter and says, essentially, my bad for
cereal spiritualism is OMG, it's so real. I was doing
(30:52):
this for a different reason, but I'm back on the team.
We think that happened due to social pressure and do
to financial woes, because at this point in time, it's
a lot like It's a lot like your favorite singer
songwriter saying, guys, music is BS. It's like Tom York
(31:15):
coming out and saying, I think guitars are made up.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Anyone can play guitar, he would say, and then.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
He comes back, or Tom York in this example comes
back and says, ah, no, I'm kidding. No one can
play guitar but me, And it's very important exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
I mean, you know, again, at this point We're talking
about decades of the spiritualism movement growing and evolving, and
entire people's livelihoods depending upon it, or or families that
have sought some form of closure or comfort and then
to be told, oh, it's all based on a lie.
(31:51):
Like you could see where people would turn on her
for multiple reasons, whether it was driven by greed or
by emotion turmoil, and why she might feel the pressure
to recant her confession because to do otherwise she could
be in financial peril, physical peril. She could just feel
(32:13):
terrible that people.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
She could also be responsible for toppling the entire industry
and so many other people depend on for their livelihood. Yeah,
you know, God knows that could lead to some serious,
you know action. She could be attacked or yeah, no,
it's scary stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Can you imagine if she had a Twitter account, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
A one account. I don't recognize that name. Does that
even exist anymore?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
You mean x dot com? The everything at all? Right?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Anyway, speaking of cesspools, the damage was done. We do
know that the Fox sisters continued on in their own
ways to try to do tours, try to do consultations.
They never quite achieved their previous fame and mediums overall
(33:06):
psychics oracles as a practice. They were here before the
spiritualism movement, so they continued. There are a lot of
self reported mediums that exist today, but the spiritualism movement,
their Spiritualist movement itself, never recovered. Society moved on to
new obsessions, new interests, indeed, new moral panics, and so
(33:30):
far as we can tell, as we record Thursday, February
twenty sixth, twenty twenty six, no one has spoken to
a ghost that we know of, that we know of
or maybe ghosts are just like snooty to us, you guys.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, I mean like I love. I said in the
first episode that when I was in elementary school I
read up on all these things. I still love the
idea of ghosts and ghosts or are still some of
my favorite stories of all time ghost in the horror genre,
of which I am a major fan, ghost stories are
(34:08):
my absolute that's peak for me for horror. Like some
people love slasher movies, some people love gore movies. For me,
it's a ghost story. If it's a well made ghost story,
I am in and so it still speaks to me.
Even though I do not personally believe in ghosts and
have never spoken to one, at least not knowingly. Maybe
(34:31):
it overheard me, but I didn't know about it. And
I still love a good ghost story. I just don't.
I just don't believe in them.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I'm also a big horror fan, and I know you
and I have some philosophical differences in how much unfounded
belief we will allow into our lives. To you, I
would respond, Jonathan Strickland, aren't you already a ghost and
your body is just a house haunt?
Speaker 3 (35:00):
No, I'm just I'm haunting a meat sack if anyone
is curious. One of my favorite ghost movies is a
classic nineteen eighty ghost film, The Changeling with George C. Scott.
First two acts are incredible. The third act goes bananas.
But for the first two acts of that movie, I
(35:22):
could not be happier. The third act does get super
duper crazy, and I go with it because I've already
enjoyed the first two acts. But yeah, if you haven't
seen The Changeling, seek it out.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
I always confuse that one with The Yearling, which is
the one about the small horses.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Well, and there's also a movie called Changeling, not the Changeling, right,
So there's there's lots of things you can confuse it with, but.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I'll check it out. That's good, Yeah, we'll check it out.
We also have to we also want to end on well,
first off, folks, thank you for joining us, humans and
spirits alike. We wanted to end on one fair point
in the interest of objectivity.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
This is a.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Bit of a quandary. I think it's a pickle for
all of us. A real bag of badgers. So far
as we can tell, this movement was a bunch of
flim flam. But was it all bad?
Speaker 4 (36:17):
You know?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Like some of the most notable figures in the spiritualism
or spiritualist movement, they used their fame to advocate for
genuine social change. A lot of these most prominent people
were women in a society that would typically ignore them,
so they had a path to power by saying, look,
(36:39):
it's not me because you guys hate women. It's the
spirits who say that slavery is bad. It's the spirits
who say that everyone should vote. And somebody in the
back was like, are those spirits dudes? And she said, yeah,
I don't know. I think is something positive to take
(37:02):
from this, I.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Think so, I like overall I would if I were
to weigh this in the great balance of positive versus negative,
I think we come down on negative more than positive.
But the positives are pretty profound, right Like whether or
not it moved the needle, at least it was something
(37:24):
that was pushing against the needle, right, So I I
have a conflicted feeling about this, you know, again, having
that love since elementary school of ghosts and stuff, when
I was a teenager, I had a love of the
skeptical side of the equation, and that's kind of where
(37:46):
I developed my worldview of critical thinking and skepticism and
things of that nature. So, since this is post transformation,
it is hard for me to reckon with the positive
of spiritualism. But it is impossible for me to deny
that there there were such positive outcomes or positive messaging.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
And maybe this is where we leave it because we
have so much more to explore regarding the role of
science and the supernatural. Regarding of course, ectoplasm. Look that
one up. Maybe not on your work computer. Uh, Noel,
I've got to commend Jonathan. I think you can join
me here as well. Of this gotta commend Jonathan for
(38:37):
keeping it together for two episodes.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
No self control a little bit.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Damn it, It's time, gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
More recent listeners. We're sorry, I'm sorry, this is happening.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Welcome one and all to the most cringe worthy segment
in all of podcasting, as I the quizt match wits
gainst these ne'er do wells, Ben and Nole and Quinn.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Now, when you did that joke at the top of
the first episode, he was coming for us the whole time.
Now it's true.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
This is I was biding my time, as it took
just a mere three hours out of my day to
be able to do this.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Jonathan Strickland, ak the quistor, you son of a gun.
You've returned once again to ridiculous history. Does our old
game still whole?
Speaker 3 (39:40):
It does? I shall present to you four scenarios, three
of which are true and one which I made up seats,
and tis your duty to determine which of the four
is the false one. And in this case I have
given you the story is about skepticism, debunking, and belief.
(40:03):
So four separate stories that tangentially relate to the topic
of discussion, and you will.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
We're not doing this as video yet, but I just
want everyone to know that I have laid back like
I'm on a fainting couch, just to make sure that
I can, you know, deal with that.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Once we get to video, I'm going to get one
of those fancy lights so I get a nice dark
red on me when I.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Quizzed from underneath.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yes, yeah, we've also almost paid off that grandfather clock.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Nice that we have to use. Nice. Yes, you will
have three minutes to discuss amongst yourselves which of the
four is the false one. If you need all three minutes,
you may you may sniff out the false one right away.
I will admit this time it was because I was
so interested in the topic, I didn't spend that much
time crafting a really good one. So so spoiler alert
(40:56):
on that, and here we go Scenario number one. Lucian
of Samosata was an early, very early skeptic. He was
born sometime around one hundred and twenty five in the
Common era in Syria. He was known to be quite
the smartass, with works that contained heaps of sarcasm. Lucian
(41:18):
didn't shy away from calling out fraud and superstition and
His works include The Dialogues of the Gods, a collection
of satirical pieces about the Greek pantheon. But my favorite
target of his was Alexander, a Greek man who styled
himself a mystic and oracle. Lucian described him as a
fraud and thief. Moreover, he claims that Alexander would regularly
(41:42):
rile up his followers to go put the hurt on
anyone whom he identified as being trouble. Lucian's work exposed
Alexander as a false prophet, a label I suspect Lucian
would apply to all prophets. Scenario the second. In eighteen
thirty six, Edgar Allan Poe penned an essay titled Meltzel's
(42:06):
Chess Player. This piece set out to debunk the famous
mechanical Turk Device, an automaton that appeared to play chess.
It was originally built by Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kippelin
de pasmand a century earlier Johann well done, thank you.
Johann Wolffi wasn't really that interested in presenting his invention
(42:28):
as the genuine article, but after his death, subsequent owners
were not so scrupulous. Meltzel would present the device as
an actual chess playing automaton capable of winning most chess games.
Poe suspected that a person was inside the device doing
all the playing, though his reasoning was a bit off.
(42:49):
Poe believed that because the turk would occasionally lose again,
there had to be a human controlling it, because machines
would always play perfectly Scenario number three. Back in eighteen sixty,
Jules Vern wrote a novel titled Paris in the twentieth Century.
It was set in gay Paris in nineteen sixty one
(43:12):
century in Verne's future. It would not see publication until
nineteen ninety four, having been initially suppressed and then sort
of just set aside. In the novel, Vern poses that
technological advancements will strip away superstition in Paris, revealing beyond
deniability that there is no supernatural element in the world.
(43:35):
As a result of machines doing all the work and
Parisians having a clear view of reality, people are free
to pursue their passions and Paris becomes the nexus of
expression and creativity. Vern appears to argue that opportunists who
depend upon naive and gullible followers are a major hurdle
for progress. Now, scenario number four, how about a tale
(43:58):
of debunking the debunkers. In his collection of works titled
The History of Spiritualism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was quick
to dismiss skeptics and critics of the spiritualist movement. In
his introduction, he went so far to say, and I'm
paraphrasing here that Frank Podmore cherry picked data points and
(44:19):
facts to support a skeptical view of mediums and such,
while he called Joseph McCabe's work that was titled Spiritualism
a Popular History an absolute quote unquote travesty because of
McCabe's insistence that various practitioners were in fact fraudsters. Doyle
thus makes his bias undeniably clear in the introduction of
(44:40):
his work. It's a bit of a blow for those
of us who thought of Doyle as a champion of rationality.
Those are your four scenarios. Gentlemen. You may ask me
a question if you wish, you have to preface your
question with I didn't think this one through. Obviously, you'll
need to preface your question with is that a knock?
I hear the door? And then you can ask me
(45:02):
start your time.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Okay, I'm running to our grandfather clock that we spent
way too much of our budget on. Okay, timers started.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Slam dunked it? Ben, jeez, Louise, let's see. I need
a rehash of the first one. Frankly, yes, if that's okay,
hold on, God a knock? Is that a knock? Guy?
Here upon the close? Okay? Thank you?
Speaker 3 (45:30):
All right, so you'll your quick synopsis. You have an
ancient Syrian skeptic, Lucien of Sammasata, who debunked a man
named Alexander who claimed to be a prophet, and proved
or attempted to prove through various writings that Alexander was
just a fraud who got his followers to beat up
(45:51):
anybody who said otherwise.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Okay't ben, is that a knock? I hear at the doors?
Speaker 3 (45:56):
Mister Bolin?
Speaker 1 (45:58):
All right? Uh, question for you, Quizzles, is out of
these four scenarios, are is the fake one totally fake?
Or does it combine elements of truth?
Speaker 3 (46:13):
I mean there are elements of truth, but the central
point is fake.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Okay, No, I think it's number one. I think it's
number one too, but I do just want to take
a minute to say that I really appreciated some of
the I don't know the content of these having so
much in common with what's going on in the world
right now, Like the the idea of Poe criticizing the
mechanical turk and saying that it has to be you know,
run by a human. That's like what's going on with
(46:40):
those Tesla bots bartending in the like, you know, being
being remote control from the room bartenders.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Yeah, there was a whole events where you know, there
were these Tesla robots tending bar and being waiters, and
it was presented as though they were fully automatic or
fully you know, self sufficient, but they were in fact
being remote controlled by people from a nearby.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Ipedal robots that included them dancing on the dance floor,
and it turned out that they were just sort of connected.
It was like motion capture in a way.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Mm hmm, exactly. Uh. And then there was another one,
the Jewels Vern one really reminded me of a lot
of the things that are going on right now in
terms of I don't know, just automation of everything, and like,
do you think what was his perspective again that it
(47:33):
was good, Yes, that like it would, it would.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
That without without the burden of work, without the burden
of work, and having superstition stripped away, it meant that
we were free to pursue whatever passions we might have
and not have to worry about the drudgery of day
to day life or being misled by someone who's preying
upon our baser instincts.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
We talked about that recently, ben on stuff that I
want you to know, because the only way that works
is in this kind of utopia fied version of that
scenario where everyone gets paid some sort of universal wage
and able to persist or subsist without working. And the
scene that we are, Yeah, we're at a place now
(48:15):
where it's not really designed that way because the folks
that are benefiting are the ones that are rolling out
all this technology without really thinking it through very well.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
And we are time we're locking it in. Okay, three
one one number one.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Sorry, gentlemen, you have picked the wrong answer, for there
really was a Syrian skeptic named Lucian of Samosata who
really did debunk a prophet, a so called prophet named Alexander,
and in fact, the only reason we really know anything
about Alexander at all is because of Lucian's smartass writings
(48:54):
about him.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Okay, but the pole thing is true. The thing is
absolutely true, is absolutely true, I remember.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Although he may have also plagiarized some of his work.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
I mean, can I just say, though, that the Lucian
thing threw me because I just assumed that everyone believed
in every prophet back then. You know that, like, what
was the metric with which you would use to quote
unquote debunk a prophet?
Speaker 3 (49:20):
He was he essentially was saying that that Alexander was
preying upon people's desire to believe. He was saying that
he was he was builking people out of money in
order to tell them things they wanted to hear. And
he was very much a skeptic about everything, not just
this prophet. I mean, he, like I said, he did
(49:41):
write a work that was a satire about a dialogue
of the gods of the Greek pantheon that he just
used to point out the absurdities inherent in the mythology.
So he was all about bringing down belief systems. Yes,
which one was the false one? Jules vern So here's
(50:04):
the thing. Paris in the twentieth century is an actual novel.
It was written in eighteen sixty. It was well or
initially it was suppressed, and then it was not pushed
toward publication until nineteen ninety four. We didn't get an
English edition until ninety six. But that story is very
different from the one I described. In this vision of
(50:26):
the future, there is a largely automated society, but everyone's
working in things like factories. No one has any ambition.
Art does not exist. The main character is someone who
wishes to be a poet, but there is no place
for poetry in this future. That everything is very utilitarian
(50:48):
and pragmatic. There's no music, there's no poetry, and so
it's a very grim view of the world. But there
is quite a bit that's predicted that does in fact exis,
you know, things like internal combustion engine vehicles, for example,
a part of the landscape of this story. So the
(51:08):
reason why it was suppressed is that his agent felt
it was too much of a bummer to.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
Put it to print.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
It's never stopped us, but I'll tell you what this
is the opposite of a bummer. Well played and I'm
not going to stress you on a technicality, but you've
you've won the day for today, which means you must
return again as Jonathan Strickland or as the Quister. Personally,
I like the first guy A little bit more like fifty,
(51:41):
A little sour, a little sweet. You like some hide
with your jekyl.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
I do, well.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
Thank you so much for joining us, folks. Big big
thanks to our guest super producer, Dyland Fagan. Big thanks
of course to you, Jonathan, big thanks to who else,
who else?
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Well, geez Ben, We've got Rachel the Big spin a Glance.
We've got Chris Frosciotis and he's Jeff goes here in spirit,
and I do believe we have the rude dudes over
ridiculous crime.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
And thanks to you as well, Noel, you and all
the ghosts Lollo Meet.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Thanks to you too, Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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