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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday,

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Speaker 1: so let's take a stroll through the old vault door.

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Speaker 1: That's right, we're going back to February eleven, part two

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Speaker 1: of our exploration of the early days of electricity, how

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Speaker 1: people thought about electricity back when it was, you know,

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Speaker 1: a new discovery and all these new technologies were first

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Speaker 1: emerging to harness its power. I hope you enjoy this

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Speaker 1: classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert row and I'm Joe McCormick. And this

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Speaker 1: is going to be the second part of a two

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Speaker 1: part series on the weird history of electricity. Different than

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Speaker 1: the history of electricity you might have learned about in school,

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Speaker 1: woll with the the invention of the various different technologies.

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Speaker 1: Here we wanted to focus on the strange social and

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Speaker 1: psychic undercurrents, if you will, of the of the development

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Speaker 1: of electricity and human society and knowledge. Yeah, kind of

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Speaker 1: the midlife crisis of human cultures. Uh, understanding and attitudes

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Speaker 1: towards electricity as it goes from pure mystery to the mundane.

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Speaker 1: So if you haven't heard part one before you listen

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Speaker 1: to this episodes, you should probably go back and listen

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Speaker 1: to part one. But if you don't care about coming

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Speaker 1: in in the middle of a conversation then and you're here,

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Speaker 1: then that's fine. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the stuff,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the episodes that we discuss are gonna

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Speaker 1: they can stand on their own, but we do highly

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Speaker 1: encourage you to check out part one. Okay. So I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna start in a kind of counterintuitive place for this

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Speaker 1: journey of psychic electricity, and that's with the English writer

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Speaker 1: and poet Thomas Hardy. So you probably remember him from

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Speaker 1: from writing extremely depressing novels that you had to read

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Speaker 1: in high school. You know, the Return of the Native

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Speaker 1: Mayor of Castor Bridge. What did you have to read

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Speaker 1: in high school? I guess it was castor Bridge. That's

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Speaker 1: the one that I feel like I'm most familiar with. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: or you might have write his poems like the Darkling Thrush,

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Speaker 1: which is one of my favorites and it contains these lines,

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Speaker 1: is one of the stanzas of the Darkling Thrush. The

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Speaker 1: land's sharp features seemed to be the centuries corpse out linked,

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Speaker 1: his crypt, the cloudy canopy, the wind, his death lament,

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Speaker 1: the ancient pulse of germ and birth was shrunken, hard

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Speaker 1: and dry, and every spirit upon the earth seemed fervorless.

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Speaker 1: As I it's kind of bleak. Yeah, But so he's

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Speaker 1: talking about something that happened in the past century. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think one of the early names of this poem,

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Speaker 1: before it was called the Darkling Thrush, was something like

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Speaker 1: the Corpse of the past century or something like that. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And this was written around nine and that, you know,

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Speaker 1: the end of the eighteen hundreds. So what happened? What

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Speaker 1: happened to our fervor during the century he spoke of.

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Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what dissipation of spirit Hardy was

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Speaker 1: referring to, but here's a stab that that I'd like

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Speaker 1: to think had something to do with it. It might

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Speaker 1: have had something to do with electricity. So there's a

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Speaker 1: great Thomas Hardy quote. That is, it's quoted in one

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Speaker 1: of the papers were using as a source on this episode,

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Speaker 1: which is Life, Death and Electricity by Nicholas Ruddick. And

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Speaker 1: this was a great paper by the way. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: was really good and it's uh. I think this one

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Speaker 1: was available out there for everyone to read. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it chronicles a lot about the developments of electricity in

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Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds leading up to the execution of

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Speaker 1: William Kimler, which we started the last episode with and

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Speaker 1: we'll get to later in this one. But it tells

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Speaker 1: the story of how hard He was quote attending an

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Speaker 1: electrically lit evening church service in London in May and

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Speaker 1: what was illuminated was the outdated nous of the old reliefs,

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Speaker 1: and Hardy wrote about it, quote everything looks like the

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Speaker 1: modern world. The electric light and the old theology seems

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Speaker 1: strange companions. And the sermon was as if addressed to

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Speaker 1: the native tribes of primitive simplicity and not to the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century English. Now putting aside the you know, racist

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Speaker 1: and colonial assumptions of the metaphor hard He uses there,

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Speaker 1: that is an interesting observation in line with what we

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Speaker 1: observed in the techno religion for the Masses episode. There

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Speaker 1: is something, uh, though though it has often been surmounted

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Speaker 1: by various cults and people of varying theologies, there is

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Speaker 1: an inherent tension for some reason between technology and religious belief. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because especially with an old religious belief, there's often that

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Speaker 1: sense that it's set in stone, and and this is

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Speaker 1: the you know that this is the truth that is

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Speaker 1: buried in the earth for all future generations to live by.

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Speaker 1: And what gives it its power is its ancient otherness.

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Speaker 1: And then what you do when a new otherness enters

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Speaker 1: the picture, when when suddenly we know more about the

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Speaker 1: what was magic in the past, when we know we

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Speaker 1: can explain electricity or at least harness it in ways

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Speaker 1: that we had no ability to in the days that

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Speaker 1: the tablets were here were carved. Yeah. And so an

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Speaker 1: observation that Ruddick makes in his paper is that he's

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Speaker 1: commenting that by the eighteen nineties, as electricity came more

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Speaker 1: and more into our lives, you know, you you might

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Speaker 1: have hundreds of different interactions with electrical appliances and services

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Speaker 1: throughout the day, it was becoming increasingly difficult, he says,

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Speaker 1: to talk about transcendental matters in electrical terms. But before

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Speaker 1: we get to the sort of the death of the

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Speaker 1: sacred ghost of electricity in the sort of mundane ravages

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Speaker 1: of modern life. I want to go back to a

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Speaker 1: period where there was still much weirdness and wonder to

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Speaker 1: be had. Yeah, we're still um, we're still in the

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Speaker 1: time period of the experiments discussed previously, where we're beginning

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Speaker 1: to understand electric to do a little bit. We're exploring

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Speaker 1: its properties. We're also exploring the you know, it's dramatic side,

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Speaker 1: it's entertaining side, as well as it's it's dangerous and

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Speaker 1: lethal side. Absolutely so uh. I want to talk about

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Speaker 1: a scientist who has been largely forgotten despite the fact

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Speaker 1: that he was one of the most famous and celebrated

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Speaker 1: scientists of the entire world in his day, and his

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Speaker 1: influence on modern scientific thought is just absolutely incalculable. And

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Speaker 1: that that is the scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Now, I

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Speaker 1: recently read a book about Alexander von Humboldt. It was

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Speaker 1: The Invention of Nature Alexander von Humboldt's New World by

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Speaker 1: Andrea Wolf. This is a great book, by the way,

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Speaker 1: but it talks about this strange fact that he's been

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Speaker 1: mostly forgotten about, despite the fact that he was responsible,

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Speaker 1: for example, for the scientific concept of ecology, thinking about

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Speaker 1: natural environments not as sort of a a god established

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Speaker 1: domain of unchanging character, but as complex dynamic systems that

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Speaker 1: vary with climate and resources and are subject to dramatic

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Speaker 1: change even by altering a small variable, if it's a

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Speaker 1: if it's sort of a keystone variable. But I want

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Speaker 1: to communicate the spirit of how scientific experiments in animal

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Speaker 1: electricity were continuing, uh in the in the late seventeen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: in early eighteen hundreds, by looking at a couple of

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Speaker 1: events in Alexander von Humboldt's life. So in the seventeen nineties,

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Speaker 1: Alexander von humbold actually became friends with the rock star

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Speaker 1: German poet Johann wolf King von Gerta. And Gerta was

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Speaker 1: the poet who, in his version of Faust wrote, what

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Speaker 1: dazzles for the moment spins its spirit? What's genuine shall

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Speaker 1: posterity inherit? I always like that sentiment, and I think

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Speaker 1: it also sort of applies to some of the showmanship

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Speaker 1: about electricity that we oh yeah mentioned in the last episode. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: very much so, because I mean, at this point, electricity

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Speaker 1: has been a show and electricity has often involved uh

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Speaker 1: dead animals, yeah, to varying to so so capt that

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Speaker 1: in mind as we move forward. But Gota wasn't just

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Speaker 1: a poet in his day. He was also a really

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Speaker 1: dedicated scientist. And one year in the seventeen nineties, about

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Speaker 1: three years after von Humboldt and and Gota had first visited,

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Speaker 1: they spent time together in a city called Ugana to

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Speaker 1: talk through scientific ideas and conduct this long series of

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Speaker 1: experiments on animal electricity, which Humboldt was writing a book

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Speaker 1: about at the time. So he was interested in that

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Speaker 1: that that animal electricity, that that idea that there was

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Speaker 1: a specific intrinsic electrical system to the body. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: as we discussed in the last episode, it was later

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Speaker 1: proved not true that animal electricity is a different kind

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Speaker 1: of electricity than the external electricity that's in lightning and

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Speaker 1: everything else. But but he was still he was trying

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Speaker 1: to suss it out. He was trying to figure out

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Speaker 1: what was going on with the role of electricity in

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Speaker 1: the bodies of animals. So I want to read a

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Speaker 1: quote from a section of of Andrea Wolf's book where

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Speaker 1: she says that Humboldt and got To had been hanging

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Speaker 1: out when there there's a violent thunderstorm on this on

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Speaker 1: this spring day and after the after humbold had been

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Speaker 1: out taking in, you know, atmospheric readings while he was

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Speaker 1: watching the lightning happened during the storm. The next day,

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Speaker 1: he finds out that a farmer and his wife nearby

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Speaker 1: had been killed by the lightning in the storm. So

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Speaker 1: Wolf writes, he rushed over to obtain their corpses, to

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Speaker 1: obtain exactly Yeah, he just obtained them, yeah, uh, she writes,

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Speaker 1: laying out their bodies on the table in the round

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Speaker 1: anatomy tower, he analyzed everything. The man's leg bones looked

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Speaker 1: as if they had been pierced by shotgun pellets, Humboldt

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Speaker 1: noted excitedly, but the worst damage was to the genitals.

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Speaker 1: At first, he thought the pubic hare might have been

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Speaker 1: ignited and caused the burns, but dismissed the idea when

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Speaker 1: he saw the couple's unharmed armpits. Despite the increasingly putrid

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Speaker 1: smell of death and burned flesh, humbold enjoyed every minute

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Speaker 1: of this gruesome investigation. I cannot exist without experiments, he said. So.

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Speaker 1: So Alexander von Homebolt just shows up on the doorstep

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Speaker 1: following a tragic event and says, hey, I'm Alexander von Homebolt.

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Speaker 1: I'm kind of a big deal. I need to see

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Speaker 1: the gruesomely distorted bodies of the lightning strike victims. The

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Speaker 1: funniest thing is this was before he was a really

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Speaker 1: big deal. This is when he was an upcoming big deal.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, he I need to examine the scorched genitals

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Speaker 1: for science. But Wolf also writes about one of Humboldt's

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Speaker 1: favorite experiments that he ever performed, which was when he

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Speaker 1: and Gerta were together experimenting on frog legs. This is

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Speaker 1: revisiting the themes of Luigi Galvani, right, who saw the

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Speaker 1: frog legs dance when stimulated by the electricity of the lightning.

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Speaker 1: Wolf writes, one morning, Humboldt placed a frog's leg on

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Speaker 1: a glass plate and connected its nerves and several muscles

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Speaker 1: two different metals in sequence two silver, gold, iron, zinc,

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Speaker 1: and so on, but generated only a discouraging, gentle twitch

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Speaker 1: in the leg. When he then leaned over the leg

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Speaker 1: in order to check the connecting metals, it convulsed so

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Speaker 1: violently that it leapt off the table. Both men were stunned,

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Speaker 1: until Humble realized that it had been the moisture of

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Speaker 1: his breath that had triggered the reaction. As the tiny

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Speaker 1: droplets in his breath had touched the metals, they had

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Speaker 1: created an electric current that had moved the frog's leg.

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Speaker 1: It was the most magical experiment he'd ever carried out,

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Speaker 1: Humboldt decided, because by exhaling onto the frog's leg, it

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Speaker 1: was as if he were breathing life into it. It

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Speaker 1: was the perfect metaphor for the emergence of the new

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Speaker 1: life sciences. So again this strangely religious aspect coming into

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Speaker 1: the relationship between between electricity and the body. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: like that the breath of life, even though the breath

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Speaker 1: is actually just delivering moisture that helps to complete the circuit. Now,

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Speaker 1: another funny thing is not being there and uh and

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Speaker 1: knowing exactly what happened. It's hard to even determine if

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Speaker 1: Humboldt's interpretation of what actually caused the twitching is correct. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it sounds sensible because it also plays into

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Speaker 1: um and into the example we'll get to at the

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Speaker 1: end of this podcast regarding the electric chair. Now, I

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Speaker 1: want to mention one more example of electricity bioelectricity experiments

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Speaker 1: carried out by Humboldt and this one was later when

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Speaker 1: he was in South America doing experiments and traveling through

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Speaker 1: the rainforest with with someone named i'm a baum Plant.

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Speaker 1: Baum Plant was his his traveling and scientific companion. I

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Speaker 1: believe he was a botanist. But anyway, there was an

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Speaker 1: incident where Humboldt found out from some locals in part

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Speaker 1: of Venezuela I believe town called Calaboso that there were

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Speaker 1: a bunch of shallow pools in the area that were

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Speaker 1: filled with electric eels. And he Humble got very excited

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Speaker 1: about this because he was a little bit eel crazy,

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Speaker 1: and and he'd heard that eels could deliver electric shocks

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Speaker 1: of more than six hundred volts. Uh So, but then

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Speaker 1: he's got a problem, right, So, if an eel can

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Speaker 1: deliver a shock of more than six hundred volts, how

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Speaker 1: to catch it? Especially since, as as Wolf notes, the

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Speaker 1: eels in these pools were buried in the mud at

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Speaker 1: the bottom of the pools, So how do you get

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Speaker 1: them out? Well, some of the locals came up with

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Speaker 1: an idea. They said, we'll round up a whole bunch

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Speaker 1: of horses. And so they rounded up a bunch of

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Speaker 1: wild horses from the nearby prairies, and they drove the

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Speaker 1: herd into the pond. So they had these wild horses

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Speaker 1: stomping in the mud that had electric eels in it.

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Speaker 1: And I want to read another section from Wolf, she writes.

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Speaker 1: As the horses hooves turned up the mud, the eels

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Speaker 1: wriggled up to the surface, giving off enormous electric shocks.

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Speaker 1: In tranced tumbled watched the gruesome spectacle. The horses screamed

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Speaker 1: in pain, the eels thrashed beneath their bellies, and waters

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Speaker 1: surface boiled with movement. Some horses fell and trampled by

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Speaker 1: others drowned. Over time, the strength of the electric shocks diminished,

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Speaker 1: and the weakened eels retreated into the mud, from where

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Speaker 1: Humble pulled them with dry wooden sticks. But he hadn't

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Speaker 1: waited long enough. When he and bond Plant dissected some

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Speaker 1: of the animals, they endured violent shocks themselves. And then,

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Speaker 1: as she goes on to describe how for hours after this,

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Speaker 1: they were just doing experiments on the eels, touching an eel,

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Speaker 1: touching an eel, standing on metal, touching a neil, standing

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Speaker 1: on clay, touching a neil, and touching each other both

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Speaker 1: touching eels and making out a little bit. It just

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Speaker 1: it almost sounds like that's part of it. Again, there's

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Speaker 1: this strangely sexual element to the union of of sharing

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Speaker 1: the electrical kiss, you know, the kiss of Venus. But

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Speaker 1: Wolf concludes the section of the book by talking about

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Speaker 1: how Humble began to think about electrical forces. The forces

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Speaker 1: that she writes variously created lightning bound metal to metal

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Speaker 1: and move the needles of compasses, all flow forth from

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Speaker 1: one source, and all melt together in an eternal, all

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Speaker 1: encompassing power. M hmm. I like that. That's a very

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Speaker 1: poetic and and kind of supernatural but scientifically grounded, if

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Speaker 1: you will, a view of electricity. Yeah, and I get

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Speaker 1: the impression from this book that Humboldt was not a

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Speaker 1: very religious guy. Yet here's this. I mean, he's not

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Speaker 1: invoking supernatural entities or God's but he is talking about

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Speaker 1: it in this kind of vaulted spiritual language. So again

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Speaker 1: it's blurring these lines. Yeah, I mean, because they're standing

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Speaker 1: on the edge of the unknown, right, and they're they're

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Speaker 1: contemplating an unknown, allowing themselves to be shocked by the unknown.

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Speaker 1: It's like like any given astronomer you could have the

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Speaker 1: most most atheistic astronomer possible. But if they're they're engaging

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Speaker 1: with the night sky and viewing up at the cosmos,

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Speaker 1: they're gonna be likely overcome by the wonder of the

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Speaker 1: cosmos in some form or another. Oh yeah, uh, you

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Speaker 1: know this whole story about the electric eels that reminds

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Speaker 1: me of my favorite Marlon Brandos story. But yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't know if you've heard this. I believe this one

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Speaker 1: has been This has been told by Ed Bagley Jr.

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Speaker 1: Is this a scene that was cut from on the Waterfront? Um,

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Speaker 1: It's it's a little older Brando that we're dealing with here.

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Speaker 1: This is very much like the larger, um, crazier, reclusive

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Speaker 1: brand though so Um according to at Bagley Jr. Uh,

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Speaker 1: he gets he gets a call to come over to

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Speaker 1: to the Brando household. Uh, you don't know what it's

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Speaker 1: going to be about it. He drives over, presumably in

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Speaker 1: like an electric car, right and uh he comes inside

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Speaker 1: and Brando asked him and says, hey, could I get

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Speaker 1: a bunch of electric eels and power the house? And uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, and so Ed Begley Jr. He's the he's

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Speaker 1: the bicycle to power your water heater kind of guy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, yeah, he's you know, he's versed in alternative

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Speaker 1: energy to a certain accident, and it's kind of a

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Speaker 1: you know, you know, has often lent his voice to

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Speaker 1: some of those causes. So yeah, Brando figured he was

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Speaker 1: the guy to ask, and so Bagley has kind of

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Speaker 1: taken aback. But he says, you know, I don't think

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Speaker 1: that would be possible. I don't think it would work.

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Speaker 1: And indeed, it's difficult to try and empower anything with

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Speaker 1: an electric eel because for one thing, they well, for

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Speaker 1: a number of reasons, but you know, you'll see aquariums

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Speaker 1: where they have like a little Christmas tree, and the

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Speaker 1: electric eel will cause the treat a light up periodically,

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Speaker 1: but the eel does not admit, you know, a continuous

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Speaker 1: amount of voltage. It's just you know, quick shocks here

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Speaker 1: and there. So it would be it would be one

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Speaker 1: of those things where if you try to engineer a

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Speaker 1: system that uses the electric eels, you quickly out engineer

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Speaker 1: yourself and realize you're better off using some other form.

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Speaker 1: But but anyway, so vaguely says, I don't think that

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Speaker 1: is gonna work, and Brando just kind of gets grumpy

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Speaker 1: and says, it's always no with you. So I love

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Speaker 1: I love that story because it's, uh, it's just it's

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Speaker 1: just a great Brando story and a great electric eel story.

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Speaker 1: Did he point a gun at him? I tell me true?

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Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know, but at any rate, it was

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Speaker 1: like the the audience was over at that point. It's like,

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Speaker 1: all right, vaguely, you've turned me down here on this

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Speaker 1: electric eel business that I had a lot of hope

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Speaker 1: built up for. So just go, just go. Don't tell

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Speaker 1: me not to any more of my disappointed the King

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Speaker 1: of Spain or something. Well. So, as you as you

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Speaker 1: can see from the stuff we've been talking about, experiments

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Speaker 1: about electricity didn't stop in the mid seventeen hundreds, where

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Speaker 1: we were talking about a bunch of the experiments in

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Speaker 1: the last episode. They continued into the turn of the century,

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Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds, and uh, and it wasn't It

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Speaker 1: also wasn't just the known scientists of the age who

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Speaker 1: experimented with electricity. One of the weirdest stories I came

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Speaker 1: across as a story about Percy Shelley, Old P. B. Shelley,

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Speaker 1: the poet, you know, the author of what might you

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Speaker 1: best know him from? Maybe Ozymandias. Yeah, I would imagine

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Speaker 1: that's probably the most famous look on my works, you

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Speaker 1: mighty in despair. But actually you might know him best

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Speaker 1: for being the husband of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.

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Speaker 1: And we talked in the last episode about the the

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Speaker 1: the impression made on Mary Shelley by the lecturers in

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Speaker 1: electricity and how that might have led to ideas in Frankenstein.

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Speaker 1: But but her own husband might have also inspired some

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Speaker 1: of these scientific terrors, because there is a story that

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Speaker 1: when he was young, Percy Shelley was learned about electricity

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Speaker 1: during his schooling and his tutoring, and he wanted to experiment.

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Speaker 1: He wanted to do some electrical experiments, and he ended

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Speaker 1: up just mainly these experiments were shocking his sisters, and

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Speaker 1: so his sister Helen wrote, quote, when my brother commenced

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Speaker 1: his studies in chemistry and practiced electricity on us, I

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Speaker 1: confessed my pleasure, and it was entirely negatived by terror

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Speaker 1: at its effects. Whenever he came to me with his

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Speaker 1: piece of folded brown packing paper under his arm and

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Speaker 1: a bit of wire and a bottle, my heart would

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Speaker 1: sink with fear at his approach, but shame kept me silent,

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Speaker 1: and with as many others as he could collect, we

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Speaker 1: replaced hand in hand round the nursery table to be electrified.

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Speaker 1: But when a suggestion was made that chilblains were to

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Speaker 1: be cured by this means, my terror overwhelmed all other feelings,

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Speaker 1: and the expression of it released me from all future annoyance.

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Speaker 1: It sounds a little bit like a young monster there. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he kind of does, or at least a mad scientist.

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Speaker 1: But again it kind of this is still the age

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Speaker 1: of the the sort of gentleman science, the scientist, you know,

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Speaker 1: the idea that any individual of means might take up

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Speaker 1: science as a as a pastime and would engage in

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Speaker 1: various experiments about natural phenomenon, right, or to to impress

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Speaker 1: people or get his yah yas out. Yeah. But the

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Speaker 1: pretense here that that the electricity and the shocks could

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Speaker 1: be used to treat chilblains does sort of tie into

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Speaker 1: something that we should talk about, which is the role

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Speaker 1: of electricity in supposed medical practices and even magical beliefs

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Speaker 1: about healing. Yeah, this is a fascinating area because I mean,

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Speaker 1: on one hand, there there's the obvious role that electricity

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Speaker 1: plays in modern medicine, and in the advent of modern medicine,

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Speaker 1: you think you might think about defibrillation, yeah, or even

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Speaker 1: some stuff is simple as being able to use electric

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Speaker 1: lighting during a surgical procedure, or electrical coudorization tools during surgery,

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Speaker 1: and stuff of that nature. Like it really ends up

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Speaker 1: playing a role in so many different facets of modern medicine.

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Speaker 1: But yet the idea that electricity in and of itself

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Speaker 1: has a healing property to it um this ends up

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Speaker 1: carrying a great deal of cultural weight during the time. Sure, well,

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Speaker 1: you don't have to invoke medical principles to make the

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Speaker 1: assumption that there's some kind of power in the electrical

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Speaker 1: fire that has has healing potential over the body. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's always been the idea of forces of nature like

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Speaker 1: light and fire as cleansing agent, and I think for

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Speaker 1: many people electricity took on some of these same elements.

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Speaker 1: There was one claim I read in a book called Witchcraft,

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Speaker 1: Confessions and Accusations edited by Mary Douglas. And according to

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Speaker 1: a claim in this book, in one case, uh the

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Speaker 1: Bongwa people of Cameroon took a child who was believed

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Speaker 1: to be a witch and what they did to cure

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Speaker 1: the child's witchcraft was sent the child into an electrified

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Speaker 1: region of the country in the south, under the reasoning

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Speaker 1: that a few months months of exposure to electricity would

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Speaker 1: cure the child's witchcraft. Okay, well it seems seems plausible.

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Speaker 1: I mean because because as we've touched on before, like

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Speaker 1: throughout history, humans have been encountering electricity on one form,

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Speaker 1: in one form or the other. If not lightning on

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Speaker 1: the hillside, then presumably just the static discharge that occurs

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Speaker 1: when you shock somebody. Uh, And this was something that

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Speaker 1: that interested me. I can't help but wonder why we

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Speaker 1: don't see more examples, uh, particularly related to this interpersonal

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Speaker 1: discharge of static electricity at least is a way to

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Speaker 1: explain certain folk beliefs and magical superstitious beliefs, you know,

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Speaker 1: because at heart, that's a very I mean, it's the

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Speaker 1: same principle as uh as as two individuals touching each

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Speaker 1: other while dissecting an electric fish. Right, I mean you're

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Speaker 1: there's this spark, sometimes visible spark between two people. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is it's the literal embodiment in reality of a

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Speaker 1: thing that's often imagined in magical thinking. In magical thinking,

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Speaker 1: there's often this sense of of supernatural contagion, where you

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Speaker 1: can pass the properties of one thing onto another thing

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Speaker 1: by touching, and that that's generally not true. It's not

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Speaker 1: true that you can gain the virility of a bore

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Speaker 1: by touching the boar's tusk to your head or something.

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Speaker 1: But you can confer electric charge by touching. And this

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Speaker 1: is demonstrated over and over in these public lectures we

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Speaker 1: talked about in the last episode. Yeah, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: also interesting. I want to mention that the according to

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Speaker 1: the Electrostatic Society of America, um, that's the thing. And

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Speaker 1: this was actually mentioned in a blog post at in

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Speaker 1: probable dot com in Probable Research the Ignoble Prize organizing

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Speaker 1: body Okay, yeah, they pointed out that the quote this

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Speaker 1: is from the electro Sex Society of America quote. Electrostatics

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Speaker 1: is an exciting area of science, as its most basic

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Speaker 1: scientific questions remain unknown and highly controversial. What yeah, and

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Speaker 1: yet its consequences are widespread. For example, the uh the

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Speaker 1: identity of the species transferred to generate charge when materials

426
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:26,760
Speaker 1: rub is being hotly debated in the leading scientific journals.

427
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: Some researchers argue that it is electrons, others that it

428
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:34,560
Speaker 1: is ions, and yet others that it is bits of material.

429
00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: What so that's crazy. I had no idea. Yeah, so

430
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: that's just a little footnote to remind everyone that that again,

431
00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:44,840
Speaker 1: even in our modern time there, when we take all

432
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:48,359
Speaker 1: the electricity around us for granted, we still haven't solved

433
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:52,119
Speaker 1: some basic questions such as why my child shocks me

434
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:54,920
Speaker 1: when he comes down a slide on a on a

435
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 1: chilly afternoon of the playground. Fascinating. But of course, the

436
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:01,200
Speaker 1: treatment of witchcraft I mentioned and earlier is not the

437
00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:06,720
Speaker 1: only spiritually significant use of electricity as a healing agent, right,

438
00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:10,159
Speaker 1: that's right. Um. We have a few different examples to

439
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,600
Speaker 1: cover here, but one of the more interesting is that

440
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 1: of John Wesley. Okay Wesley, the founder of Methodism, founder

441
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:22,639
Speaker 1: of Methodism, Christian theologian. If you visit, um, I believe, yes,

442
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 1: Savannah here in our own native state of Georgia, there

443
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:28,680
Speaker 1: is a statute of of John Wesley there. Huh yeah,

444
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like snap, why in Savannah? What

445
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 1: did he do in Savannah? He visited there for a while? Okay, yeah,

446
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:35,560
Speaker 1: he was he was in Georgia for a little bit,

447
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: then he went back. Okay, so it's kind of like

448
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:40,439
Speaker 1: how in Montrose, Switzerland, there's a statue of Freddie Mercury.

449
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:43,680
Speaker 1: Oh there is, Yeah, there is which which version of

450
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:47,240
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury? Uh? He's doing a great dancing post. It's

451
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 1: great statue. I highly recommended if you're in Switzerland. Okay,

452
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:55,199
Speaker 1: all right, So you're probably wondering, Okay, why John Wesley?

453
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:58,200
Speaker 1: Why did John Wesley? Uh? Why why is this guy

454
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:00,680
Speaker 1: interested in electric has never heard of him having anything

455
00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:03,800
Speaker 1: to do with electricity or science in general. Yeah, because

456
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:06,639
Speaker 1: prior prior to this, aside from knowing that is the

457
00:26:06,840 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 1: founder of Methodism, Like, the only other real touchdone for

458
00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 1: me was that in seventeen sixty eight he argued that

459
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 1: quote giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving

460
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:20,920
Speaker 1: up of the Bible. Getting down to this playing into

461
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 1: this idea that a lot of witchcraft persecution and the

462
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: horrible links we went to to obtain witchcraft confessions from

463
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:30,920
Speaker 1: accused witches, that a lot of that amounted to this

464
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:36,159
Speaker 1: need to provide expert testimony of the physical existence of

465
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 1: a demonic afterlife and therefore the implied physical existence of

466
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:45,200
Speaker 1: of God. Oh yeah, well, I mean, the Bible acknowledges

467
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:49,440
Speaker 1: the existence of witchcraft and all kinds of folk magic beliefs.

468
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 1: So if to to sort of say, we believe in

469
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 1: the Bible, but we don't believe in all the folk magic,

470
00:26:55,760 --> 00:27:00,240
Speaker 1: seems inconsistent. There's an aporia there, right, as so Socceres

471
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: might point out. Indeed, so yeah, it's it's weird to

472
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: think here's this guy who who sees witchcraft as a

473
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 1: reality that cannot be denied, and yet he's also caught

474
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:15,280
Speaker 1: up in uh this uh, this this curiosity about electricity

475
00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: of all things. And apparently he became interested in electricity

476
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:23,320
Speaker 1: in the late seventeen forties. So this is right after

477
00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:25,200
Speaker 1: the Laden Jar. Yeah, very much in the wake of

478
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:30,360
Speaker 1: mainstream fascination with electrical demonstrations and the supposed therapeutic applications

479
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: of electricity, like the medical electricity we were mentioned earlier. Yeah, exactly,

480
00:27:35,800 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: the idea that oh here, here's a shock that'll cure

481
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 1: what ails you. Uh, it's appealed though at this point

482
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:42,880
Speaker 1: had reached even the lower levels of society, and these

483
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 1: are the very people that Wesley sought to reach with methodism.

484
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:52,399
Speaker 1: And uh, this whole uh interconnectivity of of Wesley's you know,

485
00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: spiritual purpose if you will, and his interest in electricity.

486
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,880
Speaker 1: It's apparently an area that historians have only recently begun

487
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,680
Speaker 1: really dig into. Huh. And that's according to again electrical

488
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:09,639
Speaker 1: historian um extraordinaire Pala Bertucci, who wrote a wonderful article

489
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 1: titled Revealing Sparks, John Wesley and the Religious Utility of

490
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: Electrical Healing. Bertuccia describes him as an electrical supporter who

491
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: combined moral instruction and natural philosophy. And of course he

492
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: wasn't the only person to do this at the time,

493
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:27,639
Speaker 1: but but Wesley demonstrated the healing power of electricity to

494
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:32,879
Speaker 1: further methodism, not electricity, not science, certainly right, So this

495
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:36,920
Speaker 1: was yet another religious technology technology and service of religious

496
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:39,600
Speaker 1: or spiritual goals exactly like it plays right into our

497
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 1: into some of the issues we discussed in the Techno

498
00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 1: Religion episodes. He used electricity itself as a demonstration of

499
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 1: God's power both as a benevolent force and is a

500
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 1: damning force, you know, so both sides of the of

501
00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: the of the God coin right, the wrathful God and

502
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 1: the benevolent God. Yeah, she right? Quote as signs of

503
00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 1: God's wrath, electric manifestations gave humans a glimpse of the

504
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:09,440
Speaker 1: terrifying prospect of eternal punishment. At the same time, it

505
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 1: was because of divine benevolence that the power of the

506
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: electric fire was available to humankind as a healing agent.

507
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: It's the it's the magical carrot and the magical stick

508
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: combined in this natural phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, she says, sparks

509
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: revealed the divinity. And and this really interests me in

510
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: light of that quote I read earlier about witchcraft because

511
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:35,680
Speaker 1: Wesley supported the persecution of witchcraft for much the same

512
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: reason as he's as he's interested and demonstrating the power

513
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: of electricity the confessed, which revealed the demonic, which in

514
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: turn revealed the divine. And here he is revealing the

515
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:50,000
Speaker 1: powers of electricity in order to reveal the divine to

516
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: the onlooker. Demon in one hand, spark of electricity in

517
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:55,920
Speaker 1: the other. That's great, that's great. You know. I also

518
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: can't help but think of the touch the screen era

519
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 1: of T the evangelism. I don't know what you're talking about,

520
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:06,160
Speaker 1: and I've watched my share of TV evangelists. The idea

521
00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: that you would you would physically touch the screen in

522
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:12,360
Speaker 1: order to interact with the healing powers that were being

523
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:16,840
Speaker 1: demonstrated by the TV, uh the evangelists, and and in

524
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:18,680
Speaker 1: doing so, you're gonna feel, you know, some of that

525
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 1: static discharge on the screen, right, So to what extent

526
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:26,360
Speaker 1: is that playing into you know, religious electricity in a

527
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: more modern sense. That's interesting. I almost that makes me

528
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: wonder if that's scene in Poultergeist is parodying the spiritual

529
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: power transferred through the screen by touching. Maybe so, maybe so.

530
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 1: I've actually never seen these, uh, these TV preachings, but

531
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: it makes me think about a principle that often gets

532
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 1: brought up on another podcast. Do you ever listen to

533
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 1: the podcast Sawbones. No, I'm not familiar with it. Oh, yeah,

534
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: they're they're great there there it's a it's a husband

535
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: and wife team who who are really fun and they

536
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 1: talk about basically some of the worst parts of medical history,

537
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: So all all the bad cure alls and treatments that

538
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: have been used throughout the years that didn't really help

539
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: people very much at all. And one of the things

540
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: they often talk about is the is that it did

541
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: something principle um so a a fake treatment that doesn't

542
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 1: actually treat people is more likely to be accepted as

543
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: effective if it at least causes some kind of noticeable effect,

544
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: even if it doesn't cure you, even if it's discomfort, right,

545
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: and then you feel like, oh, it's it's doing something.

546
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 1: I feel it. I feel the shock. Yeah, exactly, And

547
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 1: that's what that's what I'm thinking about with the shock here.

548
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 1: If somebody can charge up a friction generator and and

549
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: give you a shock of static electricity from it, Uh,

550
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,479
Speaker 1: you'll feel it. And even if you don't know exactly

551
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 1: what's going on, how exactly it's supposed to work, what

552
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: is the method of action inside your body, you at

553
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: least felt something happened that was real and it was

554
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 1: powerful and pain sort of in our minds, I think

555
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: pain equals reality. We accept when something painful happens that

556
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: that something im has happened. And so I can easily

557
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,400
Speaker 1: see this kind of principle acting on the use of

558
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: medical medical electricity in the seventeen hundreds. Even if it

559
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 1: wasn't really working to cure a lot of things, it

560
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: was it was doing something. Yeah, and hey, if you

561
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: can if you can combine pleasure and pain into the

562
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: same package. Then you have a product that can likely

563
00:32:23,160 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: uh really resonate with the with with the with the

564
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:30,200
Speaker 1: people out there. Oh and that certainly ties into another

565
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 1: aspect of the electrical treatments of the time, which would

566
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 1: be electrical quackery, very often having to do with sex.

567
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: There was a guy we mentioned in the last episode.

568
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: We're coming back to him now, one James Graham, who

569
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: was a Scottish believe he was born in Edinburgh. He

570
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 1: was a Scottish quack doctor essentially, who was He called

571
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: himself a hygienist I think, and a and a sex

572
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: therapist in some way, who offered various vaguely defined electrical

573
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: treatment on on how to get people's sex lives going again.

574
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: He had some famous institutions. One is called the Temple

575
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 1: of Health, another one is called the Temple of Hymen,

576
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:13,800
Speaker 1: And oh god, what was the deal with these things? Okay, So,

577
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 1: first of all, he would he would apparently often travel

578
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 1: around and promote all this stuff, accompanied by the beautiful

579
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: young Goddess of Health. Oh yeah, he had he had

580
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 1: like a train of attractive ladies to help him promote

581
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: his message of medical well being. Yeah, and you know,

582
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: like any good salesman. He has to have products he

583
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: can sell on the spot as well as um more

584
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: expensive products that are selled on location. He sold exposure

585
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 1: to electrical ether as well as a special ointment that

586
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: you could rub on your body. And what was the ointment?

587
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: It was nervous ethereal balsam. Oh good, Yeah, keep some

588
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:52,360
Speaker 1: of that around. It's like bag bomb, except for you know,

589
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:55,880
Speaker 1: sexual purposes. Yeah. But he also sold access to his

590
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 1: special electrically powered sex bed. Right have you visited the

591
00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 1: Temple of Hymen? Would you open? Uh? Couples with marital

592
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 1: or sexual problems could test out the celestial bed for

593
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:10,720
Speaker 1: a mere fifty pounds a night. Okay, so we're talking

594
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:14,360
Speaker 1: about a twelve by nine foot bed. It has a

595
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: colored glass columns, mirrors of course, um, erotic paintings, flashing

596
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: electrical lights, organ music, and perfume. Uh yeah, it it

597
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit. My wife wants shot some

598
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:32,400
Speaker 1: pictures of the inside of Kenny Rogers house when we

599
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 1: lived up I think in around Athens, Georgie had he

600
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 1: had bought this this antique bed from James Graham. No,

601
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 1: but he he did have apparently a lot of mirrors

602
00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: in the bedroom. Um, like a disturbing amount of mirrors

603
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: in the bedroom. Uh and and that's the kind of

604
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 1: thing that you would get out of the celestial bed. Well,

605
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 1: you know what they say in the Gambler, the best

606
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

607
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 1: So yeah, well there you go. And if you're gonna

608
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 1: dine your sleep, there might as well be a lot

609
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:00,439
Speaker 1: of electrically powered flashing lights. Uh there as well. Yeah,

610
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: you got to know when to hold him. Yeah. One

611
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 1: more interesting comment on Graham from from Bertucci. Actually she

612
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: writes that, uh he he didn't now in contrast to

613
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 1: some of these other electrical healers, which would shock you

614
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: for for health, Graham quote exploited the fashion enjoyed by

615
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: electricity as a further extravaganza for his healing center. The

616
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:26,120
Speaker 1: largest electrical apparatus in the world, he called it was

617
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:30,239
Speaker 1: on display rather than in use in the temple, where

618
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: electrical vapors wrapped up the patients. And this is a

619
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: quote from his materials, gently pervading the whole system with

620
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 1: a copious tide of that celestial fire, fully impregnated with

621
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:45,399
Speaker 1: the purest, most subtle, and balmiest parts of medicines. Which

622
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: are extracted by and flows softly into the blood and

623
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: nervous system with the electric fluid or restorative ethereal essences.

624
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent he was using any

625
00:35:56,600 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: kind of electrical technology. He was given this some electrical

626
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 1: vay birds aside from using electrical lights on the guest

627
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 1: celestial bed. I don't think you've organ music organ music, yeah,

628
00:36:07,239 --> 00:36:09,800
Speaker 1: but otherwise he has to be the biggest scam artist

629
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:14,399
Speaker 1: by far that we've encountered in these episodes. Now, again,

630
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: that was around one. We'd have to wait a good

631
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:21,640
Speaker 1: century though, for the electric vibrator to become a reality

632
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:26,359
Speaker 1: and actual use of of electricity to directly deliver uh

633
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 1: sexual pleasure. H And we got it finally thanks to

634
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:34,919
Speaker 1: Dr J. Mortimer Granville. Now, previously one had to rely

635
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: on George Taylor's eighteen sixty nine steam powered manipulator or

636
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 1: the hand cranked Macura's blood circulator, all in the name

637
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:48,799
Speaker 1: of treating supposed bouts of hysteria with a healthy dose

638
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 1: of orgasm. Yeah, and these are not products that you

639
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 1: would necessarily go to the store and buy to use

640
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: at your own leisure in the product, in the privacy

641
00:36:57,560 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: of your own home, but more something that would kind

642
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:03,120
Speaker 1: of be prescribed for you by your doctor, which sounds

643
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: like it takes some of the happiness out of it. Yes,

644
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:09,560
Speaker 1: I would think. So. Okay, So now we we've talked

645
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:13,800
Speaker 1: about electricity in the body strange healing characteristics, but also

646
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:17,840
Speaker 1: we need to talk about electricity the occult, the esoteric,

647
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:23,399
Speaker 1: and the spiritual in the sense of spiritualism, because John

648
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:28,759
Speaker 1: Murray Spear also was into some electricity some science. Yes,

649
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: listeners to our techno religion may remember him as the

650
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: as the individual who whose followers built the electric Messiah. Yeah.

651
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 1: So he was a progressive radical of the eighteen hundreds.

652
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 1: He was an abolitionist. He was for a lot of

653
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: progressive political causes, but he turned in the middle of

654
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds into a spiritualist leader, meaning he was

655
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:51,720
Speaker 1: a guy who claimed to get messages from the spirit

656
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: world and they they detailed lots of plans for him

657
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 1: for sort of ungainly projects that he got his followers

658
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 1: to carry out on his behalf, including the construction of

659
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 1: the new motor. That's the thing we talked about. There

660
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 1: was a there was a vaguely described machine Messiah to

661
00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:12,400
Speaker 1: Harold the dawn of a new age by being a

662
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:17,239
Speaker 1: perpetual motion machine and changing the human of of the

663
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:20,240
Speaker 1: past into the new man. Yeah, I think we described

664
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:23,000
Speaker 1: it before. Is looking like a like the like the

665
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:25,439
Speaker 1: of a of a dalek and a coffee table bread

666
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: and produced offspring. This would be. That's pretty much it.

667
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: But he also had some interesting interactions with the science

668
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:34,800
Speaker 1: of electricity, and this would have been later than what

669
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 1: we were talking about before, almost a century later, so

670
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:39,440
Speaker 1: that this would be in the eighteen fifties. In the

671
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:43,200
Speaker 1: Remarkable Life of John Murray, Spear Agitator for the Spirit Land,

672
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: the author John Benedict Bauscher mentioned several cases where the

673
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 1: beliefs of the mid nineteenth century spiritualists in America included

674
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 1: spiritual significance of electricity. So one one associate of spirits,

675
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: who was a medium and spiritual healer named Elizabeth French,

676
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 1: had been quote an electrical experiment or ever since she

677
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: was young, trying to revive victims of lightning strikes and

678
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 1: drowning by the action of certain rude batteries in the

679
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: construction of which I, even then a child endowed with

680
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: strong tendencies in that direction, was myself the mechanic. That

681
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: was Elizabeth French speaking there at the end. Uh and

682
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: she she later on partnered with So. Yeah, so she's

683
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:26,319
Speaker 1: trying to use batteries to bring people back from the dead.

684
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 1: Pretty good. She partners with Spear for electrical experiments in

685
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:36,719
Speaker 1: augmenting spiritual potential, So communicating with the spirit world. They're saying,

686
00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:40,680
Speaker 1: maybe we can use electricity to amp up somebody's ability

687
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:44,480
Speaker 1: to communicate with the spirits. And this included Spear trying

688
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,800
Speaker 1: to control and influence the spirits with the aid of

689
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:52,640
Speaker 1: a suit of armor made out of copper and zinc batteries. Yeah,

690
00:39:52,719 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 1: and we were talking about this. We're not sure this

691
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 1: is the exactly the same outfit or a different one.

692
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:03,320
Speaker 1: But the book also mentions that Spears had one Isaac Hedges,

693
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: who was a saint. The Lewis Magnetic Spiritualist had him

694
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: craft quote a wizard suit from minerals, metals, and stones,

695
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:14,160
Speaker 1: which he wore during his experiments, and the suit itself

696
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:18,280
Speaker 1: connected to a battery which supposedly boosted his personal electro

697
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 1: magnetic field. That's crazy, I mean, a battery of a

698
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 1: wizard suit made out of batteries. It's too good and spirits.

699
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:30,760
Speaker 1: He didn't stop there. He also proposed creating telepathic towers.

700
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 1: I can't remember if we mentioned this in the other episode,

701
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: but he wanted to create a worldwide network of telepathic towers,

702
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: which would each quote constitute a grand focus of magnetic

703
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:44,719
Speaker 1: and electric influences, and this would enable a sort of

704
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 1: broadband spirit medium channeling UH and worldwide communication. So they'd

705
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: have operators who were spirit mediums who'd use the electricity

706
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:58,080
Speaker 1: generated by the towers to channel the voices of the

707
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:00,840
Speaker 1: spirits back and forth between each they're around the world,

708
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:03,520
Speaker 1: and it would be faster than the telegraph. You know,

709
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:07,480
Speaker 1: what's what's fascinating about this point in the timeline we're

710
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: exploring is that we're really looking at the just at

711
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:17,840
Speaker 1: the enthusiastic supernatural employ of of of current electrical knowledge.

712
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: So on one hand, you have this push towards the mundane,

713
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,640
Speaker 1: and this is really this is really the area of

714
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: like the midlife crisis I feel, with the with the

715
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: supernatural qualities of electricity, where you see the the portions

716
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,120
Speaker 1: of of of the populace going into just a really

717
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: extreme magical direction with it, which is crazy because even

718
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:42,600
Speaker 1: at this point in history we're starting to get a

719
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: much better understanding of how to harness electricity for utterly

720
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 1: mondaye and purposes, just how to make the machines that

721
00:41:49,719 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 1: make our lives more convenient. Yeah, Like, I feel like

722
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 1: we're at the point in a Scooby Doo cartoon where

723
00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 1: the villain and the ghost costume is apprehended and they're

724
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:02,320
Speaker 1: about to pull the map scoff. Meanwhile, John Murray Spear

725
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:04,239
Speaker 1: and some of the other individuals were discussing here. They

726
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 1: are pointing at at the culprit and saying, no, that

727
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:11,759
Speaker 1: is really again, right, it is not old man Bulvovsky, right,

728
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:16,600
Speaker 1: But speaking of people named Blevatsky. That gives us a

729
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 1: good transition to one last thing about spirituality and electricity,

730
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: which is the theology of electricity that came through in

731
00:42:24,640 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 1: various forms of Western esso terrorism. Yeah, there's a great

732
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:32,680
Speaker 1: paper on this that's out there titled The Esoteric Uses

733
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 1: of Electricity by Nicholas Goodrick Clark, which highly remanda recommend

734
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:40,440
Speaker 1: looking at if you one a little more on this

735
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:43,960
Speaker 1: particular area. This again, this last sort of last thrust

736
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:53,880
Speaker 1: of electrical spiritism. So what does Goodrick Clark have to

737
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:58,440
Speaker 1: say about the electric theology. Well, he discusses a few

738
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:04,399
Speaker 1: different individuals. He discusses leading up theosophy proponent Madam Helena Blavatsky,

739
00:43:04,719 --> 00:43:07,840
Speaker 1: whose belief in electric who believed in electricity as quote

740
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: an animating soul like force or fluid. We've seen that

741
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:14,440
Speaker 1: kind of idea before. And of course she also preached

742
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 1: the power of the third eye and the piney ole

743
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 1: glands role in modern man is an atrophy, the vestige

744
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 1: of this organ of spiritual vision. So just to give

745
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:26,960
Speaker 1: that's just to give you a brief idea about the

746
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:31,640
Speaker 1: the about theosophy and what kind of worldview she was

747
00:43:31,719 --> 00:43:34,960
Speaker 1: immersed in. Yeah, if you're not familiar with esotericism, these

748
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:37,879
Speaker 1: are I don't know what you might call them. They're

749
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: sort of alternative religions in in the history of Western culture. Yeah,

750
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:47,200
Speaker 1: new religious movements for sure, but Theosophy one that maybe

751
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:49,880
Speaker 1: help didn't hold on as well as some of the

752
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:54,480
Speaker 1: others that that cropped up. Um he good good At.

753
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: Clark also points to a scholar Ernst Dens as having

754
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 1: identified the quote theology of electricity amongst a group of

755
00:44:03,600 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: eighteenth century Swabian theosophers. He claimed that the quote discovery

756
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 1: of electricity and the simultaneous discovery of magnetic and galvanic

757
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 1: phenomena were accompanied by a most significant change in the

758
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 1: image of God and that it led to a quote

759
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:23,800
Speaker 1: completely new understanding of the relation of body and soul,

760
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:26,359
Speaker 1: of spirit and matter. Now, how does that play out?

761
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:29,839
Speaker 1: What does that look like? Basically it means I mean,

762
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:32,240
Speaker 1: basically what we're looking at is all this new information

763
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 1: about electricity is coming out, and and there are individuals

764
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 1: who are instead of saying I wonder how that casts

765
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 1: new light of my understanding, or they're thinking, oh, well,

766
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: that's something that exists separately from a religious understanding of

767
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: the world, They're like, no, this is the path. Let's

768
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 1: pour all of our our spiritual gusto into this new

769
00:44:52,040 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: electrical format. So if the if the electricity is the

770
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 1: frontier of future science, this could be the kind of

771
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:01,360
Speaker 1: religious thing king that says, no, we're not going to

772
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:03,759
Speaker 1: ground our religious ideas in the past, We're going to

773
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,359
Speaker 1: ground them in the future. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's

774
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:08,960
Speaker 1: it's kind of I mean, this is a time of

775
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:10,960
Speaker 1: a huge change, and what do you do when the

776
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:14,800
Speaker 1: world changes and you have either an old set of

777
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:17,960
Speaker 1: beliefs or you sort of cling to that mode of

778
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:20,759
Speaker 1: belief like you have to. You either have to say no,

779
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 1: that's bs, keep that away from me and keep it

780
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:26,319
Speaker 1: out of the school books, or you say, yes, bring

781
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 1: it here, let me incorporate it. Um. You know, And

782
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 1: we've looked at some plenty of examples where religion's ability

783
00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:38,560
Speaker 1: to incorporate new scientific understanding it is certainly a healthy thing.

784
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 1: It doesn't always um lead to sort of fringe belief systems. Well,

785
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: it's funny now that we think about electricity as just

786
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 1: utterly uncontroversial religiously, right. I mean, there are so many

787
00:45:52,160 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 1: scientific ideas that do come into conflict with with religious ideas.

788
00:45:56,719 --> 00:46:01,440
Speaker 1: Ideas about, for example, I don't know, cosmology and the

789
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:06,480
Speaker 1: origins the universe, ideas about biological evolution, ideas of geology,

790
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:09,839
Speaker 1: conflicting with the literal reading of some holy books. Uh,

791
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,600
Speaker 1: you see these pretty often. But electricity seems just utterly

792
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:17,319
Speaker 1: theologically neutral. But that hasn't always been the case. Yeah.

793
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:19,240
Speaker 1: I mean, it's in the same way that it's difficult

794
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 1: for us to imagine this this time when electricity was

795
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:25,760
Speaker 1: new and exciting. It's hard to imagine it's it's newness

796
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:28,799
Speaker 1: and it's and it's excitingness up, you know, having an

797
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:34,320
Speaker 1: impact on modes of religious belief. Another example that Nicholas

798
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:39,240
Speaker 1: Goodrick Clark draws on is that of Austrian occultist, racial

799
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:43,880
Speaker 1: political theorist, former monk and also the founder of Ariosophy

800
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: as well as a pretty notable anti Semite. Uh. This

801
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:53,160
Speaker 1: is Lens van Levenfells lived eighteen seventy four to nineteen

802
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 1: fifty four, and he saw electricity as quote a measure

803
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:01,320
Speaker 1: of spiritual evolution unquote that was ranted only to arians,

804
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:06,480
Speaker 1: Christ and other spiritual intermediaries. That's pretty nasty. Yeah, he

805
00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 1: was not a decent guy. Like, this is a guy

806
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 1: that when when Hitler rose to power, he was just

807
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 1: kissing up immediately apparently, and Hitler just didn't really have

808
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:19,759
Speaker 1: time for him. But but yeah, so yeah he was.

809
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:22,360
Speaker 1: He was not a pleasant guy. So as far as

810
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:26,640
Speaker 1: we know, Hitler didn't buy into his electrical theological position.

811
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:29,640
Speaker 1: Now he seemed from based on what I was reading here,

812
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 1: he really had no interest in it. But but but

813
00:47:32,880 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 1: Lan's was one of these guys who was like, yes,

814
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:38,839
Speaker 1: what you're preaching is it's perfectly with with what I'm selling. Uh,

815
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 1: and and what I take it all to mean is

816
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:46,319
Speaker 1: that the simultaneous advancement of supernatural belief and scientific understanding

817
00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:50,560
Speaker 1: just can result in some some very weird, seemingly to

818
00:47:50,600 --> 00:47:53,720
Speaker 1: the outsider weird modes of belief, but also maybe exciting

819
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:56,600
Speaker 1: modes of belief. Okay, but here I think it's time

820
00:47:56,680 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 1: to arrive at at the final stage of the transformer

821
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:05,080
Speaker 1: stepped down of the spiritual power of electricity, the metaphor

822
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,760
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the last episode, because something starts to happen,

823
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:12,360
Speaker 1: especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, we

824
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:17,560
Speaker 1: might say where electricity is losing a lot of its psychic,

825
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:22,280
Speaker 1: spiritual and symbolic power. It's becoming less and less incorporated

826
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: into I don't know, transcendental language and metaphor. It's becoming

827
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:30,200
Speaker 1: less a source of mystery and wonder and more something

828
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:33,400
Speaker 1: that resonates with what Thomas Hardy said, the quote we

829
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:35,760
Speaker 1: talked about at the beginning of the episode. It highlights

830
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:40,680
Speaker 1: something very natural and mundane in contrast to that classical

831
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:44,800
Speaker 1: sense of holy otherness. Yeah, it's two am at the nightclub.

832
00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:48,920
Speaker 1: Lawns and Spear are both still dancing desperately to keep

833
00:48:48,960 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 1: the party going, while other individuals are are going home. Yeah,

834
00:48:52,600 --> 00:48:55,279
Speaker 1: and so I want to use just one I think

835
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:59,759
Speaker 1: pretty perfect example of this. So you it's December twenty

836
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: seven nine, and you have just received your copy of

837
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:07,279
Speaker 1: the Scientific Americans Supplement and you're leafing through it, and

838
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:11,440
Speaker 1: it features on one page an invention by one M. Defoy,

839
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 1: which was an electric horse bit. Oh, so, the bit

840
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 1: being the part that goes in the horse's mouth. It

841
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 1: was a carriage armed with an electromagnetic apparatus that could

842
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:26,920
Speaker 1: send electric current through metal wires embedded in the reins,

843
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:29,960
Speaker 1: and if it opened the circuit to the current, it

844
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: would travel down the reins and through the bit in

845
00:49:32,320 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: the horse's mouth, giving the horse an electric shock through

846
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:39,800
Speaker 1: its mouth and teeth. So, according to this article it

847
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:43,400
Speaker 1: was the invention was considered a success because it managed

848
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:47,759
Speaker 1: to calm down several quote vicious and stubborn horses so

849
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:50,680
Speaker 1: that they's long enough that they could be shod. They

850
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:52,800
Speaker 1: were trying to, you know, get some shoes on these horses.

851
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: They wouldn't cooperate, so zap him in the mouth. The

852
00:49:56,640 --> 00:50:01,760
Speaker 1: superintendent of the Parisian cab company M. Camille wrote, quote

853
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:04,440
Speaker 1: one horse that was to be shod went so far

854
00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:06,800
Speaker 1: as to lie down and roll over and over on

855
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:10,800
Speaker 1: the ground, all the while struggling, defending himself and fighting

856
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:14,800
Speaker 1: against everything. Nothing could subdue him. I then had recourse

857
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 1: to m Defoy's apparatus, and on the first trial, much

858
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 1: to my surprise, the feet of the intractable horse were

859
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 1: lifted without any great difficulty. And on the second trial

860
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:26,200
Speaker 1: it was as easy to shoot him as if he

861
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 1: had never made the least resistance. The animal was conquered.

862
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 1: So we've reduced the noble spark to something that you

863
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:39,759
Speaker 1: just uh torment a horsewhip, essentially just a bullwhip. Yeah. Well,

864
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 1: and that actually comes in because m defoy went on

865
00:50:42,239 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: to create another appliance along the same lines, the electric

866
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: riding whip, which sounds more or less like a taser

867
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:52,400
Speaker 1: for horses. And if you're thinking, like what horror, nobody

868
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:54,320
Speaker 1: would ever do anything like that today. I mean, we

869
00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:59,000
Speaker 1: have electric fences for livestock. Today, there are shock collars

870
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:02,840
Speaker 1: for animals. So I mean using electricity to control and

871
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 1: tame wild animal instincts is something that is now a

872
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:09,919
Speaker 1: grand tradition. It's not a very pretty one. We don't

873
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 1: like to think about it. It doesn't seem like a

874
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:14,080
Speaker 1: nice thing to do, but it's a thing we do

875
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:16,920
Speaker 1: with the electric fire that used to be such a

876
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:20,239
Speaker 1: cosmic mystery. Yeah, and you know, also when it comes

877
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:23,759
Speaker 1: to taming horses, you know, not not every method is that,

878
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: you know, lovable and horse whispery. But this begins to

879
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:33,759
Speaker 1: get at something that that really comes through in an

880
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:35,799
Speaker 1: essay we mentioned in the last episode and we're going

881
00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: to refer to again now by a Nicholas Ruddick called

882
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:43,640
Speaker 1: Life and Death by Electricity in eighteen ninety the Transfiguration

883
00:51:43,719 --> 00:51:46,680
Speaker 1: of William Kimmler. Like we mentioned in the last episode,

884
00:51:46,719 --> 00:51:49,000
Speaker 1: this is a really great paper. It's worth reading. It's

885
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: a very interesting history of what was happening with the

886
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: power of electricity in the late eighteen hundreds. Well, he

887
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:01,160
Speaker 1: points to an eighteen nineties Scientific American article that it

888
00:52:01,239 --> 00:52:02,799
Speaker 1: does a great job of just laying out just how

889
00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:05,359
Speaker 1: much electricity is in the average person's life. It wakes

890
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:07,359
Speaker 1: him up in the morning, it cooks their breakfast, it's

891
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:10,120
Speaker 1: on their right into work, it's all over work. When

892
00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: they go to church, their electric bells, there's an electric oregon,

893
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:16,440
Speaker 1: and on up into your death. When you die, an

894
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 1: electric apparatus is used to carve your name into a tombstone.

895
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:24,160
Speaker 1: So it we we give this enormous power over our lives. Right,

896
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:27,960
Speaker 1: it's used in medicine, it can kill, it can it

897
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:30,799
Speaker 1: can be a communication technology. And yet at the same

898
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:35,680
Speaker 1: time it has lost its spiritual and symbolic luster, hasn't it. Yeah,

899
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:38,239
Speaker 1: Like the poetry is seeping out of it, you know.

900
00:52:38,440 --> 00:52:40,560
Speaker 1: And uh and and a lot of it just has

901
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:42,720
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that maybe all the poetic

902
00:52:42,800 --> 00:52:44,399
Speaker 1: things that can be said about it have been said,

903
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:46,840
Speaker 1: Like the language that we used to describe it is

904
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 1: getting a bit dull, even even if it seems exciting

905
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:52,799
Speaker 1: to re explore it from a modern perspective. And then yeah,

906
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:55,840
Speaker 1: it's also just everywhere, like how mystical can it be?

907
00:52:56,560 --> 00:53:00,160
Speaker 1: If it cooks your toast, how mystical can it be? Uh? Um,

908
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:03,040
Speaker 1: you know, if it's if it's just lighting a light

909
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:05,279
Speaker 1: bulb while you read something, and I think to put

910
00:53:05,360 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: a cherry on this. Uh. This transformation into an utterly

911
00:53:09,360 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 1: mundane and dirty, down in the mud kind of force

912
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:18,560
Speaker 1: of nature was when it was finally used in illegal execution. Yes,

913
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: which again brings us back to William Kimler, first man

914
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:26,719
Speaker 1: executed by electricity under the world's first electrical execution law,

915
00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:31,279
Speaker 1: New York State, January one, eighteen eighty nine. And like

916
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:33,920
Speaker 1: the history of this is really interesting. For instance, just

917
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 1: how how did we come to the point where that

918
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 1: was even on the table? Well? Why, why why use electricity? Well,

919
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:44,040
Speaker 1: apparently the key arguments for this were coming from prominent

920
00:53:44,080 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 1: supporters in Buffalo, New York. And that's because Buffalo was

921
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 1: really close to Niagara Falls and there was a lot

922
00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 1: of hydroelectric work going on there. The damn they began

923
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:58,440
Speaker 1: the damn there in six and so they considered themselves

924
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:02,239
Speaker 1: to be on the cutting edge of technology. Uh, you know,

925
00:54:02,320 --> 00:54:05,239
Speaker 1: it's like the Silicon Valley of the day. And uh

926
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 1: and and so in particular, you have one Dr Albert

927
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:12,520
Speaker 1: Southwick who is lobbying, um with with New York state

928
00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:18,600
Speaker 1: representatives for electrical execution. Why with the states sen It's crazy, Yeah,

929
00:54:18,920 --> 00:54:21,360
Speaker 1: we'll be I mean yeah, I mean it sounds like,

930
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 1: for instance, if Silicon Valley big shots were lobbying for

931
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: execution by virtual reality or maybe streaming video today, right, Like,

932
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:31,759
Speaker 1: can you imagine when they're saying, hey, we got this technology,

933
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:34,279
Speaker 1: why aren't we using it to kill people? Right? Death

934
00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:37,279
Speaker 1: by social media. Yeah so, but they had some core

935
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:39,719
Speaker 1: arguments for it. They said that, all right, this is

936
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:44,480
Speaker 1: a humanitarian advancement. Forget hanging. Hanging. You know, hanging has

937
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:47,880
Speaker 1: all of these horrible associations with the past, particularly with

938
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:51,000
Speaker 1: America's past. Let's move beyond it. Let's use something new

939
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:54,880
Speaker 1: and exciting to kill people that has less weight to it.

940
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: I think there was inherently some sense that low tech

941
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:02,759
Speaker 1: things were less desirable. Like it wasn't It didn't even

942
00:55:02,800 --> 00:55:05,440
Speaker 1: have to be that it caused less pain. It was

943
00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 1: just more dignified to be killed by this apparatus of

944
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:12,160
Speaker 1: science and technology rather than the creepy, low fi image

945
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 1: of a hangman's noose. And they also added that hey,

946
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:17,399
Speaker 1: if you're if you're gonna hang somebody, you might something

947
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:20,240
Speaker 1: might go wrong. You have an accidental beheading that takes place,

948
00:55:20,440 --> 00:55:23,239
Speaker 1: or if you're actually doing a beheading, there's could be

949
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:26,839
Speaker 1: an arterial spray. This is hygienically sound. It is very

950
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:30,000
Speaker 1: signed to the electric chairs. The electric chair is the hygienic,

951
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 1: scientifically sound way to go. And since electricity had been

952
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:38,520
Speaker 1: observed to kill rapidly and seemingly painlessly, it seemed like

953
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:42,680
Speaker 1: like another perfect way to avoid any messy accidents during

954
00:55:42,719 --> 00:55:45,319
Speaker 1: an execution. Don't worry about the you know, something going

955
00:55:45,360 --> 00:55:49,000
Speaker 1: wrong with the way you've you've presented the gallows. This way,

956
00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:51,880
Speaker 1: you just turn. It's basically the off switch for life.

957
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:55,359
Speaker 1: Do you think they believed these arguments they were making

958
00:55:56,400 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 1: or is this just completely mercenary trying to get I

959
00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:04,120
Speaker 1: don't know. I get the sense that they believed it

960
00:56:04,239 --> 00:56:06,880
Speaker 1: in the sense that you know, there was data supported.

961
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:08,600
Speaker 1: I mean, even just reading over what I what I

962
00:56:08,680 --> 00:56:10,520
Speaker 1: just heard. It's like, if you're if you're already on

963
00:56:10,719 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 1: board with the idea that criminals must be executed, then

964
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:19,279
Speaker 1: the most humane argument within that mindset is, well, let's

965
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:23,200
Speaker 1: make it painless, Let's make it quick, let's make it hygienic,

966
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 1: Let's do all of those things that makes it less

967
00:56:28,080 --> 00:56:30,919
Speaker 1: less horrible. You know, Well, was anybody at this point

968
00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:34,080
Speaker 1: still trying to hang on to the sacredness of electricity?

969
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 1: They actually were, and that and that, and this is

970
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:39,840
Speaker 1: interesting because yeah, there were there were others who were

971
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:43,960
Speaker 1: saying that this was a degrading use of miraculous energy.

972
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:47,200
Speaker 1: Kind of I guess, kind of like the last vestige

973
00:56:47,239 --> 00:56:50,880
Speaker 1: of that earlier enthusiasm for it. There her people think, oh,

974
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:52,880
Speaker 1: you're gonna kill people with it. Now, that's too far.

975
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:56,799
Speaker 1: Now you've just really taken it into an unfortunate area.

976
00:56:56,920 --> 00:57:00,680
Speaker 1: Even Edison was against it. The man who executed you know,

977
00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:03,920
Speaker 1: numerous animals during the War of currents. Uh, they'ugh not

978
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:07,759
Speaker 1: Topsy the elephant, apparently, despite some popular coverage to the

979
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:10,520
Speaker 1: to the contrary. Huh. Yeah. So anyway, it was a

980
00:57:10,640 --> 00:57:15,120
Speaker 1: year before the conviction um of Kimbler was finally upheld.

981
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Kimmler had a lot of litigation and appeals, right, yeah, yeah,

982
00:57:18,840 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 1: I mean this was a kind of a big case.

983
00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:22,440
Speaker 1: It went all the way to the U. S. Supreme

984
00:57:22,520 --> 00:57:25,360
Speaker 1: Court in eighteen ninety and a lot of the litigation

985
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:30,080
Speaker 1: was presumed to come from Westinghouse Electric Company. Is they

986
00:57:30,160 --> 00:57:34,000
Speaker 1: were displeased to know that their A C. Dynamos would

987
00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:37,560
Speaker 1: be used in the execution, having been obtained by three

988
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:40,280
Speaker 1: prisons in New York State. So they were afraid of

989
00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:44,240
Speaker 1: bad press for their electricity, and they paid this guy's

990
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:47,200
Speaker 1: legal bills to try to prevent it from from being

991
00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:49,000
Speaker 1: used to kill him. Yeah. I mean it's kind of

992
00:57:49,120 --> 00:57:51,760
Speaker 1: like we create this product, this podcast, what have we

993
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:54,520
Speaker 1: found out that prisons had subscribed to the podcast in

994
00:57:54,680 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 1: order to use it in some sort of sonic death

995
00:57:57,200 --> 00:58:00,400
Speaker 1: device for execution, or to take in another direct. And uh,

996
00:58:00,520 --> 00:58:03,480
Speaker 1: you know, you have musicians such as Trent Resner who

997
00:58:03,560 --> 00:58:07,240
Speaker 1: were outraged when they found out that their music might

998
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:11,600
Speaker 1: be used by interrogators in certain situations, or rock musicians

999
00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:14,280
Speaker 1: who have politicians they don't like using their music at

1000
00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 1: campaign rallies. Exactly, you've created this thing for one purpose,

1001
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:20,800
Speaker 1: and here someone's gonna use it for this this this

1002
00:58:21,240 --> 00:58:24,560
Speaker 1: rather despicable purpose over here. And then there's this No

1003
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:28,160
Speaker 1: one knew exactly how electricity would kill him? What a

1004
00:58:28,240 --> 00:58:32,640
Speaker 1: crazy controversy. Yeah, they didn't know what electricity did they

1005
00:58:32,760 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 1: due to the body to cause death. They knew it

1006
00:58:34,840 --> 00:58:37,360
Speaker 1: could cause death, right, but what did it do? Yeah?

1007
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:39,479
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, we knew that, we observed it happened.

1008
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: We knew that happened. But but experts were split on

1009
00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:47,120
Speaker 1: exactly what would happen um to kimler Um. Doctors knew

1010
00:58:47,240 --> 00:58:49,920
Speaker 1: that the body uti utilized electricity in the nervous system.

1011
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:53,000
Speaker 1: Some physicians even employed it again as a curative measure,

1012
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,320
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, some even taking the view that the

1013
00:58:55,400 --> 00:58:58,200
Speaker 1: body was like a battery that needed regular recharging. That

1014
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 1: goes back to the medical electricity talked about shock me

1015
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:04,240
Speaker 1: make me better. Yeah so, and then other experiments had

1016
00:59:04,280 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: proven electricity's ability to revive dying dogs uh and and

1017
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:11,000
Speaker 1: as well as some of these uh these experiences would

1018
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 1: just saw that like the animation of tissue. Uh so,

1019
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:16,400
Speaker 1: perhaps he would enter into a state of what they

1020
00:59:16,480 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 1: referred to as electrical asphyxia, where he would be rolled

1021
00:59:19,240 --> 00:59:22,840
Speaker 1: out to the morgue while still alive and presumably like

1022
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: screaming inwardly. Um. They weren't sure if if he would dive,

1023
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:30,720
Speaker 1: destroyed vital organs, if he would asphyxiate, And then they

1024
00:59:30,760 --> 00:59:32,600
Speaker 1: didn't know if they should use a C or d C.

1025
00:59:32,760 --> 00:59:34,440
Speaker 1: At first, they ended up going with the former, as

1026
00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:37,280
Speaker 1: it was considered more dangerous a wasp that would strike

1027
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:41,160
Speaker 1: multiple times rather than a beasting. So they constructed the

1028
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:44,680
Speaker 1: A C dynamo at Auburn prison uh in order so

1029
00:59:44,760 --> 00:59:48,040
Speaker 1: that it would deliver a maximum of six and eight volts.

1030
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:50,919
Speaker 1: They killed a horse with it. They killed a cow

1031
00:59:51,040 --> 00:59:53,960
Speaker 1: with it to test it out. Thousand volts would kill

1032
00:59:54,000 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 1: a horse, five hundred would kill a dog. So surely

1033
00:59:57,080 --> 01:00:02,240
Speaker 1: the full uh eight would kill a man without any difficulty. Okay,

1034
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:05,280
Speaker 1: So what actually happened when it came time for the execution?

1035
01:00:05,600 --> 01:00:07,440
Speaker 1: All right, so they turned it on. They gave him

1036
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 1: seventeen seconds of current, and he was pronounced dead. And

1037
01:00:11,520 --> 01:00:12,960
Speaker 1: they think, all right, we've done it. That was that

1038
01:00:13,040 --> 01:00:16,320
Speaker 1: sounds that seems perfectly reasonable. Seventeen quick seconds of powerful

1039
01:00:16,360 --> 01:00:20,480
Speaker 1: current kills him dead. But then then a witness protests,

1040
01:00:20,840 --> 01:00:23,360
Speaker 1: stands up and says, he is alive. I see him breathing,

1041
01:00:23,400 --> 01:00:26,080
Speaker 1: and indeed his chest was moving. He was still alive.

1042
01:00:26,200 --> 01:00:28,800
Speaker 1: So they panicked and they had to turn it back

1043
01:00:28,880 --> 01:00:31,840
Speaker 1: on man, and this is where things start getting horrible.

1044
01:00:32,080 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 1: Blood pours from the ruptured capillaries in his face, an

1045
01:00:35,560 --> 01:00:38,480
Speaker 1: unpleasant smell builds up, like I think it was described

1046
01:00:38,520 --> 01:00:42,080
Speaker 1: as worse than unpleasant. Yeah, yeah, And we'll read some

1047
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:46,440
Speaker 1: of the quotes from from individuals who witnessed this. Yes,

1048
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:50,040
Speaker 1: like a stinch of singed hair and flesh and all told.

1049
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:52,760
Speaker 1: At the end of it, Kimla received eight minutes of current,

1050
01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:57,360
Speaker 1: and they later realized that the electrodes didn't make full contact,

1051
01:00:57,600 --> 01:00:59,959
Speaker 1: so he didn't receive the full power of the current.

1052
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:03,479
Speaker 1: It so they were just shocking him at a lower voltage. Yeah,

1053
01:01:03,520 --> 01:01:06,040
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, I think back to the breathing on

1054
01:01:06,080 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 1: the frog. Remember breathing that the moisture of one's breath

1055
01:01:09,640 --> 01:01:12,960
Speaker 1: under the frog, and it was a uh enabled you know,

1056
01:01:13,040 --> 01:01:15,560
Speaker 1: full contact to be made with the electrodes on the frog.

1057
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:19,000
Speaker 1: Similar here, they say if Kimmeler had sweated more, or

1058
01:01:19,040 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 1: if they had greased him up or something beforehand, that

1059
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:24,000
Speaker 1: would have made the difference. But instead they just end

1060
01:01:24,080 --> 01:01:27,040
Speaker 1: up roasting him at a slower rate with with a

1061
01:01:27,200 --> 01:01:29,840
Speaker 1: lower voltage. So yet again this sounds kind of like

1062
01:01:29,960 --> 01:01:33,160
Speaker 1: the definition of cruel and unusual punishment. Yeah, exactly the

1063
01:01:33,240 --> 01:01:36,919
Speaker 1: opposite of everything they'd preached about a swift, hygienic death.

1064
01:01:37,160 --> 01:01:40,160
Speaker 1: In fact, we have a few quotes from it. What

1065
01:01:40,200 --> 01:01:41,840
Speaker 1: we're gonna read from me now, and this is from

1066
01:01:42,160 --> 01:01:45,920
Speaker 1: Kimmeler's death by torture. That's the headline, New York Herald,

1067
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:51,600
Speaker 1: August seven. Men accustomed to every form of suffering, grew

1068
01:01:51,760 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 1: faint as the awful spectacle was unfolded before their eyes.

1069
01:01:55,960 --> 01:01:58,640
Speaker 1: Those who stood the site were filled with awes. They

1070
01:01:58,680 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 1: saw the effects of this most potent of fluids, which

1071
01:02:01,680 --> 01:02:04,280
Speaker 1: is only partly understood by those who have studied it

1072
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:09,240
Speaker 1: most faithfully, as it slowly disintegrated the fiber and tissues

1073
01:02:09,320 --> 01:02:12,200
Speaker 1: of the body through which it passed. The heaving of

1074
01:02:12,240 --> 01:02:14,440
Speaker 1: a chest, which had it had been promised, would be

1075
01:02:14,520 --> 01:02:17,240
Speaker 1: stilled in an instant piece as soon as the circuit

1076
01:02:17,360 --> 01:02:20,520
Speaker 1: was completed, the foaming of the mouth, the bloody sweat,

1077
01:02:20,760 --> 01:02:24,000
Speaker 1: the writhing shoulders, and all the other signs of life.

1078
01:02:24,680 --> 01:02:27,960
Speaker 1: Horrible as these were, they were made infinitely more horrible

1079
01:02:28,080 --> 01:02:30,840
Speaker 1: by the premature removal of the electrodes and the subsequent

1080
01:02:30,920 --> 01:02:33,960
Speaker 1: replacing of them for not seconds, but minutes, until the

1081
01:02:34,040 --> 01:02:36,640
Speaker 1: room was filled with the odor of burning flesh, and

1082
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:39,800
Speaker 1: strong men fainted and fell like logs upon the floor.

1083
01:02:40,720 --> 01:02:44,800
Speaker 1: And all this done in the name of science. Yeah,

1084
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:48,360
Speaker 1: the quite a spectacle, um and again quite the opposite

1085
01:02:48,400 --> 01:02:51,440
Speaker 1: of what everyone was promised with this. And then of

1086
01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:54,440
Speaker 1: course they ended up doing an autopsy. They found that

1087
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:57,480
Speaker 1: the small blood vessels between the brain and the skull,

1088
01:02:57,880 --> 01:03:00,640
Speaker 1: that that all the blood was like charcoil, charcoal, but

1089
01:03:00,720 --> 01:03:04,520
Speaker 1: not burned ash, but the fluid had been evaporated in

1090
01:03:04,640 --> 01:03:07,920
Speaker 1: the skull itself been badly burned. So yeah, all these

1091
01:03:07,960 --> 01:03:10,920
Speaker 1: gory details made it out into the press, and uh,

1092
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:14,280
Speaker 1: it was kind of a pr nightmare for for the

1093
01:03:14,360 --> 01:03:18,240
Speaker 1: electric chairs first entry into the modern world. And I

1094
01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:21,040
Speaker 1: think Nicholas Reddick is making the point in his paper

1095
01:03:21,680 --> 01:03:24,680
Speaker 1: that this is sort of this is the death blow

1096
01:03:25,080 --> 01:03:28,880
Speaker 1: to the to the sacred spirituality of electricity, all of

1097
01:03:28,960 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 1: the mystery, all of the metaphorical sense in which it embodied, virility, fertility, spirituality,

1098
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:39,080
Speaker 1: the great unknown, the power of the universe, the power

1099
01:03:39,160 --> 01:03:42,280
Speaker 1: of God. Whatever it was that you thought was imbued

1100
01:03:42,320 --> 01:03:45,080
Speaker 1: in this force, it was kind of all gone by

1101
01:03:45,160 --> 01:03:48,560
Speaker 1: this point. Yeah, we've taken this divine energy and we've

1102
01:03:49,080 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 1: imperfectly tamed it. We've tamed it, but then in trying

1103
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:56,280
Speaker 1: to utilize it, utilize it poorly and just the most

1104
01:03:56,360 --> 01:03:59,560
Speaker 1: base purposes. Yeah, and and again needlessly. It's not like

1105
01:03:59,600 --> 01:04:02,040
Speaker 1: we didn't know how to execute people beforehand. I mean, again,

1106
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:04,520
Speaker 1: you can certainly give credence to these cases that we

1107
01:04:04,600 --> 01:04:08,880
Speaker 1: needed more modern, hygienic uh and dependable means of of

1108
01:04:09,040 --> 01:04:13,000
Speaker 1: carrying out these sentences, but it's it's hard to argue

1109
01:04:13,000 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 1: that too much in the face of of the results

1110
01:04:15,360 --> 01:04:19,400
Speaker 1: there those those those minutes and minutes of roasting electrocution, Yeah,

1111
01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:23,240
Speaker 1: but it also, Reddick points out, wasn't just the this use,

1112
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: this barbaric use of electricity. It was also something about

1113
01:04:27,280 --> 01:04:30,360
Speaker 1: the familiarity, you know. He comments that by the eighteen nineties,

1114
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:33,800
Speaker 1: as electricity came more and more into our lives, he says, quote,

1115
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 1: it was becoming increasingly difficult to talk about transcendental matters

1116
01:04:38,520 --> 01:04:41,840
Speaker 1: in electrical terms. And I think that's really saying something

1117
01:04:41,960 --> 01:04:45,560
Speaker 1: to me that suggests that there's something, uh, we we

1118
01:04:45,640 --> 01:04:49,560
Speaker 1: sort of alluded to this earlier, but about holiness itself.

1119
01:04:49,680 --> 01:04:53,720
Speaker 1: The concept of holiness and mystery. Uh, that is the

1120
01:04:53,840 --> 01:04:57,840
Speaker 1: same as strangeness and otherness and familiarity with the thing

1121
01:04:58,480 --> 01:05:00,840
Speaker 1: is death to a sense of the holy and the

1122
01:05:00,920 --> 01:05:03,440
Speaker 1: sacred about it. Yeah. Again, if it's cooking your toast,

1123
01:05:03,720 --> 01:05:06,240
Speaker 1: it's hard to find the divine in it. Of course,

1124
01:05:06,280 --> 01:05:09,440
Speaker 1: then again, I often think about how that's a lot

1125
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 1: of what we do on this podcast is exactly challenging

1126
01:05:12,520 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 1: that impulse discovering the divine Exactly. I often want to

1127
01:05:17,760 --> 01:05:20,600
Speaker 1: take a thing that's familiar and make it strange again,

1128
01:05:21,520 --> 01:05:24,200
Speaker 1: to revisit something that we we might think of as

1129
01:05:24,240 --> 01:05:29,080
Speaker 1: being utterly mundane and rediscover what's fascinating and very unsettling

1130
01:05:29,160 --> 01:05:32,960
Speaker 1: and weird about it. Absolutely so, maybe in these episodes

1131
01:05:33,040 --> 01:05:37,040
Speaker 1: we've helped you find something strange and fascinating about that

1132
01:05:37,240 --> 01:05:41,280
Speaker 1: very force that cooks your Reggo waffles. Hopefully so this

1133
01:05:41,360 --> 01:05:45,400
Speaker 1: episode not paid for by EGO. Yeah, so there you

1134
01:05:45,520 --> 01:05:49,680
Speaker 1: have it. Um, the role of the transformer is complete. Um,

1135
01:05:50,120 --> 01:05:53,120
Speaker 1: the spiritual has become the mundane. And if you want

1136
01:05:53,160 --> 01:05:55,760
Speaker 1: to check out more about this topic, be sure to

1137
01:05:55,880 --> 01:05:57,760
Speaker 1: check out the landing paid for this episode of Stuff

1138
01:05:57,760 --> 01:05:59,480
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind dot Com will include links to

1139
01:06:00,000 --> 01:06:02,680
Speaker 1: related content, links out to that how stuff Works article

1140
01:06:02,720 --> 01:06:06,360
Speaker 1: about electricity, to some of the sources we've used in

1141
01:06:06,520 --> 01:06:10,200
Speaker 1: researching the episodes as well. UM, and you'll also find

1142
01:06:10,360 --> 01:06:13,200
Speaker 1: other podcast episodes. You'll find blog posts, you'll find videos.

1143
01:06:13,280 --> 01:06:15,360
Speaker 1: You'll find links out to our social media accounts such

1144
01:06:15,400 --> 01:06:17,920
Speaker 1: as uh Facebook and Twitter. We're blow the mind on

1145
01:06:18,000 --> 01:06:20,520
Speaker 1: both of those. On Tumbler, we are Stuff to Blow

1146
01:06:20,560 --> 01:06:23,960
Speaker 1: your Mind. And hey, wherever you listen to us, if

1147
01:06:23,960 --> 01:06:27,000
Speaker 1: you listen to us that on iTunes or Stitcher or

1148
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:30,880
Speaker 1: Spotify or any of the really cool platforms that are

1149
01:06:30,960 --> 01:06:33,600
Speaker 1: rolling out seemingly every week, be sure to give us

1150
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:36,480
Speaker 1: a little love there. If they have the ability for

1151
01:06:36,560 --> 01:06:37,920
Speaker 1: you to do that if they have some sort of

1152
01:06:38,080 --> 01:06:41,160
Speaker 1: rating system, review system, give us some love it helps

1153
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:43,640
Speaker 1: support the podcast. Yeah, it's the easiest way for you

1154
01:06:43,760 --> 01:06:45,240
Speaker 1: to help the show. And if you want to get

1155
01:06:45,280 --> 01:06:48,120
Speaker 1: in touch with us with any feedback about this episode

1156
01:06:48,200 --> 01:06:51,280
Speaker 1: or other recent episodes, or give us your favorite story

1157
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:54,400
Speaker 1: or anecdote from the weird history of electricity, you can

1158
01:06:54,520 --> 01:06:57,640
Speaker 1: email us that blow the mind at how stuff works

1159
01:06:57,800 --> 01:07:09,520
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1160
01:07:09,800 --> 01:07:21,360
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com. The bigger, the deliverer,

1161
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:23,000
Speaker 1: they believe they big se