Latest / Ridiculous History / The Spiritualism Movement Was Utterly Ridiculous, Part Two: Con Artists, Skeptics, and Ghosts

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The Spiritualism Movement Was Utterly Ridiculous, Part Two: Con Artists, Skeptics, and Ghosts · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
0:31
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Knock knock, knock. Let's hear it
0:34
Speaker 1: for our super producer, Dylan the Fox brother Fagan.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, love love your barbecue. That's another very Atlanta centric.
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Speaker 3: Referend narrow casting.
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Speaker 1: Oh we are, we are. Indeed, that's Noel Brown. They
0:50
Speaker 1: called me Ben Bullen. We're welcoming back, returning guest brother
0:56
Speaker 1: of ours friend slash nemesis of the show, the one
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Speaker 1: and only Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist, And I gotta say, man,
1:05
Speaker 1: you were so well behaved in the first part of
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Speaker 1: this journey, utterly mellow.
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Speaker 3: I mean to be fair, you guys. Every day I'm
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Speaker 3: getting closer to being able to hold the other half
1:16
Speaker 3: of the conversation around spiritualism, you know, from the other side.
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Speaker 3: So it's just kind of put things into perspective.
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Speaker 2: There we go. It'll do that depending on who's leading
1:30
Speaker 2: the seance.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I think if you have ridiculous references to
1:36
Speaker 3: science fiction films I've never seen, then you know, hey,
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Speaker 3: this is probably legit.
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Speaker 1: There we go. Yes, Previously on Ridiculous History. We explored
1:47
Speaker 1: the oft untold origin story of what is called the
1:52
Speaker 1: spiritualism movement, which became a huge deal in largely English
1:57
Speaker 1: speaking countries in the nineteenth and twentieth century. So please
2:04
Speaker 1: check out part one where we left you. Spiritualism was
2:09
Speaker 1: skyrocketing in popularity. Three people named the Fox Sisters became
2:15
Speaker 1: sort of harbingers and precedents for many other self described
2:22
Speaker 1: mediums to follow. Maybe we start here, guys noll you
2:32
Speaker 1: remember in part one Jonathan made this fascinating and disturbing
2:39
Speaker 1: point about spiritualism kind of surviving through personal grief.
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Speaker 2: Well, sure, and just how powerful and rife for manipulation
2:52
Speaker 2: the experience of grief can be.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I know it's silly to quote, like a streaming
3:02
Speaker 3: TV series about these sort of things. That's so you know, trivial,
3:06
Speaker 3: But Wanda Vision the MCU thing had a great quote,
3:10
Speaker 3: or I think it's a great quote, what is grief
3:12
Speaker 3: but love persisting? And you think about that persistent love
3:18
Speaker 3: like it's a horrible thing to think about of someone
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Speaker 3: exploiting a person's love and their loss, and yet it
3:26
Speaker 3: is such an incredible opportunity if you are of the
3:31
Speaker 3: unethical or a moral sort.
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Speaker 2: Well, that's a really good point, Johnathan, because so often
3:36
Speaker 2: we see love being weaponized and like honeypot type traps
3:40
Speaker 2: for example, in you know, spy scenarios where someone will
3:45
Speaker 2: prey on an individual's either romantic love or lust or
3:49
Speaker 2: what have you. But you know, we heard so many
3:52
Speaker 2: horror stories about people being manipulated through you know, false
3:59
Speaker 2: showing affection, and this is the inverse of that, or
4:02
Speaker 2: it's the other side of that. Because the love persisting
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Speaker 2: for an actual you know, a child or a sibling
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Speaker 2: or you know, a partner, you can just as easily
4:14
Speaker 2: glom on and capitalize on that.
4:17
Speaker 3: And we're at a stage in the United States history
4:20
Speaker 3: mid nineteenth century where a massive event is going to
4:26
Speaker 3: impact the entire nation. And compound this situation where feelings
4:34
Speaker 3: are running super high and there is sadly the great
4:38
Speaker 3: tragedy of thousands upon thousands of lives.
4:42
Speaker 1: Right yeah, in one of the worst named wars ever,
4:48
Speaker 1: the US finds itself divided in something called the Civil
4:52
Speaker 1: War from eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five. Despite
4:56
Speaker 1: being just a few years long. This it is a
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Speaker 1: terrible event for the nation. It's a real reckoning, so
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Speaker 1: many people die. This means that spiritualism doesn't just survive
5:12
Speaker 1: during this period, it thrives. And it may sound ghoulish,
5:16
Speaker 1: but as we pointed out here, families on both sides
5:20
Speaker 1: of that war encountered heartbreaking losses of children, spouses, parents, friends.
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Speaker 1: So people want this explanation. We're desperately clinging to the
5:29
Speaker 1: idea that our loved ones are not really gone.
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Speaker 3: And I'm sure there are individuals who genuinely wanted to
5:37
Speaker 3: give comfort to others, who were not trying to exploit, people,
5:43
Speaker 3: who were actually attempting to make other families feel whole again.
5:50
Speaker 3: But those few people with good intentions may have been
5:54
Speaker 3: outnumbered by those who just saw opportunity to make some money.
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Speaker 1: Well said, And you know, since we're telling the truth
6:03
Speaker 1: playing here, I can't help but draw a tangential comparison
6:08
Speaker 1: to the way the pandemic lockdown was very good for
6:12
Speaker 1: the podcast business.
6:14
Speaker 3: To the point where everybody had one, to the.
6:17
Speaker 1: Point where everybody had one.
6:19
Speaker 2: People talking about boom time.
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Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, hey, y'all, do you remember do you remember
6:22
Speaker 3: back when you started podcasting and the average person had
6:27
Speaker 3: not even understood what a podcast was.
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Speaker 2: And there were dozens, maybe hundreds, but certainly not you know,
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Speaker 2: countless millions that we had. Yeah, absolutely immeasurable. That's funny though,
6:39
Speaker 2: because boom time does imply sort of like everyone's making
6:45
Speaker 2: you know, money handover fist doing this, and certainly that's
6:47
Speaker 2: not the case with podcasting exactly because there's a lot
6:50
Speaker 2: of them doesn't mean everyone's successful. But in the boom
6:53
Speaker 2: time of spiritualism, there was certainly a lot of money
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Speaker 2: being made.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, And it's interesting this differentiates it from so many
7:04
Speaker 1: other spiritual or religious movements because during the boom years,
7:08
Speaker 1: during the halcyon age of spiritualism, there was very little
7:13
Speaker 1: in the way of canonical text or formal organization. Spiritualism
7:18
Speaker 1: instead was more intellectual salon scientific pursuit stuff. You would
7:24
Speaker 1: see publications in trades or in magazines. You would have
7:28
Speaker 1: what we call trance lecturers who went on quite lucrative tours,
7:33
Speaker 1: and then you would have the performances of mediums. There's
7:37
Speaker 1: an interesting socioeconomic thing that occurs here as well. Spiritualism
7:43
Speaker 1: is inherently tied to progressive causes that are inarguably really
7:48
Speaker 1: good ideas, like the abolition of slavery or giving female
7:54
Speaker 1: identifying people the right to vote.
7:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, you cannot just wholeheartedly dismiss spiritualism as a mistake
8:06
Speaker 3: or a bad movement when there are these other elements
8:11
Speaker 3: that are involved. You know, it's one of those things
8:13
Speaker 3: where getting that big picture look is important to have
8:17
Speaker 3: a full understanding and appreciation of what the world was
8:20
Speaker 3: going through, largely the English speaking world. As Ben has mentioned,
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Speaker 3: like the spiritualism was very much a prominent thing in
8:27
Speaker 3: the UK and the United States.
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Speaker 2: Well, couldn't we lump in just things like fortune telling
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Speaker 2: and in tarot card reading and tea leave reading and
8:37
Speaker 2: all that stuff kind of in this movement.
8:39
Speaker 3: I certainly would. But I also am very good friends
8:42
Speaker 3: with a witch identifying person, and so please don't let
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Speaker 3: her hear this episode.
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Speaker 2: Well no, But my point is that I don't think
8:51
Speaker 2: there's anything wrong at all with people who do tararo
8:54
Speaker 2: or oracle cards or you know, astrology or things like that,
9:00
Speaker 2: because I don't know, I feel like you kind of
9:02
Speaker 2: know what you're signing up for if you're paying someone
9:04
Speaker 2: to read your cards or read your charts or whatever.
9:07
Speaker 2: What we're talking about here is something that's much more
9:09
Speaker 2: in the city predatory focused and predatory.
9:12
Speaker 1: Predatory is a good word. Yeah, we know. For instance,
9:15
Speaker 1: we'll give you one example of a very popular lecturer
9:21
Speaker 1: around this time, right before the Civil War. There's a
9:25
Speaker 1: person known as Cora Hatch or Cora L. V. Scott,
9:29
Speaker 1: and I think her story really speaks to the baked
9:34
Speaker 1: in prejudice of the time. So her audience would see
9:38
Speaker 1: her and during her speaker time, she was a pretty young,
9:43
Speaker 1: vivacious kind of person. So these audiences would show up
9:48
Speaker 1: in the hundreds and they would say, look at this,
9:52
Speaker 1: look at this absolute smoke show. How is she so
9:57
Speaker 1: young and so beautiful yet speaks with such eloquence. In
10:02
Speaker 1: other words, they expected her to be dumb as rocks,
10:06
Speaker 1: and they because she did not sound knuckleheaded, they said, oh, well,
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Speaker 1: the only explanation.
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Speaker 2: Is that, uh, we're not wrong.
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Speaker 1: Spirits are real and the smart guys are speaking through
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Speaker 1: uh this beautiful dumb person.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. It reminds me of how some people use the
10:27
Speaker 3: phrase well spoken, in a sense that when you hear it,
10:30
Speaker 3: depending upon whom it's being applied to, your thinking you're
10:34
Speaker 3: sounding kind of racist.
10:36
Speaker 1: Did I just say that to you?
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Speaker 2: Like it's like, man, you sure talk talk good for
10:41
Speaker 2: a woman You've never never articulated, You've never said that
10:44
Speaker 2: to me, Ben, Thank goodness, but good on Cora Hatch though.
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Speaker 2: For I mean, there are certain aspects of society that
10:53
Speaker 2: I'm totally okay with taking advantage of, and that's one
10:56
Speaker 2: of them. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about me. There is like, yeah,
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Speaker 2: capitalize on all these dumb dums thinking that you're only
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Speaker 2: smart because there are spirits moving through you, you know,
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Speaker 2: like take take their money.
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Speaker 3: It is. I mean, like we talked in the last
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Speaker 3: episode about how the Fox Sisters became kind of a
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Speaker 3: diversion and entertainment for the upper crust, and there is
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Speaker 3: a certain element of eat the rich that appeals to
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Speaker 3: me with that, Like it's not like they're preying upon
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Speaker 3: impoverished people who are grieving. If it becomes like a
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Speaker 3: parlor show, it's the people who can afford to go
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Speaker 3: that are.
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Speaker 2: Really Sadly though, as things like this get democratized and
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Speaker 2: more popular than you are going to start seeing people
11:38
Speaker 2: that are trying to find their niche and that may
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Speaker 2: well be you know, taking from the less.
11:44
Speaker 3: Are we talking about podcasts again, because maybe we.
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Speaker 1: Come on all right, we're moving on, all right, This
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Speaker 1: during this era, we also see very successful folks like
11:58
Speaker 1: Asha W's or Paschelle Beverly Randolph, both of whom are
12:05
Speaker 1: fascinating enough to be their own episodes. Essentially to Uh,
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Speaker 1: it's your earlier point about democratization and scale. If you
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Speaker 1: are the average American during this time, maybe you cannot
12:19
Speaker 1: afford to go to a seance or to commission a medium,
12:23
Speaker 1: but you cannot get away from conversations about this stuff.
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Speaker 1: It's similar to the success of television shows like Seinfeld, Friends,
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Speaker 1: Game of Thrones, or Lost. This is what people talk
12:36
Speaker 1: about constantly.
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Speaker 2: I guess what I'm getting at, too, is like everyone
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Speaker 2: can't be the top dollar earning medium. There's got to
12:44
Speaker 2: be some bargain basement ones coming into the mix, taking
12:47
Speaker 2: advantage of different markets.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you want to aim for the middle. You want
12:51
Speaker 3: the media medium in order to really.
12:54
Speaker 2: You know, medium at large, medium at large.
13:01
Speaker 3: If you need to hear the rest of that joke,
13:03
Speaker 3: you've heard the punchline already, but listen to the first episode.
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Speaker 2: Uh help.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I was, yeah, I was thinking that that this
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Speaker 3: is that there were people who were suffering profound grief
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Speaker 3: who were preyed upon by unethical people. Who who saw
13:23
Speaker 3: the opportunity there, right, uh, and in you can see
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Speaker 3: this also in other forms of supernatural occupations, like dowsers,
13:36
Speaker 3: for example, where you have someone who has a definitive
13:40
Speaker 3: need and someone.
13:42
Speaker 2: Else's susters referring to the wielders of these special sticks
13:45
Speaker 2: that could find you water, yeah.
13:47
Speaker 3: Or oil or you know, all sorts of different things.
13:49
Speaker 2: Right, Like if you're in it's a little bit hand
13:51
Speaker 2: in hand with snake oil type stuff.
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Speaker 1: Yes.
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Speaker 3: Well, again, like you've identified something that people have a
13:57
Speaker 3: need for. And in the case of mediums, it's often
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Speaker 3: grief that you're looking to exploit, but there can be
14:06
Speaker 3: other things too, Like let's say that someone passes away
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Speaker 3: and they were rumored to be in possession of a
14:14
Speaker 3: great fortune, but no one knows where that is. Well,
14:17
Speaker 3: now you have greed playing a part, right, And if
14:20
Speaker 3: you have someone who's like, oh, I can give these
14:23
Speaker 3: people hope that they can find this alleged fortune, they
14:28
Speaker 3: can take advantage of that as well. So these are
14:31
Speaker 3: things that we see repeated throughout history. The spiritualism movement,
14:35
Speaker 3: I think is a great way of looking at it
14:38
Speaker 3: in a sort of a microcosm of because it's so
14:41
Speaker 3: well defined, but that same activity happens today where you
14:45
Speaker 3: have people who identify, all right, let's go after the
14:48
Speaker 3: basest instincts of humanity greed, fear, grief, which isn't I
14:53
Speaker 3: would argue base, but same sort of thing. And by
14:57
Speaker 3: targeting that, we know that people are more likely to
15:03
Speaker 3: go along with whatever your scheme is.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, we see this then as now, same
15:10
Speaker 1: as it ever was. As the old song says, we
15:14
Speaker 1: also know that in the heyday of spiritualism, there, of
15:19
Speaker 1: course there was constant talk, but constant talk is not
15:23
Speaker 1: always inherently complementary. So even from the jump from way
15:29
Speaker 1: back in the Rochester days, there were ardent critics of spiritualism.
15:36
Speaker 1: Eventually their arguments I wouldn't even call them arguments, their
15:40
Speaker 1: observations win out and they lead to the fall of
15:44
Speaker 1: this larger movement. First off, the money is great. For
15:50
Speaker 1: a second, I love that concept of tmuse psychics because
15:54
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters are harbinger and they are precedent. They
15:58
Speaker 1: create an industry. They say, look, you don't have to
16:01
Speaker 1: churn butter or whatever people are doing. You can just
16:05
Speaker 1: be a medium, you could be a psychic. You can
16:08
Speaker 1: make a living.
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Speaker 3: They're almost literally the poster children of the spiritualist movement.
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Speaker 1: One hundred percent dude. And so now we see a
16:19
Speaker 1: old school capitalism thing happening the marketplace for mediums, and
16:24
Speaker 1: I am trying so hard not to compare this too
16:27
Speaker 1: much to podcasting. The marketplace for mediums becomes increasingly competitive
16:33
Speaker 1: and everybody has to have their own sticky right.
16:36
Speaker 3: It's it's oversaturated, oversaturated.
16:40
Speaker 2: There we go.
16:40
Speaker 1: So now you are walking down the street in the
16:46
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds and you're saying, well, I've got two dollars,
16:52
Speaker 1: why should I go see this one lady who just
16:55
Speaker 1: knocks on stuff and wraps like her ghosts communicate through counting.
17:00
Speaker 1: Next Tuesday, there's another medium in town and her ghost
17:04
Speaker 1: actually write stuff down on little cards.
17:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, or this one down the street can produce ectoplasm
17:09
Speaker 3: and you won't believe where it comes from.
17:14
Speaker 1: We were talking about this a little bit off air,
17:17
Speaker 1: folks to decide whether or not ectoplasms should be its
17:21
Speaker 1: own episode. We are a Peach thirteen show, so do yeah.
17:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well we'll leave out what I'm referencing because it's
17:30
Speaker 3: just it's not appropriate.
17:34
Speaker 2: I believe it was covered in a South Park episode
17:36
Speaker 2: as well, if I'm not mistaken.
17:38
Speaker 1: There's also you know, just the fact that cheesecloth in
17:42
Speaker 1: and of itself is kind of gross.
17:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, But this idea of creating various effects so
17:49
Speaker 3: that you can stand out among the other mediums, I
17:53
Speaker 3: mean that it did become competitive where spectacle became an
17:58
Speaker 3: an anticipation, an expected element of a medium session. Right.
18:04
Speaker 3: You wouldn't if you were to just go to someone
18:07
Speaker 3: who was just like rolling their eyes a little bit
18:10
Speaker 3: and then speaking in a slightly different voice, it might
18:13
Speaker 3: not impress upon you that it's money well spent compared
18:18
Speaker 3: to going someplace where the table appears to levitate an
18:22
Speaker 3: inch off the ground at one point, and other such
18:25
Speaker 3: effects which became commonplace in these And that also became
18:30
Speaker 3: an inroad for people who were thinking that sounds like
18:35
Speaker 3: that's not real to be able to investigate and say.
18:41
Speaker 1: You got yeah, the people who have to be the
18:43
Speaker 1: fun police and come in and say, look, I love
18:47
Speaker 1: a show. You know, I love a good time dinner
18:51
Speaker 1: in a movie. Who doesn't? But I do want to
18:54
Speaker 1: know whether or not you are acting in good faith.
18:57
Speaker 1: This is where we see concurrent with the rise of
19:01
Speaker 1: multiple self reported mediums. We see the rise of independent investigators.
19:07
Speaker 1: These folks begin to notice a troubling pattern. Whether or
19:11
Speaker 1: not the mediums under question really believe they're speaking with
19:16
Speaker 1: ghost fraud is widespread. You see stuff like the Saber
19:22
Speaker 1: Commission of eighteen eighty four to eighteen eighty seven. It's
19:26
Speaker 1: out a pen and it started posthumously by this big
19:32
Speaker 1: to do over at you pen. His name's Henry Siebert.
19:37
Speaker 1: He believes that spiritualism is real, and so in his
19:41
Speaker 1: will he creates funding for this commission to investigate it.
19:47
Speaker 1: And now where the poor boffins, the sons of Sebert,
19:50
Speaker 1: if you will, who have to investigate multiple so called mediums,
19:55
Speaker 1: get this. They found evidence, provable evidence of fraud in
20:00
Speaker 1: every single case they examined.
20:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, which makes you think that if mediums, if any
20:06
Speaker 3: of those mediums were you know, legit, that Sebert himself
20:10
Speaker 3: would have a lot to say.
20:12
Speaker 1: Right. So, spiritualisms creating famous mediums, it's also elevating famous skeptics.
20:27
Speaker 1: You know, Jonathan, you and Nolan Dylan and I were
20:32
Speaker 1: chatting through our notes a little bit off air, and
20:35
Speaker 1: we see that this investigation of spiritualism and its claims
20:42
Speaker 1: also ruined some friendships and made some enemies like Houdini
20:48
Speaker 1: and Doyle.
20:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So
20:52
Speaker 3: to set the stage a bit, both men had suffered
20:56
Speaker 3: tragedy in their lives that drew them towards spiritualism. It's
20:59
Speaker 3: just their journeys took very different paths, and Houdini's case,
21:04
Speaker 3: he never really got over the loss of his mother.
21:08
Speaker 3: When his mother passed away, it deeply affected him. And
21:12
Speaker 3: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's case, his son Kingsley perished during
21:18
Speaker 3: the Great War, so what we would now call World
21:21
Speaker 3: War One, but back then they didn't call it that
21:23
Speaker 3: because they were still optimistic. And so they both had
21:27
Speaker 3: suffered great loss, and they both turned towards spiritualism because
21:32
Speaker 3: it offered the possibility of comfort and closure. But Houdini
21:40
Speaker 3: began to come to the conclusion that in every instance
21:44
Speaker 3: that he saw, as far as spiritualism was concerned, it
21:48
Speaker 3: was a matter of fraud, and Doyle still saw the possibility.
21:52
Speaker 3: And the reason why this ultimately led to the dissolution
21:56
Speaker 3: of their friendship is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his
22:00
Speaker 3: wife Jeane, was a medium and offered to do a
22:05
Speaker 3: session to contact Houdini's mother. Gene would do automatic writing,
22:10
Speaker 3: which is where you're just moving a pen around on
22:13
Speaker 3: paper and then occasionally it seems to scribble out words and.
22:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:20
Speaker 3: And Houdini read what was written supposedly by his mother
22:24
Speaker 3: through Gene, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's wife, and his conclusion
22:30
Speaker 3: was that his mother was not very fluent in English,
22:34
Speaker 3: but the message was written in perfect English. And so
22:38
Speaker 3: there came this confrontation of Houdini saying this is balderdash
22:44
Speaker 3: and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saying, that's my wife. And
22:48
Speaker 3: the friendship never recovered. And then years a few years later,
22:52
Speaker 3: Houdini famously got punched to death and and in the
22:57
Speaker 3: good yeah, and they never, they never was all their
23:00
Speaker 3: differences and so this was like a friendship of two
23:05
Speaker 3: like greats in history. Like I think kids today, even
23:10
Speaker 3: if they've never seen or read anything about Houdini, have
23:14
Speaker 3: heard the name like it's and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
23:18
Speaker 3: Like obviously, Sherlock continues to have a massive impact as
23:22
Speaker 3: like every four or five years we get a new
23:25
Speaker 3: adaptation of Sherlock Holmes or some spin off or something and.
23:29
Speaker 2: Don't they realize how popular those Robert Downey Junior ones were? Yeah,
23:33
Speaker 2: they made gazillion dollars. Some of those adaptations are good,
23:36
Speaker 2: Yeah they are, I mean, particularly the Benedict Cumber Batcher.
23:39
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then you have, you know, these two people
23:41
Speaker 3: who were legitimate friends and then really had a massive
23:45
Speaker 3: falling out over spiritualism. That to me is a fascinating story.
23:50
Speaker 3: It's also I mean, it's been depicted in books and
23:53
Speaker 3: plays and things like that. It's not something that's like
23:56
Speaker 3: a bit of minutia. I think. I think people who
23:59
Speaker 3: are an interest in this are aware of that particular
24:04
Speaker 3: relationship and how it fell apart. But to me, it's
24:06
Speaker 3: just one of those tragic stories of two people who
24:09
Speaker 3: were really suffering and struggling with their grief, having profoundly
24:14
Speaker 3: different experiences when they were seeking a way to process that,
24:21
Speaker 3: and how that could tear them apart.
24:23
Speaker 1: And to be fair, Whodini was pretty strident. Wudini was
24:28
Speaker 1: slightly yeah, not making the point that we made in
24:34
Speaker 1: our first episode of this series. We agree that everybody's
24:39
Speaker 1: belief should be your own, as long as you don't
24:41
Speaker 1: foist it upon others. Houdini, however, a few months before
24:46
Speaker 1: he got punched to death, was so hardcore about this
24:50
Speaker 1: skepticism that he went before the US Congress and he said,
24:55
Speaker 1: we should criminalize fortune telling for hire. Anybody who pretends
25:01
Speaker 1: to in any way, how to put it, unite the separated,
25:05
Speaker 1: should be treated as a criminal because they are either
25:09
Speaker 1: diluted or they are grifters. And you thought most of
25:12
Speaker 1: them were grifters. It's a shame to see such a
25:16
Speaker 1: great romance break up in that way. But it is spelling,
25:21
Speaker 1: you know, the fall of the movement, because there are
25:24
Speaker 1: countless allegations of fraud, not just allegations, but proof of fraud. Right,
25:29
Speaker 1: We're finding how the actoplasma is produced. We're finding how
25:33
Speaker 1: the table appears to move.
25:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, wet wedging the table between your toe and your
25:38
Speaker 3: and the palm of your hands so that you can,
25:41
Speaker 3: by lifting your foot make the table levitate. Yeah.
25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it seems so basic to us now, but
25:48
Speaker 1: we have to understand the people who believed in this.
25:51
Speaker 1: They were no smarter nor dumber than anybody living today.
25:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:58
Speaker 3: So I want to give a couple points that I
26:01
Speaker 3: think back up what you're saying. Like, first of all,
26:03
Speaker 3: remember that a lot of the people who are seeking
26:05
Speaker 3: this out were motivated to believe, right, because to not
26:09
Speaker 3: believe is to give up hope. And as Noel pointed
26:12
Speaker 3: out very well in our first episode, hope is an
26:15
Speaker 3: incredible motivator, right, and to abandon hope is just such
26:20
Speaker 3: a dark concept we don't want to really pursue that.
26:26
Speaker 3: And another point is that even scientists today can be
26:31
Speaker 3: fooled by these things. And you might think, well that
26:33
Speaker 3: that seems weird, because you'd be you know, science is
26:36
Speaker 3: meant to be rational and logical and approach this in
26:39
Speaker 3: a certain way. But science also typically does not anticipate
26:45
Speaker 3: that whatever you're studying is trying to fool you, right,
26:49
Speaker 3: So it can Scientists can sometimes overlook cases of fraud
26:55
Speaker 3: because in their usual operations there's not an actual attempt
27:02
Speaker 3: to mislead taking place, Which is why I think a
27:05
Speaker 3: lot of magicians actually are much better at uncovering these
27:11
Speaker 3: things than scientists are, because a magician's job is to
27:16
Speaker 3: fool people, so they know how this works. They know
27:19
Speaker 3: how the operations work in order to fool some It's
27:23
Speaker 3: why people like Pendelette and tell Her are so good
27:27
Speaker 3: at that kind of thing. James Randy was really good
27:31
Speaker 3: at that kind of thing. These are our people whose
27:35
Speaker 3: whole existence was about fooling people, and so they know
27:39
Speaker 3: the tools of the trade and they can recognize when
27:42
Speaker 3: other people are using it not to entertain but to exploit.
27:46
Speaker 1: I think that's a great point. And wait for it,
27:49
Speaker 1: well said.
27:50
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, I appreciate it.
27:52
Speaker 1: So no, it's the perfect way to put this right.
27:58
Speaker 1: We see, we see the motivations of the people that
28:02
Speaker 1: we would call the participants or the rubs or the marks,
28:07
Speaker 1: but we also see the blind spot of a lot
28:12
Speaker 1: of potential investigators, and the nail in the coffin, or
28:16
Speaker 1: if we want, the final knock on the seance table
28:20
Speaker 1: comes when the Fox sisters go forward in public and say, Whoopsie, hey,
28:29
Speaker 1: there's a prank. It got away from us. We were
28:34
Speaker 1: making up the whole thing.
28:35
Speaker 3: It was funny when we started, and then it quickly
28:37
Speaker 3: got to a point where if we were to admit
28:41
Speaker 3: that we were manufacturing all of this, we were afraid
28:44
Speaker 3: of what would happen.
28:46
Speaker 2: Just like Looper, just like Lucaett.
28:49
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty eight, Maggie and Kate Fox travel back
28:53
Speaker 1: to the Big Apple and there a reporter offers them
28:57
Speaker 1: a pretty significant sum of money for the time and
29:01
Speaker 1: says we'll give you fifteen hundred dollars if you expose
29:06
Speaker 1: your methods and you give me an exclusive on the story.
29:11
Speaker 1: This leads to the public declaration that I would argue
29:15
Speaker 1: ultimately sinks the movement.
29:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, mister money bags, I would argue fifteen hundred dollars,
29:20
Speaker 3: it's still significant. I don't know about you, but I mean,
29:23
Speaker 3: if someone were to offer me fifteen hundred dollars, I'd
29:25
Speaker 3: be like, Okay, let's talk for sure.
29:29
Speaker 1: We're also not paying Jonathan to be here.
29:31
Speaker 3: That's true. I haven't been paid in so long, guys.
29:36
Speaker 1: So Maggie in particular, Maggie Fox appears at the New
29:41
Speaker 1: York Academy of Music on October twenty first, eighteen eighty eight.
29:46
Speaker 1: Her sister, her younger sister Kate, is in the crowd,
29:50
Speaker 1: and there are like two thousand people here. This is
29:54
Speaker 1: where Maggie or Margaret, if you want to know're a
29:58
Speaker 1: full Christian. This is where she demonstrates how those knocks
30:03
Speaker 1: and wraps occur.
30:05
Speaker 2: She produces it.
30:06
Speaker 1: By cracking her joints, and she says, wait, my sisters
30:11
Speaker 1: do this as well.
30:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the toes in particular because they were
30:16
Speaker 2: you know, under the table, couldn't really see them.
30:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where we find out that spiritualism isn't
30:21
Speaker 3: all it's cracked up to be.
30:23
Speaker 2: Dut dut du du dut yourself out, sirry nice.
30:28
Speaker 3: It was nice being here.
30:30
Speaker 1: So in in just the span of like almost less
30:36
Speaker 1: than a year. In eighteen eighty nine, Maggie recants her confession.
30:42
Speaker 1: She signs this letter and says, essentially, my bad for
30:48
Speaker 1: cereal spiritualism is OMG, it's so real. I was doing
30:52
Speaker 1: this for a different reason, but I'm back on the team.
30:56
Speaker 1: We think that happened due to social pressure and do
31:00
Speaker 1: to financial woes, because at this point in time, it's
31:04
Speaker 1: a lot like It's a lot like your favorite singer
31:09
Speaker 1: songwriter saying, guys, music is BS. It's like Tom York
31:15
Speaker 1: coming out and saying, I think guitars are made up.
31:18
Speaker 2: Anyone can play guitar, he would say, and then.
31:21
Speaker 1: He comes back, or Tom York in this example comes
31:23
Speaker 1: back and says, ah, no, I'm kidding. No one can
31:26
Speaker 1: play guitar but me, And it's very important exactly.
31:29
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, again, at this point We're talking
31:32
Speaker 3: about decades of the spiritualism movement growing and evolving, and
31:40
Speaker 3: entire people's livelihoods depending upon it, or or families that
31:44
Speaker 3: have sought some form of closure or comfort and then
31:48
Speaker 3: to be told, oh, it's all based on a lie.
31:51
Speaker 3: Like you could see where people would turn on her
31:54
Speaker 3: for multiple reasons, whether it was driven by greed or
31:58
Speaker 3: by emotion turmoil, and why she might feel the pressure
32:03
Speaker 3: to recant her confession because to do otherwise she could
32:09
Speaker 3: be in financial peril, physical peril. She could just feel
32:13
Speaker 3: terrible that people.
32:15
Speaker 2: She could also be responsible for toppling the entire industry
32:18
Speaker 2: and so many other people depend on for their livelihood. Yeah,
32:21
Speaker 2: you know, God knows that could lead to some serious,
32:25
Speaker 2: you know action. She could be attacked or yeah, no,
32:29
Speaker 2: it's scary stuff.
32:30
Speaker 1: Can you imagine if she had a Twitter account, you
32:33
Speaker 1: know what I mean.
32:35
Speaker 3: A one account. I don't recognize that name. Does that
32:38
Speaker 3: even exist anymore?
32:39
Speaker 2: You mean x dot com? The everything at all? Right?
32:44
Speaker 1: Anyway, speaking of cesspools, the damage was done. We do
32:51
Speaker 1: know that the Fox sisters continued on in their own
32:56
Speaker 1: ways to try to do tours, try to do consultations.
33:02
Speaker 1: They never quite achieved their previous fame and mediums overall
33:06
Speaker 1: psychics oracles as a practice. They were here before the
33:10
Speaker 1: spiritualism movement, so they continued. There are a lot of
33:14
Speaker 1: self reported mediums that exist today, but the spiritualism movement,
33:20
Speaker 1: their Spiritualist movement itself, never recovered. Society moved on to
33:25
Speaker 1: new obsessions, new interests, indeed, new moral panics, and so
33:30
Speaker 1: far as we can tell, as we record Thursday, February
33:34
Speaker 1: twenty sixth, twenty twenty six, no one has spoken to
33:40
Speaker 1: a ghost that we know of, that we know of
33:44
Speaker 1: or maybe ghosts are just like snooty to us, you guys.
33:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean like I love. I said in the
33:52
Speaker 3: first episode that when I was in elementary school I
33:55
Speaker 3: read up on all these things. I still love the
33:58
Speaker 3: idea of ghosts and ghosts or are still some of
34:00
Speaker 3: my favorite stories of all time ghost in the horror genre,
34:05
Speaker 3: of which I am a major fan, ghost stories are
34:08
Speaker 3: my absolute that's peak for me for horror. Like some
34:11
Speaker 3: people love slasher movies, some people love gore movies. For me,
34:14
Speaker 3: it's a ghost story. If it's a well made ghost story,
34:16
Speaker 3: I am in and so it still speaks to me.
34:22
Speaker 3: Even though I do not personally believe in ghosts and
34:27
Speaker 3: have never spoken to one, at least not knowingly. Maybe
34:31
Speaker 3: it overheard me, but I didn't know about it. And
34:35
Speaker 3: I still love a good ghost story. I just don't.
34:38
Speaker 3: I just don't believe in them.
34:40
Speaker 1: I'm also a big horror fan, and I know you
34:43
Speaker 1: and I have some philosophical differences in how much unfounded
34:48
Speaker 1: belief we will allow into our lives. To you, I
34:52
Speaker 1: would respond, Jonathan Strickland, aren't you already a ghost and
34:58
Speaker 1: your body is just a house haunt?
35:00
Speaker 3: No, I'm just I'm haunting a meat sack if anyone
35:05
Speaker 3: is curious. One of my favorite ghost movies is a
35:09
Speaker 3: classic nineteen eighty ghost film, The Changeling with George C. Scott.
35:14
Speaker 3: First two acts are incredible. The third act goes bananas.
35:18
Speaker 3: But for the first two acts of that movie, I
35:22
Speaker 3: could not be happier. The third act does get super
35:26
Speaker 3: duper crazy, and I go with it because I've already
35:29
Speaker 3: enjoyed the first two acts. But yeah, if you haven't
35:31
Speaker 3: seen The Changeling, seek it out.
35:33
Speaker 2: I always confuse that one with The Yearling, which is
35:35
Speaker 2: the one about the small horses.
35:37
Speaker 4: Yeah.
35:37
Speaker 3: Well, and there's also a movie called Changeling, not the Changeling, right,
35:41
Speaker 3: So there's there's lots of things you can confuse it with, but.
35:45
Speaker 1: I'll check it out. That's good, Yeah, we'll check it out.
35:48
Speaker 1: We also have to we also want to end on well,
35:51
Speaker 1: first off, folks, thank you for joining us, humans and
35:55
Speaker 1: spirits alike. We wanted to end on one fair point
35:59
Speaker 1: in the interest of objectivity.
36:02
Speaker 2: This is a.
36:04
Speaker 1: Bit of a quandary. I think it's a pickle for
36:07
Speaker 1: all of us. A real bag of badgers. So far
36:10
Speaker 1: as we can tell, this movement was a bunch of
36:13
Speaker 1: flim flam. But was it all bad?
36:17
Speaker 4: You know?
36:17
Speaker 1: Like some of the most notable figures in the spiritualism
36:23
Speaker 1: or spiritualist movement, they used their fame to advocate for
36:28
Speaker 1: genuine social change. A lot of these most prominent people
36:32
Speaker 1: were women in a society that would typically ignore them,
36:36
Speaker 1: so they had a path to power by saying, look,
36:39
Speaker 1: it's not me because you guys hate women. It's the
36:43
Speaker 1: spirits who say that slavery is bad. It's the spirits
36:47
Speaker 1: who say that everyone should vote. And somebody in the
36:50
Speaker 1: back was like, are those spirits dudes? And she said, yeah,
36:58
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think is something positive to take
37:02
Speaker 1: from this, I.
37:03
Speaker 3: Think so, I like overall I would if I were
37:07
Speaker 3: to weigh this in the great balance of positive versus negative,
37:13
Speaker 3: I think we come down on negative more than positive.
37:16
Speaker 3: But the positives are pretty profound, right Like whether or
37:21
Speaker 3: not it moved the needle, at least it was something
37:24
Speaker 3: that was pushing against the needle, right, So I I
37:30
Speaker 3: have a conflicted feeling about this, you know, again, having
37:34
Speaker 3: that love since elementary school of ghosts and stuff, when
37:37
Speaker 3: I was a teenager, I had a love of the
37:40
Speaker 3: skeptical side of the equation, and that's kind of where
37:46
Speaker 3: I developed my worldview of critical thinking and skepticism and
37:51
Speaker 3: things of that nature. So, since this is post transformation,
37:56
Speaker 3: it is hard for me to reckon with the positive
38:00
Speaker 3: of spiritualism. But it is impossible for me to deny
38:03
Speaker 3: that there there were such positive outcomes or positive messaging.
38:16
Speaker 1: And maybe this is where we leave it because we
38:18
Speaker 1: have so much more to explore regarding the role of
38:22
Speaker 1: science and the supernatural. Regarding of course, ectoplasm. Look that
38:26
Speaker 1: one up. Maybe not on your work computer. Uh, Noel,
38:30
Speaker 1: I've got to commend Jonathan. I think you can join
38:33
Speaker 1: me here as well. Of this gotta commend Jonathan for
38:37
Speaker 1: keeping it together for two episodes.
38:39
Speaker 2: No self control a little bit.
38:45
Speaker 1: Damn it, It's time, gentlemen.
38:54
Speaker 2: More recent listeners. We're sorry, I'm sorry, this is happening.
38:59
Speaker 4: Welcome one and all to the most cringe worthy segment
39:03
Speaker 4: in all of podcasting, as I the quizt match wits
39:11
Speaker 4: gainst these ne'er do wells, Ben and Nole and Quinn.
39:17
Speaker 2: Now, when you did that joke at the top of
39:19
Speaker 2: the first episode, he was coming for us the whole time.
39:21
Speaker 2: Now it's true.
39:23
Speaker 3: This is I was biding my time, as it took
39:26
Speaker 3: just a mere three hours out of my day to
39:28
Speaker 3: be able to do this.
39:31
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, ak the quistor, you son of a gun.
39:34
Speaker 1: You've returned once again to ridiculous history. Does our old
39:39
Speaker 1: game still whole?
39:40
Speaker 3: It does? I shall present to you four scenarios, three
39:45
Speaker 3: of which are true and one which I made up seats,
39:48
Speaker 3: and tis your duty to determine which of the four
39:52
Speaker 3: is the false one. And in this case I have
39:56
Speaker 3: given you the story is about skepticism, debunking, and belief.
40:03
Speaker 3: So four separate stories that tangentially relate to the topic
40:08
Speaker 3: of discussion, and you will.
40:11
Speaker 2: We're not doing this as video yet, but I just
40:12
Speaker 2: want everyone to know that I have laid back like
40:15
Speaker 2: I'm on a fainting couch, just to make sure that
40:17
Speaker 2: I can, you know, deal with that.
40:19
Speaker 3: Once we get to video, I'm going to get one
40:21
Speaker 3: of those fancy lights so I get a nice dark
40:23
Speaker 3: red on me when I.
40:25
Speaker 2: Quizzed from underneath.
40:27
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, we've also almost paid off that grandfather clock.
40:31
Speaker 3: Nice that we have to use. Nice. Yes, you will
40:34
Speaker 3: have three minutes to discuss amongst yourselves which of the
40:39
Speaker 3: four is the false one. If you need all three minutes,
40:42
Speaker 3: you may you may sniff out the false one right away.
40:46
Speaker 3: I will admit this time it was because I was
40:48
Speaker 3: so interested in the topic, I didn't spend that much
40:51
Speaker 3: time crafting a really good one. So so spoiler alert
40:56
Speaker 3: on that, and here we go Scenario number one. Lucian
41:02
Speaker 3: of Samosata was an early, very early skeptic. He was
41:07
Speaker 3: born sometime around one hundred and twenty five in the
41:09
Speaker 3: Common era in Syria. He was known to be quite
41:13
Speaker 3: the smartass, with works that contained heaps of sarcasm. Lucian
41:18
Speaker 3: didn't shy away from calling out fraud and superstition and
41:21
Speaker 3: His works include The Dialogues of the Gods, a collection
41:25
Speaker 3: of satirical pieces about the Greek pantheon. But my favorite
41:29
Speaker 3: target of his was Alexander, a Greek man who styled
41:33
Speaker 3: himself a mystic and oracle. Lucian described him as a
41:38
Speaker 3: fraud and thief. Moreover, he claims that Alexander would regularly
41:42
Speaker 3: rile up his followers to go put the hurt on
41:45
Speaker 3: anyone whom he identified as being trouble. Lucian's work exposed
41:50
Speaker 3: Alexander as a false prophet, a label I suspect Lucian
41:54
Speaker 3: would apply to all prophets. Scenario the second. In eighteen
42:01
Speaker 3: thirty six, Edgar Allan Poe penned an essay titled Meltzel's
42:06
Speaker 3: Chess Player. This piece set out to debunk the famous
42:10
Speaker 3: mechanical Turk Device, an automaton that appeared to play chess.
42:15
Speaker 3: It was originally built by Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kippelin
42:20
Speaker 3: de pasmand a century earlier Johann well done, thank you.
42:24
Speaker 3: Johann Wolffi wasn't really that interested in presenting his invention
42:28
Speaker 3: as the genuine article, but after his death, subsequent owners
42:33
Speaker 3: were not so scrupulous. Meltzel would present the device as
42:37
Speaker 3: an actual chess playing automaton capable of winning most chess games.
42:43
Speaker 3: Poe suspected that a person was inside the device doing
42:46
Speaker 3: all the playing, though his reasoning was a bit off.
42:49
Speaker 3: Poe believed that because the turk would occasionally lose again,
42:53
Speaker 3: there had to be a human controlling it, because machines
42:56
Speaker 3: would always play perfectly Scenario number three. Back in eighteen sixty,
43:03
Speaker 3: Jules Vern wrote a novel titled Paris in the twentieth Century.
43:08
Speaker 3: It was set in gay Paris in nineteen sixty one
43:12
Speaker 3: century in Verne's future. It would not see publication until
43:17
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four, having been initially suppressed and then sort
43:22
Speaker 3: of just set aside. In the novel, Vern poses that
43:26
Speaker 3: technological advancements will strip away superstition in Paris, revealing beyond
43:31
Speaker 3: deniability that there is no supernatural element in the world.
43:35
Speaker 3: As a result of machines doing all the work and
43:38
Speaker 3: Parisians having a clear view of reality, people are free
43:42
Speaker 3: to pursue their passions and Paris becomes the nexus of
43:45
Speaker 3: expression and creativity. Vern appears to argue that opportunists who
43:50
Speaker 3: depend upon naive and gullible followers are a major hurdle
43:54
Speaker 3: for progress. Now, scenario number four, how about a tale
43:58
Speaker 3: of debunking the debunkers. In his collection of works titled
44:02
Speaker 3: The History of Spiritualism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was quick
44:06
Speaker 3: to dismiss skeptics and critics of the spiritualist movement. In
44:10
Speaker 3: his introduction, he went so far to say, and I'm
44:13
Speaker 3: paraphrasing here that Frank Podmore cherry picked data points and
44:19
Speaker 3: facts to support a skeptical view of mediums and such,
44:22
Speaker 3: while he called Joseph McCabe's work that was titled Spiritualism
44:26
Speaker 3: a Popular History an absolute quote unquote travesty because of
44:31
Speaker 3: McCabe's insistence that various practitioners were in fact fraudsters. Doyle
44:36
Speaker 3: thus makes his bias undeniably clear in the introduction of
44:40
Speaker 3: his work. It's a bit of a blow for those
44:42
Speaker 3: of us who thought of Doyle as a champion of rationality.
44:46
Speaker 3: Those are your four scenarios. Gentlemen. You may ask me
44:49
Speaker 3: a question if you wish, you have to preface your
44:53
Speaker 3: question with I didn't think this one through. Obviously, you'll
44:56
Speaker 3: need to preface your question with is that a knock?
44:59
Speaker 3: I hear the door? And then you can ask me
45:02
Speaker 3: start your time.
45:04
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm running to our grandfather clock that we spent
45:07
Speaker 1: way too much of our budget on. Okay, timers started.
45:13
Speaker 2: Slam dunked it? Ben, jeez, Louise, let's see. I need
45:18
Speaker 2: a rehash of the first one. Frankly, yes, if that's okay,
45:22
Speaker 2: hold on, God a knock? Is that a knock? Guy?
45:27
Speaker 2: Here upon the close? Okay? Thank you?
45:30
Speaker 3: All right, so you'll your quick synopsis. You have an
45:34
Speaker 3: ancient Syrian skeptic, Lucien of Sammasata, who debunked a man
45:40
Speaker 3: named Alexander who claimed to be a prophet, and proved
45:44
Speaker 3: or attempted to prove through various writings that Alexander was
45:48
Speaker 3: just a fraud who got his followers to beat up
45:51
Speaker 3: anybody who said otherwise.
45:52
Speaker 2: Okay't ben, is that a knock? I hear at the doors?
45:56
Speaker 3: Mister Bolin?
45:58
Speaker 1: All right? Uh, question for you, Quizzles, is out of
46:05
Speaker 1: these four scenarios, are is the fake one totally fake?
46:11
Speaker 1: Or does it combine elements of truth?
46:13
Speaker 3: I mean there are elements of truth, but the central
46:16
Speaker 3: point is fake.
46:19
Speaker 2: Okay, No, I think it's number one. I think it's
46:21
Speaker 2: number one too, but I do just want to take
46:23
Speaker 2: a minute to say that I really appreciated some of
46:26
Speaker 2: the I don't know the content of these having so
46:29
Speaker 2: much in common with what's going on in the world
46:31
Speaker 2: right now, Like the the idea of Poe criticizing the
46:35
Speaker 2: mechanical turk and saying that it has to be you know,
46:37
Speaker 2: run by a human. That's like what's going on with
46:40
Speaker 2: those Tesla bots bartending in the like, you know, being
46:44
Speaker 2: being remote control from the room bartenders.
46:47
Speaker 3: Yeah.
46:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a whole events where you know, there
46:50
Speaker 2: were these Tesla robots tending bar and being waiters, and
46:54
Speaker 2: it was presented as though they were fully automatic or
46:57
Speaker 2: fully you know, self sufficient, but they were in fact
47:01
Speaker 2: being remote controlled by people from a nearby.
47:05
Speaker 3: Ipedal robots that included them dancing on the dance floor,
47:08
Speaker 3: and it turned out that they were just sort of connected.
47:10
Speaker 3: It was like motion capture in a way.
47:13
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, exactly. Uh. And then there was another one,
47:18
Speaker 2: the Jewels Vern one really reminded me of a lot
47:23
Speaker 2: of the things that are going on right now in
47:24
Speaker 2: terms of I don't know, just automation of everything, and like,
47:31
Speaker 2: do you think what was his perspective again that it
47:33
Speaker 2: was good, Yes, that like it would, it would.
47:35
Speaker 3: That without without the burden of work, without the burden
47:39
Speaker 3: of work, and having superstition stripped away, it meant that
47:42
Speaker 3: we were free to pursue whatever passions we might have
47:46
Speaker 3: and not have to worry about the drudgery of day
47:48
Speaker 3: to day life or being misled by someone who's preying
47:52
Speaker 3: upon our baser instincts.
47:54
Speaker 2: We talked about that recently, ben on stuff that I
47:57
Speaker 2: want you to know, because the only way that works
48:00
Speaker 2: is in this kind of utopia fied version of that
48:03
Speaker 2: scenario where everyone gets paid some sort of universal wage
48:09
Speaker 2: and able to persist or subsist without working. And the
48:13
Speaker 2: scene that we are, Yeah, we're at a place now
48:15
Speaker 2: where it's not really designed that way because the folks
48:18
Speaker 2: that are benefiting are the ones that are rolling out
48:20
Speaker 2: all this technology without really thinking it through very well.
48:22
Speaker 1: And we are time we're locking it in. Okay, three
48:26
Speaker 1: one one number one.
48:31
Speaker 3: Sorry, gentlemen, you have picked the wrong answer, for there
48:36
Speaker 3: really was a Syrian skeptic named Lucian of Samosata who
48:42
Speaker 3: really did debunk a prophet, a so called prophet named Alexander,
48:48
Speaker 3: and in fact, the only reason we really know anything
48:50
Speaker 3: about Alexander at all is because of Lucian's smartass writings
48:54
Speaker 3: about him.
48:55
Speaker 1: Okay, but the pole thing is true. The thing is
48:58
Speaker 1: absolutely true, is absolutely true, I remember.
49:01
Speaker 3: Although he may have also plagiarized some of his work.
49:05
Speaker 2: I mean, can I just say, though, that the Lucian
49:08
Speaker 2: thing threw me because I just assumed that everyone believed
49:12
Speaker 2: in every prophet back then. You know that, like, what
49:15
Speaker 2: was the metric with which you would use to quote
49:18
Speaker 2: unquote debunk a prophet?
49:20
Speaker 3: He was he essentially was saying that that Alexander was
49:24
Speaker 3: preying upon people's desire to believe. He was saying that
49:28
Speaker 3: he was he was builking people out of money in
49:31
Speaker 3: order to tell them things they wanted to hear. And
49:35
Speaker 3: he was very much a skeptic about everything, not just
49:38
Speaker 3: this prophet. I mean, he, like I said, he did
49:41
Speaker 3: write a work that was a satire about a dialogue
49:48
Speaker 3: of the gods of the Greek pantheon that he just
49:50
Speaker 3: used to point out the absurdities inherent in the mythology.
49:55
Speaker 3: So he was all about bringing down belief systems. Yes,
49:59
Speaker 3: which one was the false one? Jules vern So here's
50:04
Speaker 3: the thing. Paris in the twentieth century is an actual novel.
50:08
Speaker 3: It was written in eighteen sixty. It was well or
50:11
Speaker 3: initially it was suppressed, and then it was not pushed
50:15
Speaker 3: toward publication until nineteen ninety four. We didn't get an
50:18
Speaker 3: English edition until ninety six. But that story is very
50:23
Speaker 3: different from the one I described. In this vision of
50:26
Speaker 3: the future, there is a largely automated society, but everyone's
50:32
Speaker 3: working in things like factories. No one has any ambition.
50:37
Speaker 3: Art does not exist. The main character is someone who
50:42
Speaker 3: wishes to be a poet, but there is no place
50:45
Speaker 3: for poetry in this future. That everything is very utilitarian
50:48
Speaker 3: and pragmatic. There's no music, there's no poetry, and so
50:52
Speaker 3: it's a very grim view of the world. But there
50:55
Speaker 3: is quite a bit that's predicted that does in fact exis,
51:00
Speaker 3: you know, things like internal combustion engine vehicles, for example,
51:04
Speaker 3: a part of the landscape of this story. So the
51:08
Speaker 3: reason why it was suppressed is that his agent felt
51:13
Speaker 3: it was too much of a bummer to.
51:15
Speaker 2: Put it to print.
51:18
Speaker 1: It's never stopped us, but I'll tell you what this
51:21
Speaker 1: is the opposite of a bummer. Well played and I'm
51:24
Speaker 1: not going to stress you on a technicality, but you've
51:27
Speaker 1: you've won the day for today, which means you must
51:31
Speaker 1: return again as Jonathan Strickland or as the Quister. Personally,
51:36
Speaker 1: I like the first guy A little bit more like fifty,
51:41
Speaker 1: A little sour, a little sweet. You like some hide
51:44
Speaker 1: with your jekyl.
51:45
Speaker 2: I do, well.
51:47
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, folks. Big big
51:50
Speaker 1: thanks to our guest super producer, Dyland Fagan. Big thanks
51:57
Speaker 1: of course to you, Jonathan, big thanks to who else,
52:01
Speaker 1: who else?
52:02
Speaker 2: Well, geez Ben, We've got Rachel the Big spin a Glance.
52:07
Speaker 2: We've got Chris Frosciotis and he's Jeff goes here in spirit,
52:11
Speaker 2: and I do believe we have the rude dudes over
52:12
Speaker 2: ridiculous crime.
52:14
Speaker 1: And thanks to you as well, Noel, you and all
52:19
Speaker 1: the ghosts Lollo Meet.
52:20
Speaker 2: Thanks to you too, Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
52:30
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
52:33
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.