Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, there's Jerry over here,
Speaker 1: uh lurking around like a bit of a ghoul because
Speaker 1: it is the Halloween season after all. Uh, and this
Speaker 1: is stuff you should that's right spooky which trials Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It's really nice to like have stuff like
Speaker 1: this that you can be removed from by a few
Speaker 1: hundred years, and you know, it just kind of evokes
Speaker 1: that Halloween spirit or whatever. But Chuck, I have found,
Speaker 1: just in recently researching this, if you put yourself into
Speaker 1: the position that people who are like walking to the
Speaker 1: gallows and like think about how nuts all this was,
Speaker 1: it is exponentially scarier on a much more existential level.
Speaker 1: It goes beyond like Halloween spooky too. This is a
Speaker 1: genuinely frightening event in the history of America. No kidding,
Speaker 1: I mean like it was messed up in every way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. So I take it you never read
Speaker 1: The Crucible. I did read the Crucible, but I read
Speaker 1: it and didn't do it. No, it really didn't, because
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if it was me. Maybe
Speaker 1: I wasn't mentally or emotionally prepared to accept it on
Speaker 1: that level, who knows, But no, it was it was
Speaker 1: like imagining myself in the shoes of the people who
Speaker 1: were going to die. Um, that got me researching. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's dark, no, uh no, no shade though on Arthur Miller,
Speaker 1: he was great and his play was great, and it
Speaker 1: was very timely for the time. Yeah. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there's been so many kind of movie adaptations and TV
Speaker 1: movie adaptations about this time, and I'm still waiting first
Speaker 1: sort of the one great one that's not the Crucible. Well.
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason why there hasn't been
Speaker 1: that great one yet is because historians are still like
Speaker 1: actively competing explaining just what exactly happened in Salem. It's
Speaker 1: such an anomaly even among like Puritans, even among people
Speaker 1: who believe there was such a thing as witchcraft and
Speaker 1: even executed witches. This was a genuine anomaly, at least
Speaker 1: as far as American history goes. And I think because
Speaker 1: they don't understand it fully, it's difficult to really get
Speaker 1: the point across as well. You know, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I think you can make a great movie like look
Speaker 1: at the Witch that that danced around it, so well,
Speaker 1: like you just need a movie like that. But based
Speaker 1: on this, well, why don't we just say the Witch
Speaker 1: then as the is all we need? Well because it
Speaker 1: wasn't about the Salem witch Trials, but I mean it
Speaker 1: was so analogous to it and took place in at
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, I mean, just pretend like
Speaker 1: there's a trial scene that they cut it they cut out,
Speaker 1: and there actually a lot of other people they drag.
Speaker 1: They dragged the father into work basically and and excommunicate them.
Speaker 1: So there is almost like a witch trial scene right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, the which is the Salem witch trial movie
Speaker 1: We've always needed, That's right. So I'm glad we we
Speaker 1: resolved that. You must feel very satisfied. Now, yeah, completely disagree,
Speaker 1: but I'm just moving on. So, um, everybody knows about
Speaker 1: the Salem witch Trials, right, but I think because you know,
Speaker 1: we learned about it in American history, you hear about
Speaker 1: it as Halloween stories all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But like I said, I mean, we really genuinely don't
Speaker 1: understand what happened. And that's despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: is really well documented because a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: took place in the courts, and they wrote a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff down. But we only have like official primary
Speaker 1: documents that were written by people who were aware that
Speaker 1: these were public documents, rather than say a trove of
Speaker 1: private journals and letters. The Puritans didn't do that that much,
Speaker 1: and so we don't have like kind of the underneath
Speaker 1: the official line explanation for what happened. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: if if people are confused by what we mean there,
Speaker 1: you know, there were other witch trials in other places
Speaker 1: in the Young America, there were other witch trials in
Speaker 1: centuries previous in other countries, and there were mild panics
Speaker 1: and stuff. But Salem like collectively lost their mind for
Speaker 1: a short period of time. And that's what people still
Speaker 1: don't get there, like why why did that happen only
Speaker 1: there to to this scope and this degree? Uh? And
Speaker 1: you know, people have looked at various biological reasons and
Speaker 1: things like that, but I don't know. I think it
Speaker 1: was just sort of one of those weird things that
Speaker 1: could only happen like at one place in one time. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And there was actually a guy who wrote a book
Speaker 1: in two named John Demos, and he said, not only
Speaker 1: can it happen like under these very specific circumstances, here
Speaker 1: are the circumstances that could happen in And he his
Speaker 1: book wasn't just about Salem. It mentioned Salem, but it
Speaker 1: was about like witchcraft trials and panics and accusations in
Speaker 1: New England in general. And he basically said that when
Speaker 1: a town starts out really small and it's like a
Speaker 1: colonial town, they're living like on the razor's edge of existence.
Speaker 1: A lot of them don't really know each other. They're dying,
Speaker 1: so there's a big population turnover as newcomers come in
Speaker 1: and there's just not enough familiarity to say I think
Speaker 1: you're a witch to accuse your neighbor or something like that.
Speaker 1: But then after they settle in a little while and
Speaker 1: maybe there's like some boredom and everybody gets to know
Speaker 1: each other and you have grudges, but you're still living
Speaker 1: in a really small area, that's when the witchcraft accusations
Speaker 1: can really take place. And Salem seems to have kind
Speaker 1: of followed that pattern to that these witch witchcraft accusations
Speaker 1: like really took hold at a time where the colony
Speaker 1: was under tons of stress. People knew each other, had
Speaker 1: had deck aids, long rivalries and lane disputes, and they
Speaker 1: lived still in a very small little village, and they
Speaker 1: were basically crawling all over one another and saw one another,
Speaker 1: and you could not get away from people you didn't like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is especially true in Salem. That was Salem Village,
Speaker 1: in Salem Town, And like you said, they were stacked
Speaker 1: on each other and there were a lot of uh like, hey,
Speaker 1: your cow can't graze over this imaginary line because that's
Speaker 1: my land and you're not even allowed to build a
Speaker 1: fence over there, like kind of common land disputes that
Speaker 1: have happened throughout history. But in Salem they were just
Speaker 1: they were. They were described as a very quarrelsome people.
Speaker 1: They were. They fought and argued a lot, kind of
Speaker 1: more so than it seems like even other Puritans and
Speaker 1: other parts of the country. Yeah, and the Puritans in
Speaker 1: general were deeply litigious. They took each other to court
Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat, at the drop of
Speaker 1: a hat with a belt buckle on it. Um. But
Speaker 1: they they they had like the way that they supported
Speaker 1: that um, that kind of litigiousness was to say most
Speaker 1: of the courts would be like, you need to go
Speaker 1: handle this privately, and then this kind of secondary mediation
Speaker 1: kind of thing would come in and there being negotiations
Speaker 1: and then the dispute would be resolved. But the first
Speaker 1: thing that they would do is drag one another into court.
Speaker 1: That was how they would get one another's attention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so this is sort of the backdrop of what's
Speaker 1: going on in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and particularly in
Speaker 1: Salem Village in Salem Town, which I think I think
Speaker 1: Salem Village today is dan verse and then Salem Town
Speaker 1: is Salem that's right, still around and still has spooky connotations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And dan Versus where the Um the State Asylum was located.
Speaker 1: That was the setting for one of the greatest horror
Speaker 1: films of all time, Session nine. Oh that's right, man,
Speaker 1: that's a movie I don't even know if I want
Speaker 1: to see again. It's so good. I saw it a
Speaker 1: year or two ago and it's still just as good.
Speaker 1: It's great. Um. All right, So the Puritans were in control.
Speaker 1: I guess the back backdrop of this was they were
Speaker 1: full on, you know, human holocausts in Europe in the
Speaker 1: sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with their witch crazes and things
Speaker 1: got really out of hand over there. But by the
Speaker 1: time folks got to be here, they were mainly just
Speaker 1: arguing a lot. And there were you know, there was
Speaker 1: a small witch panic in Connecticut. Uh, not small if
Speaker 1: you were one of the people accused, but it didn't
Speaker 1: quite get out of hand, um, certainly in that like
Speaker 1: it did in Europe in centuries previous. And I saw
Speaker 1: an explanation, Um, I want to give a shout out
Speaker 1: to a couple of sites. But when I got a
Speaker 1: lot of info from is called the historic present, and um,
Speaker 1: they were pointing out that like for the most part, yes,
Speaker 1: people generally agreed that there were such things as witches, um,
Speaker 1: And yes you would accuse your neighbor of witchcraft, but
Speaker 1: it was kind of like it was a way of
Speaker 1: like getting your neighbor's attention, like a serious about this
Speaker 1: and publicly accusing you being a witch. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: your cow grazing on on my land, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was another thing that made Salem so anomalous.
Speaker 1: Is it just kept going and going through these steps
Speaker 1: of like the court in trial and then finally executions
Speaker 1: and and it. It just got out of hand basically, right.
Speaker 1: So the Puritans are in control in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Speaker 1: They've got an iron fist on on ruling. They don't
Speaker 1: like basically anybody who is not a Puritan. It seems
Speaker 1: like most of the Puritans didn't even like each other.
Speaker 1: But they certainly didn't like Quakers, they didn't like Catholics,
Speaker 1: and they did all they could to really establish themselves
Speaker 1: as the ones in charge and did so well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it depends on who you're talking about. Though. There were
Speaker 1: some Puritans who were deeply conservative religious leaders like Increased
Speaker 1: mather Um, who wanted to just completely secure Puritan control.
Speaker 1: But there was also like a real um read through
Speaker 1: the Puritan leadership that was willing to like give like
Speaker 1: voting rights and and um the ability to be elected
Speaker 1: into office to non Puritans who lived in in town um.
Speaker 1: And they had kind of a proto democracy in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. So it's like the Puritans in general, Yes,
Speaker 1: we're deeply intolerant of Quakers and Catholics, and they actually
Speaker 1: tortured Quakers um who were unrepentant UM, but they also
Speaker 1: did have they weren't just like this the band of
Speaker 1: like theocratic thugs that that they're often painted as. There's
Speaker 1: just more nuance to it than that. But yes, there
Speaker 1: were plenty who were like, no, we just need total
Speaker 1: puritanical control over over this whole colony. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: as we'll see once the witch trials were conducted. You know,
Speaker 1: I said that Salem collectively lost their mind sort of
Speaker 1: true in a way, and that a lot of people
Speaker 1: in power and the decision makers did. But there were
Speaker 1: still people even while it was going on. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like hundred percent of the town was behind this. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people and I guess they were
Speaker 1: probably some of those reasonable people you know that you
Speaker 1: were talking about that were like, you know what we're doing?
Speaker 1: Is it right? I don't think they really spoke up
Speaker 1: to vocally, but they were like, what is going on here?
Speaker 1: This is getting out of handing kind of crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was such a dangerous situation where it
Speaker 1: was one of those kind of fascist situations where people
Speaker 1: who did dare to speak out against this and say
Speaker 1: this is crazy, this is wrong, or even to like
Speaker 1: testify on behalf of somebody who was accused, you were
Speaker 1: putting your own life at risk. Like there's a possibility
Speaker 1: you would be accused of witchcraft and then tried and
Speaker 1: then executed. It was that kind of a situation, even
Speaker 1: with people on the outside being knowing that this is wrong,
Speaker 1: it was just such a inevitable machine that it was
Speaker 1: like people just stayed out of its way for a
Speaker 1: little while. All Right, I think that is a healthy preamble. Okay,
Speaker 1: the foundation is laid. I think we should take a break, okay,
Speaker 1: and come back talk about those mother boys right after this.
Speaker 1: I concur stuff you should stuff you shouldn't, you should know. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: so you want to talk some mothers. That's the Beaver.
Speaker 1: He's still around, I believe by the way, he still
Speaker 1: looks like he's one of those guys that stayed the same. Huh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it doesn't help that he dresses the same
Speaker 1: still too, But you can recognize him even in a
Speaker 1: tux I'm guessing. So you can't talk about out the
Speaker 1: Salem witch trials without talking about the Mathers. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the elder mother whose name was Increase of these
Speaker 1: Puritan names, and uh, the younger mother, Cotton Mather. He
Speaker 1: was the son son of a mother, so Increased Mother.
Speaker 1: He was, like you said, he was sort of the
Speaker 1: staunch Puritan who was in a position of power. He
Speaker 1: was working to establish a charter that would, you know,
Speaker 1: basically give the Puritans all the power. He was also
Speaker 1: a believer, and you know, because I mentioned that the
Speaker 1: European witch trials like this is sort of the background
Speaker 1: that allowed people like Increased Mother and Cotton Mother to
Speaker 1: really legitimately believe that demons were real and Satan could
Speaker 1: overtake and possess someone, and that there were real witches.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was just generally the puritanical worldview, but
Speaker 1: some people were much more preoccupied with it than others.
Speaker 1: And the Mathers were both deeply preoccupied with this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and Increase other gets a lot of the
Speaker 1: blame for this, and and rightfully so, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of lesser known people who actually were way more
Speaker 1: villainous during this and really took advantage of this crazy situation.
Speaker 1: And and really I just didn't didn't care about the
Speaker 1: lives of innocent people. But he was. He was not good,
Speaker 1: and that he helped fan the flames of this initially
Speaker 1: big time. That's right, Um, so should we I mean
Speaker 1: we'll we'll get a little bit more into the matters
Speaker 1: as we go. Uh. Cotton was certainly one of the
Speaker 1: villains of the trials, and they were both writing books
Speaker 1: about supernatural things. So this was all sort of the
Speaker 1: foundation that was laid when the first two people, uh
Speaker 1: were accused in what January of Yeah, So to to start,
Speaker 1: there were two girls ages nine eleven. There was Betty Paris,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Paris was her name, and Abigail Williams. And they
Speaker 1: basically started barking and convulsing and just behaving really bizarrely
Speaker 1: and strangely and would not stop. And so Samuel Paris,
Speaker 1: who was the head of the Salem Village church it
Speaker 1: was actually pretty divisive figure apparently, UM, he brought in
Speaker 1: a doctor and the doctor proclaimed this to be bewitchment,
Speaker 1: that these girls were bewitched. And that's ultimately what kicked
Speaker 1: the whole thing off. And a lot of people have
Speaker 1: tried to figure out like what initially started that because
Speaker 1: just about everybody who has a theory about this um
Speaker 1: immediately converts to mass hysteria. But you still have that
Speaker 1: first that first case of Abigail Williams and or Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Paris to to explain, and apparently it was like really
Speaker 1: prolonged stuff. They were vomiting, they were doing stuff beyond
Speaker 1: just like behaving weirdly. They were they seemed to be
Speaker 1: physically afflicted. And that's another thing too that I think
Speaker 1: your theories that say like it was just a hoax
Speaker 1: that these girls perpetrated, that doesn't understand like just how
Speaker 1: long these girls carried out this stuff, And I think
Speaker 1: it kind of ignores the fact that there are also
Speaker 1: like the Puritans weren't dumb people. They were deeply religious,
Speaker 1: they believed in witches and Satan having you know, a
Speaker 1: hand on things here on earth. But they also were
Speaker 1: very smart, very practical, and they would have seen right
Speaker 1: through a couple of girls just planning a hoax or
Speaker 1: carrying out a hoax. So there has to be something
Speaker 1: there at the beginning that no one has ever fully
Speaker 1: explained that kicked this whole thing off. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's hard not to become a little obsessed with some
Speaker 1: sort of biological route I know or got poisoning has
Speaker 1: been mentioned. I saw encephalitis. Oh, I saw that one too.
Speaker 1: That was interesting. Yeah, and just some other like possible
Speaker 1: reasons of like maybe something physically was wrong with them,
Speaker 1: while they also happened to be goofing around with folk
Speaker 1: magic and stuff like that. Not not a good combination
Speaker 1: to like get sick while you're being a kid and
Speaker 1: playing around was essentially what they were doing. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if you think about the fact
Speaker 1: that the the adults were like, okay, this is this
Speaker 1: is significant enough that we're going to start looking around
Speaker 1: for the witches, and the girl started accusing people too, Um,
Speaker 1: it does seem like there was something going on with
Speaker 1: at least one of them. And then yes, it started
Speaker 1: to spread, probably through mass hysteria to other girls in
Speaker 1: the village. It kind of makes when I when I
Speaker 1: read the sort of timeline account, I feel like if
Speaker 1: that original doctor hadn't said the word, which it could
Speaker 1: have gone in a completely different direction. Yeah, he should
Speaker 1: have just been like, it's um anti N M D
Speaker 1: A R and cephalitis and dummies an autoimmune disease that
Speaker 1: will only begin to grasp in thees and everyone would
Speaker 1: say you're a witch, right, he just see some crazy words, doc,
Speaker 1: So uh, the doctor has has breathed the word, which um,
Speaker 1: the girls are like, um, They're like, hey, what's going
Speaker 1: on with you, and they said, uh, you know, it's Tituba.
Speaker 1: It is my father's slave to Tuba, and it's her
Speaker 1: fault and she's a witch. And so they, like you said,
Speaker 1: they started accusing, and they started with her. They started
Speaker 1: with her, and then they very quickly moved on to
Speaker 1: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. And by doing that, by
Speaker 1: accusing those two women are actually uh with Titchuba as well,
Speaker 1: all three of them. Is it. I've always heard Tichuba,
Speaker 1: but I've heard I think I've heard Tituba before too,
Speaker 1: So I don't know that sounds Tchuba sounds more right, Okay.
Speaker 1: So so by accusing those three women, they were following
Speaker 1: um Abigail and Elizabeth were following like a well established
Speaker 1: tradition of focusing on older women on the margins of
Speaker 1: society as witches. Right, Titchuba was easy to accuse me
Speaker 1: because she was a foreigner. She was brought to um
Speaker 1: the colony as a slave, and she worked as a
Speaker 1: slave in the Paris's house. Um, so who knows what
Speaker 1: she was into before you know, she came over to Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: I guess was the thinking of the Puritans. But then
Speaker 1: also Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. They were like older
Speaker 1: women who were poor, um, lived on the fringes of society,
Speaker 1: and like that is who you accused of being a witch. Typically.
Speaker 1: So at first, this which panic kind of followed the
Speaker 1: standard which accusations that had been um, you know, spread
Speaker 1: around New England before. But but what made it different
Speaker 1: is that it just started to pick up steam more
Speaker 1: and more because more and more girls and people around
Speaker 1: them the colony or around the village I'm sorry, started
Speaker 1: to suffer bewitchment and started accusing one another of of
Speaker 1: bewitching them. Yeah, if you were a person, for sure,
Speaker 1: a woman, but um, a man or a woman who
Speaker 1: like you said, was about middle aged, and you know
Speaker 1: you were over there kind of doing your own thing
Speaker 1: a little bit and maybe just kept to yourself. Maybe
Speaker 1: you didn't like hanging out in the village as much
Speaker 1: as the rest of the villagers did. Uh, you marched
Speaker 1: to the beat of your own drum. You had a
Speaker 1: target on your back basically right. Yeah. And also apparently
Speaker 1: one of the things that they were well known for,
Speaker 1: these people who were accused of which is would be
Speaker 1: like like they needed things from their neighbors, so they
Speaker 1: would extract them by threatening to curse them, so they
Speaker 1: would actually use like witchy threats. Um. They were probably
Speaker 1: also into folk magic, so there was like, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just completely baseless other than the fact that like which
Speaker 1: is in that kind of puritanical conception don't exist. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't just totally out of the blue like these
Speaker 1: they they still like if you a modern person saw
Speaker 1: the person that they were originally that they traditionally accused
Speaker 1: of being, which is you'd be like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: a real life which there's one right there, it would
Speaker 1: fit the bill. Are you You know what I'm saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So you know, these accusations start flying around,
Speaker 1: they start mounting, the jails start filling up. The conditions
Speaker 1: in the jail were not good. It got so crazy
Speaker 1: early on. And this is sort of the first part,
Speaker 1: This before the like trials and hangings and everything. This
Speaker 1: is when you were just like jailed and shackled and
Speaker 1: then charged for your shackles I guess like a rental fee. Uh.
Speaker 1: But they arrested a four year old named Dorothy good
Speaker 1: Um and she was eventually released. But a four year old, like,
Speaker 1: it's crazy me as a father having gone through life
Speaker 1: with a four year old that you could accuse a
Speaker 1: four year old of being anything other than a four
Speaker 1: year old, right exactly, But she wasn't. She was held
Speaker 1: for months. I think she was arrested in March and
Speaker 1: released in May, and like this wasn't like a pleasant December.
Speaker 1: Just oh my goodness. Okay, so she was there for
Speaker 1: almost a year, just under a year. For the intense
Speaker 1: and purposes of exagger rating just how bad this was,
Speaker 1: she was in there for basically a year, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sarah Ozgar died in jail. She died in jail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the thing. Like these jails were like dirt floors.
Speaker 1: You were chained, like you're saying, like it was just
Speaker 1: it was a place where like a life could just
Speaker 1: be lost way too easily. So to keep a four
Speaker 1: year old in there for almost years just horrible. There
Speaker 1: was a woman who gave birth in jail and they
Speaker 1: just left her infant daughter in there with her, so
Speaker 1: the infants didn't survive. She died in jail. Um just
Speaker 1: from being born in jail. Somebody who was accused of
Speaker 1: being witches And this was before the trials had even started. Chuck,
Speaker 1: Like this was just the initial phase of the panic,
Speaker 1: which was accusation, accusation, accusation, and then suddenly the jails
Speaker 1: were overflowing with more than a hundred people, um who
Speaker 1: were accused of being witches, and the court was totally
Speaker 1: backed up. When increased, Mather and the new governor that
Speaker 1: he was coming back with, William Phipps, Uh he'd gotten appointed,
Speaker 1: Um showed back up in in Salem and we're like,
Speaker 1: what is going on here? And they had a choice, Chuck.
Speaker 1: They could have been like, have you all lost your mind?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Stop this right now, let all
Speaker 1: these people out. They didn't go that route. They went
Speaker 1: the exact opposite route. They at that moment when they
Speaker 1: decided which way to go, they chose incorrectly. Basically yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was also a pretty bad time. It was
Speaker 1: kind of an uh, what's the word conflagration? Man, you
Speaker 1: nailed it, And it sounded so confident confident. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was a conflagration of a bunch of things happening politically
Speaker 1: and legally. It was a very bad time because by
Speaker 1: the time the trials rolled around, they eventually got this
Speaker 1: new charter, but previous to that, they were uh, the
Speaker 1: charter of the colony was temporarily suspended, and a new
Speaker 1: charter did arrive in May of uh in the hands
Speaker 1: of the Elder Mather, but it was brand new and
Speaker 1: the court didn't create laws. They didn't have time to
Speaker 1: create any new laws. That is so they basically said,
Speaker 1: all right, we need to we got all these people
Speaker 1: in jail. We need to quickly establish a special court
Speaker 1: for this, and we'll call it the Court of Oyer
Speaker 1: and Terminer to hear and determine, and we're going to
Speaker 1: get this these people out of jail or kill them.
Speaker 1: So they're no longer in jail, but they're getting out
Speaker 1: one way or another. Right So there there ed helps
Speaker 1: us out with us. We should say we failed to
Speaker 1: mention so far. But he he points out that Um
Speaker 1: William Phipps, the new governor, possibly went along with this
Speaker 1: idea of creating a new court to get rid of
Speaker 1: this backlog of witchcraft accusations, to get these people out
Speaker 1: of jail, to get this over and done with. And
Speaker 1: that may have happened, actually, but he Um was very
Speaker 1: much focused on dealing with the the constant threat that
Speaker 1: the colonists lived under being attacked by Native Americans. King
Speaker 1: Philip's war, King Philip being the guy that punks Tawny
Speaker 1: phil was named after that I got way way wrong
Speaker 1: in our Groundhog episode. Um that had just ended. There
Speaker 1: was another war that included the French and the Native
Speaker 1: Americans to the north, sweeping down all the way into
Speaker 1: Massachusetts and staging rads. So they've lived under the constant
Speaker 1: threat of death, which definitely didn't help their mindset during
Speaker 1: the Witchcraft panic. But that's what Phipps was was worried about.
Speaker 1: That's what he was working on. So he threw the
Speaker 1: the um the job of seeing seeing this this court
Speaker 1: through to his lieutenant governor, a guy named um what
Speaker 1: was his name, William What william Ston Williams Stoughton I mentioned,
Speaker 1: like some of the lesser known people who were actually villains,
Speaker 1: this guy was a bad, bad man and he made
Speaker 1: a decision that changed the course of everything. I think
Speaker 1: Phipps's initial idea that this would have just moved the
Speaker 1: backlogs out and freed everybody from jail would have come
Speaker 1: true had it not been for Stoughton and Stowton's radical
Speaker 1: decision to include what's called spectral evidence that changed everything,
Speaker 1: and that that is what led to people being executed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so before we get into spectral evidence, I just want
Speaker 1: to point out that William Stoughton was such a bad
Speaker 1: guy they named a town after him, and they named
Speaker 1: a college dorm at Harvard after him. I believe, well
Speaker 1: Increase Mather was the Harvard president for a while too,
Speaker 1: so Stoton went to Harvard, but I think it's still
Speaker 1: one of the dorms is still Stowton. And uh, I
Speaker 1: think Stoton mass is most well known now for having
Speaker 1: an idea. Uh So yeah, spectral evidence. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: this because this changed everything. Um, there were different kinds
Speaker 1: of evidence that would be accepted in these courts. Uh.
Speaker 1: One was the spectral, which we'll talk about. One was confession,
Speaker 1: um two eyewitness testimonies. Uh. And then there were we
Speaker 1: won't get really into all the tests, but there are
Speaker 1: all kinds of different tests, including the you know, does
Speaker 1: she float? Can she swim? Uh? From Monty Python, the
Speaker 1: Holy Grail. I think they were still doing some of that.
Speaker 1: That was the witch's teat, which was it's basically, if
Speaker 1: they found a mole on a woman, they would call
Speaker 1: it a witch's teat, which was uh supposedly a third
Speaker 1: nipple used to feed her animal familiar. That's what my
Speaker 1: dad always told me my moles were when I was
Speaker 1: growing witches. He was dead serious too. So there were
Speaker 1: certain tests and all, but spectral evidence was the big
Speaker 1: one because this was basically you could kind of make
Speaker 1: up anything, and and you could be in court and say,
Speaker 1: as an accuser and say, this person is being uh
Speaker 1: has been uh possessed or or their possessor is in
Speaker 1: the courtroom right now, your honor, the this ghost, this
Speaker 1: specter is sitting on your lap right now. You just
Speaker 1: can't see it, and it's and it would freak people out.
Speaker 1: There was nothing you could really say to defend it
Speaker 1: because it was made up to begin with, uh and
Speaker 1: supposedly Cotton Mather said it should be used more sparingly,
Speaker 1: like at the end of the day he was like,
Speaker 1: it's it's enough to indict, but not to convict. Was
Speaker 1: that cotton or increase that was cotton supposedly. And then
Speaker 1: in the end I think they verified that nobody was
Speaker 1: convicted solely on the basis of spectral evidence. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: then my my hypothesis is kind of out the window.
Speaker 1: That none of these people would have been executed without it.
Speaker 1: Well it was you know, if if you need two
Speaker 1: out of three things and that's one of them, then
Speaker 1: you're right. You know. One of the other things that
Speaker 1: one of the more practical problems that spectral evidence presented
Speaker 1: for somebody accused of witchcraft was that it destroyed any
Speaker 1: alibi you had, Like your your neighbor could be like, well, no,
Speaker 1: couldn't have been bewitching this person. He was out working
Speaker 1: with me in the fields all day. They could say no, no,
Speaker 1: it was a spirit. He sent his spirit to bewitch
Speaker 1: this poor person who's accusing him, and then boop, there
Speaker 1: goes your alibi. So there you like it was like
Speaker 1: you said, you just can't defend yourself against that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um. And that was like the level of
Speaker 1: stuff that they were. That they were, that was how
Speaker 1: they were accusing people. There was one guy I read about,
Speaker 1: Philip English who who will come up again later. Um,
Speaker 1: he was accused of witchcraft by somebody who said that, uh,
Speaker 1: they got a nosebleed while they were discussing a lawsuit
Speaker 1: they had against Philip English with somebody else, so that
Speaker 1: it must be that Philip English had bewitched that Like
Speaker 1: this was the kind of accusations that they were making
Speaker 1: against one another, and they were holding up in court.
Speaker 1: That is something that you cannot look past. It's so
Speaker 1: easy to look back three years and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this whole collective group lost their mind. No, there were
Speaker 1: plenty of people who did lose their mind, but the
Speaker 1: people who were supposed to be in charge, the people
Speaker 1: who were in a position to put a stop to this,
Speaker 1: actually allowed it, in some cases fan the flames of
Speaker 1: it even further. That was the true breakdown at the
Speaker 1: Salem Witchcraft trials. The grown ups did not step in
Speaker 1: in in halt it before it got out of hand. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing that someone might do if you had a
Speaker 1: pet that you really liked, not good, Um, they could
Speaker 1: say that, well, no, no, no, they have an animal familiar. Uh.
Speaker 1: It could be anything like take Black Philip from the
Speaker 1: Witch I mean that's taken kind of straight from this
Speaker 1: time period. But if you had a pet that you
Speaker 1: enjoyed hanging out with, they could accuse you of having
Speaker 1: a familiar. If they found, uh a folk magic or
Speaker 1: folk tale book in your library, Um, that could be evidence.
Speaker 1: And that was pretty common too. I mean, like I
Speaker 1: didn't have you know, local hospitals to go to to
Speaker 1: to heal themselves or anything that any like you said
Speaker 1: with the nosebleed or whatever, anything bad happened to you,
Speaker 1: if your crop failed or if one of your cows died,
Speaker 1: you could say it was my neighbor and there which
Speaker 1: and they put a hex on me. So they established, okay,
Speaker 1: we can use spectral evidence, and we're going to use
Speaker 1: spectral evidence. And this court of Oyer and Terminer, um, god,
Speaker 1: it was established. I think they held their first trial
Speaker 1: on June two, and they were profoundly efficient at at
Speaker 1: convicting and killing people. Um Bridget Bishop was the first
Speaker 1: person hanged, and she was hanged on June tenth, just
Speaker 1: over a week after the first trials began. Um, and
Speaker 1: that kicked off like this new phase where this this
Speaker 1: idea to like clear the the jails of the accused
Speaker 1: was actually now diverting them to the gallows. And for
Speaker 1: being witches, we can't forget that either, like for being
Speaker 1: which is even though which is in this conception don't exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's at efficiency in the speed that
Speaker 1: all this happened was a big part of it, because
Speaker 1: it was the train was moving so fast that once people,
Speaker 1: the more level headed people of the town realized what
Speaker 1: was going on, like, wait a minute, we're actually hanging
Speaker 1: people for this um, certain people started to come forward
Speaker 1: and say no, no, no, I'm recanting my confession, or
Speaker 1: let me stand up for someone's good character. But it
Speaker 1: happened so quickly that you know, before you know it,
Speaker 1: there's you know, a couple of dozen people have died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like people got wrapped up in it too, Like
Speaker 1: there's the case of Giles Corey. I believe man, he
Speaker 1: testified against his wife and then later he recanted it.
Speaker 1: And after he recanted at the purgeon's apparently UM viewed
Speaker 1: perjury so suspiciously that that was enough to get him
Speaker 1: accused of which craft and he ended up paying for
Speaker 1: his life with which we'll talk about a little more later.
Speaker 1: But like, he testified against his wife, and to this
Speaker 1: day was historians are like, we have no idea why
Speaker 1: jil Corey testified against his wife. He didn't seem to
Speaker 1: have a grudge, they seemed to have a fine marriage whatever,
Speaker 1: Like it just doesn't make sense. The only way that
Speaker 1: you can explain that, at least from my perspective, is
Speaker 1: that it was, like you said, just this thing that
Speaker 1: people got whipped up in, and it just happened so
Speaker 1: fast that it was just easy to lose yourself into
Speaker 1: that degree. I mean, the whole thing happened over the
Speaker 1: course of what four to six months. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the first things were in January, but yeah, the first
Speaker 1: trials were June two, and they ultimately I think stopped
Speaker 1: the following like winter. So yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: not a very long prolonged thing, but it was just
Speaker 1: like this weird orgy of of mind loss and death.
Speaker 1: You know. Oh man, it sounds like some kind of
Speaker 1: album after Uh. The other weird thing about this was that, uh,
Speaker 1: the social order was completely knocked out of whack. Um
Speaker 1: the Puritans, if there's one thing they didn't like, it
Speaker 1: was hearing from children about anything. Kids were just they
Speaker 1: were meant to work and to shut up basically and
Speaker 1: do what they were told and kind of like full stop.
Speaker 1: And you had a situation here where children, young girls
Speaker 1: were accusing these middle aged men and women of of
Speaker 1: witchery and and it works like people listened to them
Speaker 1: and people were hanged because these kids were speaking up
Speaker 1: at a time when kids were barely allowed to even
Speaker 1: you know, have any agency or speak yeah, which is
Speaker 1: another thing that perplexes his storians because they're like, something happened,
Speaker 1: like there was something that was that this which panic fulfilled.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was to let off steam from being constantly
Speaker 1: afraid of being murdered by a Native American attack. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was um living too close proximity, too far away
Speaker 1: from where you called home, like who knows, but there
Speaker 1: was something about it was worth turning the social order
Speaker 1: on its head. And that was That was just one example.
Speaker 1: There are other examples of how the social order just
Speaker 1: totally broke down. And that wasn't how who some of
Speaker 1: the people who were accused and executed were, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the marginal women who were your prototypical witches
Speaker 1: a living you know, on the outskirts of society who
Speaker 1: were accused. That was just at first, it started to
Speaker 1: become extended to really surprising people like Rebecca Nurse was
Speaker 1: maybe one of the most upstanding Puritan women that town,
Speaker 1: the colony had to offer, and she was accused, tried,
Speaker 1: and executed as a witch. And that I think really
Speaker 1: kind of opened a lot of people's eyes in two ways.
Speaker 1: One I was like, what is going on here? This
Speaker 1: could not be the case. And then to other people
Speaker 1: is like, if Rebecca Nurse could be a witch, than
Speaker 1: anybody could be a witch. And I think that was
Speaker 1: kind of the thread that the witch trial followed. But
Speaker 1: it also is a like a really good explainer about
Speaker 1: how just completely the society broke down for these handful
Speaker 1: of months that anybody was was at risk of being
Speaker 1: murdered by their fellow townspeople for being a witch, no
Speaker 1: matter what kind of background you had. I'm picturing a
Speaker 1: I'm picturing a Puritan, like the only Puritan that actually
Speaker 1: went on vacation that summer. And they come back, you know,
Speaker 1: they leave in early June, they come back in in
Speaker 1: late September, and they're like, so, what's been going on everybody? Right,
Speaker 1: And then they get the sight of what's going on,
Speaker 1: they dropped their mickey mouse ears to the ground. Oh boy.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take another break and we'll come
Speaker 1: back and talk about sort of the finality of this,
Speaker 1: how it ended, and a little bit more about Giles
Speaker 1: Corey's crazy, crazy story. Right after this stuff you should
Speaker 1: stuff you shouldn't, you should know, all right, So in
Speaker 1: the end, um I don't think that the final final number.
Speaker 1: I've seen twenty two. I've seen UM nineteen people were hanged.
Speaker 1: Giles Corey, who were going to talk about in a minute,
Speaker 1: was pressed to death via you know, torture. UM. Five
Speaker 1: people died in prison. I think the numbers sort of
Speaker 1: depend on what you count is like like a fallout
Speaker 1: death and not a direct death like the one lady
Speaker 1: who couldn't repay like she was eis or. I think
Speaker 1: she just couldn't pay her debt to get out of jail,
Speaker 1: so she died in jail. That's such a sad story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Lydia Dustin. She is she outlived the um the witch
Speaker 1: trials like they had ended a few months before, uh,
Speaker 1: and she had actually been personally exonerated, and yet she
Speaker 1: couldn't pay her um shackle fees, so they just kept
Speaker 1: her in jail and she ended up dying there in
Speaker 1: March of six even though she yeah, for sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: because she otherwise would not have been killed or died
Speaker 1: had it not been being placed in jail after being
Speaker 1: accused of a witch for sure. But they did this
Speaker 1: in mass hangings. It wasn't just like one at a time.
Speaker 1: There was a hanging on July nineteen August nineteenth. In September,
Speaker 1: after they died, they were stripped and put in a
Speaker 1: big mass grave. Um. Supposedly, there are stories that families
Speaker 1: would come and get them out of the mass grave
Speaker 1: at night, buried them in unknown probably on parts of
Speaker 1: their land. And they tried for many years to find
Speaker 1: out exactly where these hangings took place, and they ended
Speaker 1: up at a place called Roctor's Ledge, And I don't
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a memorial there and people go there
Speaker 1: and basically they treat that as though that is definitely
Speaker 1: the place, But I don't think they have like hard
Speaker 1: heart evidence other than just trying to like take eyewitness
Speaker 1: accounts in place where they were right. Yeah, supposedly there
Speaker 1: was a study in two thousand and sixteen that where
Speaker 1: they took those eyewitness accounts, took into account what the
Speaker 1: people said they could or couldn't see in like the
Speaker 1: background or whatever, and then plotted them and then figured
Speaker 1: out that the most of these points were standing in
Speaker 1: around the same place around um that ledge where they
Speaker 1: think that yes, this happened, yeah, but they never found
Speaker 1: like and then underneath the ground they dug and they
Speaker 1: found the gallows bowl. Right. No, they never found any
Speaker 1: physical evidence. So whatever. So the story of Giles Corey,
Speaker 1: if you know The Crucible you know it. Well, if
Speaker 1: you've seen the movie, you know it. Um. He is
Speaker 1: the man that was pressed to death. Uh, he was crushed. Basically,
Speaker 1: pressing is when they would lay you down, they would
Speaker 1: put boards on top of you and then just start
Speaker 1: adding weight over the course of time, more and more weight,
Speaker 1: until you eventually die. UM. I had heard this story
Speaker 1: before because supposedly Giles Corey said more weight because he
Speaker 1: refused to He was standing mute, and he refused to
Speaker 1: to say whether he was guilty or innocent. The one
Speaker 1: thing I didn't know is that Giles Corey was eighty
Speaker 1: one years old. Yeah, he was an old guy. He
Speaker 1: was like the old guy from that um Metallica video.
Speaker 1: That's what I always imagined Giles Corey do. It looked like. Man,
Speaker 1: what a story. Though. One thing standing mute would do
Speaker 1: would um allow your estate to be passed onto your
Speaker 1: heirs rather than being convicted where that wouldn't happen. But
Speaker 1: I saw that this wasn't the reasoning behind him standing mute,
Speaker 1: because most of his stuff had already been taken and
Speaker 1: that he even wrote down that he was standing mute
Speaker 1: to protests the sham proceedings. Yeah. So yeah, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like just the way he's been um kind of
Speaker 1: lionized by history, that that was his motivation for sure.
Speaker 1: But you said something about how most of his stuff
Speaker 1: have been taken. There's another villain in all this. Beyond
Speaker 1: Stoughton and the Mathers, Um, there was a guy named
Speaker 1: George Corwin, and he was the sheriff of Essex County,
Speaker 1: which is where um, this which panics took place. Um.
Speaker 1: And he was basically taking advantage of the fact that
Speaker 1: a lot of people were suddenly way more vulnerable than
Speaker 1: they had been the year before, a few months before.
Speaker 1: And so when he would arrest them and take them,
Speaker 1: he would also take possession of their property officially, their stuff,
Speaker 1: their land, all that, and he and his deputies would
Speaker 1: divvy it up. So he had every incentive to arrest
Speaker 1: as many people as possible and throw him in jail.
Speaker 1: And he did that, and he took a lot of
Speaker 1: people's land. Uh. And I guess he took Giles Corey's
Speaker 1: land as well. And Giles Corey curse the town and
Speaker 1: the sheriff as he died, and supposedly, UM George core
Speaker 1: Actually shouldn't say supposedly. George Corwin definitely did die less
Speaker 1: than three years later at age thirty of a heart attack.
Speaker 1: And there's a local legend that UM every Essex Essex
Speaker 1: County sheriff from Corwin onward. Um either died or resigned
Speaker 1: while in office because of a heart condition. I didn't
Speaker 1: have time to go look through the records of Essex
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's but I thought that was a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: local legend. But this dude was in his twenties when
Speaker 1: he was doing this. Yeah, he was in his in
Speaker 1: his middle late twenties, and he was one of the
Speaker 1: worst of the worst. And so there's one more story
Speaker 1: about when he died. That guy Philip English that I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, UM, who was accused because of the guy
Speaker 1: getting the nosebleeding. He was a very very wealthy merchant
Speaker 1: in Salem Town and Corwin took his stuff, like his land,
Speaker 1: a lot of his ships. Um just took a lot
Speaker 1: of his stuff while Um English was on the run
Speaker 1: evading capture. And when English came back after the Salem
Speaker 1: which trials were over, and found what Corwin had done.
Speaker 1: He Um, he tried to get his money back from Corny,
Speaker 1: tried to get his money, his land and ships, all
Speaker 1: that stuff, and Corwin wouldn't give it to him. Well,
Speaker 1: Corwin dies of a heart attack, and um, Philip English
Speaker 1: placed a lean basically on this guy's body and said,
Speaker 1: you're not burying him until I get paid back. The
Speaker 1: family was like, we're not listening to you. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go bury him. So Philip English hired a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys and they went out and stopped the funeral procession,
Speaker 1: took possession of the body and held a hostage until
Speaker 1: Corwin's family paid Philip English back for what Corwin had
Speaker 1: taken from, had confiscated from, and then Philip English gave
Speaker 1: them the body to bury. Wow nuts, not a nice guy,
Speaker 1: who Philip English? No, No, okay, yeah, I totally I
Speaker 1: was gonna say I totally sighed with Philip English on
Speaker 1: that one. Um. All right, So Corey dies and the
Speaker 1: sort of the the long and short of his death
Speaker 1: was that it was sort of a final straw. And
Speaker 1: this is when Phipps comes back in and says, you
Speaker 1: know what, things are getting really out of hand. Uh, increase.
Speaker 1: Mather says, Yeah, this spectral evidence thing is gotten way
Speaker 1: out of hand and it's probably not real. And people
Speaker 1: started to um sort of stand up more and more,
Speaker 1: and it was clear that Governor Phips had to kind
Speaker 1: of halt things. Um. He said he did it under
Speaker 1: the context of, you know, this is a contravention of
Speaker 1: English law. We can't do this. I'm dissolving the court
Speaker 1: of Oyer and Terminer and I'm going to create a
Speaker 1: new court where we can't use spectral evidence. And what
Speaker 1: do you know. In January and February there were dozens
Speaker 1: of people released. Um. Note grand juries weren't indicting people. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were found not guilty. Uh. He pardoned some and
Speaker 1: by the end of May that next year, the jails
Speaker 1: had no more um quote unquote, which is right, because
Speaker 1: they found when you take away the spectral evidence, what
Speaker 1: you have, for the most part is personal grudges, land disputes,
Speaker 1: land grabs. People just trying to to um take advantage
Speaker 1: of this situation to get back at somebody they don't
Speaker 1: like and haven't liked for a really long time. And
Speaker 1: that was a weird, weird, scary time. It was very scary,
Speaker 1: and I can't imagine like living during that time. Actually
Speaker 1: it's not true. I can't imagine it, um, But it
Speaker 1: was just basically another example of like a time when
Speaker 1: a group of people became fascist together and people died
Speaker 1: as a result. Yeah, and that you know, the term
Speaker 1: witch hunt is still used, um that the Crucible was
Speaker 1: written because of McCarthy ism. It's been thrown around a
Speaker 1: lot in recent years, maybe not as accurately, but it's
Speaker 1: still a term for that reason. Um. I've got one
Speaker 1: little nice button to put on the end of this, chuck.
Speaker 1: There was at least one guy who was a judge
Speaker 1: in the Court of vy or in term, named Samuel Sewell,
Speaker 1: and within a year or two after the witch trials,
Speaker 1: he was standing in front of the Boston Congregation of
Speaker 1: Puritans having a petition read um by the local reverend there,
Speaker 1: asking for their forgiveness and admitting that this was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge mistake and he regretted participating in it, and would
Speaker 1: they forgive him? Um, And I believe they did. So
Speaker 1: the whole thing ended. Well, you got anything else else, man,
Speaker 1: If you want to go down a rabbit hole start
Speaker 1: researching the Salem witchcraft trials, you could do a lot
Speaker 1: worse than going to the Historic Present, the New England
Speaker 1: Historical Society and the History of Massachusetts dot org or
Speaker 1: just hit at Grabanowski up, he'll tell you all about it.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, you could do that too. Walk around, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're trying to take your money in all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways. Yeah, Essex County, mass is one of the
Speaker 1: most beautiful places on earth. If you asked me, sure, Um, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: since I said that, it's time for a listener mail,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this cool kid. I like to read
Speaker 1: the emails from the cool kids. Hey, guys, my dad
Speaker 1: introduced me to your show when I was barely a teenager,
Speaker 1: and I've been listening ever since. In that time, my
Speaker 1: family has gone through a lot of changes, and my
Speaker 1: dad and I haven't always been on the best terms.
Speaker 1: I wanted to reach out and let you know that
Speaker 1: stuff you should know is the only thing that we
Speaker 1: have consistently been able to talk about when we reconnect
Speaker 1: after being a part. We can go months without seeing
Speaker 1: each other and I can just ask if you listen
Speaker 1: to your latest episode to have something to talk about.
Speaker 1: It helped keeps things lighthearted and it's something we feel
Speaker 1: like it's just for the two of us. I hope
Speaker 1: we can see you live in Austin soon. Furthermore, this
Speaker 1: is mostly for Chuck. You were so much like my dad,
Speaker 1: it's actually freaky. Sometimes we always make jokes that you
Speaker 1: two would be best friends if you met in real life.
Speaker 1: Your voices even sound a little bit the same. I'll
Speaker 1: be honest. Sometimes it's comforting to listen to y'all when
Speaker 1: I miss my dad. Uh, I've been meaning to send
Speaker 1: this email for a while. Just tell you guys how
Speaker 1: much you mean to me and my family. Thanks for
Speaker 1: being there for us. Also, I don't know if my
Speaker 1: dad listens to the end of the episodes or just
Speaker 1: the factual content. We'll find out, but if he's listening
Speaker 1: this far in, tell him I said, hi, warm regards
Speaker 1: c J. Curbo and Uh says, we come to Austin,
Speaker 1: they treat us to dinner at their favorite fried catfish
Speaker 1: seafood restaurant. Nice, very nice. Um, that was very nice,
Speaker 1: c J. What a great email, and thank you very
Speaker 1: much for the invite. We probably will be in Austin
Speaker 1: again sometime. It was and c J, you should know
Speaker 1: that we cut it out, but I accidentally said fried
Speaker 1: cat food. It was hilarious and Josh got a good
Speaker 1: laugh out of it. Yeah, so thanks for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're welcome. If you want to be like c J
Speaker 1: and write a very nice email we want to hear it,
Speaker 1: you can send it to us that Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
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