1
00:00:03,240 --> 00:00:10,800
Speaker 1: Jamie Jamie loftest queen of the podcast Frontier. Wow, did

2
00:00:10,840 --> 00:00:13,560
Speaker 1: you get what that was a reference to? Yes, Davy Crockett.

3
00:00:13,720 --> 00:00:16,959
Speaker 1: David Crockett. I never know what you Yankees grow up with. Look,

4
00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:19,520
Speaker 1: we we don't really grow up with Davy Crockett, but

5
00:00:19,520 --> 00:00:22,600
Speaker 1: we we grow up with Disney movies that age poorly.

6
00:00:22,760 --> 00:00:25,239
Speaker 1: So I havena heard it. Well, if you're a Texan,

7
00:00:25,400 --> 00:00:28,240
Speaker 1: that also makes you think of Rusty Wallace, who is

8
00:00:28,280 --> 00:00:30,840
Speaker 1: a prominent Honda dealer in North Texas. When I was

9
00:00:30,840 --> 00:00:33,920
Speaker 1: a kid and had a song about his Honda dealership

10
00:00:33,960 --> 00:00:37,080
Speaker 1: that was done to the same tune. Really, yeah, there

11
00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:40,120
Speaker 1: you go for people who grew up in North Texas

12
00:00:40,200 --> 00:00:43,239
Speaker 1: at the same time that I did. There there is

13
00:00:43,680 --> 00:00:47,360
Speaker 1: remember those ads. There are so few things in this

14
00:00:47,440 --> 00:00:50,760
Speaker 1: world that can bond two people as quickly as knowing

15
00:00:50,800 --> 00:00:53,880
Speaker 1: the same local ad. It is like a rare. It's

16
00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:58,000
Speaker 1: the truest bond. It's the truest that exists. Marriage means

17
00:00:58,080 --> 00:01:01,880
Speaker 1: nothing next to having both seen. Listened to Jim Adler

18
00:01:01,960 --> 00:01:05,959
Speaker 1: the Texas Hammer ads before he killed himself, and it's

19
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:08,640
Speaker 1: a it's a story, Jamie. You don't want to hear

20
00:01:08,680 --> 00:01:12,520
Speaker 1: about the Texas hammer and what went down, Um New

21
00:01:12,600 --> 00:01:19,160
Speaker 1: England had landscape was was pretty bleak as well. I

22
00:01:19,520 --> 00:01:24,759
Speaker 1: guess less cowboy ads not none, probably not none wherever

23
00:01:24,800 --> 00:01:35,319
Speaker 1: theyking huh, I'm not. Oh, don't gaslight me. He just Robert.

24
00:01:35,400 --> 00:01:41,920
Speaker 1: That was peak asshole blowing smoke into the camera on

25
00:01:41,959 --> 00:01:44,800
Speaker 1: your computer as Jamie asked you a question. And I

26
00:01:44,840 --> 00:01:47,880
Speaker 1: could and I can smell it, first of all. And

27
00:01:48,920 --> 00:01:52,240
Speaker 1: another thing, I'm smoking men falls because I hate me

28
00:01:52,320 --> 00:01:59,559
Speaker 1: some Joe Biden hated Joe Biden. Jamie Loftus, Helena Blavotsky,

29
00:02:00,240 --> 00:02:03,840
Speaker 1: Oh well, she became aware of him decades before his

30
00:02:03,920 --> 00:02:08,240
Speaker 1: birth in her perusal of the she was psychic. She

31
00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:12,000
Speaker 1: read about him in in the ethereal library system that

32
00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:15,680
Speaker 1: she exists in her theology. The one is one of

33
00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:18,400
Speaker 1: the esoteric terms I kept coming in the Akashic records,

34
00:02:18,639 --> 00:02:21,560
Speaker 1: the Akashak records. Yes, yes, yeah, we'll talk about them

35
00:02:21,560 --> 00:02:26,520
Speaker 1: more much later. Diner in Florida was trying to unpack

36
00:02:26,560 --> 00:02:28,799
Speaker 1: the Akashic records for me, and I was like, what

37
00:02:28,840 --> 00:02:31,840
Speaker 1: are these like? Can you describ And he's like I don't,

38
00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:34,560
Speaker 1: I don't you know, I don't really start talking about

39
00:02:34,639 --> 00:02:37,800
Speaker 1: Cairo and like Alexandria and the Library of Alexandria, and

40
00:02:37,840 --> 00:02:41,120
Speaker 1: like that. The records are the ethereal equivalent of the

41
00:02:41,160 --> 00:02:45,120
Speaker 1: Library of Alexandria, and Helena Blovotsky invinced them. So we're

42
00:02:45,160 --> 00:02:47,079
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about that later. Don't worry. I have

43
00:02:47,280 --> 00:02:51,000
Speaker 1: I have found that people will attribute whatever vague thing

44
00:02:51,120 --> 00:02:52,920
Speaker 1: that they They'll just be like, yeah, it's in the

45
00:02:52,919 --> 00:02:57,120
Speaker 1: Akashic Records, and whereas records exists for it's the vague

46
00:02:57,120 --> 00:03:00,239
Speaker 1: projection text. Well, I read about it in the Akashic Records.

47
00:03:00,320 --> 00:03:02,639
Speaker 1: There's a future book about it or something like how

48
00:03:02,680 --> 00:03:07,520
Speaker 1: many how many topics record because it's all over the

49
00:03:07,520 --> 00:03:10,880
Speaker 1: places everything, it's everything that's ever been written. So it's

50
00:03:10,880 --> 00:03:13,760
Speaker 1: a library outside of time. So like you can read

51
00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:16,040
Speaker 1: about the future by just like reading some history books.

52
00:03:16,040 --> 00:03:20,760
Speaker 1: Somebody wrote was aware of the fact that Donald Trump

53
00:03:20,760 --> 00:03:23,280
Speaker 1: in the future would attempt to strangle a Secret Service

54
00:03:23,320 --> 00:03:25,480
Speaker 1: agent to take control of the limousine away from him

55
00:03:25,480 --> 00:03:31,440
Speaker 1: on shaker. Yeah, because that's got to be in there somewhere.

56
00:03:31,480 --> 00:03:35,400
Speaker 1: So anyway, when we left off, Helena had kayaked her

57
00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:37,960
Speaker 1: way to freedom and escaped from her I don't know,

58
00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:41,560
Speaker 1: evil husband's really the right thing to say, because spoilers.

59
00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:44,720
Speaker 1: He spends the rest of his life like sending her money. Um,

60
00:03:44,840 --> 00:03:48,720
Speaker 1: whenever she does not love definitely her husband, she does

61
00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:51,240
Speaker 1: not see as as someone she wants to be around.

62
00:03:51,320 --> 00:03:53,800
Speaker 1: And he did lock her into castle. So whatever, that's

63
00:03:53,840 --> 00:03:56,560
Speaker 1: reason enough to not marry someone. Sure, but he does

64
00:03:56,640 --> 00:03:58,280
Speaker 1: keep sending her money. So I don't know. You can

65
00:03:58,320 --> 00:04:02,920
Speaker 1: think about it whoever you want. Yeah, definitely some finn

66
00:04:02,960 --> 00:04:06,640
Speaker 1: doom energy going off here. Also throughout her entire life.

67
00:04:06,760 --> 00:04:11,880
Speaker 1: So she was a scammer. She was about twenty years

68
00:04:11,920 --> 00:04:15,840
Speaker 1: she is in the wind right. Um, there are stories

69
00:04:16,120 --> 00:04:18,840
Speaker 1: and very detailed stories and both of our biographies about

70
00:04:18,839 --> 00:04:21,000
Speaker 1: everything she was doing during this period of time. We

71
00:04:21,080 --> 00:04:22,800
Speaker 1: have no way of knowing if any of them are true.

72
00:04:22,839 --> 00:04:25,800
Speaker 1: We definitely know a lot of them are false. Um,

73
00:04:25,839 --> 00:04:27,960
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of wild ship in here. She's in

74
00:04:28,040 --> 00:04:31,080
Speaker 1: like two different boat crashes that kill almost everybody on

75
00:04:31,120 --> 00:04:34,520
Speaker 1: the boat. Of her life. I'm more familiar with it,

76
00:04:34,920 --> 00:04:39,200
Speaker 1: like the wild stories that are unverifiable, absolutely unbar And

77
00:04:39,240 --> 00:04:40,880
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of stories. There's one when she's a

78
00:04:40,880 --> 00:04:43,839
Speaker 1: little girl. There's a story that she like partly falls

79
00:04:43,839 --> 00:04:45,800
Speaker 1: off a horse and like should have died, but the

80
00:04:45,839 --> 00:04:48,600
Speaker 1: spirit saved her. And it's like man, I had like

81
00:04:48,680 --> 00:04:50,359
Speaker 1: I had a horse bolt on me when I was

82
00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:52,880
Speaker 1: a kid. A lot of kids have a slightly scary

83
00:04:52,960 --> 00:04:55,760
Speaker 1: experience with a horse or a car or something else

84
00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:58,440
Speaker 1: that moves faster than things should move. It does. It's

85
00:04:58,440 --> 00:05:03,239
Speaker 1: not the ghosts, but whatever. No, the horse got back

86
00:05:03,279 --> 00:05:05,600
Speaker 1: to like ran back to where it lived and then

87
00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:07,960
Speaker 1: didn't want to run anymore. It was just scary because

88
00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:09,720
Speaker 1: I wasn't in control. I don't know that. I like,

89
00:05:09,760 --> 00:05:11,760
Speaker 1: it's just a horse that decided to run back home.

90
00:05:11,839 --> 00:05:14,680
Speaker 1: It didn't want to listen to me. Um, it happens

91
00:05:14,680 --> 00:05:16,800
Speaker 1: with horses. I assume I never read a horse, rode

92
00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:19,599
Speaker 1: a horse again. Um, well, fair enough, Well not for

93
00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:22,080
Speaker 1: any particularly. I just it's not a lot of opportunities

94
00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:26,039
Speaker 1: to ride horses. My cousin was riding a horse once

95
00:05:26,200 --> 00:05:28,680
Speaker 1: at the Jesus Horse Camp we used to get scholarships

96
00:05:28,720 --> 00:05:31,440
Speaker 1: to go to we were kids, and it died while

97
00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:35,919
Speaker 1: she was riding it. Jesus Christ. It just kind of

98
00:05:36,160 --> 00:05:44,599
Speaker 1: it just it just gave up. She sat on a

99
00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:50,880
Speaker 1: horse and it decided life was done. It Sorry, that's

100
00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:56,480
Speaker 1: extremely funny. The horse just committed suicide. I have second hand,

101
00:05:56,960 --> 00:06:00,479
Speaker 1: really old it was. It was that a camp in

102
00:06:00,520 --> 00:06:04,120
Speaker 1: the middle of news that young. So wow, they definitely

103
00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:09,000
Speaker 1: worked that horse to death. That's sad. That's actually that

104
00:06:09,480 --> 00:06:12,520
Speaker 1: was so formative for me where I don't remember any

105
00:06:12,560 --> 00:06:16,200
Speaker 1: of the Jesus stuff, but I do remember that when

106
00:06:16,200 --> 00:06:18,360
Speaker 1: my cousins sund on the horse and had died, and

107
00:06:18,400 --> 00:06:21,440
Speaker 1: I remember that for some reason, they like, because you

108
00:06:21,440 --> 00:06:23,960
Speaker 1: would just be doing Jesus stuff, horse stuff, Jesus stuff,

109
00:06:23,960 --> 00:06:27,839
Speaker 1: horse stuff, occasional hearts and crafts, dinner, uh, no contact

110
00:06:27,880 --> 00:06:31,880
Speaker 1: with the outside world and you. But there was like

111
00:06:31,960 --> 00:06:35,040
Speaker 1: one time where we had to watch a horse dental

112
00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:37,279
Speaker 1: procedure and I remember being like, I don't want to.

113
00:06:37,480 --> 00:06:41,520
Speaker 1: Can I leave? And they were like, because I like,

114
00:06:41,640 --> 00:06:44,039
Speaker 1: you need to watch here's how we shoe a horse

115
00:06:44,240 --> 00:06:46,880
Speaker 1: or like, but like, you don't. It's a horse rider.

116
00:06:46,880 --> 00:06:48,560
Speaker 1: You're never going to need to learn how to do

117
00:06:48,720 --> 00:06:51,200
Speaker 1: dentistry on your horse. That's not your job. That's that's

118
00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:55,280
Speaker 1: Christian nine year olds. Do you need to watch a

119
00:06:56,560 --> 00:06:59,200
Speaker 1: dental procedure? I bet they taught you more about that

120
00:06:59,279 --> 00:07:01,880
Speaker 1: than they did about sex though, um, oh for sure.

121
00:07:02,800 --> 00:07:05,599
Speaker 1: But I didn't see a horse get all the canal

122
00:07:06,320 --> 00:07:10,880
Speaker 1: to teach you about sex, slam a big fat subway

123
00:07:10,960 --> 00:07:16,240
Speaker 1: foot long down on the table and walking out. That go, now,

124
00:07:16,640 --> 00:07:20,440
Speaker 1: kids about sex. I know we have to talk about Helena,

125
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:22,960
Speaker 1: but I do. I've seen this opinion circulating more and

126
00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:27,280
Speaker 1: it really brings me pleasure to see that people are finally,

127
00:07:27,720 --> 00:07:29,559
Speaker 1: you know, kind of coming around to this. The best

128
00:07:29,560 --> 00:07:34,720
Speaker 1: food at subway are the cookies. The cookies a subway major,

129
00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:38,400
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? White macadeen? White chocolate macadeen? Are

130
00:07:38,520 --> 00:07:42,520
Speaker 1: not heart agree, Jamie Loft is no opinion, But I

131
00:07:42,560 --> 00:07:45,120
Speaker 1: do have some opinions about the life of Helena Blavatsky.

132
00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:50,080
Speaker 1: And over the next years after escaping, uh, she goes

133
00:07:50,120 --> 00:07:53,400
Speaker 1: all over the place. She starts a spiritual society in Cairo,

134
00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:57,520
Speaker 1: which like falls apart in like two weeks. What what

135
00:07:57,520 --> 00:07:59,800
Speaker 1: what span of years are we talking? This is like

136
00:08:00,080 --> 00:08:03,960
Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine to like eighteen seventy or like eighteen

137
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:06,400
Speaker 1: fifties something like that to eighteen, like seventy one or

138
00:08:06,440 --> 00:08:11,000
Speaker 1: seventy two per encountering spiritualism or like I mean she

139
00:08:11,080 --> 00:08:13,120
Speaker 1: encounters it as a kid, according to her right, she's

140
00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:16,400
Speaker 1: talking to Princekal litson. She's reading her Grandpa's a cult library.

141
00:08:16,760 --> 00:08:20,640
Speaker 1: She hung out with those horse nomads, right because she's

142
00:08:20,640 --> 00:08:23,640
Speaker 1: like because American spiritualism starts in eighteen forty eight. So

143
00:08:23,640 --> 00:08:26,160
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to fare out when she she is,

144
00:08:26,600 --> 00:08:28,560
Speaker 1: and she is she is. So when she starts a

145
00:08:28,600 --> 00:08:32,679
Speaker 1: spiritual and spiritualism society in Cairo the first time, that's

146
00:08:32,760 --> 00:08:35,800
Speaker 1: right after she starts her visit, they're doing seances, they're

147
00:08:35,800 --> 00:08:40,080
Speaker 1: doing medium ship, they're very much doing America like Spiritualism

148
00:08:40,080 --> 00:08:41,880
Speaker 1: like starts in America, gets over to Europe and then

149
00:08:41,920 --> 00:08:45,000
Speaker 1: eventually further south later and like they're doing that sort

150
00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:49,040
Speaker 1: of ship in um in in Cairo, she's doing the

151
00:08:49,040 --> 00:08:52,280
Speaker 1: Fox sister ship. Okay, yeah, yeah, and well again we'll

152
00:08:52,280 --> 00:08:55,040
Speaker 1: talk to them. We'll talk about them a bit later. Um.

153
00:08:55,120 --> 00:08:58,200
Speaker 1: But it's it is unclear she we We're pretty it's

154
00:08:58,200 --> 00:09:00,800
Speaker 1: pretty clear that she attempts and fails start a spiritual

155
00:09:00,840 --> 00:09:04,760
Speaker 1: society mainly because the other medians start like grifting people,

156
00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:06,800
Speaker 1: um and turning it into a cash thing, and it

157
00:09:06,800 --> 00:09:09,839
Speaker 1: falls apart. That's her claim the whole first way this

158
00:09:09,920 --> 00:09:12,360
Speaker 1: is spiritualism. Might be more accurate to say that the

159
00:09:12,440 --> 00:09:14,680
Speaker 1: grift just got away from her and she wasn't able

160
00:09:14,720 --> 00:09:18,040
Speaker 1: to prop But anyway, she goes to Paris, where, according

161
00:09:18,120 --> 00:09:21,040
Speaker 1: to her own recollections, she astonished a group of freemasons

162
00:09:21,080 --> 00:09:24,520
Speaker 1: with her depth of occult knowledge. There's no evidence of this, uh,

163
00:09:24,679 --> 00:09:26,800
Speaker 1: we do know that in eighteen fifty eight, after she's

164
00:09:26,800 --> 00:09:29,319
Speaker 1: been nearly at ten year, it's like eighteen four nights

165
00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:31,440
Speaker 1: something like that, that she she starts her journey in

166
00:09:31,440 --> 00:09:33,880
Speaker 1: like eighteen fifty eight after nearly ten years, because she

167
00:09:33,920 --> 00:09:35,720
Speaker 1: comes back home a couple of times for like money

168
00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:37,960
Speaker 1: and stuff. She tells her sister that she had spent

169
00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:41,520
Speaker 1: the last decade as a prostitute. Um. Now, her sister

170
00:09:41,640 --> 00:09:43,760
Speaker 1: is also kind of a grifter, so we don't really know,

171
00:09:43,840 --> 00:09:46,080
Speaker 1: like they have a falling out at some point. It

172
00:09:46,200 --> 00:09:49,920
Speaker 1: is entirely possible that she spends as her you know, year,

173
00:09:50,559 --> 00:09:52,960
Speaker 1: that that's how she finances her travel. There's out we

174
00:09:52,960 --> 00:09:55,760
Speaker 1: don't really know how she pays for it, Okay, because

175
00:09:55,760 --> 00:09:57,640
Speaker 1: I was kind of what I was like, is she

176
00:09:58,080 --> 00:10:00,200
Speaker 1: using sex work as a metaphor there? Or is she

177
00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:02,640
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it in the literal? It might be it

178
00:10:02,720 --> 00:10:04,880
Speaker 1: might be literal. She may have just gotten the money

179
00:10:04,920 --> 00:10:07,760
Speaker 1: from her husband, who she also visits occasionally during this

180
00:10:07,800 --> 00:10:10,520
Speaker 1: period and who apparently sends her money. She comes from

181
00:10:10,559 --> 00:10:12,640
Speaker 1: a rich family, she probably gets some money there. But

182
00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:17,120
Speaker 1: what what is certain is that she travels widely throughout Europe,

183
00:10:17,200 --> 00:10:20,760
Speaker 1: throughout the Middle East, and throughout Southeast Asia. Um. And

184
00:10:20,840 --> 00:10:24,920
Speaker 1: that she semi regularly receives money from someone. And there's

185
00:10:24,920 --> 00:10:27,120
Speaker 1: a couple of it's probably a couple of different people

186
00:10:27,120 --> 00:10:32,040
Speaker 1: like her family, and she gets some amount of money. Um.

187
00:10:32,160 --> 00:10:36,120
Speaker 1: And yeah, she's she's in. Her claim is that she's

188
00:10:36,160 --> 00:10:41,000
Speaker 1: having like a series of wide ranging like mystical adventures. Um.

189
00:10:41,040 --> 00:10:45,120
Speaker 1: That kind of the inciting incident for her spiritual journey

190
00:10:45,200 --> 00:10:47,480
Speaker 1: and like this period according to her claim of things

191
00:10:47,520 --> 00:10:50,400
Speaker 1: is that in eighteen fifty one, she meets a teleporting

192
00:10:50,480 --> 00:10:54,680
Speaker 1: Hindu mystic named Master Moria in London. Now, she claims

193
00:10:54,679 --> 00:10:56,840
Speaker 1: she recognizes this guy when she sees me in London

194
00:10:57,040 --> 00:10:59,480
Speaker 1: because she'd seen him in her dreams and visions which

195
00:10:59,480 --> 00:11:01,040
Speaker 1: she had been had again as a little girl. She's

196
00:11:01,040 --> 00:11:02,880
Speaker 1: talking about these dreams of this. She claims she's been

197
00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:05,080
Speaker 1: seeing this guy for decades in her dreams and visions,

198
00:11:05,400 --> 00:11:07,880
Speaker 1: and then she meets him at a hotel lobby in London,

199
00:11:08,280 --> 00:11:11,240
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from Stawazinski again. The man told

200
00:11:11,280 --> 00:11:13,800
Speaker 1: Blovotsky had been waiting for her. It was planned long ago.

201
00:11:13,880 --> 00:11:16,400
Speaker 1: He explained, they kept talking Mr Maria for that was

202
00:11:16,400 --> 00:11:19,120
Speaker 1: how he introduced himself to Helena. Explained he had a

203
00:11:19,160 --> 00:11:21,680
Speaker 1: special mission for her. Madame Blovotsky had to go to

204
00:11:21,679 --> 00:11:23,960
Speaker 1: a secret school in Tibet that Maria ran together with

205
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:27,040
Speaker 1: his friend Master kut Umi. After he said that, he

206
00:11:27,200 --> 00:11:32,600
Speaker 1: literally vanished into thin air. Now. Blovotsky later claimed that

207
00:11:32,640 --> 00:11:35,120
Speaker 1: this inspired a series of attempts to try and make

208
00:11:35,160 --> 00:11:38,240
Speaker 1: her way to the isolated kingdom of Tibet. At this point,

209
00:11:38,240 --> 00:11:41,080
Speaker 1: Tibet was independent of China and anyone else, and in

210
00:11:41,120 --> 00:11:43,880
Speaker 1: the West it was basically mythic, as almost no Westerners

211
00:11:43,880 --> 00:11:47,199
Speaker 1: had ever been there. The kingdom was geographically isolated, and

212
00:11:47,320 --> 00:11:49,800
Speaker 1: bandits and border guards would either kill or turned back

213
00:11:49,840 --> 00:11:52,800
Speaker 1: people who tried to enter. The first European woman on

214
00:11:52,880 --> 00:11:56,160
Speaker 1: record to see Tibet was Alexandra David Neil in nineteen

215
00:11:56,200 --> 00:11:59,719
Speaker 1: thirty two. Blovotsky claimed that in the eighteen sixties she

216
00:11:59,800 --> 00:12:02,000
Speaker 1: made her way into the country and lived there for

217
00:12:02,040 --> 00:12:06,280
Speaker 1: several years, studying with kud Humi and Moria. Now this

218
00:12:06,400 --> 00:12:09,960
Speaker 1: did not happen. Again, Tibet is a closed society to

219
00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:13,400
Speaker 1: the west at this point. Um. It is occasionally, like

220
00:12:13,559 --> 00:12:17,600
Speaker 1: European diplomatic officials and stuff will go to Tibet, but

221
00:12:17,960 --> 00:12:21,119
Speaker 1: you really don't get in easily, and it's very dangerous

222
00:12:21,160 --> 00:12:25,240
Speaker 1: to do so. Um. There is, however, like weirdly enticing

223
00:12:25,280 --> 00:12:27,400
Speaker 1: evidence that she might have gotten close to Tibet a

224
00:12:27,440 --> 00:12:29,559
Speaker 1: couple of times. She claimed she tried and failed to

225
00:12:29,559 --> 00:12:33,840
Speaker 1: get in twice. Um. Lackman traces a couple of enticing

226
00:12:33,920 --> 00:12:36,600
Speaker 1: leads of like, there's a couple of European officials in

227
00:12:36,600 --> 00:12:39,240
Speaker 1: India who later will say that they met a woman

228
00:12:39,280 --> 00:12:42,240
Speaker 1: matching her description near Kashmir, and like Satin had like

229
00:12:42,280 --> 00:12:43,960
Speaker 1: tea with her and hung out for a while and

230
00:12:44,040 --> 00:12:46,760
Speaker 1: like hosted her for a while. Um. And we know

231
00:12:46,840 --> 00:12:49,160
Speaker 1: those two those Buddhist tribesmen that she met as a

232
00:12:49,200 --> 00:12:52,160
Speaker 1: girl she meets again in this period and the Gobi

233
00:12:52,240 --> 00:12:56,360
Speaker 1: Desert not wildly far from the Tibetan border. Um. So again,

234
00:12:56,880 --> 00:13:01,199
Speaker 1: this definitely didn't happen. But like any good lifter, she

235
00:13:01,240 --> 00:13:03,800
Speaker 1: gets close enough, there's a like and because of her

236
00:13:03,800 --> 00:13:06,679
Speaker 1: back story, it's like it's not imp of the women

237
00:13:06,720 --> 00:13:09,000
Speaker 1: in this period, she's maybe one of the only ones

238
00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:13,600
Speaker 1: who realistically might have been able to get to Tibet. Right,

239
00:13:14,240 --> 00:13:18,280
Speaker 1: that's so, But it's but so much of her philosophy

240
00:13:18,320 --> 00:13:25,080
Speaker 1: depends on this lie being true. Yes, Um. She claims

241
00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:27,800
Speaker 1: that during her years in Tibet, she learned she stays

242
00:13:27,800 --> 00:13:30,560
Speaker 1: with her kut Humie and Master Maria and this, and

243
00:13:30,600 --> 00:13:34,080
Speaker 1: they're like occult compound and she learns all these ancient

244
00:13:34,160 --> 00:13:38,960
Speaker 1: mystic secrets uh and the secret history of the world. Um.

245
00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:41,880
Speaker 1: And yeah, so this is a very important period of

246
00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:45,040
Speaker 1: journey for her. That she's like she's getting uh, this

247
00:13:45,160 --> 00:13:48,040
Speaker 1: occult schooling and like and it's also like in the

248
00:13:48,080 --> 00:13:51,880
Speaker 1: real Hinduism and Buddhism, right, like this stuff that that

249
00:13:52,040 --> 00:13:55,720
Speaker 1: is not actually like she's inventing. When she later brings

250
00:13:55,840 --> 00:13:58,280
Speaker 1: knowledge of like Eastern religions to a lot of Americans,

251
00:13:58,320 --> 00:14:00,720
Speaker 1: a lot of it ship she invented. But she'll claim

252
00:14:00,720 --> 00:14:02,800
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this more later that like, well, no,

253
00:14:02,880 --> 00:14:05,400
Speaker 1: they just the Hindus and India don't know the truth.

254
00:14:05,440 --> 00:14:08,400
Speaker 1: But I got it directly from Master Maria or from Kudhumi,

255
00:14:08,480 --> 00:14:11,640
Speaker 1: who like know the real ship stuff like this. It's

256
00:14:11,679 --> 00:14:15,920
Speaker 1: just like, I mean, it's there's certainly another big name

257
00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:17,800
Speaker 1: that comes to mind with this ship, but you're just like,

258
00:14:18,280 --> 00:14:21,400
Speaker 1: just like be a novelist like your mom, Like what

259
00:14:21,520 --> 00:14:24,840
Speaker 1: exactly exactly novel about this ship. It's fine, probably would

260
00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:28,680
Speaker 1: have been a little rosist, but it was much better

261
00:14:28,720 --> 00:14:31,560
Speaker 1: than you. It's like l Ron Hubbard ship. You're like,

262
00:14:31,760 --> 00:14:37,400
Speaker 1: just stick to that. Come on. Yeah, she does not, so,

263
00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:39,400
Speaker 1: you know, this is a big part of her story

264
00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:42,560
Speaker 1: during that like twenty years. She also will claim frequently

265
00:14:42,640 --> 00:14:46,000
Speaker 1: later that she fights alongside Italian revolutionary I think it's

266
00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:49,600
Speaker 1: Giuseppe Garibaldi um and gets like shot several times. She

267
00:14:49,680 --> 00:14:52,400
Speaker 1: has some scars on her body that sh'll show people

268
00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:53,880
Speaker 1: the rest of her life and be like, this is

269
00:14:53,880 --> 00:14:57,040
Speaker 1: where I got shot, fighting, you know with Garibaldi UM

270
00:14:57,080 --> 00:14:59,960
Speaker 1: in this in this failed revolution against like the Catholic

271
00:15:00,160 --> 00:15:03,640
Speaker 1: some king or the Catholics, and like, yeah, basically is

272
00:15:03,720 --> 00:15:07,560
Speaker 1: this like revolution to try to gain into U at

273
00:15:07,600 --> 00:15:12,200
Speaker 1: least some independence from fucking Catholicism or whatever. Um. She

274
00:15:12,440 --> 00:15:14,760
Speaker 1: yeah claims that she learned secrets from mystics all over

275
00:15:14,800 --> 00:15:16,680
Speaker 1: the world in the Middle East and to bet she

276
00:15:16,680 --> 00:15:19,040
Speaker 1: goes to the United States. Obviously she hangs out with

277
00:15:19,080 --> 00:15:23,320
Speaker 1: indigenous people and learns their mystical traditions and stuff. Right, Um,

278
00:15:25,560 --> 00:15:29,000
Speaker 1: I'm sure that we don't. Like who knows the degree

279
00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:30,840
Speaker 1: to which all of this is true. I tend to

280
00:15:30,880 --> 00:15:36,160
Speaker 1: think it's about fIF um, Yeah, most likely bullshit and

281
00:15:36,200 --> 00:15:38,760
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, she probably like went to a fucking

282
00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:43,760
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a truck stop and like was briefly

283
00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:46,600
Speaker 1: like shook hands with a Navajo person and then wrote

284
00:15:46,680 --> 00:15:50,240
Speaker 1: lurred stories about how like she was instructed in their

285
00:15:50,320 --> 00:15:52,920
Speaker 1: traditions and whatnot. Like that's the kind of person she is,

286
00:15:53,000 --> 00:15:55,560
Speaker 1: you know. It's like if that, I mean, if she did,

287
00:15:56,960 --> 00:16:00,120
Speaker 1: if it wasn't just someone in fucking San Francisco, oh

288
00:16:00,200 --> 00:16:02,800
Speaker 1: bar who had been to Arizona told her a story

289
00:16:02,840 --> 00:16:05,280
Speaker 1: and like yeah, well, it's like also if she was like, yeah,

290
00:16:05,400 --> 00:16:08,920
Speaker 1: she was fraternizing with like white spiritualists in the nineteenth

291
00:16:08,920 --> 00:16:12,960
Speaker 1: century they were just making ship up about indigenous people

292
00:16:12,960 --> 00:16:15,800
Speaker 1: while they were massacre, yes, and so it's just possible

293
00:16:15,840 --> 00:16:17,800
Speaker 1: that she like talked to them and was like, Okay,

294
00:16:17,960 --> 00:16:20,120
Speaker 1: let's just take this at face value, even though there's

295
00:16:20,160 --> 00:16:23,800
Speaker 1: like almost everything yeah spiritualist said at that time was

296
00:16:23,840 --> 00:16:27,680
Speaker 1: like totally wrong. Yes. Um. And one of so one

297
00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:29,640
Speaker 1: of the very few solid things we can kind of

298
00:16:29,680 --> 00:16:33,280
Speaker 1: grasp on during this period is that she takes she

299
00:16:33,360 --> 00:16:35,800
Speaker 1: moves to Cairo a second time. She attempts to create

300
00:16:35,840 --> 00:16:39,640
Speaker 1: this is years later, a second spiritual society. Um. And

301
00:16:39,680 --> 00:16:42,440
Speaker 1: this is again an attempt. This is when the spiritualist

302
00:16:42,480 --> 00:16:44,400
Speaker 1: craze is kind of at its height. So she's she's

303
00:16:44,440 --> 00:16:48,000
Speaker 1: continually trying to cash in on the spiritualist craze in

304
00:16:48,080 --> 00:16:50,840
Speaker 1: Cairo because there's a lot of like rich, dilettante white

305
00:16:50,840 --> 00:16:54,800
Speaker 1: people living in Cairo, right, Um, because it's you know,

306
00:16:54,880 --> 00:16:58,600
Speaker 1: colonizer tithes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um. And she basically seems

307
00:16:58,600 --> 00:17:00,720
Speaker 1: to have put together a group of mems and set

308
00:17:00,760 --> 00:17:04,080
Speaker 1: them to the task of building rubs for cash. Blovotsky

309
00:17:04,160 --> 00:17:06,399
Speaker 1: was said to have used a long glove stuffed with

310
00:17:06,480 --> 00:17:09,399
Speaker 1: cotton as a spirit hand, basically puppeting it to like

311
00:17:09,520 --> 00:17:11,720
Speaker 1: do things and trick people into thinking she summoned a

312
00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:14,720
Speaker 1: ghost that was like, I mean, that was some of

313
00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:17,560
Speaker 1: the objects that some of the best of of like

314
00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:20,280
Speaker 1: both of the waves of spiritualism. That's like some of

315
00:17:20,280 --> 00:17:23,239
Speaker 1: the greatest stuff because it's like, well, yeah, it can

316
00:17:23,280 --> 00:17:29,000
Speaker 1: be a terrific grift the physical mediumship phase. It's she

317
00:17:29,000 --> 00:17:31,359
Speaker 1: she all, she loves. She was big into having a

318
00:17:31,359 --> 00:17:33,320
Speaker 1: physical dimension. We're going to talk about this a lot

319
00:17:33,359 --> 00:17:35,560
Speaker 1: over the course of these episodes. Yeah, that is no

320
00:17:35,640 --> 00:17:39,480
Speaker 1: longer the case because it was proven false, like just

321
00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:42,560
Speaker 1: so many times that most people don't bother. And at

322
00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:44,840
Speaker 1: this point I have to note, the long gloves stuffed

323
00:17:44,840 --> 00:17:47,240
Speaker 1: with stuff with cotton as a ghost hand was not

324
00:17:47,400 --> 00:17:50,399
Speaker 1: a good grift trick. Um, it does not seem to

325
00:17:50,400 --> 00:17:54,920
Speaker 1: have worked on many people. Now Lachman claims the woman

326
00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:58,199
Speaker 1: who like says this of Blovotsky, that she tried to

327
00:17:58,240 --> 00:18:00,720
Speaker 1: con people with a big fake cotton hand, was a

328
00:18:00,720 --> 00:18:04,440
Speaker 1: liar herself. Uh. And again everyone who was arguing on

329
00:18:04,480 --> 00:18:07,119
Speaker 1: the negative side of Lavotsky's life is also a con artist,

330
00:18:07,280 --> 00:18:10,800
Speaker 1: spiritual crifter. So it is it is everyone is questionable

331
00:18:10,800 --> 00:18:16,480
Speaker 1: who says anything about this woman. Most physical have been disproved,

332
00:18:16,640 --> 00:18:21,159
Speaker 1: but the okay, the best of what I know, because

333
00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:23,280
Speaker 1: there were there's like all this I don't know, like

334
00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:25,080
Speaker 1: there's all this lore of like there were a few

335
00:18:25,119 --> 00:18:29,080
Speaker 1: spiritual like physical mediums who were never disproven, and then

336
00:18:29,119 --> 00:18:31,400
Speaker 1: you can like sort of find examples to the case

337
00:18:31,480 --> 00:18:33,720
Speaker 1: that like they may have been disproven and then paid

338
00:18:33,760 --> 00:18:36,600
Speaker 1: someone off or like the situations like that. But the

339
00:18:36,640 --> 00:18:41,320
Speaker 1: most convincing spirit hands, which is covered in uh think

340
00:18:41,359 --> 00:18:43,440
Speaker 1: we talked about it in your the episode of Ghost

341
00:18:43,520 --> 00:18:47,800
Speaker 1: Richer in if you're using like animal guts, people will

342
00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:51,679
Speaker 1: start there. You can't just be a cotton hand, poopy

343
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:57,920
Speaker 1: and wet. And because for whatever reason, I people were

344
00:18:57,960 --> 00:19:02,520
Speaker 1: more likely to believe that physical mediumship was real if

345
00:19:02,560 --> 00:19:05,560
Speaker 1: it was wet, and there was like this common belief

346
00:19:05,680 --> 00:19:08,880
Speaker 1: that like if you went beyond the veil and reached

347
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:14,560
Speaker 1: through to like our dimension, you'd be goopy, and so

348
00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:18,119
Speaker 1: women would would um yeah, Oh there was a lot

349
00:19:18,240 --> 00:19:20,320
Speaker 1: to do with like yeah, as you talk about in

350
00:19:20,400 --> 00:19:24,920
Speaker 1: your show, like vaginal discharge and like ectoplasm and all

351
00:19:24,920 --> 00:19:27,400
Speaker 1: this stuff, like it's a whole history. Yeah, And it

352
00:19:27,400 --> 00:19:31,119
Speaker 1: became this like this I'm curious of like what Blovotsky

353
00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:34,680
Speaker 1: did specifically, But if she's using a bone, dry cotton hand,

354
00:19:34,960 --> 00:19:37,720
Speaker 1: people don't. That's not a show people are interested in

355
00:19:37,800 --> 00:19:40,240
Speaker 1: going to. And that's where she is. She's a dry

356
00:19:40,280 --> 00:19:43,360
Speaker 1: aass medium at this point, but I mean, she's not

357
00:19:43,400 --> 00:19:47,240
Speaker 1: gooping it up. Figure out how to get America very wet.

358
00:19:47,320 --> 00:19:50,760
Speaker 1: But she doesn't know yet. Also she's in Cairo. Um,

359
00:19:50,840 --> 00:19:55,000
Speaker 1: so here's here's Lackman writing about the kind of the

360
00:19:55,040 --> 00:19:58,639
Speaker 1: claims of Blovotsky's time and her second Spiritualist Society quote.

361
00:19:58,920 --> 00:20:01,399
Speaker 1: Blovotsky's own account has it that although she was against

362
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:04,080
Speaker 1: the idea of contacting the dead, she would allow mediums

363
00:20:04,080 --> 00:20:07,520
Speaker 1: to perform. Emma Colombe was apparently one of these, and

364
00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:10,080
Speaker 1: then explained to the audience the truth behind the phenomena.

365
00:20:10,359 --> 00:20:12,679
Speaker 1: What Bolotsky wanted to show with the difference between a

366
00:20:12,680 --> 00:20:15,000
Speaker 1: passive medium, that is, someone who is merely the means

367
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:17,359
Speaker 1: by which phenomena could occur, and what she called an

368
00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:20,359
Speaker 1: active doer, someone who could produce and control the phenomena

369
00:20:20,680 --> 00:20:23,240
Speaker 1: and not, as with mediums, be controlled by them, in

370
00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:26,480
Speaker 1: other words, a magician. That is, in essence, what she

371
00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:30,000
Speaker 1: learned in Tibet or wherever she was. Yet, Helena Blovotsky

372
00:20:30,040 --> 00:20:32,080
Speaker 1: claimed to be a poor judge of character at least

373
00:20:32,080 --> 00:20:34,760
Speaker 1: at this time, or perhaps her generous nature was taken

374
00:20:34,760 --> 00:20:36,840
Speaker 1: advantage of something that would prove to be the case

375
00:20:36,960 --> 00:20:39,480
Speaker 1: down the line. In any case, while she was away,

376
00:20:39,520 --> 00:20:43,000
Speaker 1: the mediums amateurs, according to her account, decided to try

377
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:46,320
Speaker 1: to fleece the members of the society by staging fake seances.

378
00:20:46,560 --> 00:20:50,280
Speaker 1: They also drank a great deal, something Helena was decidedly against.

379
00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:53,119
Speaker 1: When she returned and discovered what had happened, she closed

380
00:20:53,119 --> 00:20:56,800
Speaker 1: the society down, not however, before a Greek madman, who

381
00:20:56,800 --> 00:20:59,240
Speaker 1: had been present at the only two public seances we

382
00:20:59,320 --> 00:21:02,160
Speaker 1: held she tried to shoot her. She thought he must

383
00:21:02,200 --> 00:21:05,400
Speaker 1: have been possessed by some vile spook. Although the society

384
00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:07,520
Speaker 1: that lasted only two weeks, the attempt on her life

385
00:21:07,520 --> 00:21:12,480
Speaker 1: if it was not an exact weeks weeks. She goes

386
00:21:12,520 --> 00:21:15,800
Speaker 1: from starting a spiritual society to a guy trying to

387
00:21:15,840 --> 00:21:18,640
Speaker 1: assassinate her in a bunch of mediums like creating a

388
00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:23,280
Speaker 1: con artist range. It's amazing this, I mean, this does

389
00:21:23,320 --> 00:21:26,480
Speaker 1: all kind of track that she I mean, And not

390
00:21:26,520 --> 00:21:30,520
Speaker 1: to say that the spiritualist mediums were like actually pulling

391
00:21:30,520 --> 00:21:34,080
Speaker 1: shut off. Statistically they were not, but there was like

392
00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:36,960
Speaker 1: I I it felt to me when I was doing

393
00:21:37,040 --> 00:21:39,600
Speaker 1: and again I didn't get really far in theosophy research,

394
00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:43,359
Speaker 1: but that it was so because there was like such

395
00:21:43,400 --> 00:21:47,399
Speaker 1: a huge controversy around spiritualism and people like it was

396
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:51,760
Speaker 1: just it's like the easiest thing to use as like,

397
00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:54,840
Speaker 1: well this is fake, what I'm doing is real because

398
00:21:54,840 --> 00:21:57,240
Speaker 1: it just had such a bad reputation, And that's what

399
00:21:57,400 --> 00:22:00,440
Speaker 1: that's what we're building towards here, because like she will

400
00:22:00,560 --> 00:22:04,360
Speaker 1: later claim that this experience and Lackman, one of her biographers,

401
00:22:04,359 --> 00:22:07,760
Speaker 1: will claim that, like, this experience is what helps her

402
00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:13,440
Speaker 1: to realize that spiritualism is wrong, specifically, like this assassination attempt,

403
00:22:13,600 --> 00:22:16,040
Speaker 1: which she believes is like caused by this guy being

404
00:22:16,119 --> 00:22:19,600
Speaker 1: possessed by a vile spook. Is there a proof that

405
00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:24,240
Speaker 1: the assassination attempt happened? And absolutely not? Okay, okay, just checking.

406
00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:27,479
Speaker 1: But this is what Lackman says proves her point. Quote,

407
00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:30,040
Speaker 1: what her mediums were contacting. We're not the souls of

408
00:22:30,040 --> 00:22:33,640
Speaker 1: the deer departed, but a species of astral hobo psychic

409
00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:36,119
Speaker 1: tramps with nothing better to do than hover near the

410
00:22:36,119 --> 00:22:39,200
Speaker 1: borderland between the living and the dead, looking for some mischief.

411
00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:41,400
Speaker 1: It was the insight that would lead to a lifelong

412
00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:44,600
Speaker 1: feud between Helena Blovotsky and the major spiritualists of her time.

413
00:22:44,960 --> 00:22:49,280
Speaker 1: And I gotta say astral Hobo fucking good band name right,

414
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:55,520
Speaker 1: that huge in the nineties huge mostly forgotten now, but

415
00:22:55,640 --> 00:23:01,080
Speaker 1: really because of that Rhode Island punk scene at one time. Yeah,

416
00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:04,120
Speaker 1: they had that concert where fourteen people burned to death.

417
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:07,680
Speaker 1: But yes, really good band. Okay, let's let's ease off

418
00:23:07,800 --> 00:23:11,400
Speaker 1: Rhode Island for a second, Okay, because some people are

419
00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:13,400
Speaker 1: really sad when they learned about that when they were

420
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:19,160
Speaker 1: tent or whatever. I don't anyway, but yeah, it makes

421
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:22,040
Speaker 1: it especially at this time, getting as far away from

422
00:23:22,040 --> 00:23:27,320
Speaker 1: spiritualism as popular was how a lot of movements started, Yes, exactly,

423
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:30,800
Speaker 1: and and that's that is how Blovotsky claims it happens.

424
00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:33,399
Speaker 1: Um and she went on to make something way worse

425
00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:35,320
Speaker 1: so that she does a bunch of other ship like

426
00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:37,880
Speaker 1: again this there's this whole period. You can read both

427
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: in Lachman's and meads biographies. You can read many pages

428
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:43,119
Speaker 1: about what she supposedly did in this period. I'm not

429
00:23:43,119 --> 00:23:45,399
Speaker 1: going to get into detail on it because it's almost

430
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 1: certainly mostly nonsense, although she definitely went places and did

431
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:51,480
Speaker 1: stuff and it was probably pretty interesting. I'm going to

432
00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:55,800
Speaker 1: guess the actual biography of Helena Blovotsky is also quite interesting,

433
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 1: just not very flattering. Sure, so she you know, we

434
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: know she like bums around Europe about her precise moments

435
00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:04,240
Speaker 1: are unclear, but when she comes up on the historic

436
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:08,240
Speaker 1: next definitive of the historic record next, definitively it's in

437
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:13,080
Speaker 1: the United States, So we were she's pretty sure because

438
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:16,240
Speaker 1: there's you know, government docks and ship that Helena Blovotsky

439
00:24:16,359 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 1: lands in New York on July seventh, eighteen seventy three. Um,

440
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:23,360
Speaker 1: I've definitely heard some people say it was eighteen seventy two.

441
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:25,680
Speaker 1: I assume Lachman's not wrong here because it's such a

442
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:29,840
Speaker 1: documented basic fact. She's forty two years old. Now, this

443
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 1: is not her first time in the United States, according

444
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 1: to her. I don't actually know that there's documentation that

445
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: she visited before. But it wouldn't have been weird if

446
00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:39,040
Speaker 1: she had gone through the US on her way to

447
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:43,360
Speaker 1: India because of how travel worked at the time. Yeah,

448
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:46,199
Speaker 1: she claims that she was supposed to ride there on

449
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:48,440
Speaker 1: a first class ticket but gave it up to help

450
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:51,399
Speaker 1: a poor family afford the journey. There's no evidence this

451
00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 1: is true. Meads seems to say this is clearly a lie.

452
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:56,919
Speaker 1: Lackman takes it because again he's he's very invested in

453
00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 1: her being uh a hero to the poor. Um. So,

454
00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:04,679
Speaker 1: she says she arrives with only a few dollars to

455
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:08,080
Speaker 1: her name, plus a massive fortune in cash that Master

456
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:10,760
Speaker 1: Maria gave her, but that she wasn't allowed to spend right,

457
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: she couldn't use it at all. She had to give

458
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: it to a random guy in Buffalo. Um, there's god

459
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: cool because again she's getting messages, these spiritual they told

460
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 1: her to go to Tibet. Now they keep giving her

461
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:24,439
Speaker 1: commands all through her life. So she she gets like

462
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:26,320
Speaker 1: told where to find this package of money and she

463
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 1: has to take it to Buffalo again and again again.

464
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:33,120
Speaker 1: It's like that's there's like huge spiritualists like overlap there

465
00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: because it was all like almost exclusively in upstate New

466
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: York was like where it was populous. Um Now. Next,

467
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 1: Lackman claims that she basically lives the life of like

468
00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 1: a stereotypical immigrant to the United States. Quote her adventures

469
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: in the next few years are a kind of American

470
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:50,439
Speaker 1: success story in which a penniless foreigner arrives in the

471
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:55,720
Speaker 1: new world and through courage, persistence, and determination makes good. Um. Now,

472
00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: this is nonsense, in part because she gets a bunch

473
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 1: of family money at some point, but is she well, No,

474
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 1: she seems to have been poor for a while. There

475
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:07,040
Speaker 1: were like issues with her getting her money, and like

476
00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:09,280
Speaker 1: if you have like an issue getting money mail to you,

477
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:12,479
Speaker 1: that could be years um. So she is like living

478
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:16,960
Speaker 1: in a working class house. Both Mead and Lackman claims

479
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: she becomes like the din Mother for this, like bunch

480
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:21,400
Speaker 1: of immigrants making a hard scrabble living in the late

481
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:25,600
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds in New York City. Uh Mead notes that,

482
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 1: and one of the worries in which her story difference

483
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:31,879
Speaker 1: from differs from Lackman's. Mead notes that Boat got the

484
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:34,199
Speaker 1: idea to go to the United States during while she

485
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: was in Paris in the spring of eighteen seventy three,

486
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: and someone tells her about spiritualism and that it's taken

487
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: over the United States. This is probably not true because

488
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: she would like it's weird. I don't know, it's a

489
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:49,120
Speaker 1: weird claim to make, but she'd probaised to be something

490
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: she'd be twenty five years later to I think maybe

491
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:53,719
Speaker 1: the germ of truth in there is that she probably

492
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:56,320
Speaker 1: goes there because somebody in fucking Paris is like, you know,

493
00:26:56,320 --> 00:26:58,640
Speaker 1: where people are making a shipload of money pulling off

494
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:01,719
Speaker 1: the grifts that you failed to pull offen C New

495
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:06,240
Speaker 1: York City. That's where that will work. Um, so we

496
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 1: should probably talk about spiritualism. There's some stuff you've been

497
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: alluding to, Jamie that maybe our listeners who haven't listened

498
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: to Ghost Church because they're cooks don't know legally they are. Yes, um, Sylphie,

499
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:26,159
Speaker 1: what it's time for an at break? But you're on

500
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:31,400
Speaker 1: a roll. Oh thank you? You know who's not cooked?

501
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 1: Okay you cannot verify that. Wow, you're right, you're right.

502
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 1: Honestly find either way, it's all good here. Yeah, get cooked,

503
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:48,440
Speaker 1: get not cooked, be the cuck old. Um, be into

504
00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:53,680
Speaker 1: magpie fetishism. I'm not sure what that is, but figure

505
00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: out what's going to get into whatever. Yeah, yes, surgically

506
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:01,919
Speaker 1: implant an egg into another person. Actually, now that you

507
00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 1: say that, that definitely exists in card that's got to

508
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 1: be a fetish, right, that has to be a fetish,

509
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: absolutely has to be fetish. God, Yeah, I mean there

510
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: are there. There is specifically a sex toy that like

511
00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: you can pump eggs into somebody with they're made out

512
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: of like a gelatin. That's nasty. I don't. Well, that's

513
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:22,520
Speaker 1: a thing that people can do if they want to

514
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:28,520
Speaker 1: do an ad brick my god man, Yeah, here's some ads.

515
00:28:34,320 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 1: We're back and we're talking about the sex toy that

516
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: lets you squirt eggs up in your partner. It's called

517
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: the ovipositor. You make the eggs. That is some gelatine thing.

518
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: It's a whole, it's a thing. You can look it up.

519
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 1: The name like makes up for how horrible this entire

520
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: thing is. It's good ship. It's good ship. Like, I

521
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 1: can't be mad. I have judged, but like, I'm not

522
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 1: mad that I had a physical response to Jamie. Jamie

523
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: literally backed off. Wow, Ova, That's that's a gnarly name. Okay,

524
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: Well that's good, dope. Dope with the script. Let's move on.

525
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 1: So what's what's going on, Robert? Okay, So after she

526
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:24,160
Speaker 1: innvinced the oviposit no, okay. Like most great movements in

527
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 1: American intellectual history, spiritualism started with the lies of a child,

528
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: two children. Actually, I'm looking at the picture of this

529
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: of the ovipositor. I don't like it. Well, Jamie the

530
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: high Dragon, Ova positor I serpent Aquarius, the kelpie, the

531
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 1: tentacle ovipositor, the dragon del Doll, the sea beast, come back,

532
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 1: come back, He's about to started talking about my girl.

533
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:04,560
Speaker 1: Your girl is the stuff you like? Yeah, my, my,

534
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:08,719
Speaker 1: my foxy ladies. These two liars who start spiritualism are

535
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 1: fifteen year old Maggie Fox and her eleven year old

536
00:30:14,840 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: sister Katie. The Fox family lived outside of Newark and

537
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 1: that blighted hellscape some fools called New York State m

538
00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: Rochester adjacent. Yeah, they're Rochester adjacent. One assumes. Like most children,

539
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: they were little ships, and they decided they wanted to

540
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 1: scare their mom by creating weird sounds that would echo

541
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: in their drafty farmhouse. They started by tying strings to

542
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 1: apples and then dropping them on the stairs repeatedly to

543
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: simulate the footsteps of a sort of ghost, which is

544
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 1: pretty creative. You gotta give them credit. Um. Maggie and

545
00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:47,960
Speaker 1: Katie graduated to popping and thumping sounds, often by popping

546
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 1: their knuckles or snapping their toes together. They could the knees. Yeah,

547
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: it's like fucked up ship. And they would do it

548
00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 1: with like even their shoes and socks on, and it

549
00:30:57,320 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 1: was still loud enough that it would like wake their

550
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: parents up, and they can do it barely moving, which

551
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: is wild. Over time. Again, I have a feeling I'm

552
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: going to object to a few of your your broader

553
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:11,000
Speaker 1: characterizations at the Foxes, but I will say this of

554
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 1: the Foxes. If systematic massive discrimination of women didn't exist,

555
00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: they would have been huge in early Hollywood. Well, see,

556
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you. Or the radio maybe because

557
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:23,800
Speaker 1: it's more sound based, but whatever. There's what There's one

558
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: Fox sister that I think is primarily at faultier. We'll

559
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: get there. Yeah. I think the only Fox that I

560
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 1: would not blame for this is Fox Molder. He's just

561
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: trying to find the truth. Anyway. I'm gonna quote now

562
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:41,480
Speaker 1: from a write up on History Net. Maggie later claimed

563
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: that she and Katie planned a final performance for their

564
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 1: mother in which they would talk to the ghost. After

565
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:48,200
Speaker 1: the rapping sounds had begun. In the evening of March

566
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight, Miss fox Rose lit a candle and

567
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: began searching the house. When she reached her daughter's bed,

568
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:56,200
Speaker 1: Katie peered into the darkness and boldly addressed the ghost.

569
00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: Mr splitfoot, Do as I do, she said, snapping her

570
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 1: fingers in the case of the earlier noises, the appropriate

571
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 1: raps followed. Maggie then clapped her hands four times and

572
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: commanded the ghost to rap back. Four knox followed as

573
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: if on cue. Katie responded by making soundless finger snapping

574
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 1: gestures that in turn were answered with raps. Taking pity

575
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: upon her terrified mother, Katie then offered a hint of

576
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:19,719
Speaker 1: explanation for the sounds. Oh, mother, I know what it is.

577
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 1: Tomorrow is April full day, and it's somebody trying to

578
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:26,280
Speaker 1: fool us, she began, But Miss Fox, apparently consider refused

579
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: to consider the suggestion of a prank. The ghost, she

580
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: believed was real and terrified those she was, she decided

581
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: to test it herself. Initially, she asked the ghost to

582
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,720
Speaker 1: count to ten. After it responded appropriately, she asked other questions,

583
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: among them the number of children she had borne. Seven

584
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: raps came back, how many were still living? Six raps

585
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 1: their ages. Each was wrapped out correctly, as Miss Fox

586
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 1: later recalled that. She then demanded, if it was an

587
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 1: injured spirit, make two raps. Promptly, two knox were returned.

588
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:56,840
Speaker 1: Mrs Fox then wanted to know who the ghost was

589
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 1: in life. Maggie and Katie quickly concocted an answer. The

590
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: year it, they claimed was a thirty one year old

591
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:04,280
Speaker 1: married man dead for two years and the father of five.

592
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: Will you continue to rapid I call in the neighbors.

593
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,000
Speaker 1: Their mother asked that they may hear it too, So

594
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 1: that's the start of all this is right, Like that

595
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 1: is the start. Yeah, and then the whole neighborhood gets

596
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: in on it, and it very quickly gets echoes of

597
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: the control of these two kids very immediately, and again

598
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:24,800
Speaker 1: like their kids trying to funk with an adult, and

599
00:33:24,840 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: then the adult just doesn't seem to get it, even

600
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 1: when they pull the April Fools thing, and it very

601
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 1: quickly becomes something like, well if you tell the truth now,

602
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: like right, well it it's all yeah, it got out

603
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 1: of their hands really quickly. And it's also like at

604
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:43,160
Speaker 1: this time in this area, there were a lot of

605
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 1: like this was like, I mean, this specific thing happening

606
00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 1: was unique, but there were a lot of similar cases reported.

607
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: So it was like, I feel like it's really often

608
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 1: characterized like they were just fucking idiots, but it was

609
00:33:56,560 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: like this had been reported as news before, so there

610
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:02,200
Speaker 1: was some president for it. And then it's when they're

611
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 1: older sister becomes involved that it really becomes an issue

612
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 1: because I always, I don't know, I feel because like

613
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:12,799
Speaker 1: they were fucking kids. They're kids, like I call them

614
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:16,520
Speaker 1: liars joking. I think their children who had like we're

615
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:20,280
Speaker 1: fucking around and the adults around them, like all adults

616
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:24,600
Speaker 1: are like idiots who are easily led in fanatic directions

617
00:34:24,680 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: and what are you gonna do? Yeah, very yeah, exactly.

618
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: They're religious there. It's like it's like the kind of

619
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 1: the opposite of a Satanic panic because I guess people

620
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:35,399
Speaker 1: weren't well, I mean, that does happen to? That does

621
00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 1: happen to? There's like a backlash from the church in

622
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:41,480
Speaker 1: their town as well. It's a fascinating story their children.

623
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: Obviously it's not their fault that it's almost I don't

624
00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:47,840
Speaker 1: I haven't watched South Park in a long time, but

625
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 1: you know a lot of old South Park episodes, like

626
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:52,399
Speaker 1: the plot would basically be all of the adults get

627
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:57,200
Speaker 1: into some like like it do something like get onto

628
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:00,320
Speaker 1: some insane bandwagon, and it causes problems and like the

629
00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: kids are just kind of caught in the middle of it.

630
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:04,320
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that story, like all of the

631
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: adults in this town are just like immediately lose their

632
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 1: minds and the girls just have to keep going along

633
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:11,799
Speaker 1: with it. It's very funny. Yeah, And then when when

634
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 1: their sister gets involved, because they have a sister who's

635
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 1: in her like thirties who comes over. She's a single

636
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: mom who's like kind of barely making ends meet, and

637
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: like basically sees an opportunity with what they're doing and

638
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: like realizes that this is something that she can monetize.

639
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: So there's like so many different I don't know. Like

640
00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:34,600
Speaker 1: the story as it's later told, was that like the

641
00:35:34,640 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 1: older sister was able to convince the girls that what

642
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 1: they were doing was real and like to establish like, oh,

643
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: well this it's not morally wrong what we're doing. You're

644
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:48,240
Speaker 1: just you're just passing along messages. And then the sister,

645
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 1: the older sister would mostly um profit from it and

646
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: was always in control of the money and the tour

647
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:57,839
Speaker 1: schedule and all this stuff. Actually the sister villain. There's

648
00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: a place I might suggest our listeners go if they

649
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 1: want to know more about this. Um you actually might

650
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: really benefit from listening to this podcast. It's called Ghost Church, uh,

651
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:08,879
Speaker 1: and it really has a lot of fascinating stuff about

652
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,560
Speaker 1: American spiritualism in it. A friend of mine made it.

653
00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:14,759
Speaker 1: You you wouldn't know her. I don't like podcasts, so

654
00:36:15,680 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: they're hard for me to listen to, especially if it's

655
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:22,760
Speaker 1: a woman talking. It really bothers me. Well, the voices

656
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:28,840
Speaker 1: are so hard. Get one of those, like Mafia voice changers,

657
00:36:28,880 --> 00:36:30,759
Speaker 1: so that it goes like it makes her sound like

658
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 1: a man. I just hope it doesn't get political, because

659
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 1: I just don't like when podcasts get political. Jamie, you

660
00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 1: may be a great candidate from my new device, the

661
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:43,879
Speaker 1: Jocko Willick podcast voice changer. If you want to listen

662
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:46,120
Speaker 1: to a podcast by a woman but you don't want

663
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:48,719
Speaker 1: it to be woke, you just turned this on and

664
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,400
Speaker 1: it sounds like that Navy seal guy who started the

665
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:53,719
Speaker 1: grift of Navy seals, writing books and making millions of

666
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:57,600
Speaker 1: dollars and now as a podcast. Everyone like, Look you want,

667
00:36:57,960 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 1: whoever you want? The lady from Cereal one of the

668
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 1: NPR ladies. Uh you You can make any ladies sound

669
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: like Jocko Willick and thus not woke. Wow, Okay, cool,

670
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: I'm in. We also have a reverse device that makes

671
00:37:12,120 --> 00:37:15,960
Speaker 1: Dr Jordan B. Peterson sound like Kamala Harris, so like

672
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: whatever you like. What Sorry, I'm just I am trying

673
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: to imagine Sir Jordan Peterson aphorisms smoking in her voice.

674
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:31,359
Speaker 1: It's pretty far. Yeah, exactly, by making it making it

675
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 1: good for whether you're everywhere or an insufferable left winger,

676
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to podcasts that you shouldn't

677
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: be listening to based on the things you say on Facebook,

678
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 1: by our voice changing devices. God, what a long, pointless bit.

679
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:52,839
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry the right we got there? So yeah,

680
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: it's it's the Fox sisters, you know, get themselves in

681
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: a little bit of trouble. Um. The neighbors come over

682
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:01,959
Speaker 1: and one of the visitor suggests, like trying to create

683
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:03,799
Speaker 1: a code for the ghosts that can wrap all the

684
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: letters of the alphabet. And this really expands the number

685
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:09,959
Speaker 1: of things you can do in a seyance. Um. There's

686
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 1: a funny moment where like the girls are pretending to

687
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: be a murdered peddler buried in the basement, So the

688
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:17,240
Speaker 1: adults try to excavate the basement, but then it rains

689
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: just in time to like flood the basement, so they

690
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 1: can't continue the excavation. So like the rumors keep spreading,

691
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:25,839
Speaker 1: and soon the Fox girls are traveling all around I say,

692
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 1: the United States, like the East, but that was most

693
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: of the United States at this point. It's why I mean,

694
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 1: like it does get them access to like all these

695
00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:38,960
Speaker 1: like educational like ship never would access to if you're

696
00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:42,440
Speaker 1: a girl in like this is your best bet. Katie

697
00:38:42,480 --> 00:38:45,839
Speaker 1: Fox lived with Horace Greeley for a while, Like it's

698
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 1: like all this fucking wild stuff, like they're They're older

699
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:52,759
Speaker 1: sister gets involved at one point and like, well, that's

700
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. The older sister is the one that's

701
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: running the business. Yeah. She turns it into like a

702
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:02,280
Speaker 1: solid grift um and and she becomes a medium as well,

703
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 1: and like now it's a whole production. Yeah. And and

704
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 1: it's a the claim that Laa makes who is their

705
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:11,719
Speaker 1: older sister, like in her version of events, which is

706
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 1: her like claiming that this is all legitimate. Yeah. Seeing

707
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:19,440
Speaker 1: what her sisters were doing made her think about the

708
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 1: work of a guy named Andrew Jackson Davis who was

709
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:24,320
Speaker 1: a best selling author at the time. And Andrew Jackson

710
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:28,760
Speaker 1: Davis wrote The Divine Principles of Nature Um. His work

711
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 1: itself was based on the writings of an eighteenth century

712
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:36,800
Speaker 1: European mystic, theologian and scientist named Emmanuel Swedenborg, who again

713
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:41,160
Speaker 1: that prince that Bolotski was hangings big Swedenborg guy to um. Now.

714
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 1: Swedenborg wrote that all human experience was a fraction of

715
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:48,120
Speaker 1: a spirit larger spiritual universe. UM. In eighteen forty seven,

716
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: David Davis had like written his book which kind of

717
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 1: made Swedenborg's theories popular. Um. And this is the first

718
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:56,240
Speaker 1: time we get this. It's kind of like the early

719
00:39:56,360 --> 00:39:58,839
Speaker 1: version of the unit of the world is a simulation

720
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,760
Speaker 1: thing like his sween words. Idea is that the material

721
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:04,759
Speaker 1: world is like a shadow of the spiritual universe. Um.

722
00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: And this is how the dead are able to be

723
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 1: in regular contact with the living. Like the dead are

724
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: constantly interacting with us, even if we don't realize it

725
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 1: because we can't see the larger spiritual universe. Um. And

726
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,160
Speaker 1: he had Davis had predicted that the truth was eventually

727
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 1: going to like become present in the form of a

728
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:24,760
Speaker 1: living demonstration. Right, Eventually there's going to be physical proof

729
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: of the spiritual world and of the communication that happens

730
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: between those two worlds. So that's what Davis writes in

731
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:33,760
Speaker 1: this book that becomes very popular, and it's worth noting

732
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 1: Davis himself is a pretty good grifter. Um. He claims

733
00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:39,120
Speaker 1: to have psychic powers that make him a human X

734
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:41,919
Speaker 1: ray machine, so he would have this was I mean, yeah,

735
00:40:41,960 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 1: it's like Davis Swedenborg in like Anton Mesmer like all enough,

736
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: but yeah, he's a big part of those are like

737
00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:53,200
Speaker 1: the guys and there there's still I mean Davis in

738
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: particular still like hugely like mentioned in spirit like the

739
00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 1: we the place that I took a table tipping like

740
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: a spiritualist like demonstration. It's like the Andrew Jackson Davis building,

741
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:10,200
Speaker 1: like it's still super super present. And thing was like

742
00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:13,160
Speaker 1: he could see through your body and tell which organs

743
00:41:13,160 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: were sick and could diagnose health problems. Um. And he

744
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 1: would also he would have seance conversations with dead medical experts.

745
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:23,040
Speaker 1: This is exactly the griff that John of God executes

746
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: in Brazil direct line of descendant ideologically between Andrew Davis

747
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 1: and John of God, Who's this Brazilian grifter who is

748
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:33,520
Speaker 1: having seances with dead doctors who give him advice on

749
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: how to cure people, and then he does like psychic

750
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:38,759
Speaker 1: surgeries on them, right, Everyone after these guys is just

751
00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: taking apart pieces of the ship, they say, and making

752
00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:43,239
Speaker 1: new grifts out of them. Up to the present moment, right,

753
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 1: very little has been invented in like spiritualism and this

754
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:50,239
Speaker 1: like kind of wooy side of it that is new

755
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: in the last hundred and fifty years. It's just different

756
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:55,880
Speaker 1: mix ups. It's kind of like, I don't know, if

757
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 1: I knew more about hip hop, I'd probably be able

758
00:41:57,560 --> 00:41:59,359
Speaker 1: to make a good hip hop joke here, but I'm not.

759
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:02,319
Speaker 1: It is a lot of like recycled ideas or or

760
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: repackaged ideas as new technologies become available, because there's very

761
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 1: few like practicing spiritualists now, but it's more migrated movement. Yeah, exactly.

762
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: New Age is modern spiritualism, um anyway, Yeah, yeah, I

763
00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:22,759
Speaker 1: mean it's there. Yeah, it's it's like it's like I

764
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 1: don't know, um, it's like the Protestantism of Spiritualism or

765
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: something whatever, and I'm into a lot of it. Philosophy

766
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:32,840
Speaker 1: is probably more like the Catholicism of I don't know,

767
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 1: it's useless to try to make these comparisons, but whatever.

768
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:37,600
Speaker 1: Everything that like we're dealing with today, and like the

769
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 1: weird New Age WU movement. The pieces of it are

770
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 1: being invented by these guys. Now, um, and so Leiah

771
00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:47,880
Speaker 1: you know, decides and I think again as a grifter

772
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: layas like, Okay, this book is a best seller. That's

773
00:42:50,640 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 1: what we need to like angle this as is like

774
00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:56,239
Speaker 1: we're the physical manifestation of the spiritual reality of the

775
00:42:56,320 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: universe that Davis predicted was coming. Um. And the fact

776
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 1: that all of this starts to go viral and local

777
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: news stories, um, just sort of causes an eruption of

778
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:12,400
Speaker 1: this very shallowly buried desire for supernatural communication. And again,

779
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:16,319
Speaker 1: people always wish that they could talk with their dead

780
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:18,719
Speaker 1: loved ones, right, That's probably as long as there have

781
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 1: been humans, there has been a desire to like communicate

782
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,799
Speaker 1: with people who are gone. Versions of sciences have been

783
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 1: happening for absolutely absolutely Yeah this and so once this

784
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 1: people very quickly and obviously there is a kind of

785
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: conservative religious backlash against this. We're not going to get

786
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:37,239
Speaker 1: into that a lot, because that's not the story we're

787
00:43:37,239 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 1: telling today. Um, but most regular people are pretty happy

788
00:43:43,280 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 1: to like buy into this, at least for a little while,

789
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 1: and the idea takes off like fucking gang Busters. Uh.

790
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: Maggie and her sisters visit New York City in eighteen fifty,

791
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 1: and in short order they were fitted and appeared in

792
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: front of some of the most prominent people in the

793
00:43:56,600 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 1: city doing their medium stick, including James Finnimore Cooper. Uh.

794
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: They raised his sister for a post mortem conversation. Um,

795
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:10,360
Speaker 1: and Cooper walks away very impressed. So suddenly spiritualism is everywhere.

796
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 1: Magazines and newspapers launched, the mediums set up or mediums

797
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 1: set up shop in every state. People immediately start copying

798
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:20,480
Speaker 1: the Fox sisters, and most of them are teenage girls

799
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: and young women. UM yeah, yeah, which is which is

800
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 1: like a cool that's part of like and and that

801
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: happens in the second revival of spiritualism too. Is like

802
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: it's a way for like one of the only ways

803
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 1: in America for like a woman to be a spiritual leader.

804
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:38,319
Speaker 1: And I think that the Shakers were kind of one

805
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: of the only other movements where that was possible, that

806
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:44,680
Speaker 1: it was like a woman like in this period, there's

807
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 1: a degree to which the Southern Baptists are doing some

808
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:50,279
Speaker 1: of that. Um. But but you know, we we talked

809
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 1: about that this week, Like that was one of the

810
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 1: things that had made them controversial more in like the

811
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. Um. But yeah, like and so this is

812
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:02,440
Speaker 1: there's a there's an ability to like gain social mobility

813
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 1: as the one woman by doing this, some control over

814
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:07,880
Speaker 1: your own life, some money, and also it's justified in

815
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: like their quote unquote theology. The idea is that uh,

816
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 1: young women and girls have pure souls if they're virgins,

817
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: which you have to assume like you're always going to

818
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 1: claim you are. Um, and that makes them easy conduits

819
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 1: for the spirit world, is that they're which also like

820
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:26,239
Speaker 1: it like you know, blows back in the expected way

821
00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: where it's like, as spiritualism goes on, women are mediums

822
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: but like men, right, the theory and the history and

823
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 1: all this stuff. So they're there. It's they're still disfranchised.

824
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:41,720
Speaker 1: And that's one different Um. But yes, exactly, she controlled

825
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:45,920
Speaker 1: the narrative. Yeah. Now, by eighteen fifty four, spiritualists claimed

826
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: there were between one and two million spiritualists in the

827
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,400
Speaker 1: United States. So obviously that's fake, that's for sure, but

828
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: a lot, certainly hundreds of thousands. Um. It depends on

829
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:57,520
Speaker 1: how you like, not necessarily spiritualists, and that this was

830
00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 1: the center of their theology because most people don't becomes

831
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 1: spiritualists and that they discard everything else. But but it's like, well,

832
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:08,000
Speaker 1: I'm still Catholic, but I also believe this person can

833
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: talk to the dead, you know, yeah, Catholicism or whatever. Yeah,

834
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:16,360
Speaker 1: which is still kind of how it uh functions today,

835
00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 1: Like it's most religious for most people. Um My, mom,

836
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: I don't think every knew a goddamn thing about Hinduism,

837
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:27,240
Speaker 1: um and was just kind of more or less Christian

838
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: all her life, but believe very strongly in reincarnation, just

839
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: like people do this, right, This is just how human

840
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:34,439
Speaker 1: beings are. You take bits and pieces of what other

841
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 1: people tell you and you incorporated into your and that's fine.

842
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:42,399
Speaker 1: There's a lot of spiritualism stuff that I'm like, yeah, sure, yeah, sure, whatever, Yeah, yeah,

843
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 1: it's whatever. I don't care. Um, but yeah, there's a

844
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:48,080
Speaker 1: lot of people are into spiritual and again it's probably

845
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:50,760
Speaker 1: useless to say they're spiritualist, but I wouldn't be surprised

846
00:46:50,760 --> 00:46:53,360
Speaker 1: if wanted. Two million Americans became convinced that, like you

847
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 1: could talk to ghosts through mediums, right, And a lot

848
00:46:57,000 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 1: of this also had to do with the fact that

849
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:01,800
Speaker 1: it's like I don't know, I feel that also gets

850
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 1: like loss of the discussion sometimes of like this was

851
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:07,799
Speaker 1: a science or or sorry, this was a religion that

852
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: was presented itself and still presents itself as like well,

853
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 1: we're backed by science, and like this was a time

854
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:17,239
Speaker 1: where like yeah it was yeah, which I know, Boski

855
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:20,239
Speaker 1: you know goes not on as well like oh yes, yeah,

856
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 1: um yeah, they which I think is why so many

857
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:27,319
Speaker 1: people were willing to buy into it was because there

858
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 1: was so much science ship they never would have believed

859
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 1: was possible being proven, so they're like, well why not this, Yeah,

860
00:47:33,600 --> 00:47:35,520
Speaker 1: we'll be getting that. But that that is a huge

861
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:37,399
Speaker 1: like the fact that this is a time in which,

862
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:41,320
Speaker 1: for the first time in history, people are like starting

863
00:47:41,320 --> 00:47:44,320
Speaker 1: to invent things that like you can't imagine some guys

864
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 1: zapping into the world out of like a lightning bolt,

865
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 1: like a sword or whatever. Like you can imagine some

866
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:52,120
Speaker 1: sort of but like once you have like automotives and

867
00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:56,319
Speaker 1: electric lights, it does seem a bit different. You're like, okay, yeah,

868
00:47:56,360 --> 00:47:58,799
Speaker 1: sure we can talk to GHEs why fucking nut, Yeah,

869
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 1: I can imagine some sucking ancient giant building this big

870
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 1: statue or whatever. But like yeah, now, now things are

871
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 1: gonna anyway whatever. Um so uh yeah. By the time

872
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:14,399
Speaker 1: Bolovotsky makes it to the United States in eighteen seventy three,

873
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:17,879
Speaker 1: spiritualism has passed its first great wave and a lot

874
00:48:17,920 --> 00:48:21,480
Speaker 1: of folks probably figured it was dying out. Um, Helena Blovotski,

875
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 1: maybe because of the Civil War. That stuff like peaked

876
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:29,200
Speaker 1: in the Civil War and then defined. Yeah, and so

877
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: it's declined. It's it's well passed its height at this period.

878
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: And this probably is probably why for the first year

879
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: or so she's in the United States, Bolovotsky doesn't really

880
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:41,040
Speaker 1: make any effort to establish herself as a guru uh

881
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 1: legitimately destitute who her first move in the city now

882
00:48:44,600 --> 00:48:46,600
Speaker 1: she is still a grifter. So she moves there, and

883
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 1: she immediately tries to like notifies the New York Sun

884
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:51,960
Speaker 1: that she has arrived in the city because she's a

885
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:55,319
Speaker 1: noble woman, right, um. And there is a lot less

886
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: happening back then. So the Sun's sensor sends a reporter,

887
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:01,360
Speaker 1: Anna Ballard, to interview Blovotsky at the house where she

888
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:05,400
Speaker 1: lived with several working class immigrant families. Blovotsky claims that

889
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: she and a number of other aristocratic Russian women had

890
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:11,520
Speaker 1: been studying medicine in Zurich to become actual doctors, which

891
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:13,400
Speaker 1: is not a thing that a lot of women can

892
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 1: do in this time. When suddenly the Emperor of Russia

893
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:19,680
Speaker 1: changed his mind and forbade women from learning men's trades.

894
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:21,439
Speaker 1: And she was like, and so all of these women

895
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:23,360
Speaker 1: who had learned science, we all had to flee to

896
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:25,480
Speaker 1: the four corners of the world to not go back

897
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:28,000
Speaker 1: to Russia. So I was like, that's the first. Like,

898
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:29,960
Speaker 1: I don't know what her grift plan for this was.

899
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:31,840
Speaker 1: There must have been one. She wouldn't reach out to

900
00:49:31,880 --> 00:49:34,320
Speaker 1: the Sun for nothing. Right, this isn't going nowhere? But

901
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:37,840
Speaker 1: where is this going? It doesn't go anywhere, It doesn't work.

902
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 1: The Sun runs this as front page news on July twenty,

903
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:43,840
Speaker 1: but they don't mention her name. Uh. They ended the

904
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:47,879
Speaker 1: story with the words quote these accomplished women, polyglots, travelers, scientists,

905
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:50,600
Speaker 1: nearly moneyless, are able to do much and wants something

906
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:53,640
Speaker 1: to do. But like it's just a human interest story

907
00:49:53,680 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 1: and they don't name her, so she doesn't. Actually there's

908
00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:59,759
Speaker 1: no interesting. She doesn't get shipped from this um. So

909
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:01,960
Speaker 1: she had been hoping this would kind of work as

910
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:04,279
Speaker 1: a want ad and like she would be able to

911
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: get some sort of a job or some sort of

912
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:08,680
Speaker 1: attention she could turn into money from it, But it doesn't,

913
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:12,040
Speaker 1: so she languishes for a while. She uses her mystique

914
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:14,280
Speaker 1: as a Russian countess to like she's able to convince

915
00:50:14,320 --> 00:50:16,759
Speaker 1: people she is a Russian countess, and she's able to

916
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 1: convince people to like. She gets a job writing advertising

917
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 1: cards and stuff like. She gets a couple of weird

918
00:50:22,160 --> 00:50:25,120
Speaker 1: gigs because people are impressed by her background, but she

919
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: can't really hack it with any more substantial work. She

920
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:29,719
Speaker 1: like tries to be a leather worker at one point

921
00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: and just is no good at it. So frustrated, she

922
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 1: lapses into her girlhood habit of telling stories about the supernatural.

923
00:50:37,160 --> 00:50:40,600
Speaker 1: Her biographer Mead writes, quote, Apart from spooky stories, Helena

924
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:44,720
Speaker 1: amiably dispensed information about people's pasts to anyone who asked.

925
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 1: Miss Parker, for one, was greatly startled to hear about

926
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 1: incidents in her own life that were she thought only

927
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 1: known to herself. When she asked to be put in

928
00:50:51,719 --> 00:50:54,880
Speaker 1: touch with her dead mother, Helena refused. Her mother progressed

929
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:58,360
Speaker 1: beyond reach involved herself in higher matters. Now, since Madam

930
00:50:58,480 --> 00:51:01,080
Speaker 1: continually claimed to be under the already of unseen powers,

931
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 1: Elizabeth and the others at too too too, Madison assumed

932
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: she must be speaking of her spirit guides and naturally

933
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:09,440
Speaker 1: concluded that she was a spiritualist. So she's doing cold

934
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 1: reading on these people, right, Like whenever someone's like, oh

935
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 1: they knew things about me, it's probably goes okay. Did

936
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 1: they start by asking a series of questions that they

937
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:18,400
Speaker 1: then turn into like a revelation, you know, right, like

938
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 1: leading questions. And then if they start to ask for

939
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 1: things that are too specific and you don't know anything

940
00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:27,239
Speaker 1: about you, and you say, oh there you redirect or

941
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:30,440
Speaker 1: you're concerned with high matters. Yeah right, yeah, so that

942
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:32,560
Speaker 1: sounds like a classic like I I didn't know anything

943
00:51:32,560 --> 00:51:34,759
Speaker 1: about you before you entered the room. Good thing. Now

944
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 1: they assume she's a spiritualist because of what she's doing

945
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:40,959
Speaker 1: again cold reading. This is like the period in which

946
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:43,480
Speaker 1: it's invented. She's one of the first people doing this,

947
00:51:43,680 --> 00:51:47,239
Speaker 1: at least in in a in an organized way. Um,

948
00:51:47,360 --> 00:51:50,520
Speaker 1: and well, yeah, I mean spirits, spiritualists. If you were

949
00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:52,440
Speaker 1: if you were a medium that didn't get busted. You

950
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:56,680
Speaker 1: were really good at doing that. The voices that she

951
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: claimed to hear were not, in her mind, the dead

952
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,480
Speaker 1: or spirits of any kind. She insisted that they were

953
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:06,000
Speaker 1: real living men, her Master Moreya and Kote Whomie whose

954
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 1: I guess also her master, but he's always called kut

955
00:52:08,239 --> 00:52:10,800
Speaker 1: Whomie and the other one is usually just called the master. Now.

956
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:13,399
Speaker 1: She insisted again that these are real last dudes who

957
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 1: live in Tibet that she had like met and stuff.

958
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 1: They just are keeping up the conversation via psychic phone calls.

959
00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:24,560
Speaker 1: Um so Blovotsky again. It's she's assumed to be a

960
00:52:24,600 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 1: spiritualist by the first people who like meet her doing

961
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:29,960
Speaker 1: mystic stuff. But that's not really what she's doing. Um

962
00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:31,800
Speaker 1: And for more than a year she just kind of

963
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:34,840
Speaker 1: runs through friends, fails at a couple of businesses. She

964
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 1: nearly burns down her apartment building because she smokes a

965
00:52:37,719 --> 00:52:42,560
Speaker 1: pound a day of tobacco. Um. Like, that's that's probably true,

966
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:46,240
Speaker 1: like literally a pound a day of tobacco. Um. How

967
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: it's fucking dope. That's rat as hell. That's just cool.

968
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:54,000
Speaker 1: That's just hot girl shit. It's just a hot girl ship.

969
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: That was hot girl ship, Jamie, we need to go

970
00:52:56,719 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: back to the drying. We need to go back to

971
00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: the drawing board on hot girl, ship isn't it is not?

972
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:04,360
Speaker 1: Now you know what will make you a hot girl?

973
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:08,760
Speaker 1: I'm so disappointed if you enjoy if you start huffing

974
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:14,759
Speaker 1: jewel flavored vaporizer pods. Jewel pods they're like cigarettes, but

975
00:53:15,080 --> 00:53:19,560
Speaker 1: more convenient. You can smoke them anywhere, in an airplane bathroom,

976
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 1: in your cousin's basement, on the top of a mountain.

977
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:33,439
Speaker 1: Jewels catch the addiction. You're you're fire, Robert, I'm sorry,

978
00:53:33,440 --> 00:53:38,160
Speaker 1: you're fired. Do you not like the delicious taste of

979
00:53:38,200 --> 00:53:43,640
Speaker 1: jewel tobacco? The delicious tastes a pound of jewels. Okay?

980
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 1: If he Ky was sunking a pound of jewel pods,

981
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:54,600
Speaker 1: just the little plastics rectangles underneath, I don't know why

982
00:53:54,680 --> 00:54:00,879
Speaker 1: that's a more pleasurable just fucking burning through them like

983
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: like like, do not influence him. Okay, But if someone

984
00:54:05,520 --> 00:54:11,440
Speaker 1: wants to do John Wick with his guns like always

985
00:54:11,480 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: like like like that's Helena Blovotsky, but just with like jewels,

986
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:17,040
Speaker 1: switching out doing like cool moves to pop out the

987
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:21,320
Speaker 1: cartridges and put a new one on fire, Robert, that's funny,

988
00:54:21,360 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 1: I mean temporarily, but I can't. Okay, Well, here's here's

989
00:54:27,120 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 1: some more ads for our primary sponsor, the tobacco industry. Ah,

990
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:39,560
Speaker 1: we're back, you know, Jamie. What I like most about

991
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 1: tobacco and tobacco products is their absolute lack of any

992
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:49,160
Speaker 1: health consequences tobacco. It's like medicine. Anyway, back to asked

993
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:53,280
Speaker 1: that hunk of my dad's lung, that's no longer about that. Well,

994
00:54:53,600 --> 00:54:56,359
Speaker 1: maybe he didn't need that lung. It was slowing him down.

995
00:54:56,880 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: You think he's about so much. He's so much stronger now,

996
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:04,399
Speaker 1: just like Helena Blovotsky was. Actually she's in terrible health

997
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:07,719
Speaker 1: her entire life. Um yeah, that is one of the

998
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:10,960
Speaker 1: wildest guy's vote because she does so many like a

999
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:13,000
Speaker 1: lot of it is lies, but she does genuinely go

1000
00:55:13,080 --> 00:55:14,640
Speaker 1: a lot of places and do a lot of things.

1001
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:17,040
Speaker 1: And I'm like, but she was like in pain. She's

1002
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: like nearly losing a limb from gang Green and she Yeah,

1003
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:24,680
Speaker 1: she smokes a pound of tobacco a day. Be a

1004
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:27,840
Speaker 1: just stay home and be a novelist. My god, what

1005
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:31,839
Speaker 1: she's gonna do She's going to be anyway, she gets

1006
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: an inheritance from her family at one point. Some sources

1007
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,440
Speaker 1: say she spends a bunch of time living in like

1008
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 1: a hotel, a fancy hotel, uh that. Other times others

1009
00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:46,520
Speaker 1: she apparently like wastes a lot of it on a

1010
00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:49,000
Speaker 1: farm scam. She gets like conned into investing into a

1011
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 1: farm that can't make money. Um whatever, she does a

1012
00:55:54,040 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 1: bunch of ship. Obviously, there's different stories about like her habits.

1013
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:00,319
Speaker 1: Lockman says she was a teetotal or obviously lea. She

1014
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: smoked a lot of cigarettes, but she didn't she wouldn't drink,

1015
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:07,880
Speaker 1: didn't do anything else. Spiritualists like they don't drink because

1016
00:56:08,040 --> 00:56:10,839
Speaker 1: they are always accused of being alcoholics and that's why

1017
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:13,239
Speaker 1: they have visions. So they're like, no, we're sober. So

1018
00:56:13,360 --> 00:56:17,319
Speaker 1: I will say probably true that she didn't drink. But

1019
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:19,960
Speaker 1: Mead claims she was heavily addicted to both hasheesh and

1020
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:23,239
Speaker 1: opium during this period. Um. Yeah, and it's one of

1021
00:56:23,239 --> 00:56:26,760
Speaker 1: those things. Actually she becomes in like the seventies and stuff,

1022
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:30,440
Speaker 1: like kind of a pot icon like a hundred years

1023
00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:33,960
Speaker 1: after her death. But like because she's supposedly smoking hash

1024
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:37,560
Speaker 1: during this like Madame Blovotsky is like gets involved in

1025
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:40,080
Speaker 1: Like she doesn't get involved, but like her image gets

1026
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:44,520
Speaker 1: involved in kind of the early marijuana and now as

1027
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:48,200
Speaker 1: of today, she's a she's a jewel icon. She's a

1028
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:51,360
Speaker 1: jewel that's right. She would have loved jewels, because everyone

1029
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:53,879
Speaker 1: does agree. She was a chain smoker with a kind

1030
00:56:53,880 --> 00:56:57,359
Speaker 1: of dedication that today you only see in Serbia. Now,

1031
00:56:57,560 --> 00:57:00,120
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four, she was interviewed by in their

1032
00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: journalist UM and it's noted by me that she was

1033
00:57:03,360 --> 00:57:06,400
Speaker 1: scantily clad on the floor of an apartment when this reporter,

1034
00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 1: Hannah Wolf, starts to talk to her. UM and Wolf

1035
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: I think right, works for the Post and gets like

1036
00:57:12,160 --> 00:57:16,680
Speaker 1: fascinated by her, follows her around. She she like Blovotsky

1037
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: tells her about fighting with Garibaldi and like shows her

1038
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:23,080
Speaker 1: her scars. Wolf claims that Blovotsky tells her about the

1039
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:27,880
Speaker 1: benefits of opium and hash for insigning the imagination. UM

1040
00:57:27,960 --> 00:57:31,920
Speaker 1: not inaccurate. Yeah, She she charms this reporter, who's a

1041
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:34,640
Speaker 1: reasonably well connected person. Through this reporter, she meets a

1042
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:39,480
Speaker 1: friend of Hannah's named Mr. W who the two get

1043
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:42,760
Speaker 1: into the subject of spiritualism and Mr W is into seances,

1044
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:47,160
Speaker 1: and Blovotsky claims, I don't know anything about stand for

1045
00:57:47,640 --> 00:57:50,160
Speaker 1: we don't know. In her biography is there's a shipload

1046
00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:53,040
Speaker 1: of like Mr X and Y and random letters like

1047
00:57:53,080 --> 00:57:56,400
Speaker 1: it's very frustrating X. She is one of the most

1048
00:57:56,440 --> 00:57:59,360
Speaker 1: annoying people to read about because like every third page

1049
00:57:59,400 --> 00:58:01,440
Speaker 1: is a five page age aggression about people from a

1050
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:07,480
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years ago. Yeah, having and having unverifiable

1051
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:10,800
Speaker 1: arguments that are central to the point being made by

1052
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 1: the biographer but also completely impossible to back up. You

1053
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:19,520
Speaker 1: don't raise eyebrows, don't name people. Mr W like, what

1054
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 1: the well I think I don't think that's his Christian name.

1055
00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 1: So Mr W is a fan of spiritualism, and Bolotsky

1056
00:58:26,840 --> 00:58:30,600
Speaker 1: probably she must be lying, because even if even though

1057
00:58:30,720 --> 00:58:32,680
Speaker 1: she's certainly full of shit about a bunch of stuff,

1058
00:58:32,680 --> 00:58:35,520
Speaker 1: she's very well educated on the occult and on religion.

1059
00:58:35,680 --> 00:58:38,360
Speaker 1: There's no way that in eighteen seventy four she didn't

1060
00:58:38,360 --> 00:58:41,680
Speaker 1: know what spiritualism is. But she claimed, I've never heard

1061
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:46,080
Speaker 1: of spiritualism. Yes, what do you call it? A seance? Yes,

1062
00:58:46,200 --> 00:58:50,120
Speaker 1: let's go to this seance? And that sounds very exciting. Well,

1063
00:58:50,120 --> 00:58:52,360
Speaker 1: that just sounds like she's gonna go and then all

1064
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:56,880
Speaker 1: of a sudden perform very well, they're interesting. Is that

1065
00:58:56,920 --> 00:58:59,680
Speaker 1: exactly what happens? Yeah, I'm gonna quote from meat again here.

1066
00:59:00,120 --> 00:59:02,320
Speaker 1: Soon after that, she met Hannah and Mr W on

1067
00:59:02,400 --> 00:59:04,760
Speaker 1: the street and animatedly informed them that as a result

1068
00:59:04,760 --> 00:59:07,800
Speaker 1: of the medium's lecture, she had began to develop occult powers.

1069
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:10,440
Speaker 1: Having placed some photographs in a bureau, she found her

1070
00:59:10,440 --> 00:59:14,120
Speaker 1: astonishment that spirits had tinted them like watercolor paintings. She

1071
00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:16,880
Speaker 1: invited Hannah and Mr W back to the cheap apartment

1072
00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:19,880
Speaker 1: she shared with three journalists. Her roommates were two men

1073
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: and a woman, a decidedly bohemian arrangement for the eighteen seventies,

1074
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:25,320
Speaker 1: but at least she had a small bedroom of her

1075
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:27,720
Speaker 1: own off the dining room. When Hannah and Mr W

1076
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:30,560
Speaker 1: stopped in to see the spirit art, Helena led them

1077
00:59:30,560 --> 00:59:32,560
Speaker 1: to a sideboard in the dining room, pulled out some

1078
00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:35,480
Speaker 1: colored pictures and explained that the coloring seemed chiefly to

1079
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:37,440
Speaker 1: be done in the night and when nature was in

1080
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:40,320
Speaker 1: her negative mood. Hannah did not believe this for a minute.

1081
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 1: Speaking privately to the other residents of the apartment, she

1082
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:45,320
Speaker 1: learned that they too had been skeptical of Madam's occult

1083
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 1: powers and had laid weight for the spirit who worked

1084
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,360
Speaker 1: in the night Watches and had discovered it materialized in

1085
00:59:50,360 --> 00:59:55,400
Speaker 1: the form of Maldadam Lavotsky dressed. Um so yeah, like

1086
00:59:55,480 --> 01:00:01,560
Speaker 1: they had yes, yes, um so. At this stage, again,

1087
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:04,320
Speaker 1: she's not good enough to like trick her friends, and

1088
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:06,840
Speaker 1: she probably lives with journalists in part because journalists are

1089
01:00:06,840 --> 01:00:09,880
Speaker 1: like bohemian weirdos and more into the living in that

1090
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:12,680
Speaker 1: kind of an arrangement. But also she's desperately trying to

1091
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:14,960
Speaker 1: get attention for something, right, That's what all of the

1092
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:17,640
Speaker 1: first people she starts talking to the US or press,

1093
01:00:17,680 --> 01:00:19,880
Speaker 1: she like really wants to get her name out there, right.

1094
01:00:20,320 --> 01:00:22,840
Speaker 1: Um she gets that, you know, no press is bad press.

1095
01:00:23,560 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 1: Um So Hannah Wolf kind of quickly, well not all

1096
01:00:27,120 --> 01:00:29,120
Speaker 1: that quickly, but eventually it does realize what this lady

1097
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:30,880
Speaker 1: is may be full of ship and I don't need

1098
01:00:30,920 --> 01:00:34,240
Speaker 1: to be hanging out with her too much. Um. But

1099
01:00:34,280 --> 01:00:38,280
Speaker 1: Blovotsky sends her a manuscript which she claims is a

1100
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:42,120
Speaker 1: satire of American politics. The way Bolovotsky describes it, she's

1101
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:47,000
Speaker 1: basically written Confederacy of like Dunce's um and Hannah Wolf

1102
01:00:47,040 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 1: starts reading it and it's like this is number one.

1103
01:00:49,080 --> 01:00:50,960
Speaker 1: This is very bad, but number two like this seems

1104
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:54,360
Speaker 1: really weird, like none of it reads properly. And she's

1105
01:00:54,400 --> 01:00:56,960
Speaker 1: like hanging out with some mutual friends who like are

1106
01:00:57,000 --> 01:00:59,440
Speaker 1: also friends of Blovotsky and shows it to them and

1107
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 1: they're like, so, like, a couple of weeks ago, we

1108
01:01:02,080 --> 01:01:05,560
Speaker 1: gave this lady a Russian book and she just translated

1109
01:01:05,600 --> 01:01:08,800
Speaker 1: into English and replaced Czar with president, and that's what

1110
01:01:08,880 --> 01:01:16,760
Speaker 1: she's claiming as a satire of American politics. That's a

1111
01:01:16,840 --> 01:01:23,880
Speaker 1: good one. She got their asses. That weird. Yeah, it's

1112
01:01:23,880 --> 01:01:25,720
Speaker 1: just it's funny because it's like there's a lot of

1113
01:01:26,200 --> 01:01:30,360
Speaker 1: the way you're describing a lot of her behavior. It's like, Okay,

1114
01:01:30,400 --> 01:01:33,000
Speaker 1: what's the end game? Like it sounds like she's trying

1115
01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:36,320
Speaker 1: to like piggyback onto the adjacent movements to what she

1116
01:01:36,400 --> 01:01:39,880
Speaker 1: was trying to do in other locations, but like, what's

1117
01:01:39,920 --> 01:01:43,400
Speaker 1: the end game? What is the end game? We know

1118
01:01:43,440 --> 01:01:48,080
Speaker 1: what the end game for us, as Jamie, when the

1119
01:01:48,160 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 1: FDA comes after us for the vast racketeering scheme that

1120
01:01:52,720 --> 01:01:57,840
Speaker 1: I've I've put together talking about that we are we

1121
01:01:57,880 --> 01:02:02,560
Speaker 1: are allowed to talk to that uncle Robert's ghost potions

1122
01:02:04,680 --> 01:02:09,160
Speaker 1: I'm selling. I'm selling ectoplasm that stores well in your

1123
01:02:09,160 --> 01:02:15,760
Speaker 1: crevices and releases on demand. Yep. So by our ghost

1124
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:21,680
Speaker 1: potions and crevice gu time for an ad, you know? Anyway?

1125
01:02:22,240 --> 01:02:25,680
Speaker 1: Uh So she moves after this, you know, things with

1126
01:02:25,720 --> 01:02:28,040
Speaker 1: Hannah fall apart and with those friends. This happens a

1127
01:02:28,080 --> 01:02:31,840
Speaker 1: couple of times. Early On is like an artist. Yeah,

1128
01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:34,240
Speaker 1: she's moving around New York City because she's a con artist.

1129
01:02:34,920 --> 01:02:37,040
Speaker 1: She does at this point grow her hair out into

1130
01:02:37,080 --> 01:02:40,720
Speaker 1: what Mead describes as a blond afro, which I desperately

1131
01:02:40,760 --> 01:02:42,600
Speaker 1: want to see a picture of. There do not appear

1132
01:02:42,640 --> 01:02:45,040
Speaker 1: to be excellent ones, but that sounds christ On how

1133
01:02:45,080 --> 01:02:48,480
Speaker 1: she looked as an I can't imagine it, neither can I.

1134
01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:50,600
Speaker 1: I don't know what the funk that it doesn't seem

1135
01:02:50,640 --> 01:02:54,920
Speaker 1: like her hair texture. Okay, if you look up pictures

1136
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:57,000
Speaker 1: of Helena Blovotsky and try to imagine her in a

1137
01:02:57,040 --> 01:02:58,960
Speaker 1: blond afrow, someone will be one of those AI s

1138
01:02:59,040 --> 01:03:04,520
Speaker 1: on it. Um, God, it's very funny to think about. Um.

1139
01:03:04,560 --> 01:03:07,120
Speaker 1: And Yeah, so this is again summer of eighteen seventy four,

1140
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:11,760
Speaker 1: she sets a new motto for herself. Try right, don't

1141
01:03:12,720 --> 01:03:15,200
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what you try, and just try quote

1142
01:03:15,240 --> 01:03:17,120
Speaker 1: to be sure. She had been trying all along, but

1143
01:03:17,160 --> 01:03:19,520
Speaker 1: efforts had been confined to the realm of the impractical.

1144
01:03:19,880 --> 01:03:22,560
Speaker 1: Perhaps it was time to attempt something different. Laying aside

1145
01:03:22,600 --> 01:03:24,440
Speaker 1: her gimmicks, she found a way of meeting the much

1146
01:03:24,480 --> 01:03:28,400
Speaker 1: advice admired Andrew Jackson Davis, the first important figure in

1147
01:03:28,440 --> 01:03:31,400
Speaker 1: American spiritualism and a man whose writings were respected throughout

1148
01:03:31,400 --> 01:03:34,240
Speaker 1: the world. Even through though the Poughkeepsie see or knew

1149
01:03:34,280 --> 01:03:36,880
Speaker 1: nothing about Helena, he accurately gauged her true worth and

1150
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:40,360
Speaker 1: extended a generous welcome. So she's somehow managed to like

1151
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:43,760
Speaker 1: manages to like kind of get this guy on her

1152
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 1: side right like and and she's something that's she's she's

1153
01:03:47,240 --> 01:03:50,120
Speaker 1: a very charismatic person. She's good at reading people and

1154
01:03:50,160 --> 01:03:55,120
Speaker 1: manipulating them. Um and media are charismatic. For a while

1155
01:03:55,280 --> 01:03:57,360
Speaker 1: that she's going to plagiarize the hell out of him later,

1156
01:03:57,400 --> 01:03:59,440
Speaker 1: but for a while, the two our friends. She visits

1157
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:02,680
Speaker 1: him daily. Uh, he takes pity on her money troubles,

1158
01:04:02,680 --> 01:04:04,680
Speaker 1: and he gets her a job writing articles for a

1159
01:04:04,720 --> 01:04:09,080
Speaker 1: magazine called Psychic Studies. Blovotsky's articles were interesting because she

1160
01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:11,600
Speaker 1: seems to view she she views very much the seance

1161
01:04:11,640 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 1: and medium stuff as not important and is primarily writing

1162
01:04:15,520 --> 01:04:18,400
Speaker 1: about it to make the case for a larger occult worldview,

1163
01:04:18,680 --> 01:04:21,120
Speaker 1: where like speaking to the dead is more more like

1164
01:04:21,160 --> 01:04:23,840
Speaker 1: a piece of a mosaic. That's she's kind of cribbed

1165
01:04:23,880 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: together from bits of half remembered heavily manipulated Buddhist and

1166
01:04:27,280 --> 01:04:30,720
Speaker 1: Hindu mythology. And it was around this time, running out

1167
01:04:30,720 --> 01:04:32,480
Speaker 1: of money and people who listened to her just say

1168
01:04:32,480 --> 01:04:35,440
Speaker 1: ship that Helena Blovotsky came across an article in the

1169
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 1: Sun by a fellow named Colonel Henry Steele Old Coot.

1170
01:04:40,240 --> 01:04:45,439
Speaker 1: Oh m hm oh sorry, I didn't have any other

1171
01:04:46,040 --> 01:04:47,880
Speaker 1: That was the end of my reactions. That was that

1172
01:04:47,960 --> 01:04:49,240
Speaker 1: was That was just that. Yeah, that was a dun

1173
01:04:49,320 --> 01:04:52,640
Speaker 1: dundone moment. Anyway. So Okt is an interesting guy. He

1174
01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:55,640
Speaker 1: was a colonel because he had like done some ship

1175
01:04:55,720 --> 01:04:59,680
Speaker 1: during the Civil War, mainly like organizational ship. He was

1176
01:04:59,720 --> 01:05:04,400
Speaker 1: like a a legitimately like really talented organizer. He's a lawyer, um,

1177
01:05:04,440 --> 01:05:07,520
Speaker 1: but he's also this guy he like abandons his wife

1178
01:05:07,560 --> 01:05:10,560
Speaker 1: after he gets bored um. He's like he's searching for

1179
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:13,040
Speaker 1: something in his life beyond like being an upper middle

1180
01:05:13,080 --> 01:05:16,560
Speaker 1: class victorian gentleman um, which is why he abandons his

1181
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:19,800
Speaker 1: wife and family. And he cons a newspaper into paying

1182
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:22,720
Speaker 1: for him to visit a farmhouse in Chittenton, Vermont, where

1183
01:05:22,720 --> 01:05:28,240
Speaker 1: a spiritual manifestation had reportedly occurred. Now he writes about this,

1184
01:05:28,400 --> 01:05:31,160
Speaker 1: these guys, the Eddie brothers, who claim their Scottish great

1185
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:33,800
Speaker 1: great great grandmother had been a witch and like their

1186
01:05:33,840 --> 01:05:36,479
Speaker 1: family had the ability to summon phantoms, so they would

1187
01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:38,840
Speaker 1: like claim they would do seances where they would claim

1188
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:42,680
Speaker 1: to to to raise the ghosts of dead indigenous people

1189
01:05:43,440 --> 01:05:48,000
Speaker 1: um and talk to them. And one of the most sinister,

1190
01:05:48,680 --> 01:05:53,680
Speaker 1: shitty fucking things of that spiritualists do is live on

1191
01:05:53,720 --> 01:05:56,800
Speaker 1: indigenous land, no nothing about it and then claim to

1192
01:05:56,840 --> 01:06:00,720
Speaker 1: be it's just and then literally steal their ghosts. Steeler

1193
01:06:00,760 --> 01:06:03,919
Speaker 1: goes in makeup history that serves their narrative, and it's

1194
01:06:03,920 --> 01:06:07,120
Speaker 1: also they're kind of doing that. Their contribution to the

1195
01:06:07,120 --> 01:06:09,520
Speaker 1: grift is they're kind of doing a puppet show, like

1196
01:06:09,560 --> 01:06:11,920
Speaker 1: a shadow puppet things what it sounds like because they

1197
01:06:11,920 --> 01:06:14,720
Speaker 1: have this like closed cabinet that's like their altar and

1198
01:06:14,760 --> 01:06:16,680
Speaker 1: the like some of these spirits and you can watch

1199
01:06:16,760 --> 01:06:19,360
Speaker 1: them like fight duels with swords and stuff like. Again,

1200
01:06:19,400 --> 01:06:22,400
Speaker 1: I think they're basically doing shadow puppets and claiming that

1201
01:06:22,440 --> 01:06:26,960
Speaker 1: they're spirits. Yeah, the spirit cabinet became like a really popular,

1202
01:06:27,760 --> 01:06:31,400
Speaker 1: uh manifestation thing because it's easy to do kind of

1203
01:06:31,440 --> 01:06:35,880
Speaker 1: like magic tricks. Because there was those early spiritualists, the

1204
01:06:35,960 --> 01:06:39,640
Speaker 1: Davenport Brothers, um, that would do a similar thing. And

1205
01:06:39,680 --> 01:06:41,800
Speaker 1: then Houdini like talked to one of them towards the

1206
01:06:41,880 --> 01:06:44,160
Speaker 1: end of his life and he was like, yeah, it

1207
01:06:44,280 --> 01:06:47,720
Speaker 1: was a really good magic trick that we're tren fucking

1208
01:06:47,840 --> 01:06:49,920
Speaker 1: We realized we were good at puppets and decided to

1209
01:06:49,960 --> 01:06:55,040
Speaker 1: make some money. Um. Yeah, so old Cot. He just

1210
01:06:55,040 --> 01:06:57,520
Speaker 1: seems to be one of these guys. He's modest, moderately

1211
01:06:57,560 --> 01:07:02,360
Speaker 1: successful and it is very talented on like an organizational level. Um,

1212
01:07:02,400 --> 01:07:05,200
Speaker 1: but I think is also bored of Like again, it's

1213
01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:07,479
Speaker 1: pretty boring to just like be a dude who works

1214
01:07:07,480 --> 01:07:11,320
Speaker 1: as a lawyer in the eighteen seventies. Um, So he's

1215
01:07:11,360 --> 01:07:14,120
Speaker 1: searching for something else and it kind of seems like

1216
01:07:14,440 --> 01:07:16,720
Speaker 1: he finds it in the old cots like he's a

1217
01:07:16,720 --> 01:07:20,920
Speaker 1: little He's a pretty credulous guy. So he buys this um.

1218
01:07:21,080 --> 01:07:23,040
Speaker 1: He gets very much on board, and he writes these

1219
01:07:23,040 --> 01:07:27,640
Speaker 1: incredibly enthusiastic articles for a couple of different moderately large

1220
01:07:27,680 --> 01:07:32,280
Speaker 1: newspapers about this puppet show out and fucking Crittenden. And

1221
01:07:32,440 --> 01:07:36,880
Speaker 1: Helena Blovotsky sees these articles and she decides like, well,

1222
01:07:36,960 --> 01:07:39,480
Speaker 1: and I think what her decision. I think her thinking

1223
01:07:39,480 --> 01:07:43,280
Speaker 1: on the matter is, Okay, this is the first spiritualism

1224
01:07:43,280 --> 01:07:45,520
Speaker 1: related thing that's gone viral in a while. This is

1225
01:07:45,560 --> 01:07:47,800
Speaker 1: the first thing that's getting some real attention in the media.

1226
01:07:48,520 --> 01:07:50,520
Speaker 1: So if I get down there and I can get in,

1227
01:07:50,800 --> 01:07:53,040
Speaker 1: if I can get face to face with this journalist who,

1228
01:07:53,120 --> 01:07:55,800
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, he's gotten people to care about spiritualism again,

1229
01:07:56,240 --> 01:07:58,200
Speaker 1: I can There's probably some way for me to make

1230
01:07:58,240 --> 01:08:00,680
Speaker 1: this work out for Helena, you know. And then he

1231
01:08:00,760 --> 01:08:05,320
Speaker 1: becomes her Mr. President. Sure does, he sure does. That

1232
01:08:05,520 --> 01:08:08,680
Speaker 1: is absolutely the way this story goes. So she travels

1233
01:08:08,680 --> 01:08:11,880
Speaker 1: to Chittenden. She shows up dressed like absolutely no one

1234
01:08:11,920 --> 01:08:15,280
Speaker 1: else on earth. As Lachman describes quote, the first thing

1235
01:08:15,280 --> 01:08:18,439
Speaker 1: he noticed was her red Garibaldi shirt, a military tunic

1236
01:08:18,479 --> 01:08:20,599
Speaker 1: and blazing scarlet that had been the height of hout

1237
01:08:20,680 --> 01:08:23,000
Speaker 1: couture for a season or two and was not yet

1238
01:08:23,000 --> 01:08:25,759
Speaker 1: out of fashion amid the sober dress of Vermont farmers.

1239
01:08:25,760 --> 01:08:27,479
Speaker 1: It must have been a site, as must have been

1240
01:08:27,479 --> 01:08:29,720
Speaker 1: the Mongolian features that may have helped her in her

1241
01:08:29,720 --> 01:08:33,200
Speaker 1: Tibetan forays Lachman's a little racist. After the shirt, Olcott

1242
01:08:33,280 --> 01:08:36,280
Speaker 1: next noticed her hair, a thick blonde mop that stood

1243
01:08:36,320 --> 01:08:38,519
Speaker 1: out from her head, silken soft and crinkled to the

1244
01:08:38,600 --> 01:08:41,400
Speaker 1: roots like the fleece of a Cotswald. You then the

1245
01:08:41,439 --> 01:08:45,960
Speaker 1: massive kalmuck face full of power culture imperiousness that contrasted

1246
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:48,640
Speaker 1: sharply with the dour looks of the other guests. This

1247
01:08:48,760 --> 01:08:51,320
Speaker 1: caught his eye, as must the fur tobacco pouch, the

1248
01:08:51,320 --> 01:08:55,439
Speaker 1: many rings that adorned her delicate fingers. So old timey

1249
01:08:55,520 --> 01:09:01,160
Speaker 1: writing is so goofy, he's less It does say a

1250
01:09:01,200 --> 01:09:03,960
Speaker 1: lot about Lavotsky, that Lackman, this guy writing about her

1251
01:09:04,040 --> 01:09:08,600
Speaker 1: much later, is like clearly taken in by her spell. Um.

1252
01:09:08,640 --> 01:09:11,519
Speaker 1: But that's how a lot of like women were written about,

1253
01:09:11,520 --> 01:09:13,639
Speaker 1: who were a part of like women who had magic

1254
01:09:13,680 --> 01:09:16,160
Speaker 1: attributed to them, Which is kind of wild because at

1255
01:09:16,160 --> 01:09:20,120
Speaker 1: this time there were still witch laws, but this was

1256
01:09:20,160 --> 01:09:22,680
Speaker 1: like a unique moment in history where people were like

1257
01:09:22,760 --> 01:09:25,960
Speaker 1: willing to kind of forego the witch laws for certain.

1258
01:09:27,160 --> 01:09:29,760
Speaker 1: Lachman writes this in two thousand twelve, and like one

1259
01:09:29,800 --> 01:09:32,080
Speaker 1: of his the reason he talks about her Mongolian features

1260
01:09:32,080 --> 01:09:33,840
Speaker 1: there is That's one of the reasons he tries to

1261
01:09:33,880 --> 01:09:36,240
Speaker 1: convince us he probably she would have made it to

1262
01:09:36,280 --> 01:09:39,080
Speaker 1: Tibet is that well she looked Mongolian. No one would

1263
01:09:39,080 --> 01:09:44,280
Speaker 1: have noticed. That's pretty fucking racist, dude, Yeah, like that's

1264
01:09:44,320 --> 01:09:46,559
Speaker 1: what a what a cuc He also says that her

1265
01:09:46,600 --> 01:09:49,200
Speaker 1: face has like Kalmuck features because she spent so much

1266
01:09:49,200 --> 01:09:52,240
Speaker 1: time with them, which is also like anyway those are

1267
01:09:52,280 --> 01:09:56,120
Speaker 1: like is like, oh, it's like a person who printed

1268
01:09:56,160 --> 01:10:01,280
Speaker 1: on me, so exactly it's something else, simply not but

1269
01:10:01,360 --> 01:10:04,439
Speaker 1: clearly like Blovotsky has been all over the place, and

1270
01:10:04,479 --> 01:10:07,080
Speaker 1: her her dress is very eclectic. She's got stuff on

1271
01:10:07,080 --> 01:10:09,479
Speaker 1: her from all around. No, yeah, I gotta run into

1272
01:10:09,479 --> 01:10:13,000
Speaker 1: anyone else who looks like Helena Blovotsky in eighteen seventy

1273
01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:18,120
Speaker 1: four and yeah, uh so this journalist guy all called

1274
01:10:18,320 --> 01:10:20,679
Speaker 1: Olcott who started to get kind of pilled on spirit

1275
01:10:20,800 --> 01:10:23,240
Speaker 1: is um and stuff is like sees her and it's like, well,

1276
01:10:23,240 --> 01:10:26,400
Speaker 1: there's probably something going on there. Being the guy I am,

1277
01:10:26,479 --> 01:10:29,559
Speaker 1: I'm going to hang around this lady and Bolovotsky she

1278
01:10:30,240 --> 01:10:32,599
Speaker 1: knows she basically ceased through the core of this man

1279
01:10:32,640 --> 01:10:36,719
Speaker 1: immediately um and just takes him apart as a human being,

1280
01:10:36,880 --> 01:10:40,559
Speaker 1: and and like weaves herself into every aspect of his being.

1281
01:10:41,320 --> 01:10:45,160
Speaker 1: Henry himself later recalled her manner was gracious and captivating.

1282
01:10:45,160 --> 01:10:47,920
Speaker 1: Her criticisms upon men and things original and witty. She

1283
01:10:48,040 --> 01:10:50,280
Speaker 1: was particularly interested in drawing me out as to my

1284
01:10:50,320 --> 01:10:53,559
Speaker 1: own ideas about spiritual things, and expressed pleasure and finding

1285
01:10:53,600 --> 01:10:56,639
Speaker 1: that I had instinctively thought along the occult lines which

1286
01:10:56,640 --> 01:10:59,840
Speaker 1: she herself had pursued. It was not as an Eastern mystic,

1287
01:10:59,840 --> 01:11:02,280
Speaker 1: but rather as a refined spiritualist that she talked. For

1288
01:11:02,360 --> 01:11:04,080
Speaker 1: my part, I knew nothing then, or next to nothing

1289
01:11:04,120 --> 01:11:06,080
Speaker 1: of how a Eastern philosophy, And at first she kept

1290
01:11:06,080 --> 01:11:08,880
Speaker 1: silent on the subject. So she lets him, what do

1291
01:11:09,000 --> 01:11:12,000
Speaker 1: you believe about spiritualism? Now? What are you thinking? What

1292
01:11:12,040 --> 01:11:16,519
Speaker 1: does this make? She's cold rading him my ideas too,

1293
01:11:16,600 --> 01:11:19,120
Speaker 1: And what you're thinking is based upon these things that

1294
01:11:19,160 --> 01:11:22,000
Speaker 1: I read and my grandfather's and YadA, YadA, YadA. You know,

1295
01:11:22,320 --> 01:11:25,640
Speaker 1: she makes him feel like he's somehow tapped into some

1296
01:11:25,760 --> 01:11:28,600
Speaker 1: secret like, oh, I know you're just getting into this,

1297
01:11:28,680 --> 01:11:31,560
Speaker 1: but you're really advanced in your understanding of the spiritual

1298
01:11:31,600 --> 01:11:35,880
Speaker 1: world right right, because she needs something from him and

1299
01:11:35,920 --> 01:11:39,000
Speaker 1: he needs something from her. It's it's so wild, like

1300
01:11:39,080 --> 01:11:41,479
Speaker 1: how yeah, I mean her story and and a lot

1301
01:11:41,479 --> 01:11:43,760
Speaker 1: of people it's like she I feel like, specifically just

1302
01:11:43,960 --> 01:11:49,040
Speaker 1: really took advantage of how little people knew about anywhere

1303
01:11:49,080 --> 01:11:51,800
Speaker 1: that was not the West and just sort of inventedge

1304
01:11:51,800 --> 01:11:54,799
Speaker 1: shit and and and the fact that like New Age

1305
01:11:55,760 --> 01:11:59,160
Speaker 1: leaders still do that ship to this day. Yeah, it's

1306
01:11:59,160 --> 01:12:02,080
Speaker 1: pretty and for mission is now accessible, Like it's just

1307
01:12:02,120 --> 01:12:04,960
Speaker 1: wild now, and it's it's interesting when you look at

1308
01:12:05,000 --> 01:12:07,920
Speaker 1: like what Henry started writing about her in his articles

1309
01:12:07,920 --> 01:12:10,160
Speaker 1: about her, one of the compliments he pays her is

1310
01:12:10,200 --> 01:12:12,280
Speaker 1: like the highest compliment a man could give a woman

1311
01:12:12,320 --> 01:12:14,360
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, which is that he considered her

1312
01:12:14,400 --> 01:12:18,000
Speaker 1: androgynous rather than female. Um oh, so he's that's his

1313
01:12:18,040 --> 01:12:21,120
Speaker 1: way of saying, and I take what she says seriously.

1314
01:12:21,880 --> 01:12:24,479
Speaker 1: It's also there's more than that, because there's also because

1315
01:12:24,520 --> 01:12:27,360
Speaker 1: these two become business partners. There's this like series of

1316
01:12:27,439 --> 01:12:30,439
Speaker 1: rumors that they're fucking for years, and so part of

1317
01:12:30,560 --> 01:12:32,760
Speaker 1: he emphasizes that, like, I don't even see her as

1318
01:12:32,760 --> 01:12:35,960
Speaker 1: a woman, you know. Um, So there's a lot wrapped

1319
01:12:35,960 --> 01:12:39,800
Speaker 1: in there. Um. So that first night when they so

1320
01:12:39,840 --> 01:12:42,280
Speaker 1: by the time she gets to the Eddie brother's house

1321
01:12:42,280 --> 01:12:45,960
Speaker 1: in Crittenden, um, you know, old cots been there a while,

1322
01:12:46,040 --> 01:12:48,200
Speaker 1: and it's the medium stick they're doing has started to

1323
01:12:48,240 --> 01:12:52,160
Speaker 1: wear a little thin for him. Um. But it changes

1324
01:12:52,200 --> 01:12:54,840
Speaker 1: significantly once she arrives this night. For the first time,

1325
01:12:54,840 --> 01:12:57,320
Speaker 1: they've been summoning different spirits. For the first time, they

1326
01:12:57,439 --> 01:13:00,959
Speaker 1: channeled the spirit of a Georgian musician, and Votsky excitingly

1327
01:13:01,040 --> 01:13:02,840
Speaker 1: is like, I knew the man back in Europe when

1328
01:13:02,880 --> 01:13:06,080
Speaker 1: he was alive, And she has him sing some songs

1329
01:13:06,120 --> 01:13:08,920
Speaker 1: for her and he answers questions and stuff about the afterlife.

1330
01:13:09,040 --> 01:13:11,240
Speaker 1: And Olcott finds this this is the first time that

1331
01:13:11,280 --> 01:13:13,000
Speaker 1: someone has come from far away and been like, no,

1332
01:13:13,320 --> 01:13:16,679
Speaker 1: they're channeling someone I knew. I've never met these people before.

1333
01:13:16,920 --> 01:13:21,400
Speaker 1: This must be real because I've never met them before. Um. Now, obviously,

1334
01:13:21,640 --> 01:13:23,680
Speaker 1: Blovotsky sat down with these dudes and was like, hey,

1335
01:13:23,720 --> 01:13:25,439
Speaker 1: you want to really get this mark roped in, Like

1336
01:13:25,560 --> 01:13:27,400
Speaker 1: let me tell you what to do, Like you just say,

1337
01:13:27,439 --> 01:13:29,400
Speaker 1: these things sing the song and like I'll tell them

1338
01:13:29,400 --> 01:13:33,360
Speaker 1: it's this Yeah anyway, Um, but Olcott falls for it entirely.

1339
01:13:33,400 --> 01:13:35,800
Speaker 1: He becomes convinced it must be real because Helena is

1340
01:13:35,880 --> 01:13:38,160
Speaker 1: quote a lady of such social position as to be

1341
01:13:38,200 --> 01:13:41,280
Speaker 1: incapable of entering into a vulgar conspiracy with any pair

1342
01:13:41,280 --> 01:13:49,920
Speaker 1: of tricksters. Yeah, that's that logic has never gone gone left. Yeah. Now,

1343
01:13:49,960 --> 01:13:52,960
Speaker 1: this was all incredibly staged, and the piece to resistance

1344
01:13:53,040 --> 01:13:55,479
Speaker 1: was when the spirit or spirits managed to summon a

1345
01:13:55,560 --> 01:13:58,559
Speaker 1: medal into Helena's hand, which she claimed had been a

1346
01:13:58,600 --> 01:14:01,080
Speaker 1: military medal that had been married with her dead father,

1347
01:14:01,200 --> 01:14:03,799
Speaker 1: that like the spirits had brought back for her and stuff.

1348
01:14:04,320 --> 01:14:06,280
Speaker 1: The reality was that again, it's just a simple slight

1349
01:14:06,320 --> 01:14:08,360
Speaker 1: of hand trick in a dark room. But all caught,

1350
01:14:08,479 --> 01:14:11,799
Speaker 1: being the most credulous man in history, bought it all writing.

1351
01:14:12,240 --> 01:14:15,120
Speaker 1: Was there ever a manifestation more wonderful than this? A

1352
01:14:15,160 --> 01:14:17,800
Speaker 1: token drug by unknown means from a father's grave and

1353
01:14:17,920 --> 01:14:21,040
Speaker 1: laid in his daughter's hand five thousand miles away across

1354
01:14:21,040 --> 01:14:23,360
Speaker 1: an ocean, A jewel from the breast of a warrior

1355
01:14:23,439 --> 01:14:26,519
Speaker 1: sleeping his last sleep in Russian ground, sparkling in the

1356
01:14:26,560 --> 01:14:29,240
Speaker 1: candle light in a gloomy apartment of a Vermont farmhouse,

1357
01:14:29,439 --> 01:14:31,639
Speaker 1: a precious pet present from the tomb of her nearest

1358
01:14:31,680 --> 01:14:33,680
Speaker 1: and best beloved of kin, to be kept as a

1359
01:14:33,680 --> 01:14:36,839
Speaker 1: perpetual proof that death can neither extinguish the ties of blood,

1360
01:14:37,040 --> 01:14:39,559
Speaker 1: nor long divide those who were once united and desire

1361
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:45,840
Speaker 1: reunion with one another. Woo that perfect mark, perfect mark?

1362
01:14:45,880 --> 01:14:48,880
Speaker 1: And Jamie, you know who else is a perfect mark?

1363
01:14:49,479 --> 01:14:54,920
Speaker 1: Who our listeners for your content? Wow? Oh that's where

1364
01:14:54,920 --> 01:14:57,960
Speaker 1: we're leaving today. You want to plug it? Yeah, we

1365
01:14:58,000 --> 01:15:00,880
Speaker 1: are all right. So I would play especially for this

1366
01:15:00,920 --> 01:15:03,839
Speaker 1: episode if you ought to know more about the Fox

1367
01:15:03,880 --> 01:15:10,760
Speaker 1: Sisters and the history of American spiritualism in the nineteenth century. UM.

1368
01:15:10,920 --> 01:15:15,000
Speaker 1: That is contained in my new podcast, Ghost Church. It's

1369
01:15:15,080 --> 01:15:18,000
Speaker 1: nine episodes. We just finished it. Robert's in it. So

1370
01:15:18,040 --> 01:15:22,120
Speaker 1: if you produced it, UM, and there's I I have

1371
01:15:22,200 --> 01:15:24,280
Speaker 1: a I have a very I have a soft spot

1372
01:15:24,320 --> 01:15:28,479
Speaker 1: for a lot of spiritualists, especially women improving their social station.

1373
01:15:29,120 --> 01:15:32,360
Speaker 1: Uh through through through chicks and goofs and uh. There's

1374
01:15:32,360 --> 01:15:34,479
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about modern spiritualists as well, and

1375
01:15:34,880 --> 01:15:40,960
Speaker 1: what they're up to now, um, so check that out. Yeah,

1376
01:15:41,200 --> 01:15:45,360
Speaker 1: check it out. Check out spiritualism. Go find a ghost,

1377
01:15:45,479 --> 01:15:48,160
Speaker 1: you know what, find a ghost? I truly am Like,

1378
01:15:48,240 --> 01:15:52,799
Speaker 1: if you want to talk to ghosts, like that's your business.

1379
01:15:52,840 --> 01:15:55,160
Speaker 1: Just don't hurt other people with it, you know, I

1380
01:15:55,200 --> 01:15:59,320
Speaker 1: don't know, you know what, it's just hurt the right

1381
01:15:59,360 --> 01:16:01,920
Speaker 1: people with it, you know. There you go, yes, yes,

1382
01:16:01,960 --> 01:16:04,360
Speaker 1: like if if, if you've got a good mark, then

1383
01:16:04,920 --> 01:16:08,160
Speaker 1: go fucking nuts. I'm just I don't know. People get

1384
01:16:08,240 --> 01:16:11,919
Speaker 1: so mad about stuff like this something and and sometimes

1385
01:16:11,960 --> 01:16:16,200
Speaker 1: are good and other times with like there are there

1386
01:16:16,200 --> 01:16:19,320
Speaker 1: there are theosophists like foaming at the mouth right now

1387
01:16:20,200 --> 01:16:24,720
Speaker 1: about about this takedown of Helena Blovotsky. I don't know

1388
01:16:24,880 --> 01:16:28,000
Speaker 1: enough about theosophy to have an opinion on it. I'm

1389
01:16:28,080 --> 01:16:31,679
Speaker 1: learning in real time from you spiritualists. You know, live

1390
01:16:31,680 --> 01:16:34,519
Speaker 1: your life. I don't know. Yeah, go live your life,

1391
01:16:34,640 --> 01:16:38,120
Speaker 1: talk to ghosts, go create ghosts. Commit murder in a field.

1392
01:16:38,280 --> 01:16:41,519
Speaker 1: You know. I will literally pay you to watch, and

1393
01:16:41,560 --> 01:16:45,080
Speaker 1: I have and I probably will again. Wow. Wow, Jamie

1394
01:16:45,320 --> 01:16:49,400
Speaker 1: just offered to pay to murder someone while she watches.

1395
01:16:49,640 --> 01:16:53,400
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's exactly what I said. Yeah, become a murderer.

1396
01:16:53,479 --> 01:16:56,440
Speaker 1: That's the message of this episode of Behind the Bastards,

1397
01:16:56,920 --> 01:16:59,719
Speaker 1: the message of Ghost Church and the message of Ghost Church. Sure.

1398
01:17:00,240 --> 01:17:00,519
Speaker 1: Eight