Speaker 1: Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the known
Speaker 1: things go, a corridor of the mind. I haven't been
Speaker 1: down here in a while. This is good to be
Speaker 1: back down here, where the walls are lined with shelves
Speaker 1: cluttered with proof, especially books. Huh on the Origin of
Speaker 1: Species by Charles Darwin. Oh, and right next to that
Speaker 1: The Menace of Darwinism by William Jennings Bryan more of
Speaker 1: a pamphlet. Really, here's a skeleton of a chimpanzee, its
Speaker 1: bones held together by wire like a necklace of beads.
Speaker 1: This place, this evidence room, stores the facts that matter,
Speaker 1: and matters of fact. It's all that stands between a
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt in the chaos of ignorance. It lies in
Speaker 1: a time between now and then. The sign on the
Speaker 1: door reads the last archive step across the threshold to
Speaker 1: the little town of Dayton, Tennessee, population a hair under
Speaker 1: two thousand in the year nineteen hundred and twenty five.
Speaker 1: There's an old guy playing the banjo. All the folklan
Speaker 1: Piana be bror, grateful house can be, and they know
Speaker 1: the Bible be dif water if rod is the start
Speaker 1: of what came to be known as the Monkey Trial.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most famous trials in American history.
Speaker 1: The defendant, John T. Scoops, a high school teacher, charged
Speaker 1: with the crime a misdemeanor of teaching the theory of evolution.
Speaker 1: A lot of people think the arguments in this trial
Speaker 1: marked a triumph of reason over superstition. Some of those people, okay,
Speaker 1: I confess, for a long time, I was one of them.
Speaker 1: Some of those people only really knew about this trial
Speaker 1: from a movie made about it in nineteen sixty called
Speaker 1: Inherit the Wind. It starred Spencer Tracy as the heroic
Speaker 1: lawyer for the defense fanaticism. An ignorance is forever busy
Speaker 1: and needs feeding, And soon, your honor, we'll be marching
Speaker 1: backward through the lawyer sages about sixteenth century, when bigots
Speaker 1: burned a man who dat being enlightenment an intelligence to
Speaker 1: the human mind. Inherit the Wind began as a play
Speaker 1: written in nineteen fifty five. The playwrights weren't really interested
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties. They were interested in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and the political persecution of their day. McCarthyism. Me,
Speaker 1: I'm a historian, I'm interested in now the twenty twenties
Speaker 1: and the dilemmas of our day. So when I look
Speaker 1: at the nineteen twenties, it looks to me as if
Speaker 1: what was on trial was skepticism itself and the role
Speaker 1: of doubt and a democracy. We're going to do our
Speaker 1: own re enactment. I don't know, call it disinherit the wind.
Speaker 1: One thing before we get started that you really need
Speaker 1: to know. The Scopes Trial, the Monkey trial. It was
Speaker 1: a show trial. A platform had been built for movie
Speaker 1: cameras and seeding for hundreds of spectators. Two hundred reporters
Speaker 1: were there too. Telegraph wires had been laid across the
Speaker 1: floor for speedy reporting. Hl Linklin, the themed newspaperman from
Speaker 1: the Baltimore Sun, who was there too, writing with his
Speaker 1: celebrated wit, the two parties are the farther marked poles
Speaker 1: of difference and leaning out into space, and one of
Speaker 1: them is right at all and the other is wrong Altogether.
Speaker 1: Microphones and speakers had been installed so that all the
Speaker 1: people assembled outside could hear the goings on. Also this trial,
Speaker 1: not for nothing was it called the Trial of the century.
Speaker 1: Who was the very first American trial ever broadcast live
Speaker 1: on the radio. Who was a miracle of modern science.
Speaker 1: We're like moon men here, one of the radio announcers said,
Speaker 1: we're the radio guys from outer space. Back in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five, the power of radio transmitters wasn't yet regulated,
Speaker 1: and the station broadcasting the Scoop's trial had a signal
Speaker 1: so strong it could be heard by half the country.
Speaker 1: This is WGN Chicago, the radio broadcast of the Chicago
Speaker 1: Tribune WGN, World's greatest newspaper. I'm Jill Lapour. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the second season of The Last Archive, the World's Greatest
Speaker 1: podcast w GP. Where the show about how we know
Speaker 1: what we know and why it seems lately as if
Speaker 1: we don't know anything at all, and geez, maybe we
Speaker 1: never did. Last season was about truth and who killed it? Oh,
Speaker 1: who done it? We lined up the usual suspects, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, postmodernism. In the end, I argued that this
Speaker 1: case was like murder on the Orient Express. Everyone really
Speaker 1: had a hand in the killing. This season, we've got
Speaker 1: a new case. I'm going to go back over the
Speaker 1: same decades, the last hundred years and trace the instability
Speaker 1: of knowledge. Not so much who killed truth, but what
Speaker 1: fed doubt. This season is about a kind of questioning
Speaker 1: that began with skepticism and ended up a century later
Speaker 1: with people finding it hard to believe anything. How did
Speaker 1: that happen? In this season of the last Archive, we
Speaker 1: watch a shadow grow and grow, the long, dark shadow
Speaker 1: of doubt, the until Dayton came a man with his
Speaker 1: new ideas, old brand and heat that we came from
Speaker 1: monkeys long ago. What if he king help me? Leading
Speaker 1: with the gold found only grief? Harley would not let
Speaker 1: their all really done go. Salesman and quacks and all
Speaker 1: kinds of people who were just curious came from all
Speaker 1: over the country to Dayton, setting up shop for the trial,
Speaker 1: lining the streets. Some preached, some performed with trained monkeys.
Speaker 1: The New York Times filed this report. Whatever the deep
Speaker 1: significance of the trial, if it has any, there is
Speaker 1: no doubt that it has attracted some of the world's
Speaker 1: champion freaks. Three days before the trial, William Jennings Bryant,
Speaker 1: attorney for the prosecution, arrived by train. A crowd of
Speaker 1: thousands greeted him at the station. Waving to the throngs,
Speaker 1: Brian doffed his hat a pith helmet to protect his
Speaker 1: bald head from the sun. He looked as if he
Speaker 1: were on safari. Clarence Darrow, attorney for the defense, arrived
Speaker 1: two days later. John Scopes, the defendant, met Darrow at
Speaker 1: the train station, but hardly anyone else was there except
Speaker 1: a few reporters and photographers. Very little of this was
Speaker 1: about Scopes, or even about the teaching of evolution, at
Speaker 1: least in one high school classroom in Tennessee. The trial
Speaker 1: was a test case engineered by the ACLU. States around
Speaker 1: the country had been discouraging the teaching of evolution. The
Speaker 1: Tennessee legislature had been the first to ban it. The
Speaker 1: ACLU wanted to expose how that band violated freedom of speech.
Speaker 1: Scopes himself was all but a bystander. He never took
Speaker 1: the stand in our reenactment. I'll hardly have reason to
Speaker 1: mention him again. The trial was set to open on
Speaker 1: a Friday, nine am. Sharp farmers and overalls from the
Speaker 1: hillside farms. Silent, gaunt men. They occupied every seat and
Speaker 1: stood in the aisles and around the walls of the room.
Speaker 1: By eight forty five, every seat in the courtroom was filled.
Speaker 1: At home all over the country, Americans switched on their radios.
Speaker 1: That's something to hold in your mind this season of doubt.
Speaker 1: Learning about the world in our own houses instead of
Speaker 1: going out into it to see things for ourselves. Elephant
Speaker 1: in the room here. We made this season of the
Speaker 1: Last Dark on lockdown during a pandemic year, stuck at
Speaker 1: home for people who weren't health workers or teachers or
Speaker 1: other essential workers. Most of what a lot of us
Speaker 1: learned about the world this year we learned from inside
Speaker 1: our homes, online on the internet. All this isolation and
Speaker 1: remoteness got me really interested in the work of mediation,
Speaker 1: a world mediated by technology. Mediation that's what media does,
Speaker 1: That's what the word means. And learning about the world
Speaker 1: that way remotely turned out to be a big part
Speaker 1: of how I came to understand the history of doubt.
Speaker 1: We know what it's like now to check Twitter on
Speaker 1: your phone, to see the world so far away but
Speaker 1: feel that it's so close. Who was it like in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five to turn on the radio in your
Speaker 1: kitchen and hear a trial beaming in from Dayton, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Gentleman and mister Attorney General, I am now calling for
Speaker 1: trial the State at Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes. Scopes
Speaker 1: had been charged with violating a law that stipulated, well,
Speaker 1: just listen to it. Be it enacted by the General
Speaker 1: Assembly of the State of Tennessee that it shall be
Speaker 1: unlawful for any teacher to teach any theory that denies
Speaker 1: the story of the divine creation of man as taught
Speaker 1: in the Bible, and to teach him stare that man
Speaker 1: has descended from a lower order of animals. So hold on.
Speaker 1: This is tricky. Under the terms of Tennessee law, the
Speaker 1: prosecution didn't have to prove that Scopes had taught evolution.
Speaker 1: Scopes never denied that he had. The prosecution had to
Speaker 1: prove that the theory of evolution contradicts the Bible. Evolution
Speaker 1: is not truth, Brian planned to say on behalf of
Speaker 1: the prosecution. It is merely a hypothesis. It's millions of
Speaker 1: guesses strung together. But the Bible Brian believed was true,
Speaker 1: not just parables, literally true. Somehow this claim would have
Speaker 1: to be evaluated by a jury. One way to think
Speaker 1: about the modern era is that it dethroned God as
Speaker 1: the arbiter of truth and erected a new God. Reason
Speaker 1: the fact replaced the mystery that anyway is what the
Speaker 1: scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment tried to do, but always
Speaker 1: with a struggle, a struggle that never ended. Galileo said
Speaker 1: the earth revolved around the Sun and not the other
Speaker 1: way around, and the Catholic Church accused him of heresy,
Speaker 1: who was tried and convicted and spent the rest of
Speaker 1: his life under house arrest for doubting the truth of religion.
Speaker 1: To a lot of people, the Scope's trial was a
Speaker 1: kind of retrial of Galileo, except they thought, surely this
Speaker 1: time the reasonable person would not be sentenced and enlightenment
Speaker 1: would prevail. That's a lot of pressure to put on
Speaker 1: a misdemeanor case in a little town in Tennessee. Names
Speaker 1: were drawn from a hat. Both the prosecution and the
Speaker 1: defense could object to any three jurors without cause, but
Speaker 1: no more. When I listened to this part of the trial,
Speaker 1: I imagine Americans at home listening, wondering to themselves, would
Speaker 1: I be qualified to sit on that jury? Could I
Speaker 1: decide this case fairly? Picture Americans who teach Sunday school
Speaker 1: or said the prayers every night, or Americans who didn't
Speaker 1: believe in any God, who are atheists or agnostics, whatever
Speaker 1: anyone's views on religion. In a democracy, everyone's supposed to
Speaker 1: be able to set all that aside to sit on
Speaker 1: a jury, abide by the rules of evidence, an issue
Speaker 1: a verdict, decide what's true and what's not true. But
Speaker 1: that depends on the jury and Clarence Darrow, attorney for
Speaker 1: the defense, happened to be an expert on jury selection.
Speaker 1: The more a lawyer knows of life, human nature, psychology,
Speaker 1: and the reactions of the human emotions, the better he
Speaker 1: is equipped for the subtle selection of his so called
Speaker 1: twelve men, good and true. Darrow a strategy for picking
Speaker 1: the perfect jury. If a Presbyterian enters the jury box
Speaker 1: and carefully rolls up his umbrella and calmly and critically
Speaker 1: sits down, let him go, he is as called as
Speaker 1: the grave. Darrow was the most famous trial lawyer in
Speaker 1: the country from the big city of Chicago. Attorney for
Speaker 1: the damned, he was called the hero to the poor,
Speaker 1: the oppressed, the beleaguered, and the falsely accused. He'd played
Speaker 1: a role in some two thousand trials. In more than
Speaker 1: a third, he'd been paid nothing. As far as picking
Speaker 1: a jury goes, the trick, Darrow always said was to
Speaker 1: only seat a man so likely to identify with your
Speaker 1: client that really he is trying himself. In Dayton, the
Speaker 1: court brought in a jury pool of one hundred men,
Speaker 1: white men. None of these men had much in common
Speaker 1: with a high school biology teacher. They were mainly farmers.
Speaker 1: Some couldn't read. The first man stood up to be
Speaker 1: question hl Menkin, the slick city reporter from Baltimore, picked
Speaker 1: up his pen and licked it with spit. Listen carefully
Speaker 1: and you can hear the first volley in a culture
Speaker 1: war that is still reverberating today. And it'll be no
Speaker 1: them more possible in this Christian valley to get a jury.
Speaker 1: I'm prejudiced to gain scopes, and we'll be possible in
Speaker 1: wall Street to get a jury. I'm prejudiced against Bolshek.
Speaker 1: Darrow did his best to pull together a fair jury.
Speaker 1: By late afternoon, twelve men had been seated. They were sworn,
Speaker 1: and then court adjourned until Monday morning. Overhead airplanes, little
Speaker 1: prop planes flew north to deliver footage of the proceedings
Speaker 1: to cinemas to be shown as newsreels over the weekend. Sunday, though,
Speaker 1: was hardly a day of rest. The judge went to church.
Speaker 1: He and his wife sat in the front pew incredibly
Speaker 1: and do you and me scandalously. William Jennings Bryan, attorney
Speaker 1: for the prosecution, delivered the sermon, and he preached about
Speaker 1: the case. The attorneys for the defense charged that our
Speaker 1: objection to expert testimony is an attempt to evade the issue.
Speaker 1: William Jennings Bryan, Nebraska born a populist known as the
Speaker 1: Great Commoner. He wasn't much of a lawyer, he hadn't
Speaker 1: practiced law for more than thirty years at this point. Instead,
Speaker 1: he joined the prosecution's team because he was a celebrity.
Speaker 1: Bryan was a politician, a long time presidential contender, a
Speaker 1: Democrat opposed to conservative Republican economic policy. He was also
Speaker 1: a fire and brimstone lay preacher, known as mister Fundamentalist.
Speaker 1: He'd led a national campaign against the teaching of evolution.
Speaker 1: He once told a political cartoonist, you should represent me
Speaker 1: as using a double barreled shotgun, fixing one barrel at
Speaker 1: the elephant as he tries to enter the treasury, and
Speaker 1: another at Darwinism the monkey as he tries to enter
Speaker 1: the school room. Brian opposed to Republicanism and to Darwinism.
Speaker 1: Monday morning, the Scopes trial resumed in that courtroom in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Just about everyone sided with Brian. They were pro bible
Speaker 1: and anti evolution. The racic issues of the case indeed,
Speaker 1: seemed to be a very little disgust at Dayton. What
Speaker 1: interest to everyone is its mere strategy by what device?
Speaker 1: Precisely well Brian Trimmell Clarence Darrow. For no one here
Speaker 1: seems to doubt that Brian railway, that is, if about
Speaker 1: goes to a fashion. But remember, the audience for this
Speaker 1: trial wasn't only that courtroom in Dayton. It was also
Speaker 1: the millions of Americans tuning it at home. To that
Speaker 1: national audience. Darrow was making a point about the place
Speaker 1: of science in the American mind. Early on he delivered
Speaker 1: a speech that kept everyone listening in glued to their radios.
Speaker 1: Here we find today as brazen and as bold an
Speaker 1: attempt to destroy learning as was ever made in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. And the only difference is we have not
Speaker 1: provided that they shall be burned at the stake. But
Speaker 1: there is time for that, Your honor Darrow knew he
Speaker 1: had two audiences, the whole country and that jury of
Speaker 1: twelve men. He walked a tight rope, mostly though he
Speaker 1: appealed to the nation, the State of Tennessee, under an
Speaker 1: honest and fair interpretation of the Constitution, has no more
Speaker 1: right to teach the Bible as the divine book than
Speaker 1: that the Quran is one the book of Mormons, or
Speaker 1: the Book of Confucius, or the Buddha, or the Essays
Speaker 1: of Emerson, or any one of the ten thousand books
Speaker 1: to which human souls have gone for consolation and aid
Speaker 1: in their troubles. Tennessee's constitution specifically protected religious freedom in
Speaker 1: language that borrowed very heavily from Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom,
Speaker 1: which had been written by Thomas Jefferson. Whereas Almighty God
Speaker 1: hath created the mind free, no man shall be compelled
Speaker 1: to frequent or support any religious worship place or ministry whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So when Darrow said Tennessee couldn't require anyone to teach
Speaker 1: the Bible as a divine book, he had constitutional cause. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the Tennessee legislature disagreed with them, or else they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have passed that evolution law. So Darrow had to go
Speaker 1: a lot further. And here he was talking to the jury.
Speaker 1: What is the Bible. Well, it is a book primarily
Speaker 1: of religion and morals. It is not a book of science,
Speaker 1: never was and was never meant to be. It is
Speaker 1: not a textbook or a text on chemistry. Is not
Speaker 1: a work on evolution that was a mystery, is not
Speaker 1: a work on astronomy. The man who looked out at
Speaker 1: the universe and studied the heavens had no thought but
Speaker 1: that the Earth was the center of the universe. But
Speaker 1: we know better than that. They thought the Sun went
Speaker 1: around the Earth and gave us light and gave us night.
Speaker 1: He's orating like a prophet straight out of the King
Speaker 1: James Bible. We know better. I doubt if there is
Speaker 1: a person in Tennessee who does not know better. They
Speaker 1: told us the best they knew. But man finds out
Speaker 1: what he can and yearns to know more and supplements
Speaker 1: his knowledge with hope and faith. Darrow talked about what
Speaker 1: was actually in the Bible, the story of Adam and Eve,
Speaker 1: and how much people disagreed about what the Bible even said.
Speaker 1: Different religions, different sects, there were so many just in Dayton.
Speaker 1: Then finally he got to scopes his crime, which he
Speaker 1: said was no crime at all. He taught the doctrine
Speaker 1: of evolution, which is taught by every believed by every
Speaker 1: scientific man on earth. You could hear over the radio
Speaker 1: the sound of people trying to fan themselves like so
Speaker 1: many bird wings flapping. Inside the courtroom, the temperature had
Speaker 1: risen to one hundred degrees fahrenheit. People's pants and skirts
Speaker 1: stuck to their seats, but they were glued there anyway.
Speaker 1: By Darrell's speech, he was two hours into it. Your
Speaker 1: Honor knows the fires that have been lighted in America
Speaker 1: to kindle religious bigotry and hate. You know that there
Speaker 1: is no suspicion which possesses the minds of men like
Speaker 1: bigotry and ignorance and hatred. Here's the part, the big
Speaker 1: part where Darrows is the lines that Spencer Tracy would
Speaker 1: later re enact and inherit the wind. The movie script,
Speaker 1: at least here is straight from the trial transcript. And okay,
Speaker 1: it is a great speech, Your Honor. It is the
Speaker 1: setting of man against man and creed against creed, until
Speaker 1: with flying banners and beating drums, we are marching backward
Speaker 1: to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century, when bigots
Speaker 1: lighted faggots to burn the men who dared to bring
Speaker 1: any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
Speaker 1: I'm all in. I suspect you're all in. Maybe the
Speaker 1: people listening to the radio in the big cities we're
Speaker 1: all into. But the audience in Dayton was not caught
Speaker 1: his adjourn until nine tomorrow morning. Darrow's speech rose like
Speaker 1: a wind and ended like a flourish abulance. The very
Speaker 1: judge on a bench began to look uneasy, the Morons
Speaker 1: and the audience when it was over. Simply hisstor Mancin
Speaker 1: was a mean bastard. He hated that crowd into to see.
Speaker 1: He thought they were all idiots. He was just one voice.
Speaker 1: Though that day, telegraph operators wired more than two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand words from Dayton, setting a record. During the whole
Speaker 1: time of Darrel's delivery, the old Mountebank Ryan sat tackle
Speaker 1: it's a done move. There is, of course no reason
Speaker 1: why it should have shaken him. He has hill that
Speaker 1: is locked up in his pen, and he knows it.
Speaker 1: If you get your history only from hl Mankin, then
Speaker 1: Clarence Darrow was brilliant, and William Jennings Bryan was a bigot.
Speaker 1: Mankin comes through loud and clear, but it can be
Speaker 1: hard to hear everyone else. That's why we're here in
Speaker 1: the last archive to turn up the volume on the
Speaker 1: quieter voices. People have to believe something before they out it.
Speaker 1: Believe in gods or one God, or Karma, or the
Speaker 1: Torah or the Koran or the Bible. People believe, then
Speaker 1: some people began to doubt belief and out are partners
Speaker 1: engaged in an endless ancient dance. Skepticism itself was an
Speaker 1: intellectual movement in ancient Greece. Every time a doubter is
Speaker 1: on trial, that trial has as its precedent one that
Speaker 1: took place more than two thousand years ago in Athens.
Speaker 1: Socrates is a doer of evil and corruptor of the youth.
Speaker 1: And he does not believe in the gods of the state,
Speaker 1: and he believes in other new divinities of his own. Socrates,
Speaker 1: a philosopher, a teacher, had stood accused of doubt because
Speaker 1: he had asked questions about the gods. He waged his
Speaker 1: own defense, and if convicted by the jury hundreds of Athenians,
Speaker 1: he faced death. I should like to know in what
Speaker 1: I am affirmed to corrupt the young. I do not
Speaker 1: as yet understand whether you affirm that I teach others
Speaker 1: to acknowledge some god, but they are not the same
Speaker 1: gods which the city recognizes. Or do you mean to
Speaker 1: say that I am a teacher of atheism? I mean
Speaker 1: that you are a complete atheist. Socrates argued that the
Speaker 1: prosecutor made a common error. He'd mistaken belief for knowledge.
Speaker 1: To believe is to know little. To doubt, though, is
Speaker 1: to know even less, except to have one very important
Speaker 1: bit of knowledge, knowledge that you don't know much. By
Speaker 1: way of illustration, Socrates told the court the story about
Speaker 1: meeting a man with a reputation for wisdom. When I
Speaker 1: began to talk with him, I could not help thinking
Speaker 1: that he was not really wise, although he was thought
Speaker 1: wise by many, and wiser still by himself. So I
Speaker 1: left them, saying to myself as I went away, well,
Speaker 1: although I do not suppose that either of knows anything
Speaker 1: really beautiful or good, I am better off than he,
Speaker 1: for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I
Speaker 1: neither know nor think that I know. This, Socrates insisted,
Speaker 1: was what the charges against him really came down to.
Speaker 1: It's not that he didn't believe in the divinity of
Speaker 1: the sun or the moon. It's that he had demonstrated
Speaker 1: that people who are believed to be wise were ignorant,
Speaker 1: and they hated him for it. The jury found Socrates
Speaker 1: guilty of impiety and corrupting the young, and condemned him
Speaker 1: to death. In response, he imagined an afterlife in which
Speaker 1: he could further his inquiries by asking questions of the dead.
Speaker 1: I shall be able to continue my search into true
Speaker 1: and false knowledge. For in that world they do not
Speaker 1: put a man to death for this. To doubt, to
Speaker 1: really doubt, is to admit what you don't know. In
Speaker 1: the case of Socrates, it's to admit it so holy
Speaker 1: and so honestly that you're willing to die for it.
Speaker 1: Centuries later, in progressive era America, Socrates had become something
Speaker 1: of a cult hero, a symbol of the defensive free inquiry.
Speaker 1: Even Time magazine compared the Scopes trial to the trial
Speaker 1: of Socrates. But in Dayton, Tennessee in nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: Clarence Darrow didn't say things like I neither know nor
Speaker 1: think that I know. He knew what he knew, and
Speaker 1: he sought to defend his client the ordinary way by
Speaker 1: casting doubt about the case made by the prosecution, led
Speaker 1: by William Jennings. Bryan Darrow often did this by mocking Brian,
Speaker 1: So did HL Lincoln, who called Brian an old buzzard.
Speaker 1: It is a tragedy indeed, to begin life as a
Speaker 1: hero and ended as before well, that no one laughing
Speaker 1: at him underestimate the magic clip eyes in his black
Speaker 1: malignant eye is fraid stell eloquent woice. He can shake
Speaker 1: him and find him his pardon, Ramises has now the
Speaker 1: round of on us can shaken and fine mouth, and
Speaker 1: as desperate lager toward of the charge. On Thursday, the
Speaker 1: fifth day of the trial, Brian spoke at length for
Speaker 1: the first time, in order to object to the defense's
Speaker 1: motion to bring in expert witnesses, scientists who could argue
Speaker 1: for the scientific consensus about the theory of evolution. It is,
Speaker 1: I think apparent to all that we have now reached
Speaker 1: the heart of this case. To permit an expert to
Speaker 1: testify upon this issue would be to substitute trial by
Speaker 1: experts for trial by jury, and to announce to the
Speaker 1: world your honor's belief that this jury is too stupid
Speaker 1: to determine a simple question of fact. There is not
Speaker 1: a scientist in all the world who can trace one
Speaker 1: single species to any other, and yet they call us
Speaker 1: ignoramuses and bigots because we do not throw away our Bible.
Speaker 1: The one beauty about the Word of God is it
Speaker 1: does not take an expert to understand it. Brian pointed
Speaker 1: out that the people of Tennessee had elected their legislature
Speaker 1: to enact their will. The people, he said, get to
Speaker 1: decide what's taught in schools, not experts. An expert cannot
Speaker 1: be permitted to come in here and try to defeat
Speaker 1: the enforcement of a law by testifying that it is
Speaker 1: a bad law. The place to prove that or teach
Speaker 1: that was to the legislature. On Friday, one week into
Speaker 1: the trial, the judge sustained Brian's objections. The evidence of
Speaker 1: experts would shed no light on the issues. Therefore, the
Speaker 1: court is content to sustain the motion to exclude the
Speaker 1: expert testimony. I do not understand why every suggestion of
Speaker 1: the prosecution to meet with an endless waste of time
Speaker 1: and a bare suggestion of anything that is perfectly competent
Speaker 1: on our part should be immediately overrule. I hope you
Speaker 1: do not mean to reflect upon the cult. Well, your
Speaker 1: honor has the right to hope, I have the right
Speaker 1: to do something else. Perhaps the judge would sit Daryl
Speaker 1: for contempt. Darrel would apologize. Meanwhile, the two prize fighters
Speaker 1: went back to their corners. This is how a show
Speaker 1: trial works. Trials are imperfect means of reaching the truth.
Speaker 1: But this show trial was also a culture war, and
Speaker 1: a culture war really never arrives at the truth because
Speaker 1: its combatants are only interested in the glory of the skirmish.
Speaker 1: They like to hear the sound of their own voices
Speaker 1: on the radio. Every move, every maneuver in a culture
Speaker 1: war makes things worse. The next bout was slated to
Speaker 1: begin on Monday morning. On Saturday, Darrow, deprived of his
Speaker 1: team of experts scientists, told a friend that he decided
Speaker 1: he needed only one witness to prove his case. I'm
Speaker 1: going to put a Bible expert on the stand about
Speaker 1: day after tomorrow, greatest in the world. He thinks a
Speaker 1: master stroke. Never mind about the master stuff, and don't
Speaker 1: talk so loud. Too many reporters around here. If Daryl
Speaker 1: couldn't bring in scientists to prove the truth of doubt,
Speaker 1: he could bring in a believer to prove the error
Speaker 1: of faith, the defense called to the stand. It's surprise,
Speaker 1: witness William Jennings Bryan, the old buzzard himself. That's possidence.
Speaker 1: On Monday morning, the beginning of the second week of
Speaker 1: the Scopes trial, the courthouse was so crowded it was
Speaker 1: feared the floor might collapse, so the judge moved the
Speaker 1: trial outdoors to the lawn under a giant tent, and
Speaker 1: then Darrow announced that he planned to call Brian to
Speaker 1: the stand as a witness for the defense. Has word spread,
Speaker 1: the crowd grew from five hundred to more than three thousand.
Speaker 1: Where do you want me to sit, mister Brian? You
Speaker 1: are not objecting to going on the stand, not at all.
Speaker 1: Do you want, mister Brian swan? No? I can make
Speaker 1: an affirmation, I can say, so help me God, I
Speaker 1: will tell the truth. No, I take it. You will
Speaker 1: tell the truth, mister Brian. You have given considerable study
Speaker 1: to the Bible, haven't you, mister Brian, Yes, sir, I
Speaker 1: have tried to. I have studied the Bible for about
Speaker 1: fifty years. Do you claim that everything in the Bible
Speaker 1: should be literally interpreted? I believe everything in the Bible
Speaker 1: should be accepted as it is given there. Some of
Speaker 1: the Bible is given illustratively. For instance, ye are the
Speaker 1: salt of the earth. I would not insist that a
Speaker 1: man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt,
Speaker 1: but it is used in the sense of salt as
Speaker 1: saying God's people. Darrow asked Brian whether the whale really
Speaker 1: swallowed Jonah that sort of thing he asked him when
Speaker 1: the flood happened, and whether it really wiped out every
Speaker 1: living thing except for Noah and his wife and the
Speaker 1: animals on his arc. Mainly, Brian said he didn't know
Speaker 1: anything but what was in the Bible, and he wasn't
Speaker 1: curious about anything else either. Mister Bryan's complete lack of
Speaker 1: interest in many of the things closely connected with such
Speaker 1: religious questions as he had been supporting for many years,
Speaker 1: was strikingly shown again and again by mister Darrow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Brian didn't have a lot of intellectual curiosity, but
Speaker 1: mocking him the way a lot of newspaper reporters did
Speaker 1: the way Darrow did was also wildly unfair. It misses
Speaker 1: most of what's worth knowing here. Long before William Jennings.
Speaker 1: Bryan became famous as a fundamentalist long before the Scopes trial.
Speaker 1: He'd been a reformer, a defender of the poor. Even
Speaker 1: Darrow had supported him. Back then, Brian had nearly been
Speaker 1: elected president. He'd run three times. Also, he didn't hate science.
Speaker 1: He hated Darwinism, but he reserved a special censure for
Speaker 1: a particular kind of Darwinism, Social Darwinism, the idea that
Speaker 1: among humans it's right that only the fit survived. In
Speaker 1: a speech he gave countless times, Brian explained his position
Speaker 1: on evolution. I object to Darwinian theory because I fear
Speaker 1: we shall lose the consciousness of God's presence in our
Speaker 1: daily life if we must accept the theory that through
Speaker 1: all the ages, no spiritual force has touched the life
Speaker 1: of a man and shaped the destiny of nations. But
Speaker 1: there is another objection. The Darwinian theory represents man as
Speaker 1: reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law
Speaker 1: of hate, the merciless law by which the strong crowd
Speaker 1: out and kill off the weak. In other words, social
Speaker 1: Darwinism implied that the poor were unfit and that they
Speaker 1: deserved to be poor. In a speech called the menace
Speaker 1: of Darwinism. Brian laid out his support for a raft
Speaker 1: of progressive reforms that aim to check the very idea
Speaker 1: that only the fittest should survive. Pure food laws have
Speaker 1: become necessary to keep manufacturers from poisoning their customers. Child
Speaker 1: labor laws have become necessary to keep employers from dwarfing
Speaker 1: the bodies, minds, and souls of children. That by ology
Speaker 1: textbook that Scopes used in his classroom, its discussion of
Speaker 1: evolution also happened to endorse the forced sterilization of people
Speaker 1: like epileptics, the mentally ill, and those who were called
Speaker 1: feeble minded. If such people were lower animals, we would
Speaker 1: probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity
Speaker 1: will not allow this. But we do have the remedy
Speaker 1: of separating the sexes in asylums or other places, and
Speaker 1: in various ways preventing inner marriage and the possibility of
Speaker 1: perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. That's textbook social
Speaker 1: Darwinism eugenics. In nineteen twenty one, when Kentucky's Baptist Board
Speaker 1: of Missions called for a law to ban the teaching
Speaker 1: of evolution, Brian decided to wage a national crusade he
Speaker 1: saw in secular modernity the end of Christian sympathy, compassion,
Speaker 1: and charity. Four years later, in nineteen twenty five, Brian's
Speaker 1: crusade brought in to the Scoop's trial, where he squared
Speaker 1: off against Clarence Darrow. Mister Brian, because you tell me
Speaker 1: how old the earth is, no, sir, I couldn't. The
Speaker 1: Tennessee Attorney General leapt from his chair and interrupted. He
Speaker 1: begged for this to stop. What is the purpose of
Speaker 1: all of this? But Brian was delighted to have the
Speaker 1: chance to answer for both the court and the jury
Speaker 1: and the listeners across the country tuned into their radios.
Speaker 1: The purpose is to cast ridicule on everybody who believes
Speaker 1: in the Bible. And I am perfectly willing that the
Speaker 1: world shall know that these gentlemen have no other purpose
Speaker 1: than ridiculing every Christian who believes in the Bible. We
Speaker 1: have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramus is from
Speaker 1: controlling the education of the United States. And you know it.
Speaker 1: I am simply trying to protect the Word of God
Speaker 1: against the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States.
Speaker 1: I want the papers to know that I am not
Speaker 1: afraid to get on the stand in front of him
Speaker 1: and let him do his worst. I want the world
Speaker 1: to know the judge let it go on. The audience
Speaker 1: sweated and swatted it flies, The sun bore down, the
Speaker 1: telegraph machines clattered. Daryl kept questioning Brian, how long had
Speaker 1: it taken God to create the earth and everything in it?
Speaker 1: Seven days? Have you any idea of the length of
Speaker 1: these periods? No, I don't. Do you think the sun
Speaker 1: was made on the fourth day? Yes? And they had
Speaker 1: an evening and morning without the sun. I am simply
Speaker 1: saying it is a period. They had an evening in
Speaker 1: mourning for four periods without the sun. Do you think
Speaker 1: I believe in creation as they're told? And if I'm
Speaker 1: not able to explain it, I will accept it. Was
Speaker 1: every thing in the Bible true? Or was it worth doubting?
Speaker 1: Or had Darrow gone far past doubting the Bible and
Speaker 1: then to mocking people who believe it? The only purpose
Speaker 1: mister Darrow has is to slur the Bible. I object
Speaker 1: to your statement. I am examining your fool ideas that
Speaker 1: no intelligent Christian on earth believes fool ideas like if
Speaker 1: in the beginning there was only Adam and Eve and
Speaker 1: they had two sons, where did Kane find a mate?
Speaker 1: Did you ever discover where Kane got his wife? No, sir,
Speaker 1: I leave the agnostics to hunt for her. There were
Speaker 1: no others recorded, but Kane got a wife. That is
Speaker 1: what the Bible says. The judge asked the jury to
Speaker 1: ignore all of Brian's testimony. Darrow declined to make a
Speaker 1: closing argument. What else was there to say? That meant
Speaker 1: that Brian couldn't make one either. The jury then took
Speaker 1: nine minutes to deliberate. He found Scopes guilty of a
Speaker 1: misdemeanor under state law. The judge find him one hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Narah had lost his case. It was lost long before
Speaker 1: he came to date. But it seemed to me that
Speaker 1: he has never last performed a great public service by
Speaker 1: finding it to a finish and in a perfectly serious way,
Speaker 1: it served notice on the country and at neanderthall Man
Speaker 1: is organizing in these far alarmed back quarters of the land,
Speaker 1: led by a fanatic, a rate of sense and avoid
Speaker 1: of conscience. It had been and was always meant to
Speaker 1: be a show trial. Even though Daryl lost. The trial
Speaker 1: did what the aco you wanted. It got progressives worried
Speaker 1: about fundamentalists, But what had the trial actually shown? That
Speaker 1: a gulf was growing between believers and skeptics. That gulf
Speaker 1: has grown wider since contempt, though, is not progress or
Speaker 1: enlightenment or a march towards some glorious, tolerant new world.
Speaker 1: It's just a dumb ass culture war. You may find
Speaker 1: on you be lad. It will only bring you bread
Speaker 1: or a house that build on sandy your nefa. And
Speaker 1: wherever you may turn there the life on you will
Speaker 1: learn that the old read it done bed after all.
Speaker 1: Five days after the close of the Scoop's trial, William
Speaker 1: Jennings Bryan died in his sleep. It was as if
Speaker 1: fending off Clarence Darrow had sapped the very life out
Speaker 1: of him. All around the country people tried to make
Speaker 1: sense of the Trial of the century. One journalist, Walter
Speaker 1: Lippmann decided the best way to reckon with the implications
Speaker 1: of the trial was to imagine Brian in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: Lippman pictured Brian meeting up there with Socrates and Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 1: Crazy mashup right, but so cool, also very last archive.
Speaker 1: And remember Socrates always said, then in the afterlife he'd
Speaker 1: be very excited to continue his inquiry into the nature
Speaker 1: of belief. Here's how Lippman thought their conversation might go.
Speaker 1: Socrates speaks first. I shall ask you a few questions.
Speaker 1: Mister Jefferson can answer them all where you're not. Mister
Speaker 1: Jefferson accused of being an enemy of religion. That is
Speaker 1: a foolish question. You may not know it, mister Socrates,
Speaker 1: but he was twice president of the United States. I
Speaker 1: was denounced as an atheist by many good people. Were
Speaker 1: you an atheist? No? But I disestablished the church in
Speaker 1: Virginia on what theory? Socrates was asking Jefferson about Virginia's
Speaker 1: Statute for Religious Freedom, which Jefferson had written and which
Speaker 1: had found its way into the Tennessee Constitution. Too. Let
Speaker 1: us be frank, did you not overthrow a state religion
Speaker 1: based on revelation and established in its place the religion
Speaker 1: of rationalism. It's getting very warm in here, question relentlessly
Speaker 1: by Socrates. This is what's called the Socratic method. Who's
Speaker 1: getting pretty hot up there for Jefferson too. I mean,
Speaker 1: within the context of this truly weird but also great
Speaker 1: imaginary scene said in the afterlife. Because here's the problem
Speaker 1: with doubt. It's not the absence of belief. Skepticism is
Speaker 1: a belief in inquiry, and belief in inquiry is foundational
Speaker 1: to the United States. That's how a democracy works. But
Speaker 1: Socrates kept on pressing Jefferson about the limits of his
Speaker 1: tolerance for any belief other than the belief in reason.
Speaker 1: Couldn't skepticism become its own religion. Jefferson had established a
Speaker 1: public school and a university to teach knowledge as acquired
Speaker 1: by the use of reason, a rejection of knowledge as
Speaker 1: revealed by God. But Socrates kept asking questions. And then
Speaker 1: your taxpayers believed that the best knowledge could be acquired
Speaker 1: by human reason, Some believed it, some preferred revelation, and
Speaker 1: which prevail those who believed in the human reason? Were
Speaker 1: they the majority of the citizens, they must have been.
Speaker 1: The legislature accepted my plans. You believe, mister Jefferson, that
Speaker 1: the majority should rule, yes, providing it does not infringe
Speaker 1: the natural rights of man. If you believe in majority rule,
Speaker 1: a system of government where the people get to decide
Speaker 1: what's true, what happens when people are just wrong, then
Speaker 1: Socrates turned to a very sweaty William Jennings. Bryan, you
Speaker 1: must have seen where all this was going, towards a
Speaker 1: seemingly unresolvable conflict between fundamental American principles, majority rule and
Speaker 1: the freedom of thought. Did you say you believe in
Speaker 1: the separation of church and state? I did. It is
Speaker 1: a fundamental principle. If the right of the majority to
Speaker 1: rule a fundamental principle, it is. Is freedom of thought
Speaker 1: a fundamental principle? Jefferson? It is, well, how would your
Speaker 1: gentlemen compose your fundamental principles if a majority, exercising its
Speaker 1: fundamental right to rule, ordain that only Buddhism should be
Speaker 1: taught in the public schools, I'd move to a Christian country.
Speaker 1: I'd exercise the sacred right of revolution. Do you do, Socrates?
Speaker 1: I'd reexamine my fundamental principles. And that's what will be
Speaker 1: up to two in this season of Doubt, re examining
Speaker 1: our fundamental principles episode after episode, from hypnosis to propaganda
Speaker 1: to conspiracy theories, Q and on, your decade will come
Speaker 1: to as we crawl into the deeper, darker recesses of
Speaker 1: the Last Archive. The Last Archive is written and hosted
Speaker 1: by me Jillapour. It's produced by Sophie Crane, mckibbon and
Speaker 1: Ben nat of Haafrey. Our editor is Julia Barton and
Speaker 1: our executive producer is Mioobell. Martin Gonzalez is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Emy Gains, Original music by Matthis Bossi
Speaker 1: and John Evans Stillwagen, Symfinet. Our research assistants are Olivia
Speaker 1: Oldham and all of our riskin cuts our full proof player.
Speaker 1: There's a Yoshia Mau, Raymond Blankenhorne, Matthias Bosse, Dan Epstein,
Speaker 1: Ethan Herschenfeld, Becca A. Lewis, Andrew Parella, Robert Roccatta and
Speaker 1: Nick Saxton. The Last Archive is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: At Pushkin. Thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fain, John Schnarz,
Speaker 1: Carl Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostick, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig and Daniella Lacan. Special thanks to Simon Leak
Speaker 1: and Oliver Leek. Thanks also to Edward J. Larson for
Speaker 1: his incredible book Summer for the Gods and for answering
Speaker 1: questions about the trial for this episode. Many of Our
Speaker 1: sound effects are from Harry Jenette Junior and the Star
Speaker 1: Janette Foundation. If you like the show, please remember to rate, share,
Speaker 1: and review. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm Jill Lapour.