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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome

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Speaker 1: back to the show. My name is Matt our compatriot

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Speaker 1: kol Is off on adventures in the meantime. They call

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Speaker 1: me Ben. When you're joined with our super producer Paul

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Speaker 1: mission controlled dec and most importantly, you are you. You

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Speaker 1: are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want

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Speaker 1: you to know. Today, we are exploring one of the strangest,

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Speaker 1: most infamous series of events in early American history, genuine

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Speaker 1: real life which Trials, and nowadays most people only know

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Speaker 1: of these events through wildly fanciful works of fiction, film, books, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: So how do we separate the fact from the fancy here?

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Speaker 1: How do we establish what really led to these trials,

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Speaker 1: what genuinely happened to the victims, and how these events

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Speaker 1: impacted our culture and history from that point onto the

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Speaker 1: modern day. This is admittedly a tall order, Matt, and luckily,

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Speaker 1: very luckily, we are not tackling it alone. We are

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Speaker 1: joined by the creator, producer, and host of the hit

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Speaker 1: podcast Lore, which has also been adapted into a book

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Speaker 1: series and a television series, and as well as the

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Speaker 1: creator of the brand new podcast Unobscured, Ladies and Gentlemen,

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Speaker 1: Aaron Mankate, Hey, gentlemen, thanks for having me. Hey, is

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Speaker 1: our pleasure to have you on the show. Erin, And

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Speaker 1: just a bit of full disclosure here, I work with

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Speaker 1: Aaron in creating the show Unobscured. Just lest you think

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Speaker 1: we're pulling a fast one on you, h We work

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Speaker 1: together on this, but the bulk of the work is

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Speaker 1: most certainly Errand's um. But we we had it was

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Speaker 1: just a fascinating deep dive into the Salem witch Trials,

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Speaker 1: right and and Aaron Ben hit on it immediately at

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Speaker 1: the top of this show. But it's something I want

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Speaker 1: to jump right into. Just this fact that many of

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Speaker 1: us are introduced to the Saland witch Trials usually in

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Speaker 1: at least in my case, an academic setting. You take

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Speaker 1: an early history class about American history, then you know

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Speaker 1: you kind of have an understanding. But then all of

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Speaker 1: that gets shaped by all of this pop culture and

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Speaker 1: all of these other references. So how how has our

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Speaker 1: understanding of the real witch trials been modified by this

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Speaker 1: pop culture? Well, I mean, I think you're exactly right.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of different factors that come

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Speaker 1: into play too, I guess hide the true story and

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Speaker 1: and and not always intentionally. It's not like there's a

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Speaker 1: dare I say it on this show, But it's not

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Speaker 1: like there's a conspiracy to to hide the the you know,

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Speaker 1: the true acts and deeds and all that went on.

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Speaker 1: You know, the sale and witch trial was a you know,

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Speaker 1: roughly thirteen or fourteen month period of time that had

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Speaker 1: a lot going on, and so you think about maybe

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Speaker 1: bumping into it in a high school class on early

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Speaker 1: American history, and you know, it's one of you know,

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Speaker 1: a couple of dozen things that you're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about that semester, and so by necessity you sort of

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Speaker 1: have to brush over it and and just mentioned a

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Speaker 1: few things like it happened, Um, nineteen people were hanged,

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Speaker 1: one was crushed to death by stones, and five died

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Speaker 1: in jail. And and that's that's the story you hear,

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Speaker 1: you know, and maybe somebody throws in, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: they believe that there were witches and the church one

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Speaker 1: of those dead, and you know, we we just we

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Speaker 1: sort of sum it all up into a couple of sentences,

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Speaker 1: and especially in this day and age of you know,

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Speaker 1: small character count tweets and social media posts, it's easy

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Speaker 1: to try to summarize things up like that. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: other factory coming into this is, like you mentioned before,

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Speaker 1: is pop culture, right, like films and and screens like

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Speaker 1: like The Crucible and TV shows and and even you know,

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Speaker 1: Bad One our documentaries You can cover something like Sale

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Speaker 1: and witch trials in one hour. So you know that

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Speaker 1: those things all just sort of work to to force

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Speaker 1: us toward an easy SoundBite answer. And when you do that,

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Speaker 1: you lose all of the nuance. You know something that

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Speaker 1: a lot of people may not know. It's something that

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Speaker 1: I learned, uh fairly recently. You actually physically lived within

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Speaker 1: a very close proximity to where the Salem which trials occurred. Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: tell us about well you know, so, um you hear

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Speaker 1: about the Sale in which trials And if you were

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Speaker 1: to find the location where a lot of the victims

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Speaker 1: came from on a map today, it would come with

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Speaker 1: the name Danvers as the town and not Salem, which

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Speaker 1: is sort of confusing, right. You kind of expected to

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Speaker 1: be Salem. Salem, which is a little bit more towards

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Speaker 1: the East. But back in the late sixteen hundreds, Salem

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Speaker 1: was like this territory, you know, and you had the city,

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Speaker 1: but then you have the breadbasket around it of all

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Speaker 1: these different communities, places that exist now today as their

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Speaker 1: own independent communities, like when Um and Danvers and Beverly

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Speaker 1: and andover in tops Field and all these places slowly

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Speaker 1: were chiseled off of the Salem land mass and became

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Speaker 1: their own things. So what is now today Danvers used

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Speaker 1: to be Salem Village, and Salem proper today used to

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Speaker 1: be Salem Town because that was sort of the the

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Speaker 1: built up, um, wealthier town aspect of it all. Uh

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Speaker 1: So this this is going to be new information for

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Speaker 1: quite a few of our listeners here, you know, and

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Speaker 1: it's important, I would argue for us to to carve

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Speaker 1: these distinctions out and clarify them because the last time

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Speaker 1: that we were in Boston we learned firsthand from uh

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Speaker 1: some residents about Salem's the current Salem's uh pretty successful

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Speaker 1: tourism industry based off of this tragedy. Is that a

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Speaker 1: realing is it's still in full swing? Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And you know, and we talk about Danvers being old

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Speaker 1: Salem Village and in Salem being old Salem Town and

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Speaker 1: that dichotomy between the two places. There's there's a reason

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Speaker 1: why their name has changed, and that's partly to distance

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Speaker 1: themselves from what happened most of the Salem base because

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Speaker 1: there Okay, so there were a lot of victims that

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Speaker 1: came from other communities and over tops Field, all over

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Speaker 1: the place, Gloucester, um, but a lot of the Salem

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Speaker 1: victims came from the Salem village area. So what is

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Speaker 1: now danvers and a lot of the the legal aspects,

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Speaker 1: especially the Court of Oyer and Terminal which was sort

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Speaker 1: of the the higher level um jury plus judges system

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Speaker 1: um and then moving on to the superior court, those

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Speaker 1: things all happened in Salem town. So you had victims

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Speaker 1: coming from one area and that's now Danvers Um. And

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Speaker 1: that's wildely generalized. I'm just roughly saying it. And then

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Speaker 1: in Salem all the all the basically all the bad guys, right,

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Speaker 1: all the people that sat in the jury or on

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Speaker 1: the court and judge people in in them to death.

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Speaker 1: So you have these two towns, you know, three and

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Speaker 1: twenty five years ago, we're sort of sitting next to

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Speaker 1: each other, and they've grown they've grown up, but they've

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Speaker 1: also grown apart culturally, and so Danver has changed its name,

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Speaker 1: and it's sort of distances itself from the idea that

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Speaker 1: the Witch Charles happened there, like you can find things.

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Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse is one of the victims UM. She was

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Speaker 1: a seventy five seventy six year old woman whom her

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Speaker 1: crime was that she was too generous with one of

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Speaker 1: her neighbors. Back then, Puritans were incredibly um prejudiced against

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Speaker 1: any other faiths, and so even Quakers, which we never

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Speaker 1: think of Quakers as being like antagonists or or bad people,

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Speaker 1: but in the Puritan mind, they just they weren't Puritans,

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Speaker 1: and so Quakers were bad. And she took in a

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Speaker 1: Quaker orphan and that sort of sealed her fate. Among

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Speaker 1: among other things, she had some rumors spread about her

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Speaker 1: and whatnot. Anyway, her house is still there. It's it's

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Speaker 1: a homestead, it's a museum. You can tour three and

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Speaker 1: twenty five years later. It's still there, and um it's

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Speaker 1: set up more sensitively and as a as a museum

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Speaker 1: UM as opposed to the Salem Witch Museum, which is

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Speaker 1: you know, red lights and dark shadows and witches and

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Speaker 1: cauldrons and things like that. And and so there's this

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Speaker 1: there's this dichotomy of Salem sort of dodging the issue

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Speaker 1: and Danvers dodging the issue in Salem town sort of

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Speaker 1: rolling right into it. I mean, there's a there's a

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Speaker 1: statue of Samantha from the the old TV show Bewitched

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Speaker 1: in the middle of town because she was a witch,

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Speaker 1: and let's put a statue up for her. You know,

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Speaker 1: it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, all right, Well you've hit

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Speaker 1: on something very important here. And that's that dichotomy between

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Speaker 1: these two towns. But there's also a dichotomy between what

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Speaker 1: our understanding of what a witch is now that is again,

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Speaker 1: have it's been morphed and changed over all of these years. Um,

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Speaker 1: what what was a witch in New England? It's such

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Speaker 1: a tricky question. Which was I mean, you know, in

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Speaker 1: the in the religious sense. To the Puritan it was

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Speaker 1: it was somebody who was working for the devil too

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Speaker 1: tear down the Puritan mission of this utopian society in

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Speaker 1: the New World. Um. The reason why the Puritans came

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Speaker 1: over is because, um, the the Anglican Church, which was

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Speaker 1: kind of a Protestant branch off of the Catholic Church,

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Speaker 1: the Church of England, that just wasn't pure enough. It

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Speaker 1: hadn't it hadn't tossed off enough of the Catholic trappings

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Speaker 1: to be acceptable, and the Puritans wanted it to be

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Speaker 1: more pure. Thus the name and UM. Among all of

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Speaker 1: the colonies that were set up in the sixteen hundreds

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Speaker 1: that were all sort of like either endeavors of the

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Speaker 1: crown or business ventures, this was a business venture that

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Speaker 1: was run purely by the Puritans, and they all the

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Speaker 1: people that ran it essentially came over with it and

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Speaker 1: set up shop here. So it wasn't being run from

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Speaker 1: afar by the owners. It was being run here. They

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Speaker 1: had a charter from the king and you had to

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Speaker 1: get that um. But they were this They were this

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Speaker 1: isolated religious community, and anybody who threatened their mission was

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Speaker 1: potentially which they were, an agent of the devil. And

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Speaker 1: there were all these cool little trappings that came with

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Speaker 1: it that we still have pieces of in our culture today.

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Speaker 1: You know, you think about, um, how many times you've

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Speaker 1: seen a witch on TV with a black cat, right

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Speaker 1: like that's just the it's the partner in crime they

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Speaker 1: always have. And that comes back to the idea of

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Speaker 1: a familiar, you know, an animal that that is a

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Speaker 1: evil spirit in the form of an animal um that

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Speaker 1: follows the witch around, and that's just almost a European

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Speaker 1: an American constant that you have familiars. There are things like, well,

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Speaker 1: we can tell you're a witch if you have witch

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Speaker 1: marks on you, which is supposed to be like this

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Speaker 1: little devil's teeth, this this place where the demons will

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Speaker 1: will suckle from the witch um and they look like

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Speaker 1: freckles or moles or skin tags. And of course they

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Speaker 1: found them on people because everybody has those things. So

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Speaker 1: you know, it was this really tricky thing where, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they were enemies of of the Puritan faith, but after

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Speaker 1: that it was just kind of hard to nail it down,

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Speaker 1: which created problems for them. You know, yeah, we can

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Speaker 1: I can totally understand this because in the case of Um,

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Speaker 1: I believe it was Sarah Osborne, right, one of the

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Speaker 1: first people accused of witchcraft. In in her case, I

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Speaker 1: think one of the primary uh causes for persecution or

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Speaker 1: prosecution was that she was suspected of living with her

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Speaker 1: second husband before they got officially married, and there was

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Speaker 1: a little bit of that going on. Yeah, she had

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Speaker 1: a child with him. She had a child from a

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Speaker 1: previous marriage, She had a child with I think before

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Speaker 1: she married her second husband. Um. And I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: if I'm getting my people right or not, but I

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Speaker 1: think she might have been the one who, like one

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Speaker 1: of the kids lived at home and one of them

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Speaker 1: lived in sort of a boarding house situation. But yes,

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Speaker 1: Sarah Osborne wasn't um she I mean, she was also

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Speaker 1: just an outsider. She wasn't respected. She she didn't tow

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Speaker 1: the line, she didn't follow the rules and people then

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Speaker 1: as people now lash out against the outsider, they become

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Speaker 1: a scapegoat or our fears and our anxieties. And there's

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Speaker 1: something here to be said. It's it's I'm trying to

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Speaker 1: articulate this correctly, Earon, but the thin, somewhat non existent

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Speaker 1: line between religion and the law within the land, and

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Speaker 1: it's almost the same thing in most respects. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to wrap my head around exactly what I'm

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Speaker 1: trying to ask you here, But I feel like that

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Speaker 1: is one of the major contributing factors, or at least

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Speaker 1: that's one of the things you think about, uh nowadays,

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Speaker 1: when you're imagining this time period. How how did that

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Speaker 1: come into play with setting up these trials, Like we're

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Speaker 1: the Oyer and Terminal trials. Specifically a um a law

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Speaker 1: of the land kind of thing or was it a

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Speaker 1: religious law thing? Well, um, I mean, that's a forty

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Speaker 1: minute podcast in that answer right there. But like let's

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Speaker 1: just let's let's say it this way. So they had

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Speaker 1: a charter, which was sort of a permission certificate from

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Speaker 1: the king to go create this colony. Um. The charter

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Speaker 1: usually had some laws and regulations that were in there,

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Speaker 1: and for the most part you were supposed to adhere

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Speaker 1: to English law, kind of defer to that. But because

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Speaker 1: of the way the Puritan colony of the Commonwealth of

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Speaker 1: Massachusetts was set up, it was just a little different.

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Speaker 1: They had a little bit more freedom and latitude, and

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Speaker 1: they were able to build their faith into the laws

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Speaker 1: a lot more tightly. So when the Salem witch trials happened,

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Speaker 1: it happens in this uh you know. Dr Emerson Baker

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Speaker 1: is one of our historians, and he calls his book

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Speaker 1: the Storm of Witchcraft because it's it's this perfect storm

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Speaker 1: of ingredients. Among all these other things, the fear of

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Speaker 1: the wars with the Native Americans, to the north, the

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Speaker 1: French who are allied with them, UM, a harsh winter. Um.

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Speaker 1: All these different factors coming together. You also had the

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Speaker 1: fact that the king kind of in a power play,

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Speaker 1: takes the Charter away from the people, um shortly before

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Speaker 1: the witch trials happened. So they're essentially government lists. They

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Speaker 1: don't have any they don't have anything, and there's this

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Speaker 1: promise of a new charter, but they haven't got it yet,

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Speaker 1: so they're they're literally uh there there there are society

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Speaker 1: that has lost all their laws, and so they're leaning

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Speaker 1: on the people like like John Hawthorne, who you know

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Speaker 1: his him and his father both worked with the Charter

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Speaker 1: and then they knew the law. They're kind of leaning

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Speaker 1: on these people to help them. But I mean, you know,

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Speaker 1: their faith is permeating these things. They you know, they

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Speaker 1: have this sphere of witches. And I mean even when

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Speaker 1: they sit down with a new charter and start to

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Speaker 1: list out, like all right, we have to put together

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Speaker 1: a list of capital crimes, which they started doing in

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Speaker 1: you know, witchcraft falls on the capital crime list. You're

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Speaker 1: not going to find that on the books today because

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Speaker 1: we have a very secular government. Um. And but back

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Speaker 1: then there that that border between church and state was

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Speaker 1: a lot more fuzzy and uh, and so things like,

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Speaker 1: you know, being a witch became this capital offense and uh,

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Speaker 1: it was executed, executable by death with some exceptions. The

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Speaker 1: deeper into the trials you get and it just gets

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Speaker 1: more complex, things like you know, at some point, if

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Speaker 1: you used witchcraft but you didn't kill anybody, you could

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Speaker 1: be punished, but you won't be executed and whatnot. But

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Speaker 1: but yeah, the faith really did. It permeated everything, really,

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Speaker 1: And it makes sense what you're saying given the context

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Speaker 1: of the time when people are I think you hit

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Speaker 1: a really powerful point here. Wouldn't you say that the

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Speaker 1: people found themselves governless right in in a hostile environment

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Speaker 1: in terms of the ecosystem they were surrounded by uh.

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Speaker 1: And if we're if we're being honest, this is in

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Speaker 1: many ways a group of what we would call religious

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Speaker 1: extremists today. So people in a vacuum of organizational structure

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Speaker 1: would tend to fall back on the number one organizational

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Speaker 1: structure that they considered their their core set of values,

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Speaker 1: which personally, and I don't want to inject too much

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Speaker 1: of my opinion here, is terrifying because it kind of

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Speaker 1: it sounds as if this is something that occurs, you know,

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Speaker 1: in the distant past. But it's very important for us

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Speaker 1: to remember that people are still people were still the

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Speaker 1: same cognitive machines, and these sorts of things are not

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Speaker 1: as implausible in the modern day as they were. You know,

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Speaker 1: they're not any less plausible, i should say, than they

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Speaker 1: were in the sixt hundreds. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean one

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Speaker 1: of the benefits of of I mean, think about how

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Speaker 1: our government, you know, the original American government was put together.

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Speaker 1: You had representatives who were you know, chosen by the

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Speaker 1: people to go to a continental Congress and they lay

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Speaker 1: down laws and they worked together. They worked with a

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Speaker 1: lot of existing laws around Europe that they knew of,

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Speaker 1: you know, the Magna Carta was an influence and things

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Speaker 1: like that. But they they they were they were a

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Speaker 1: voice for the people as a collective putting things together.

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Speaker 1: And that made it a lot a lot more infallible.

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Speaker 1: You had people saying, well, that idea sounds good, but

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Speaker 1: here are three problems with it, and that's this is

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Speaker 1: how it could go wrong, and so they could adjust things.

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Speaker 1: When you move to a society that's smaller, I mean,

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Speaker 1: Salem village had about five in um Salem town I

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Speaker 1: think had maybe two thousand people in it. Now that's

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Speaker 1: a smaller group of people, with a smaller pool of

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Speaker 1: leaders making up laws and trying to find their way.

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Speaker 1: They're gonna make a lot more mistakes, and they're gonna

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Speaker 1: bring a lot more personal bias into things, which is why,

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is why dictatorships go wrong and why

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Speaker 1: emperors and kings have so many problems unless they have

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Speaker 1: some sort of a parliamentary system around them to keep

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Speaker 1: them in check, because one person making choices is going

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Speaker 1: to make a lot more worse choices than than a

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Speaker 1: group of people collectively thinking things through with common sense.

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Speaker 1: So this is, you know, this is partly what plays

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Speaker 1: out in Salem. You have a bunch of people who

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Speaker 1: they're just kind of leaning on what they know and

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Speaker 1: uh and their personal opinions and their fears and their

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Speaker 1: hopes and all this stuff, and we get a mess.

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Speaker 1: And will pause right there for a quick word from

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Speaker 1: our sponsor, and we're back. This is a little bit biographical,

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Speaker 1: but what were your primary inspirations or motivations that that

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Speaker 1: set you on the path to explore and clarify this story?

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Speaker 1: You know. Um, I mean I've I've made the podcast

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Speaker 1: called Lore for about three and a half years now,

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Speaker 1: and Laura is essentially a dark historical podcast, you know.

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Speaker 1: I I look for stories from history that have a

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Speaker 1: more unusual or um or dark is just the best

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Speaker 1: word for it, a dark bent that you know, that's

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Speaker 1: the kind of stuff you're not going to learn about

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Speaker 1: in history class. You're not gonna learn about the drummer

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Speaker 1: of Tedworth. Um, you know, a house haunted by a

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Speaker 1: ghost that keeps making a drumming sound and possibly a

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Speaker 1: haunted drum and all these you're not gonna learn about

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Speaker 1: these things that history class, and and and and that's

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Speaker 1: why I I do Lore because I want people to

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Speaker 1: hear these great sales of things that happened and people

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Speaker 1: claim that they were true, and I want to explore them.

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Speaker 1: Most of the time I'm find finding topics that I

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Speaker 1: can do in a half an hour. That's typically the

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Speaker 1: format of the show, you know, about thirty minutes long,

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Speaker 1: throwing some ads and some credits and more good and uh,

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Speaker 1: that leaves out a few topics, you know. And so

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Speaker 1: from the very beginning, I thought, well, the Salem which

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Speaker 1: trials fits you? Know that it has all of these

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Speaker 1: really great details. There's good context lessons in here, like

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Speaker 1: learning about how witchcraft worked in Europe and England, all

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Speaker 1: these great things, but you couldn't cover it in an

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Speaker 1: hour or a half an hour even so I I

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Speaker 1: just kind of set it aside. And so for a

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Speaker 1: couple of years I had a folder on my hard

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Speaker 1: drive that said it said lower the Salem Project. And

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Speaker 1: I had this vision of maybe someday when I had

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Speaker 1: free time, uh, because I just got busier and busier

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Speaker 1: as time went by. Um, maybe someday I'll be able

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Speaker 1: to do like a little mini series on on Salem.

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Speaker 1: And I didn't I didn't know if i'd give it

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Speaker 1: its own RSS feed or if I would, you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe make it a paid only like you could go,

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Speaker 1: you know, download the thing, like an audiobook sort of thing,

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Speaker 1: because I didn't know what the material would would turn into. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it wasn't until you know, about a year ago

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Speaker 1: that I started working with some of your folks over

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Speaker 1: there and how stuff works and realize that if we

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Speaker 1: were going to build a a network of shows, one

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Speaker 1: of those could very well be a long form documentary

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Speaker 1: series that just takes time you know, gives these really

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Speaker 1: big stories the breathing room that they need and and

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Speaker 1: let it, let it go deep. And so that's that

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Speaker 1: was the perfect home for the Salem topic. And not

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Speaker 1: only that, but living in it and around it here

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Speaker 1: in my area, it just made sense. And and it's

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Speaker 1: you can't pass up a topic like this. So jumping back,

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Speaker 1: let's jump back to Salem. It's winter time. It's uh

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Speaker 1: freaking cold out there, and there's no central heating, there's

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Speaker 1: no electricity. Um, the only way to keep you and

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Speaker 1: your family warm enough to not die is to have firewood.

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Speaker 1: And one thing that I didn't understand going into this

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Speaker 1: project was just how vital firewood was as a commodity,

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Speaker 1: as almost a currency in a way. Can you talk

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Speaker 1: to us about the importance of firewood back then? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean picture that post apocalyptic movie that you love,

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Speaker 1: where you know there is no more US currency, the

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Speaker 1: global markets gone, and you need to go buy food

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Speaker 1: from some trader and it's either a precious metal or

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Speaker 1: it's a bullet. You know, things like that that you're

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Speaker 1: trying to find ways like what what are valuable commodities

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Speaker 1: to trade for something? And firewood was certainly UM. I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't say it was worth its weight in gold, but

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Speaker 1: it was highly important. So to illustrate this, you know,

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Speaker 1: the the minister in Salem Village where a lot of

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Speaker 1: the victims came from, UM was this guy named Samuel

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Speaker 1: Parris who came from UM. I mean his family was English. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: his his uncle had uh purchased or somehow acquired a

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Speaker 1: plantation on the island of Barbados and uh and then

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Speaker 1: he was really bad at running the business, and so

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Speaker 1: he brought his brother in, which was Samuel's dad, and

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Speaker 1: his brother saved it. As you know, his uncle that

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Speaker 1: eventually dies and so Sam's dad inherits the place and

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Speaker 1: runs it well. But some natural disasters happened. There's like

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Speaker 1: this massive hurricane, and there's a a drought, and I

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Speaker 1: think some sickness and smallpox maybe, And eventually, UM Samuel

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Speaker 1: Paris has found himself running the place and he doesn't

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Speaker 1: want to anymore. He realizes it's it's going to kill him,

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Speaker 1: so he sells it and heads north. Um. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to go to Harvard, and while his dad was still alive,

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Speaker 1: he was attending Harvard, which is really really old school

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Speaker 1: from the sixteen hundreds outside of Boston, and so when

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Speaker 1: he finally sold the place off for good, he moved

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Speaker 1: back to Boston, maybe thinking that he would finish school

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Speaker 1: because he had stopped a few classes shy um, maybe

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Speaker 1: just looking for work. He used some of his money

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Speaker 1: to set up a business there. Finally he ends up

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Speaker 1: um not doing well at business and taking the position

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Speaker 1: in Sale and Village as their new minister. Um. The

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Speaker 1: negotiation process for his contract took him over a year

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Speaker 1: because he was this super litigious like we have to

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Speaker 1: get all the tease crossed in the eyes dotted and

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Speaker 1: want to be taken care of. I think he had

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Speaker 1: some high aspirations, but one of the things that he

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Speaker 1: was super picky about was firewood that he needed his

430
00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:20,320
Speaker 1: firewood delivered. And even after becoming the minister there, there

431
00:23:20,400 --> 00:23:23,560
Speaker 1: was a problem constantly with with you know, farmers in

432
00:23:23,600 --> 00:23:25,359
Speaker 1: the area. It was like their turn that week to

433
00:23:25,359 --> 00:23:26,919
Speaker 1: bring him a load of firewood, and they just they

434
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:29,320
Speaker 1: wouldn't do it. Um. He was hard to like, it

435
00:23:29,359 --> 00:23:31,479
Speaker 1: was hard to get along with, and some of them

436
00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:33,720
Speaker 1: just sort of held it back as as a leverage

437
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:36,959
Speaker 1: over him. Uh. And there's these stories of him writing

438
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:40,639
Speaker 1: in his study upstairs in the middle of winter, dipping

439
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:43,440
Speaker 1: his quill and the inkwell to to scratch on the book,

440
00:23:43,840 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 1: and the ink in the ink well being frozen because

441
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:49,880
Speaker 1: it's so cold in the house. And uh, that firewood

442
00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:53,880
Speaker 1: just becomes this thorn in his side for the entire time.

443
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 1: Just chop your own firewood, man. You know, as a minister,

444
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:01,760
Speaker 1: your give in the parsonage to live in. There's no

445
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,480
Speaker 1: land with it, um, all the land of budding you

446
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 1: is fenced off, and it belongs to somebody else, and

447
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:09,240
Speaker 1: they're gonna cut down their trees and use it. And

448
00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:10,680
Speaker 1: and he was sort of stuck. But yeah, I mean

449
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: I'd get a hatchet and go out in the middle

450
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:15,400
Speaker 1: of the night and just you know, start clearing branches

451
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: off of trees and bringing them home. Which so this

452
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 1: is uh one thing that I think is going to

453
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:26,400
Speaker 1: be fascinating to a lot of our fellow listeners when

454
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 1: they are as they explore Unobscured. Is the process through

455
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:37,679
Speaker 1: which you discover these stories? Um, could you tell us

456
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the primary written records that

457
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:46,000
Speaker 1: you found, or how complete or incomplete they were, and

458
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:51,600
Speaker 1: and how how you took this this vast amount of

459
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 1: uncollected resources, like how how did you arrange them? And

460
00:24:56,600 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 1: what was what was the process? Like? Was it was

461
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:02,920
Speaker 1: it all up hill? Where there surprising fines? Were there

462
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:08,359
Speaker 1: times where you know, it was frustrating because again the

463
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 1: great game of telephone that is human history got in

464
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:14,120
Speaker 1: the way. I think we're all very curious to learn

465
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:16,399
Speaker 1: about that. Well, one thing to keep in mind is

466
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 1: that Um toward the end of the which trial period

467
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 1: of six nine two basically starts in January two and

468
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,680
Speaker 1: runs through until about May of sixteen nine. And towards

469
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:30,439
Speaker 1: the end of that, the Governor of Massachusetts is this

470
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: guy named Sir William Phipps, and he he realizes that

471
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: the public perception of what's going on in the trials

472
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 1: is bad. Um. In fact, at some point that the

473
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:45,679
Speaker 1: judges involved in the trial higher Um a minister from

474
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:49,240
Speaker 1: a prominent minister family. Their last name was Mather. Increase

475
00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:53,600
Speaker 1: was the father. Cotton was the son Cotton mother. Um.

476
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: That's right, Cotton, uh and and Cotton was hired to

477
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,240
Speaker 1: basically write a pr piece. It was a book in

478
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:03,159
Speaker 1: defense of the Sailing witch trials. And right about that

479
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:06,879
Speaker 1: time Governor Phipps decides it will be very bad if

480
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 1: anybody else prints things about this. We want this to

481
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:11,520
Speaker 1: be the only thing out there. And so the governor

482
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 1: outlaws the press. They can't talk or write about the

483
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:19,360
Speaker 1: sand Witch trials anymore. So you have that which limits

484
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 1: the amount of stuff that's written about it. In then

485
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 1: you have people with with you know, let's let's let's

486
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 1: just pick a judge out of you know, like Nathaniel

487
00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 1: Saltonstall or or somebody like that, like or Samuel Sewell

488
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:37,640
Speaker 1: Um their their family documents that would have existed. Personal

489
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,439
Speaker 1: journals was a big thing for a lot of these judges.

490
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: They wrote in their journals every night, and a lot

491
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:46,040
Speaker 1: of them just go missing. Letters between judges who served

492
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:49,280
Speaker 1: on the trial and family members kind of take a

493
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: break for about a year there where they just they've vanished.

494
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 1: It's not like they stopped writing. Somebody's gone in and

495
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 1: they've taken these sheaves of paper out and they've destroyed

496
00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 1: them in some way. Samuel Paris himself, the Minister for

497
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: you know, fourteen fifteen months, kept notebooks of what was

498
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 1: going on, and one page was pulled out of a

499
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,760
Speaker 1: notebook at some point and taken as evidence for something.

500
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 1: We don't know how or why. But all the rest

501
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 1: of the notebooks have vanished. It's not that they've been

502
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,880
Speaker 1: misplaced or you know that the family just won't give

503
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,280
Speaker 1: them up. They just don't exist anymore. There's this almost

504
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:29,200
Speaker 1: global cover up of the documentation of what happened. Once

505
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: the government gets on its feet in late sixty two

506
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: and the Oiler and Terminer is shut down and it

507
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:39,400
Speaker 1: becomes the Superior Court essentially the the state Supreme Court. UM,

508
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:42,640
Speaker 1: the documents don't go away anymore. Those become really official

509
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 1: and we still have all those, but all the court

510
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 1: documents from the Oyer and Terminer, the big trial, all

511
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:50,359
Speaker 1: through the summer six two, it's just gone. So there's

512
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 1: not a lot to look at. There is stuff. Um,

513
00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:56,240
Speaker 1: I'm gonna plug the website just because it's got great

514
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:58,119
Speaker 1: resources on it. But if you go to history on

515
00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 1: obscured dot com, there's a resources page and I can't

516
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 1: remember if it's on there if I need to put

517
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:06,000
Speaker 1: it on there, but there's a link to is that

518
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: the University of Virginia that has a like a digital

519
00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: scan in library of every document relating to it. So

520
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:18,000
Speaker 1: things like the warrant that was issued for um Reverend

521
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:20,560
Speaker 1: George Burrows. Like you can see the warrants right there

522
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:22,679
Speaker 1: written out in handwriting, long form. It's got dates on

523
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:26,640
Speaker 1: and everything. It's it's beautiful. It's tragic. Um. So there

524
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: there are things that we have, and we still find things.

525
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:31,479
Speaker 1: You know, every year, somebody is bumping into a new document,

526
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:34,239
Speaker 1: some family opens up a book in their library and

527
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:37,480
Speaker 1: finds a warrant or a letter that was tucked away.

528
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: Like it happens, but a lot of it's just sort

529
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: of disappeared. You know. I think this right here is

530
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 1: the stuff they don't want you to know about the

531
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 1: Salem witch Trials. Can you can you imagine now in

532
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: this in modern history, if someone attempted to do this,

533
00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:56,360
Speaker 1: just if it was a on a year long process

534
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: somewhere and someone said, oh, nope, we're gonna strike this

535
00:28:59,760 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: whole thing from the record. Uh nope, everybody put away

536
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 1: your social media note. We're gonna delete everybody's Facebook. Uh

537
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: it's over. This didn't happen. Here's the official account in

538
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 1: this one home or this one blog. All right, Uh

539
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 1: carry on. That's insane to me that that could even happen.

540
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:20,920
Speaker 1: But you know we did. Where did we go? We

541
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: went to the Danvers Archival, the Danvers Archival Center. Yeah.

542
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 1: So the Pbody Essex Library a Pbody Institute Library that's

543
00:29:30,400 --> 00:29:33,959
Speaker 1: in Danvers. Pbody is another town, but the Danvers Library

544
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,719
Speaker 1: is actually called the Pbody Institute Library. It's confusing, but

545
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: they have a they have an archive in the basement.

546
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,120
Speaker 1: They have an archivist. One of our historians, Richard Trask,

547
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: is a you know, decades long experienced historian. He's also

548
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 1: descended from a number of the victims from the witch trials,

549
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 1: and he lives within blocks of where it all happened, um,

550
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 1: in a period home. He's he's a cool guy. I

551
00:29:56,200 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: like Richard a lot. And he sits as the archivist

552
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 1: down there in the bowels of the library and he

553
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: manages all these amazing things. Um. The church changed locations.

554
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 1: They moved across the street. A few years after it

555
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 1: was all over. They've got a new minister, Reverend Green

556
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:19,000
Speaker 1: Um maybe in the sixteen ninety nine range or so.

557
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:22,239
Speaker 1: He moved the building across the street. Um. And then

558
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 1: eventually that was, you know, torn down and they built

559
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,120
Speaker 1: a bigger building because it's a church, and they grow

560
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 1: and populations grow. Um. In the nineteen seventies, I think

561
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: there was a fire of the church and Richard Trask

562
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:37,160
Speaker 1: went with the fire department and was able to get

563
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: in and save some things. He saved the the original

564
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: communion where you know, like the chealist, the bowl, those

565
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: things they're made out of pewter. But they were in

566
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: a box right by the door and on purpose, like

567
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: he told them to keep them by the door in

568
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:51,680
Speaker 1: case there was a fire. Uh. And then two books

569
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:54,719
Speaker 1: were saved. One is think of them both as like

570
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 1: ships logs. You know, you think like Picard talking to

571
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:00,680
Speaker 1: the computer in his in his ready room, um, you know,

572
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: ship's log date whatever. So there was there was a

573
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: log for the church itself and a lot of people

574
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 1: wrote in it, whoever, officers and important people would write

575
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: in there, like you know, we excommunicated, you know, Martha

576
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:14,640
Speaker 1: Corey on this date, um, or we brought in this

577
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 1: member this date. It's sort of a happenings of the church.

578
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: That book from was saved UM as well as the

579
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 1: Minister's Book, which is sort of a ship's log for

580
00:31:24,520 --> 00:31:28,040
Speaker 1: the minister um and and that has Samuel paris Is

581
00:31:28,040 --> 00:31:30,440
Speaker 1: writing in it detailing things that are going on, writing

582
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: about the events and when he left and Reverend Green

583
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: came in that book was handed off to Reverend Green,

584
00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:38,280
Speaker 1: and then he takes over writing in it. And it's

585
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:42,280
Speaker 1: almost like a diary for whoever holds the position of minister.

586
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,560
Speaker 1: So cool, Yeah, and get to get to see them

587
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 1: and hold them and look at them. It's just they're amazing.

588
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 1: And we will continue to explore this in just a

589
00:31:52,480 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 1: moment after a quick word from our sponsor and we're back.

590
00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: One of the crucial things about reading these primary sources,

591
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 1: finding these uh, contemporary or near contemporary accounts, is that

592
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: because they are so much closer to the time in

593
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 1: which these actual events occurred, they do not suffer from

594
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:29,320
Speaker 1: some of the frankly widespread misconceptions that we have in

595
00:32:29,360 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: the modern day, not just look not just in the

596
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: world of Hollywood, but in the cultural zeitgeist, even in

597
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 1: academic settings. So what, uh, if you could tell us

598
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: here and what were some of the misconceptions that you

599
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: found in the course of your work on Unobscured. Well,

600
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 1: you know, I have this belief that people like to

601
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: some things up into a sentence. You know, we like

602
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 1: to say, oh, I understand that, you know it was this,

603
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: It was it was simple, right, like to be able

604
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: to declare something as simple means that we've grasped it

605
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: and we're in control of it. And you can't do

606
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 1: that with the Sale and witch trials. It wasn't simple.

607
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 1: It was highly complex. So one of the most common

608
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: questions that I get, um, whether it's social media or

609
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:16,959
Speaker 1: in person, regarding the Sale and witch trials is well,

610
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: why did it happen? You know? And I think that

611
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:23,080
Speaker 1: that's our inclination. It's a noble question, it's good, but

612
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 1: it's people saying, give me that one sentence that explains why.

613
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 1: What's the one answer? And there isn't There isn't a

614
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 1: one answer. Again, I hearkened back to what Dr Baker

615
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 1: wrote for his book The Storm of Witchcraft. It's got

616
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:37,760
Speaker 1: this great introduction by somebody else that talks about how

617
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: it's the perfect storm of all these elements that come

618
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 1: together before I go on to what maybe they were misconceptions?

619
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 1: You know, the big one that I always get as

620
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:49,600
Speaker 1: always just rotten bread, right, it was? It was that

621
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: ergot poison stuff. Right. Um, hopefully you have learned, um,

622
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 1: but know er, God is this fungus that grows on grains? Uh?

623
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: We hear about it as rye um, and people make

624
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:08,880
Speaker 1: bread out of rye, among other things. It makes a

625
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:13,120
Speaker 1: good bourbon on a rye. But um, this, this fungus

626
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: can cause hallucinations. And the idea was put forward in

627
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: the mid seventies that hey, what if these people were

628
00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: having hallucinations and and that explains why they were behaving

629
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 1: so bad. They can have convulsions too. And you know,

630
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: some of the the afflicted girls as we call them,

631
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 1: the people who are showing symptoms of being attacked by

632
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 1: the witches, um, they had convulsions and fits. They would

633
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 1: fall on the floor and thrash around. So you know, hey,

634
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: it sounds like ergot explains this. And the very next

635
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:42,399
Speaker 1: month after that was published in a journal, the same

636
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: journal published a um a debunking of it. You know,

637
00:34:46,680 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: two more scientists came on board and said, no, look,

638
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: it can't be ergot poisoning. And here's why. Ergot poisoning

639
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 1: reacts to you one of two ways, depending on how

640
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:04,359
Speaker 1: you eat. If you are deficient in vitamin A, you

641
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:07,880
Speaker 1: will probably have hallucinations and convulsions. They call it convulsing

642
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 1: or got poisoning something like that. Um. But but that's

643
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 1: only one of the ways the symptoms can present themselves.

644
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,879
Speaker 1: The other way would be gang green, and I get

645
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: that those are wildly disparate, you know, responses for something

646
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:23,759
Speaker 1: in your body. You know, you can either have convulsions

647
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 1: and hallucinations or you can have gang green, you know,

648
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 1: like pick um. And I would certainly grab the convulsions

649
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: myself and skip the gang green. But um, you have

650
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:35,520
Speaker 1: to be deficient in vitamin A to have the convulsions,

651
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:40,840
Speaker 1: and vitamin A comes from things like seafood. And Salem

652
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:44,360
Speaker 1: is a coastal town, a ports city, and most of

653
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:47,920
Speaker 1: the victims, the afflicted girls who have these symptoms are wealthy,

654
00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:50,839
Speaker 1: and they could have afforded to have good food and

655
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:53,239
Speaker 1: would have been eating food from the sea, they would

656
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: not have been deficient in vitamin A. So because nobody

657
00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 1: ever gets reported as having gang green, we can right

658
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: away right off or got poisoning. Um. I sometimes hear people, Yeah,

659
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's kind of like, oh, you

660
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 1: pop my bubble, why did you do that? But we

661
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 1: want there to be the magic pill, right We want

662
00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:12,759
Speaker 1: to say, oh, it was the one thing, and if

663
00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 1: we could go back in time and a time machine

664
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:17,440
Speaker 1: and like in one day, fix everything and make it

665
00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 1: not happen. We'll just take away their grain because it's

666
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:24,279
Speaker 1: got fungus on it, right, Well, it wouldn't work. It's

667
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: more complex than that, you know. And uh, you have

668
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: you have a lot of people suffering from what was

669
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:35,799
Speaker 1: essentially post traumatic stress disorder UM. Refugees coming from the

670
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: middle of Maine down the coast back to New England,

671
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:40,760
Speaker 1: back to Salem where they had come from years before,

672
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:43,800
Speaker 1: because they kept trying to settle the coast of Maine.

673
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:48,239
Speaker 1: But up there you had the wabanaki Um and the Algonquin,

674
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:50,200
Speaker 1: and you had the French who were allied with them,

675
00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 1: and they were constantly kind of hammering back down to

676
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,239
Speaker 1: the south. And these refugees, like you, they'd go up

677
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 1: and they'd settle, and they live for a couple of years,

678
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:00,800
Speaker 1: and then they'd get raided and attacked and they would

679
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 1: flee back selth having lost everything they ever took with him.

680
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:07,000
Speaker 1: And it was horrible, it was it was worth. Some

681
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 1: of them watch their parents die, some of them lost children, UM.

682
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 1: And so they come back to Salem and they tell

683
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:16,719
Speaker 1: their stories, and you know, they passed this trauma on

684
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,800
Speaker 1: to the people there. Everything outside their borders was darkness

685
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 1: and evil and danger and they were afraid. And uh,

686
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:25,360
Speaker 1: of course we mentioned the lack of the charter. They

687
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 1: didn't have a government at the time. It was very

688
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:30,840
Speaker 1: very tricky. Um. The one of the things the government

689
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 1: was doing is I think it was when Governor Andros

690
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: took over before Phips like they started to read re

691
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 1: tax property that had already been taxed and so you

692
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:43,800
Speaker 1: had paid your tax and you had your profit leftover,

693
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 1: and now you're gonna get taxed again. So financially they

694
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 1: were getting hammered. Um. They had an incompetent leader who

695
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:51,439
Speaker 1: didn't understand how to govern because he had never done

696
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: it before, Governor Phipps. Um, all these all these pieces

697
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: helped to kind of mix in the bowl and be

698
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: this perfect storm that that in that window of time,

699
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:04,600
Speaker 1: that's that's when it could have happened, and it did

700
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:09,680
Speaker 1: well well said well put this also this, this also

701
00:38:10,040 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: reminds me of work by the author Carol Carlson, The

702
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 1: Devil in the Shape of a Woman that I wanted

703
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:24,360
Speaker 1: to wanted to ask you about, because in Carlson's examination, Uh,

704
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 1: what what this author is looking at is more of

705
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: an emphasis on how certain women, primarily women, were chosen

706
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: to be accused of witchcraft, and Carlson argues that there

707
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:49,760
Speaker 1: is a a violation of social hierarchy that occurs in

708
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 1: some cases. I think one of the specific quotes is

709
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 1: that the accusers and the accused were in a way

710
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 1: in a negotiation about the legit him to see of

711
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: female discontent, resentment, and anger, because it's not too far

712
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 1: of an assumption to say this was probably a severely

713
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:12,840
Speaker 1: patriarchal society. Is that correct? Oh? Absolutely, yeah. You know.

714
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 1: One of the historians that we that we spoke to,

715
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:17,839
Speaker 1: we spoke to six, did great interviews with them. One

716
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:20,719
Speaker 1: of them is Dr Jane Kaminski. She's a professor of

717
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 1: history at Harvard, which is a school I think some

718
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:27,920
Speaker 1: people have heard of, but she's also the director of

719
00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 1: the library there, Slushing Or Library, which is essentially a

720
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 1: library devoted to women studies through history. So we wanted

721
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 1: we wanted a perspective, a historical perspective on like what

722
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 1: sort of a voice did did women have in that age?

723
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:43,439
Speaker 1: What was their place in society, what was seen as wrong,

724
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:45,960
Speaker 1: what was seen as good? You know, things like um,

725
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:50,400
Speaker 1: women in would have been able to read because they

726
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:52,759
Speaker 1: needed to read the scripture to their family, but they

727
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:56,480
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily have been able to write. Um. So you know,

728
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:59,120
Speaker 1: years later, when Reverend Green takes over one of the

729
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:01,720
Speaker 1: only afflicted girls, one of the girls who accused people

730
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:05,200
Speaker 1: and got them killed, wanted to join the church, and

731
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: her confession is in that church's book that I talked

732
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:10,960
Speaker 1: about that Saved from the Fire, but it's in It's

733
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: in the reverence handwriting, and then she scrawls her her

734
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:16,359
Speaker 1: signature underneath it because she couldn't write. She could read,

735
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: but she couldn't write, and that was pretty common for

736
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: women back then. It was, you know, partly out of this,

737
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 1: you know, what what was necessary for them, what wasn't necessary.

738
00:40:23,680 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of control in there too. If

739
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:27,919
Speaker 1: they can't read, um, all right, if they can't write,

740
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:30,319
Speaker 1: then they can't you know, get involved in governments and

741
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:32,839
Speaker 1: things like that, and and so there was a patriarchal

742
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: you know, pushed down on that as well. It is

743
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: really bizarre what happens in the Sandwich Childs because in

744
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:42,400
Speaker 1: effect you have you have not only women, but you

745
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:46,439
Speaker 1: have young women, girls twelve fourteen years old, who begin

746
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:49,320
Speaker 1: to guide the process of the court like their word

747
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:52,960
Speaker 1: is taken as law. And these judges, these educated men,

748
00:40:53,080 --> 00:40:55,320
Speaker 1: a lot of them had gone to Harvard Divinity School,

749
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 1: like they were either just shy of being ministers themselves

750
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: or or could very well go out and get a

751
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:03,080
Speaker 1: job as a minister. They were who were some of

752
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:06,239
Speaker 1: the most educated people of the day. Um they were

753
00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 1: they were doing basically doing their bidding, you know, And

754
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:11,439
Speaker 1: so these roles are reversed. There's there's this the shift there,

755
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: and you have to wonder, like you said, in a

756
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 1: time when women are told to shut up and be quiet,

757
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: sit down and do what you're told, that that they

758
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 1: have this opportunity all of a sudden, they notice an

759
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: opening right that that they're being listened to and things

760
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 1: are being done based on their stories. And you have

761
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:32,000
Speaker 1: to think at least some of them sort of leaned

762
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 1: into that that I have freedom right now, and I'm

763
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 1: going to use this freedom right now. And you know,

764
00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any study that looks at the list

765
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:45,239
Speaker 1: of victims who are accused by these people, but you know,

766
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:47,759
Speaker 1: I wonder how many of them were we're sort of

767
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:52,959
Speaker 1: like pro traditional women, sort of women like Rebecca Nurse

768
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: was seventy six, and maybe she was one of those

769
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:57,839
Speaker 1: people that tow the line and say, look, I'm a good,

770
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: quiet Christian woman, I'm not going to speak up. I

771
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: have to wonder if there's a little bit of a

772
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: social battle going on there. You know, we know that

773
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 1: twenty years before the sail in Which Trials, there was

774
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:11,320
Speaker 1: an event in um Gratton. Um. One of the ministers

775
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:13,200
Speaker 1: who pops up in the Witch Trials is this guy

776
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: named um Samuel Willard, I think twenty years before he

777
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 1: was in Groton, and he had a household servant who

778
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:23,440
Speaker 1: was having fits and seizures and was speaking about the

779
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:25,840
Speaker 1: devil in the book. Like it's all these elements that

780
00:42:25,880 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 1: come right from the sailor Wich Trials, but it was

781
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:32,719
Speaker 1: twenty years before Um and and I I see a

782
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:36,440
Speaker 1: lot of the servant speaking out and having a voice

783
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:40,080
Speaker 1: for you know, a few months, uh and and it's

784
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 1: it's a pretty easy way to view these things. I

785
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm reading into it, if I'm applying

786
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 1: my own perceptions onto it, but they're certainly speaking out.

787
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:53,080
Speaker 1: You know. Another person we interviewed, Marybeth Norton, who's an

788
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 1: author as well as a professor. She she makes a

789
00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:59,680
Speaker 1: great point about that consolidation of power that you're you're

790
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: talking about erin where the same men who are running

791
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: the church are also the judge, jury, and executioner essentially.

792
00:43:08,320 --> 00:43:11,880
Speaker 1: Uh So, like all four points essentially are covered by

793
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:14,959
Speaker 1: the same old white men UM, who are the best

794
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 1: writers and readers and learned men of the time. And

795
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:22,359
Speaker 1: it really does bring home that idea of these young

796
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: women fighting back in any way they possibly could to

797
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: to be seen and to be heard and to be known. Yeah,

798
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:31,839
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the way she describes it as like,

799
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 1: let's pretend today that the presidents at his cabinet, Secretary

800
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:39,200
Speaker 1: of Interior, Secretary of State, all these this very small

801
00:43:39,200 --> 00:43:42,760
Speaker 1: window of people. They also all served as the Supreme Court,

802
00:43:43,239 --> 00:43:46,040
Speaker 1: and they served as the legislative branch, and that was

803
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:50,440
Speaker 1: the government, and and that's what it was like in UM.

804
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:54,640
Speaker 1: I want to be careful with leading people to believe

805
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: that the the Afflicted girls were a social movement UM,

806
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: because there might have been part of that, but again

807
00:44:02,239 --> 00:44:04,279
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not a neat and clean, black and

808
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 1: white thing. Some of the Afflicted girls were literally refugees

809
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:10,279
Speaker 1: from Maine who had come down having watched their entire

810
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 1: families killed and we're afraid for their life every single day.

811
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:16,239
Speaker 1: There was a lot of PTSD in there. There were

812
00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 1: some social things going on, um, some of the better

813
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:23,480
Speaker 1: off families versus competitive families, you know. So it's this

814
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:26,520
Speaker 1: big mix. But I think it would be wrong to

815
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:29,880
Speaker 1: say that there isn't some aspect of this rebellion against

816
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: the patriarchy going in there. It's not the only thing,

817
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 1: it's not even the primary thing, but but there's an

818
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: element of that in there for sure. Well, Aaron, we

819
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:43,440
Speaker 1: were coming to the end here, um what well by

820
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:46,919
Speaker 1: and which by the way, un obscured season one about

821
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:50,160
Speaker 1: the sale which trials is finishing. I believe when we're

822
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: when this episode is available, the the last major episode

823
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: will be out. So you can go and listen to

824
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 1: all twelve episodes right now of a here, Um there

825
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:04,080
Speaker 1: are there are gonna be some other episodes that come

826
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 1: out though, right yeah, so, um, the season is twelve

827
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 1: episodes long, twelve episodes, you know, this story from start

828
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: to finish. Um. Which, by the way, if like, if

829
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 1: you want to get away from the political arguments in

830
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 1: your household, grab your iPhone and your headphones and just

831
00:45:19,200 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 1: go find a dark room and sitting binge a listen

832
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 1: to un Obscured. It's a great way to do it,

833
00:45:23,120 --> 00:45:25,680
Speaker 1: um and uh because at least there's some hope at

834
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:27,879
Speaker 1: the end of the tunnel on that one. And uh.

835
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 1: So when we get back into the new year, we're

836
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:31,919
Speaker 1: gonna take those six interviews we did with the six

837
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:36,280
Speaker 1: historians Dr Emerson Baker, Dr Richard Trask, Uh, Dr Jan Kaminski,

838
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:40,360
Speaker 1: Marybeth Norton, Marilyn k Roach, and Stacy Schiff. Hey. I

839
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:43,240
Speaker 1: got them all, um, and we're gonna we're gonna publish

840
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:45,719
Speaker 1: them weekly, one at a time, all six of the

841
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: interviews polished up and put together nicely so that you know,

842
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:53,880
Speaker 1: because Unobscured is narrative stories telling. It's me telling a

843
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 1: story for forty five minutes, and then every now and

844
00:45:55,560 --> 00:45:58,799
Speaker 1: then you'll hear like Dr Baker jump in and talk

845
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 1: for fifteen seconds to get a point across for me.

846
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:03,920
Speaker 1: But we never get all of his his interview, and

847
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: it's it's a great interview. So this is our way

848
00:46:06,239 --> 00:46:09,040
Speaker 1: of sharing those big conversations with people. And you can

849
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 1: just sit in front of the fire hose and drink

850
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:14,239
Speaker 1: and it's awesome. I concur It sounds like a plan.

851
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:18,360
Speaker 1: So so, Aaron, before we leave, what is the one

852
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:22,440
Speaker 1: big lesson that you have learned from making this show

853
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:27,600
Speaker 1: that we should in turn learned. That's wait, yeah, that's right,

854
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:29,920
Speaker 1: teach us the secrets of the universe. Erin, please hurry,

855
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:35,319
Speaker 1: point of order, man Frederick. We part of our exploration

856
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 1: today was how it was about how difficult and misleading

857
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:43,759
Speaker 1: it is. I'm trying trying to get magic magic out

858
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:46,399
Speaker 1: of this thing. No, I hear you. No, look um,

859
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:48,600
Speaker 1: I will say that I'm gonna echo something I heard

860
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: somebody say earlier. It's really, really um important to remember

861
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:56,759
Speaker 1: that these were people that week. We look back with

862
00:46:56,800 --> 00:47:02,000
Speaker 1: three six years of distance and say crazy like they

863
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 1: shouldn't have done that. I would totally do things different

864
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: if I was in their shoes, and you know what,

865
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't because of the way it was built,

866
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:15,640
Speaker 1: the structure, the social, the religious, the government, the wars

867
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 1: and the weather and all of those pieces. I think

868
00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:19,719
Speaker 1: we would all do the same thing. And I think

869
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: it's important for us, in any historical situation, but especially

870
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:24,879
Speaker 1: the Sandwich Trials, to look back at it and say,

871
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 1: these are just people. They have hopes, and they have dreams,

872
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 1: they have fears, they have insecurities, they have talents, they

873
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 1: have desires to be on stage, they have desires to

874
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:36,719
Speaker 1: slip in and hide under the radar, whatever it is like.

875
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: These are just normal people like us. And if we

876
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:44,319
Speaker 1: forget that, that's when we start to misunderstand history. And

877
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: and that's that's one of the biggest lessons that I

878
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:50,440
Speaker 1: can take away from this. Oh man, that was so

879
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:53,840
Speaker 1: much more than I even expected. Okay, thank you, Aaron,

880
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:58,319
Speaker 1: You're very welcome, sir, yeahs, sincerely, thank you so much.

881
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:02,920
Speaker 1: In thank you, listen is for joining us today. As

882
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:06,600
Speaker 1: we said earlier, you can you can, if need be

883
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:11,239
Speaker 1: escape holiday time with your family or just in the

884
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:14,800
Speaker 1: interest of enjoying a fascinating deep dive into a widely

885
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: misunderstood period of American history. You can find Unobscured in

886
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 1: its entirety now wherever you find your favorite shows and uh.

887
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 1: Aaron mentioned earlier the website, which is chock full of

888
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 1: some excellent additional resources, including for our more visually driven

889
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:40,040
Speaker 1: audience members, maps and diagrams of the surrounding area to

890
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:42,920
Speaker 1: really put you in the place, as well as books.

891
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:45,879
Speaker 1: If you want to continue your reading and learning. So

892
00:48:46,719 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: once again, that is unobscured season one. We're not I'm

893
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 1: not going to try to finagle any uh any juicy

894
00:48:56,200 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: tidbits about season two out just yet. Uh. You'll have

895
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:04,000
Speaker 1: to take our word to stay tuned, look forward. Let

896
00:49:04,120 --> 00:49:07,080
Speaker 1: us know what you think about un ob Steward, Let

897
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:11,680
Speaker 1: us know what you which historical lessons you feel can

898
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:17,720
Speaker 1: be drawn from this series of events in six two. Again, Aaron,

899
00:49:18,080 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 1: any any last words before we leave, Have fun with

900
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:23,680
Speaker 1: the with the show, dig in, listen and enjoy and

901
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: learn something. And thanks for having me on. Guys, thank

902
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:28,560
Speaker 1: you so much for being with us. All right, good

903
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:30,319
Speaker 1: to do it. If you don't want to do any

904
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,719
Speaker 1: of those things, find us on social media where we're

905
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 1: Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show. And if you don't

906
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:37,359
Speaker 1: want to do that, just send us a good old

907
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:41,000
Speaker 1: fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot

908
00:49:41,000 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 1: com