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Speaker 1: Happy Samhain, everybody. You know, across the world, people are

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Speaker 1: celebrating the day of the year when the veil between

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Speaker 1: the living and the dead is the thinnest. And since

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Speaker 1: you can expect all the usual ghosts and jack-o'-lanterns and

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Speaker 1: serial killers and the like today, for this week's special

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Speaker 1: Halloween Select, I decided to go even darker with a

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Speaker 1: genuine American horror story of the worst variety, the kind

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Speaker 1: that really happened. Well, witchcraft always gets top billing when

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Speaker 1: we talk about the Salem witchcraft trials, which makes sense

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Speaker 1: because it's right there in the name. But when we

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Speaker 1: dig just a little deeper, we find an isolated village

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Speaker 1: that turned on itself and that the executions that took

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Speaker 1: place were murder, plain and simple. It's one of the

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Speaker 1: more chilling chapters in American history, and this 2021 episode

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Speaker 1: is one of our better ones. I hope you enjoy it.

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Speaker 1: and that it doesn't accidentally tear the veil between living

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Speaker 1: and dead where you happen to be listening to it.

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Speaker 1: If so, I'm sorry in advance for the terrible fate

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Speaker 1: that will befall you.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's

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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. There's Jerry over here

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Speaker 1: lurking around like a bit of a ghoul because it

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Speaker 1: is the Halloween season after all. And this is Stuff

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Speaker 1: You Should Know.

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Speaker 2: That's right. Spooky witch trials.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's really nice to like have

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Speaker 1: stuff like this that you can be removed from by

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Speaker 1: a few hundred years. And, you know, it just kind

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Speaker 1: of evokes that Halloween spirit or whatever. But, Chuck, I

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Speaker 1: have found just in recently researching this, if you put

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Speaker 1: yourself into the position of the people who are, like,

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Speaker 1: walking to the gallows and, like, think about how nuts

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Speaker 1: all this was, it is exponentially scarier on a much

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Speaker 1: more existential level. It goes beyond, like, Halloween spooky to

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Speaker 1: this is a genuinely frightening event in the history of America.

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Speaker 2: No kidding.

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Speaker 1: I mean, like, it was messed up. In every way, shape,

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Speaker 1: or form.

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Speaker 2: So I take it you never read The Crucible.

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Speaker 1: I did read The Crucible, but I read it in

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Speaker 1: the context. And that didn't do it? No, it really didn't.

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Speaker 1: Because I don't know if it was me. Maybe I

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Speaker 1: wasn't mentally or emotionally prepared to accept it on that level.

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Speaker 1: Who knows? But no, it was like imagining myself in

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Speaker 1: the shoes of the people who are going to die

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Speaker 1: that got me researching this. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. That's dark.

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Speaker 1: No shade, though, on Arthur Miller. He was great, and

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Speaker 1: his play was great, and it was very timely for

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Speaker 1: the time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, there have been so many kind of

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Speaker 3: movie adaptations and TV movie adaptations about this time, and

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Speaker 3: I'm still waiting for sort of the one great one

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Speaker 3: that's not The Crucible.

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Speaker 1: Well, I think part of the reason why there hasn't

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Speaker 1: been that great one yet is because historians are still

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Speaker 1: actively competing, explaining just what exactly happened in Salem. It's

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Speaker 1: such an anomaly. Even among Puritans, even among people who

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Speaker 1: believe there was such a thing as witchcraft and even

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Speaker 1: executed witches, this was a genuine anomaly, at least as

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Speaker 1: far as American history goes. And I think because they

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Speaker 1: don't understand it fully, it's difficult to really get the

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Speaker 1: point across as well, you know?

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Speaker 2: I don't know, man. I think you could make a

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Speaker 2: great movie. Like, look at The Witch.

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Speaker 1: That.

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Speaker 3: That danced around it so well. Like you just need

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Speaker 3: a movie like that, but based on this.

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Speaker 1: Well, why don't we just say The Witch then is

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Speaker 1: all we need.

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Speaker 2: Well, because it wasn't about the Salem witch trials.

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Speaker 1: But, I mean, it was so analogous to it and

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Speaker 1: took place at the same time. You know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: just pretend like there's a trial scene that they cut out.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: And there actually is, remember.

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Speaker 2: And a lot of other people.

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Speaker 1: They drag the father into court, basically, and excommunicate him.

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Speaker 1: So there is almost like a witch trial scene right there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. I forgot about that for 60 seconds.

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Speaker 1: The witch is the Salem witch trial movie we've always needed.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

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Speaker 1: So I'm glad we resolved that. You must feel very

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Speaker 1: satisfied now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely disagree, but I'm just moving on.

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Speaker 1: So everybody knows about the Salem witch trials, right? But

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Speaker 1: I think because, you know, we learn about it in

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Speaker 1: American history. You hear about it as Halloween stories, all

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Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff. But like I said, I mean,

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Speaker 1: we really genuinely don't understand what happened. And that's despite

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Speaker 1: the fact that it is really well documented because a

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Speaker 1: lot of the stuff took place in the courts. And

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Speaker 1: they wrote a lot of stuff down. But we only have, like,

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Speaker 1: official primary documents that were written by people who were

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Speaker 1: aware that these were public documents rather than, say, a

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Speaker 1: trove of private journals and letters. The Puritans didn't do

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Speaker 1: that that much. And so we don't have, like, kind

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Speaker 1: of the underneath the official line explanation for what happened. Well, yeah.

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Speaker 3: And if people are confused by what we mean there,

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Speaker 3: you know, there were other witches in other places in

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Speaker 3: the young America. There were other witch trials in centuries

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Speaker 3: previous in other countries. And there were mild panics and stuff.

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Speaker 3: But Salem, like, collectively lost their mind for a short

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Speaker 3: period of time. And that's what people still don't get.

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Speaker 3: They're like, why did that happen only there to this

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Speaker 3: scope and this degree? And, you know, people have looked

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Speaker 3: at various biological reasons and things like that.

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Speaker 2: But I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I think it was just sort of one of those

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Speaker 3: weird things that could only happen like at one place

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Speaker 3: and one time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And there was actually a guy who wrote

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Speaker 1: a book in 1982 named John Demos. And he said,

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Speaker 1: not only can it happen like under these very specific circumstances,

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Speaker 1: Here are the circumstances that could happen. And his book

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Speaker 1: wasn't just about Salem. It mentioned Salem. It was about

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Speaker 1: like witchcraft trials and panics and accusations in New England

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Speaker 1: in general. And he basically said that when a town

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Speaker 1: starts out really small and it's like a colonial town,

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Speaker 1: they're living like on the razor's edge of existence. A

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Speaker 1: lot of them don't really know each other. They're dying.

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Speaker 1: So there's a big population turnover as newcomers come in.

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Speaker 1: And there's just not enough familiarity to say, I think

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Speaker 1: you're a witch to accuse your neighbor of something like that.

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Speaker 1: But then after they settle in a little while and

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Speaker 1: maybe there's like some boredom and everybody gets to know

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Speaker 1: each other and you have grudges, but you're still living

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Speaker 1: in a really small area, that's when the witchcraft accusations

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Speaker 1: can really take place. And Salem seems to have kind

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Speaker 1: of followed that pattern too, that these witchcraft accusations like

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Speaker 1: really took hold at a time where The colony was

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Speaker 1: under tons of stress. People knew each other, had had

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Speaker 1: decades-long rivalries and land disputes, and they lived still in

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Speaker 1: a very small little village. And they were basically crawling

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Speaker 1: all over one another and saw one another, and you

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Speaker 1: could not get away from people you didn't like.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is especially true in Salem. There was

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Speaker 3: Salem Village and Salem Town. And like you said, they

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Speaker 3: were stacked on each other, and there were a lot of, Like, hey,

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Speaker 3: your cow can't graze over this imaginary line because that's

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Speaker 3: my land and you're not even allowed to build a

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Speaker 3: fence over there. Like kind of common land disputes that

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Speaker 3: have happened throughout history. But in Salem, they were just,

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Speaker 3: they were described as a very quarrelsome people. They fought

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Speaker 3: and argued a lot, kind of more so than it

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Speaker 3: seems like even other Puritans in other parts of the country.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And the Puritans in general were deeply litigious. They took

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Speaker 1: each other to court at the drop of a hat,

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Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat with a belt buckle

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Speaker 1: on it. But they had like the way that they

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Speaker 1: supported that, that kind of litigiousness was to say, most

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Speaker 1: of the courts would be like, you need to go

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Speaker 1: handle this privately. And then this kind of secondary mediation

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Speaker 1: kind of thing would come in and there'd be negotiations.

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Speaker 1: And then the dispute would be resolved. But the first

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Speaker 1: thing that they would do is drag one another into court.

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Speaker 1: That was how they would get one another's attention.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and so this is sort of the backdrop of

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Speaker 3: what's going on in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and particularly

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Speaker 3: in Salem Village and Salem Town, which I think Salem

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Speaker 3: Village today is Danvers.

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Speaker 1: That's right.

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Speaker 2: And then Salem Town is Salem.

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Speaker 1: That's right.

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Speaker 2: Still around and still has spooky connotations.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and Danvers is where the state asylum was located.

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Speaker 1: That was the setting for one of the greatest horror

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Speaker 1: films of all time, Session 9.

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Speaker 2: Oh, that's right. Oh, man. That's a movie I don't

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Speaker 2: even know if I want to see again.

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Speaker 1: It's so good. I saw it a year or two ago,

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Speaker 1: and it's still just as good.

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Speaker 2: It's great. All right, so the Puritans were in control.

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Speaker 3: I guess the backdrop of this was there were full-on

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Speaker 3: human holocausts in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.

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Speaker 3: with their witch crazes, and things got really out of

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Speaker 3: hand over there. But by the time folks got over here,

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Speaker 3: they were mainly just arguing a lot. And there were,

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Speaker 3: you know, there was a small witch panic in Connecticut.

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Speaker 3: Not small if you were one of the people accused,

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Speaker 3: but it didn't quite get out of hand, certainly not

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Speaker 3: like it did in Europe in centuries previous.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I saw an explanation. I want to give

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Speaker 1: a shout out to a couple of sites, but one

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Speaker 1: I got a lot of info from is called The

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Speaker 1: Historic Present. And they were pointing out that, like, for

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Speaker 1: the most part, yes, people generally agreed that there were

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Speaker 1: such things as witches. And yes, you would accuse your

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Speaker 1: neighbor of witchcraft. But it was kind of like it

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Speaker 1: was a way of like getting your neighbor's attention. Like

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Speaker 1: I'm serious about this. I'm publicly accusing you of being

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Speaker 1: a witch. Let's talk about your cow grazing on my land.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You know? And that was another thing that made Salem

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Speaker 1: so anomalous is it just kept going and going through

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Speaker 1: these steps of like the court and trial and then

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Speaker 1: finally executions. And it just got out of hand, basically. Right.

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Speaker 3: So the Puritans are in control in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

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Speaker 3: They've got an iron fist on ruling. They don't like

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Speaker 3: basically anybody who is not a Puritan. It seems like

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Speaker 3: most of the Puritans didn't even like each other. But

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Speaker 3: they certainly didn't like Quakers. They didn't like Catholics. And

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Speaker 3: they did all they could to really establish themselves as

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Speaker 3: the ones in charge and did so well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it depends on who you're talking about, though. There

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Speaker 1: were some Puritans who were deeply conservative religious leaders like

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Speaker 1: Increase Mather who wanted to just completely secure 100% Puritan control.

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Speaker 1: But there was also like a real thread through the

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Speaker 1: Puritan leadership that was willing to like give like voting

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Speaker 1: rights and– the ability to be elected into office to

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Speaker 1: non-Puritans who lived in town. And they had kind of

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Speaker 1: a proto-democracy in a lot of ways. So like the

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Speaker 1: Puritans in general, yes, were deeply intolerant of Quakers and Catholics,

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Speaker 1: and they actually tortured Quakers who were unrepentant. But they

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Speaker 1: also did have, they weren't just like this, the band

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Speaker 1: of like theocratic thugs and that they're often painted as.

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Speaker 1: There's just more nuance to it than that. But yes,

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Speaker 1: there were plenty who were like, no, we just need

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Speaker 1: total puritanical control over this whole colony. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And, you know, as we'll see, once the witch trials

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Speaker 3: were conducted, you know, I said that Salem collectively lost

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Speaker 3: their mind.

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Speaker 2: It's sort of true.

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Speaker 3: In a way, and that a lot of people in

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Speaker 3: power and the decision makers did, but there were still

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Speaker 3: people even while it was going on, it wasn't like 100%

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Speaker 3: of the town was behind this. There were a lot

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Speaker 3: of people, and I guess they were probably some of

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Speaker 3: those reasonable people, you know, that you were talking about

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Speaker 3: that were like, you know, what we're doing isn't right.

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Speaker 3: I don't think they really spoke up too vocally, but

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Speaker 3: they were like, what is going on here?

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Speaker 2: This is getting out of hand and kind of crazy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it was such a dangerous situation where

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Speaker 1: it was one of those kind of fascist situations where

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Speaker 1: people who did dare to speak out against this and say,

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Speaker 1: this is crazy, this is wrong, Or even to like

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Speaker 1: testify on behalf of somebody who is accused. You were

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Speaker 1: putting your own life at risk. Like there was a

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Speaker 1: possibility you would be accused of witchcraft and then tried

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Speaker 1: and then executed. It was that kind of a situation.

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Speaker 1: Even with people on the outside knowing that this is wrong,

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Speaker 1: it was just such an inevitable machine that it was

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Speaker 1: like people just stayed out of its way for a

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Speaker 1: little while.

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Speaker 2: All right. I think that is a healthy preamble. Okay.

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Speaker 2: Foundation is laid. I think we should take a break.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: And come back, talk about those Mather boys right after this.

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Speaker 1: I concur. Okay, Chuck, so you want to talk some Mathers?

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Speaker 1: I'll talk about some Mathers.

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Speaker 2: That's the beaver.

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Speaker 1: He's still around, I believe, by the way. He still

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Speaker 1: looks like the beaver.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think he died, did he? He's one

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Speaker 2: of those guys that stayed the same, huh?

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I think it doesn't help that he dresses

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Speaker 1: the same still, too. But you can recognize him even

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Speaker 1: in a tux, I'm guessing.

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Speaker 3: So you can't talk about the Salem Witch Trials without

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Speaker 3: talking about the Mathers. I'm talking about the elder Mather,

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Speaker 3: whose name was Increase. Love these Puritan names. And the

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Speaker 3: younger Mather, Cotton Mather. He was the son, son of

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Speaker 3: a Mather. So Increase Mather, he was, like you said,

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Speaker 3: he was sort of the staunch Puritan son. who was

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Speaker 3: in a position of power. He was working to establish

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Speaker 3: a charter that would, you know, basically give the Puritans

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Speaker 3: all the power. He was also a believer in, you know,

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Speaker 3: because I mentioned the European witch trials, like this is

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Speaker 3: sort of the background that allowed people like Increase Mather

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Speaker 3: and Cotton Mather to really legitimately believe that demons were

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Speaker 3: real and Satan could overtake and possess someone and that

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Speaker 3: there were real witches.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that was just generally the puritanical worldview, but

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Speaker 1: some people were much more preoccupied with it than others,

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Speaker 1: and the Mathers were both deeply preoccupied with this kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. And Increased Mather gets a lot of the

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Speaker 1: blame for this, and rightfully so. But there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of lesser-known people who actually were way more villainous during

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Speaker 1: this and really took advantage of this crazy situation and

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Speaker 1: really did— just didn't care about the lives of innocent people.

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Speaker 1: But he was not good in that he helped fan

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Speaker 1: the flames of this initially big time.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

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Speaker 3: So should we, I mean, we'll get a little bit

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Speaker 3: more into the Mathers as we go. Cotton was certainly

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Speaker 3: one of the villains of the trials. And they were

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Speaker 3: both writing books about supernatural things. So this was all

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Speaker 3: sort of the foundation that was laid when the first

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Speaker 3: two people were accused in, what, January of 1692?

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So, to start, there were two girls ages 9

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Speaker 1: and 11. There was Betty Parris, Elizabeth Parris was her name,

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Speaker 1: and Abigail Williams. And they basically started barking and convulsing

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Speaker 1: and just behaving really bizarrely and strangely and would not stop.

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Speaker 1: And so, Samuel Parris, who was the head of the

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Speaker 1: Salem Village Church. It was actually a pretty divisive figure, apparently.

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Speaker 1: He brought in a doctor, and the doctor proclaimed this

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Speaker 1: to be a bewitchment, that these girls were bewitched. And

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Speaker 1: that's ultimately what kicked the whole thing off. And a

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Speaker 1: lot of people have tried to figure out, like, what

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Speaker 1: initially started that? Because just about everybody who has a

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Speaker 1: theory about this immediately converts to mass hysteria. But you

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Speaker 1: still have that first... that first case of Abigail Williams

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Speaker 1: and or Elizabeth Paris to explain. And apparently it was

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Speaker 1: like really prolonged stuff. They were vomiting. They were doing

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Speaker 1: stuff beyond just like behaving weirdly. They were, they seemed

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Speaker 1: to be physically afflicted. And that's another thing too, that

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Speaker 1: I think theories that say like, it was all just

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Speaker 1: a hoax that these girls perpetrated.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't understand like just how long these girls carried

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Speaker 1: out this stuff. And I think it kind of ignores

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Speaker 1: the fact that There are also, like, the Puritans weren't

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Speaker 1: dumb people. They were deeply religious. They believed in witches

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Speaker 1: and Satan having, you know, a hand on things here

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Speaker 1: on Earth. But they also were very smart, very practical.

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Speaker 1: And they would have seen right through a couple of

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Speaker 1: girls just planning a hoax or carrying out a hoax.

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Speaker 1: So there has to be something there at the beginning

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Speaker 1: that no one has ever fully explained that kicked this

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Speaker 1: whole thing off. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, it's hard not to become a little

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Speaker 3: obsessed with some sort of biological root. I know ergot

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Speaker 3: poisoning has been mentioned. I saw encephalitis.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I saw that one too. That was interesting.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and just some other possible reasons of maybe something

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Speaker 3: physically was wrong with them while they also happened to

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Speaker 3: be goofing around with folk magic and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Not a good combination to get sick while you're being

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Speaker 3: a kid and playing around, which is essentially what they

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Speaker 3: were doing.

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Speaker 1: Think about the fact that the adults were like, okay,

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Speaker 1: this is significant enough that we're going to start looking

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Speaker 1: around for the witches. And the girls started accusing people too.

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Speaker 1: It does seem like there was something going on with

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Speaker 1: at least one of them. And then, yes, it started

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Speaker 1: to spread probably through mass hysteria to other girls in

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Speaker 1: the village.

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Speaker 3: When you read the sort of timeline account, I feel

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Speaker 3: like if that original doctor hadn't said the word witch—

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Speaker 3: it could have gone in a completely different direction.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. He should have just been like, it's anti-NMDA-R encephalitis dummies.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: An autoimmune disease that we'll only begin to grasp in

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Speaker 1: the 2020s.

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Speaker 2: And everyone would say, you're a witch. Right.

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Speaker 1: He just used some crazy words, Doc.

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Speaker 3: So, the doctor has breathed the word witch. The girls

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Speaker 3: are like, they're like, hey, what's going on with you?

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Speaker 3: And they said, you know, it's, Tituba. It is my

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Speaker 3: father's slave, Tituba, and it's her fault and she's a witch.

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Speaker 3: And so they, like you said, they started accusing and

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Speaker 3: they started with her.

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Speaker 1: They started with her and then they very quickly moved

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Speaker 1: on to Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. And by doing that,

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Speaker 1: by accusing those two women, or actually with Tituba as well,

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Speaker 1: all three of them.

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Speaker 2: Is it Tituba?

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Speaker 1: I've always heard Tituba, but I've heard, I think I've

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Speaker 1: heard Tituba before too, so.

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Speaker 2: Well, tituba sounds more right.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so by accusing those.

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Speaker 1: Three women, they were following, Abigail and Elizabeth were following

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Speaker 1: like a well-established tradition of focusing on older women on

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Speaker 1: the margins of society as witches, right?

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: Tituba was easy to accuse because she was a foreigner.

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Speaker 1: She was brought to the colony as a slave and

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Speaker 1: she worked as a slave in the Paris's house. So

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Speaker 1: who knows what she was into before, you know, she

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Speaker 1: came over to Massachusetts, I guess, was the thinking of

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Speaker 1: the Puritans. But then also Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne,

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Speaker 1: they were like older women who were poor and lived

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Speaker 1: on the fringes of society. And like that is who

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Speaker 1: you accused of being a witch typically. So at first

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Speaker 1: this witch panic kind of followed the standard witch accusations

380
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Speaker 1: that had been, you know, spread around New England before.

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Speaker 1: But what made it different is that it just started

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Speaker 1: to pick up steam more and more because more and

383
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Speaker 1: more girls and people around the colony or around the village,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, started to suffer bewitchment and started accusing one

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Speaker 1: another of bewitching them.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, if you were a person, for sure a woman,

387
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Speaker 3: but a man or a woman who, like you said,

388
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Speaker 3: was about middle-aged and, you know, you were over there

389
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Speaker 3: kind of doing your own thing a little bit and

390
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Speaker 3: maybe just kept to yourself. Maybe you didn't like hanging

391
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Speaker 3: out in the village as much as the rest of

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Speaker 3: the villagers did.

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Speaker 2: You marched to the beat of your own drum. You

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Speaker 2: had a target on your back, basically.

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Speaker 1: Right, yeah. And also, apparently, one of the things that

396
00:21:31,030 --> 00:21:34,050
Speaker 1: they were well-known for, these people who were accused of witches,

397
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Speaker 1: would be, like, they needed things from their neighbors, so

398
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Speaker 1: they would extract them by threatening to curse them. So

399
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Speaker 1: they would actually use, like, witchy threats. They were probably

400
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Speaker 1: also into folk magic. So there was, like, it wasn't

401
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Speaker 1: just completely baseless other than the fact that, like, witches

402
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Speaker 1: in that kind of puritanical conception don't exist. But it

403
00:21:56,910 --> 00:22:00,020
Speaker 1: wasn't just totally out of the blue. Like these, they still,

404
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Speaker 1: like if you, a modern person, saw the person that

405
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Speaker 1: they were originally, that they traditionally accused of being witches,

406
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Speaker 1: you'd be like, oh my gosh, a real life witch.

407
00:22:07,740 --> 00:22:10,199
Speaker 1: There's one right there. It would fit the bill for you.

408
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Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying?

409
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Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So, you know, these accusations start flying around.

410
00:22:16,310 --> 00:22:20,650
Speaker 3: They start mounting. The jails start filling up. The conditions

411
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Speaker 3: in the jail were not good. It got so crazy

412
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Speaker 3: early on. And this is sort of the first part.

413
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Speaker 3: This is before the, like, trials and hangings and everything.

414
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Speaker 3: This is when you were just, like, jailed and shackled

415
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Speaker 3: and then charged for your shackles, I guess, like a

416
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Speaker 3: rental fee. But they arrested a four-year-old named Dorothy Good.

417
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Speaker 3: And she was eventually released, but a four-year-old, like– It's crazy,

418
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Speaker 3: me as a father having gone through life with a four-year-old,

419
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Speaker 3: that you could accuse a four-year-old of being anything other

420
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Speaker 3: than a four-year-old.

421
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Speaker 1: Right, exactly. But she wasn't. She was held for months.

422
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Speaker 1: I think she was arrested in March and released in May. And, like,

423
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Speaker 1: this wasn't, like, a pleasant— December. Oh, my goodness. Okay,

424
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Speaker 1: so she was there for almost a year, just under

425
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Speaker 1: a year. For the intents and purposes of exaggerating just

426
00:23:10,330 --> 00:23:12,390
Speaker 1: how bad this was, she was in there for basically

427
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Speaker 1: a year. Okay?

428
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Sarah Osgood died in jail, right?

429
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Speaker 1: She died in jail. Yeah, this is the thing. Like

430
00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:21,320
Speaker 1: these jails were like dirt floors. You were chained, like

431
00:23:21,359 --> 00:23:23,580
Speaker 1: you're saying, like it was just it was a place

432
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Speaker 1: where like a life could just be lost way too easily.

433
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Speaker 1: So to keep a four year old in there for

434
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Speaker 1: almost a year is just horrible. There was a woman

435
00:23:32,100 --> 00:23:35,890
Speaker 1: who gave birth in jail and they just left her

436
00:23:36,010 --> 00:23:39,850
Speaker 1: infant daughter in there with her. So the infant didn't survive.

437
00:23:39,890 --> 00:23:43,090
Speaker 1: She died in jail. just from being born in jail,

438
00:23:43,109 --> 00:23:45,930
Speaker 1: somebody who was accused of being witches. And this was

439
00:23:46,010 --> 00:23:48,910
Speaker 1: before the trials had even started, Chuck. Like this was

440
00:23:49,010 --> 00:23:53,760
Speaker 1: just the initial phase of the panic, which was accusation, accusation, accusation.

441
00:23:54,100 --> 00:23:57,160
Speaker 1: And then suddenly the jails were overflowing with more than

442
00:23:57,160 --> 00:24:02,159
Speaker 1: 100 people who were accused of being witches. And the

443
00:24:02,260 --> 00:24:06,409
Speaker 1: court was totally backed up when Increase Mather and the

444
00:24:06,450 --> 00:24:09,250
Speaker 1: new governor that he was coming back with, William Phipps,

445
00:24:09,890 --> 00:24:14,889
Speaker 1: who he'd gotten appointed, showed back up in Salem and

446
00:24:14,910 --> 00:24:18,380
Speaker 1: were like, what is going on here? And they had

447
00:24:18,420 --> 00:24:20,760
Speaker 1: a choice, Chuck. They could have been like, have you

448
00:24:20,820 --> 00:24:23,540
Speaker 1: all lost your mind? What are you doing? Stop this

449
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:26,160
Speaker 1: right now. Let all these people out. They didn't go

450
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:28,900
Speaker 1: that route. They went the exact opposite route. At that

451
00:24:28,980 --> 00:24:33,689
Speaker 1: moment when they decided which way to go, they chose incorrectly, basically.

452
00:24:34,510 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it was also a pretty bad time. It

453
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:41,610
Speaker 2: was kind of a– what's the word? Conflagration?

454
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 1: Man, you nailed it.

455
00:24:45,070 --> 00:24:48,030
Speaker 2: And it sounded so confident too. Yeah. Confident?

456
00:24:49,710 --> 00:24:51,970
Speaker 3: It was a conflagration of a bunch of things happening.

457
00:24:52,030 --> 00:24:55,380
Speaker 3: Politically and legally, it was a very bad time because

458
00:24:56,580 --> 00:24:59,440
Speaker 3: by the time the trials rolled around, they eventually got

459
00:24:59,460 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 3: this new charter. But previous to that, they were– the

460
00:25:03,300 --> 00:25:05,500
Speaker 3: charter of the colony was temporarily suspended.

461
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 2: Right.

462
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:09,300
Speaker 3: And a new charter did arrive in May of 1692

463
00:25:09,300 --> 00:25:13,660
Speaker 3: in the hands of the elder Mather. But it was

464
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:17,270
Speaker 3: brand new, and the court didn't create laws. They didn't

465
00:25:17,310 --> 00:25:20,250
Speaker 3: have time to create any new laws, that is. So

466
00:25:20,350 --> 00:25:22,230
Speaker 3: they basically said, all right, we need to– we got

467
00:25:22,250 --> 00:25:24,630
Speaker 3: all these people in jail. We need to quickly establish

468
00:25:24,670 --> 00:25:27,730
Speaker 3: a special court for this. And we'll call it the

469
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:31,659
Speaker 3: Court of Oyer and Terminer to hear and determine. And

470
00:25:31,700 --> 00:25:36,070
Speaker 3: we're going to get this– these people out of jail–

471
00:25:36,490 --> 00:25:39,409
Speaker 3: or kill them so they're no longer in jail. But

472
00:25:39,430 --> 00:25:40,630
Speaker 3: they're getting out one way or another.

473
00:25:40,770 --> 00:25:43,590
Speaker 1: Right. So Ed helps us out with this. We should

474
00:25:43,630 --> 00:25:46,990
Speaker 1: say we failed to mention so far. But he points

475
00:25:47,070 --> 00:25:51,100
Speaker 1: out that William Phipps, the new governor, possibly went along

476
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:53,340
Speaker 1: with this idea of creating a new court to get

477
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:57,140
Speaker 1: rid of this backlog of witchcraft accusations to get these

478
00:25:57,180 --> 00:25:59,380
Speaker 1: people out of jail, to get this over and done with.

479
00:26:00,150 --> 00:26:03,630
Speaker 1: And that may have happened, actually. But he was very

480
00:26:03,670 --> 00:26:08,429
Speaker 1: much focused on dealing with the constant threat that the

481
00:26:08,470 --> 00:26:11,860
Speaker 1: colonists lived under of being attacked by Native Americans. King

482
00:26:11,900 --> 00:26:15,160
Speaker 1: Philip's War. King Philip being the guy that Punxsutawney Phil

483
00:26:15,180 --> 00:26:17,820
Speaker 1: was named after that I got way, way wrong in

484
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:22,430
Speaker 1: our groundhog episode. That had just ended. There was another

485
00:26:22,470 --> 00:26:25,790
Speaker 1: war that included the French and the Native Americans to

486
00:26:25,810 --> 00:26:29,510
Speaker 1: the north, sweeping down all the way into Massachusetts and

487
00:26:29,550 --> 00:26:32,070
Speaker 1: staging raids. So they've lived under the constant threat of death,

488
00:26:32,430 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: which definitely didn't help their mindset during the witchcraft panic.

489
00:26:36,850 --> 00:26:39,570
Speaker 1: But that's what Phipps was worried about. That's what he

490
00:26:39,590 --> 00:26:44,790
Speaker 1: was working on. So he threw the job of seeing

491
00:26:44,869 --> 00:26:49,730
Speaker 1: this court through to his lieutenant governor, a guy named–

492
00:26:49,940 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 1: what was his name? William what?

493
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:52,380
Speaker 2: William Stoughton.

494
00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:56,360
Speaker 1: William Stoughton. I mentioned like some of the lesser known

495
00:26:56,440 --> 00:26:59,480
Speaker 1: people who were actually villains. This guy was a bad,

496
00:27:00,060 --> 00:27:04,419
Speaker 1: bad man. And he made a decision– That changed the

497
00:27:04,460 --> 00:27:08,060
Speaker 1: course of everything. I think Phipps' initial idea that this

498
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:10,159
Speaker 1: would have just moved the backlogs out and freed everybody

499
00:27:10,180 --> 00:27:13,160
Speaker 1: from jail would have come true had it not been

500
00:27:13,220 --> 00:27:17,820
Speaker 1: for Stoughton and Stoughton's radical decision to include what's called

501
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:22,070
Speaker 1: spectral evidence. That changed everything. And that is what led

502
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,810
Speaker 1: to people being executed. Yeah.

503
00:27:25,010 --> 00:27:27,950
Speaker 3: So before we get into spectral evidence, I just want

504
00:27:27,970 --> 00:27:30,250
Speaker 3: to point out that William Stoughton was such a bad guy.

505
00:27:30,270 --> 00:27:33,350
Speaker 2: They named a town after him. Mm-hmm. And they named

506
00:27:33,390 --> 00:27:35,010
Speaker 2: a college dorm at Harvard after him.

507
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:38,439
Speaker 1: I believe, well, Increase Mather was the Harvard president for

508
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:39,420
Speaker 1: a while too, so.

509
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Stoughton went to Harvard, but I think

510
00:27:42,300 --> 00:27:45,620
Speaker 3: it's still, one of the dorms is still Stoughton. And

511
00:27:46,500 --> 00:27:49,090
Speaker 3: I think Stoughton, Mass is most well-known now for having

512
00:27:49,109 --> 00:27:49,570
Speaker 3: an Ikea.

513
00:27:51,030 --> 00:27:51,170
Speaker 2: Wow.

514
00:27:51,190 --> 00:27:51,710
Speaker 1: I don't know.

515
00:27:52,230 --> 00:27:52,850
Speaker 2: It all comes around.

516
00:27:52,910 --> 00:27:55,370
Speaker 1: It's quite a claim to fame.

517
00:27:55,430 --> 00:27:58,350
Speaker 3: So yeah, spectral evidence. Let's talk about this because this

518
00:27:58,390 --> 00:28:02,580
Speaker 3: changed everything. there were different kinds of evidence that would

519
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:06,500
Speaker 3: be accepted in these courts. One was the spectral, which

520
00:28:06,540 --> 00:28:13,100
Speaker 3: we'll talk about. One was confession. Two eyewitness testimonies. And

521
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:16,400
Speaker 3: then there were, we won't get really into all the tests,

522
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:19,810
Speaker 3: but there were all kinds of different tests, including the,

523
00:28:19,850 --> 00:28:24,350
Speaker 3: you know, does she float? Can she swim? From Monty Python,

524
00:28:24,390 --> 00:28:26,550
Speaker 3: the Holy Grail. I think they were still doing some

525
00:28:26,570 --> 00:28:29,909
Speaker 3: of that. There was the witch's teat. which was, it's

526
00:28:29,950 --> 00:28:33,310
Speaker 3: basically if they found a mole on a woman, they

527
00:28:33,350 --> 00:28:36,550
Speaker 3: would call it a witch's teat, which was supposedly a

528
00:28:36,609 --> 00:28:39,030
Speaker 3: third nipple used to feed her animal familiar.

529
00:28:39,250 --> 00:28:41,410
Speaker 1: That's what my dad always told me my moles were

530
00:28:41,450 --> 00:28:42,950
Speaker 1: when I was growing up.

531
00:28:43,010 --> 00:28:43,709
Speaker 2: Witch's teats.

532
00:28:43,730 --> 00:28:45,710
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was dead serious too.

533
00:28:46,250 --> 00:28:47,290
Speaker 2: So there were.

534
00:28:47,230 --> 00:28:49,780
Speaker 3: Certain tests and all, but spectral evidence was the big

535
00:28:49,890 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 3: one because this was basically, you could kind of make

536
00:28:52,580 --> 00:28:55,420
Speaker 3: up anything and you could be in court and say

537
00:28:55,560 --> 00:29:03,500
Speaker 3: as an accuser and say, This person has been possessed

538
00:29:03,660 --> 00:29:04,940
Speaker 3: or their possessor is.

539
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:06,280
Speaker 2: In the courtroom right now.

540
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 3: Your Honor, this ghost, this specter is sitting on your

541
00:29:11,540 --> 00:29:12,300
Speaker 3: lap right now.

542
00:29:12,660 --> 00:29:16,130
Speaker 2: You just can't see it. And it would freak people out.

543
00:29:16,630 --> 00:29:18,690
Speaker 3: There was nothing you could really say to defend it

544
00:29:18,790 --> 00:29:23,570
Speaker 3: because it was made up to begin with. And supposedly

545
00:29:23,630 --> 00:29:27,840
Speaker 3: Cotton Mather said it should be used more sparingly. Like

546
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, he was like, it's

547
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 3: enough to indict, but.

548
00:29:30,300 --> 00:29:31,110
Speaker 2: Not to convict.

549
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:33,170
Speaker 1: Oh, really? Was that cotton or increase?

550
00:29:33,890 --> 00:29:35,770
Speaker 2: That was cotton, supposedly. Okay.

551
00:29:36,070 --> 00:29:39,969
Speaker 3: And then in the end, I think they verified that nobody.

552
00:29:40,170 --> 00:29:43,890
Speaker 3: was convicted solely on the basis of spectral evidence.

553
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:47,180
Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Okay. Well then my, my hypothesis is kind

554
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: of out the window that none of these people would

555
00:29:48,940 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: have been executed without it.

556
00:29:51,120 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 3: Well, it was, you know, if, if you need it,

557
00:29:55,100 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 3: two out of three things and that's one of them,

558
00:29:57,040 --> 00:29:58,340
Speaker 3: then you're right, you know?

559
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:00,590
Speaker 1: One of the other things, one of the more practical

560
00:30:00,850 --> 00:30:04,830
Speaker 1: problems that spectral evidence presented for somebody accused of witchcraft

561
00:30:04,890 --> 00:30:08,430
Speaker 1: is that it destroyed any alibi you had. Like your

562
00:30:08,550 --> 00:30:10,410
Speaker 1: neighbor could be like, well, no, he couldn't have been

563
00:30:10,430 --> 00:30:12,870
Speaker 1: bewitching this person. He was out working with me in

564
00:30:12,910 --> 00:30:15,190
Speaker 1: the fields all day. They could say, no, no, it

565
00:30:15,230 --> 00:30:18,110
Speaker 1: was a spirit. He sent his spirit to bewitch this

566
00:30:18,190 --> 00:30:21,810
Speaker 1: poor person who's accusing him. And then, boop, there goes

567
00:30:21,830 --> 00:30:24,979
Speaker 1: your alibi. So it was like you said, you just

568
00:30:25,020 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: can't defend yourself against that kind of thing. And that

569
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: was like the level of stuff that they were, that

570
00:30:31,820 --> 00:30:33,900
Speaker 1: was how they were accusing people. There was one guy

571
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:37,310
Speaker 1: I read about, Philip English, who will come up again later.

572
00:30:38,530 --> 00:30:41,370
Speaker 1: He was accused of witchcraft by somebody who said that

573
00:30:42,310 --> 00:30:45,690
Speaker 1: They got a nosebleed while they were discussing a lawsuit

574
00:30:45,730 --> 00:30:49,170
Speaker 1: they had against Philip English with somebody else. So that

575
00:30:49,210 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: it must be that Philip English had bewitched them. Like

576
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:54,500
Speaker 1: this was the kind of accusations that they were making

577
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 1: against one another. And they were holding up in court.

578
00:30:57,580 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 1: That is something that you cannot look past. It's so

579
00:31:02,020 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: easy to look back 300 years and be like, yeah,

580
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:06,540
Speaker 1: this whole collective group lost their mind. No, there were

581
00:31:06,580 --> 00:31:08,420
Speaker 1: plenty of people who did lose their mind. But the

582
00:31:08,540 --> 00:31:11,740
Speaker 1: people who were supposed to be in charge, the people

583
00:31:11,780 --> 00:31:13,620
Speaker 1: who were in a position to put a stop to

584
00:31:13,660 --> 00:31:17,620
Speaker 1: this actually allowed it. In some cases, fan the flames

585
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,600
Speaker 1: of it even further. That was the true breakdown at

586
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:24,540
Speaker 1: the Salem witchcraft trials. The grownups did not step in

587
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:27,060
Speaker 1: and halt it before it got out of hand.

588
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, another thing that someone might do if you had

589
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 3: a pet that you really liked, not good. They could say, well, no, no, no,

590
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:38,660
Speaker 3: they have an animal familiar. It could be anything, like

591
00:31:39,150 --> 00:31:41,750
Speaker 3: take Black Phillip from The Witch. I mean, that's taken

592
00:31:41,830 --> 00:31:43,850
Speaker 3: kind of straight from this time period.

593
00:31:43,930 --> 00:31:44,130
Speaker 1: Sure.

594
00:31:45,290 --> 00:31:47,250
Speaker 3: But if you had a pet that you enjoyed hanging

595
00:31:47,350 --> 00:31:50,530
Speaker 3: out with, they could accuse you of having a familiar.

596
00:31:51,170 --> 00:31:55,930
Speaker 3: If they found a folk magic or folktale book in

597
00:31:55,950 --> 00:31:58,860
Speaker 3: your library– that could be evidence.

598
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:00,940
Speaker 1: And that was pretty common too. I mean, like these

599
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,110
Speaker 1: people didn't have, you know, local hospitals to go to,

600
00:32:04,130 --> 00:32:05,370
Speaker 1: to heal themselves.

601
00:32:06,270 --> 00:32:08,750
Speaker 3: Or anything that any, like you said, with the nosebleed

602
00:32:08,770 --> 00:32:11,470
Speaker 3: or whatever, anything bad that happened to you, if your

603
00:32:11,490 --> 00:32:14,490
Speaker 3: crop failed or if one of your cows died, you

604
00:32:14,540 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 3: could say it was my neighbor and they're a witch

605
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:17,620
Speaker 3: and they put a hex on me.

606
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:21,780
Speaker 1: Right. So they established, okay, we can use spectral evidence

607
00:32:21,840 --> 00:32:24,900
Speaker 1: and we're going to use spectral evidence. And this court

608
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:30,209
Speaker 1: of Oyer and Terminer it was established, I think they

609
00:32:30,260 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 1: held their first trial on June 2nd, and they were

610
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: profoundly efficient at convicting and killing people. Bridget Bishop was

611
00:32:40,820 --> 00:32:43,500
Speaker 1: the first person hanged, and she was hanged on June 10th,

612
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:46,910
Speaker 1: just over a week after the first trials began. And

613
00:32:47,970 --> 00:32:52,690
Speaker 1: that kicked off this new phase where this idea to

614
00:32:52,770 --> 00:32:57,330
Speaker 1: clear the jails of the accused was actually now diverting

615
00:32:57,370 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 1: them to the gallows and for being witches. We can't

616
00:33:02,140 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 1: forget that either. Like for being witches, even though witches

617
00:33:06,140 --> 00:33:08,620
Speaker 1: in this conception don't exist. Yeah.

618
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 3: And I think it's that efficiency and the speed that

619
00:33:11,580 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 3: all this happened was a big part of it because

620
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:17,980
Speaker 3: it was, the train was moving so fast that once people,

621
00:33:19,110 --> 00:33:21,469
Speaker 3: the more level headed people of the town realized what

622
00:33:21,510 --> 00:33:24,270
Speaker 3: was going on, like, wait a minute, we're actually.

623
00:33:24,070 --> 00:33:25,070
Speaker 2: Hanging people for this.

624
00:33:26,030 --> 00:33:28,800
Speaker 3: Um, certain people started to come forward and say, no, no, no,

625
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:32,500
Speaker 3: I'm recanting my confession or let me stand up for

626
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:36,719
Speaker 3: someone's good character. But it happened so quickly that, you know,

627
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 3: before you know it, there's, you know, a couple of

628
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 3: dozen people have died.

629
00:33:40,660 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 1: Yeah. And like people got wrapped up in it too.

630
00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:46,420
Speaker 1: Like there's the case of Giles Corey, I believe.

631
00:33:47,020 --> 00:33:47,420
Speaker 2: Oh man.

632
00:33:47,580 --> 00:33:52,300
Speaker 1: He testified against his wife and then later he recanted it.

633
00:33:53,050 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 1: And after he recanted it, the Puritans apparently, viewed perjury

634
00:33:57,100 --> 00:33:59,940
Speaker 1: so suspiciously that that was enough to get him accused

635
00:33:59,960 --> 00:34:02,090
Speaker 1: of witchcraft. And he ended up paying for his life,

636
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:05,930
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about a little more later. But he

637
00:34:05,970 --> 00:34:08,529
Speaker 1: testified against his wife. And to this day, historians are like,

638
00:34:08,550 --> 00:34:11,509
Speaker 1: we have no idea why Giles Corey testified against his wife.

639
00:34:11,870 --> 00:34:13,390
Speaker 1: He didn't seem to have a grudge. They seem to

640
00:34:13,430 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 1: have a fine marriage, whatever. It just doesn't make sense.

641
00:34:17,500 --> 00:34:19,379
Speaker 1: The only way that you can explain that, at least

642
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:22,270
Speaker 1: From my perspective is that it was like you said,

643
00:34:22,310 --> 00:34:24,969
Speaker 1: just this thing that people got whipped up in and

644
00:34:24,989 --> 00:34:27,830
Speaker 1: it just happened so fast that it was just easy

645
00:34:27,870 --> 00:34:29,310
Speaker 1: to lose yourself into that degree.

646
00:34:29,330 --> 00:34:33,060
Speaker 2: I mean, the whole thing happened over the course of what,

647
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:34,819
Speaker 2: four to six months.

648
00:34:35,489 --> 00:34:38,250
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the first things were in January, but yeah,

649
00:34:38,390 --> 00:34:41,750
Speaker 1: the first trials were June 2nd and they ultimately, I think,

650
00:34:41,850 --> 00:34:45,450
Speaker 1: stopped the following like winter. So yeah, I mean, it

651
00:34:45,489 --> 00:34:48,140
Speaker 1: was not a very long, prolonged thing, but it was

652
00:34:48,180 --> 00:34:52,800
Speaker 1: just like this weird orgy of mind loss and death,

653
00:34:53,180 --> 00:34:53,500
Speaker 1: you know?

654
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:57,860
Speaker 2: Oh man, that sounds like some kind of album.

655
00:34:58,500 --> 00:35:00,880
Speaker 1: Fiona Apple, album title.

656
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:06,430
Speaker 3: The other weird thing about this was that the social

657
00:35:06,489 --> 00:35:10,390
Speaker 3: order was completely knocked out of whack. The Puritans, if

658
00:35:10,430 --> 00:35:13,049
Speaker 3: there's one thing they didn't like, it was hearing from

659
00:35:13,110 --> 00:35:18,009
Speaker 3: children about anything. Kids were just, they were meant to

660
00:35:18,050 --> 00:35:20,509
Speaker 3: work and to shut up, basically, and do what they

661
00:35:20,530 --> 00:35:24,150
Speaker 3: were told. And kind of like full stop. And you

662
00:35:24,170 --> 00:35:28,049
Speaker 3: had a situation here where children, young girls, were accusing

663
00:35:28,610 --> 00:35:34,670
Speaker 3: these middle-aged men and women of witchery, And it worked.

664
00:35:34,730 --> 00:35:37,570
Speaker 3: Like people listened to them and people were hanged because

665
00:35:38,090 --> 00:35:40,170
Speaker 3: these kids were speaking up at a time when kids

666
00:35:40,270 --> 00:35:43,070
Speaker 3: were barely allowed to even, you know, have any agency

667
00:35:43,130 --> 00:35:43,610
Speaker 3: or speak.

668
00:35:43,870 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: Yeah. Which is another thing that perplexes historians because they're

669
00:35:47,260 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: like something happened. Like there was something that was that

670
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 1: this witch panic fulfilled. Maybe it was to let off

671
00:35:55,980 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: steam from being constantly afraid of being murdered by a

672
00:36:00,140 --> 00:36:04,739
Speaker 1: Native American attack. Maybe it was living too close proximity,

673
00:36:04,820 --> 00:36:08,029
Speaker 1: too far away from where you called home. Like, who knows?

674
00:36:08,450 --> 00:36:11,410
Speaker 1: But there was something about it that was worth turning

675
00:36:11,450 --> 00:36:14,330
Speaker 1: the social order on its head. And that was just

676
00:36:14,430 --> 00:36:16,490
Speaker 1: one example. There are other examples of how the social

677
00:36:16,530 --> 00:36:19,169
Speaker 1: order just totally broke down. And that was in how

678
00:36:19,950 --> 00:36:22,770
Speaker 1: some of the people who were accused and executed were.

679
00:36:23,270 --> 00:36:27,810
Speaker 1: Because it wasn't just the marginal women who were your

680
00:36:28,150 --> 00:36:32,090
Speaker 1: prototypical witches and Living, you know, on the outskirts of

681
00:36:32,140 --> 00:36:34,830
Speaker 1: society who were accused, that was just at first. It

682
00:36:34,850 --> 00:36:39,010
Speaker 1: started to become extended to really surprising people like Rebecca

683
00:36:39,050 --> 00:36:45,140
Speaker 1: Nurse was maybe one of the most upstanding Puritan women

684
00:36:45,510 --> 00:36:50,980
Speaker 1: that town, the colony, had to offer. And she was accused, tried,

685
00:36:51,219 --> 00:36:54,620
Speaker 1: and executed as a witch. And that, I think, really

686
00:36:54,660 --> 00:36:56,700
Speaker 1: kind of opened a lot of people's eyes in two ways. One,

687
00:36:56,739 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: it was like, what is going on here? This could

688
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:01,520
Speaker 1: not be the case. And then to other people, it

689
00:37:01,540 --> 00:37:04,240
Speaker 1: was like, if Rebecca Nurse could be a witch, then

690
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:06,880
Speaker 1: anybody could be a witch. And I think that was

691
00:37:06,940 --> 00:37:10,180
Speaker 1: kind of the thread that the witch trial followed. But

692
00:37:10,219 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 1: it also is like a really good explainer about how

693
00:37:14,830 --> 00:37:18,730
Speaker 1: just completely the society broke down for these handful of

694
00:37:18,850 --> 00:37:22,800
Speaker 1: months that anybody was at risk of being murdered by

695
00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:27,000
Speaker 1: their fellow townspeople for being a witch, no matter what

696
00:37:27,060 --> 00:37:28,279
Speaker 1: kind of background you had.

697
00:37:29,420 --> 00:37:33,229
Speaker 3: I'm picturing a Puritan, like the only Puritan that actually

698
00:37:33,270 --> 00:37:36,670
Speaker 3: went on vacation that summer. And they come back, you know,

699
00:37:36,710 --> 00:37:39,089
Speaker 3: they leave in early June, they come back in late

700
00:37:39,110 --> 00:37:41,450
Speaker 3: September and they're like, So what's been going on, everybody?

701
00:37:41,469 --> 00:37:45,420
Speaker 1: Right. And then they get sight of what's going on.

702
00:37:45,460 --> 00:37:47,840
Speaker 1: They drop their Mickey Mouse ears to the ground.

703
00:37:47,860 --> 00:37:53,150
Speaker 3: Oh, boy. All right. Well, let's take another break, and

704
00:37:53,190 --> 00:37:56,509
Speaker 3: we'll come back and talk about sort of the finality

705
00:37:56,530 --> 00:37:59,490
Speaker 3: of this, how it ended, and a little bit more.

706
00:37:59,350 --> 00:38:02,089
Speaker 2: About Giles Corey's crazy, crazy story right after this.

707
00:38:11,910 --> 00:38:12,670
Speaker 1: All right.

708
00:38:12,690 --> 00:38:37,390
Speaker 3: So in the end, um, I don't think they have

709
00:38:37,430 --> 00:38:41,730
Speaker 3: the final, final number. I've seen 22. I've seen 25.

710
00:38:41,730 --> 00:38:45,170
Speaker 3: 19 people were hanged. Giles Corey, who we're going to

711
00:38:45,190 --> 00:38:49,760
Speaker 3: talk about in a minute, was pressed to death via torture.

712
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,520
Speaker 3: Five people died in prison. I think the numbers sort

713
00:38:53,580 --> 00:38:57,339
Speaker 3: of depend on what you count as like a fallout death.

714
00:38:57,800 --> 00:38:59,260
Speaker 3: And not a direct death.

715
00:38:59,380 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: Right.

716
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 3: Like the one lady who couldn't repay, like she was exonerated,

717
00:39:03,460 --> 00:39:05,320
Speaker 3: or I think she just couldn't pay her debt to

718
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:06,930
Speaker 3: get out of jail, so she died in jail.

719
00:39:06,989 --> 00:39:11,529
Speaker 1: That's such a sad story. Yeah, Lydia Dustin, she outlived

720
00:39:11,870 --> 00:39:15,630
Speaker 1: the witch trials. Like they had ended a few months before.

721
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:20,060
Speaker 1: And she had actually been personally exonerated, and yet she

722
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:23,430
Speaker 1: couldn't pay her shackle fees.

723
00:39:23,750 --> 00:39:24,010
Speaker 3: Yeah.

724
00:39:24,290 --> 00:39:26,009
Speaker 1: So they just kept her in jail, and she ended

725
00:39:26,070 --> 00:39:28,350
Speaker 1: up dying there in March of 1693, even though she

726
00:39:28,530 --> 00:39:29,090
Speaker 1: was exonerated.

727
00:39:29,110 --> 00:39:29,969
Speaker 2: I mean, that certainly counts.

728
00:39:30,390 --> 00:39:32,989
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, because she otherwise would not have

729
00:39:33,030 --> 00:39:36,489
Speaker 1: been killed or died had it not been being placed

730
00:39:36,530 --> 00:39:38,589
Speaker 1: in jail after being accused of a witch, for sure.

731
00:39:39,610 --> 00:39:41,700
Speaker 3: But they did this in mass hangings. It wasn't just

732
00:39:41,739 --> 00:39:43,549
Speaker 3: like one at a time. There was a hanging on

733
00:39:43,610 --> 00:39:49,700
Speaker 3: July 19th, August 19th, and September 27th. after they died,

734
00:39:49,739 --> 00:39:54,739
Speaker 3: they were stripped and put in a big mass grave. Supposedly,

735
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:56,759
Speaker 3: there are stories that families would come and get them

736
00:39:56,840 --> 00:39:59,900
Speaker 3: out of the mass grave at night, bury them in unknown,

737
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 3: probably on parts of their land. And they tried for

738
00:40:04,020 --> 00:40:06,700
Speaker 3: many years to find out exactly where these hangings took place.

739
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:11,010
Speaker 2: And they ended up at a place called Proctor's Ledge.

740
00:40:12,390 --> 00:40:16,009
Speaker 3: And I don't, I mean, there's a memorial there and

741
00:40:16,210 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 3: people go there and Basically, they treat that as though

742
00:40:19,219 --> 00:40:22,919
Speaker 3: that is definitely the place. But I don't think they have, like, hard,

743
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:26,569
Speaker 3: hard evidence other than just trying to, like, take eyewitness

744
00:40:26,610 --> 00:40:28,390
Speaker 3: accounts and place where they were, right?

745
00:40:28,550 --> 00:40:32,750
Speaker 1: Yeah, supposedly there was a study in 2016 where they

746
00:40:32,810 --> 00:40:36,450
Speaker 1: took those eyewitness accounts, took into account what the people

747
00:40:36,510 --> 00:40:38,850
Speaker 1: said they could or couldn't see in, like, the background

748
00:40:38,890 --> 00:40:40,730
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then plotted them.

749
00:40:41,290 --> 00:40:41,550
Speaker 2: Right.

750
00:40:41,710 --> 00:40:44,750
Speaker 1: And then figured out that most of these points were

751
00:40:44,810 --> 00:40:48,950
Speaker 1: standing in around the same place around um that ledge

752
00:40:49,090 --> 00:40:51,190
Speaker 1: where they think that yes this happened.

753
00:40:51,290 --> 00:40:53,690
Speaker 3: Yeah but they never found like and then underneath the

754
00:40:53,730 --> 00:40:56,210
Speaker 3: ground they dug and they found the gallows bowl.

755
00:40:55,969 --> 00:41:00,700
Speaker 1: Right no they never found any physical evidence so whatever.

756
00:41:01,980 --> 00:41:04,180
Speaker 3: So the story of giles cory if you know the

757
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:06,500
Speaker 3: crucible you know it well if you've seen the movie

758
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:09,589
Speaker 3: you know it um he is the man that was

759
00:41:09,810 --> 00:41:14,350
Speaker 3: was pressed to death uh he was crushed basically pressing

760
00:41:14,410 --> 00:41:16,420
Speaker 3: is when they would lay you down They would put

761
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:18,899
Speaker 3: boards on top of you and then just start adding

762
00:41:18,940 --> 00:41:22,360
Speaker 3: weight over the course of time, more and more weight

763
00:41:22,420 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 3: until you eventually die. I had heard this story before

764
00:41:26,180 --> 00:41:31,750
Speaker 3: because supposedly Giles Corey said more weight because he refused to–

765
00:41:32,110 --> 00:41:35,169
Speaker 3: he was standing mute and he refused to say whether

766
00:41:35,230 --> 00:41:37,469
Speaker 3: he was guilty or innocent. The one thing I didn't

767
00:41:37,510 --> 00:41:39,670
Speaker 3: know is that Giles Corey was 81 years old.

768
00:41:39,790 --> 00:41:41,870
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was an old guy. He was like the

769
00:41:42,030 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: old guy from that Metallica video. Right. That's what I

770
00:41:46,780 --> 00:41:48,770
Speaker 1: always imagined Giles Corey to have looked like.

771
00:41:49,469 --> 00:41:52,069
Speaker 3: Man, what a story though. One thing standing mute would

772
00:41:52,110 --> 00:41:55,549
Speaker 3: do would allow your estate to be passed on to

773
00:41:55,570 --> 00:41:59,410
Speaker 3: your heirs rather than being convicted where that wouldn't happen.

774
00:41:59,469 --> 00:42:03,069
Speaker 3: But I saw that this wasn't the reasoning behind him

775
00:42:03,130 --> 00:42:06,220
Speaker 3: standing mute because most of his stuff had already been

776
00:42:06,260 --> 00:42:09,020
Speaker 3: taken and that he even wrote down that he was

777
00:42:09,060 --> 00:42:11,820
Speaker 3: standing mute to protest the sham proceedings.

778
00:42:12,420 --> 00:42:15,750
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, and it sounds like Just the way

779
00:42:15,790 --> 00:42:18,710
Speaker 1: he's been kind of lionized by history that that was

780
00:42:18,770 --> 00:42:21,850
Speaker 1: his motivation for sure. Yeah. But you said something about

781
00:42:22,130 --> 00:42:25,070
Speaker 1: how most of his stuff had been taken. There's another

782
00:42:25,130 --> 00:42:29,690
Speaker 1: villain in all this beyond Stoughton and the Mathers. There

783
00:42:29,710 --> 00:42:31,890
Speaker 1: was a guy named George Corwin, and he was the

784
00:42:31,969 --> 00:42:36,480
Speaker 1: sheriff of Essex County, which is where this witch panic

785
00:42:36,560 --> 00:42:41,450
Speaker 1: took place. And he was basically taking advantage of the

786
00:42:41,489 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 1: fact that a lot of people were suddenly way more

787
00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:47,799
Speaker 1: vulnerable than they had been the year before, a few

788
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 1: months before. And so when he would arrest them and

789
00:42:50,540 --> 00:42:53,890
Speaker 1: take them, he would also take possession of their property officially,

790
00:42:54,510 --> 00:42:56,890
Speaker 1: their stuff, their land, all that. And he and his

791
00:42:56,950 --> 00:42:59,810
Speaker 1: deputies would divvy it up. So he had every incentive possible.

792
00:43:00,180 --> 00:43:02,420
Speaker 1: to arrest as many people as possible and throw him

793
00:43:02,460 --> 00:43:04,420
Speaker 1: in jail. And he did that. And he took a

794
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: lot of people's land. Uh, and I guess he took

795
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: Giles Corey's land as well. And Giles Corey cursed the

796
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,660
Speaker 1: town and the sheriff as he died. And supposedly, um,

797
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:16,830
Speaker 1: George Corwin, actually I shouldn't say supposedly, George Corwin definitely

798
00:43:16,870 --> 00:43:19,890
Speaker 1: did die less than three years later at age 30

799
00:43:19,890 --> 00:43:23,110
Speaker 1: of a heart attack. And there's a local legend that, um,

800
00:43:23,350 --> 00:43:30,180
Speaker 1: every Essex, Essex County sheriff from Corwin onward, um, either

801
00:43:30,300 --> 00:43:33,780
Speaker 1: died or resigned while in office because of a heart condition.

802
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:36,160
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to go look through the records

803
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:38,150
Speaker 1: of Essex County sheriffs, but I thought that was a

804
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:39,549
Speaker 1: pretty interesting local legend.

805
00:43:40,170 --> 00:43:41,930
Speaker 2: So this dude was in his 20s when he was

806
00:43:41,969 --> 00:43:42,330
Speaker 2: doing this?

807
00:43:42,370 --> 00:43:44,650
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was in his mid to late 20s. And

808
00:43:44,710 --> 00:43:47,750
Speaker 1: he was one of the worst of the worst. And

809
00:43:47,770 --> 00:43:50,630
Speaker 1: so there's one more story about when he died. That guy,

810
00:43:50,730 --> 00:43:54,430
Speaker 1: Philip English, that I mentioned before, who was accused because

811
00:43:54,469 --> 00:43:57,620
Speaker 1: of the guy getting the nosebleed. He was a very,

812
00:43:57,640 --> 00:44:02,710
Speaker 1: very wealthy merchant. in Salem town and Corwin took his stuff,

813
00:44:03,250 --> 00:44:06,509
Speaker 1: like his land, a lot of his ships, just took

814
00:44:06,570 --> 00:44:09,630
Speaker 1: a lot of his stuff while English was on the

815
00:44:09,670 --> 00:44:13,650
Speaker 1: run evading capture. And when English came back after the

816
00:44:13,690 --> 00:44:17,530
Speaker 1: Salem witch trials were over and found what Corwin had done,

817
00:44:18,070 --> 00:44:21,569
Speaker 1: he tried to get his money back from Corwin. He

818
00:44:21,590 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: tried to get his money, his land, his ships, all

819
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:25,339
Speaker 1: that stuff, and Corwin wouldn't give it to him. Well,

820
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:28,980
Speaker 1: Corwin dies of a heart attack And Philip English placed

821
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:31,700
Speaker 1: a lien, basically, on this guy's body and said, you're

822
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:33,660
Speaker 1: not burying him until I get paid back.

823
00:44:34,100 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 2: Jeez.

824
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:36,739
Speaker 1: The family was like, we're not listening to you. We're

825
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:38,940
Speaker 1: going to go bury him. So Philip English hired a

826
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:41,340
Speaker 1: bunch of guys, and they went out and stopped the

827
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:44,480
Speaker 1: funeral procession, took possession of the body, and held it

828
00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:49,219
Speaker 1: hostage until Corwin's family paid Philip English back for what

829
00:44:49,300 --> 00:44:52,980
Speaker 1: Corwin had confiscated from him. And then Philip English gave

830
00:44:53,020 --> 00:44:54,170
Speaker 1: them the body to bury. Wow.

831
00:44:55,300 --> 00:44:55,550
Speaker 2: Wow.

832
00:44:56,739 --> 00:44:57,299
Speaker 1: Isn't that nuts?

833
00:44:57,820 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 2: Not a nice guy.

834
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:00,620
Speaker 1: Who, Philip English?

835
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 2: No, no, no, Corwin.

836
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I was going to say, I totally side

837
00:45:04,260 --> 00:45:05,580
Speaker 1: with Philip English on that one.

838
00:45:06,940 --> 00:45:10,779
Speaker 3: All right, so Corey dies, and sort of the long

839
00:45:10,820 --> 00:45:13,700
Speaker 3: and short of his death was that it was sort

840
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:17,459
Speaker 3: of a final straw, and this is when Phipps comes

841
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:19,720
Speaker 3: back in and says, you know what, things are getting

842
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:23,739
Speaker 3: really out of hand. Increase Mather says, yeah, this spectral

843
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 3: evidence thing has gotten way out of hand and is

844
00:45:27,260 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 3: probably not real. And people started to sort of stand

845
00:45:32,260 --> 00:45:34,860
Speaker 3: up more and more. And it was clear that Governor

846
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:38,130
Speaker 3: Phipps had to kind of halt things. He said he

847
00:45:38,170 --> 00:45:41,050
Speaker 3: did it under the context of, you know, this is

848
00:45:41,090 --> 00:45:42,950
Speaker 3: a contravention of English law.

849
00:45:43,310 --> 00:45:46,430
Speaker 2: We can't do this. I'm dissolving the court of Oyer

850
00:45:46,850 --> 00:45:47,410
Speaker 2: and Terminer.

851
00:45:47,430 --> 00:45:49,930
Speaker 3: And I'm going to create a new court where we

852
00:45:49,969 --> 00:45:51,360
Speaker 3: can't use spectral evidence.

853
00:45:51,940 --> 00:45:52,660
Speaker 2: And what do you know?

854
00:45:53,270 --> 00:45:56,630
Speaker 3: In January and February of 1693, there were dozens of

855
00:45:56,650 --> 00:46:02,330
Speaker 3: people released. Grand juries weren't indicting people. They were found

856
00:46:02,390 --> 00:46:05,850
Speaker 3: not guilty. He pardoned some. And by the end of

857
00:46:05,950 --> 00:46:10,850
Speaker 3: May that next year, the jails had no more, quote unquote, witches.

858
00:46:11,210 --> 00:46:11,450
Speaker 2: Right.

859
00:46:11,950 --> 00:46:14,339
Speaker 1: Because they found when you take away the spectral evidence,

860
00:46:14,450 --> 00:46:17,580
Speaker 1: what you have for the most part is personal grudges,

861
00:46:17,700 --> 00:46:23,180
Speaker 1: land disputes, land grabs. people just trying to take advantage

862
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:25,500
Speaker 1: of this situation to get back at somebody they don't

863
00:46:25,540 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 1: like and haven't liked for a really long time.

864
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 2: What a weird, weird, scary time.

865
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:34,020
Speaker 1: It was very scary, and I can't imagine living during

866
00:46:34,060 --> 00:46:36,340
Speaker 1: that time. Actually, it's not true. I can't imagine it.

867
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:41,000
Speaker 1: But it was just basically another example of a time

868
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:44,780
Speaker 1: when a group of people became fascist together and people

869
00:46:44,840 --> 00:46:45,880
Speaker 1: died as a result.

870
00:46:46,860 --> 00:46:51,009
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the term witch hunt is still used that

871
00:46:51,140 --> 00:46:55,919
Speaker 3: the crucible was written because of McCarthyism. It's been thrown

872
00:46:55,940 --> 00:46:59,460
Speaker 3: around a lot in recent years, maybe not as accurately,

873
00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:02,020
Speaker 3: but it's still a term for that reason.

874
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:05,020
Speaker 1: Yep. I've got one little nice button to put on

875
00:47:05,060 --> 00:47:07,450
Speaker 1: the end of this, Chuck. There was at least one

876
00:47:07,489 --> 00:47:09,609
Speaker 1: guy who was a judge in the court of Oyer

877
00:47:09,650 --> 00:47:13,350
Speaker 1: and Terminer named Samuel Sewell. And within a year or

878
00:47:13,410 --> 00:47:16,989
Speaker 1: two after the witch trials, he was standing in front

879
00:47:17,030 --> 00:47:22,100
Speaker 1: of the Boston congregation of Puritans having a petition read

880
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:27,509
Speaker 1: by the local reverend there asking for their forgiveness and

881
00:47:27,570 --> 00:47:30,129
Speaker 1: admitting that this was a huge, huge mistake and he

882
00:47:30,270 --> 00:47:35,130
Speaker 1: regretted participating in it and would they forgive him. And

883
00:47:35,150 --> 00:47:37,629
Speaker 1: I believe they did. So the whole thing ended well.

884
00:47:39,750 --> 00:47:40,489
Speaker 1: You got anything else?

885
00:47:41,330 --> 00:47:42,030
Speaker 2: I got nothing else.

886
00:47:42,070 --> 00:47:43,640
Speaker 1: Man, if you want to go down a rabbit hole,

887
00:47:43,680 --> 00:47:47,420
Speaker 1: start researching the Salem witchcraft trials. You could do a

888
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,250
Speaker 1: lot worse than going to the historic present the New

889
00:47:50,290 --> 00:47:55,630
Speaker 1: England Historical Society, and the historyofmassachusetts.org. Or just hit Ed

890
00:47:55,690 --> 00:47:57,410
Speaker 1: Grabinowski up. He'll tell you all about it.

891
00:47:58,450 --> 00:47:58,989
Speaker 2: Go to Salem.

892
00:47:59,380 --> 00:48:00,260
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could do that too.

893
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:03,609
Speaker 2: Walk around. They're trying to take your money in all

894
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:04,140
Speaker 2: kinds of ways.

895
00:48:04,219 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Essex County Mass is one of the most

896
00:48:07,060 --> 00:48:08,960
Speaker 1: beautiful places on earth, if you ask me.

897
00:48:09,500 --> 00:48:09,739
Speaker 3: Sure.

898
00:48:11,060 --> 00:48:13,500
Speaker 1: Okay, well, since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

899
00:48:16,420 --> 00:48:18,020
Speaker 2: I'm going to call this Cool Kid. Cool Kid.

900
00:48:19,090 --> 00:48:21,270
Speaker 3: I like to read emails from the cool kids. Hey, guys,

901
00:48:21,290 --> 00:48:23,489
Speaker 3: my dad introduced me to your show when I was

902
00:48:23,530 --> 00:48:26,250
Speaker 3: barely a teenager, and I've been listening ever since. In

903
00:48:26,290 --> 00:48:28,250
Speaker 3: that time, my family has gone through a lot of changes,

904
00:48:28,830 --> 00:48:30,489
Speaker 3: and my dad and I haven't always been on the

905
00:48:30,530 --> 00:48:32,700
Speaker 3: best terms. I wanted to reach out and let you

906
00:48:32,719 --> 00:48:34,259
Speaker 3: know that Stuff You Should Know is the only thing

907
00:48:34,739 --> 00:48:36,819
Speaker 3: that we have consistently been able to talk about when

908
00:48:36,860 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 3: we reconnect after being apart. We can go months without

909
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:41,779
Speaker 3: seeing each other, and I can just ask if you'd

910
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:43,660
Speaker 3: listen to your latest episode to have something.

911
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:43,940
Speaker 2: To talk about.

912
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:44,399
Speaker 1: That's cool.

913
00:48:44,700 --> 00:48:47,650
Speaker 3: It helps keep things lighthearted. And it's something we feel

914
00:48:48,170 --> 00:48:50,170
Speaker 3: like it's just for the two of us. Hope we

915
00:48:50,210 --> 00:48:54,049
Speaker 3: can see you live in Austin soon. Furthermore, this is

916
00:48:54,550 --> 00:48:57,230
Speaker 3: mostly for Chuck. You are so much like my dad,

917
00:48:57,290 --> 00:49:00,489
Speaker 3: it's actually freaky sometimes. We always make jokes that you

918
00:49:00,510 --> 00:49:02,049
Speaker 3: two would be best friends if you met in real life.

919
00:49:02,570 --> 00:49:05,290
Speaker 3: Your voices even sound a little bit the same. I'll

920
00:49:05,310 --> 00:49:07,930
Speaker 3: be honest, sometimes it's comforting to listen to y'all when

921
00:49:07,950 --> 00:49:10,870
Speaker 3: I miss my dad. I've been meaning to send this

922
00:49:10,910 --> 00:49:12,210
Speaker 3: email for a while just to tell you guys how

923
00:49:12,250 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 3: much you mean to me and my family. Thanks for

924
00:49:14,180 --> 00:49:16,320
Speaker 3: being there for us. Also, I don't know if my

925
00:49:16,340 --> 00:49:18,169
Speaker 3: dad listens to the end of the episodes or just

926
00:49:18,270 --> 00:49:21,839
Speaker 3: the factual content we'll find out. But if he's listening

927
00:49:21,860 --> 00:49:24,520
Speaker 3: this far in, tell him I said hi. Warm regards,

928
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:25,980
Speaker 3: CJ Kerbo.

929
00:49:26,980 --> 00:49:29,420
Speaker 2: And it says if we come to Austin, they treat

930
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:32,970
Speaker 2: us to dinner at their favorite fried catfish seafood restaurant.

931
00:49:33,230 --> 00:49:36,969
Speaker 1: Nice. Very nice. That was very nice, CJ. What a

932
00:49:37,030 --> 00:49:39,090
Speaker 1: great email, and thank you very much for the invite.

933
00:49:39,110 --> 00:49:41,230
Speaker 1: We probably will be in Austin again sometime.

934
00:49:41,969 --> 00:49:43,810
Speaker 3: It was, and CJ, you should know that we cut

935
00:49:43,850 --> 00:49:46,129
Speaker 3: it out, but I accidentally said fried cat food.

936
00:49:46,739 --> 00:49:47,550
Speaker 1: It was hilarious.

937
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:49,279
Speaker 2: And Josh got a good laugh out of it.

938
00:49:49,340 --> 00:49:50,460
Speaker 1: Yeah, so thanks for that, too.

939
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're welcome.

940
00:49:52,340 --> 00:49:54,540
Speaker 1: If you want to be like CJ and write a

941
00:49:54,580 --> 00:49:56,719
Speaker 1: very nice email, we want to hear it. You can

942
00:49:56,800 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 1: send it to us at stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

943
00:49:59,920 --> 00:50:05,779
Speaker 2: Thank you. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

944
00:50:06,260 --> 00:50:10,529
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

945
00:50:10,690 --> 00:50:12,460
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.