Invention Playlist 4: Guillotine

It cuts heads off, but who invented it? Robert and Joe explore.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode is brought to you by Slack. Before there
was podcast, there was radio, Before that, the stage, and
before that. You get the idea. Things evolve, Technology changes,
and we do too. So now we can listen to
a show wherever, whenever. However, why should our work be
any different? Why can't we work with more freedom, more flexibility,

(00:22):
more choices. That's how Slack works. It's a digital headquarters
that works how you work, and Slack is where the
future works. Hello, Hello, Hi, Oh my god. I want
to come through the screen and hug you. Hey, everybody,

(00:42):
Jessica's are here, also known as Vanessa Abrams on Gossip Girl.
I am so excited to share my new podcast with
you guys. It's called XO XO and it's a walk
down memory lane all about Gossip Grow. I'll chat with
some of the cast crew fans of the show, and
I'm just so pumped for you guys to go on
this journey with me. All right, Made Westwick, I played
Chuck Bass Is this Michelle Tractonberg. I'll never tell. Okay,

(01:04):
I'm Taylor Mompson and I played Jenny Humphrey. Hi. I'm
smashon Stan and I played Carter Bison. That was one
of the reasons I liked the character Jenny so much
is that she was very relatable. The whole thing was
such a choice for me to do, and I was
just so thankful that people responded the way they did
to what we were doing. This really was just like wonderful.

(01:25):
I like have like warm feelings inside. I'm giving you
air hugs. Listen to XO XO on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Hello, Hey,
I don't know if you hurt, but my podcast Checking
It has been nominated for the end of a CP
Image Award in the category of Outstanding Lifestyle and Self

(01:49):
Help Podcast. I'm grateful for the nomination. I I almost
didn't even do a podcast because I was just wandering
there are thousands of podcasts out there and why is
my voice me it? But a nomination from the end
a CP lets me know that I made the right choice,
and I encourage you to do don't worry if there
are thousands of something else that you want to do.

(02:11):
No nobody has your sauce, so listen. You can still vote.
Go to vote dot a CP Image Awards dot net.
You have until February five, um nine pm Eastern Standard Time,
and please listen to my podcast. We're part of the
Black Effect podcast Network on the I Heart Radio app
or wherever you get your podcast. Thank you for checking in. Hey,

(02:48):
welcome to Invention. I'm Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And you might know Robert nine from our other show
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, our other show in the
house Stuff Works Network. But today you apparently you have
somehow wandered into our brand new Curiosity Store of Inventions,
where we explore human ingenuity for good, for ill, all

(03:09):
of the stuff that comes out of our imaginations and
becomes the technology we use every day or maybe just
read about in history books. Yes, the hallowed halls of technological, systematic,
and cultural invention, the very human machines, customs, and systems
that altered the course of history. And today we're talking
about one of the most useful inventions of all time.
It's got to be the and Robert, before I say it,

(03:31):
do you say it like a French guy's name, or
like what a fish breathes with? I go with guillotine
because it sounds a little more like an open face
sandwich that way, and also it has the the g
has more of a sound to it. Yeah, I like
how it sounds kind of like the minotar the guillotine.
But but apparently guillotine in English is also somewhat acceptable pronunciation.

(03:54):
I don't think there's a firm ruling one way or
another from the lords of English pronunciation. Now, one thing
is for certain as we we ventured into this world
of the guillotine. Beheadings themselves are just a time honored
way for one human being to kill another. It's a
wound that still can't be repaired, and it is, without questions,
certain death. Now, one thing I was thinking about to

(04:16):
illustrate this is what would you even say is the
quote cause of death in a beheading? So well, blood loss,
loss of oxygen to the brain. Basically, it just cuts off.
It cuts off your all your plumbing systems from all
of your your your thinking systems. Yeah, it makes it
makes you think about how often when you hear phrases
like clinically dead, that can refer to something about circulation,

(04:38):
like the cessation of the heartbeat. Um. But yeah, so
when you separate the head from the body, I guess
you've got to be really rigorous about what you mean
by dead, though I guess it also happens pretty quickly
so you don't have to worry about it too much.
But yeah, all the blood comes out of the head,
immediate loss of blood pressure, which means the brain can't
get oxygen, which means the brain can't work. Yeah, and
it's something that's just cemented in the athology as well, right,

(05:01):
I mean, you want to kill a vampire, you wanna
kill a medusa, you want to kill a highlander, what
do you do? You cut their head off? There is
something just supernaturally potent about this form of death. Well,
I think that's absolutely true. And you see that in
a lot of archaeological finds of beheadings from human history. Like,
here's a kind of strange fact. A lot of times
when you find beheaded humans from ages past, there appears

(05:24):
to be evidence that the people were beheaded posthumously. Why
did that happen? There are a lot of ways you
could explain it. I mean that you would take a
dead person and cut off their head. Maybe there's some
sort of ritual function going on here, might be a
human sacrifice, Maybe there's some kind of symbolic form of
justice being done, if it's the corps of a criminal

(05:46):
or an enemy or something. But a lot of times
it appears like it might be a form of apotropaic magic,
the kind of magic you would use to ward off
evil or bad spirits, in the same way that you
might find a skeleton from hundreds of yours ago with
an iron rod driven through its hard or with a
brick in its mouth, and say the tombs underneath Venice. Yeah,

(06:06):
there's like a dismantling of the both the individual that
that seems evident in these acts um, you know, And
we see acts of ritual decapitation dating back thousands of years.
For instance, there's evidence in Brazil that dates back to
at least nine thousand BC, and it's uh. In it
we find a human skull draped and amputated, hands palm

(06:28):
side down, covering the face as if as if in grief.
That's from place called Lapa Dosanto in in South America
and Brazil, and a lot of bones have been discovered there.
And it's not always easy to determine how to read
the intention behind what you see in these people. But
the yeah, there were all kinds of forms of of
apparently posthumous mutilation going on in the way these bones

(06:50):
are arranged. For example, sometimes you'll find skulls they're full
of finger bones inside the skulls. What was going on?
What made the will want to do that? It seems
like it may well have formed some kind of magical intention,
but what was it? Indeed, we can only guess now.
Another kind of significance that beheading has often had in

(07:11):
the ancient world was that it was one of the
many forms of execution practiced, of course in ancient Greece
and Rome. Uh. And in fact, our terms decapitation and
capital punishment both come from the Latin from capit meaning head,
so like capital punishment is punishment of the head, or
that you you pay, you pay for a crime with
your head by separating it from the other stuff. Uh.

(07:34):
And there's some evidence that the ancient Greeks and Romans
viewed beheading as not a particularly harsh punishment, but more
as a particularly noble and honorable form of execution. And
you see strains of this thinking carried into much more
recent times, like when beheading was deployed as an execution
method throughout the history of England, not always, but it

(07:55):
was most often reserved for the aristocracy, while common criminals
might more often be killed and what was considered a
less dignified way like hanging. Yeah, I mean, obviously, beheadings
in general have probably been occurring as long as we've
had weapons fine enough to inflict the blow. Uh, you know,

(08:15):
as long as we had you know, something that couldn't
knock or cut a head off. And then when you
start looking at these, uh, the the use of the
of of a sword or an axe and execution, you know,
a lot of it comes down to the craftsmanship of
that weapon, but also the skill of the individual using it. Yeah,
that's that's a real kicker, isn't it. I Mean, when
you contract somebody to do a job for you, a

(08:37):
lot of times if you don't have a previous relationship
with them, you know, you don't know what kind of
work they're gonna do. You want to find those people
you can trust, but it's hard to find a trustworthy
the executioner that you know is going to cut your
head off right right, like you' you really got to
put yourself in the in the shoes of the condemned here, right, Uh.
You know, obviously you don't want to be stoned to death.
You know, you don't want to be thrown into that
burlap sack with two wild animals and thrown in at

(09:00):
the river. You would probably prefer a nice, clean beheading,
But nobody wants a less than perfect beheading. If the
local warlord is doing it, you know, that's one thing, uh,
you know, unless, however, you're worried about the war lord
inflicting an intentionally less than perfect stroke, you know, out
of personal malice. If if it's a professional executioner that's

(09:22):
doing the honors, well that's either really good or really bad,
depending on how you look at it. Like the idea
of a trained specialist doing the ded that sounds good.
But on the other hand, at death via the sort
of person who either seeks this line of work out
or is not suited for any other form of labor,
that's a little, uh frightening, I would say. Plus, do

(09:42):
you really want to be toward the bottom of an
executioner's list for the day after they're tired from swinging
that big old axe, like it's your turn on Friday afternoon? Yeah,
like you kind of I want to be up there.
I would want to be up there first, let him
get that that first blow in on me. I must
admit I don't think I'd ever much considered the horrors
of a weak strike from the executioner until Game of

(10:04):
Thrones came around, and then that I suddenly began to think, like, oh, yes,
this could go very wrong. But George R. Martin did
not make up this concept, obviously, of of being weak
at swinging the executioner sword or the acts. History is
replete with stories of botched beheadings, and they are horrific
and unfortunately sometimes kind of funny. I want to tell

(10:26):
you a couple. This one is not so funny. This
concerns Mary, the Queen of Scots. So during the reign
of Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First of England in the
sixteenth century, there was obviously a lot of anxiety about
succession because Elizabeth had been born to King Henry the
Eighth and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, after Henry's first

(10:47):
marriage to Catherine of Aragon had been annulled, and obviously
lots of people at the time, especially some Catholics, had
opinions about that right. And Elizabeth's cousin Mary Stewart, was
born to James the fifth of Scott at Land, who
was descended from a legitimate royal line, and so many
Catholic supporters thought, well, maybe Mary actually has a more

(11:07):
legitimate claim to the throne than Elizabeth does. And so
Mary was eventually implicated in an assassination plot against Elizabeth
in fifteen eighty six, at least she was allegedly involved
in it, and she was sentenced to execution in seven.
So you've got Mary Stuart, Mary Queen of Scott's going
to her execution and the story goes that she's blindfolded

(11:27):
and she gets helped to the block and the executioner,
wearing all black, raises up his axe to kill her,
but instead of cutting through her neck, he misses and
he hits her on the head, and then some report
that she murmurs Sweet Jesus in shock before the executioner
raises his axe a second time and then strikes again
and still fails to cut her head off completely, and

(11:50):
finally he quote just sawed through what remained of her neck.
That's that's that's rough for Mary. And this is you know,
this is present and main event be heading here, So right,
this is before a royal audience right, So this would
have to be either an act of just just just
an utterly inapped executioner or one that is intentionally doing

(12:12):
a bad job out of mouth. It's like there seems
to be very little room in between. It's hard to
understand what happened here because you know, we only have
accounts from the time, which may not even be fully reliable.
We're relying on what people told us they saw there, right,
And there could be some objective in crafting a version
of the tale that sounds more inapt than it actually was.
But it actually gets worse because apparently so, it's described

(12:34):
sometimes that the executioner appeared horrified at what was going on.
But the headsman, after he got her head off, he
took hold of the severed head and he held it
up in front of the crowd so he could hold
up the severed head and say God save Queen Elizabeth.
But he grasped Mary's head by the hair, and it
turned out the hair was a wig, so the head
fell down and rolled away, leaving him holding only a

(12:55):
hacked up, bloody wig while proclaiming his true queen and
then an they're part of the story, maybe maybe not
to be believed is that after Mary's head rolled away,
her lips kept moving as if she was talking or praying. Okay,
some of that sounds like it might have been embellished,
but it also sounds like this guy was a real hack.
No pun intended. Well, I got an even worse hack
for you, because there was a seventeenth century English executioner

(13:18):
named jack Ketch. Catch spelled like catch up, catch yeah,
or like what's the kid in the Pokemon's. I have
no idea. Our very knowledgeable producer Paul just tells me
it is ash catch um. Okay. I guess he's got
to catch them all right. It's like jack Ketch him right,
the horror Rider. That's what comes to my mind. I

(13:40):
don't well anyway, this is jack Ketch K E T
C H so Jack Ketch birthday unknown died in sixteen
eighty six, who was notorious for being a complete screw
up at his job and bungling executions. A couple of examples.
In sixteen eighty three, Catch performed the beheading of William
Lord Russell, who convicted for treason in his role of

(14:02):
in his role in the Rye House plot, which was
against King Charles the second of England, and Catches beheading
of Russell was reportedly just this clumsy horror, with Catch
whacking Russell again and again with the axe, but repeatedly
failing to get his head off, and apparently after this,
Catch defended himself by complaining that Russell wouldn't hold still.

(14:23):
And then you got the second one. Later, James, Duke
of Monmouth, he went to the block for the Monmouth
Rebellion of s five, and he tried to pay Catch
not to screw up his execution. He's recorded as saying, quote,
here are six guineas for you. Pray, do your business well.
Do not serve me as you did my lord Russell.

(14:44):
I have heard you struck him three or four times.
Then Monmouth gave three more guineas to his servant who
was standing nearby, and told his servant to pay Catch
only if Catch did the beheading correctly, and then Catch said,
I hope I shall. Then mon Month asked to feel
the axe blade, and he did, and he complained that

(15:04):
this is too dull, and Catch said no, it's sharp enough,
it'll be heavy enough. So Monmouth got down in place
to accept his fate, and Catch brought the axe down
on Monmouth, and at this point it is reported that
after he got hit, Monmouth lifted his head up and
turned around and glared at Catch angrily. Then he got

(15:25):
back down so Ketch could hit him again, and Catch
hit him several more times, failing each time to be
head him. Then Catch got frustrated and tried to walk
away and quit in the middle of the execution, while
Monmouth was still alive. But the crowd yelled at him
and told him to go back and finish it, So
finally he went back. After some more blows and the
use of a knife, he finally managed to get the

(15:47):
duke's head off. Well that's awful. This guy is a
true hack. I wonder if that's where the word hat
comes from. Perhaps, Uh yeah, But so you had people
whose job it was to administer what I guess was
supposed is to be the more humane form of execution
at the time. I mean, this is different than being
you know, uh, tortured and hanged and drawn and quartered

(16:07):
and all that. But he this is obviously not going
the way it's supposed to. And if we're going inspired
by the Greek and Roman model, something is obviously wrong here.
Like not only is it unnecessarily painful. This does not
really seem like an honorable death. This seems humiliating. Yeah,
there's nothing noble about this, you know. It's this is
not a finely craft instrument wielded by a by and

(16:30):
by an expert practitioner. This is just a clumsy exercise
and horror. But what if mechanical controls could be set
in place the same level of perfection, regardless of whoever
you know happens to be wearing the hood, how tired
they are, what sort of weapon they're using, or what
sort of six stuff they're into. A machine that cannot

(16:53):
get tired, It can't hesitate or engage in unfair punishment.
It's not gonna judge you based on your your royal
or commoner status. A good blade, some gravity, and a
simple frame with a necklock, well that would be the guillotine.
All right, We're gonna take a quick break and when
we come back we will discuss some precursors to the

(17:15):
guillotine and the guillotine itself. Today's episode is brought to
you by Slack. Before there was podcast, there was radio.
Before that, the stage, and before that, you get the idea,
things evolve technology changes and we do too, So now

(17:36):
we can listen to a show wherever, whenever. However, why
should our work be any different? Why can't we work
with more freedom, more flexibility, more choices. That's how Slack works.
It's a digital headquarters that works how you work, and
Slack is where the future works. Check out the new

(17:56):
podcast I Am Code. Do you want to understand how
Code Bryant achieved his unequal determination? How did he come
to his incredible passion to win? In I Am Kobe,
we reveal intimate, never before heard tapes of Kobe when
he was a teenager, just as he was starting to
glimpse his own greatness. It's about the making of an icon.

(18:17):
We weave together these tapes with Kobe's high school coaches,
his friends, and the figures who knew him in his youth.
All episodes are out now so you can binge the
whole thing. Listen to I Am Kobe on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with

(18:38):
the before Breakfast podcast. In each bite sized daily episode,
time management and productivity expert Laura Vanderkam teaches you how
to make the most of your time, both at work
and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need
to get more done with your day. Just as lifting
weights keeps our body as strong as we age, learning
new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listened

(19:01):
to before breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. All right,
we're back. So the guillotine of late eighteenth century France,
which I'm sure you've heard about before, that was involved
in the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the first
French Republic. That guillotine was not the first human head
removal machine, not by a long shot. And we're not

(19:22):
saying it was. You know that it was predated by
people swinging in axe or a sword with their hands.
Of course it was. But there were organized machines for
doing this job more efficiently and in a more consistent
way before the guillotine was instituted in France, right, And
and they worked along the same principles. They maybe they
weren't quite as refined, but essentially the idea was there

(19:44):
that we should say that. It was only in the
aftermath of the French Revolution that people began referring to
decapitation machines as guillotines. That's where the name comes from. Yes,
they had equally less refined names. They had more grizzly names.
One find well me a couple in a moment. So
as for who invented the first general decapitation machine, this

(20:05):
is totally unknown, lost to history, and in fact, we
don't even know for sure how many societies used a
device like this. There there are a lot of tales,
but many of these tales might not even be true.
We don't know for sure, right, and then how often
is the individual uh celebrated for creating such a thing?
As we'll discover the naming of the guillotine it doesn't

(20:26):
really relate to the individual or individuals that created it, right.
I mean a lot of people who create execution devices
don't want to be associated with And when you find
the people who do want to be associated with them
or don't mind, you've got to kind of wonder about
those people. But um, So, there are a couple of
known mechanical beheading devices from England that predated the French guillotine,

(20:48):
and one is known as the Halifax Gibbet. So the
how Halifax is a town in West Yorkshire in England,
and it had this infamous beheading machine known as the
Halifax Gibbitt, which was allegedly used mostly to punish petty theft.
So people would steal some small sum of money or
something worth not very much, some cloth or something, and

(21:08):
into the Halifax Gibbet they would go. It was described
in an eighteen thirty seven history by an author named
William White in the following way quote. The executions always
took place on the Great Market day in order to
strike the more terror into the neighborhood. When the criminal
was brought to the gibbet, which stood a little way

(21:28):
out of the town, where part of the stone platform
may still be seen on Gibbet Hill. The execution was
performed by means of an engine, which was raised upon
a platform four ft high and thirteen feet square, faced
on every side with stone, and ascended by a flight
of steps. In the middle of this platform was placed
two upright pieces of timber fifteen feet high, joined at

(21:51):
the top by a transverse beam. Within these was a
square block of wood four ft and a half long,
which moved up and down by means grooves made for
that purpose to the lower part of the sliding block
was fastened in iron axe of the weight of seven
pounds and twelve ounces. The axe, thus fixed, was drawn
up to the top by a cord and pulley. At

(22:13):
the end of the cord was a pin, which, being
fixed to the block, kept it suspended till the moment
of execution. When the culprit, having placed his head on
the block, the pin was withdrawn and his head was
instantly severed from his body. If the offender was condemned
for stealing an ox, a sheep or a horse, the
end of the rope was fastened to the beast, which,

(22:35):
being driven, pulled out the pin and thus became the executioner.
In other cases, the bailiff for his servant cut the
rope and allowed the axe to descend. It's a little
unnecessary complexity involving fim animals, but otherwise the basic principles
of the guillotine as we've come to know it, Yeah,
it's more or less there there. There might be some
design refinements we come on later, but this is the idea.

(22:58):
It's it's a rely bowl consistent machine that's not going
to mess up right, And of course it doesn't sound
like it was necessarily a custom blade, or maybe it was,
but it's very much based on the design of an
axe blade. Yeah, and when you see illustrations, it looks
like just a large axe head on the bottom of
a huge wooden block. Uh So, this beheading machine of
Halifax was famous enough that the English poet John Taylor

(23:21):
referenced it alongside the notoriously tough police of Kingston upon
Hull in a poem uh that that I thought was
pretty good. He writes, there is a proverb and a
prayer withal that we may not to Three strange places
fall from Hull, from Halifax, from Hell. 'tis thus from
all these three good Lord deliver us at Halifax. The

(23:45):
law so sharp doth deal that whoso more than one
threepence doth steal. They have a lyn that wondrous, quick
and well, since thieves all headless unto Heaven or Hell.
From Hell, each man says, Lord, deliver me, because from
Hell can no redemption be. Men may escape from Hull
and Halifax, but sure in Hell there is a heavier tax.

(24:08):
It sounds pretty grim. Well. I like how it's sort
of captures two themes there. One is that how the
Halifax jibbit is deadly and something to be feared, but
it also contrasts it with the supposed tortures of hell.
I guess it can emphasizing that, well, it's not as
torturous as many of the other methods that are being used. Yeah,
he's almost describing it like it's a like it's a

(24:29):
plane ticket to to greater rewards or suffering, depending on
how one supernatural revenge fantasy is playing out here. But
on the other hand, I like that it is to
a certain extent farm animals. Uh, you know. Notwithstanding, it
is to a certain extent saving the horrors of an

(24:50):
afterlife for those imagined afterlife and not trying to um
embody them too much in the act of execution itself. Yeah. Now,
whether that's actually a good thing or not, we can
discuss later, but it does seem to be there's at
least there's at least a superficial kind of humaneness to write,
even though it seems to be being lumped on people

(25:11):
who committing extremely pet crimes and not and no matter
what you think, really probably deserving of death. But there's
some strange stories about how people reacted to what happened
with at the Halifax gibbet. The story in Thomas Wright
tells a legend quote of a countrywoman who was writing
by the gibbet on her hampers to the market just

(25:33):
at the execution of a criminal, when the axe chopped
his neck through with such force that the head jumped
into one of her hampers, or as others say, seized
her apron with the teeth and they're stuck for some time.
I don't believe that's true, or at least the teeth.
I don't believe. Again, we're coming back to the sort
of inherent comedy. I mean, it's true gallows humor, uh

(25:57):
that comes with beheading executions. But there's an interesting observation
from the Halifax historian John Crabtree, who has a sort
of attitude about what stories like this mean. He writes, quote,
it is useless employing words about this fair, but the
circumstance may serve to show with what apathy the country
people regarded this mode of punishment. Their minds were evidently

(26:20):
hardened by such exhibitions, and the fact develops the inadequacy
of such awful administrations of justice to produce that proper
moral and salutary effect which might have been anticipated. Such scenes,
often repeated, appear to harden rather than soften, to stupefy
rather than awaken the sensibilities of man's nature. And I

(26:41):
think we should come back to that thought later on. Indeed,
all right, so what else do we have in terms
of proto guillotine machines. Well, a quicker story is just
a copy essentially of the Halifax jibbitt, known as the
Scottish Maiden. So James Douglas, the fourth Earl of Morton,
who is the ruler of Scotland from fifteen seventy two
to fifteen seventy eight, he was alleged at some point

(27:03):
to have introduced the decapitation machine to his country of Scots,
inspired by the Halifax gibbet. Allegedly, he at some point
traveled through Halifax and he was so inspired by the
gibbet that he thought, well, I should share this same
technology with my countrymen. So a similar machine was built
out of oak, and it could be transported around the
country to perform beheadings wherever. But it was often accepting

(27:26):
the condemned at Edinburgh, and according to the National Museums
of Scotland, crimes that could get you sent to the
Scottish Maiden included murder, incest, stealing, treason, adultery, forgery and robbery.
But there's an ironic twist. So James Douglas the Earl,
fourth Earl of Morton was a supporter of James the sixth,

(27:46):
and Morton opposed the Catholic faction of Mary, Queen of
Scott's who we discussed earlier, Mary Stewart, and he was
eventually implicated in a plot to murder Mary's second husband,
Lord Darnley, and was put to death in June one,
decapitated by the Scottish maiden that he brought to Scotland. Ah,
there's your poetic justice, and legends of that kind will

(28:11):
appear again and again in this episode. Actually, well, yes,
and even beyond this episode, because this isn't that a
common theme? The man destroyed by his own invention, by
his own machine. It happens enough in the movies that
you should think it happens more often in reality. Though
in the movies it's especially common when that invention is
some kind of hybrid animal, like I created a shark

(28:32):
ape and you know it swings from the trees, taking
bites out of people who could have known my shark
ape would turn on me, and yet it always happens. Alright. So,
as we've been discussing, there were similar devices already used
in Europe and had been for centuries before the guillotine
came around. But the individual who is often credited as
the inventor of the guillotine is a French surgeon and

(28:56):
physiologist Antoine Louis, who lives seventy three through sev Yeah,
he is often credited as the inventor, though based on
what I was reading, it appears to me was maybe
designed by some sort of committee of which Louis was
the leader. Right, And this is actually all the more
fitting U when we really get to the heart of

(29:16):
the guillotine here, because it is this this thing that
is it is this utilization of technology and this there's
a there's an air of civility to it. Uh. This
this taking something that is kind of that is rather
barbaric and making it a little less so. Well, it's
bureaucratic violence, yes, it's It very much embodies the idea

(29:37):
of retributive violence by the state, taken out of the
emotional hands of the single executioner and placed into the
hands of a disembodied machine that is created by a
committee through drafts. Yes, you know, we have another episode
that we're recording this week on vending machines. And it's
amazing this the similarities involved here, this this these sometimes

(29:57):
these struggles over what exactly is happening when a machine
does the bidding of a human. If a machine is
vendang say, blasphemous literature, as we discussed in this other episode,
then who is it fault foresaid literature sale and uh,
And there's a sense of that here too. It's like
the bureaucracy has condemned you to death. The machine is

(30:19):
actually doing the execution. We're just merely you know, pushing
the button, pulling the string, et cetera, to carry out
this judgment. Right, But we do at least have Antoine
Louis to associate with the creation of the machine, even
if it wasn't just him alone, but because of his
association with it, it was often early on it was
called names, not the guillotine yet, but names like the

(30:41):
Louisette or the louis zone, which doesn't have as much
of a ring to it. Oh, I kind of like it.
I could see executions by the Louisette. Yeah, I guess
it would have grown on us. But at any rate,
later it definitely came to be named after Joseph Ignace
Guillotan who lived seventy eight through eighteen four. Team He

(31:01):
was a physician. Uh, he was a National Assembly member,
and he played a major role in passing legislation that
made death by machine the law. The loose idea here
is that it would this kind of legislation would provide
the best possible version of beheading to all classes of society.
And we do have to point out that, despite some

(31:22):
urban legends out there, uh, Guillotine himself was not killed
by his own machine, and he wasn't actually a huge
fan of execution either. It's not like he was a
huge execution enthusiasts. Well, no, exactly the opposite. Guilloton opposed
the death penalty. He wanted the abolition of the death penalty,
but he didn't think that he could accomplish that directly. Right,

(31:43):
this seemed the best reasonable next step. Right. It's like,
if I can't we can't eradicate it, we're going to
have it. We might as well make it clean and
uh and fair to all involved. According to a popular legend,
Guillotan was born when his pregnant mother was out walking
one day and she overheard the screams of a condemned

(32:04):
criminal being broken on the wheel. And breaking on the
wheel was you know, a classic death by torture type method,
where a person would be stretched out on a wheel
in a kind of starfish post and they'd have their
limbs broken with an iron rod or with a club.
Just insane brutality. So he was very much opposed to
that sort of thing, not only just the bar the

(32:24):
barbaric nature of the execution, but the public nature of
the idea that that women and children, uh, just innocent
bystanders might just walk through town and witness such such horror.
So he was thinking, maybe if less children end up
watching this, the better, Yes, and make it. Yeah, it's
more systematic, it's more you know that the act itself

(32:47):
is less flashy, and then we're just gonna make it
less for performance. So Gio Tom was not out there
lobbying to get this machine named after his family, No, No,
it just it ended up sticking. Now a cool fact
here that sounds like something right out of an Allan
Moore comic book, But along with Benjamin Franklin h Guillotine

(33:07):
investigated the work of Franz Mesmer of Mesmerism, you know,
the the form of hypnotism that we had back in
the day, and they investigated him on behalf of King
Louis League of extraordinary Gentleman exactly. So another way of thinking,
you alluded to this a minute ago, Robert like the

(33:29):
idea that it would be the best method for all
the classes. So another way of thinking about the motivation
for the institution of the guillotine at this time in
history was that it supposedly extended the democratic and egalitarian
principles of the French Revolution to common criminals, essentially extending

(33:50):
them the courtesy of the honorable beheading that was more
often reserved for nobles and aristocrats, instead of more shameful
and common and painful deaths like hanging, burning, or breaking
on the wheel, which you were more likely to get
if you were just some lower class petty criminal. Now,
as for the idea Guillotan had, thinking that this would
shield children from the gruesome practice of execution, Unfortunately this

(34:14):
did not work out. I was reading a section from
a book called Children's Toys of Bygone Days. A History
of Playthings of all people's from prehistoric times to the
nineteenth century by Carl Grober, published in nineteen and the
author writes, quote, the worst monstrosity of the kind was
the outcome of the French Revolution, which indeed was over

(34:36):
rich in aberrations of taste. The toy shops put on
the market little guillotines with which little patriots could be
head figures of aristocrats. They're still survives some specimens of
this pretty and diverting machine, one of which bears the
date seventeen ninety four, and he's got an illustration. These
were not models, but pure toys. And in proof of

(34:58):
this we have the king's evidence from one whom we
should never suspect of wishing to give so bloodthirsty a
toy to his little son. And here the author is
speaking of the romantic poet Johann wolf Kang von Gurta.
So Gruber tells the story and that in December sevente
Girta wrote a letter to his mother and Frankfort, asking

(35:21):
if she would buy a toy guillotine for his little son,
and she replied, dear son, anything I can do to
please you is gladly done and gives me joy. But
to buy such an infamous implement of murder that I
will not do at any price. If I had authority,
the maker should be put in the stocks, and I
would have the machine publicly burnt by the common executioner.

(35:42):
And I guess this is sort of the seventeen nineties
equivalent of like asking your grandmother to buy you a
copy of Doom for Christmas in the nineteen nineties. Yeah, well,
I'm glad that you brought up Doom here. And just
because it's it's easy for us to look back on
this account and think, oh, these children of a more
barbarous age. But go to any toy store and look

(36:02):
at the machine gun based toys that are on display. There,
all the various guns like true true murder weapons. Um,
not even methods of bureaucratic execution, but weapons of just
wanton violence. Uh. These are all represented in toys even today. Uh. Likewise,

(36:22):
I can't help but think back on how much I
wanted the slime pit when I was a kid. This
was a master's of the universe. Place set the device
and basically you would lock he man or some other
figure into the machine and it was like shaped like
a skull, and then it would dump slime on top
of the head of the poor hero. And it was

(36:43):
I think maybe the actual lore of it was like
I would make them mutate or something. But it was
very much Uh, it was very much like a guillotine,
except instead of a blade, it was slime. It was like,
clearly an instrument of execution, of of ritualized death for
your toys. So you're arranging an execution for he man exactly.
So you know, the idea of a toy guillotine. It

(37:05):
makes perfect sense. Uh, we can't. We can only distance
ourselves from such an idea so much, though I also
have to wonder somehow detect between the lines. This could
have been one of those situations where and Robert, I
bet you're familiar with this, where a dad buys or
requests a toy for his child because secretly he wants
to play. Uh. In fact, Gerta wrote in Faust quote

(37:29):
ages no second childhood age makes plain children. We were
true children. We remain again much like it is today. Now.
We mentioned that Guillaton was responsible for introducing legislation that
would eventually lead the French National Assembly to say Okay,
we're only going to be killing people by beheading machine.

(37:51):
Now that that's that's going to be the new method
of execution. That's what's humane, that's what the state should
be up to. And so I think in just a
minute we should turn to the sheen itself. But I
just wanted quickly before we do that, to discuss where
it is that this rumor came from. The Guillotam was
killed by the machine that he recommended putting in place

(38:11):
for executions in France, and I think I know maybe
a few threads of where the story came from. Obviously,
we had that ironic story of the Earl of Morton earlier, right,
so you can see how that might have influenced confused
the telling, right. But then there are a couple of
other examples. So Dr Antoine Louis, the secretary of the
Academy of Medicine and physician to King Louis the one

(38:33):
who we talked about earlier, chairing that committee that designed
the device. He was actually temporarily condemned to die in
the machine that he designed or helped design, though he
escaped this fate basically during a change of power. So
he narrowly escaped going to the guillotine himself, and then
King Louis the sixteenth, who was interested in mechanical engineering,

(38:56):
is said to have made refinements to the design of
the guillotine, like recommending an angled blade while he was
still in power, before the device was eventually turned on
the king himself and on his wife Marie Antoinette. And
so there's another kind of like creator and then killed
by his creation irony there since he apparently or at
least allegedly offered refinements to the design. All right, Well,

(39:19):
on that note, we're gonna take one more break, and
when we come back, we'll discuss the machine itself in
more detail, and we'll also discuss its legacy. Hello, and
welcome to our show. I'm Zoe de Channel and I'm
so excited to be joined by my friends and cast
mates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to recap our

(39:39):
hit television series New Girl. Join us every Monday on
the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind
the scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes, revealed
the truth behind the legendary game True American, and discuss
how this show got made with the writer's guest stars
and directors who made the show so special. Fans have
been begging us to do a New Girl recap for year,

(40:00):
and we finally meet a podcast where we answer all
your burning questions like is there really a bear? In
every episode of New Girl. Plus each week you'll hear
hilarious stories like this at the end, when he says
you got some Schmidt on your face. I feel like
I pitched that joke. I believe that. I feel like
I did. I'm not on a thousand percent. I want
to say that was I tossed that without Listen to

(40:22):
the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
What grows in the forest trees, Sure you know what
else grows in the forest. Our imagination, our sense of wonder,
and our family bonds grow too, because when we disconnect
from this and connect with this, we reconnect with each other.

(40:48):
The forest is closer than you think. Find a forest
near you and start exploring. I Discover the Forest dot Org,
brought to you by the United States Forest Service and
the AD Council. I'm John Gonzalez, the host of Sports
Illustrated Weekly Sports Illustrated has delivered the best storytelling in
sports for seventy years, first in the pages of the magazine,

(41:11):
then on SI dot com, and now that tradition continues
on a new podcast. Each week, we'll dive deep into
the best stories from around the sports world. We'll ask
the questions that we're all wondering and push for the
answers we all want. Everything from investigating the Super Bowls
impact on l A to examining white booing is as
big a part of the fan experience as cheering. Sports

(41:34):
Illustrated Weekly is here to bring you the entertaining tales
you can't get anywhere else, the kinds of stories that
make you smile and laugh, clap and cry, marvel, think,
and fall in love with sports all over again. Sports
Illustrated Weekly is available every Wednesday on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe. Now,

(42:00):
all right, we're back. So now we're at the machine itself,
the French guillotine of the seventeen eighties and onward. And
the question is was it actually built? Well, of course
it was. This one was definitely built. Some of the
inventions were discussing on this show, you know, maybe didn't
get out of the blueprint phase. This definitely saw action.
So after the legal standard of execution by machine was

(42:21):
approved by the National Assembly in sevent the construction of
the machine was delegated to a politician named Pierre Louis
red Areo, who I'm always going to struggle with that name,
so I'll just call him Pierre here. Uh. He apparently
had trouble finding a contractor who could build the machine
since no one wanted their name associated with it, and

(42:42):
eventually found a taker was a taker from Germany, and
so the guillotine was constructed by a German harpsichord maker
named Tobias Schmidt. Apparently he also supplied a leather sack
that would catch heads. And now you can you just
gotta wonder about Tobias. I could just imagine the scenario.
It's like, uh so, honey, what are you working on today?

(43:02):
I get this new contracted you know it pays well,
it's gonna really help us out next month. Oh, who
are you putting a hots harpsichord of chord for well,
it's not quite a harpsichord. Well, I'm just imagining you
in his shop while he's working on the guillotine, that
harpsichord music is constantly playing Dan Dan Dan Dan Dan
dy Anyway, according to the memoirs of the French executioner

(43:25):
Enrie Clements Sans Song in eighteen seventy six, saints On
came from a line of a long line of executioners,
and he so he has these memoirs about his family's
exploits cutting off heads and performing executions in France, and
his memoirs are considered probably only partially reliable, but his
up close description of the workings of the guillotine is

(43:47):
fairly straightforward. So I see, I feel like he's probably
on the right track here. All right, I'm gonna read
part of this and I'm gonna I'm gonna go for
an executioner's voice. Here do it. On a scaffold from
seven to eight feet high, two parallels are made fast
in one end. Their top part is united by a
strong crossbar. To this crossbar is added a thick iron ring,

(44:08):
and which is past a rope which fixes and retains
a ram. This is perpendicularly armed with a sharp and
broad blade, which gradually becomes broader on all its surface,
so that instead of striking perpendicularly. It strikes sideways, so
that there is not an inch of the blade that
does not serve the ram ways from pounds, and its

(44:29):
weight is doubled. When it begins to slide down. It
is enclosed in the groove of the bars. A spring
makes it fast to the left bar. A band of
iron descends along the outside of the same bar, and
the handle is locked to a ring with a padlock,
so that no accident is possible and the weight only
falls from the executioner interferes to a way link. Strong

(44:52):
straps are fastened by which the criminal is attached under
the armpits and over the legs, so that the body
cannot move as soon as the way plank goes down.
The head being between the bars, is supported by a
rounded crossbar. The executioner's assistance lower another rounded crossbar. The head,
being thus grooved in a perfect circle, would prevents it

(45:14):
from moving in any way. This precaution is indispensable in
regard to the terrible inconvenience as of fear. The executioner
then touches the spring. The whole affair has done so
quickly that only the thump of the blade when it
slides down and forms the spectators that the culprit is
no longer of the living. The head falls into a

(45:34):
basket full of brand and the body is pushed into
another wicker basket line with very thick leather. That's a
heck of a rating, Robert, Yeah, that is going to
do a number on my throat. But I'm sorry, maybe
I should have taken part of it, but I was
just enjoying listening to your Henri Clement. Well, there is
a precision in his in his description of the act

(45:58):
that I felt like I had had to capture now obviously,
so he's described how the device works now, but they
had to test it out before they could make sure
to try it on a human. Right, So you know
you always wonder like, how do you test a guillotine?
You put a watermelon in there? Do you gallagher it? Well,
I suppose you could, but it's kind of a waste
of a good melon, And ultimately you want to test

(46:18):
it on the real thing, right, So they use dead bodies.
Oh yeah, also farm animals like sheep and calves. Yeah,
because you just I mean, it makes sense. You want
to make sure you're cutting through actual vertebrate tissue there
and most notably the neck, and then on a officials
installed and use the guillotine for the first time. Right, So,

(46:39):
the first victim of the French guillotine was Nicholas Jacques Beltier,
who was a highwayman, and he was executed where the
machine was erected, at the Plasta Grev And they're so
a large crowd came out, obviously to witness the first
execution by the new machine, but it was reported that
the crowd was somewhat unimpressed and they found the efficiency

(46:59):
of the killing less entertaining than the forms of execution
they were used to, even the more classic beheadings. Nevertheless,
over time the executions that the guillotine became a very
popular spectator event during the Reign of Terror, and you know,
in generally afterwards when the guillotine was used, people would
show up to watch. So we see a little success here.

(47:19):
Like it was clearly less dramatic, uh, you know, there
was less theater in the act, and yet at the
same time, a few things are more dramatic in life
than the ending of a life like this is the people.
You can understand why people would still turn out even
if you had made things a little more precise now,
putting aside the question, I guess we can talk talk

(47:42):
about in a minute or whether it's ever humane to
just execute somebody, Was it actually true that the the
guillotine was a more refined, more humane version of execution
than what came before? Was it? Was it an improvement
if you were somebody who was interested in reduce sing
the suffering of humankind. Yeah, I mean you could. Again,

(48:03):
you could say the concept is inherently controversial, but still
others took issue with just how humane it was. So
Opprussian doctor Samuel Thomas Summering, who lives seventeen fifty five
through eighteen thirty he studied the cadavers of guillotine victims,
and he argued that severed heads were still capable feeling
and since, and he wrote an essay on this in
seventeen so he he was something of a poly math.

(48:27):
In addition to naming the twelve pairs of cranial nerves,
he also invented a telegraphic system and made discoveries in paleontology,
specifically with the pterodactyl fossils. They're not dinosaurs, folks, that's
a different thing. So this was, you know, this was
not just this wasn't just some crazy guy coming up
in Santa the heads are still alive, you know, he

(48:48):
was He was making an expert argument that, like, I'm
not sure that this is great what we're doing. Maybe
it's a little it's almost a little too precise. Yeah,
the core takeaway of his essay on the inhumanity of
the guy team was that we can't rule out that
it's possible that a severed head could still be having experience,
could experience being severed. Now we knew. There were a

(49:09):
lot of tales of this happening right of people running
to check out the heads of the decapitated, in various
doctors checking in and seeing what was going on with
the eyes, And there was a lot of interest in
this in determining what, you know, what happens to consciousness
at death, Like this was a perfect clinical exercise for
for weighing in on it. Yeah. The classic tales about this,

(49:32):
they get repeated the most often, are like seeing someone's
cheeks flush with anger when they behold someone or who's
someone who mocks them or something like that, or or
who slaps them in the face, or thinking that that
I severed head would be like looking at people as
if it recognized them something like that. Yeah, and obviously

(49:53):
there's a lot of indeliphment with these stories, but we
don't know how much to trust them. Yeah, we really
don't know how much to trust them. But we do
know today that that any kind of activity scene in
the heads after death, most of this is going to
be reflective twitching of muscles. So um, basically, coma and
brain death are probably gonna occur within two to three

(50:14):
seconds of decapitation due to interruption of blood flow to
the brain. So just the massive sudden drop in blood pressure. Yeah,
that's gonna do it. Yeah. So any tales of like,
you know, confronting the head having any kind of like
moment of human uh contact, even if it's just in
the eyes, Uh, it's pretty clear that that is all

(50:35):
just embellishment of stories or just wishful thinking on the
part of the observer. So what is the legacy of
this machine, this this machine of bureaucratic violence. And if
we try to look at it from with our perspective,
from today, with our hindsight, and you know, with with
the kind of value judgments we would make, was the
guillotine a step forward or a step backward. Was it

(50:56):
as Giatan envisioned a more humane way of doing business
when the state was just you know, couldn't be convinced
not to kill people. Or did it perhaps enable a
worse state of affairs where more people could be sent
to their deaths with impunity than would have been the
case otherwise. Yeah, I think you could probably go either

(51:17):
way on it. I mean, one thing is for certain.
It it changed the way executions were performed in France
for nearly two hundred years. It was actually used in
France up until nineteen seventy seven, that's when the last
execution occurred via guillotine, before the outlying of capital punishment
in one It also took on symbolic way. It's just
this this symbol of the reign of terror and perhaps

(51:37):
to a larger extent, a symbol of systematically violent rebellion. Yeah.
I read one author point out, certainly not in defending
the guillotine or the use of the guillotine, but it
just pointing out a kind of strange irony that the
guillotine now to us symbolizes this this horror, this horror
period of bureaucratic violence which it certainly was. But we

(51:59):
look at that and we think of that period as
a reign of terror. But don't think the same way
say about the Napoleonic Wars, which killed far more people
than the guillotine ever did. Not that that makes the
killings of the guillotine any less horrific. That's true, now,
you know one the one thing about the weirdness of
this whole situation that stands out. I mean, aside from
just the inherently weird nature of of a beheading machine

(52:21):
machine that cuts off heads, there is still something highly
symbolic going on here. I think to the means of
an execution, and you'll typically see an expression of of
power involved, say it's a physical strength or you know,
vengeful spirit, or increasingly a culture's greatest technological achievements. Isn't
it weird to think about how these methods climb the

(52:45):
tree of developing technology. So starting with varying levels of
tool proficiency, you know, axes and swords, weapons, weapon crafting,
then we go into gunpowder, uh, you know, firing squads,
electricity and the electric chair. It is weird to trace
through history execution methods just sort of like tracking with
whatever is the most interesting new technology we have available chemicals, pharmaceuticals.

(53:10):
I mean, why an electric chair. That is just such
a strange idea to even come up with. French philosopher
Michelle Fuco he weighed in on this, and he pointed
out that penal technology is of course an expression of power,
but we also have to dwell in the fact that
it does this through everyday technology, ubiquitous technology. So if

(53:34):
it's something like electricity or even you know or even
you know, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, Uh, it's it's taking aspects of
everyday life and turning them into the the system, the
tool of of justice. So like our everyday use of
energy and the consumer economy, a constant reminder of the

(53:54):
methods of death that the state can inflict upon people
if they if they don't stay in line. Actually, now,
one small area of the legacy of the guillotine comes
down to its use in medical terminology. So there are
two primary means of amputation. Um in terms of like
amputating a limb or what have you, you have flap amputations,
in which flaps of flesh are left so that you

(54:16):
can fold them and close the stump of the wound
and then there are guillotine amputations which which are more
of a straight down affair with no immediate concerns for
flap tissue. So in guillotine amputation, it's more about cutting
out infected tissue and making sure drainage of proper drainage occurs,
and then secondary surgery is performed to create the flap

(54:37):
tissue to close everything off into a stump. But obviously
that's like a secondary appellation, like you wouldn't you wouldn't
have called that guillotine cutting in the surgical since before
the guillotine, right, But it is certainly an example where
if you're you, you encounter this terminology now in in
the medical science, and uh, and it stems from the
use of this execution device. That being said, there's a

(55:00):
lot of medical terminology that stems from various weapons and
so forth. Of course, so I want to come back
to this question that we've been teasing throughout where you
can't help, but wonder if Josephine Skyton pushed us in
exactly the wrong direction, if he was actually against the
death penalty and trying to institute more humane treatment of criminals.

(55:24):
You know, it's hard not to notice that by sanitizing
a horrible act, it often seems like you make the
act easier to carry out. And I mean, just think
about how this applies to modern methods of state sanctioned killing,
everything from lethal injection to drone strikes. Does the sanitizing
and distancing and depersonalization opportunity provided by lethal technology encourage

(55:51):
us to make ourselves able to kill more while feeling
less about it? Yeah? I mean, ultimately, is the botched
at execution that we've discussed already, are those not maybe
a more honest depiction of what's going on? This this
this fallible um barbaric human effort, not this uh precision

(56:13):
of the holy blameless machine. Well, I mean, obviously we're
not going to sit here and advocate brutal, botched executions
with jack Catch hacking at us with a sword or
an axe. But yeah, at least with that, I'm not
saying that's preferable, But I do see what you're saying
that it's at least there, you're acknowledging that something brutal
and weird is going on, and you can't just you know,

(56:35):
clean it up in your mind and ignore it because
you're hearing the screams, and it's splattering on you, and
it's so brutal that it's almost funny. You know. It's interesting.
You know, in this show we talk about innovation and
inventions and how how they change the world, and and
so often you see that that people have to look
back and try to figure out what changed and how

(56:57):
it changed us. Uh, And here we are, years of
years later, looking back and saying, well, what did the
guillotine mean? What did it do? And what are the
ultimate ramifications of this advancement. Well, I posit that maybe
one takeaway from it is that the truth is it
has showed us that there is no good or clean

(57:18):
or sanitary way to kill a person, and any belief
that there is, in fact turns out to be a
kind of brutalizing and dehumanizing illusion. All Right, So that's
it for this week's episode of Invention. If you want
to learn more about the show and check out other episodes,
head on over to our website invention pod dot com.
Big thanks to Scott Benjamin for research assistance with this episode.

(57:42):
Thanks to our audio producer Tari Harrison. If you would
like to get in touch with us directly with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
for the future, or just to say hi, let us
know how you found out about the show where you
listen From all that kind of stuff, you can email
us at contact at invention and pod dot com. But

(58:19):
what's up? What's up? This is Robin Dixon, co host
of Reasonably Shady, which has just been nominated for an
n double A CP Image Award in the Outstanding Arts
and Entertainment Podcast category. This is so big for Gizelle
and I and of course we must thank all of
our fantastic listeners, but we need your help. Visit vote

(58:39):
dot M double A CP Image Awards dot net to
vote for Reasonably Shady. That's vote dot n A A
CP Image Awards dot net. But don't wait. Voting closes
on February five at nine pm Eastern, and make sure
to listen to Reasonably Shady every single Monday on the
Black A Podcast Network. I'm John Gonzalez, the host of

(59:06):
s i S new podcast, Sports Illustrated Weekly. Sports Illustrated
has delivered some of the best storytelling in sports for
seventy years, and now that continues. On our show. Each week,
we'll dive deep into the best stories from around the
sports world. Sports Illustrated Weekly is available every Wednesday on
the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you

(59:27):
get your podcasts. Subscribe now, Hello, and welcome to our show.
I'm Zoe de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be
joined by my friends and cast Meats Hanna Simone and
Lamar and Morris to recap our hit television series New Girl.
Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast,
where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite

(59:49):
New Girl episodes. Each week, we answer all your burning
questions like is there really a bear in every episode
of New Girl? Plus, you'll hear hilarious stories like this
that was one of your thanks you brought back from
what Yeah? All professional basketball players seven Yeah. Listen to
the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I heart

(01:00:11):
radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.