Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: in this episode we are venturing into the house Stuff
Speaker 1: works Awesiuary because like like a great educational institute. Um.
Speaker 1: We're of course so situated over an underground catacomb stuff
Speaker 1: full of human remnants. We have this wonderful bone chandelier
Speaker 1: hanging over us. Uh. It's a delightful place and we
Speaker 1: hope that you will join us for this episode as
Speaker 1: we explore some of the specimens we have around here. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and in case your company doesn't have an osuary, UM,
Speaker 1: this is also known as the bone house, the facility
Speaker 1: for the storage of human of course UM now owesuaries.
Speaker 1: You'll find these throughout human history, sometimes not with such
Speaker 1: an elegant title. Again, going back to just a bone
Speaker 1: house or even a bone pit um you look back
Speaker 1: to ancient Persia. For instance, the Tzarastrians used a version
Speaker 1: of of an ossiuary. They would they would take corpses,
Speaker 1: put them on top of their their towers of silence
Speaker 1: and birds and the elements to break the bodies down
Speaker 1: to the bones, and then the bones would be stored
Speaker 1: away in for safekeeping. And uh. And actually we see
Speaker 1: some truly ancient bone pits out there that provide us
Speaker 1: with some of the earliest evidence, even DNA evidence of
Speaker 1: early humans and pre human hominids. For instance, back in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, a German team from the Max Plank
Speaker 1: Institute was able to identify twenty eight different remains from
Speaker 1: Spain's Semididas twices, or the bone pit, which contained four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand year old Homo Heidelbergenis hominids. So we've we've
Speaker 1: been dumping our skeletons into various tombs and caves and
Speaker 1: nublettes for quite a while. Uh, it's a grand tradition
Speaker 1: and uh and one that one that I hope continues,
Speaker 1: and it's pragmatic. Um. And we're going to actually look
Speaker 1: at one of probably the most stellar examples of an ossuary,
Speaker 1: which is the Catacombs of Paris. You've been lucky enough
Speaker 1: to witness this place firsthand. Yes, I have been to
Speaker 1: the Empire of Death and it's it truly is one
Speaker 1: of the creepiest places I have ever been. At sixty
Speaker 1: underground and Uh, you know, you go through these small
Speaker 1: little halls until you get to this marker that talks about, hey,
Speaker 1: you're about to enter the Empire of Death, and lo
Speaker 1: and behold you see all of these bones. Um, this
Speaker 1: pathway of bones stacked in such a configuration, in such
Speaker 1: an elaborate one that it's just it's like the Vatican
Speaker 1: of bones. It's too much. It's almost it's overwhelming. And
Speaker 1: you imagine the person responsible for arranging those bones, and
Speaker 1: wonder if if he went absolutely mad with the task.
Speaker 1: Now are you there on an official tour or is
Speaker 1: this like a secret underground Parisian ray? If you written, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't really tell you the details of how I
Speaker 1: got there, just that I got there. Now, of course
Speaker 1: they aren't just they're willing million for people to ply
Speaker 1: off the sewer covers and jump down and have a
Speaker 1: party in the catacombs have a very long history that
Speaker 1: actually started with Romans. Yeah. I mean, of course, you
Speaker 1: can go back even even further, Ina, we can go
Speaker 1: back like forty five million years to where you had
Speaker 1: just a tropical sea instead of Paris, France. And eventually, uh,
Speaker 1: the seabed sediment turns into limestone and This is key,
Speaker 1: of course, because most naturally occurring caves formed from limestone
Speaker 1: via dissolution. Uh and limestone is soft yet firm, so
Speaker 1: it's a great stone to use in construction as well,
Speaker 1: which is what the Romans were doing, right. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were like, look at all this delicious limestone. Let's carve
Speaker 1: it out and make things out of it. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: eventually created the Roman city of Lutatia, the city that
Speaker 1: would eventually become Paris. And in the process they made
Speaker 1: they dug up these quarry pits. They resulted in roughly
Speaker 1: a hundred eighty seven miles of underground tunnels. And these
Speaker 1: these cores ended up providing the stone for even such
Speaker 1: such modern post Roman constructions as uh as Notre Dame
Speaker 1: well And and they remain that way for quite a
Speaker 1: bit until the eighteenth century, when they were long abandoned
Speaker 1: and someone scratched their heads said, hmmm, this could really
Speaker 1: solve our public health problem, namely, like all these bodies
Speaker 1: that we have piling up from various diseases. That's right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you had you had such large central cemeteries
Speaker 1: as uh as Saints Innocence are what's the French on that, Well,
Speaker 1: this is not Holly Fry certified. But I'm going to
Speaker 1: take a step. Okay, okay, so active Germans. I'm useless
Speaker 1: on this one. But yes. St. Sentisen is one of
Speaker 1: the main cemetery, is the largest cemetery in Paris. And
Speaker 1: you had a situation where you had the bodies were
Speaker 1: just improperly buried or weren't weren't buried yet. It was
Speaker 1: there's things are just stacking up. We've been burying people
Speaker 1: in the cemetery for for quite a while. And so
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do. Well, you dig those bodies up,
Speaker 1: you take the bones, and you deposit them somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It took two years to do that, by the way,
Speaker 1: and then between seventeen eighty seven and eighteen fourteen, bones
Speaker 1: from other cemeteries were also transferred in the final transfer
Speaker 1: of bones took place in eighteen fifty nine. Now, there
Speaker 1: is a ton of history in those bones. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have the bones of Robespierre from the French Revolution. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's a it's a piling up
Speaker 1: of historical events and historical diseases. Yeah, all just cataloged
Speaker 1: there in the catacombs. Uh. Into the tune of what
Speaker 1: like seven million dead Parisians down there, Yes, seven million
Speaker 1: deporations and perhaps some people of other nationalities stirring about there.
Speaker 1: But that is why when you go into this it
Speaker 1: is so it's just like staggering to see that amount
Speaker 1: of bones configured in that way. Again, we were talking
Speaker 1: about a hundred and eighties seven miles of these tunnels
Speaker 1: and various other little areas. Um, there's there's a place
Speaker 1: where I think they called it like the footbath for
Speaker 1: the quarrymen. That's just this big open pool that's sort
Speaker 1: of fascinating to to be, you know, in this configuration
Speaker 1: and then just happened upon this pool. So um, it
Speaker 1: really is sort of this empire of death underground, which
Speaker 1: is fitting. Yeah, I mean it really gets down to
Speaker 1: some of the you know, the fascinations we just have
Speaker 1: with the skeleton, like what are we to make of
Speaker 1: the skeleton? This this this part of ourselves that remains
Speaker 1: after all the flesh has has gone away, and and
Speaker 1: sometimes when there's for quite some time that that is
Speaker 1: it's us, but it's also just a part of us. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, what are we to make of the skeleton? Well,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind too that until humans really started
Speaker 1: missing about with skeletons. I mean, the natural thing to
Speaker 1: happen would be deterioration for it just to become part
Speaker 1: of a leaf litter, which in large part it still does, right, Um,
Speaker 1: if you have sort of your traditional burial um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was for me. It's the sort of
Speaker 1: grappling with what life and death is in this attempt
Speaker 1: to take these bones, arrange them, give meaning, preserve them,
Speaker 1: hope that there's an Afro life for them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I you know, a lot of that is what
Speaker 1: Western funeral practices come down to, is this idea that
Speaker 1: there's going to be an actual physical resurrection of the dead.
Speaker 1: And then we got into that a bit in uh
Speaker 1: one in a couple of our episodes, the Problem of
Speaker 1: Immortality and then also the Problem of Hell, both of
Speaker 1: which deal with what do we do with our ideas
Speaker 1: about what happens to some permanent, supposedly permanent part of
Speaker 1: ourselves when when we pass on. Yeah, And we were
Speaker 1: actually just talking about this before we started recording this episode,
Speaker 1: about that song dem Bones, which sort of like we
Speaker 1: think of a children's song like to THEE. I don't know, Um,
Speaker 1: that's actually an African spiritual that is talking about if
Speaker 1: I've got this right resurrection, that all these different parts
Speaker 1: are fitting back together so that this person can you know,
Speaker 1: have a resurrection. It's pretty fascinating when you when you
Speaker 1: compare that to say that the practice of sky burial
Speaker 1: into bad and also in parts of Mongolia and elsewhere where,
Speaker 1: the the idea is to just break everything down and
Speaker 1: and just have it be reabsorbed by nature to the
Speaker 1: point where actually, uh, someone is pulverizing the bones. Now
Speaker 1: there is an idea in terms of green burials that
Speaker 1: ossuaries could make a comeback. In other world this practice
Speaker 1: of moving bones could continue, um because as they decompose,
Speaker 1: you could then add it to an ossuary and then
Speaker 1: could sort of clear up that land and reuse it
Speaker 1: for another burial. Yeah, I really like the idea. The
Speaker 1: more I read about green burial, the more I'm on
Speaker 1: board with it. Um. So, I guess ultimately anyone's death
Speaker 1: is you know, it's it's been a large part in
Speaker 1: the hands of what you know, the people that come
Speaker 1: after you. But I think there's something more, There's something
Speaker 1: get far more beautiful about your body being broken down
Speaker 1: becoming part of nature instead of being sealed away in
Speaker 1: this artificial box, popped with all these artificial chemicals. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, for what, for what purpose? Well? And again
Speaker 1: I think it's as trying to grapple all the questions
Speaker 1: of life and death and put some sort of form
Speaker 1: to it and organize it and make ourselves feel better
Speaker 1: about it. Um. But the ossuary route is really a
Speaker 1: lot more practical or any sort of green burial um.
Speaker 1: You know, because again we've got the population exclusion currently
Speaker 1: and comeing online in the next fifty years. We don't
Speaker 1: have any more territory to explore to to really sort
Speaker 1: of grow our food or bury our dead. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean our cemeteries are nice, but let's maybe we
Speaker 1: should stop making new ones. You know. That's this land
Speaker 1: that commute further the purposes. So yeah, for my part,
Speaker 1: I say, let the flesh fall off my body, Let
Speaker 1: the lambur guyers have my bones, let them drop them
Speaker 1: from from from from from on high onto some stones
Speaker 1: and then eat the marrow. Wow. So if you did
Speaker 1: have some sort of traditional barrel that would be on
Speaker 1: your tombstone, Uh, yeah, I guess I don't know where
Speaker 1: the teambstone is gonna go. There. I guess like you know,
Speaker 1: my descendants living room or something, or you just you
Speaker 1: find some stone, you need to face it somewhere and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I existed, my body rotted and then some birds messed
Speaker 1: with my bones. Tombstone. There you go. All right, look
Speaker 1: at the virtual Robert Lamb that exists online. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna handle some skulls. Does that mean that we're
Speaker 1: going down to the basement. Yes, yes, let's look at
Speaker 1: some skulls. You know, you you look at the human
Speaker 1: skull and a lot of things go through your head.
Speaker 1: We've a very discussed some of this. You know, it
Speaker 1: appears to be smiling at you or laughing at you
Speaker 1: with its uh, with its big grins, it's gaping sockets.
Speaker 1: But you know, the more we look at it, the
Speaker 1: more we look at the skull, and the more we
Speaker 1: look at the human hand and incidentally, um, the hands
Speaker 1: and feet contain over half the body's bones. Because these
Speaker 1: are you know, these are delicate instruments, uh that are
Speaker 1: that have that have evolved for you know, the fine
Speaker 1: manipulation of of of items and tools. The more we
Speaker 1: look at them though we can tell that the hand,
Speaker 1: particularly the fist, was made for punching the skull, and
Speaker 1: the skull evolved to receive the fifth. The skull and
Speaker 1: the fifth are are made for each other. They are
Speaker 1: there there, their lovers across time and uh and and
Speaker 1: when you look at the science of it, it's it's
Speaker 1: really fascinating. There. I don't know that I would say
Speaker 1: their lovers across time, but I would say they have
Speaker 1: certainly connected across time, that's right. University of Utah biologists
Speaker 1: David Carrier and Michael H. Morgan, a University of Utah physician,
Speaker 1: contend that these human faces of ours, especially those of
Speaker 1: our austral epith ancestors, evolved to minimize injury from punches
Speaker 1: to the face during fights between males, and their paper
Speaker 1: is titled Protective Buttressing of the homin In Face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they said, if we look back four or five million
Speaker 1: years at these ancestors, we find an increased robustness in
Speaker 1: the particular facial bones that are most likely to suffer
Speaker 1: fracture during a pummeling. Uh And these are these are
Speaker 1: the areas where we also find the greatest different between
Speaker 1: male and female facial structures. Both in austero epiths, both
Speaker 1: in asterol epiths, and in humans because again, uh, the
Speaker 1: structures may have evolved in response to that male on
Speaker 1: mail of violence. Now, initially the idea was something like
Speaker 1: the these really strong jaws were needed to you know,
Speaker 1: break down not serving really hard foods. But more and
Speaker 1: more of this evidence in these resulting studies suggests that no,
Speaker 1: it's not just to break down nuts. And there is
Speaker 1: a difference in gender. Yes. Now, previously back at this
Speaker 1: study about the skulls, come but Carrier back in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve had looked at the bones of the hand,
Speaker 1: and this is the study where he revealed that proportions
Speaker 1: of the human hand allow us to make a fist
Speaker 1: that protects all of those delicate bones and muscles and
Speaker 1: ligaments during a jaw shattering, right hook. Because again, it's
Speaker 1: kind of crazy when you think about it, Like these hands, right,
Speaker 1: these these these fine manipulative limbs that we use to
Speaker 1: h to make tools, to make fire, to prepare food,
Speaker 1: to put food in our mouth, that we're gonna then
Speaker 1: take those fine instruments and punch people in the face
Speaker 1: with it. I mean, it's like like a violinist it's
Speaker 1: gonna take his or her strata varius and then swing
Speaker 1: it at an enemy during a battle. It doesn't make sense, right, Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: the argument here from Carry's research is that we evolve
Speaker 1: to deal with that. No other primates um or any
Speaker 1: animal for that matter, can actually throw a punch. You
Speaker 1: don't see punch is thrown with chimps, with gorillas, none
Speaker 1: of them. It's a human thing um and Carry argues
Speaker 1: that our earliest answers just may have benefited from an
Speaker 1: evolutionary advantage if they could actually punch hard without injuring. Uh,
Speaker 1: those five fingers, and they're gonna win mates, They're going
Speaker 1: to win resources, they're gonna win tribal honor. Furthermore, Carrier
Speaker 1: also found that a punch is always going to be
Speaker 1: better than a slap or a chop. Now I've about
Speaker 1: the chop that can be really effective. Well, a chop,
Speaker 1: chop can be effective. And I've i when I shared
Speaker 1: this study a few years back, when it first came
Speaker 1: out on on social media and on our blogs, I
Speaker 1: did have some conversations with people that were arguing against that,
Speaker 1: people who had a little more expertise in martial arts, saying, well,
Speaker 1: actually a chop you know, can be extremely effective, or
Speaker 1: or a palm thrust, etcetera. But Carriers research found that
Speaker 1: a peak that peak strike force is always the same
Speaker 1: no matter what manner of handblow you're using. But the
Speaker 1: fist delivers all of this force to a smaller area.
Speaker 1: So according to him, the force per area is up
Speaker 1: to three times greater with a punch of the face
Speaker 1: versus a slap to the face. Now, Carrier says, quote,
Speaker 1: if indeed the evolution of our hand proportions were associated
Speaker 1: with selection for fighting behavior, you might expect the primary target,
Speaker 1: the face, to have undergone evolution to better protect from
Speaker 1: injury when punched. In other words, coevolution. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: an arms race, essentially almost literally in arms race. Right,
Speaker 1: you canna swing that big meat club at me? Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna my jaw is gonna get much bigger to
Speaker 1: absorb that so it doesn't break its easily. Now, all
Speaker 1: this being said, uh, Michael H. Morgan, one of the
Speaker 1: studies co author, says, quote, our research is about peace.
Speaker 1: We seek to explore, understand, and confront human kinds, violent
Speaker 1: and aggressive tendencies. Peace begins with ourselves and is ultimately
Speaker 1: achieve through disciplined self analysis and an understanding of where
Speaker 1: we've come from as a species. Through our research, we
Speaker 1: look at ourselves in the mirror and begin the difficult
Speaker 1: work of changing ourselves for the better. I think Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson said the same thing. Yeah, I think so. I mean,
Speaker 1: really when it comes to changing ourselves for the better.
Speaker 1: We'll get into an example this later on. But humans
Speaker 1: have always been into finding ways to hack their bodies
Speaker 1: and indeed hack their skeletons in ways that match up
Speaker 1: with their own expectations of the human form. Well, you
Speaker 1: know this, this whole study to makes me think of
Speaker 1: just the complexity of of evolution. Like imagine if it
Speaker 1: were a boardroom or a committee trying to determine what
Speaker 1: shape that the fifth or the skull would take. Because
Speaker 1: on one hand that you would have individuals saying, all right, look,
Speaker 1: it needs to be a delicate a delicate system of
Speaker 1: fingers so that we can do some fine manipulation of
Speaker 1: crafting projects of uh, you know, of the various interactions
Speaker 1: with the natural environment. But also it needs to be
Speaker 1: able to punch somebody in the face. And likewise, the
Speaker 1: face department are saying, well, this is essentially a communications array.
Speaker 1: We have our sense organs frontloaded at the at the top.
Speaker 1: We want, you know, all the faces to kind of
Speaker 1: look look the same, so that there's a so that
Speaker 1: needs a small difference can have an emotional response on
Speaker 1: the viewer. But also it needs to be able to
Speaker 1: take a punch just head on without too much damage occurring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and especially when it comes to the hands, I really
Speaker 1: feel like that potential for peace or thoughtful um ways
Speaker 1: in which to enter a situation and war are contained
Speaker 1: within because you do have the intricate system that that thumb,
Speaker 1: the placement of that that is gives us that sort
Speaker 1: of advantage with tools and that grasp that no other
Speaker 1: species has. At the same time, it also gives it
Speaker 1: the strength that just wallet the big old punch. But
Speaker 1: I feel like that like the tool using things should
Speaker 1: win out here, that that thoughtfulness of like, Okay, how
Speaker 1: do we proceed. We can use tools, we can use
Speaker 1: our minds and use communication getting into the universality of
Speaker 1: of of sign language. We can just use these hands
Speaker 1: to actually communicate. But or you know, or we can
Speaker 1: shop people in the face and punch them. Yeah, choice
Speaker 1: is yours, all right? We're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back more bones. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's let's discuss another ossuary of sorts, one that is
Speaker 1: tied in with with with a central figure in the
Speaker 1: history of of the United States of America, Ben Franklin,
Speaker 1: of course, and he's come up before. We've talked about
Speaker 1: his air bath in which he would just you know,
Speaker 1: hang out naked during the middle of the night and
Speaker 1: read when he couldn't sleep. Well, he is associated with
Speaker 1: this ossuary. Uh did he know about it? We're not
Speaker 1: quite sure. But let's sort of unravel this for you.
Speaker 1: We're talking about number thirty six Craven Street in London,
Speaker 1: which was Craven Street which was once home to Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 1: who resided there between seventeen fifty seven and seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: five when he was the ambassador for the American Colonies. Now,
Speaker 1: that's all very fine and well, but in ninet the
Speaker 1: house received extensive renovations and during that excavations and renovations
Speaker 1: were halted because in the basement a thigh bone was found. Yes,
Speaker 1: the police were called. Uh, they began to dig out
Speaker 1: more from this pit. In the basement, and they found
Speaker 1: some twelve hundred pieces of bones, and initial examinations revealed
Speaker 1: that the bones were the remains of ten bodies, six
Speaker 1: of them children, and uh, they were about two hundred
Speaker 1: years old. Um, which all of a sudden casts a
Speaker 1: new light on ben Franklin. Yeah, and it's uh, it
Speaker 1: was probably a pretty interesting if maybe even a little scary. Uh.
Speaker 1: There for for a few minutes with the friends of
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin House, who were who were orchestrating this whole
Speaker 1: attempt to get this house in shape. Because as far
Speaker 1: as places Benjamin Franklin had lived like this one stood up.
Speaker 1: This one was was a good one to renovate and
Speaker 1: and and and turn into the museum devoted to the man.
Speaker 1: And here you go digging around underneath it, and you
Speaker 1: find this windowless room with a pit full of bones.
Speaker 1: And what do you make of it? Now? Now, granted,
Speaker 1: we're talking about London here, and so in London is
Speaker 1: is an old city, and if you dig down deep
Speaker 1: enough in a place like London, you're gonna find just
Speaker 1: about anything. You're gonna find bones, um, mental flaws. And
Speaker 1: their article about it asked the question, well, was Franklin
Speaker 1: a serial killer. Yeah it was no. No, but that
Speaker 1: still leaves room for aout the questions like was he
Speaker 1: a necromancer? Was he was he a ghoul? Was he
Speaker 1: a bone fetishist? I don't know. The more likely explanation
Speaker 1: and will never know, is that he had a friend
Speaker 1: who who definitely owned a saw and uh and a
Speaker 1: drill probably even, and he happened to be an anatomous
Speaker 1: and um. Sure enough, when people looked at further analysis
Speaker 1: of those bones, they saw saw marks, scalpel scraping, and
Speaker 1: drill holes. And so the story that begins to emerge
Speaker 1: is that these bodies were taken apart in a in
Speaker 1: a very thought full manner, and probably by an anatomist. Yes,
Speaker 1: the animis in question William Houston, who had previously been
Speaker 1: a student of anatomist William Hunter, but the two had
Speaker 1: a falling out, Howiston broke aways, but he continued his studies. Now,
Speaker 1: this was an interesting time to be an anatomist, because
Speaker 1: to study human anatomy you need examples of human antomy.
Speaker 1: Anatomy to study I mean even today, despite all of
Speaker 1: our our resources, our illustrations are models, um that the
Speaker 1: use of computers to really explore the human body. You
Speaker 1: need cadavers, you need medical specimens to to cut into,
Speaker 1: to look out, to study, and at the time these uh,
Speaker 1: we're not easily obtainable, at least in in an ethical sense.
Speaker 1: You can always get human bodies, but you've gotta be
Speaker 1: willing to put in the work or pay for that work. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: cadaverish for medical students um, which the demand for dovetailed
Speaker 1: with the increase in medical students, by the way, created
Speaker 1: a black market for dead bodies, and these bodies were
Speaker 1: obtained by people called the resurrection men. And this is
Speaker 1: just a really unsavory piece of history. And the reason
Speaker 1: why people had to go to the black market is
Speaker 1: because the Anatomy Act of eighteen thirty two wasn't in
Speaker 1: place yet, and the Anatomy Act um kind of loosened
Speaker 1: up the laws a bit in terms of getting cadaver
Speaker 1: so people had to go to grave robbers essentially. And
Speaker 1: this really marked the whole medical profession because people began
Speaker 1: to get, of course, a little bit paranoid and not
Speaker 1: you know, like if you introduce yourself as a doctor
Speaker 1: to cocktail party back then you might say, woe, I know,
Speaker 1: I have an uncle who's terminal and and right on
Speaker 1: the edge. Um, please don't go hunting after him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the idea here was that if you die
Speaker 1: and you're buried, there was a chance that a doctor
Speaker 1: ananimous would dig you up and essentially desecrate your body.
Speaker 1: And if you were extremely religious and literal about everything
Speaker 1: you could, you could say, well, they're gonna undo everything
Speaker 1: that my my burial set out to accomplish, which loops
Speaker 1: back to Houston, because here's this guy who's just trying
Speaker 1: to further his education. He's got his friend Franklin, who
Speaker 1: may or may not be in town, and Franklin has
Speaker 1: you know, this great little set up in this house.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Houston's mother in law is the
Speaker 1: landlord of this so oh in the location of of
Speaker 1: this Craven Street house has uh at one end the
Speaker 1: gallows and on the other end the cemetery. So all
Speaker 1: you have to do is take a right or left
Speaker 1: up the house to go ahead and get that body
Speaker 1: and get it there quickly, which would have been really
Speaker 1: helpful for Houston to practice his anatomy on. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: of course you get into the question how much did
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin Now on one hand, is possible that he
Speaker 1: didn't know anything. It's possible, you know that the fact
Speaker 1: of friends of Benjamin Franklin house reportedly have some some
Speaker 1: evidence that that Franklin let you he's gonna have just
Speaker 1: the whole house while he was living up the street
Speaker 1: with a landlady during that time. So so that's one
Speaker 1: possibility is that he had no idea. He's essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: home alone, and so I brought in brought in the
Speaker 1: gadabbers for study, or he was like, the smell is
Speaker 1: so terrible, I'm moving going up the street. Or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe to some extendion, was he was aware of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, Franklin, you know it seems to have been
Speaker 1: a freethinker in many ways. Um, so maybe he was like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, do what you gotta do. As
Speaker 1: long as you know, I'm not going to have anything
Speaker 1: to do with it. But uh, you know, just look
Speaker 1: the other way and let you continue what you're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be upstairs taking an air bath. Yeah. Or maybe
Speaker 1: he was in all the way. Maybe maybe he said, hey,
Speaker 1: you want some corpses, let's go get it. Let's let's
Speaker 1: go get him. I can't sleep. I just woke up.
Speaker 1: I was just just gonna read Naked in the setting Room.
Speaker 1: But if you're up for you know, hitting the cemetery,
Speaker 1: then let's let's go do it. I'm up for a party.
Speaker 1: And alternate story of Ben Franklin, why not? I mean
Speaker 1: that we have alternate fictional account of Lincoln, right is
Speaker 1: the vampire Slayer? Yeah, we can have something that ridiculous
Speaker 1: with virtually nothing historical to back it up. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's here's a piece of history, a little nugget from history.
Speaker 1: This is begging for exploitation. And we've already we have
Speaker 1: properties that have exploited the Gray robbing at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, Burke and Hair and all that. I think
Speaker 1: there've been several movies about about those resurrectionists. But here
Speaker 1: you have an American icon. Uh. Then Franklin and he
Speaker 1: is living on top of a pile of bones, and
Speaker 1: their their Pilford bodies being brought into his house. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't you don't even have to add much to that,
Speaker 1: just on its phone. That would be a great little,
Speaker 1: uh little comedy, but it's half written already. Yeah, throwing
Speaker 1: some goes, throwing some necromancy, a google, what have you
Speaker 1: and you're you're good to go. Now. If you're interested
Speaker 1: in some historical fiction about this, there is a great
Speaker 1: book called The Dress Lodger, but share Erri Holman, and
Speaker 1: it's about a prostitute and a disgrace doctor and she's
Speaker 1: called that. It's called the Dress Lodger because at that time, uh,
Speaker 1: prostitutes would sometimes rent really upscale looking dresses so they
Speaker 1: didn't look like sort of these third prostitutes that might
Speaker 1: be diseased, and they get more business, which is in
Speaker 1: and of itself really interesting. Yeah, I mean dress for success, right, indeed.
Speaker 1: Embodied cognition. Yeah, yeah, all right, we've been down here
Speaker 1: in the ossuary for quite a while. We probably need
Speaker 1: to break and pick this up in a second episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little, i don't know, claustrophobic. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say lonely, but there are a lot of bones
Speaker 1: down here. After a while, they kind of kind of
Speaker 1: feel like those skulls are watching you talking. Hey. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, be sure to check out stuff to Blow
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