Latest / Journey to the Fringe / Charles Fort, Pretty Self Explanitory

Transcript

Charles Fort, Pretty Self Explanitory · Journey to the Fringe

0:03
From the unexplained to the mundane, come join
0:06
us on a journey to the fringe. Hello and welcome
0:15
to Journey to the Fringe. Not where I expected
0:18
us to be learning Spanish pronunciations, yet
0:21
here we are. Not in this episode, I assume, but
0:25
I don't know for sure. If you want to know what
0:27
we're talking about, you've got to go listen
0:29
to that slightly longer than average fringy menu
0:31
we just thought out. We are your podcast hosts,
0:34
Taylor and Chelsea, here today for a Chelsea
0:37
episode. It's true, and it's not going to be
0:39
in Spanish. Not even Spanish adjacent, which
0:43
is probably English, actually, now that I think
0:45
about it. Looking back through our catalog recently,
0:49
well, mine, my specific episodes, Taylor's have
0:52
been heavy on the Bigfoots. Mine have been heavy
0:55
on the abduction stuff. So I thought I would
0:58
change it up. I don't know if Taylor's going
1:00
to feel the same way next week. But I'm going
1:04
to do a person. And I thought, hopefully. I could
1:09
focus on a good guy this episode. And I think
1:13
I found one. I think we're going to get. I think
1:16
I did. Why are you going to say it up front?
1:18
I wanted to be held in suspense if this guy was
1:20
an asshole or not. As with all my research, we
1:24
might get to the end and decide differently.
1:26
I don't know. Okay. As I like to leave a little
1:29
mystery for myself sometimes as well. You all
1:32
know that. You've been here long enough now.
1:35
So anyhow. Charles Hoy Fort was born in Albany,
1:39
New York in 1874. Does the name ring a bell?
1:43
This is the Fortean guy, isn't it? It is the
1:46
Fortean guy. No way. You know, it's hard to find
1:49
a good guy these days. We'll see if he's still
1:52
a good guy at the end. Yeah, well, and let's
1:54
take into account, too, he was born in the 1800s,
1:57
so we're already talking about a very different
1:59
kind of good guy. Yeah, it's true. They were
2:03
held to a much lower standard. They were held
2:05
to a much, much lower standard. Incredibly. Don't
2:09
ask his opinion on many things. His early life
2:14
was largely defined by his relationship with
2:16
his authoritarian, physically abusive father.
2:20
Biographers suggest this harsh upbringing sparked
2:23
his lifelong, deep -seated distrust of authority,
2:27
especially the authority of mainstream science.
2:31
Did mainstream science beat him too? Sounds like
2:34
it might have. Yeah. Yep. Okay. It was boxed
2:38
in there with that, wasn't it? Oh, I knew. As
2:42
a young man, he wanted to be a naturalist and
2:46
collected specimens like shells and minerals.
2:49
He dropped out of high school, worked as a journalist,
2:52
and traveled extensively. I'm sure you didn't
2:56
look into this, but maybe you can tell me off
2:57
the top of your head, what exactly is a naturalist?
3:00
Just somebody who lives off the land? It would
3:03
have to be something to do with natural. Stuff.
3:07
Yeah. Right? But it sounds like he described
3:10
being like a geologist. He wanted to be, what
3:13
is a naturalist? Don't ask AI. I'll just ask
3:16
Google. Well, depending on how you ask it, it's
3:18
going to answer it immediately. Take out your
3:21
encyclopedia. Do you have it handy? An expert
3:26
in or student of natural history specializing
3:29
in the observation of plants, animals, and ecosystems
3:32
in their natural habitats. So it is almost exactly
3:36
as it sounds. Okay, so just like a general science
3:40
doer in the wild. Yes, I don't even know if you
3:44
would need a degree for that. No, yeah, that's
3:47
why I'm a little confused. I could be considered
3:50
that too. I'll be on the lookout for monkeys.
3:53
He eventually settled down to write, achieving
3:57
some modest success writing humorous short stories
4:00
about tenement life in New York, but struggling
4:03
financially. In 1906, he began to collect accounts
4:07
of anomalies. He was 32 years at that time. Fort
4:12
didn't rise to prominence through traditional
4:14
academic or literary ladders. In 1916, a modest
4:19
inheritance from an uncle, followed by another
4:23
from a deceased brother, gave him enough financial
4:25
independence to quit his day jobs and write full
4:28
-time. Finally, everybody around me has died
4:30
and given me their funds. Time for my passions.
4:34
Ford's experience as a journalist, coupled with
4:37
his wit and contrarian nature, prepared him for
4:40
his real -life work, ridiculing the pretensions
4:45
of scientific positivism and the tendency of
4:48
journalists and editors of newspapers and scientific
4:52
journals to rationalize. So at this point, I'm
4:55
starting to like him. I don't like how much he's
4:58
been, like... Really described as anti -authoritary.
5:03
Like, you cannot tell this guy something's wrong.
5:06
No, it's gonna come up some more. Yeah. Freed
5:09
from the need to earn a traditional living, Fort
5:12
dedicated his life to the library. See, I feel
5:15
like he should have went on to be a naturalist,
5:17
because it didn't seem like that makes money.
5:19
That's true, but this seems to be his real passion.
5:23
Yeah. Why didn't he go on to become a naturalist?
5:30
That was his true passion. We heard nothing of
5:33
this being a passion. I guess he just got addicted
5:37
as he got older. Wasn't his day job writing cartoons
5:40
or something? Anecdotes, yeah. He worked as a
5:44
journalist, so he quit his day job and just continued
5:47
to work as a writer? I guess it's what he knew.
5:51
But don't tell him what to do. Don't tell him
5:54
what to do. He spent years in the New York Public
5:57
Library and the British Museum, sifting through
6:00
thousands of scientific journals, newspapers,
6:03
and magazines to gather material on phenomena
6:06
on the borderline between fact and fantasy. He
6:09
was looking for what he called the damned data.
6:12
Reports of anomalies that mainstream science
6:15
ignored or swept under the rug because they didn't
6:18
fit accepted theories. Fort wrote 10 novels,
6:22
although only one, The Outcast Manufacturers,
6:26
in 1909, A Tenement Tale, was published. Reviews
6:31
were mostly positive, but it was unsuccessful
6:33
commercially. During 1915, Fort began to write
6:38
two books titled X and Y, the first dealing with
6:43
the idea that beings on Mars were controlling
6:45
events on Earth, and the second with the postulation
6:49
of a sinister civilization extant on the South
6:53
Pole. And, sorry, Chelsea, what years are we
6:55
talking about for the release of these? Like
6:57
1910s? 1915, okay. Yeah. These books caught the
7:02
attention of writer Theodore Dreiser, who tried
7:05
to get them published, but to no avail. Discouraged.
7:09
Fort burnt the manuscripts, but soon began work
7:12
on the book that would change the course of his
7:15
life, The Book of the Damned, which came in 1919,
7:19
which Dreiser helped to get published. The title
7:22
referred to the damned data that Fort collected,
7:26
phenomena for which science could not account
7:29
or that was thus rejected or ignored. You see,
7:32
multiple times through this, he quite oftentimes
7:35
destroys his work. Because like he came up here
7:40
and he just burnt all his manuscripts of all
7:42
the 10 books that he wrote. And this was the
7:45
early 1900s. Like it's still not that easy to
7:50
get rid of everything. It's true. And there's
7:53
a point where he's getting frustrated with his
7:55
work again. And he's like sitting with all his
7:58
notes on a park bench in New York. And he literally
8:00
just lets the wind take it away. It doesn't do
8:04
anything about it. And someone actually picks
8:07
it up. He's like, oh no, I will help you. Yeah,
8:09
and he was like, I didn't want that. He just
8:13
lets it all go. So, Fort found himself... the
8:18
subject of a cult following after this book is
8:21
published, which is the Book of the Damned. And
8:25
talk arose of the formation of a formal organization
8:28
to study the type of odd events related by his
8:31
books. And a part of understanding this is that
8:35
nobody is talking about this at the time, which
8:38
is a part of how he starts to get a cult following.
8:41
To be fair, there were seances. People were talking
8:44
about giants. There were no books. such as what
8:47
he's rated oh comp compiling it okay yeah so
8:51
this is how he kind of gets a cult following
8:53
cataloging it yeah because i could think like
8:56
alistair crowley would have been roughly around
8:58
this time a little bit before this But he wasn't
9:02
like cataloging things. He was doing his own.
9:04
He was doing his own thing, like his own insane
9:06
thing. Yeah, as he does. So Jerome Clark writes,
9:09
quote, Fort himself, who did nothing to encourage
9:13
any of this, found the idea hilarious. Yet he
9:17
faithfully corresponded with his readers, some
9:20
of whom had taken to investigating reports of
9:22
anomalous phenomena and sending their findings
9:25
to Fort, end quote. Historian Mitch Horowitz
9:28
has compared the trajectory of Fort's literary
9:31
career to Edgar Allan Poe's. Quote, through his
9:34
pioneering of paranormal reportage, Fort did
9:37
for weird facts or alleged ones what Edgar Allan
9:40
Poe did for horror literature. Created a genre
9:43
where none was recognized. The two authors led
9:46
strangely similar lives of near punery. uneven
9:50
but notable literary praise during otherwise
9:53
struggling careers and elevation to iconic status
9:57
after death, end quote. Is he going to be killed
9:59
by rabies? Is that how Edgar Allan... That's
10:01
how Poe died. Oh, that's awful. That's awful.
10:04
As a side note, I just think that rabies would
10:07
be the absolute worst way to go because - Oh,
10:10
awful. I was on a Reddit doom scroll one time
10:14
and for whatever reason, it was the ask was,
10:17
what's the worst way to die? And at 2am reading
10:20
about how you die from rabies, it's stuck with
10:23
me ever since. And I just am paranoid about getting
10:26
rabies. It's actually crazy like how common it
10:29
is and was even for humans to die from. Yeah.
10:33
Back in the day. Yeah. I would have to say it
10:35
does sound like the worst way to go. That sucks
10:38
for Edgar Allan Poe. I'm very sad to learn that.
10:40
Now you all know that I'm very terrified of fish
10:43
and rabies. But love Mothman. Anyhow, now that
10:48
we know more about me, Fort dies May 3rd, 1932,
10:53
after seeing the advanced copies of his book,
10:56
Wild Talents, literally that day. They bring
10:58
it to him, they show it to him, the advanced
11:00
copy, and he dies. And it's probably of leukemia,
11:05
probably. It was never confirmed. Not the book?
11:07
Okay. Yeah. It was in the works to get, and I
11:12
guess it just like goes with his whole thing
11:14
of he didn't like particularly like any of what
11:17
was going on with his, like his career, like
11:20
his notability or anything. We'll talk a little
11:22
bit more about it. So just a little bit funny
11:25
that he like sees it and he dies. Not funny,
11:29
but you know. After Fort's death, the writer
11:32
Colin Wilson said that he suspected that Fort
11:35
took few, if any, of his explanations seriously
11:38
and noted that Fort made, quote, no attempt to
11:42
present a coherent argument, end quote. He described
11:44
Fort as a patron saint of cranks. Wilson called
11:48
Fort's writing style atrocious and almost unreadable,
11:52
yet despite his objections to Fort's prose, he
11:55
allowed that the facts are certainly astonishing
11:57
enough. In the end, Ford's work gave him the
12:01
feeling that no matter how honest scientists
12:04
think they are, they are still influenced by
12:07
various unconscious assumptions that prevent
12:10
them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed
12:13
in a sentence, Ford's principle goes something
12:15
like this. People with psychological need to
12:19
believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and
12:22
gullible than people with a psychological need
12:25
not to believe in marvels. So, That's like the
12:29
life of Charles Fort. I just want to talk about
12:32
his important contributions. Fort published four
12:36
major nonfiction books that cemented his legacy.
12:39
I talked about one or two of them, but I want
12:42
to tell you more about the books that he was
12:45
writing that kind of cemented him as he is. The
12:49
first is the Book of the Dam that came out in
12:51
1919, which is his landmark work. The title refers
12:55
to the data that dogmatics science is damned
12:58
to exclusion. So it's concerning various types
13:01
of anomalous phenomena, included UFOs, strange
13:05
falls of both organic and inorganic material
13:09
from the sky, odd weather patterns, the possible
13:12
existence of creatures generally believed to
13:15
be mythological, disappearances of people, and
13:18
many other phenomena. The book is considered
13:21
to be the first of the specific topic of anomalistics.
13:26
Anomalistics. Anomalistic, yeah. Anomalistic.
13:30
The second one, New Lands, which came out in
13:36
1923, focused heavily on astronomical anomalies
13:40
and mysterious objects in space. And then we
13:43
have Lowe in 1931 and Wild Talents. And Lowe
13:47
is L -O exclamation mark. I know I didn't really
13:51
pronounce the exclamation mark, but you should
13:53
know it's there. Explored human -centric anomalies
13:57
like spontaneous human combustion, strange disappearances,
14:00
and psychic phenomena. His key contributions
14:04
to the community, for which it certainly in my
14:09
opinion, gains him cult status. He coined the
14:12
word teleportation. It came from Charles Hunt.
14:16
Yeah, to explain how objects or people could
14:18
disappear from one place and appear in another.
14:21
He talks about in the Book of the Dam falls of
14:24
frogs, fishes, and inorganic materials. And he
14:28
was one of the very first people to suggest that
14:31
strange lights in the sky were alien spacecraft.
14:34
And he introduced early concepts of alien abduction.
14:38
Yeah, to be fair, he was saying that Mars was
14:40
going to attack us really early on. Yeah. And
14:43
famously writing, I think we are property. Examples
14:47
of the odd phenomena in Ford's book include occult,
14:51
supernatural, and paranormal phenomena, like
14:54
I listed out for you. Reported events include
14:57
spontaneous human combustion, ball lightning,
15:00
which is another term explicitly used by Fort,
15:04
poltergeist events, unaccountable noises and
15:07
explosions, levitation, unidentified flying objects,
15:11
unexplained disappearances, giant wheels of light
15:13
in the oceans, and animals found outside of their
15:16
normal ranges, if, for example, phantom cats.
15:19
He offered many reports of out -of -place artifacts
15:22
or ooparts. We have done... an episode on Oopert's
15:26
strange items found in unlikely locations. He
15:30
was also perhaps the first person to explain
15:33
strange human appearances and disappearances
15:35
by the hypothesis of alien abduction and was
15:39
an early proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis
15:41
specifically suggesting that strange lights or
15:44
objects sighted in the skies might be alien spacecraft.
15:48
I know I said a great deal of those twice but
15:50
I just want to make sure that you're listening.
15:53
So for Fork's work has inspired some people to
15:57
consider themselves Fortians. I certainly never
16:00
paid attention to that word. I've seen it. come
16:03
up a lot but it's with specific researchers and
16:07
it's usually better researchers I find when you
16:09
use the term 14. So I never noticed the word
16:12
before or even heard it until we started doing
16:15
the podcast when I started seeing it pop up more
16:19
and more which is where I got the idea for this
16:22
episode. The major one that I've seen it is the
16:25
one you used it a couple episodes back and Lon
16:29
Strickler is a little bit involved with them
16:32
and it's the Fortean Research Society, I believe.
16:35
Forte's work inspired these people to consider
16:38
themselves Forteans. The first of these was Hecht,
16:41
a screenwriter, who in a review of the Book of
16:44
the Damned declared, I am the first disciple
16:47
of Charles Forte, henceforth I am a Fortean.
16:50
Which I kinda, I guess it goes along with the
16:54
research because he was such a first of his kind
16:57
kind of pioneer, putting this stuff together
16:59
and looking into it. Basically saying, I wanna
17:02
look at this stuff exactly and precisely what
17:05
i don't have answers but man do i like these
17:07
stories Precisely what is encompassed by the
17:11
term Fortean is a matter of great debate. The
17:15
term is widely applied to people ranging from
17:18
Fortean purists dedicated to Fortean's methods
17:20
and interests to those with open and active acceptance
17:24
of the actuality of paranormal phenomena, a belief
17:28
with which Fortean may not have agreed. Most
17:31
generally, Forteans have a wide interest in unexplained
17:35
phenomena concerned mostly with the natural world
17:38
and have a developed agnostic skepticism regarding
17:41
the anomalies they note and discuss. The Fortean
17:45
Society was initiated at the Savoy Plaza Hotel
17:48
in New York City on January 26, 1931 by some
17:53
of Forte's friends, including such significant
17:55
writers as Hecht Dreiser and Alexander Woolcott,
18:00
and organized by fellow American writer Thayer.
18:03
half in earnest and half in the spirit of great
18:06
good humor like the works of Fort himself. The
18:10
board of founders included Dreiser, Heck, Tarkington,
18:14
Powies, Aaron Sussman, former Puck editor Harry
18:17
Leon Wilson, Wolcott, and J. David Stern, publisher
18:21
of the Philadelphia Record. Active members of
18:23
the Fortean society included prominent science
18:26
fiction writers such as Knight and Eric Frank
18:29
Russell. Forte, however, rejected the society
18:32
and refused the presidency, which went to his
18:35
friend Reiser. He was lured to its inaugural
18:38
meeting by false telegrams. As a strict non -authoritarian,
18:43
Fort refused to establish himself as an authority
18:46
and further objected on the grounds that those
18:49
who would be attracted by such a group would
18:52
be spiritualists, zealots, and those opposed
18:55
to a science that rejected them. Oh, so he did
18:57
not give a shit about like the seance side of
18:59
it. No, he, we'll get into it in a second. It
19:02
would attract those who believed in their chosen
19:05
phenomenon, an attitude exactly contrary to Forteanism.
19:09
The magazine, 14 Times, first published in November
19:13
1973, is a proponent of 14 journalism, combining
19:17
humor, skepticism, and serious research into
19:20
subjects that scientists and other respectable
19:23
authorities often disdain. Another such group
19:26
is the International 14 Organization, INFO, which
19:30
was formed during the early 1960s, incorporated
19:33
in 1965 by brothers and writers Ron and Paul
19:37
Willis, who acquired much of the material of
19:39
the 14 Society, which had largely ceased by 1959
19:43
with the death of Thayer. Info publishes the
19:47
Info Journal, Science and the Unknown, and organizes
19:50
the Fort Fest, the world's first continuously
19:53
running conference on anomalous phenomena dedicated
19:56
to the spirit of Charles Fort, which I don't
19:59
know why they'd say that. It sounds like he'd
20:01
want nothing to fucking do with it. Yeah. Does
20:04
it still run? I believe it does. Yes, I was looking
20:07
at their website. It does seem to still be up
20:10
and running. Wow. Other notable 14 societies
20:13
include the London 14 Society, Edinburgh 14 Society
20:17
in Edinburgh and the Isle of Wight. Ford's work
20:20
also influenced science fiction and horror writers
20:23
through the introduction of 14 themes, which
20:25
is often evident in the work of contemporary
20:28
luminaries such as Stephen King. Science fiction
20:31
great Robert Heinlein was also a longtime member
20:35
of the International 14 Organization until his
20:38
death. As you can tell, Fort was a polarizing
20:42
figure. Mainstream scientists and critics absolutely
20:46
hated his work. The New York Times called his
20:50
writing a quagmire of pseudoscience, and H .G.
20:53
Wells famously said Fort writes like a drunkard.
20:57
Fort routinely openly mocked astronomers. But
21:00
like half the good authors are drunkards. It's
21:03
true. Like Hemingway, considered one of the best,
21:06
was like not sober ever. Yeah, I mean, drunkard
21:12
shouldn't say anything about the quality of your
21:15
work. If anything, it might make it better. I
21:17
mean, I think the work should speak for itself,
21:20
not what state of mind you were in when you were
21:23
writing it. Belligerently, if you're writing
21:25
it drunk. I mean, I love Fear and Loathing in
21:27
Las Vegas, and let me tell you, I can guarantee
21:29
that was not written sober. Okay, so Fort routinely
21:35
openly mocked astronomers and physicists treating
21:39
their laws as little more than arrogant guesses.
21:43
However, the biggest controversy surrounding
21:46
Fort is actually a misunderstanding of his intent.
21:49
Many of his critics and many of his most fervent
21:52
followers failed to realize that Fort was often
21:55
joking. He later admitted he didn't literally
21:58
believe in most of the wild theories he proposed.
22:01
Like a super sargassum sea hovering above earth
22:05
dropping objects on us. This is in the Book of
22:08
the Dam. His extreme theories were satirical
22:10
tools used to show that the explanations offered
22:13
by mainstream science, like a whirlwind dropping
22:16
fish perfectly on one town, were often just as
22:19
absurd as his own made -up ideas. He was an anti
22:23
-positivist, arguing that the universe Look,
22:38
I just cataloged the shit. Ford's impact is massive.
22:45
Obviously, when you're like us and you're looking
22:48
at stuff like this constantly, his name has become
22:51
an adjective. Today, any unexplained or anomalous
22:54
phenomenon, cryptozoology, UFOs, weird weather
22:58
is classified as Forteum. The 14th Society was
23:01
founded during his lifetime, though Fort himself
23:04
found the idea of organizing a society hilarious
23:07
and refused to run it, and the group carried
23:09
on his work of collecting weird data. Can you
23:11
imagine, like, a group carrying on in your name,
23:15
despite the fact you're like, this is dumb, don't
23:17
do this, it's the opposite of what I would want,
23:20
and they're like, no, no, we're still gonna do
23:22
it. I'm going to be the head of it. Then name
23:25
it after yourself. No. No, I'm not. No, I want
23:28
nothing to do with this. And tarnish my good
23:32
name? No, sir. The 14 Times is a popular magazine
23:38
founded in the 70s that is still running today,
23:41
dedicated to cataloging the world's weirdest
23:43
news and anomalies. And Fort heavily influenced
23:47
the golden age of science fiction. Writers routinely
23:50
used his books as idea mines. Modern shows like
23:54
The X -Files and radio programs like Coast to
23:56
Coast Day. Oh, yeah, that would not surprise
23:58
me if it was like The Outer Limits. Yeah. Oh,
24:01
what do you call it? The original one. would
24:03
steal their ideas from that and yeah stephen
24:05
king had no time but for cocaine during his like
24:09
Heavy writing years. So he needed places to find
24:11
ideas. Talk about another author that doesn't
24:14
write sober. Coast to Coast AM. The direct spiritual
24:18
descendants of Charles Ford's lonely hours in
24:20
the library. I mean, the list goes on and on.
24:23
We quite often use sources that are called the
24:26
14 times. 14 society. I can't remember what it's
24:30
called off the top of my head. There's like 50
24:32
different 40 websites that we've used, though.
24:35
Yeah, I'll notice his name on things. It came
24:37
up in your lab. episode too actually about the
24:40
monkeys something had the name in it so yeah
24:44
that's the end of my episode but i think he's
24:47
a good guy i think i like him i he seems good
24:51
enough and especially like this i don't know
24:54
it almost feels like a greek tragedy or a greek
24:57
story like how it ends with like oh no you'll
25:01
hate the people who continue on in your name
25:03
and they're just gonna keep doing it yeah you're
25:06
just for a hundred years guess what you shouldn't
25:09
have done that if you didn't want this but i
25:12
just i like that Just how skeptical of it, yet
25:17
he wanted to catalog it for some reason. And
25:21
compile it all together, yet he did it all with
25:24
a sense of humor. And I just feel like all of
25:28
that goes together with Journey to the Fringe
25:30
so well. Because we have such a sense of humor
25:33
about these things and we compile it all together.
25:36
I'm really worried that Fringian research or
25:40
Fringian groups are going to study. cryptid genitalia
25:43
in the future chelsea i wonder if he did that
25:46
it didn't actually come up in what let's call
25:50
it 40 and right now just snap that right in the
25:52
butt yeah it's 40 but what do you think about
25:58
them i it's hard to say with these people He
26:02
was a cataloger, so you don't actually hear many
26:04
of his thoughts when we're talking about this
26:06
portion of his life. He did insert some of his
26:09
stuff because he comments himself that he was
26:13
often joking on the stuff that he did put in.
26:16
Was he joking or just did he find it so bad and
26:20
he couldn't burn it at that point that he wanted
26:22
to distance himself from it? That's true. We'll
26:27
never know. And you know what? He is born in
26:29
the 1800s. So you got to think that he was probably
26:32
doing some pretty horrible things at the same
26:35
time. We just didn't talk about. Yeah. But yeah,
26:39
I mean, yeah, that group in the like late 1800s,
26:42
early 1900s, it is easier to be a nice guy or
26:45
at least not a deemed asshole at that point.
26:48
Giving you more slack and you just had less opportunities.
26:52
Yeah. But yeah, I mean, like somebody had to
26:54
do it and I'm glad somebody did do this begrudgingly.
26:57
But you got to think it's always like eventually
26:59
somebody would have done it probably because
27:02
the stories are all there. It's just we were
27:05
waiting for someone to kind of. It's not even
27:08
rights themselves. The stories are literally
27:11
there. Yeah. Like even Passport to Magonia puts
27:15
together super old stories. It was just a matter
27:18
of time. And boy, did Charles Fort not want it,
27:22
but he did it. I really wanted to make a joke
27:26
about them wanting unlimited energy in the 1970s
27:30
because OPEC came in and there was an oil shortage.
27:33
So the Fortean magazine they created to get him
27:36
spinning in his grave to generate power. But
27:39
that's too contrived and too much set up for
27:43
that one very offhanded joke. Well, I'm glad
27:47
that you said it. Need to be included. Thought
27:50
process needs to be known. So yeah, that's my
27:53
episode. That's Charles Fort. I'm glad. I've
27:56
always wondered, and I felt like we did look
27:59
it up at one point, that it was a guy, but I've
28:01
never since actually looked into him. So I'm
28:03
glad to see that. I think I would be curious
28:06
to actually see his opinions on some things.
28:08
Because also, he wrote stories about it being
28:11
like Mars is controlling us. Yeah. Was he joking
28:14
then? Or was it... Like, is, I don't know. It's
28:17
hard to say. It seems to me like, I mean, he
28:22
said himself, what was it? It was like one of
28:23
the last quotes. I believe nothing of my own
28:26
that I've ever written. And it seems like he
28:28
was just a guy that just hated science so much.
28:32
Not that any of this is science. He hated pretentiousness,
28:35
it sounds like. It does. I'm kind of interested
28:39
in reading his book. Well, and it's written in
28:41
1800s English, early 1900s English. So it's,
28:45
uh. It's going to be a drag. One with Shakespeare
28:47
again? Of seven 1600s. Okay. So, anyhow, I didn't
28:53
really need to ask that out loud. 1616s is death.
28:57
So, late 1500s, early 1600s. I might, out of
29:02
interest, read it. You know what? This has no
29:07
place for me to say it right here, but I'm just
29:09
going to say it. Do you know what I ordered that
29:11
is currently on its way to me? Is it a Bigfoot
29:14
podcast? No. Oh. It's a book, and it is The Encyclopedia
29:19
Claims Frauds and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
29:23
by James Randi. Oh, that sounds like fun. Yeah.
29:26
I like him. Yeah. The wizard. I know. It's been
29:29
in my cart forever and I finally ordered it and
29:31
it has absolutely no place for me to be mentioning
29:34
it here, but here it is for everyone to know
29:38
because it had to do with the book. Oh, he was,
29:41
yeah, he's in. Yeah, the Uri Geller episodes.
29:45
Yeah, he hates Uri Geller. Maybe he gets his
29:47
own episode. I can see him being a good guy.
29:49
Yeah, he wrote a book on how much he hates Uri
29:52
Geller. That's probably a good spot to leave
29:57
off here. I have been Taylor, here with Chelsea.
29:59
We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for
30:01
listening. We'll see you next week. Bye. Thank
30:05
you for listening to Journey to the Fringe. If
30:07
you have liked what you have listened to, please
30:10
like, share, subscribe, or follow depending on
30:14
what venue you are listening to us through. Also,
30:17
please, if possible, leave a five -star review
30:19
as that really helps us in the algorithms. Should
30:23
you wish to interact with us, please check us
30:25
out on your social media of choice. I bet you
30:28
we are there. And if you really want to communicate
30:30
with us and give us ideas for new episodes or
30:33
tell us that were wrong and terrible either way
30:36
please send us an email at journeytothefringe
30:39
at gmail .com for now I'll see you in the next
30:42
episode