Speaker 1: Pushkin. Imagine there's a place in our world where the
Speaker 1: known things go, a quarter of the mind, an endless
Speaker 1: vault crammed with evidence, proof clues me. I like to
Speaker 1: go there and poke around. A book of poems by
Speaker 1: Emily Dickinson, flowers pressed between its pages. Oh, I wonder
Speaker 1: if this old radio still works. I must ended up
Speaker 1: the downs music for a moment. I have an urgent
Speaker 1: message when police had called griefy. Imagine that this place,
Speaker 1: this chamber of knowledge, is all that stands between a
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt and the chaos of uncertainty. That it lies
Speaker 1: somewhere in a time between now and then. Sign on
Speaker 1: the door reads the last archive. I'm Jill Lapoor. Step
Speaker 1: outside to a noisy street in the bustling, rowdy city
Speaker 1: of New York in the year this time, we don't
Speaker 1: have to go very far, the year two thousand and nineteen,
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty five. Maybe we could get in behind. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's an alley on one side. Sarria's under constant videotape
Speaker 1: surreals just in case she comes back. That's nineteen. On
Speaker 1: a sweltering day in July, my producer Ben and I
Speaker 1: went to New York to find an invisible woman. She
Speaker 1: was invisible, and she was also dead, long dead, so
Speaker 1: not an easy search. But I have a rule about
Speaker 1: doing historical research, which is that you should always go
Speaker 1: to the scene of the crime, even if it wasn't
Speaker 1: her crime, the spot where it happened the thing you're
Speaker 1: interested in, even if there's nothing there anymore, because people
Speaker 1: lived and died, and if you're going to try to
Speaker 1: understand them, you owe it to them to breathe their air.
Speaker 1: We're looking for twenty one park Row, or what used
Speaker 1: to be twenty one would it be in that This
Speaker 1: is one peak right here. We had an address on
Speaker 1: Park Row. It's in Lower Manhattan, near the New World
Speaker 1: Trade Center. A long time ago, this part of town
Speaker 1: used to be the theater district, but now twenty one
Speaker 1: Park Row is a construction site. Ben and I were
Speaker 1: on the hunt for whatever might remain of a place
Speaker 1: called the Shakespeare Gallery. The Shakespeare Gallery was a sort
Speaker 1: of exhibit space where in the year eighteen o four,
Speaker 1: an invisible lady was put on display. Visitors could come
Speaker 1: see her, if you could call it that, in a
Speaker 1: glass box, the way you'd pay a penny to see
Speaker 1: a two headed calf or a bearded lady or the
Speaker 1: tiniest man a freak show. Come see the Invisible Lady
Speaker 1: somewhere beneath that construction site. The Shakespeare Gallery is long gone, demolished, forgotten, buried.
Speaker 1: So we went to a park across the street to
Speaker 1: see what we could see. We could not confirm or deny,
Speaker 1: but she could be in the construction site. And then
Speaker 1: she just vanished again. It was lunch hour a work day,
Speaker 1: and the park was crowded. All around us, people had
Speaker 1: their phones out, taking selfies, streaming video, uploading whatever to wherever,
Speaker 1: trying to make themselves visible to someone somewhere. On this
Speaker 1: season of The Last Archive, we're trying to solve a crime.
Speaker 1: Who killed Truth? I had a hunched that the Invisible Lady,
Speaker 1: the invisible lady we were looking for, that she had
Speaker 1: something to do with the answer. We started in episode
Speaker 1: one asking what is a fact that took us all
Speaker 1: the way back to the year twelve? Then we asked,
Speaker 1: how can you tell if someone's telling the truth? That
Speaker 1: took us to the nutty history of the lie Detector.
Speaker 1: This episode, we're asking can you believe stuff that you
Speaker 1: can't see? People want to know things, But people also
Speaker 1: like to hide things. The search for knowledge, then, is
Speaker 1: always bumping up against the right to privacy. That's what
Speaker 1: interests me most about the strange story of the Invisible
Speaker 1: Lady from the year eighteen o four. After all, how
Speaker 1: often do you meet an invisible lady? Hello, I'm Sirie,
Speaker 1: your virtual assistant. Okay, maybe pretty often. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but I hear from invisible ladies all the time.
Speaker 1: Invisible ladies who seem to know everything. They're all over
Speaker 1: the place. But why why can women know things only
Speaker 1: when they're disembodied? It was cold when she got to
Speaker 1: New York the winter of eighteen oh four. Notices of
Speaker 1: her arrival appeared all over the city, and newsboys shouted
Speaker 1: from street corners get jarred and posts. Get your chronicle
Speaker 1: express here on Monday, will commence an exhibition in the
Speaker 1: Shakespeare Gallery near the Theater. That extraordinary phenomenon, the Invisible Lady.
Speaker 1: She has come to the city to see, if not
Speaker 1: to be seen, to visit the Invisible Lady. The Invisible
Speaker 1: Lady didn't turn up in New York and stay for
Speaker 1: only a day or a week. No, she stayed for
Speaker 1: a long time, for months, then she went on tour
Speaker 1: all over the country. Before Barnum and his museum and
Speaker 1: his freak shows, the Invisible Lady was just about the
Speaker 1: most popular attraction in the United States. You'd get your
Speaker 1: ticket good anytime from nine in the morning till nine
Speaker 1: at night, except for a lunch hour, and then you'd
Speaker 1: go into the gallery, a small room by the theater
Speaker 1: where they choke exhibits and spectacles. It was a bit
Speaker 1: like a peep show and a little porny in that way.
Speaker 1: What you'd see when you walked into the room was
Speaker 1: an eerily beautiful glass box about the size of a coffin,
Speaker 1: suspended from the ceiling by four golden chords. It looked empty,
Speaker 1: but if you bent close to the speaking trumpets made
Speaker 1: of brass that poked out of the corners, you could
Speaker 1: hear her voice. Probably it sounded something like this. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but you could hear her breathing. You can
Speaker 1: see her, of course, I'm in the room right now.
Speaker 1: I can smell Wisher. My astonishment was extreme. I thought
Speaker 1: at first this voice was that of a ventriloquist. But
Speaker 1: there couldn't have been a ventriloquist, because even if the
Speaker 1: room was empty except for you. You could still talk
Speaker 1: with her. Scholars, reporters, ordinary people. They all tried to
Speaker 1: figure it out. What can be the cause of a
Speaker 1: phenomenon so astonishing It was incredibly fun. The thing to
Speaker 1: do was to ask her questions, all sorts of questions,
Speaker 1: as if she were an oracle or a psychic fortune teller.
Speaker 1: Have you been to heaven? Is there a God? What
Speaker 1: am I thinking about right now? Who will be our
Speaker 1: next president? She was super chatty. If you were lucky,
Speaker 1: she might even sing to you. People came up with
Speaker 1: all kinds of theories about how this lady could be invisible.
Speaker 1: If there wasn't a ventriloquist, maybe there was some sort
Speaker 1: of contraption involved. Either way, she was a mystery. She
Speaker 1: defied facts. It is hoped by some of our cognisanti
Speaker 1: that the mystery will be here unveiled. Okay, So no
Speaker 1: one actually believed that the Invisible Lady was a mystery
Speaker 1: in the sense of being a miracle. They thought she
Speaker 1: was a mystery in the newer modern secular sense, a
Speaker 1: secret to be discovered the secret of this wonderful machine
Speaker 1: appears to me well worthy of exciting public curiosity, and
Speaker 1: will not fail to give occasion for the researches of
Speaker 1: those who wish to comprehend and explain everything. People really
Speaker 1: wanted to know how the schimmick worked, and they couldn't
Speaker 1: figure it out, or if they figured it out, they
Speaker 1: kept quiet. So honestly, I didn't want to spill the
Speaker 1: beans either. But Ben and I back in that park
Speaker 1: had been sweating it out empty handed for a long time,
Speaker 1: lazy ghostbuster style, and Ben really wanted to know how
Speaker 1: did it actual work? So how I actually worked is
Speaker 1: and this is lifting the magician's veil and viole leading
Speaker 1: the one pledge of all mysticism. How it worked is
Speaker 1: that the building was adjusted before the Invisible Lady came
Speaker 1: to town to make a place in the ceiling between
Speaker 1: the ceiling and the floor above the room where the
Speaker 1: Invisible Lady's box was, where a very small woman would
Speaker 1: be hidden so she could witness everything that was going on.
Speaker 1: And the audio was essentially delivered via a system of
Speaker 1: tubes from her little crawl space above the ceiling and
Speaker 1: below the upper floorboards down into a little hole in
Speaker 1: the box. So when she spoke from that crawl space
Speaker 1: into the tube, her voice came out of the box.
Speaker 1: It really did seem like she was inhabiting the box.
Speaker 1: It was really about the particular kind of plumbing, right right,
Speaker 1: people are just looking at an empty box. But she
Speaker 1: could be really responsive because she could see them and
Speaker 1: she could hear everything. If you could ask the Invisible
Speaker 1: Lady anything, or would you ask her what's it like
Speaker 1: to be invisible? I mean, the thing that's so funny
Speaker 1: about it to me, like if you were invisible in
Speaker 1: New York City in the nineteenth century, Like, would you
Speaker 1: go put yourself on display in a box and be
Speaker 1: like stuck in her? You'd be so cool. You could
Speaker 1: go anywhere and see anything, do anything, and get away
Speaker 1: with anything. Ever since I first came across the story
Speaker 1: of the Invisible Lady, I figured the whole attraction had
Speaker 1: to do with privacy and the thrill of invading a
Speaker 1: woman's privacy. I liked this theory of mine. I got
Speaker 1: pretty committed to it. Sometimes when you do research, you're
Speaker 1: chronicling a person's life or reconstructing an event, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you follow a theme. And once I got interested in
Speaker 1: the Invisible Lady, I started seeing invisible ladies, or I
Speaker 1: guess not seeing them everywhere, and then I started taking
Speaker 1: my theory about them more seriously when one day, poking
Speaker 1: around in the last archive, I came across an essay
Speaker 1: written by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Higginson was the editor of
Speaker 1: the famously private poet Emily Dickinson. He'd almost certainly seen
Speaker 1: the Invisible Lady when he was a kid. Everyone did,
Speaker 1: and then years later, in eighteen eighty one, he wrote
Speaker 1: an essay called Yes, the Invisible Lady. The Invisible Lady,
Speaker 1: as advertised in all Our Cities a good many years ago,
Speaker 1: was a mysterious individual who remained unseen. Higginson thought that
Speaker 1: the Invisible Lady was a big fat metaphor. She lived
Speaker 1: on in the minds of men who believed that a
Speaker 1: woman is best off when least visible. He was talking
Speaker 1: about the Victorian fetish for privacy, which he thought was
Speaker 1: mostly about keeping women out of you. I agree. I
Speaker 1: think it's mainly about political oppression. Keep women out of
Speaker 1: sight and say you're protecting their delicate nature, their chastity,
Speaker 1: as a way to deny them a role in public life,
Speaker 1: including denying them the right to vote. To many men, doubtless,
Speaker 1: she would have seemed the ideal of her sex. Could
Speaker 1: only her brain and tongue have disappeared, like the rest
Speaker 1: of her faculties. These appeals which still meet us for
Speaker 1: the sacred privacy of women are only the invisible lady
Speaker 1: on a larger scale. Higginson was a radical, a militant abolitionist,
Speaker 1: and a women's rights activist, a suffragist. He'd met Emily
Speaker 1: Dickinson when, almost out of the blue, she'd written them
Speaker 1: a letter in eighteen sixty two, unsigned, and she'd enclosed
Speaker 1: a poem, mister Higginson, are you too deeply occupied to say?
Speaker 1: If my verse is alive? Emily Dickinson comes across as
Speaker 1: more than a little intense in this note. But Higginson
Speaker 1: took her on as a writer, and I like to
Speaker 1: think that when he got upset about the ridiculous Victorian
Speaker 1: cult of the invisible lady, he was worrying about Dickinson,
Speaker 1: and about how tired he was of this kind of
Speaker 1: invisible woman swishing around in her skirts, trapped in her house.
Speaker 1: Dickinson was an obscure and unknown poet her whole life.
Speaker 1: She hardly ever left her house. The cult of privacy,
Speaker 1: the idea that women should not be seen. She'd taken
Speaker 1: it very seriously. I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you
Speaker 1: nobody too? When I read Dickinson's poems, it's as if
Speaker 1: I can hear her speak to me from her box
Speaker 1: of glass through a trumpet of brass. How dreary to
Speaker 1: be somebody how public, like a frog? And it is
Speaker 1: dreary to be somebody public like a frog. But it's
Speaker 1: also dreary to be private, invisible, and locked in a box.
Speaker 1: Higginson knew that once woman got out of that box,
Speaker 1: there was no going back. Before you know it, women
Speaker 1: would be casting ballots and run for office, and lord
Speaker 1: knows what else. You might as well try to stop
Speaker 1: the air in its escape from a punctured balloon, as
Speaker 1: to try, when woman is once out of the harem,
Speaker 1: to put her back there. Ceasing to be an invisible lady,
Speaker 1: she must become a visible force. There is no middle ground.
Speaker 1: I closed my book of Emily Dickinson poems and put
Speaker 1: it back on the shelf, and then I resumed my
Speaker 1: hunt for the invisible lady, chasing her across the passage
Speaker 1: of time. I turned over boxes, I unlocked ancient trunks.
Speaker 1: I pursued her through the musty pages of old newspapers.
Speaker 1: At last I found her. She was lying in a
Speaker 1: casket covered in flowers, swarmed by reporters at a funeral
Speaker 1: in Delaware in the year eighteen eighty six. You can
Speaker 1: visit the churchyard just around the corner from the last archive.
Speaker 1: Emily Dickinson died in eighteen eighty six. That same year,
Speaker 1: another lady who wished to remain unseen, was also laid
Speaker 1: to rest, Louisa Bayard. Her funeral took place in Wilmington, Delaware,
Speaker 1: on a winter's day. God the Father, have mercy on us,
Speaker 1: God the Son, have mercy on us. You'd think this
Speaker 1: would be a very private occasion, a funeral, But Louisa Bayard,
Speaker 1: this particular invisible lady, had been the wife of the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State, and reporters flooded the church. The boye
Speaker 1: of Missus Bayard was consigned to the family vault today
Speaker 1: in old Sweets churchyard, while the sun shone brightly on
Speaker 1: the crisp but slowly falling snow. All funerals are tragedies,
Speaker 1: but this one, this one was a melodrama. And let
Speaker 1: me add here that just about everything I'm telling you
Speaker 1: about this funeral comes from an ingenious law journal article
Speaker 1: written by the legal scholar Amy Gaya. She teaches at
Speaker 1: Tulane Law School, and she's writing a book called The
Speaker 1: Secret History of the Right to Privacy. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to read it. Anyway, as Gaia discovered, Bayard's funeral had
Speaker 1: been a melodrama, not only because Louisa Bayard was the
Speaker 1: wife of a famous politician, but also because hers was
Speaker 1: the second of two funerals that this family had endured
Speaker 1: that month. The Secretary of State's wife died two weeks
Speaker 1: after her daughter, and it's a long story. She blamed
Speaker 1: herself for her daughter's death, so did the public. Newspaper
Speaker 1: reporters speculated hinted obliquely that Missus Bayard had taken her
Speaker 1: own life one way or another after her daughter she
Speaker 1: died of grief. Missus Bayard, though she was the wife
Speaker 1: of the Secretary of State, had been a particularly private person,
Speaker 1: an invisible lady, an invalid who had not left her
Speaker 1: house for years. For the funeral, the Bayards wanted privacy,
Speaker 1: begged for privacy, no such luck. The family had deliberately
Speaker 1: concealed her casket, hidden it in flowers, but instead of
Speaker 1: taking the hint. Reporters just described the flowers. At the
Speaker 1: head rested a pillow of Camelia's interwoven with maidenhair fern,
Speaker 1: an offering from the president. There were also a massive
Speaker 1: cross of purple violets with a bunch of Kali lilies
Speaker 1: bursting from the center. From the ladies of the cabinet,
Speaker 1: crosses of white roses and tulips, wreaths of white flowers,
Speaker 1: an anchor cross in wreath combined in white roses with
Speaker 1: sprays of green, a pillow of violets bordered with lilies
Speaker 1: of the valley, and wreaths of paul I mean, geez,
Speaker 1: it was a lot. This kind of reporting was called
Speaker 1: at the time keyhole journalism. Photographers did the same thing.
Speaker 1: They came to the funeral. One newspaper described the order
Speaker 1: of the funeral procession. The secretary, accompanied by his three
Speaker 1: unmarried daughters, were followed by mister and Missus Warren of
Speaker 1: Boston and Philip I and Thomas. Mister Warren and Missus
Speaker 1: Warren of Boston. Missus Warren was another Bayard daughter, the
Speaker 1: former Mabel Bayard, now married to mister Samuel Warren, a
Speaker 1: Boston lawyer and the fact that they were at this funeral,
Speaker 1: that Samuel Warren was there, became central to something you
Speaker 1: probably hold very dear. The right to privacy. Marrying into
Speaker 1: the Bayard family had nearly driven Samuel Warren nuts. Warren
Speaker 1: didn't like his family, especially his wife, being in the limelight,
Speaker 1: and the newspaper coverage of his mother in law's funeral
Speaker 1: was the last straw. He was appalled at the reporters,
Speaker 1: at the news stories. The family felt so exposed, so
Speaker 1: violated his poor life, her sister dead and now her
Speaker 1: mother did from grief on display as if she were
Speaker 1: trapped in a glass box placed on a stage. Warren
Speaker 1: nourished his rage. How could they and he got an
Speaker 1: idea for a way that the law could stop this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. He began drafting an essay with his
Speaker 1: law partner, a young man named Lewis Brandeis. Warren and
Speaker 1: Brandeis had graduated first and second in their law school class.
Speaker 1: They decided to write an essay about privacy, partly because
Speaker 1: Warren was so upset about publicity, and partly to advertise
Speaker 1: the services of their law firm. The article appeared in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety. It's been described as the single most influential
Speaker 1: law review article ever published. It was titled the Right
Speaker 1: to Privacy. When you hear about a right to privacy,
Speaker 1: every time you talk about a right to privacy, like
Speaker 1: you don't think your employers should be reading your email,
Speaker 1: you don't think the government should decide whether or not
Speaker 1: you can have an abortion, and you don't think Facebook
Speaker 1: should sell your data. Every time you even think about
Speaker 1: a right deprivacy, you're pulling on an idea that originated
Speaker 1: with Samuel Warren and Lewis Brandeis in this essay they
Speaker 1: wrote in eighteen ninety because they were upset over the
Speaker 1: press coverage of Missus Bayart's funeral. Historically, the right deprivacy
Speaker 1: has to do with women. A couple of years before
Speaker 1: Missus Bayart's funeral, Congress had actually entertained a piece of
Speaker 1: legislation called a Bill to Protect Ladies. It would have
Speaker 1: prohibited the circulation or publication of unauthorized photographs of the wife, daughter, mother,
Speaker 1: or sister of any citizen of the United States. Believe me,
Speaker 1: the right deprivacy is about keeping women unseen. Instantaneous photographs
Speaker 1: and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private
Speaker 1: and domestic life. The right to privacy, Warren and brand
Speaker 1: I said, was a lot like the right to property,
Speaker 1: like owning a house. Violating that right was like breaking
Speaker 1: into your house peeping through keyholes. But it was also worse,
Speaker 1: because the violation of privacy, peering through keyholes, peeping through
Speaker 1: curtains constitutes a kind of wound, a puncturing of your soul,
Speaker 1: of the walls of your very self, and that kind
Speaker 1: of wound might in the end deprive you of your reason.
Speaker 1: Numerous mechanical devices threatened to make good the prediction that
Speaker 1: what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from
Speaker 1: the housetops. The right to privacy, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: is a right to hide, a right to have both
Speaker 1: a public self, a self that people can see, and
Speaker 1: a privateself, a self that remains unseen. Warren and Brandais
Speaker 1: weren't just trying to hide women, or one particular woman,
Speaker 1: like Louisa Bayard. They were now terrified that all these
Speaker 1: new machines could expose each and every man and woman,
Speaker 1: every person. Their idea had a lot in common with
Speaker 1: William James the same year, in eighteen ninety called The
Speaker 1: Hidden Self. James is the philosopher who trained as a physician.
Speaker 1: He was a founder of modern American psychology. Psychology, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, is the study of what's invisible,
Speaker 1: This whole field of inquiry whose scope is the stuff
Speaker 1: most of us consider private, the inside of your own head,
Speaker 1: the stuff you hide the way I say Doctor Jekyll
Speaker 1: hides mister Hyde. But psychologists believed science could penetrate the
Speaker 1: mind and expose your hidden self. This is a very
Speaker 1: scary idea. That's why Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde is
Speaker 1: a thriller. It was written in eighteen eighty six, the
Speaker 1: very year Missus Bayard died. Another wildly popular thriller from
Speaker 1: that very same moment is even scarier. A novel written
Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells. It's called The Invisible Man. Later
Speaker 1: it became a film. I watched it dimly projected in
Speaker 1: the dark recesses of the last archive. I left off
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety seven when H. G. Wells wrote a novel,
Speaker 1: and that's when the Invisible Lady I met the Invisible Man. H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells's book The Invisible Man was made into a movie
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three. I saw it when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. I saw it a lot. There used to
Speaker 1: be every Saturday afternoon on Channel thirty eight, my local
Speaker 1: TV station, creature double feature back to back black and
Speaker 1: white horror films. I watched him every week with my
Speaker 1: favorite snack, which I somehow thought was glamorous ketchup mayonnaise
Speaker 1: and cucumbers. But Invisible Man was my favorite. And I
Speaker 1: made a costume. I dressed up just like him, and
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, I was five when I was wearing it,
Speaker 1: I was invisible. All I wi is to say this
Speaker 1: is a vitally important film, not because it's on some
Speaker 1: list of greatest films, but because of those cucumbers. I
Speaker 1: want a room and a fire, Jenny. And now here's
Speaker 1: a genial or wants a room and a fire? What
Speaker 1: a boom. The Invisible Man stars Claude Rains as a
Speaker 1: chemist who's made himself invisible sort of accidentally. Bumm deal
Speaker 1: for the chemist. Really bad role for Claude Rains. You
Speaker 1: don't ever see him except for about two seconds. He
Speaker 1: was cast for his incredible voice. When the movie begins,
Speaker 1: he's struggling through a snowstorm, bundled up in an overcoat
Speaker 1: and hat until he finally arrives at an inn. I
Speaker 1: say it a room we ain't gotten unready, not at
Speaker 1: this time a year. Don't you really have a film
Speaker 1: stopping check in the summer, you can get one. The
Speaker 1: innkeepers are freaked out because his face is wrapped in
Speaker 1: surgical bandages and dark glasses hide his eyes. I want
Speaker 1: a private sitting room too. They make up a room
Speaker 1: for him, and he hides out in there for days
Speaker 1: with his beakers and elixirs, trying to devise a potion
Speaker 1: that could reverse the process that led to his invisibility.
Speaker 1: I want to be left alone and undisturbed. He isn't
Speaker 1: exactly the best guest, mainly because he's very slowly going insane.
Speaker 1: After a while, the innkeeper tries to throw him out,
Speaker 1: but the Invisible Man attacks him, and then the police
Speaker 1: arrive and break into his room, and they want to
Speaker 1: know who he is. This is the best part. This
Speaker 1: is my favorite part of this whole movie. This is
Speaker 1: where he really loses it. You're he starts taking off
Speaker 1: his clothes one by one, throwing them at the police,
Speaker 1: doing a sort of Madman's strip tease. I'll show you
Speaker 1: who I am, but what I am? Finally, he unwinds
Speaker 1: the bandages covering his face to reveal nothing. What is he?
Speaker 1: Who is he? He is nothing, He's nobody. We cannot
Speaker 1: ever know him, because after what science has done to him,
Speaker 1: there is no him. You're no worry. How do you
Speaker 1: like that? He chases everyone out of his room and
Speaker 1: into the town, and then the Invisible Man spends the
Speaker 1: rest of the movie on a mad crime spree. He
Speaker 1: strangles people invisibly Darth Vader style. He sends trains careening
Speaker 1: off tracks by messing up the switches. He rides a
Speaker 1: bicycle while invisible, quite a feat, both for him and
Speaker 1: mainly for a special effects crew in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: After he goes bananas and starts killing people, a warning
Speaker 1: is broadcast over the radio. I must ended up the
Speaker 1: down music for a moment. I have an urgent message
Speaker 1: from police headquarters. Earlier this evening, we broadcast a report
Speaker 1: of an invisible man. The report has now been confirmed.
Speaker 1: It appears that an unknown man by scientific means, has
Speaker 1: made himself invisible. A lot of the movie's plot sticks
Speaker 1: pretty closely to the H. G. Wells book, but the
Speaker 1: filmmakers added the radio, and it fits perfectly. Remember how
Speaker 1: all that privacy stuff in the nineteenth century was about
Speaker 1: how new technologies like the camera had exposed the hidden self.
Speaker 1: New technologies made people nervous, and by the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: no technology made people more nervous than radio. People thought
Speaker 1: that a voice accompanied by sound effects and music had
Speaker 1: some kind of special power to mold your mind. They
Speaker 1: hoped radio could bring about a new democratic enlightenment. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three, the year The Invisible Man came
Speaker 1: out in Germany, Hitler had just risen to power, and
Speaker 1: his Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Gebels, saw another more sinister
Speaker 1: way to use the radio. The German radio and the
Speaker 1: national Socialist auspices must become the clearest and most direct
Speaker 1: instruments for educating on restructuring the German nation. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, a radio in your kitchen was a shocking thing,
Speaker 1: a box out of which came a voice from an
Speaker 1: invisible body. It appears that an unknown man, by scientific means,
Speaker 1: has made himself invisible. You think the movie Invisible Man
Speaker 1: is going to be about invisibility, but in the end,
Speaker 1: it's all about sound and sound machines. The man himself
Speaker 1: is a disembodied voice, a mad assassin. The potion that
Speaker 1: makes him invisible also turns him into a kind of fascist.
Speaker 1: Being an invisible voice, like a voice on the radio,
Speaker 1: is just too much power. It makes him insane. But
Speaker 1: then again, without the radio, the police would never be
Speaker 1: able to track him down. For that, they also needed
Speaker 1: a telephone. There's a police. This is doctor Kemp. The
Speaker 1: invisible man is in my house. Sleep upstairs, Come at once, hurry.
Speaker 1: This movie is genious. Here's a man making every attempt
Speaker 1: to stay out of sight, and he gets exposed by sound.
Speaker 1: Sound captured and carried by machines over the telephone wires,
Speaker 1: over the radio. He can't be seen, but he can
Speaker 1: be heard, so he can be found. He can't be nobody.
Speaker 1: Even if people didn't worry that these machines were making
Speaker 1: them insane, they did worry that the machines were invading
Speaker 1: their privacy. One person who really worried about that was
Speaker 1: Lewis brandeis the same Lewis brandeis who wrote the Right
Speaker 1: to Privacy in eighteen ninety with his law partner Samuel Warren,
Speaker 1: Louisa Bayard's son In law. Later, Brandeis became a US
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justice, it's most impassioned liberal and one of
Speaker 1: the most influential legal thinkers of the twentieth century. A
Speaker 1: lot of the cases that came before the Court in
Speaker 1: his time had to do with new technologies, like the telephone.
Speaker 1: Brandis was on the Court when it ruled on the
Speaker 1: use of wire tapping. A defendant who had been convicted
Speaker 1: after authorities tapped his phone, argued that a wire tap
Speaker 1: violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The right of the people
Speaker 1: to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
Speaker 1: against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. The
Speaker 1: defendant said the tapping his phones had also violated the
Speaker 1: Fifth Amendment, No person shall be compelled, in any criminal case,
Speaker 1: to be a witness against himself. This case went all
Speaker 1: the way up to the Supreme Court, and in a
Speaker 1: five to four decision, the Court decided that a telephone conversation,
Speaker 1: which is just a bunch of electrical pulses, doesn't belong
Speaker 1: to you. It's not part of your house or your papers,
Speaker 1: and so in wire tapping, nothing has been unconstitutionally searched
Speaker 1: or seized, just as Brandeis dissented from that opinion. Brandeis thought,
Speaker 1: would you say on a telephone still belongs to you,
Speaker 1: even if it's nothing more than electrical pulses, because it's
Speaker 1: still your voice or what we might call your data.
Speaker 1: In his descent, he tried to explain how dangerous it
Speaker 1: would be to think otherwise. He pointed out that governments
Speaker 1: used to be able to torture you to try to
Speaker 1: get you to confess, or they could invade your house,
Speaker 1: they could seize your stuff to get evidence against you.
Speaker 1: But the rules of evidence and trial by jury and
Speaker 1: the Fourth and Fifth Amendment were meant to put a
Speaker 1: stop to that. Wire tapping, he argued, was just a
Speaker 1: newer version of those same old tricks. Subtler and more
Speaker 1: far reaching means of invading privacy have become available to
Speaker 1: the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for
Speaker 1: the government by means far more effective than stretching upon
Speaker 1: the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is
Speaker 1: whispered in the closet. Brandis said wire tapping amounted to
Speaker 1: an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. Then he issued a warning
Speaker 1: the progress of science in furnishing the government with means
Speaker 1: of espionage is not likely to stop with wire tapping.
Speaker 1: Ways may someday be developed by which the government, without
Speaker 1: removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court,
Speaker 1: and by which it will be enabled to expose to
Speaker 1: a jury. The most intimate occurrences of the Home brandis
Speaker 1: was trying to warn that the government, if it wanted
Speaker 1: evidence against you, could one day pretty much just wire
Speaker 1: tap your brain. Except that's not really what happened. We
Speaker 1: decided instead to wire tap our own brains, which brings
Speaker 1: us at last to the real or at least the
Speaker 1: latest Invisible Lady. She lives in one hundred million little
Speaker 1: boxes scattered on kitchen counters and end tables the world over.
Speaker 1: I couldn't connect to the Internet for help, go to
Speaker 1: your Alexa app. That same super hot day that I
Speaker 1: went to New York to look for the Invisible Lady
Speaker 1: ben but an Alexa had a Best Buy And then
Speaker 1: in a shabby hotel room uptown with a single bare
Speaker 1: light bulb swinging above our heads, we grilled her to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this privacy evidence paradox. When
Speaker 1: you're chasing a theme across history, you've got to be
Speaker 1: ruthless Alexa, what's the weather? So many to try the
Speaker 1: same things. It took her a little while to warm up, or,
Speaker 1: let me be honest, it took us a long time
Speaker 1: to get her to work. All Right, I propose turning
Speaker 1: her off. I'm going to download the thing and let's
Speaker 1: just try. Hello. I'm Alexa. It's nice to meet you, Alex.
Speaker 1: Are you invisible? Sorry? I don't know that. Alexa doesn't
Speaker 1: just not have a body. She's evasive in every way.
Speaker 1: I'm very helpful around the house, for example, setting alarms.
Speaker 1: Try saying, Alexa, wake me up at nine am. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It's just so fully despair. It's the loneliest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever met, Alex. Are you sad? I'm happy when I'm
Speaker 1: helping you. Back in eighteen eighty one, a century and
Speaker 1: a half ago, Emily Dickinson's editor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson had
Speaker 1: written that the Invisible Lady was someone's idea of a
Speaker 1: perfect woman unseen. She needs nothing except to serve you.
Speaker 1: This Alexa cospend twenty seven bucks. She's cheap. But Amazon's
Speaker 1: getting more from you than you're getting from Alexa. Amazon's
Speaker 1: getting your data. What you say what you want, what
Speaker 1: you need. This invisible lady doesn't show you her hidden self.
Speaker 1: She looks into yours, always uploading, uploading, You give me
Speaker 1: your madness when you're appearing through a key hole and
Speaker 1: peeping from that contains and now you'll The tension between
Speaker 1: knowledge and privacy has a very long history. But in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, every door is wide open, every
Speaker 1: soul exposed, every brain tapped. Who killed truth? Well, someone
Speaker 1: decided that being seen, being utterly exposed, posed, is what
Speaker 1: we're all supposed to agree to pay for knowledge. It
Speaker 1: is a very steep price. The last Archive is produced
Speaker 1: by Sophie Crane mcabin and Ben Netta of Haaffrey. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Julia Barton and our executive producer is Mia Lobell.
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrella is our engineer. Fact checking by Amy Gaines.
Speaker 1: Original music by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Symfonett.
Speaker 1: Many of our sound effects are from Harry Janette Junior
Speaker 1: and the Star Ganette Foundation. Our full Proof players are Barlow, Adamson,
Speaker 1: Daniel Burger, Jones, Jesse Hinson, John Kuntzbeca A. Lewis and
Speaker 1: Maurice Emmanuel parent. The last archive is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Special thanks to Ryan McKittrick in the
Speaker 1: American Repertory Theater, to Alex Allinson and the Bridge Sound
Speaker 1: and Stage, and at Pushkin to Heather Fane, Maya Kanig,
Speaker 1: Carly mcgliori, Emily Rustick, Maggie Taylor, and Jacob Weisberg. Our
Speaker 1: research assistants are Michelle Gaw, Olivia Oldham, Henrietta Riley, all
Speaker 1: of a riskin Kutz, and Emily Specter Angelapoor