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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and we have a special

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Speaker 1: episode for you today. Uh. This is a live recording

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Speaker 1: from C to E two the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo.

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Speaker 1: We were just there a couple of weeks ago. We

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Speaker 1: presented this a wonderful talk where we talked about the UH,

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Speaker 1: the the Columbian Exposition there in Chicago. We talked about

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Speaker 1: the UH, the origins of the Ferris Wheel, the Parliament

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Speaker 1: of World Religions, and of course the H. H. Holmes

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Speaker 1: murder House. Now, just a word of warning, the audio

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Speaker 1: is a little crisp here because this is a live recording.

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Speaker 1: But the the episode is great that the discussion is wonderful,

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Speaker 1: so we definitely wanted to share it with you. But

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Speaker 1: if it's not your cup of tea, don't fret. The

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Speaker 1: next episode we'll be back to the studio recording process

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Speaker 1: as usually usual. Alright, so without further ado, let's go

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Speaker 1: to the live show. All right. Well, hey, welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb,

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Speaker 1: and I'm Christian Saga and I'm Joe McCormick, and we

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Speaker 1: are the hosts of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a

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Speaker 1: podcast about science, culture, the human mind, and the weirdness

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Speaker 1: of reality. So I want to start off with a question.

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Speaker 1: How many people here are from out of town not

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Speaker 1: from Chicago? Okay, So we've got a good amount of people,

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Speaker 1: all right, like maybe half. We're gonna keep you in

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Speaker 1: mind for later. This is going to be important because

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about Chicago's hotel past. Well when

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Speaker 1: we're honored to be here at C two e two

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Speaker 1: and they asked us, they said, hey, maybe you could

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Speaker 1: put something together that's a little bit Chicago theme. So

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Speaker 1: we thought about it, and uh, you know, we decided, well, okay,

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Speaker 1: Chicago World Fair, that's gonna that's gonna be what we

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Speaker 1: want to focus in on here. And uh, we decided

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Speaker 1: that to really dive into this topic, though, we need

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Speaker 1: to take a paleo futurist journey into the past of

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Speaker 1: this city. Right, So I guess we need to start

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Speaker 1: by thinking about Chicago as a city. Um, and I

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Speaker 1: want to put forward that the history of American population

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Speaker 1: growth as this country has increased in numbers over the

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Speaker 1: centuries is a history of urbanization um and that rapidly

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Speaker 1: accelerated in the eighteen hundreds. For example, in eighteen forty,

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Speaker 1: the U. S population was about seventeen million people. About

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Speaker 1: eighty nine percent of those people at that time were rural,

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Speaker 1: living out in the country on farms, not in cities.

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Speaker 1: Only about ten percent we're living in cities. Just about

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Speaker 1: fifty years later, in nine the U. S population sixty

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Speaker 1: three million, and by then thirty five percent of Americans

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Speaker 1: are living in cities. So over the course of the

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Speaker 1: century we see a rapid uptick in the way people

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Speaker 1: are are moving in to crowd into dense quarters and

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Speaker 1: come to where a lot of the new jobs are

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Speaker 1: the new jobs made available by technology and manufacturing and

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Speaker 1: by transportation like steam power. But Chicago is a particularly

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Speaker 1: crucial part of this urbanization story. I want to go

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Speaker 1: back to those years eighteen forty and eighteen nine, eighteen forty.

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Speaker 1: Anybody want to guess what the population of Chicago was, Uh,

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Speaker 1: ten thousand people. Let the people guess. Shout him out,

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Speaker 1: Let the people speak one point five million. We've heard

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Speaker 1: it was. Chicago in eighteen forty had forty people in it.

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Speaker 1: Wrigley Field as a seating capacity of about forty one thousand,

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Speaker 1: so it could fit about nine eighteen forty Chicago's in it.

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Speaker 1: Or to give you, to give you like a context,

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Speaker 1: that's here and now, right now at C two E two,

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Speaker 1: there's between twenty and forty thousand people in this building.

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Speaker 1: So we've got eighteen forty Chicago beat. By eighteen eighty,

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Speaker 1: population of Chicago is up to five thousand. By eighteen

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Speaker 1: ninety it's up to one million. And you have to

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Speaker 1: imagine what it does to a place when the population

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Speaker 1: and the population density increases that rapidly. But by eighteen nineties,

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Speaker 1: Chicago would become the second biggest city in America, finally

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Speaker 1: beating out Philadelphia, but still behind New York. And by god,

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Speaker 1: Chicago wanted to be number one. Those of you from Chicago,

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Speaker 1: do you do you have New York hatred? Do you

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Speaker 1: have New York? Yeah? Like do you hate your piece? Uh?

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Speaker 1: And so I want to put forward that stepping into

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Speaker 1: Chicago in the eighteen nineties, if you were, say a

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Speaker 1: country farmer coming out of the rural areas and stepping

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Speaker 1: into Chicago in the eighteen nineties would have been kind

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Speaker 1: of like walking into the city or if we were

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Speaker 1: to walk into the city in Blade Runner. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: so part of this population explosion in the nineteen century

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Speaker 1: was fueled by immigration from all over Europe. So you

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Speaker 1: have Chicago flooded with people of diverse ethnic origins. Um

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Speaker 1: and this this may be very alien to people who had,

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Speaker 1: you know, never met people from all over Europe. Then

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Speaker 1: also you've got to think about technology. I would say

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Speaker 1: that Chicago at this time was a sort of techno

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Speaker 1: punk hallucination where you had this steam powered transport hub

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Speaker 1: and most importantly a center of industrialized meat production. So

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Speaker 1: so so was it like Blade Runner in that you

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Speaker 1: could buy like cloned animals on the street. Wouldn't that

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Speaker 1: be great? You know, we were talking on the way

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Speaker 1: over here. Another aspect of it is the sort of

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Speaker 1: layers of the city. How you see this vertical depth

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Speaker 1: in Blade Runner. This is more apparent in Chicago of today.

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Speaker 1: But like with the L train and UH and and

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Speaker 1: the way, when you're downtown, you you can almost feel

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Speaker 1: like you're inside when you're outside. Yeah, I think it's

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Speaker 1: it's more prevalent here than about any other city I

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Speaker 1: can think of off off in my head that I've

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Speaker 1: been to. Yeah, and in the Blade Runner analogy I

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Speaker 1: think is especially apt when anytime we're looking back in

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Speaker 1: time and we're trying to especially the last couple of centuries,

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Speaker 1: and trying to figure out what it was like, uh

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Speaker 1: to live in in that day, you you have to

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Speaker 1: think of it almost in sci fi terms, because the

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Speaker 1: only way to really get a handle on the fact that, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this was the this is the bleeding age, this was

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Speaker 1: this was this was this was the modern age. It

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Speaker 1: was it was the bleeding edge, literally and that it

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Speaker 1: was covered in pig blood um because it was the

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Speaker 1: city where hogs were slaughtered in process, but it was

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Speaker 1: also covered in cold dust, smog, steam, uh and rapidly electrifying.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is a time when electricity is going

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Speaker 1: from a sort of rarefied novelty to being dispersed all

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Speaker 1: over urban areas. And so this is going to be

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Speaker 1: a crucial part of the story we tell today about

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Speaker 1: the World's Fair. But another thing is that Eastern cities

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Speaker 1: at the time would have looked back on Chicago in

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Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties as a sort of effed up backwater

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Speaker 1: like there there was there was a very snooty attitude

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Speaker 1: towards Chicago. That's like looking at it like like it

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Speaker 1: was just pumped up, like ban on technology and cash

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Speaker 1: and and pig blood and all of that great stuff,

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Speaker 1: but that it didn't really have the refined character and

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Speaker 1: culture makes an American city great. Bin with a backpack

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Speaker 1: full of pig blood just being injected into his body,

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Speaker 1: that sounds great. This is not the brain you carn't understand.

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Speaker 1: It's the it's the old band with the getting pumped up.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, rapid urbanization had factors that people found both

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Speaker 1: alluring and repulsive. And I want to explore one of

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Speaker 1: the people who found it repulsive. So in eighteen ninety three,

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Speaker 1: the French writer and publisher Octavouzon wrote a letter to

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Speaker 1: the periodical The American Architect and Building News, and he

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Speaker 1: was reporting on a recent visit he made to Chicago.

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Speaker 1: He'd actually been visiting the eighteen nine World's Fair that

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about. And in talking about Chicago,

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Speaker 1: he he was writing about the prospect of leaving the city.

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Speaker 1: And this is an abridged quote. Built upon a mud

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Speaker 1: flat on the shore of a somber verdure less lake.

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Speaker 1: It was the noisy, furious, impulsive, brutal life which their

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Speaker 1: maneuvers its battalions, a life without soul and ideal business

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Speaker 1: business business. Is this not the real burden of the

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Speaker 1: raven and Pose poem? I don't believe it is. I think,

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Speaker 1: I think, probably think that he died in the street. Yeah, Baltimore, though,

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Speaker 1: Baltimore is a city with character. It's got old school class,

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Speaker 1: or at least they thought. But continuing us, quote, he's

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Speaker 1: on the train leaving Chicago, and he's very happy to

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Speaker 1: be leaving, he says. The next morning, raising the shade

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Speaker 1: of my compartment, I saw behind the glass a smiling

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Speaker 1: country unroll itself before nature, thus peaceful in sight of

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Speaker 1: the light mists, these mosses, these flowers opening in the sun.

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Speaker 1: I forgot the frightful nightmare of the departure from Chicago.

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Speaker 1: That Gordian city, so excessive, so satanic, so so yeah,

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Speaker 1: this was like hell raiser for this guy from France,

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Speaker 1: basically Chicago. Yeah, pin Head lived here. I really like

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Speaker 1: Gordian City. I don't. I don't. I think you guys

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Speaker 1: should embrace that here in the same way that a

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Speaker 1: lot of take it back, a lot of people from

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Speaker 1: Atlanta embraced Terminus, as is our alternate title. I think

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Speaker 1: that's only after the Walking Dead. But yeah, I don't

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Speaker 1: know if that actually works out that well, because to

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Speaker 1: be Gordian, I would think it would be hard to navigate.

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Speaker 1: So far, I found Chicago much easier to navigate than

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Speaker 1: most cities. Right, y'all, this is smart. Y'all have a grid.

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Speaker 1: Guys have great public transportation. We're from Atlanta. Try to

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Speaker 1: find your way around in Atlanta. Yet, well, they're all

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Speaker 1: little cattle trails that got convert anyway. I'm just saying

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Speaker 1: it's a great name. I'm that's not saying you're gonna

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Speaker 1: get lost. Okay, we got to make it to the fair. Okay. So,

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Speaker 1: as cities gathering, urbanization cities gathering, they tend to grow

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Speaker 1: up because where you're going to fit all those people, right,

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Speaker 1: You've got to expand into three dimensions. So uh so

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Speaker 1: driving into three dimensions. The urbanization trend was also tightly

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Speaker 1: linked to the development of high rise architecture and and

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Speaker 1: this new class of architects to design these tall buildings

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Speaker 1: that would pack in all these people in the new cities.

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Speaker 1: And this new class of architects included the people Daniel

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Speaker 1: Burnham and John Wellborn Route, who were also responsible for

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Speaker 1: buildings like the twenty one story Masonic Temple building in

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Speaker 1: Chicago pretty good name Satanic, Yeah, and the Rookery Building,

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Speaker 1: which is still standing today. I went and saw it yesterday. Robert,

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Speaker 1: you saw it, Christian? Did you see it yet? I

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Speaker 1: haven't been yet. I'm gonna try to go tomorrow. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's if you're in town. It's beautiful. You should go

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Speaker 1: in there. Take a look at the lobby. It's got

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Speaker 1: this non representative artistry on the architecture inside the lobby

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Speaker 1: that makes it look kind of like a mosque. It's

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Speaker 1: very beautiful. I love it. Um But anyway, so they

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Speaker 1: were designing these new type types of buildings, buildings that

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Speaker 1: went up into the sky, stuff people have never seen before.

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Speaker 1: And being a high rise architect in Chicago was a

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Speaker 1: difficult job because I don't know if anybody here has

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Speaker 1: ever tried to build in Chicago. Apparently the soil here

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Speaker 1: is just junk. It's uh, it's like a mud flat

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Speaker 1: that sinks down, and when you try to build, your

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Speaker 1: buildings will sink into the mud and shift. So they

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Speaker 1: had to come up with new technologies to build new

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Speaker 1: types of foundations that would anchor these buildings. They didn't

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Speaker 1: start leaning over halfway through construction. Um, so this really

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Speaker 1: is It's we don't often think about buildings as technological

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Speaker 1: organisms today, but they really are. These high rise buildings

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Speaker 1: were a monstrous achievement of science and technology. So we

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Speaker 1: get to eighteen ninety, we're getting to the fair. The

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Speaker 1: US Congress votes to host a World's Fair in eighteen

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Speaker 1: it's in celebration of does anybody want to guess Columbus

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Speaker 1: that guy because it's the Columbian right, Yes, So it

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Speaker 1: would be the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's landing in

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Speaker 1: the New World. And who's going to get to host

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Speaker 1: the city? There's a big competition between cities. You have

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Speaker 1: New York wants to host it. All these cities want

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Speaker 1: to host I think St. Louis did, but wouldn't you

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Speaker 1: know it, Chicago, this satanic building building, the satanic city

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Speaker 1: built on quicksand gets to host the fair. And that,

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Speaker 1: I mean that's pretty cool to imagine, like, oh, this

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Speaker 1: city all these people thought was just a hellhole. Um,

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Speaker 1: and now we're going to bring the entire world there

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Speaker 1: and show them what's up. Show them what America can do.

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Speaker 1: So this is probably a good place to acknowledge one

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Speaker 1: of our key resources in researching this episode, which is

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Speaker 1: Eric Larson's excellent two thousand three nonfiction book White City.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, you haven't read it. That is a great book,

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Speaker 1: absolutely fabulous and one of one of the Mikey resources

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Speaker 1: and working in this And one of the points Eric

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Speaker 1: Larson made is that it's hard for us today, even

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Speaker 1: we got some cheers earlier for hating New York, but um,

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Speaker 1: it's hard for us today to understand the depth of

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Speaker 1: location based pride in the eighteen nineties that people, when

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Speaker 1: the reputation of their city was on the line, they

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Speaker 1: took that so seriously. And so fair is coming, you

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Speaker 1: gotta make it good. So there was an absolutely frantic

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Speaker 1: design and construction phase, and the fair opened finally in

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Speaker 1: May one. It began with a horrible flot because it

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Speaker 1: coincided almost perfectly with the panic of eighteen ninety three.

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Speaker 1: So imagine starting this World's Fair where you want to

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Speaker 1: bring everybody and show what your country can do, and

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Speaker 1: right then you get a depression. It's like if you're

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Speaker 1: at C two E two in two thousand eight, in

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Speaker 1: the economy. It is completely plummeted, and you couldn't buy

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Speaker 1: cosplay costumes right or worse, maybe worse. So in a

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Speaker 1: lot of ways, you could look at the fair as

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Speaker 1: kind of a financial failure, but in other ways, I

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Speaker 1: think we should look at it as one of the

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Speaker 1: coolest and most important events in American history. It was

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Speaker 1: this romantic, ecumenical, insane, science fiction assemblage of the spirit

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Speaker 1: of the American city, especially the soul of Chicago and

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Speaker 1: everything that Chicago embodied, everything angelic, everything satanic, And I mean,

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Speaker 1: how cool is this? They built a city within a city.

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Speaker 1: They built a city within a city on the shore

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Speaker 1: of Lake Michigan, and it lived for a year. It

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Speaker 1: was throughout the summer season while people came to the fair,

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Speaker 1: and then it disappeared into history, you know. And we've

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Speaker 1: been talking about this amongst ourselves as we've been researching it. Like,

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Speaker 1: I'm wondering, those of you who are from Illinois, did

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Speaker 1: you learn about the White City as you're growing up?

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Speaker 1: Was this like a point of pride from the various

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Speaker 1: places that we grew up in. I didn't hear about

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Speaker 1: it until I was until I read double in the

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Speaker 1: White City and this is this amazing thing in American

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Speaker 1: history that seems to get glossed over. Yeah, I feel

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Speaker 1: like you tend to learn more about your own states

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Speaker 1: world thing, right, Yeah, then you do about the about

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Speaker 1: You know, everyone wants to celebrate their own party, not

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Speaker 1: the great party of it. For me, it was the

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Speaker 1: tea party, but the old one. Uh, for us growing

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Speaker 1: up in Tennessee, what did we learn more like the

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Speaker 1: mini versatile uses of corn chips. Well, and of course

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Speaker 1: in Knox Fill we have the big golden globe with

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Speaker 1: the wigs in it. Yeah, with the wig tower. Was

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Speaker 1: that real? Or was that just the Simpsons? That? What?

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Speaker 1: The wig tower? There, wigs in it, the buildings there,

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Speaker 1: you have ruined reality for me. Okay, So each of

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Speaker 1: the three of us is going to focus on one

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Speaker 1: major aspect of the fair that we want to talk

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Speaker 1: about that we found especially interesting. But before we get

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Speaker 1: into that, we just wanted to give you a little

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Speaker 1: bit of the texture of the fair so you can

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Speaker 1: know what all is going on there. There's absolutely no

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Speaker 1: way we could explore everything that was happening at the

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Speaker 1: fair because it was I mean, it was the the

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Speaker 1: whole world in a in a in a single place,

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Speaker 1: it would be a possible, but to try to give

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Speaker 1: you a quick picture, one of the first things you'd

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Speaker 1: notice if you walk into the fair is probably the architecture. Now,

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Speaker 1: they had landscape architecture right from Frederick Law Olmstead, the

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Speaker 1: guy who designed Central Park in New York and a

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Speaker 1: lot of I mean a lot of times. If you

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Speaker 1: go to a city and you find a beautiful park

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Speaker 1: with greens and nice sloping contours and uh tastefully selected

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Speaker 1: plants and all that, you look it up designed by Olmstead. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so are our big park back in our hometown of Atlanta.

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Speaker 1: Piedmont Park is an Olmstead park. That's pretty cool. It

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Speaker 1: is pretty cool. It's best when it's full of dogs,

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Speaker 1: exactly when they get away from their owners and they

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Speaker 1: come and get your hot dog. I'm not speaking from experience,

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Speaker 1: I don't, but yeah, but also building architecture, so um.

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Speaker 1: The person who is selected to head up the fair,

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Speaker 1: to be the czar of the fair and control all

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Speaker 1: of its machinations was Daniel Burnham. The architect I mentioned

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Speaker 1: earlier was responsible for the rookery uh, and he also

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Speaker 1: wanted the fair to be about building architecture. And this

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Speaker 1: is what led to the White City. We had the

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Speaker 1: image up earlier. It seems to be gone now, uh,

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Speaker 1: But this was this was a city built on the shore.

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Speaker 1: It was in Jackson Park on the shore of Lake Michigan,

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Speaker 1: and he invited architects from all over the place, all

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Speaker 1: the best architects in the country to come together and

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Speaker 1: build a city in the neo classical architecture style. So

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Speaker 1: if you're trying to picture that, think I think like

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Speaker 1: ancient Rome. Think columns and cornices and sort of like

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Speaker 1: the design you would find in the US capital, uh

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Speaker 1: and things like that. It suggests stateliness, power, pride, empire

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Speaker 1: uh and other various beautiful and evil things all wrapped

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Speaker 1: into one. But because they were on a really tight schedule,

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Speaker 1: they've been thinking about what are we going to paint

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Speaker 1: all the buildings that they just went all white, just

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Speaker 1: everything white. It just painted all white. Basically, it's like

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Speaker 1: they put the primer on it. It's like they got

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Speaker 1: their miniatures ready for the big game and they had

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Speaker 1: time for the primer, but not to really paint the army.

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Speaker 1: But hey, you know, you gotta that's a game. You

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Speaker 1: got a game that's a good way to think about

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Speaker 1: the White City, like a big game of Warhammer. Warhammer,

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Speaker 1: I guess it would. It's the future. The future is

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Speaker 1: those the emphasis here, right. Okay, So you've got the

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Speaker 1: White City and you're walking in there, and you try

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Speaker 1: to imagine going to this on like a hot summer

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Speaker 1: day with the sun beating down and all these white

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Speaker 1: buildings and then the sun reflecting off the lake. It

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Speaker 1: would be not only beautiful but probably literally hurt your eyes. Uh,

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Speaker 1: just all this is all this light, but you're so bright.

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Speaker 1: You gotta wear shades. Man, oh man, I'm like that

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Speaker 1: was the slogan at my college graduation. No way they

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Speaker 1: made us wear sunglasses. It was real silly. Anyway, who

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Speaker 1: embarrassing personal history? We don't do that enough. Anyway. By night,

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Speaker 1: you would you would witness another one of the fairest marvels,

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Speaker 1: which is electric lighting. Now, electric lighting was had already

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Speaker 1: existed at this point, but it wasn't fully adopted everywhere,

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Speaker 1: and so they had enormous amounts of electric light going

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Speaker 1: on at this fair more than a hundred and twenty

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Speaker 1: thousand incandescent electric lamps, seven thousand arc lights. George Westinghouse

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Speaker 1: the guy who held the rights to Nicola Tesla's Alternating

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Speaker 1: Current was the one who got the contract to electrify

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Speaker 1: the Fair, and this actually played a big role in

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Speaker 1: getting Alternating Current AC accepted as the new standard over

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Speaker 1: Edison's d C. I'm sure y'all we got fans of

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Speaker 1: the current wars out here. Yeah, we have. We have

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Speaker 1: a couple of episodes about that stuff. These guys in particular,

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Speaker 1: did a really great episode about the uh, the religious

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Speaker 1: aspects of electricity. Yeah, if you want to go check

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Speaker 1: that out in our back catalog. What is it called

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Speaker 1: Early Days of Electricity. It's about how a lot of

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Speaker 1: people used to think electricity was magic and holy and

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Speaker 1: they wrote poems about it and then it got really boring.

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Speaker 1: Around the same time they started electrocuting people in the

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Speaker 1: electric chair. So the Fairy used three times as much

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Speaker 1: electricity as the entire city of Chicago. This is definitely

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Speaker 1: a technological revolution. Um. More random curiosities from the Fair.

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Speaker 1: I just want to mention a few real quick. The

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Speaker 1: future of weaponry. The largest artillery gun ever built up

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Speaker 1: to that time, by the Fritz, by the Fritz, by

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Speaker 1: the German gun. Yeah, while he was the Fritz. He

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Speaker 1: was Fritz Krupp, the German gun god who made artillery weapons.

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Speaker 1: So this was the biggest one, every twenty seven tons.

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Speaker 1: It was capable of shooting a one ton shell. Krupp

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Speaker 1: claimed up to a range of sixteen miles, and people

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Speaker 1: nicknamed it Krup's baby or Crup's monster. And I think

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Speaker 1: this is interesting because you get a kind of preview

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Speaker 1: of some of the carnage that's going to come with

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Speaker 1: the changing technological world. And just I guess with twenty

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Speaker 1: five years from then, once we get to World War One,

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Speaker 1: the first really true artillery campaign. So this is like

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Speaker 1: the moat up of their time, the what the moab?

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Speaker 1: The mo Yeah pretty much. Yeah. And then didn't they

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Speaker 1: like that you told me this. They would fire the

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Speaker 1: shells at targets here in Chicago, right, so they could

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Speaker 1: demonstrate its power. Thankfully, they did not try to fire

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Speaker 1: the gun inside the city. They had these destroyed targets.

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Speaker 1: It was almost like warnings. They had these destroyed targets

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Speaker 1: to be these sheets of eighteen inch thick steel that

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Speaker 1: are just blown to smithereens by the gun. Uh, they

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Speaker 1: claimed the gun had done this. No nobody really saw it. Happen.

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Speaker 1: I guess we have to assume it worked. But the

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Speaker 1: fair had a Hall of Electricity. Apparently there was just

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Speaker 1: an ungodly noise inside. Can you imagine all this nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century electricity uh display? So Nicola Tesla had all these

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Speaker 1: devices there to show off how electricity worked, induction motors, um,

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Speaker 1: you know. Can you imagine the whirring and the clattering

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Speaker 1: and the static discharge crashing like there's lightning and screaming

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Speaker 1: all in the building. I'm sure it would have been cool.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like here kind of Also about the hall

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Speaker 1: of like tricity, they had a Benjamin Franklin statue in

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Speaker 1: Michael Angeloyd glory, except he was clothed boring. What was

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Speaker 1: he wearing standard Benjamin Franklin crap? I don't know even

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Speaker 1: they shared that coat with the spectacles. Think he had

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Speaker 1: his spectacles on. But to go for the real thing,

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Speaker 1: they should have had him nude, like the David with

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Speaker 1: the arm back holding a kite. Yeah. One last thing

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Speaker 1: I want to mention is the cultural displays of the fair.

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Speaker 1: So the fair had a midway with these international cultural

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Speaker 1: displays from all over the world. For example, the Street

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Speaker 1: of Cairo where they would recreate the architecture of Egypt.

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Speaker 1: So they had like a mosque because they had a

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Speaker 1: mosque rebuilt there. Uh. They had the replica of the

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Speaker 1: luxe Or Temple, and supposedly one of the obelisks in

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Speaker 1: their replica luxe Or Temple I have read had Grover

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Speaker 1: Cleveland's name President Grover Cleveland inscribed in hyrid affix. Who

409
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Speaker 1: knows if that's true? How would you even spell that?

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Speaker 1: Did they anyway? Um? But then also uh, to to

411
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Speaker 1: pair with the futurists, been to the fair. Westinghouse put

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Speaker 1: together a second Egyptian temple, except this one was an

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Speaker 1: electrical temple with electrified lights, almost just to mess with

414
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Speaker 1: people like, oh you saw that other Egyptian temple. Huh,

415
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Speaker 1: how about one that will shock you? And they had

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Speaker 1: mummies there, Oh yeah, wax mummies. They had replicas of mummies.

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Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be great if they had real mummies? Electric

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Speaker 1: electric electric mummies. That's a good that's a good band name.

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Speaker 1: You can imagine Tesla and Westinghouse would like come up

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Speaker 1: with the machine. A machine makes sixteen mummies an hour. Um.

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Speaker 1: But one more thing about the street of Cairo was

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Speaker 1: the street itself, and this was actually the more popular

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Speaker 1: aspect of the the international things. In the Midway. You

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Speaker 1: would have things like donkey rides for the kids. People

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Speaker 1: actually came from places all around the world to show

426
00:23:57,200 --> 00:23:59,240
Speaker 1: off what their culture looked like. Now we don't know

427
00:23:59,320 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: always how acurate it would have looked as depicted at

428
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 1: the fair, but they'd have, you know, a street that's

429
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:06,879
Speaker 1: supposed to be filled with people from Cairo showing what

430
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:09,879
Speaker 1: they do in Cairo, having a donkey and camel rides

431
00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:12,680
Speaker 1: for the kids, and coffee and Egyptian exotic dancers for

432
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:16,520
Speaker 1: mom and dad, and that this is like the Epcot

433
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:19,679
Speaker 1: center of it. It's hard not to think of of

434
00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:22,719
Speaker 1: Disney World. Yea, when when when when? When thinking how

435
00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:27,080
Speaker 1: much cosplay was going on there, that is a good question.

436
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 1: I don't know if that had caught on yet, but

437
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 1: like so you'd have people from Chicago or maybe from

438
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:34,639
Speaker 1: rural Illinois showing up dressing as the street of Cairo

439
00:24:36,040 --> 00:24:41,359
Speaker 1: or mummies as Yeah. Uh so when I think about this,

440
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 1: I think about like the cultural display is coming together.

441
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 1: I think it's confounding because I sense different different spirits

442
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:51,040
Speaker 1: in the interest people had in this. In one sense,

443
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:54,920
Speaker 1: I sense a kind of crass orientalism, right, like Americans

444
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:57,360
Speaker 1: just wanting to look at what those backward foreigners are,

445
00:24:57,400 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: like a kind of puerile curiosity, maybe also hoping there

446
00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 1: might be some nudity and seeing some foreign dances. But

447
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:07,320
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I also since there there's a

448
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: layer of genuine, admirable interest in other cultures, and that's

449
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 1: a cool thing to see too in the eighteen nineties,

450
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:16,120
Speaker 1: and I think should help transition to what you wanted

451
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,360
Speaker 1: to talk about, right, Robert, Yes, this really interesting thing

452
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 1: that we're seeing during the World's Fair, this like idea

453
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: of embracing diversity, and so that included religion, right, Yeah,

454
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:31,159
Speaker 1: So this was the the auxiliary was in charge of

455
00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:34,320
Speaker 1: all cultural matters because you know, this is not only

456
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,919
Speaker 1: a celebration of of what we are, you know, and

457
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:40,000
Speaker 1: what what cult where culture was at the time, but

458
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 1: it was about history where how far had we come?

459
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:46,639
Speaker 1: And uh, and there was this really cool thing that

460
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:51,160
Speaker 1: was going on there the the Parliament of World Religions. Now,

461
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:52,920
Speaker 1: I know what what you're gonna ask you. You want

462
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: to know is how funky is it? No, it's not.

463
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:00,119
Speaker 1: I wanted to know if it's a literal parliament, like

464
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:03,280
Speaker 1: they bring God in for question time and they can

465
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:06,199
Speaker 1: you fill a buster? The Presbyterians say, where wigs? Now,

466
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: maybe that's where all those wigs from Tennessee went. Yeah,

467
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: it could be. Basically, the idea of the Parliament of

468
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: World Religions was, let's let's send out these invites to

469
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:17,240
Speaker 1: all of these these major religions. And yes, most of

470
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:20,480
Speaker 1: them are gonna end up being English speaking Protestant religions,

471
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 1: but let's have everybody come in. We'll celebrate what we

472
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 1: have in common. We'll give everyone a chance to not

473
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:29,200
Speaker 1: so much to to boast about the religion and push

474
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:32,199
Speaker 1: down other faiths, but rather to to say, hey, this

475
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:34,840
Speaker 1: is what we have worked out. This is how we

476
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: bring out the best men people, and this is how

477
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: we can address the concerns of our world. Right, because,

478
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 1: as Joe is mentioning, you had all these pressures converging

479
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: on not just Chicago but America at the time, right, industrialism, immigration,

480
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:52,919
Speaker 1: people were freaked out. Yeah, and it's with all of this,

481
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 1: really every aspect of the of the of the fair here.

482
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:00,159
Speaker 1: You I mean, you look at it and you know

483
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:02,920
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in the twentieth century. You know

484
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:08,120
Speaker 1: about the revolutions, the civil wars, the nationalism, the world wars,

485
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, the Holocaust, nuclear weapons though, the whole

486
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 1: nine yards, so stuff everybody's I don't know, but the thing.

487
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 1: But at the same at the same time, you know,

488
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:23,920
Speaker 1: we we did have a lot of really positive stuff

489
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:25,520
Speaker 1: to come out of the twentieth century. I mean, civil

490
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: rights movements, triumph of non violent protests, human space exploration,

491
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 1: and large extent I'm sorry, Lade Runner, well, of course

492
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: the Blade runner um, but to a to a large extent,

493
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:42,399
Speaker 1: there was a lot of effort that was made to

494
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:47,199
Speaker 1: to understand other religions, to promote religious tolerance. And we

495
00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:50,199
Speaker 1: can really look back to the Parliament of World Religions

496
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:53,840
Speaker 1: in ere and see sort of a beginning there. So

497
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:56,399
Speaker 1: you could say that in the eighteen nineties this was

498
00:27:56,440 --> 00:28:00,199
Speaker 1: something that was also very needed, right, Yes, So what

499
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 1: I'm gonna explain it describe now, and I'm very much

500
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: jumping off of what Joe said earlier. A lot of

501
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:10,159
Speaker 1: this is gonna sound hauntingly familiar. Okay, so we have

502
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 1: to go back to the climate of eighteen nineties America

503
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:16,440
Speaker 1: and uh, an author by the name of Catherine Marshall.

504
00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: She wrote a wonderful piece in the Interfaith Observer in

505
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 1: tiften and she she did a great job driving home

506
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 1: some of the key areas where religious and cultural tensions

507
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: were were brewing. So a flood of mostly poor immigrants,

508
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 1: many of them Jewish refugees from Russia, were entering the

509
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:38,520
Speaker 1: country and as a result, you had this surge in

510
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: xenophobic and nativist attitudes, and this inspired the founding of

511
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: the Immigration Restriction League, as well as anti immigrant laws

512
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 1: such as eighteen eighty two's China Exclusion Act. And on

513
00:28:51,600 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 1: top of that, you had changes in immigration policies that

514
00:28:55,320 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 1: that favored educated Northern European immigrants over pretty much everybody else. Yes,

515
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: this sounds scarily familiar. Yeah, but again you have to

516
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 1: you have to look at this this world. You see

517
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:10,640
Speaker 1: what's going on and on in in in In addition

518
00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:14,000
Speaker 1: to all the immigration, you have these globalizing elements that

519
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: were taking place, right you had you had this surge

520
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: and technological achievement. So this is where again the the

521
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:27,200
Speaker 1: the World Religious Parliament comes into play. One of the

522
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:29,520
Speaker 1: key individuals here and uh and I'm going to go

523
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: into detail about him because it's kind of interesting to

524
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: to look at him. Is one of the roots of

525
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: it here. Um. His name was Charles Carroll Bonnie, and

526
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: he was a Chicago lawyer, a judge, a teacher, president

527
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: of the World's Congress Auxiliary. They're the ones who did

528
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: a lot of the cultural and religious stuff for this celebration.

529
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: And he was charged with highlighting the intellectual and more

530
00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: moral progress of the civilized world. And uh, he was

531
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: also a member of a new religious movement known as

532
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 1: the sweden Borgian Church. Oh boy, how many of you

533
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: have heard of the Swedenborgian Church before? Okay, I see,

534
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:10,120
Speaker 1: like four hands, all right, there's a fifth. We may

535
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: even have some Swedenborgians in the audience, maybe any Swedenborgians.

536
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: Well okay, maybe not, but we got one maybe. Al right,

537
00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: well all right, well hope this is named after a person, right, yeah, yeah,

538
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: this is named after an individual by the name of

539
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Swedenborg. What a name. Okay, hold on a second.

540
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 1: This guy is Swedish and his name is sweden Borg.

541
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:36,640
Speaker 1: So that'd be like if my name was Christian America Borg.

542
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:39,200
Speaker 1: You should consider it. I mean, I think that's the one.

543
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:41,200
Speaker 1: Heck of mind. Yeah, maybe I'll change it for the show.

544
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: That's the name of a project deep under the ground

545
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:51,960
Speaker 1: in the Pentagon Christian American. It's an electric mummy. So

546
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk a little more about the Swedenborgians in

547
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 1: just a second. But first, new religious movements. What is

548
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: a new religious movement, Robert, be straight with me. It

549
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:03,720
Speaker 1: is the same thing as a cult. All right, This

550
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: is the way I listen to this pause, Well, okay,

551
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: this is the way I like to look at it.

552
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,680
Speaker 1: You have cults over here, and there's a certain certain

553
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 1: list of criteria for cults, and you have a new

554
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: religious movements over here, and there are certain criteria. Sometimes

555
00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: these two things overlap. I think you can sort of

556
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:23,800
Speaker 1: look at like like any young religion is kind of

557
00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: like a like a teenager. You know, they're they're just

558
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: figuring out who they are and uh, maybe they're a

559
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: little impulsive. They have a lot of growing up to do, uh,

560
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: and that will come in time if they survive. And

561
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 1: they don't always get invited to world parliaments like teenagers.

562
00:31:41,240 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: So another way to look at it at new religious movements,

563
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: very much in keeping with the fair, is that these

564
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: are they're almost always rooted in ancient religious traditions, but

565
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:57,400
Speaker 1: it's someone has taken those religious traditions, or rather picked

566
00:31:57,440 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: up the shards of them and reform them into something

567
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: that appeals to modern believers. That that it tackles modern problems.

568
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 1: It's been it's something that's taken the old and remade

569
00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: it into something new. This is the principle of syncretism.

570
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 1: In fact, this is how we get I would say,

571
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: most religions that exist in the world you can see

572
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: as being sort of built out of the pieces of

573
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 1: older religions. Yeah, if you've ever listened to our podcast before,

574
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 1: this actually comes up quite a bit, and sometimes we

575
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: refer to it as the lunch tray method of religion,

576
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: where you can just pick different versions that will be

577
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,720
Speaker 1: your meal. Yeah, though generally at this time you're talking

578
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 1: about someone else saying, all right, here is your new meal.

579
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 1: I've I've picked up what you don't need anymore. I've

580
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:39,239
Speaker 1: decided that we're just having corn. That's sort of thing.

581
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:43,960
Speaker 1: But it's corner of the ky what or it's corn

582
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 1: with the quor. You know, it's interesting to talk about

583
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: religion while we're we're here it's E two E two

584
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:53,720
Speaker 1: because we we have passed episodes where we talked about

585
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: hyper real religions, the idea that a lot in many

586
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 1: cases fandoms and various five properties. Fantasy properties like these

587
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 1: can take on the power of religion for modern people.

588
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: And we have some examples where people tend to take

589
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: that to a literal extent, such as Jedi is um

590
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: any jedi Ists in here or jedis there. There are

591
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:17,360
Speaker 1: people who literally claim to have Jedi as their religions.

592
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:21,400
Speaker 1: Consider the one way were wondering about was postapharianism. Yeah,

593
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: if there are any of those folks here, we'll think

594
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:29,200
Speaker 1: about all of this religious in some places. So as

595
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: we continue, Yeah, if you're having trouble connecting to the

596
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 1: religious idea, just replace the religion with with whatever your

597
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: favorite fandom happens to be. Now, as far as real

598
00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 1: um a new religious movements, just a two quick examples

599
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: because these will come into play. That you had eighteen

600
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: thirty the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

601
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:51,800
Speaker 1: That's a perfect example of not only a new religious movement,

602
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 1: but a frontier and new religious movement, one that was

603
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 1: was very much coming out of a place and time

604
00:33:57,280 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 1: and the needs of the people there and deeply American

605
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 1: in character. And then you also had the Christian Scientist

606
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy nine. They were both founded prior to the

607
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:11,880
Speaker 1: Colombian Exposition, but only one of them was invited. And

608
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 1: I'll touch that on that in a minute. You're not

609
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 1: gonna tell us which one, Okay, I'll go ahead, and

610
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:20,400
Speaker 1: all right, you can try and figure it out. But

611
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 1: more recent examples, of course, would be like Rastafari scientology

612
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: and follow him gong. Okay, so we've we've established that Swedenborgianism,

613
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 1: or rather the New Church Swedenborgian Church. This was basically

614
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:37,560
Speaker 1: the idea that the Second Coming had occurred and we're

615
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 1: all living in the New Jerusalem and uh, and we

616
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:42,280
Speaker 1: need to focus on making the world a better place.

617
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:46,239
Speaker 1: That's that's just a very brief breakdown of that. Uh.

618
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 1: It's like later seasons of Battlestar Collector. Yeah, and it

619
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: was a pretty big deal. I mean, Johnny Appleseed was

620
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: a member of the New Church. Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed,

621
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: Helen Keller, William Blake, and there was one other who

622
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:03,760
Speaker 1: was Rubber Frost. So so they were cool with cider then,

623
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, the American side are hard on like

624
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:11,880
Speaker 1: the Swedenborgian Avengers. Yeah yeah, b B B b b

625
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 1: B one thing we didn't even say. But you've got

626
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 1: to have in mind thinking about the World's Fair in

627
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:20,919
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties. Behind everything, there is a rabid temperance

628
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:24,920
Speaker 1: movement that wants influence on whatever you're doing. So anybody

629
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 1: who wanted to have drinks going on wherever, they were

630
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: always fighting the temperance movement. All right, So back to

631
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: this world, this Parliament of religions, how does a good

632
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 1: rolling Well, Bonnie appoints the first Presbyterian clergyman, John Henry Barrows,

633
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,800
Speaker 1: to admit that minister this thing. He ends up writing

634
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:43,799
Speaker 1: about this a lot. There's a book that you can

635
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 1: find of his online at archive dot org where he

636
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 1: just goes into exhaustive detail about the whole deal. But basically,

637
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: they send out these invitations. He and a bunch of

638
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:56,879
Speaker 1: sixteen other people that put together these invitations send them

639
00:35:56,880 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 1: out three thousand copies of the preliminary address, uh to

640
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:06,040
Speaker 1: religions around the world to participate. Uh So not everybody

641
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,759
Speaker 1: was crazy about it. The Presbyterians didn't like it, The

642
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:12,280
Speaker 1: Church of England, European Roman Catholics, the Sultan of Turkey,

643
00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:17,799
Speaker 1: various American even a Gelicles disapproved, but a number of

644
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:21,800
Speaker 1: other people were really into the idea. Now, not everybody

645
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:23,399
Speaker 1: got an invite. I don't want to make it sound

646
00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:26,839
Speaker 1: like this was just super inclusive. The Church of Latter

647
00:36:26,920 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 1: day Saints were snubbed from the event despite really uh

648
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: that they were really interested in attending, but they ended

649
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:39,600
Speaker 1: up not taking of the controversy of polygamy at the time. Yeah,

650
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: and it just but it does just go to show

651
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:45,759
Speaker 1: that there was some favoritism. Like even it's eight so

652
00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: even in the name of like bringing all these religions together,

653
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 1: there's still some closed mindedness about about some new religious movements,

654
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: like the right kind of new religious movements, like the

655
00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: Christian Scientists are invited, but but but not the Morment.

656
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: We're having a religion party. No Mormons allowed, all right,

657
00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: So the party takes place and it is it's it's

658
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 1: quite a success. So talk in terms of who attended,

659
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:14,360
Speaker 1: one fifty two out of one nine papers were English

660
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: speaking Christians, but you still saw twelve Buddhist, eleven Jewish presenters,

661
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 1: eight Hindu to Islamic, two Zoroastrians to Shinto to Confucians,

662
00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:29,880
Speaker 1: to Dallast and uh one Janus. So that's a pretty

663
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 1: good Amountain. You also had a Christian scientist and a theosoficet.

664
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:36,440
Speaker 1: That sounds like a pretty good representation to me. I mean,

665
00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:38,640
Speaker 1: went the more I hear about this more, the more

666
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: I wonder, like, would this be possible today? Well, we'll

667
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:45,839
Speaker 1: get to that. So the inaugural celebration began with an

668
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: interfaith ceremony, drawing in some four thousand people. Reported five

669
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:56,319
Speaker 1: thousand assembled to hear a speech by Hindu monk Swami Vivicananda,

670
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: who's widely regarded as being the guy who introduced Hinduism

671
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,359
Speaker 1: and yoga to the Western world. So if you did

672
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,799
Speaker 1: yoga today, thanks Swami Vivicananda. We have our hotel has

673
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 1: yoga mats in the closets all thank to Swami Vivcana.

674
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:12,440
Speaker 1: It's awful. And oh yeah, nineteen women spoke at the

675
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:15,360
Speaker 1: at at the Congress as well, which I think was,

676
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:18,239
Speaker 1: you know, pretty good for the day. So the Parliament

677
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: didn't attempt to unify religion. They again, they approached it

678
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:23,919
Speaker 1: more as a platform for everyone to share their light.

679
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:26,920
Speaker 1: And yet there were those who managed to throw a

680
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:30,000
Speaker 1: few elbows into other religions to sort of talk here

681
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:34,080
Speaker 1: and there about you know, false religions. Uh. There was

682
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 1: a few people in in particular who kind of use

683
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 1: battle royal darwinnus of Um language to describe it as

684
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 1: if this whole party was just one big battle and

685
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:46,160
Speaker 1: at the end there can be only one. I like

686
00:38:46,239 --> 00:38:49,359
Speaker 1: the Yeah, it's like Highlander, but they're all wearing like

687
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 1: Japanese school girl outfits fighting over religions. Yeah, and McLeod

688
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: is a Presbyterian. Yeah, which one is a clancy Brown

689
00:38:57,160 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 1: with his leather jacket? I don't know Christian scientists Kgan.

690
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: Let's see, he's Church of England, all right. So everyone

691
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: comes together, they share stuff about the religion, and everyone's

692
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:11,719
Speaker 1: patting themselves on the bag. But I know what you're

693
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:14,960
Speaker 1: you're you're asking yourself. You're thinking ahead to the twentieth century,

694
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 1: you're thinking ahead to now, and you're saying, did any

695
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: of this accomplish anything? Did any good come out of it?

696
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 1: Or is it just kind of like those uh, you know,

697
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:25,480
Speaker 1: those kitchens of the future that you see footage job

698
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: from the fifties and sixties where you look back and

699
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: you know you say, well, well, that's great, but we

700
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:32,360
Speaker 1: never had flying toast. There's no one ever had a

701
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:36,919
Speaker 1: had had a refrigerator like that. You know, they didn't

702
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 1: have the Internet of Things yet. But so wait, did

703
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 1: this have a continuing influence or not? Well it did,

704
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:46,719
Speaker 1: but I mean part of it is that in the

705
00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: in the era to follow, interfaith cooperation was not a priority.

706
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: You know. Um, you might say that there were a

707
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:59,879
Speaker 1: number of different interfaith groups that sprang up right at

708
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 1: of the Parliament. Not all of them lasted, They weren't

709
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 1: necessarily all that focused. After the Second World War you

710
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:11,920
Speaker 1: saw more localized focus on inter religious efforts, and eventually

711
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:14,239
Speaker 1: you did. You did see some really major groups come

712
00:40:14,239 --> 00:40:17,560
Speaker 1: out of this, such as International Association for Religious Freedom

713
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred, the World Council of Churches in nineteen

714
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 1: forty eight. You also had groups that were not expressly religious,

715
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:27,359
Speaker 1: but but did you know, we did entail some some

716
00:40:27,719 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 1: religious discussions, such as John D. Rockefeller the Thirds Asia

717
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:36,240
Speaker 1: Society founded in nineteen fifty six. You also saw various

718
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 1: religious groups becoming more open at least to talking about

719
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 1: other religions, um, the Catholic Church, for instance. Following the

720
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:48,120
Speaker 1: Second Vatican Council in the nineteen sixties. And I imagine

721
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:50,239
Speaker 1: like anybody out there who grew up in a church,

722
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: I mean everybody's If you grew up in a church,

723
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: everybody's church upbrings a little different. But you might be

724
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 1: able to think back to some at least mild mid level,

725
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 1: you know, interfaith discussion that went on. What do you

726
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 1: think Mel Gibson thinks about this? Why would you go there?

727
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:10,919
Speaker 1: We should probably ask him next time he's in the studio. Yeah,

728
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 1: well we'll have him on to talk about interfaith communication

729
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 1: to go get the Grengo. But a number of these

730
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 1: these groups are still around, and the World Parliament of

731
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:22,839
Speaker 1: Religions lives on what what what? You're still having this?

732
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:27,319
Speaker 1: They are They reconvened once more in so that's their

733
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 1: their centennial wow right here in Chicago, and they still

734
00:41:31,480 --> 00:41:34,800
Speaker 1: hold events every few years. Ironically enough, the most recent

735
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 1: US meeting took place in Salt Lake City, so they

736
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,359
Speaker 1: had to invite the Mormons. Yeah, so there's some come

737
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,200
Speaker 1: up in there. You know. Now we're hosting the party,

738
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, you can suck it. I guess,

739
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: you know what with this kind of parliament coming together

740
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:52,800
Speaker 1: fostering mutual understanding. It makes me think that the people

741
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:55,800
Speaker 1: who would be most likely to attend are the people

742
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 1: who need it the least. You know. Yeah, like, you're

743
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:01,680
Speaker 1: not going to get the Westboro Baptist Church to show

744
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:04,400
Speaker 1: up at the Parliamental World Religions, or if they do that,

745
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:06,719
Speaker 1: they're going to be just making a ruckus. Well, I

746
00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 1: think it's it's kind of like any conference, right, you know.

747
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: The people who are super interested and motivated or even

748
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:14,879
Speaker 1: like bound by career to it, those are the ones

749
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:17,479
Speaker 1: that show up. But hopefully they get something, they bring

750
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: it back, they bring back the spirit of the thing,

751
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 1: and they share it with everyone else. I don't know,

752
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 1: maybe maybe everyone here plans to do the same. You're

753
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:26,920
Speaker 1: gonna get just filled up with the spirit of your

754
00:42:26,920 --> 00:42:29,799
Speaker 1: favorite fandom. You bring it home, and you just inflicted

755
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: on everyone. That's the way. That's why they make them

756
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:37,759
Speaker 1: peace bond those Hey. So all right, let's say I

757
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 1: have attended the Parliament of World Religions, right, and I

758
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:43,880
Speaker 1: need to walk outside for a smoke break, and you

759
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:46,759
Speaker 1: need a new God, yeah yeah, And so I go

760
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:51,319
Speaker 1: outside and I look up and there's this huge gigantic

761
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 1: wheel in front of me. Do you start worshiping it?

762
00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:58,839
Speaker 1: Is this much? Exactly? Is that my new God? Yes,

763
00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 1: of course you do, cause I want to talk about

764
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: the Colossus of Chicago as I would call it, or

765
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:09,919
Speaker 1: Chicago's Eiffel Tower. Uh So, in eighteen ninety three, getting

766
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,719
Speaker 1: ready for the fair, Chicago had what we might call

767
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: Paris envy um, and the Freudian centerpiece of Paris Envy

768
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:22,319
Speaker 1: is Eiffel envy. So the Eiffel Tower was created by

769
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 1: the engineering company of Gustav Eiffel, and it was for

770
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:28,000
Speaker 1: a previous World's fair, the Paris World's Fair in eighteen

771
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:31,600
Speaker 1: eighty nine, and uh it was. It was ridiculed by

772
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:34,239
Speaker 1: some people at the time, is what's this hideous, gigantic

773
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: iron monstrosity. It's not in keeping with the surrounding architecture whatever.

774
00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: But a lot of other people looked at that and

775
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: they said, wow, that's really something, And a lot of

776
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: architects look at looked at it and said wow that yeah,

777
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 1: it's an it's a new kind of romantic modernism. It's grand,

778
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: it's inspiring, and furthermore, it ties in with the technological

779
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,360
Speaker 1: change theme because it's visual evidence that France was claiming

780
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:00,920
Speaker 1: to have edged out the United States in iron and

781
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:04,479
Speaker 1: steel working, and the people of Chicago did not like that.

782
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:09,959
Speaker 1: I'm assuming all these architects were men. Well, actually all

783
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 1: the main architects leading the fair weremen, but they did. Um,

784
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:15,719
Speaker 1: they did have a women's building at the fair that

785
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:19,280
Speaker 1: was designed by a female architect. Um. But it probably

786
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 1: wasn't very phallic like the Eiffel Tower. Yeah. I don't

787
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,280
Speaker 1: know the degree in which it was phallic. Uh, alright,

788
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 1: we needn't measue. Yeah, we need like a scale of fellicism.

789
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:31,400
Speaker 1: But they were trying to out Eiffel, the Eiffel Tower.

790
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:34,520
Speaker 1: So that's literally a lot of tower designs. Yeah. So

791
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:38,360
Speaker 1: Daniel Burnham, the tsar of the World's Fair, and his associates,

792
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: they were obsessed with this. They were obsessed with finding

793
00:44:40,680 --> 00:44:44,359
Speaker 1: an architectural centerpiece for the fair, something like a new

794
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:47,399
Speaker 1: Eiffel tower. They wanted to literally, as you say, out

795
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:51,280
Speaker 1: Eiffel Eiffel um. And they got a bunch of proposals

796
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:53,759
Speaker 1: they solicited from architects all over the place, give us

797
00:44:53,800 --> 00:44:56,279
Speaker 1: ideas for what we could do. Uh. And these are

798
00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: all documented in Larson's book as well. So one of

799
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:02,359
Speaker 1: the purpo posals. Uh well, actually, first I should say

800
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 1: I think you can think about basically the proposals fall

801
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:11,480
Speaker 1: into two categories. There's boring and there's insane. Eiffel himself,

802
00:45:11,760 --> 00:45:14,760
Speaker 1: the guy who designed the Eiffel Tower, offered to design

803
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:17,560
Speaker 1: them a centerpiece, and Burnham was like, yeah, okay, let's

804
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:19,920
Speaker 1: see what you got, and Eiffels like here, here, here,

805
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:24,799
Speaker 1: sit down, sit down. Another Eiffel tower, a little bit

806
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:29,399
Speaker 1: bigger than the first one. Burnham wasn't really into it.

807
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 1: He was like, no, I think we need something weirder,

808
00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:35,719
Speaker 1: more shocking. That's something that's fresh and new. So let's

809
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:39,000
Speaker 1: look in the fresh and new category. One proposal they

810
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: got put forward by an inventor named JB. Mccomber, was

811
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 1: a tower that would be eight thousand, nine hundred and

812
00:45:45,200 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: forty seven ft tall. For reference, the tallest building in

813
00:45:49,560 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 1: the world today, the Birch Khalifa in Dubai is twenty

814
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: dred feet tall, So totally in this in the eight nineties,

815
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:01,759
Speaker 1: so there might have been varying levels of taking it

816
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: seriously among the architects here. But yeah, so the top

817
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:09,319
Speaker 1: of this tower would serve as a station for elevated

818
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:13,080
Speaker 1: railways that would connect to major cities like New York

819
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 1: and Boston. Almost think about nineteenth century hyper loop where

820
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: when you're done at the fair, you take an elevator

821
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 1: up to the top of this nine thousand foot tower

822
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:26,319
Speaker 1: and then you ride downhill all the way back to

823
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: Baltimore wherever you came from. But it's like a it's

824
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 1: like a sled. Yeah. I got another one that This

825
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:36,919
Speaker 1: one's pretty good, uh. Proposal put forward by guy named

826
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:39,640
Speaker 1: CF Ritchell of Connecticut. It was a tower with three

827
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:42,239
Speaker 1: nested levels. You might think of it kind of like

828
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 1: a nested ziggurat, and it would have a base that's

829
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:48,360
Speaker 1: a hundred feet tall, then a second tower nested within

830
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:51,000
Speaker 1: the first one, and then a third tower nested within

831
00:46:51,040 --> 00:46:56,280
Speaker 1: the second, and then it would harness hydraulic power slowly

832
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,800
Speaker 1: over the course of several hours, extend the tower to

833
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:02,880
Speaker 1: full height, and then shrink it back down. Can you

834
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:06,920
Speaker 1: picture this, by the way, So it just goes from

835
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 1: two messes to flacidity, exactly flacidity. You know, we just

836
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: recorded an episode for next week about H. R. Giger.

837
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:17,520
Speaker 1: So every time I hear you talking about this, you

838
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: can only imagine it as designed by now that would

839
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,480
Speaker 1: have been cool. But then you gotta add he this

840
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: is my Eiffel tower. Uh. Well, getting back to the

841
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,600
Speaker 1: Freudian elements here, but yeah, they wanted to have a

842
00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:37,960
Speaker 1: restaurant by the way right at the tip um one more. Uh,

843
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:40,560
Speaker 1: this is good. So an inventor wanted to design a

844
00:47:40,600 --> 00:47:43,440
Speaker 1: tower that would be four thousand feet tall. Remember our

845
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:45,840
Speaker 1: Birch Khaliphs again, so this is still taller than the

846
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:48,880
Speaker 1: tallest building in the world today. Uh. And at the

847
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:51,840
Speaker 1: top there's a car that seats two hundred people. You

848
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:54,000
Speaker 1: get into the car, it's like a train car. And

849
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:55,799
Speaker 1: this car would be attached to the top of the

850
00:47:55,840 --> 00:48:00,040
Speaker 1: tower by a two thousand foot long rubber cable. And

851
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:03,560
Speaker 1: you see where we're going with this. The design proposal

852
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:09,759
Speaker 1: specifies best rubber good, none of that cheapo rubber for this.

853
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:12,640
Speaker 1: And then they push you off the top of the

854
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: tower and you bungee until you come to a halt.

855
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 1: But but you're in a train car. Yeah, so one

856
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: would hope that the rubber is sufficiently elastic. I mean,

857
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:25,799
Speaker 1: if it didn't stretch enough, you basically you have a

858
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:28,160
Speaker 1: car full of soup at the yeah, right, like they

859
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:30,919
Speaker 1: opened the doors at the bottom and everybody just spills out.

860
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:34,440
Speaker 1: This just makes me think of various like Kaiju movies

861
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:36,799
Speaker 1: where the monster picks up a train car and just

862
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 1: takes it until everybody is presumably liquefied inside. Right, just

863
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 1: that would just have to be the result of this

864
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:45,400
Speaker 1: horrific design. It's a shame they didn't build it. I

865
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh. Then we get to the very last

866
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:51,800
Speaker 1: alternate proposal, my favorite one for lovers of Abraham Lincoln,

867
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:55,720
Speaker 1: of the log cabin lore. You've got the log tower

868
00:48:56,760 --> 00:49:01,840
Speaker 1: basically Eiffel Tower rip off, except have underfeet taller, entirely

869
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:06,319
Speaker 1: made of logs instead of iron, just logs, and at

870
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:08,719
Speaker 1: the top there's a log cabin where you can get

871
00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:11,640
Speaker 1: some drinks and refreshment and I don't know, maybe getting

872
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 1: a camp fire with that. Yeah. I think we were

873
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:17,759
Speaker 1: talking earlier how this would this could have been like

874
00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:22,160
Speaker 1: the first burning there. Yeah, exactly, gone for it. You

875
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:25,040
Speaker 1: missed out all the people who misbehaved. The fair had

876
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 1: its own police force, by the way, so you should

877
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:29,000
Speaker 1: think about that. The fair basically had a private army,

878
00:49:29,600 --> 00:49:31,799
Speaker 1: and so for all the people who misbehave at the fair,

879
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:33,040
Speaker 1: they could just put him at the top of the

880
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:35,759
Speaker 1: log tower and then a wicker man it up at

881
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: the end of the day. So none of these ideas

882
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:47,120
Speaker 1: are really getting it now. They're sort of we might

883
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:50,320
Speaker 1: call it junk um. So Daniel Burnham is not happy.

884
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:53,000
Speaker 1: The Chicago Fair needs a colossus. You know, it's something

885
00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:55,399
Speaker 1: that's got to be this distinctive physical feature that's gonna

886
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:59,400
Speaker 1: inspire wonder, not hilarity or terror um. And he was

887
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 1: bored with towers. So enter a young engineer from Pittsburgh

888
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 1: who's the proprietor of a steel inspecting company, and he'd

889
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:09,960
Speaker 1: been sitting in on a meeting of engineers that Burnham

890
00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:12,040
Speaker 1: was heading up. Burnham standing at the top of the

891
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 1: room yelling at everybody, you idiots, why you can't why

892
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:18,239
Speaker 1: can't you come up with something good? And farett. This

893
00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: guy his name is George Ferris, and he's sitting in

894
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:24,320
Speaker 1: the room and he's thinking, you know, we are idiots,

895
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:28,800
Speaker 1: but I've got an idea, and this is how we

896
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:34,120
Speaker 1: got the world's first Ferris wheel. So essentially he was like, well,

897
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:36,400
Speaker 1: let's let's do an Eiffel tower, but let's make an

898
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 1: Eiffel tower that didn't move. It's a live right, perfect. Yes,

899
00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:42,920
Speaker 1: it's like a walking Eiffel Tower. They're like, you build

900
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 1: a giant iron tower. I'll make one that rolls around

901
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 1: the place. You can get in. It's take up their

902
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:54,879
Speaker 1: statue of liberty and Ghostbusters too. Man. Uh. I don't

903
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:57,160
Speaker 1: know what music played at the first Ferris Wheel. I'd

904
00:50:57,200 --> 00:50:59,240
Speaker 1: love to know if it was like that that happy

905
00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 1: beat that makes statue dance. Yeah. Um so so Ferris

906
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:05,440
Speaker 1: Wheels kind of mundane to us. Right, you get in,

907
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: you go up to the top, you spit on your friends.

908
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: Um but you have to you have to put yourself

909
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 1: in the mindset of an eight nine three farmer showing

910
00:51:15,040 --> 00:51:19,360
Speaker 1: up to the fair and seeing this giant revolving wheel.

911
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:22,279
Speaker 1: I mean, this thing is huge, probably bigger than the

912
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:25,200
Speaker 1: standard wheels you would have gotten in today. Ferris Wheels,

913
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: I have to think of it as something like a

914
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: steam punk creation. It's like something you'd see in one

915
00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:35,440
Speaker 1: of the BioShock games. You like, libertarian monsters on it

916
00:51:35,600 --> 00:51:40,200
Speaker 1: that are injecting themselves with with Well there may have been, okay,

917
00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:44,640
Speaker 1: so here's how to picture it. Instead. It didn't have benches.

918
00:51:44,719 --> 00:51:46,280
Speaker 1: You know you've been on the ones that have benches.

919
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 1: That's like a two person bench you go up around. No, no, no,

920
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:52,440
Speaker 1: that that's that's small junk. Okay, this, Uh, you have

921
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:56,240
Speaker 1: to imagine this giant spind lee steel wheel carrying thirty

922
00:51:56,280 --> 00:52:01,359
Speaker 1: six individual train cars two and sixty four ft up

923
00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:04,040
Speaker 1: into the sky and back. And it's usually reported that

924
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:06,920
Speaker 1: each of the thirty six cars held forty passengers. But

925
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:10,000
Speaker 1: actually that's I read this book by Stanley apple Bomb.

926
00:52:10,040 --> 00:52:12,520
Speaker 1: The forty passenger load is just for who could sit

927
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 1: in the plush chairs. Uh, that it could hold sixty

928
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:18,840
Speaker 1: passengers in each car overall. So that's a capacity of

929
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:23,200
Speaker 1: two thousand, one hundred and sixty passengers on this Ferris wheel,

930
00:52:23,400 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: which is more than the number of passengers who died

931
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 1: in the sinking of the Titanic and getting close to

932
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 1: the full capacity of the Titanic. So this is this

933
00:52:33,200 --> 00:52:38,879
Speaker 1: is a rolling Spindlee Titanic wheel spider at the fair.

934
00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: The axle shaft a loan is forty five ft long

935
00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:44,760
Speaker 1: with forty six tons. At the time, it was believed

936
00:52:44,800 --> 00:52:46,840
Speaker 1: to be the biggest piece of steel ever forged in

937
00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:51,080
Speaker 1: America up to that time. Um and so the Ferris

938
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:53,919
Speaker 1: wheel wasn't finished until about six weeks after the fair open,

939
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:56,560
Speaker 1: but it ended up being arguably one of the most

940
00:52:56,640 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 1: successful aspects of the World's Fair, probably the most success

941
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:04,520
Speaker 1: full aspect if you don't count Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show,

942
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:07,560
Speaker 1: which I think is worth a mention. Buffalo Bill. You know,

943
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:10,080
Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill Cody. He wanted to run his Wild West

944
00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:13,239
Speaker 1: show inside the fair. Uh. They wouldn't give him a pass,

945
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:17,800
Speaker 1: citing incongruity, which to me reads as tackiness. Um. But

946
00:53:17,960 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: so he was like, okay, he won't let me in

947
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 1: the fair. Well, he bought a parcel of land right

948
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:25,560
Speaker 1: outside the gate of the fair and caught people on

949
00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: the way in. A lot of people went to the

950
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:30,320
Speaker 1: wild West Show thinking it was the fair. Uh, and

951
00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:33,160
Speaker 1: he made a killing or like where's the wheel? Yeah,

952
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 1: it's this lasso so uh yeah, this this World's Fair

953
00:53:39,719 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: has a lot of shooting. I didn't expect so much

954
00:53:43,560 --> 00:53:48,000
Speaker 1: more exciting. It's like a fast and furious movie. But yeah.

955
00:53:48,040 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: So the Ferris Wheel opens June one, more than a

956
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:53,960
Speaker 1: month and a half after the fair began, and it

957
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:56,720
Speaker 1: was generally considered safe. The authority said it was safe,

958
00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:59,560
Speaker 1: the steel inspectors said it was fate safe. But people

959
00:53:59,719 --> 00:54:03,120
Speaker 1: look dot it and thought that doesn't look right. It

960
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 1: looks too frail. There's a nice mismatch between how physics

961
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:10,200
Speaker 1: really works and our intuitive grasp of it of it

962
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:12,439
Speaker 1: because you you looked at it, and people just thought

963
00:54:12,480 --> 00:54:15,800
Speaker 1: that thing looks like it's gonna collapse. And a wonderful

964
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:17,879
Speaker 1: story to go along with this. When they first ran

965
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:20,560
Speaker 1: it for for a test run for the press, people

966
00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:24,000
Speaker 1: got into these cars and they the wheel starts to

967
00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:26,279
Speaker 1: move for the first time. The engines are turning it

968
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:29,400
Speaker 1: and they start going up to the top and people

969
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:34,799
Speaker 1: start hearing hail on the roof of their car going

970
00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:36,360
Speaker 1: to the top of the ferris wheel, like, what is

971
00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:39,880
Speaker 1: it hailing outside? Now it was nuts and bolts raining

972
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:43,400
Speaker 1: down on the roof of the ferris wheel car. Because

973
00:54:43,880 --> 00:54:47,399
Speaker 1: this ties into I think the way I always feel

974
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:49,240
Speaker 1: when I get on a on a ferris wheel. Instead

975
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 1: I am I'm not concerned. Yeah I'm a little terrified,

976
00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:54,239
Speaker 1: but it's not because of this like epic construction. It's

977
00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:56,640
Speaker 1: about the people that they put it together, like trying

978
00:54:56,680 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: to imagine like did they sleazy car? Yeah, it's kind

979
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 1: of like the instructions aside, the island wrench doesn't fit

980
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:07,480
Speaker 1: whatever I'm just getting in with my finger and then

981
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:09,640
Speaker 1: and then it's just gonna fall apart when I'm up there.

982
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 1: So the question is would the wheel hold up? And

983
00:55:13,320 --> 00:55:15,719
Speaker 1: we actually got a pretty strong test of that. On

984
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:19,239
Speaker 1: Sunday July nine, the Ferris wheels having a huge day.

985
00:55:19,280 --> 00:55:21,160
Speaker 1: People were climbing in. By the way, I read this

986
00:55:21,239 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 1: one great account from a guy named Rice, Luther Rice

987
00:55:24,600 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: who sent a telegram when they first opened the fair saying,

988
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:30,680
Speaker 1: we need extra guards to keep people from like mobbing

989
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:33,239
Speaker 1: into this thing. Can you imagine that? So it's like,

990
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:35,360
Speaker 1: I have a new invention that will carry you hundreds

991
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:37,759
Speaker 1: of feet into the sky, and you're like mobbing to

992
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:40,239
Speaker 1: get inside when people are telling you not to. I

993
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:44,319
Speaker 1: don't know, but yeah. So, so you've got all these people,

994
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:47,319
Speaker 1: more than a thousand passengers in this walking Eiffel Tower

995
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 1: or this rolling Titanic, And sometime in the afternoon of

996
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:55,200
Speaker 1: Sunday July nine, you start to feel the pressure dropping,

997
00:55:56,600 --> 00:56:00,640
Speaker 1: and the sky turns a little dark, and the clouds

998
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: roll in and then you spot it, a funnel cloud

999
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:07,080
Speaker 1: coming straight at you, and you are in the Ferris

1000
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:12,040
Speaker 1: wheel at the top. Okay, it moves pretty slow. We

1001
00:56:12,080 --> 00:56:14,839
Speaker 1: should mention. So if you're at the top, you're it's

1002
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:16,880
Speaker 1: gonna be a while before you can get out, and

1003
00:56:16,920 --> 00:56:20,000
Speaker 1: the wheels continuing to turn. And there's another fact that

1004
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:21,960
Speaker 1: you told me. They put mesh over the windows so

1005
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:24,520
Speaker 1: people wouldn't jump out, right. Yeah, they were afraid people

1006
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:26,720
Speaker 1: would be like panicking and trying to jump out the windows,

1007
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:28,600
Speaker 1: which ties into something I'll get to in just a second.

1008
00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:31,200
Speaker 1: So they had to like have this great over all

1009
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 1: the windows to be like no suicides. Now. Um, so

1010
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:37,759
Speaker 1: there's a funnel cloud heading for the ferris wheel and

1011
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:40,200
Speaker 1: people are in it. Uh. There There was actually an

1012
00:56:40,239 --> 00:56:42,719
Speaker 1: engineer who was aboard the ferris wheel who wrote to

1013
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:46,080
Speaker 1: the journal Engineering News who said that, you know, people

1014
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:48,520
Speaker 1: started to panic and it took two people to brace

1015
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 1: the doors shut as the winds picked up. But then ultimately,

1016
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:56,200
Speaker 1: uh uh, this engineer riding in let's see, I'm trying

1017
00:56:56,239 --> 00:56:59,320
Speaker 1: to find this well anyway, said that all the people

1018
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 1: felt in the end was a small vibration and it

1019
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:04,879
Speaker 1: blew the wheel maybe an in chine and a half

1020
00:57:04,960 --> 00:57:08,239
Speaker 1: to the side. So but they did get treated to

1021
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:11,120
Speaker 1: the image of a nearby hydrogen balloon floating out over

1022
00:57:11,239 --> 00:57:15,120
Speaker 1: the lake, which was completely obliterated by the storm. Uh,

1023
00:57:15,200 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 1: and so this should be this should be a testament

1024
00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:20,920
Speaker 1: to what an amazing feat of steampunk engineering this wheel was.

1025
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:25,240
Speaker 1: It totally defied common sense and yet it withstood this

1026
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:29,840
Speaker 1: powerful storm. Yeah, that's one last story on this. There

1027
00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:32,480
Speaker 1: was a great story about a time when a man

1028
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 1: got in the ferris wheel. They were taking him up

1029
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:36,800
Speaker 1: to the top and he starts panicking. He's like, I

1030
00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:39,120
Speaker 1: gotta get out. I don't know if the logic works

1031
00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:41,120
Speaker 1: on that, because you're getting to the top, you're panicking.

1032
00:57:41,160 --> 00:57:44,960
Speaker 1: You're like, getting out doesn't really help you. Um, but

1033
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:50,200
Speaker 1: you know, he was panicking, he wasn't wasn't being rational.

1034
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:51,840
Speaker 1: So he's like, I gotta get out, and he's trying

1035
00:57:51,880 --> 00:57:54,240
Speaker 1: to open the doors and jump out, and nobody could.

1036
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:56,440
Speaker 1: People were trying to restrain him, they couldn't stop him.

1037
00:57:56,680 --> 00:57:59,240
Speaker 1: And it finally was one passenger on the car with

1038
00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:01,840
Speaker 1: him who was resourceful enough to figure out how to

1039
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:04,320
Speaker 1: stop him. It was a woman who removed her skirt

1040
00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:07,160
Speaker 1: and threw it over his head and hooded him like

1041
00:58:07,280 --> 00:58:10,120
Speaker 1: a horse, you know, like when you put blinders on

1042
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:13,360
Speaker 1: a horse, and that calmed him down. He couldn't see anymore,

1043
00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:15,200
Speaker 1: and he made it back down to the bottom. Okay,

1044
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:19,080
Speaker 1: but but the fairs will worked, never collapsed, never turned over,

1045
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:20,320
Speaker 1: and made it to the end of the fair and

1046
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:22,440
Speaker 1: it was a big success. So that's one way to

1047
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:26,320
Speaker 1: calm a madman at the fair. But but now Christian's

1048
00:58:26,360 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 1: gonna talk about another madman that was that was in play. Unfortunately,

1049
00:58:32,280 --> 00:58:34,160
Speaker 1: as far as I know, no one threw a skirt

1050
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:38,320
Speaker 1: over this guy's head. I imagine many of you are

1051
00:58:38,360 --> 00:58:43,919
Speaker 1: familiar with H. H. Holmes, the first American serial killer,

1052
00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:46,520
Speaker 1: or at least recorded, as Robert likes to say, is

1053
00:58:46,520 --> 00:58:49,040
Speaker 1: the first one that got caught. Yeah, I'm glad we

1054
00:58:49,080 --> 00:58:52,960
Speaker 1: have some murder fans and the audience. So also disclaimer

1055
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,000
Speaker 1: if there's any children here, this is about to get

1056
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:59,520
Speaker 1: a little graphic. Uh So I asked you earlier, how

1057
00:58:59,560 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 1: many of you from out of town. I imagine you're

1058
00:59:01,720 --> 00:59:04,360
Speaker 1: staying in hotels, right. What if you went back to

1059
00:59:04,440 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 1: your hotel room tonight and the door locks behind you

1060
00:59:09,400 --> 00:59:12,240
Speaker 1: and you go to sleep, and the room fills with

1061
00:59:12,360 --> 00:59:15,000
Speaker 1: gas while you're a sleeping asphyxiates you to death, and

1062
00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:17,720
Speaker 1: then the home the hotel owner comes in, he takes

1063
00:59:17,720 --> 00:59:20,360
Speaker 1: your body, he drops it down a shoot into the

1064
00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:22,640
Speaker 1: basement and dumps it into a Vada acid. Then he

1065
00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:26,000
Speaker 1: sells your skeleton to a local medical school. That's what

1066
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:29,520
Speaker 1: was going on with H. H. Holmes purportedly. Now wait, Christian,

1067
00:59:29,560 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 1: did you ask what if that happened? Like, what would

1068
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:40,720
Speaker 1: what would do? What? I've been thinking about it in

1069
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:44,080
Speaker 1: our hotel. Our hotel is a little creepy. Um, it's

1070
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:48,880
Speaker 1: got these We'll tell you guys just afterwards. Yeah. Uh,

1071
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 1: but so this is gonna be a brief look into

1072
00:59:52,200 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 1: the science behind H. H. Holmes Murder Castle. Uh. At

1073
00:59:57,080 --> 01:00:00,160
Speaker 1: least six people were killed there, maybe more. Dirt ring

1074
01:00:00,200 --> 01:00:03,160
Speaker 1: the World Fair The Devil in the White City is

1075
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:05,600
Speaker 1: going to be a big source for us here. But actually,

1076
01:00:05,680 --> 01:00:09,880
Speaker 1: there is this fantastic e book that Mysterious Chicago put

1077
01:00:09,960 --> 01:00:12,280
Speaker 1: out that is called The Murder Castle of H. H. Holmes,

1078
01:00:12,360 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 1: The Expanded Edition by Adam Seltzer, and it was incredibly

1079
01:00:16,280 --> 01:00:19,080
Speaker 1: helpful because he pulled together all these primary resources from

1080
01:00:19,120 --> 01:00:22,480
Speaker 1: the time about what was actually going on. Uh. So

1081
01:00:22,960 --> 01:00:25,040
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a brief intro on H. A. Holmes

1082
01:00:25,120 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: for those of you who aren't familiar. But really we're

1083
01:00:27,200 --> 01:00:29,240
Speaker 1: not gonna have the time to go into all of

1084
01:00:29,400 --> 01:00:32,800
Speaker 1: his exploits, but mainly we're gonna talk about how he

1085
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:36,560
Speaker 1: designed this murder castle from the ground up, specifically to

1086
01:00:36,720 --> 01:00:40,720
Speaker 1: dispose of victims with science. In fact, one of the

1087
01:00:41,280 --> 01:00:45,560
Speaker 1: investigators involved in this case referred to Homes as a

1088
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:49,120
Speaker 1: scientific criminal, and he said he would never think of

1089
01:00:49,240 --> 01:00:52,480
Speaker 1: engaging in a burglary or shooting a person in cold blood.

1090
01:00:52,600 --> 01:00:55,480
Speaker 1: So there's that, you know. I think that's interesting to

1091
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:58,000
Speaker 1: think about this being the age of a scientific criminal

1092
01:00:58,080 --> 01:01:00,960
Speaker 1: because right right around the same times when we got

1093
01:01:01,040 --> 01:01:03,360
Speaker 1: the Jack the Ripper killings. Yeah, and in fact, a

1094
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:07,080
Speaker 1: lot of people were speculating that they were the same person.

1095
01:01:07,360 --> 01:01:09,640
Speaker 1: And this might be for the scientific aspects. I mean,

1096
01:01:09,720 --> 01:01:12,960
Speaker 1: Holmes himself was a physician. He was He was a doctor,

1097
01:01:13,240 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 1: had a degree in surgery, and he operated as a pharmacist.

1098
01:01:17,800 --> 01:01:21,880
Speaker 1: Uh So his actual name was Herman Webster Mudget, so

1099
01:01:22,200 --> 01:01:24,080
Speaker 1: you can see why he changed it to H. H.

1100
01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:26,880
Speaker 1: Holmes Henry Howard. Uh. Like I said, he was trained

1101
01:01:26,880 --> 01:01:29,360
Speaker 1: as a surgeon. He changed his name when he moved

1102
01:01:29,400 --> 01:01:33,800
Speaker 1: to Chicago, and he operated as a totally legitimate pharmacist

1103
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:37,200
Speaker 1: here in town. Uh Now, the question is usually how

1104
01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 1: many people did this guy kill? This is all during

1105
01:01:39,760 --> 01:01:44,760
Speaker 1: the World's Fair. Supposedly he killed visitors who rented rooms

1106
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:48,400
Speaker 1: in this hotel of his, and they were especially plentiful

1107
01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:52,960
Speaker 1: as people were coming into town. They're like varied numbers.

1108
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:55,520
Speaker 1: Some people say it's up to two hundred people, but

1109
01:01:55,720 --> 01:01:58,240
Speaker 1: that estimate doesn't really seem to have any hard evidence

1110
01:01:58,280 --> 01:02:00,920
Speaker 1: to back it up. More likely either tall tales that

1111
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:03,760
Speaker 1: are just springing out of something that's already a grizzly situation.

1112
01:02:04,400 --> 01:02:07,880
Speaker 1: He admitted, however, to killing twenty seven people, but the

1113
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:10,160
Speaker 1: confession is totally dubious because some of the people he

1114
01:02:10,200 --> 01:02:15,240
Speaker 1: admitted to killing killing came forward and we're like, I'm alive.

1115
01:02:15,280 --> 01:02:18,640
Speaker 1: I don't know what he's talking about. Yeah, yeah, sorry,

1116
01:02:18,640 --> 01:02:21,160
Speaker 1: I confuse you with that other person killed that other

1117
01:02:21,200 --> 01:02:24,240
Speaker 1: person I killed. But then on the on the gallows

1118
01:02:24,360 --> 01:02:26,240
Speaker 1: right before they hung him, he said, no, I only

1119
01:02:26,320 --> 01:02:29,000
Speaker 1: killed two people. So it's all over the place, what

1120
01:02:29,200 --> 01:02:31,680
Speaker 1: we but we know he killed more than two. Yeah, definitely,

1121
01:02:32,120 --> 01:02:34,919
Speaker 1: at least in the Murder Castle, five to six people

1122
01:02:34,960 --> 01:02:38,200
Speaker 1: were killed, if not more. Uh. And he was eventually

1123
01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:41,520
Speaker 1: arrested in Boston for his crimes. He killed his accomplice

1124
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:43,960
Speaker 1: and three of his children. It was this part of

1125
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:46,720
Speaker 1: this insurance scam that went wrong. He was hung in

1126
01:02:47,640 --> 01:02:50,760
Speaker 1: six This is something. Uh. He asked to have his

1127
01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:54,680
Speaker 1: body buried in ten ft deep of concrete so nobody

1128
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:56,960
Speaker 1: could get ahold of his body and put it on

1129
01:02:57,040 --> 01:03:00,880
Speaker 1: a dissection table. So yeah, he was real charmer. So

1130
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:04,240
Speaker 1: you mentioned his insurance scam. I think we got to

1131
01:03:04,280 --> 01:03:06,520
Speaker 1: mention this because this is one of the most fun

1132
01:03:06,640 --> 01:03:09,880
Speaker 1: things about Holmes, if anything is fun. Holmes was doing

1133
01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:12,560
Speaker 1: these insurance scams his whole life. What would you do

1134
01:03:12,640 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 1: if somebody came up to you and said, Hey, I've

1135
01:03:14,720 --> 01:03:17,040
Speaker 1: got a great idea. I'm going to take out an

1136
01:03:17,160 --> 01:03:21,760
Speaker 1: insurance policy, a life insurance policy on you with me

1137
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:25,200
Speaker 1: is the beneficiary. I'll give you a little bit of money. Hey,

1138
01:03:27,600 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 1: And for a lot of the people who met Holmes

1139
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:34,440
Speaker 1: were like, yes, okay, we'll do that. So this Murder Castle,

1140
01:03:34,680 --> 01:03:38,320
Speaker 1: it's in there. It was in Englewood, Illinois, just southeast Chicago,

1141
01:03:38,800 --> 01:03:42,160
Speaker 1: on the corner of Wallace and sixty third Street. Apparently

1142
01:03:42,240 --> 01:03:44,640
Speaker 1: the construction of the building was finished in eighteen ninety.

1143
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:49,040
Speaker 1: The blueprint plans for this building included fifty one doorways

1144
01:03:49,120 --> 01:03:52,560
Speaker 1: that just opened up into brick walls and a hundred

1145
01:03:52,760 --> 01:03:56,680
Speaker 1: windowless rooms. So some people go, how do you build

1146
01:03:56,720 --> 01:03:59,320
Speaker 1: a how do you build something like that? Christian? I

1147
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:03,440
Speaker 1: want to build him herder castle like a pyramid. Right. Well,

1148
01:04:03,560 --> 01:04:06,520
Speaker 1: during construction, he made sure that no workmen stayed on

1149
01:04:06,640 --> 01:04:08,160
Speaker 1: the job for more than a week. And the way

1150
01:04:08,160 --> 01:04:09,640
Speaker 1: he did this was he would just claim all their

1151
01:04:09,680 --> 01:04:12,240
Speaker 1: work was second rate and he refused to pay them.

1152
01:04:12,320 --> 01:04:14,680
Speaker 1: They walk off the job, they'd hire somebody else. So

1153
01:04:14,800 --> 01:04:17,040
Speaker 1: he was the only one who knew the exact layout

1154
01:04:17,080 --> 01:04:19,680
Speaker 1: of this building. It was three stories tall, it was

1155
01:04:19,760 --> 01:04:23,280
Speaker 1: one block long. He referred to it as the World's

1156
01:04:23,360 --> 01:04:26,120
Speaker 1: Fair Hotel. The idea was the World's Fair was going

1157
01:04:26,200 --> 01:04:29,160
Speaker 1: to be coming to town. He would use it not,

1158
01:04:29,600 --> 01:04:31,800
Speaker 1: you know, not publicly, to murder people. People would rent

1159
01:04:32,640 --> 01:04:35,560
Speaker 1: rent rooms there. It was kind of like an airbnb. Uh,

1160
01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:38,800
Speaker 1: it wasn't really a hotel in the modern sense either.

1161
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:40,680
Speaker 1: There wasn't like a front desk or anything like that.

1162
01:04:40,760 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 1: It was mainly like long term rentals. Um. So here's

1163
01:04:44,400 --> 01:04:48,680
Speaker 1: some features of this building. It had trap doors, secret compartments,

1164
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:52,760
Speaker 1: and hidden stairways. The halls were designed like mazes. Some

1165
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:55,600
Speaker 1: of the stairs led to nowhere, which is what our

1166
01:04:55,680 --> 01:04:59,160
Speaker 1: hotel that we're staying and has in common. Uh. The

1167
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:02,800
Speaker 1: upper floor rooms were soundproofed and airtight, and they were

1168
01:05:02,920 --> 01:05:05,640
Speaker 1: sealed in line with s best us and they were

1169
01:05:05,680 --> 01:05:08,200
Speaker 1: hooked up to these gas lines so he could pump

1170
01:05:08,280 --> 01:05:11,800
Speaker 1: in gas and either asphyxiate people or some people speculate

1171
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:14,080
Speaker 1: that he burned people of death and they're like he

1172
01:05:14,120 --> 01:05:16,840
Speaker 1: would roast them. The evidence on that's a little weird.

1173
01:05:16,960 --> 01:05:19,360
Speaker 1: But there were like gas valves on the other sides

1174
01:05:19,440 --> 01:05:22,840
Speaker 1: of these walls. It's like a late seventies Dungeons and

1175
01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:26,640
Speaker 1: Dragons module. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If only he could just

1176
01:05:26,720 --> 01:05:29,560
Speaker 1: played Dungeons and Dragons, I think we could have saved

1177
01:05:29,600 --> 01:05:32,200
Speaker 1: a lot. All. You could also look at it as

1178
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:36,400
Speaker 1: like a Winchester mystery house that kills you very much. Yeah.

1179
01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:38,920
Speaker 1: So there were seveny one guest bedrooms. He had some

1180
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:40,880
Speaker 1: of them rigged up so they had alarms so he

1181
01:05:40,880 --> 01:05:43,880
Speaker 1: would know if the occupant was trying to escape. Um

1182
01:05:44,240 --> 01:05:47,560
Speaker 1: and some of the some of the reporters who investigated

1183
01:05:47,640 --> 01:05:50,200
Speaker 1: this case, they like gave the rooms these fancy names.

1184
01:05:50,240 --> 01:05:53,480
Speaker 1: These weren't like Holmes names for them. The Black Closet,

1185
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:57,080
Speaker 1: the Room of the three corpses, and the hanging secret chamber.

1186
01:05:57,320 --> 01:06:00,760
Speaker 1: That's the room I'm staying. Um. But they were all

1187
01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:02,880
Speaker 1: just made up, you know. They weren't even by people

1188
01:06:02,880 --> 01:06:05,480
Speaker 1: who worked in Chicago. This is like newspapers in New York.

1189
01:06:05,480 --> 01:06:07,680
Speaker 1: They would get ahold of diagrams and they'd go, oh cool,

1190
01:06:07,720 --> 01:06:09,600
Speaker 1: we gotta come up with fun names for these when

1191
01:06:09,640 --> 01:06:11,320
Speaker 1: And that's something to keep in mind through all of it, right,

1192
01:06:11,360 --> 01:06:13,320
Speaker 1: because it's not just what happened, but it's what people

1193
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:17,240
Speaker 1: are layering over what happened exactly. Yeah. So his bathroom,

1194
01:06:18,000 --> 01:06:20,560
Speaker 1: his personal bathroom, had a trap door in it that

1195
01:06:20,720 --> 01:06:24,320
Speaker 1: led to a hidden stairwell down to a windowless cubicle

1196
01:06:24,440 --> 01:06:27,040
Speaker 1: between the floors, and then from here there was a

1197
01:06:27,120 --> 01:06:28,920
Speaker 1: shoot that dropped to the cellar. And it wasn't just

1198
01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:32,000
Speaker 1: like a fun slide, it was you know, for purposes.

1199
01:06:32,320 --> 01:06:35,080
Speaker 1: And he also had an exit so he could basically

1200
01:06:35,160 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: like get away if something was going on. Just right

1201
01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:39,560
Speaker 1: out into the street. Next to his office, there was

1202
01:06:39,600 --> 01:06:42,680
Speaker 1: a vault, and when they investigated the vault, the impression

1203
01:06:42,720 --> 01:06:46,520
Speaker 1: of a wounded woman's footprint was found on the inside

1204
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:48,840
Speaker 1: of the door, and it was described as being big

1205
01:06:48,960 --> 01:06:52,520
Speaker 1: enough only for a person to stand in. So how

1206
01:06:52,560 --> 01:06:54,600
Speaker 1: does he get rid of all these bodies? Well, this

1207
01:06:54,680 --> 01:06:57,800
Speaker 1: is where the basement comes in. That shoot dimension goes

1208
01:06:57,880 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 1: straight down to the basement. And here's some fun thing

1209
01:07:00,040 --> 01:07:02,800
Speaker 1: that we're supposedly in the basement. Uh, that's of acid

1210
01:07:03,400 --> 01:07:07,160
Speaker 1: quicklime pits. And there was a furnace in his office

1211
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:10,960
Speaker 1: on the upper floors. Uh. Most people have furnaces in

1212
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:14,040
Speaker 1: their office. Uh. And in the basement there was also

1213
01:07:14,120 --> 01:07:17,959
Speaker 1: supposedly a dissecting table, his surgeon tools. It was also

1214
01:07:18,160 --> 01:07:21,720
Speaker 1: rumored that there were these like apparatus is that looked

1215
01:07:21,760 --> 01:07:25,320
Speaker 1: like medieval torture devices everywhere, but their purpose was never explained.

1216
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:28,400
Speaker 1: A lot of this is really alleged, especially like when

1217
01:07:28,400 --> 01:07:31,200
Speaker 1: you read that Seltzer book, because the police at the

1218
01:07:31,280 --> 01:07:33,640
Speaker 1: time that we're investigating in the journalists who are reporting

1219
01:07:33,720 --> 01:07:35,880
Speaker 1: on it were really like kind of hysterical about the

1220
01:07:35,920 --> 01:07:39,440
Speaker 1: whole thing, and it took on some hyperbolee. Yeah, we

1221
01:07:39,480 --> 01:07:43,520
Speaker 1: gotta sell some newspapers, folks. So what's the best way

1222
01:07:43,520 --> 01:07:44,960
Speaker 1: to get rid of body? How do you guys get

1223
01:07:45,040 --> 01:07:51,360
Speaker 1: rid of bodies? Oh? Quicklime? Quicklime is one way, but

1224
01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:53,160
Speaker 1: in a lot of people, you know, if you've read

1225
01:07:53,200 --> 01:07:55,440
Speaker 1: Detective stories. You're like, oh, yeah, I've heard of alligator

1226
01:07:55,480 --> 01:08:01,400
Speaker 1: lime MESSI alligators in the murder basement, pitt crabs. Yeah,

1227
01:08:01,480 --> 01:08:03,280
Speaker 1: those would be great too. I just don't think he

1228
01:08:03,400 --> 01:08:08,480
Speaker 1: had those as options. But there were supposedly these quicklime pits.

1229
01:08:09,000 --> 01:08:11,280
Speaker 1: Now what's quicklime? We hear that and we go, oh, yeah, sure,

1230
01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:13,240
Speaker 1: that's the way to get rid of a body. Quicklimes

1231
01:08:13,320 --> 01:08:16,800
Speaker 1: this chemical compound known as calcium oxide. It's made through

1232
01:08:16,840 --> 01:08:20,880
Speaker 1: the thermal decomposition of limestone. Uh and it basically it's

1233
01:08:20,880 --> 01:08:23,680
Speaker 1: anything that contains calcium carbonate. If you heat it up

1234
01:08:23,760 --> 01:08:27,240
Speaker 1: to a high temperature, it reacts uh and uh. It

1235
01:08:27,320 --> 01:08:30,400
Speaker 1: reacts a CEO two specifically, so it can create heat, energy,

1236
01:08:30,479 --> 01:08:32,680
Speaker 1: and light. They used to actually use it for fireworks.

1237
01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:36,479
Speaker 1: That's what lime light is. Uh. So in twenties, well,

1238
01:08:36,720 --> 01:08:39,439
Speaker 1: this fun group of researchers got together and they said,

1239
01:08:39,760 --> 01:08:42,280
Speaker 1: let's see how well quicklime gets rid of a body.

1240
01:08:42,600 --> 01:08:45,920
Speaker 1: And they took six dead pigs and they buried them

1241
01:08:46,479 --> 01:08:50,000
Speaker 1: in pits of quicklime with this in Chicago, No, it

1242
01:08:50,160 --> 01:08:53,600
Speaker 1: was in Europe actually, uh. And they they found that

1243
01:08:53,720 --> 01:08:56,759
Speaker 1: when they recovered these pig bodies six months later, instead

1244
01:08:56,800 --> 01:09:00,360
Speaker 1: of disposing of the bodies. The quicklime actually del laid

1245
01:09:00,800 --> 01:09:04,479
Speaker 1: the decay of the carcasses, so it's better not to

1246
01:09:04,640 --> 01:09:07,200
Speaker 1: dispose of a body or destroy it. But it it

1247
01:09:07,320 --> 01:09:10,760
Speaker 1: was really used to keep putrification at bay so that

1248
01:09:10,880 --> 01:09:14,000
Speaker 1: animals wouldn't be attracted to bodies. And it was historically

1249
01:09:14,080 --> 01:09:18,760
Speaker 1: used in plague burials. So maybe it wasn't quicklime he

1250
01:09:18,840 --> 01:09:22,360
Speaker 1: had in his basement, maybe it was live ah. Now,

1251
01:09:22,760 --> 01:09:24,639
Speaker 1: in the past, Robert and I did an episode about

1252
01:09:24,680 --> 01:09:28,439
Speaker 1: Hollywood acid dissolving people, and one of the things we

1253
01:09:28,560 --> 01:09:30,519
Speaker 1: came to in that episode was about how you know,

1254
01:09:30,560 --> 01:09:32,160
Speaker 1: if you if you want to dissolve a body, it

1255
01:09:32,280 --> 01:09:34,400
Speaker 1: might be better to use a strong base rather than

1256
01:09:34,439 --> 01:09:37,960
Speaker 1: a strong acid. Yeah, Lie's sodium hydroxide, and you know,

1257
01:09:38,120 --> 01:09:41,559
Speaker 1: purportedly drug cartel assassins use it to dispose of bodies

1258
01:09:41,600 --> 01:09:45,760
Speaker 1: in several outer hours. UM in Chicago actually is the

1259
01:09:45,880 --> 01:09:49,880
Speaker 1: first instance of somebody being recorded as using it to

1260
01:09:49,920 --> 01:09:51,479
Speaker 1: dispose of a body. A guy by the name of

1261
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:54,760
Speaker 1: Adolph Lutgert dumped his wife into a boiling vat of

1262
01:09:54,880 --> 01:09:57,800
Speaker 1: lie in. Then they burned what was left, but the

1263
01:09:57,840 --> 01:10:02,560
Speaker 1: police found the bone fragments. Uh. And a key component

1264
01:10:02,680 --> 01:10:04,639
Speaker 1: here seems to be water, So you have to add

1265
01:10:04,760 --> 01:10:07,160
Speaker 1: water to LIE to make it really work pretty well.

1266
01:10:07,520 --> 01:10:10,519
Speaker 1: So maybe homes had these pits. He put LIE in them.

1267
01:10:10,640 --> 01:10:12,800
Speaker 1: Lies really easy to get ahold of, and he filled

1268
01:10:12,840 --> 01:10:16,200
Speaker 1: them up with water. We don't know. Uh. Then there's

1269
01:10:16,240 --> 01:10:20,000
Speaker 1: supposedly this acid, right, how does that work? Well? A

1270
01:10:20,080 --> 01:10:23,040
Speaker 1: lot of you are probably thinking about breaking bad right now. Uh,

1271
01:10:23,439 --> 01:10:25,160
Speaker 1: we don't know what kind of acid he had, but

1272
01:10:25,240 --> 01:10:28,960
Speaker 1: typically acid dissolves a body more completely than LIE, but

1273
01:10:29,040 --> 01:10:32,240
Speaker 1: it takes way longer. And the fumes are also supposed

1274
01:10:32,240 --> 01:10:36,559
Speaker 1: to be intolerable. They're really toxic. Uh. So it's easier

1275
01:10:36,640 --> 01:10:39,479
Speaker 1: to get LIE. It's safer to use LIE. I mean,

1276
01:10:39,560 --> 01:10:41,800
Speaker 1: it's not safe. It's like you think of fight club

1277
01:10:41,880 --> 01:10:43,760
Speaker 1: when they're like putting the stuff on their hands and

1278
01:10:43,840 --> 01:10:47,800
Speaker 1: burning their hands. That's basically LIE. But acids are also

1279
01:10:48,000 --> 01:10:52,360
Speaker 1: monitored for bomb making nowadays, so it's not that easy

1280
01:10:52,479 --> 01:10:55,200
Speaker 1: to use. But if you're thinking breaking bad, they used

1281
01:10:55,280 --> 01:10:59,800
Speaker 1: hydrofluoric acid in that, and it takes silicon oxide and

1282
01:11:00,280 --> 01:11:03,880
Speaker 1: types of glass and metals and plastic and just ripped

1283
01:11:03,960 --> 01:11:06,320
Speaker 1: through them. That's why you've got that infamous tub scene.

1284
01:11:07,600 --> 01:11:11,280
Speaker 1: Another thing they found in the basement a wooden tank

1285
01:11:11,360 --> 01:11:16,200
Speaker 1: filled with strange chemicals and workman later excavating it. They

1286
01:11:16,800 --> 01:11:18,439
Speaker 1: lit a match to see what was in there in

1287
01:11:18,479 --> 01:11:23,840
Speaker 1: the accident, accidentally ignited it. Nineties investigation techniques, y'all, yeah,

1288
01:11:24,400 --> 01:11:26,479
Speaker 1: if we set it on fire, he'll see. They never

1289
01:11:26,640 --> 01:11:28,800
Speaker 1: quite figured out what was in there, but they think

1290
01:11:28,880 --> 01:11:31,320
Speaker 1: it might have been like a combination of crude petroleum

1291
01:11:31,360 --> 01:11:34,120
Speaker 1: and gasoline or benzene, and that might have been what

1292
01:11:34,360 --> 01:11:37,080
Speaker 1: was in the vault with one of his potential victims.

1293
01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:39,439
Speaker 1: So we locked her in there, placed some of the

1294
01:11:39,560 --> 01:11:42,800
Speaker 1: substance in there. It suffocated her, and then the residue

1295
01:11:43,120 --> 01:11:46,559
Speaker 1: was left behind from her footprint on the door. Uh.

1296
01:11:46,840 --> 01:11:53,200
Speaker 1: And there's another question. This furnace. Okay, so he's got

1297
01:11:53,240 --> 01:11:56,920
Speaker 1: this furnace in his office. Now, the police at the

1298
01:11:57,000 --> 01:11:59,240
Speaker 1: time said, oh, yeah, we found a human rib and

1299
01:11:59,360 --> 01:12:02,080
Speaker 1: a heck of long hair in the furnace, But then

1300
01:12:02,200 --> 01:12:03,960
Speaker 1: like a couple of years later, they were like, oh,

1301
01:12:04,040 --> 01:12:10,000
Speaker 1: actually it was some stove lining. Uh So, so it

1302
01:12:10,160 --> 01:12:12,000
Speaker 1: was actually pointed out in the papers of the time.

1303
01:12:12,080 --> 01:12:15,000
Speaker 1: To destroy a human torso like that in this furnace

1304
01:12:15,040 --> 01:12:18,040
Speaker 1: would have been totally impossible to cremate a body. Now,

1305
01:12:18,200 --> 01:12:20,640
Speaker 1: I mean, you need a furnace that can burn at

1306
01:12:20,680 --> 01:12:24,200
Speaker 1: fourteen d eighteen hundred degrees and it still takes two

1307
01:12:24,280 --> 01:12:26,800
Speaker 1: to three hours to burn a body at that level.

1308
01:12:27,320 --> 01:12:30,479
Speaker 1: And the first modern cremation chamber wasn't presented until eighteen

1309
01:12:30,520 --> 01:12:33,680
Speaker 1: seventy three in France and then eighteen seventy six here

1310
01:12:33,720 --> 01:12:36,960
Speaker 1: in the US. So yeah, that was before Holmes was active,

1311
01:12:37,040 --> 01:12:39,120
Speaker 1: But it's not likely that he had one of these

1312
01:12:39,200 --> 01:12:43,120
Speaker 1: furnaces in his office. So the way the story ends

1313
01:12:43,160 --> 01:12:45,720
Speaker 1: of the Old Murdoch Castle is it gets set on

1314
01:12:45,840 --> 01:12:49,559
Speaker 1: fire a bunch of times. Holmes himself sets on fire

1315
01:12:49,640 --> 01:12:53,920
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety three, then he gets arrested, uh four

1316
01:12:54,000 --> 01:12:58,160
Speaker 1: more times eight nineteen o three and nineteen o seven,

1317
01:12:58,800 --> 01:13:03,360
Speaker 1: is finally officially torn down in ninety eight. Uh. Story goes.

1318
01:13:03,520 --> 01:13:06,320
Speaker 1: A post office currently occupies the plot. Anybody here from

1319
01:13:06,400 --> 01:13:09,400
Speaker 1: town been to this post office? Yeah yeah, yeah, I

1320
01:13:09,760 --> 01:13:16,280
Speaker 1: hear they're lingering smells. There's like ghost tours. Uh oh

1321
01:13:16,479 --> 01:13:19,040
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, Well actually I was reading that you can

1322
01:13:19,200 --> 01:13:24,880
Speaker 1: still access homes basement. Oh you have to email yourself exactly. Yeah,

1323
01:13:24,920 --> 01:13:26,920
Speaker 1: and they just dump you down the shoot the shoots

1324
01:13:26,960 --> 01:13:29,600
Speaker 1: still there. Um, here's the creepy thing. And this is

1325
01:13:29,640 --> 01:13:31,840
Speaker 1: what I'll leave you with. What most people who write

1326
01:13:31,840 --> 01:13:35,040
Speaker 1: about H. H. Holmes don't know or fail to mention,

1327
01:13:35,240 --> 01:13:38,479
Speaker 1: is that he actually owned several other properties around town,

1328
01:13:39,200 --> 01:13:42,400
Speaker 1: and those weren't investigated as much as the murder Castle.

1329
01:13:42,640 --> 01:13:44,720
Speaker 1: So if he had any associates in the area, they

1330
01:13:44,760 --> 01:13:47,000
Speaker 1: totally could have gone in and cleaned up the evidence

1331
01:13:47,040 --> 01:13:50,960
Speaker 1: while everybody was looking at this murder castle. Uh. And specifically,

1332
01:13:51,400 --> 01:13:53,920
Speaker 1: he had a glass bending factory that was in an

1333
01:13:54,000 --> 01:13:56,720
Speaker 1: isolated area and when the police got there, all they

1334
01:13:56,760 --> 01:14:00,560
Speaker 1: found were junk, except there was a diagram showing that

1335
01:14:00,680 --> 01:14:04,800
Speaker 1: a massive furnace had recently been removed from there. So

1336
01:14:05,680 --> 01:14:07,800
Speaker 1: maybe there's more victims. What kind of names would they

1337
01:14:07,800 --> 01:14:09,800
Speaker 1: have given these other places, like murder Hut, because you

1338
01:14:09,800 --> 01:14:13,920
Speaker 1: can can't all be murder Castle, right, Yeah, murder Factory,

1339
01:14:14,200 --> 01:14:20,080
Speaker 1: murder the murder pad. So that's the science of the

1340
01:14:20,160 --> 01:14:24,000
Speaker 1: weird white City of Chicago. Yeah. What I love about

1341
01:14:24,040 --> 01:14:25,880
Speaker 1: this is that all these examples we looked at, you

1342
01:14:25,960 --> 01:14:29,879
Speaker 1: can see just these like these burning stars just gathering

1343
01:14:30,000 --> 01:14:32,360
Speaker 1: mass based on all of all of what's going on

1344
01:14:32,479 --> 01:14:36,479
Speaker 1: in the culture. Although the momentum of the century in

1345
01:14:36,560 --> 01:14:39,120
Speaker 1: the case homes is kind of like the dark angel

1346
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:42,639
Speaker 1: of the festivities, and then we have the mechanical God,

1347
01:14:42,760 --> 01:14:44,800
Speaker 1: and then we have people trying to figure out how

1348
01:14:44,880 --> 01:14:47,320
Speaker 1: we all get along while talking about other gods as well.

1349
01:14:47,600 --> 01:14:50,400
Speaker 1: It's really kind of the birth of the twentieth century.

1350
01:14:50,840 --> 01:14:56,679
Speaker 1: You know, you've got like industrialism, psychopaths, and religious in fighting. Yeah,

1351
01:14:58,479 --> 01:15:01,040
Speaker 1: all right, So there you have it. Once again, we're

1352
01:15:01,120 --> 01:15:08,000
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. I'm Robert I'm America Christian

1353
01:15:08,080 --> 01:15:12,240
Speaker 1: Board all right. Uh, and I'm Joe McCormick. Again. You

1354
01:15:12,280 --> 01:15:13,840
Speaker 1: can find it a stuff to bow your mind dot com.

1355
01:15:13,880 --> 01:15:16,680
Speaker 1: We'll blow the mind on the most social media. I

1356
01:15:16,720 --> 01:15:18,560
Speaker 1: think they're probably gonna kick everybody out of here, but

1357
01:15:18,640 --> 01:15:21,040
Speaker 1: we'll hang around out out here if anyone wants to

1358
01:15:21,080 --> 01:15:23,599
Speaker 1: come chat with us. Uh, you know, I've got nowhere

1359
01:15:23,640 --> 01:15:31,080
Speaker 1: to go. Thanks everybody. All right, So there you have it,

1360
01:15:31,160 --> 01:15:34,160
Speaker 1: a little stuff to blow your mind live and uh, hey,

1361
01:15:34,400 --> 01:15:37,040
Speaker 1: if you really enjoyed this, and you've been you're thinking yourself,

1362
01:15:37,120 --> 01:15:39,880
Speaker 1: I would love the opportunity to see stuff to blow

1363
01:15:39,920 --> 01:15:42,439
Speaker 1: your mind perform a lot. Well, then don't fret. We're

1364
01:15:42,720 --> 01:15:45,120
Speaker 1: working on putting together some more of these in the future,

1365
01:15:45,160 --> 01:15:48,680
Speaker 1: and we will keep you updated about those opportunities at

1366
01:15:48,680 --> 01:15:51,040
Speaker 1: all of our social media accounts. Our main ones, of course,

1367
01:15:51,120 --> 01:15:55,240
Speaker 1: are on Facebook, Twitter, uh Tumbler, Instagram. We are blow

1368
01:15:55,360 --> 01:15:58,120
Speaker 1: the Mind on all of those, and of course our mothership,

1369
01:15:58,200 --> 01:16:00,160
Speaker 1: our main website, is stuff to Blow your Mind mind

1370
01:16:00,280 --> 01:16:02,360
Speaker 1: dot com. And in the meantime, if you want to

1371
01:16:02,400 --> 01:16:05,040
Speaker 1: reach out to us with your you know, feedback on

1372
01:16:05,080 --> 01:16:07,560
Speaker 1: the topics we discussed here or the live episode, you

1373
01:16:07,640 --> 01:16:09,800
Speaker 1: can email us the old fashioned way at below the

1374
01:16:09,880 --> 01:16:22,200
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on

1375
01:16:22,320 --> 01:16:24,800
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff

1376
01:16:24,800 --> 01:16:25,439
Speaker 1: works dot com.