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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: By names Robert Brown 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

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Speaker 1: school 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. So,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: you know, they can stand on their own, but we

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Speaker 1: do highly encourage you to check out part one. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So I'm going to start in a kind of counterintuitive

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Speaker 1: place for this journey of psychic electricity, and that's with

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Speaker 1: the English writer and poet Thomas Hardy. So you probably

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Speaker 1: remember him from from writing extremely depressing novels that you

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Speaker 1: had to read in high school, you know, the Return

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Speaker 1: of the Native Mayor of castor Bridge. What did you

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Speaker 1: have to read in high school? I guess it was

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Speaker 1: castor Bridge. That's the one that I feel like I'm

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Speaker 1: most familiar with. Yeah, or you might have write his

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Speaker 1: poems like The Darkling Thrush, which is one of my favorites,

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Speaker 1: and it contains these lines as one of the stanzas

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Speaker 1: of the Darkling Thrush. The land's sharp features seemed to

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Speaker 1: be the centuries corpse out linked his crypt, the cloudy canopy,

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Speaker 1: the wind, his death lament, the ancient pulse of germ

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Speaker 1: and birth was shrunk and hard and dry, and every

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Speaker 1: spirit upon the earth seemed fervorless. As I it's kind

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Speaker 1: of bleak, Yeah, But so he's talking about something that

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Speaker 1: happened in the past century. Yeah. I think one of

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Speaker 1: the early names of this poem, before it was called

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Speaker 1: The Darkling Thrush, was something like the Corpse of the

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Speaker 1: Past century. Or something like that. Uh. And this was

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Speaker 1: written around nine and that, you know, the end of

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Speaker 1: the eight hundred, So so what happened what happened to

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Speaker 1: our fervor during the century he spoke of. I don't

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Speaker 1: know exactly what dissipation of spirit Hardy was referring to,

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

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

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Speaker 1: something to do with electricity. And so there's a great

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Speaker 1: Thomas Hardy quote that is it's quoted in one of

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Speaker 1: 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. What

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Speaker 1: was illuminated was the outdated nous of the old beliefs,

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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. Uh. Now, putting aside the you know,

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Speaker 1: racist and colonial assumptions of the metaphor hard he uses

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: sur mounted by various cults and people of varying theologies,

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Speaker 1: there is an inherent tension for some reason between technology

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Speaker 1: and religious belief. Yeah, because especially with an old religious belief,

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Speaker 1: there's often that sense that it's set in stone and

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Speaker 1: and this is the uh. You know, that this is

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Speaker 1: the truth that is buried in the earth for all

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Speaker 1: future generations to live by. And what gives it its

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Speaker 1: power is its ancient otherness. Right? And then what do

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Speaker 1: you do when a new otherness centers the picture? When

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Speaker 1: when suddenly we we know more about the what was

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Speaker 1: magic in the past, when we know we can explain

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Speaker 1: electricity or at least harness it in ways that we

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

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Speaker 1: were here were carved. Yeah, and so an observation that

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

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

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Speaker 1: into our lives, you know, you you might have hundreds

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Speaker 1: of different interactions with electrical appliances and services throughout the day,

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Speaker 1: it was becoming increasingly difficult, he says, to talk about

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Speaker 1: transcendental matters in electrical terms. But before we get to

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Speaker 1: the sort of the death of the sacred ghost of

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Speaker 1: electricity in the the sort of mundane ravages of modern life,

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Speaker 1: I want to go back to a period where there

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Speaker 1: was still much weirdness and wonder to be had. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're still we're still in the time period of the

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Speaker 1: the experiments discussed previously where we're beginning to understand electricity

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Speaker 1: a little bit. We're exploring its properties, we're also exploring

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Speaker 1: the you know, it's dramatic side, it's entertaining side, as

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Speaker 1: well as it's it's dangerous and lethal side. Absolutely. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about a scientist who has been

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Speaker 1: largely forgotten despite the fact that he was one of

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Speaker 1: the most famous and celebrated scientists of the entire world

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Speaker 1: in his day, and his influence on modern scientific thought

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Speaker 1: is just absolutely incalculable. And that that is the scientist

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Speaker 1: Alexander von Humboldt. Now, I recently read a book about

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Speaker 1: Alexander von Humboldt. It was the Invention of Nature Alexander

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Speaker 1: von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wolf. This is a

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Speaker 1: great book, by the way, but it talks about this

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Speaker 1: strange fact that he's been mostly forgotten about, despite the

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Speaker 1: fact that he was responsible, for example, for the scientific

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Speaker 1: concept of ecology, thinking about natural environments not as sort

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Speaker 1: of a god established domain of unchanging character, but as

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Speaker 1: complex dynamic systems that vary with climate and resources and

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Speaker 1: are subject to dramatic change even by altering a small variable.

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Speaker 1: If it's a if it's sort of a keystone variable.

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Speaker 1: But I want to communicate the spirit of how scientific

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Speaker 1: experiments in animal electricity were continuing uh in the in

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Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundreds in early eighteen hundreds by looking

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Speaker 1: at a couple of events in Alexander von Humboldt's life.

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Speaker 1: So in the seventeen nineties, Alexander von humbold actually became

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Speaker 1: friends with the rock star German poet Johann wolf King

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Speaker 1: Von Guta and Gerta was the poet who, in his

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Speaker 1: version of Faust wrote, what dazzles for the moment spends

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Speaker 1: its spirit? What's genuine shall posterity inherit? I always like

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Speaker 1: that cinnamon, and I think it also sort of applies

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Speaker 1: to some of the showmanship about electricity that we oh

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Speaker 1: yeah mentioned in the last episode. Yeah, very much so,

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Speaker 1: because I mean, at this point electricity has been a

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Speaker 1: show and electricity has often involved uh, dead animals, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: to varying degrees. So so caten in mind as we

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Speaker 1: move forward. But Gota wasn't just a poet in his day.

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Speaker 1: He was also a really dedicated scientist, and one year

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Speaker 1: in the seventeen nineties, about three years after von Humboldt

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Speaker 1: and and Gota had first visited, they spent time together

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Speaker 1: in a city called Yugana to talk through scientific ideas

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Speaker 1: and conduct this long series of experiments on animal electricity,

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Speaker 1: which Humboldt was writing a book about at the time.

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Speaker 1: So he was interested in that that that animal electricity,

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Speaker 1: that that idea that there was a specific intrinsic electrical

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Speaker 1: system to the body. Yeah, and as we discussed in

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Speaker 1: the last episode, it was later proved not true that

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Speaker 1: animal electricity is a different kind of electricity than the

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Speaker 1: external electricity that's in lightning and everything else. But but

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Speaker 1: he was still he was trying to suss it out.

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Speaker 1: He was trying to figure out what was going on

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Speaker 1: with the role of electricity in the bodies of animals.

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Speaker 1: So I want to read a quote from a section

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Speaker 1: of of Andrea Wolf's book where she says that Humboldt

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Speaker 1: and go To had been hanging out when there there's

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Speaker 1: a violent thunderstorm on this on this spring day, and

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Speaker 1: after the after humbold had been out taking in, you know,

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Speaker 1: atmospheric readings while he was watching the lightning happened during

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Speaker 1: the storm. The next day, he finds out that a

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Speaker 1: farmer and his wife nearby had been killed by the

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Speaker 1: lightning in the storm. So Wolf writes, he rushed over

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Speaker 1: to obtain their corpses, to obtain exactly Yeah, he just

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Speaker 1: obtained them, yeah, uh, she writes, laying out their bodies

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Speaker 1: on the table in the round anatomy tower. He analyzed

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Speaker 1: everything the man's leg bones looked as if they had

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Speaker 1: been pierced by shotgun pellets, Humboldt noted excitedly, but the

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Speaker 1: worst damage was to the genitals. At first, he thought

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Speaker 1: the pubic hare might have been ignited and caused the burns,

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Speaker 1: but dismissed the idea when he saw the couple's unharmed armpits.

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Speaker 1: Despite the increasingly putrid smell of death and burned flesh,

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Speaker 1: Humboldt enjoyed every minute of this gruesome investigation. I cannot

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Speaker 1: exist without experiments, he said. So, so Alexander von Homeboldt

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Speaker 1: just shows up on the doorstep following the tragic event

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Speaker 1: and says, Hey, I'm Alexander von Homeboldt. I'm kind of

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Speaker 1: a big deal. I need to see the gruesomely distorted

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Speaker 1: bodies of the lightning strike victims. The funniest thing is

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Speaker 1: this was before he was a really big deal. This

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Speaker 1: is when he was an upcoming big deal. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: he I need to examine the scorched genitals for science.

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Speaker 1: But Wolf also writes about one of Humboldt's favorite experiments

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Speaker 1: that he ever performed, which was when he and Gerta

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Speaker 1: were together experimenting on frog legs. This is uh reve

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Speaker 1: visitting 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

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Speaker 1: lightning Wolf writes. One morning, Humbldt placed a frog's leg

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

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Speaker 1: muscles 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. But the breath of life, even though the

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Speaker 1: breath is actually just delivering moisture that helps to complete

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Speaker 1: the circuit. Now, another funny thing is not being there

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Speaker 1: and uh and knowing exactly what happened. It's hard to

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Speaker 1: even determine if Humboldt's interpretation of what actually caused the

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Speaker 1: twitching is correct. Yeah, I mean it sounds sensible because

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Speaker 1: it also plays into into the example we'll get to

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: through the rainforest with with someone named I'm a boon Plan.

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Speaker 1: Bon 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 a town called Calaboso, that there

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

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Speaker 1: were filled with electric eels, and he Humble got very

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Speaker 1: excited 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: do you catch it? Especially since, as as Wolf notes,

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

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Speaker 1: at the bottom of the pools. So how do you

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: horses 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 bon 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: 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 an eel, standing

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Speaker 1: on clay, touching an eel, 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, of view of electricity. Yeah, and I get

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Speaker 1: the impression from this book that Humblet 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 Brando 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 Bigley 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 Brando.

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Speaker 1: So Um. According to Ed Bigley Jr. Uh, he gets

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: of electric eels and power the house? And uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: And so Ed Begley Jr. He's the he's the bicycle

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Speaker 1: to power your water heater kind of guy. Yeah, you know, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's you know, he's versed in alternative energy to a

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Speaker 1: certain extent, and it's kind of a you know, you

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Speaker 1: know it has often lent his voice to some of

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Speaker 1: those causes. So, yeah, Brando figured he was the guy

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Speaker 1: to ask, and so Bagley has kind of taken aback.

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Speaker 1: But he says, you know, I don't think that would

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Speaker 1: be possible. I don't think it would work. And indeed,

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Speaker 1: it's difficult to try and empower anything with an electric

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Speaker 1: eel because for one thing, they well, for a number

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Speaker 1: of reasons. But you know, you'll see aquariums where they

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Speaker 1: have like a little Christmas tree, and the electric eel

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Speaker 1: will cause the tree to light up periodically. But the

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Speaker 1: eel does not admit, you know, a continuous amount of voltage.

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Speaker 1: It's just you know, quick shocks here and there. So

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Speaker 1: it would be it would be one of those things

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Speaker 1: where if you try to engineer a system that uses

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Speaker 1: the electric eels, you quickly out engineer yourself and realize

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Speaker 1: you're better off using some other form. But but anyway,

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Speaker 1: so Baguley says, I don't think that is gonna work,

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Speaker 1: and Brando just kind of gets grumpy and says, it's

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Speaker 1: always no with you. So I love I love that

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Speaker 1: story because it's it's just it's just a great brand

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Speaker 1: of story and a great electric eel story. Did he

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Speaker 1: point a gun at him? I tell me true. Maybe

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Speaker 1: I don't know, But at any rate, it was like

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

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Speaker 1: you've turned me down here on this electric eel business

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Speaker 1: that I had a lot of hope built up for.

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Speaker 1: So just go, just go, don't tell me not to

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Speaker 1: any more of my disappointed the King of Spain or something. Well, so,

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Speaker 1: as as you can see from the stuff we've been

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Speaker 1: talking about, experiments about electricity didn't stop in the mid

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Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, where we were talking about a bunch of

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Speaker 1: the experiments in the last episode. They continued into the

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Speaker 1: turn of the century, the early eighteen hundreds, and uh,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't It also wasn't just the known scientists

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Speaker 1: of the age who experimented with electricity. One of the

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Speaker 1: weirdest stories I came across as a story about Percy

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Speaker 1: Shelly Old P. B. Shelley, the poet, you know, the

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Speaker 1: author of what might you best know him from? Maybe Ozymandias? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would imagine that's probably the most famous look on

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Speaker 1: my work, Seeing Mighty and Despair. But actually you might

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Speaker 1: know him best for being the husband of Mary Shelley,

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Speaker 1: who wrote Frankenstein. And we talked in the last episode

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Speaker 1: about the the the impression made on Mary Shelley by

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Speaker 1: the lecturers in electricity and how that might have led

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Speaker 1: to ideas in Frankenstein. But but her own husband might

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Speaker 1: have also inspired some of these scientific terrors, because there

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Speaker 1: is a story that when he was young, Percy Shelley

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Speaker 1: was learning about electricity during his schooling and his tutoring,

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Speaker 1: and he wanted to experiment. He wanted to do some

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Speaker 1: electrical experiments, and he ended up just mainly. These experiments

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Speaker 1: were shocking his sisters, and so his sister Helen wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: when my brother commenced his studies in chemistry and practiced

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Speaker 1: electricity on us, I confessed my pleasure, and it was

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Speaker 1: entirely negatived by terror at its effects. Whenever he came

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Speaker 1: to me with his piece of folded brown packing paper

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Speaker 1: under his arm and a bit of wire and a bottle,

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Speaker 1: my heart would sink with fear at his approach, but

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Speaker 1: shame kept me silent, and with as many others as

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Speaker 1: he could collect, we replaced hand in hand round the

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Speaker 1: nursery table to be electrified. But when a suggestion was

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Speaker 1: made that chillblaines were to be cured by this means,

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Speaker 1: my terror overwhelmed all other feelings, and the expression of

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Speaker 1: it released me from all future annoyance. It sounds a

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Speaker 1: little bit like a young monster there, YEA, yeah, it

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 yaz 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 Chillblaines 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 uh medical practices and even magical

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

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Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, there there's the obvious role

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Speaker 1: that electricity plays in modern medicine and in the advent

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Speaker 1: of modern medicine that you think you might think about defibrillation, yeah,

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Speaker 1: or even so stuff is simple as being able to

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Speaker 1: use electric lighting during a surgical procedure, or electrical coudroization

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Speaker 1: tools during surgery and stuff of that nature. Like, it

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Speaker 1: really ends up playing a role in so many different

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Speaker 1: thoughtts of modern medicine. But yet the idea that electricity

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Speaker 1: in and of itself has a healing property to it um,

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Speaker 1: this ends up carrying a great deal of cultural weight

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Speaker 1: during the time. Sure, well, you don't have to invoke

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Speaker 1: medical principles to make the assumption that there's some kind

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Speaker 1: of power in the electrical fire that has has healing

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Speaker 1: potential over the body. I mean, there's always been the

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Speaker 1: idea of forces of nature like light and fire as

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Speaker 1: cleansing agent, and I think for many people electricity took

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Speaker 1: on some of these same elements. There was one claim

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Speaker 1: I read in a book called Witchcraft, Confessions and Accusations

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Speaker 1: edited by Mary Douglas. And according to a claim in

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Speaker 1: this book, in one case, uh the Bongwa people of

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Speaker 1: Cameroon took a child who was believed to be a witch,

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Speaker 1: and what they did to cure the child's witchcraft was

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Speaker 1: sent the child into an electrified region of the country

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Speaker 1: in the south, under the reasoning that a few months

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Speaker 1: months of exposure to electricity would cure the child's witchcraft. Well,

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Speaker 1: it seems seems plausible. I mean because because as we've

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Speaker 1: touched on before, like throughout history, humans have been encountering

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Speaker 1: electricity on one form, in one form or the other.

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Speaker 1: If not lightning on the hillside, then presumably just the

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Speaker 1: static discharge that occurs when you shock somebody. Uh, And

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Speaker 1: this was something that that interest at me. I cannot

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Speaker 1: but wonder why we don't see more examples, uh, particularly

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Speaker 1: related to this interpersonal discharge of static electricity at least

394
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Speaker 1: is a way to explain certain folk beliefs and magical

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Speaker 1: superstitious beliefs, you know, because at heart, that's a very

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's the same principle as uh, as as

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Speaker 1: two individuals touching each other while dissecting an electric fish. Right,

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Speaker 1: I mean you're there's this spark, sometimes visible spark between

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Speaker 1: two people. Well, yeah, that is. It's the literal embodiment

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Speaker 1: in reality of a thing that's often imagined in magical thinking.

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00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:40,800
Speaker 1: In magical thinking, there's often this sense of of supernatural

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Speaker 1: contagion where you can pass the properties of one thing

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Speaker 1: onto another thing by touching, and that that's generally not true.

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Speaker 1: It's not true that you can gain the virility of

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Speaker 1: a bore by touching the boar's tusk to your head

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Speaker 1: or something. But you can confer electric charge by touching,

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00:22:58,840 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 1: and this is demonstrated over and over in these public

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Speaker 1: lectures we talked about in the last episode. Yeah, you know,

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

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Speaker 1: to the Electrostatic Society of America. Um, that's the thing.

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

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Speaker 1: in probable dot com U in Probable research the Ignoble

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Speaker 1: Prize organizing body. Yeah. They they pointed out that the

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

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Speaker 1: Electro Statics is an exciting area of science as its

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: materials rub is being hotly debated in the leading scientific journals.

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Speaker 1: Some researchers argue that it is electrons, others that it

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Speaker 1: is ions, and yet others that it is bits of material.

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Speaker 1: What so that's crazy. I had no idea. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: that's just a little footnote to remind everyone that that again,

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Speaker 1: even in our modern time there, when we take all

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Speaker 1: the electricity around us for granted, we still haven't solved

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Speaker 1: some basic questions such as why my child shocks me

427
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:15,600
Speaker 1: when he comes down a slide on a chilly afternoon

428
00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:18,840
Speaker 1: of the playground. Fascinating but of course, the treatment of

429
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:23,320
Speaker 1: witchcraft I mentioned earlier is not the only spiritually significant

430
00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:28,440
Speaker 1: use of electricity as a healing agent, right, that's right. Um.

431
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:30,680
Speaker 1: We have a few different examples to cover here, but

432
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 1: one of the more interesting is that of John Wesley. Okay, Wesley,

433
00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:40,520
Speaker 1: the founder of Methodism, founder of Methodism, Christian theologian. If

434
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:43,399
Speaker 1: you visit, um, I believe, yes, Savannah, here in our

435
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:46,879
Speaker 1: own native state of Georgia, there is a statue of

436
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:49,520
Speaker 1: of John Wesley there. Huh yeah, it kind of looks like, snap,

437
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 1: why in Savannah? What did he do in Savannah? He

438
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: visited there for a while. Okay, yeah he was. He

439
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 1: was in Georgia for a little bit, then he went back. Okay,

440
00:24:56,840 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like how in Montrose, Switzerland, there's

441
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:02,040
Speaker 1: the statue of Freddie murk Cury. Oh there is? Yeah,

442
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 1: there is? Which which version of Freddie Mercury. He's doing

443
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:09,560
Speaker 1: a great dancing post. It's great statue. I highly recommended

444
00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 1: if you're in Switzerland. Okay, all right, So you're probably wondering, Okay,

445
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:17,560
Speaker 1: why John Wesley? Why did John Wesley? Uh? Why why

446
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:19,560
Speaker 1: is this guy interested in electric has never heard of

447
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:23,320
Speaker 1: him having anything to do with electricity or science in general. Yeah,

448
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:26,240
Speaker 1: because prior prior to this, aside from knowing that there

449
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: is the founder of Methodism, like, the only other real

450
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:32,800
Speaker 1: touchstone for me was that in seventeen sixty eight he

451
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:36,160
Speaker 1: argued that quote giving up of witchcraft is in effect

452
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:39,879
Speaker 1: the giving up of the Bible. Getting down to this

453
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:43,160
Speaker 1: playing into this idea that a lot of witchcraft persecution

454
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:47,159
Speaker 1: and the horrible links we went to to obtain witchcraft

455
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 1: confessions from accused witches, that a lot of that amounted

456
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 1: to this need to provide expert testimony of the physical

457
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 1: existence of a demonic afterlife and therefore the implied physical

458
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:03,719
Speaker 1: existence of of God. Oh yeah, well, I mean, the

459
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: Bible acknowledges the existence of witchcraft and all kinds of

460
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: folk magic beliefs. So if to to sort of say,

461
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:14,159
Speaker 1: we believe in the Bible, but we don't believe in

462
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:18,200
Speaker 1: all the folk magic seems inconsistent. There's an aporia there, right,

463
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:23,080
Speaker 1: as so Socrates might point out. Indeed, So yeah, it's

464
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 1: it's weird to think here's this guy who who sees

465
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:28,960
Speaker 1: witchcraft as a reality that cannot be denied, and yet

466
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 1: he's also caught up in uh. This uh, this this

467
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 1: curiosity about electricity of all things. And apparently he became

468
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 1: interested in electricity in the late seventeen forties. Okay, so

469
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:44,600
Speaker 1: this is right after the Laden Jar. Yeah, very much,

470
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:47,879
Speaker 1: in the wake of mainstream fascination with electrical demonstrations and

471
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: the supposed therapeutic applications of electricity, like the medical electricity

472
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,680
Speaker 1: we were we mentioned earlier. Yeah, exactly, the idea that oh, here,

473
00:26:56,760 --> 00:26:59,680
Speaker 1: here's a shock that'll cure what else you Uh, it's appealed,

474
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,400
Speaker 1: though the point had reached even the lower levels of society,

475
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:04,879
Speaker 1: and these are the very people that Wesley sought to

476
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:11,119
Speaker 1: reach with methodism. And uh. This whole uh interconnectivity of

477
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: of Wesley's you know, spiritual purpose if you will, and

478
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: his interest in electricity. It's apparently an area that historians

479
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:21,639
Speaker 1: have only recently begun to really dig into. Uh. And

480
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:27,120
Speaker 1: that's according to again electrical historian Um extraordinaire Pala Bertucci,

481
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:31,640
Speaker 1: who wrote a wonderful article titled Revealing Sparks John Wesley

482
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 1: and the Religious Utility of Electrical Healing. Bertuccia describes him

483
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 1: as an electrical supporter who combined moral instruction and natural philosophy,

484
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: and of course he wasn't the only person to do

485
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:46,119
Speaker 1: this at the time, but but Wesley demonstrated the healing

486
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:52,439
Speaker 1: power of electricity to further methodism, not electricity, not science, certainly, right,

487
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 1: So this was yet another religious technology technology and service

488
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 1: of religious or spiritual goals exactly like it plays right

489
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:02,399
Speaker 1: into our into some of the issues we discussed in

490
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,879
Speaker 1: the Techno Religion episodes. He used electricity itself as a

491
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 1: demonstration of God's power both as a benevolent force and

492
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:13,880
Speaker 1: is a damning force, you know, so both sides of

493
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 1: the of the God coin right, the wrathful God and

494
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:21,240
Speaker 1: the benevolent God. Yeah, she writes quote as signs of

495
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:24,959
Speaker 1: God's wrath. Electric manifestations gave humans a glimpse of the

496
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:29,280
Speaker 1: terrifying prospect of eternal punishment. At the same time, it

497
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:32,119
Speaker 1: was because of divine benevolence that the power of the

498
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:35,639
Speaker 1: electric fire was available to humankind as a healing agent.

499
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 1: It's the it's the magical carrot and the magical stick

500
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 1: combined in this natural phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, she says, sparks

501
00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:47,480
Speaker 1: revealed the divinity and and this really interests me in

502
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 1: light of that quote. I read earlier about witchcraft, because

503
00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 1: Wesley supported the persecution of witchcraft for much the same

504
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:59,080
Speaker 1: reason as he's as he's interested and demonstrating the power

505
00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 1: of electricity. Uh, the confessed, which revealed the demonic, which

506
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 1: in turn revealed the divine. And here he is revealing

507
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: the powers of electricity in order to reveal the divine

508
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: to the onlooker. Demon in one hand, spark of electricity

509
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:15,440
Speaker 1: in the other. That's great, that's great, you know. I

510
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:18,720
Speaker 1: also can't help but think of the touch the screen

511
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 1: era of TV evangelism. I don't know what you're talking about,

512
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: and I've watched my share of TV evangelists, the idea

513
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,440
Speaker 1: that you would you would physically touch the screen in

514
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 1: order to interact with the healing powers that were being

515
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 1: demonstrated by the TV UH evangelists, and and in doing so,

516
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 1: you're gonna feel, you know, some of that static discharge

517
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 1: on the screen. Right. So, to what extent is that

518
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: playing into uh, you know, religious electricity in a more

519
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: modern sense. That's interesting, I almost that makes me wonder

520
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:53,480
Speaker 1: if that scene in Poultergeist is parodying the spiritual power

521
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,479
Speaker 1: transferred through the screen by touching. Maybe so, maybe so?

522
00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: I've actually never seen these uh these TV preachings, but

523
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: the it makes me think about a principle that often

524
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 1: gets brought up on another podcast. Do you ever listen

525
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: to the podcast Sawbones. No, I'm not familiar with it. Oh, yeah,

526
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: they're they're great there there. It's a it's a husband

527
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:13,960
Speaker 1: and wife team who who are really fun and they

528
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 1: talk about basically some of the worst parts of medical history,

529
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 1: so all all the bad cure alls and treatments that

530
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: have been used throughout the years that didn't really help

531
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: people very much at all. And one of the things

532
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: they often talk about is the is that it did something. Principle,

533
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: um so a a fake treatment that doesn't actually treat

534
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 1: people is more likely to be accepted as effective if

535
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 1: it at least causes some kind of noticeable effect, even

536
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:45,239
Speaker 1: if it doesn't cure you, even if it's discomfort, right

537
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 1: then you feel like, oh, it's it's doing something. I

538
00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: feel it. I feel the shock, Yeah, exactly, And that's

539
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:51,920
Speaker 1: what that's what I'm thinking about with the shock here.

540
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 1: If somebody can charge up a friction generator and and

541
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 1: give you a shock of static electricity from it, uh,

542
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: you'll feel it. And even if you don't know exactly

543
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,400
Speaker 1: what's going on, how exactly it's supposed to work, what

544
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: is the method of action inside your body? You at

545
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:11,440
Speaker 1: least felt something happen that was real and it was

546
00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: powerful and pain sort of in our minds, I think

547
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 1: pain equals reality. We except when something painful happens that

548
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 1: that something important has happened. And so I can easily

549
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 1: see this kind of principle acting on the use of

550
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:30,640
Speaker 1: medical medical electricity in the seventeen hundreds, even if it

551
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:32,880
Speaker 1: wasn't really working to cure a lot of things, it

552
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: was it was doing something. Yeah, and hey, if you

553
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 1: can if you can combine pleasure and pain into the

554
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:42,760
Speaker 1: same package, then you have a product that can likely

555
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: uh really resonate with the with with the with the

556
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: people out there. Oh and that certainly ties into another

557
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:53,160
Speaker 1: aspect of the electrical treatments of the time, which would

558
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: be electrical quackery, very often having to do with sex.

559
00:31:57,360 --> 00:31:59,280
Speaker 1: There was a guy we mentioned in the last episode

560
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: where we're coming back to him now, one James Graham,

561
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: who was a Scottish believe he was born in Edinburgh.

562
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: He was a Scottish quack doctor essentially who was he

563
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 1: called himself a hygienist I think, and a and a

564
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: sex therapist in some way, who offered various vaguely defined

565
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: electrical treatments on on how to get people's sex lives

566
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 1: going again. He had some famous institutions. One's called the

567
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:29,560
Speaker 1: Temple of Health, another one is called the Temple of Hymen,

568
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:33,520
Speaker 1: And oh god, what was the deal with these things? Okay,

569
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: so first of all, he would he would apparently often

570
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: travel around and promote all this stuff, accompanied by the

571
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: beautiful young Goddess of health. Oh yeah, he had he

572
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 1: had like a train of attractive ladies to help him

573
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: promote his message of medical well being. Yeah. And you know,

574
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:50,480
Speaker 1: like any good salesman, he has to have products he

575
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:53,120
Speaker 1: can sell on the spot as well as uh, more

576
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: expensive products that are sell on location. He sold exposure

577
00:32:57,240 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 1: to electrical ether as well as a special ointment that

578
00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:03,520
Speaker 1: you could rub on your body. And wait, what was

579
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: the ointment? It was nervous ethereal Balsamo. Yeah, keep some

580
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:12,239
Speaker 1: of that around. It's like bag bomb, except for you know,

581
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:15,720
Speaker 1: sexual purposes. Yeah. But he also sold access to his

582
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: special electrically powered sex bed. Right, have you visited the

583
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: Temple of Hymen? Would you open. Uh, couples with marital

584
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 1: or sexual problems could test out the celestial bed for

585
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: a mere fifty pounds a night. Okay, so we're talking

586
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:34,200
Speaker 1: about a twelve by nine foot bed. It has a

587
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:39,840
Speaker 1: colored glass columns, mirrors of course, um, erotic paintings, flashing

588
00:33:39,880 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 1: electrical lights, organ music, and perfume. Hyeah. It it reminds

589
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:49,280
Speaker 1: me a little bit. My wife once shot some pictures

590
00:33:49,320 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 1: of the inside of Kenny Rogers house when you lived

591
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,800
Speaker 1: up I think in around Athens, Georgie. He had a

592
00:33:55,800 --> 00:33:58,880
Speaker 1: house he had bought this, this antique bed from James Graham. No,

593
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: but he he did have apparently a lot of mirrors

594
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:04,600
Speaker 1: in the bedroom. Um, like a disturbing amount of in

595
00:34:04,600 --> 00:34:06,959
Speaker 1: the bedroom. Uh. And and that's the kind of thing

596
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:09,400
Speaker 1: you would get out of the celestial bed. Well, you

597
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: know what they say in the Gambler, The best you

598
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 1: can hope for is to die in your sleep. So yeah,

599
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:15,359
Speaker 1: but there you go. And if you're gonna dine your sleep,

600
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: you might as well be a lot of electrically powered

601
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 1: flashing lights. Uh there as well. Yeah, you gotta know

602
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:23,719
Speaker 1: when to hold them. Yeah. One more interesting comment on

603
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 1: Graham from from Bertucci actually she writes that, uh he

604
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:30,359
Speaker 1: he didn't. Now, in contrast to some of these other

605
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: electrical healers, which would shock you for for health, Graham

606
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: quote exploited the fashion enjoyed by electricity as a further

607
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:44,400
Speaker 1: extravaganza for his healing center. The largest electrical apparatus in

608
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 1: the world, he called it was on display rather than

609
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: in use in the temple, where electrical vapors wrapped up

610
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: the patients. And this is a quote from his materials,

611
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:57,920
Speaker 1: gently pervading the whole system with a copious tide of

612
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: that celestial fire, fully impregnated with the purest, most subtle,

613
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 1: and balmiest parts of medicines which are extracted by and

614
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: flows softly into the blood and nervous system with the

615
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 1: electric fluid or restorative ethereal essences. I don't know to

616
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: what extent he was using any kind of electrical technology.

617
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,399
Speaker 1: He was given them some electrical vapors, aside from using

618
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: electrical lights on the guestlestial bed. I don't think you've

619
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 1: organ music organ music, yeah, but otherwise he has to

620
00:35:28,040 --> 00:35:31,720
Speaker 1: be the biggest scam artist by far that we've encountered

621
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:36,919
Speaker 1: in these episodes. Now, again, that was around one we'd

622
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,920
Speaker 1: have to wait a good century though, for the electric

623
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: vibrator to become reality and actual use of electricity to

624
00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:49,320
Speaker 1: directly deliver uh sexual pleasure. And we got it finally

625
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:54,359
Speaker 1: thanks to Dr J. Mortimer Granville. Now, previously one had

626
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 1: to rely on George Taylor's eighteen sixty nine steam powered

627
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 1: manipulator or are the hand cranked Macua's blood circulator, all

628
00:36:04,280 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: in the name of treating supposed bouts of hysteria with

629
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:10,359
Speaker 1: a healthy dose of orgasm. Yeah, and these are not

630
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: products that you would necessarily go to the store and

631
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:16,320
Speaker 1: buy to use at your own leisure in the product

632
00:36:16,640 --> 00:36:18,800
Speaker 1: in the privacy of your own home, but more something

633
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: that would kind of be prescribed for you by your doctor,

634
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:24,719
Speaker 1: which sounds like it takes some of the happiness out

635
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: of it. Yes, I would think. So. Okay, So now

636
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: we we've talked about electricity in the body strange healing characteristics,

637
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,800
Speaker 1: but also we need to talk about electricity the occult,

638
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:41,520
Speaker 1: the esoteric, and the spiritual in the sense of spiritualism,

639
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: because John Murray Spear also was into some electricity some science. Yes,

640
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:51,360
Speaker 1: listeners to our techno religion may remember him as the

641
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 1: as the individual who whose followers built the electric Messiah. Yeah.

642
00:36:57,160 --> 00:36:59,760
Speaker 1: So he was a progressive radical of the eighteen hundreds.

643
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:01,880
Speaker 1: He was an abolitionist. He was for a lot of

644
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:05,839
Speaker 1: progressive political causes, but he turned in the middle of

645
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds into a spiritualist leader, meaning he was

646
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: a guy who claimed to get messages from the spirit world.

647
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:15,759
Speaker 1: And they detailed lots of plans for him for sort

648
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: of ungainly projects that he got his followers to carry

649
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: out on his half, including the construction of the new motor.

650
00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: That's the thing we talked about. There was a there

651
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: was a vaguely described machine Messiah to harold the dawn

652
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:33,800
Speaker 1: of a new age by being a perpetual motion machine

653
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 1: and changing the human of of the past into the

654
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 1: new man. Yeah. I think we described it before. Is

655
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: looking like a like the like the a of a

656
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: dalek and a coffee table bread and produced offspring. This

657
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 1: would be. That's pretty much it. But he also had

658
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: some interesting interactions with the science of electricity, and this

659
00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 1: would have been later than what we were talking about before,

660
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: almost a century later, so that this would be in

661
00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties. In the Remarkable Life of John Murray

662
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:04,440
Speaker 1: Spear agitator for the spirit land. The author John Benedict

663
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: Bauscher mentioned several cases where the beliefs of the mid

664
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:12,399
Speaker 1: nineteenth century spiritualists in America included spiritual significance of electricity.

665
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:15,800
Speaker 1: So one one associate of spirits, who was a medium

666
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:19,879
Speaker 1: and spiritual healer named Elizabeth French, had been quote an

667
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:22,879
Speaker 1: electrical experiment or ever since she was young, trying to

668
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 1: revive victims of lightning strikes and drowning by the action

669
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:31,839
Speaker 1: of certain rude batteries in the construction of which I

670
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 1: even then a child endowed with strong tendencies in that direction,

671
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:39,759
Speaker 1: was myself the mechanic. That was Elizabeth French speaking there

672
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:42,480
Speaker 1: at the end. Uh And she she later on partnered

673
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:45,000
Speaker 1: with So yeah, so she's trying to use batteries to

674
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:48,400
Speaker 1: bring people back from the dead. Pretty good. She partners

675
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:54,279
Speaker 1: with Spear for electrical experiments in augmenting spiritual potential. So

676
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:57,359
Speaker 1: communicating with the spirit world. They're saying, maybe we can

677
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:01,480
Speaker 1: use electricity to amp up somebody's ability to communicate with

678
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:05,279
Speaker 1: the spirits. And this included Spear trying to control and

679
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 1: influence the spirits with the aid of a suit of

680
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: armor made out of copper and zinc batteries. Yeah, and

681
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: we were talking about this. We're not sure if this

682
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:18,239
Speaker 1: is the exactly the same UM outfit or a different one.

683
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: But the book also mentions that Spears had one Isaac Hedges,

684
00:39:23,160 --> 00:39:27,000
Speaker 1: who was a saint. The Lewis Magnetic Spiritualist had him

685
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 1: craft quote a wizard suit from minerals, metals, and stones,

686
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: which he wore during his experiments, and the suit itself

687
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: connected to a battery which supposedly boosted his personal electro

688
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:43,000
Speaker 1: magnetic field. That's crazy. A battery of a wizard suit

689
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 1: made out of batteries. It's too good and spirits. He

690
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:50,719
Speaker 1: didn't stop there. He also proposed creating telepathic towers. I

691
00:39:50,719 --> 00:39:52,840
Speaker 1: can't remember if we mentioned this in the other episode,

692
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: but he wanted to create a worldwide network of telepathic

693
00:39:56,560 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 1: towers which would each quote constitute a and focus of

694
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: magnetic and electric influences. And this would enable a sort

695
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:09,759
Speaker 1: of broadband spirit medium channeling UH and worldwide communication. So

696
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: they'd have operators who are spirit mediums who'd use the

697
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:17,799
Speaker 1: electricity generated by the towers to channel the voices of

698
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:20,720
Speaker 1: the spirits back and forth between each other around the world,

699
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,360
Speaker 1: and it would be faster than the telegraph. You know,

700
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:27,319
Speaker 1: what's what's fascinating about this point in the timeline we're

701
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: exploring is that we're really looking at the just at

702
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: the enthusiastic supernatural employ of of of current electrical knowledge.

703
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:40,920
Speaker 1: So on one hand you have this push towards the mundane,

704
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 1: and this is really this is really the area of

705
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 1: like the midlife crisis I feel, with the with the

706
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:52,440
Speaker 1: supernatural qualities of electricity, where you see the the portions

707
00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: of of of the populace going into just a really

708
00:40:55,120 --> 00:41:00,160
Speaker 1: extreme magical direction with it, which is crazy because is

709
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:02,319
Speaker 1: even at this point in history, we're starting to get

710
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 1: a much better understanding of how to harness electricity for

711
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: utterly monday and purposes, just how to make the machines

712
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: that make our lives more convenient. Yeah, Like I feel

713
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:15,360
Speaker 1: like we're the point in a Scooby Doo cartoon where

714
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,839
Speaker 1: the villain and the ghost costume is apprehended and they're

715
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:22,120
Speaker 1: about to pull the mask off. Meanwhile, John Murray Spear

716
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: and some of the other individuals were discussing here. They

717
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:27,600
Speaker 1: are pointing at at the culprit and saying, no, that

718
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 1: is really a good right, It is not old man Bulvovsky, right,

719
00:41:32,880 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: But speaking of people named Blevotsky. That gives us a

720
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,239
Speaker 1: good transition to one last thing about spirituality and electricity,

721
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: which is the theology of electricity that came through in

722
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:48,799
Speaker 1: various forms of Western esso terrorism. Yeah, there's a great

723
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:52,480
Speaker 1: paper on this that's out there titled The Esoteric Uses

724
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:57,280
Speaker 1: of Electricity by Nicholas Goodrick Clark, which highly Remanda recommend

725
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: looking at if you want a little more on this

726
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:03,840
Speaker 1: particular area. This again, this last sort of last thrust

727
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:06,359
Speaker 1: of electrical spirit is m So what does good Rick

728
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:10,759
Speaker 1: Clarke have to say about the electric theology, Well, he

729
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:14,560
Speaker 1: discusses a few different individuals. He discusses leading up theosophy

730
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: proponent Madam Helena Blavatsky, whose belief in electrics, who believed

731
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: in electricity as quote an animating soul like force or fluid.

732
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:26,600
Speaker 1: Now we've seen that kind of idea before, and of

733
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:28,839
Speaker 1: course she also preached the power of the third eye

734
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:32,279
Speaker 1: and the piney ole glands role in modern man is

735
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:36,640
Speaker 1: an atrophy, the vestige of this organ of spiritual vision.

736
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:38,799
Speaker 1: So just to give that's just to give you a

737
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 1: brief idea about the the about theosophy and what kind

738
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 1: of worldview she was immersed in. Yeah, if you're not

739
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 1: familiar with esotericism, these are I don't know what you

740
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 1: might call them. They're sort of alternative religions in in

741
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:58,600
Speaker 1: the history of Western culture. Yeah, new religious movements for sure,

742
00:42:58,719 --> 00:43:02,319
Speaker 1: but theosophy one that maybe help didn't hold on as

743
00:43:02,360 --> 00:43:04,359
Speaker 1: well as some of the others that that cropped up.

744
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:09,760
Speaker 1: Um he good Goodrick Clark also points to a scholar,

745
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:14,400
Speaker 1: Ernst dens as H, having identified the quote theology of

746
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:19,880
Speaker 1: electricity amongst a group of eighteenth century Swabian theosophers. He

747
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:23,800
Speaker 1: claimed that the quote discovery of electricity and the simultaneous

748
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: discovery of magnetic and galvanic phenomena were accompanied by a

749
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:31,799
Speaker 1: most significant change in the image of God, and that

750
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:35,080
Speaker 1: it led to a quote completely new understanding of the

751
00:43:35,120 --> 00:43:38,600
Speaker 1: relation of body and soul, of spirit and matter. Now,

752
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: how does that play out? What does that look like?

753
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:44,040
Speaker 1: Basically it means, I mean, basically what we're looking at

754
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: is all this new information about electricity is coming out,

755
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:49,359
Speaker 1: and and there are individuals who are instead of saying,

756
00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: I wonder how that casts new line of my understanding,

757
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 1: or they're thinking, oh, well, that's something that exists separately

758
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 1: from the religious understanding of the world. They're like, no,

759
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: this is the path. Let's pour all of our our

760
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 1: spiritual gusto into this new electrical format. So if the

761
00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: if the electricity is the frontier of future science, this

762
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:13,880
Speaker 1: could be the kind of religious thinking that says, no,

763
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 1: we're not going to ground our religious ideas in the past,

764
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:19,000
Speaker 1: We're going to ground them in the future. Yeah. Yeah,

765
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's kind of I mean, this is

766
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 1: the time of a huge change. And what do you

767
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:27,359
Speaker 1: do when the world changes and you have either an

768
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,880
Speaker 1: old set of beliefs or you sort of cling to

769
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:32,879
Speaker 1: that mode of belief like you have to. You either

770
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:35,799
Speaker 1: have to say no, that's bs, keep that away from

771
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:37,800
Speaker 1: me and keep it out of the school books, or

772
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: you say, yes, bring it here, let me incorporate it. Um.

773
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: You know, and we've looked at some plenty of examples

774
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 1: where religion's ability to incorporate new scientific understanding it is

775
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 1: certainly a healthy thing. It doesn't always um lead to

776
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 1: sort of fringe belief systems. Well, it's funny now that

777
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:03,400
Speaker 1: we think about electricity as just utterly uncontroversial religiously right,

778
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:06,719
Speaker 1: I mean, there are so many scientific ideas that do

779
00:45:06,880 --> 00:45:12,359
Speaker 1: come into conflict with with religious ideas. Ideas about, for example,

780
00:45:13,120 --> 00:45:16,120
Speaker 1: I don't know, cosmology and the origins the universe, ideas

781
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:20,880
Speaker 1: about biological evolution, ideas of geology conflicting with the literal

782
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 1: reading of some holy books. Uh, you see these pretty often.

783
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:29,280
Speaker 1: But electricity seems just utterly theologically neutral. But that hasn't

784
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 1: always been the case. Yeah, I mean it's in the

785
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: same way that it's difficult for us to imagine this

786
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:36,399
Speaker 1: this time when electricity was new and exciting. It's hard

787
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: to imagine it's it's newness and it's and its excitingness, Uh,

788
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:44,480
Speaker 1: you know, having an impact on modes of religious belief.

789
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:49,719
Speaker 1: Another example that Nicholas Goodrick Clark draws on is that

790
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:55,359
Speaker 1: of Austrian occultist, racial political theorist, former monk and also

791
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: the founder of ariosophy as well as a pretty notable

792
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:05,479
Speaker 1: anti might. Uh. This is Lens van Levenfells lived seventy

793
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 1: four to nineteen fifty four, and he saw electricity as

794
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:13,400
Speaker 1: quote a measure of spiritual evolution unquote that was granted

795
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:18,239
Speaker 1: only to arians, Christ and other spiritual intermediaries. That's pretty

796
00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 1: nasty yeah, he was not a decent guy. Like, this

797
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:23,840
Speaker 1: is a guy that when when Hitler rose to power,

798
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: he was just kissing up immediately apparently and m Hitler

799
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 1: just didn't really have time for him. But but yeah,

800
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 1: so yeah he was it was not a pleasant guy.

801
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 1: So as far as we know, Hitler didn't buy into

802
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:41,840
Speaker 1: his electrical theological position. Now, he seemed from based on

803
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 1: what I was reading here, he really had no interest

804
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:46,719
Speaker 1: in it. But but but LANs was one of these

805
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:49,319
Speaker 1: guys who was like, yes, what you're preaching is fits

806
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:52,759
Speaker 1: perfectly with with what I'm selling. Uh, And And what

807
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:56,000
Speaker 1: I take it all to mean is that the simultaneous

808
00:46:56,040 --> 00:47:00,920
Speaker 1: advancement of supernatural belief and scientific understanding can result in

809
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:04,799
Speaker 1: some some very weird, seemingly to the outsider weird modes

810
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: of belief, but also maybe exciting modes of belief. Okay,

811
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 1: but here I think it's time to arrive at at

812
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: the final stage of the transformer stepped down of the

813
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: spiritual power of electricity, the metaphor you mentioned in the

814
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: last episode, because something starts to happen, especially in the

815
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:26,760
Speaker 1: second half of the nineteenth century, we might say where

816
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:31,640
Speaker 1: electricity is losing a lot of its psychic, spiritual and

817
00:47:31,719 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: symbolic power. It's becoming less and less incorporated into I

818
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: don't know, transcendental language and metaphor. It's becoming less a

819
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 1: source of mystery and wonder and more something that resonates

820
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: with what Thomas Hardy said the quote we talked about

821
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the episode. It highlights something very

822
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:54,239
Speaker 1: natural and mundane in contrast to that classical sense of

823
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:58,560
Speaker 1: holy otherness. Yeah, it's two am at the nightclub. Lawns

824
00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: and Spear are both still dancing desperately to keep the

825
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:05,560
Speaker 1: party going while other individuals are are going home. Yeah,

826
00:48:05,680 --> 00:48:08,399
Speaker 1: and so I want to use just one I think

827
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:14,239
Speaker 1: pretty perfect example of this. So you it's December seventy nine,

828
00:48:14,520 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 1: and you have just received your copy of the Scientific

829
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:21,439
Speaker 1: Americans Supplement, and you're leafing through it, and it features

830
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:25,400
Speaker 1: on one page an invention by one M. Defoy, which

831
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:30,000
Speaker 1: was an electric horse bit. Oh, so, the bit being

832
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:32,799
Speaker 1: the part that goes in the horse's mouth. It was

833
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:36,399
Speaker 1: a carriage armed with an electromagnetic apparatus that could send

834
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:40,960
Speaker 1: electric current through metal wires embedded in the reins, and

835
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:43,319
Speaker 1: if it opened the circuit to the current, it would

836
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 1: travel down the reins and through the bit in the

837
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 1: horse's mouth, giving the horse an electric shock through its

838
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 1: mouth and teeth. So, according to this article, it was

839
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: the invention was considered a success because it managed to

840
00:48:56,640 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 1: calm down several quote vicious and stubborn horses. Is uh

841
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:03,239
Speaker 1: so that they's long enough that they could be shod.

842
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:05,400
Speaker 1: They were trying to, you know, get some shoes on

843
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:08,400
Speaker 1: these horses. They wouldn't cooperate, So zap him in the mouth.

844
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 1: The superintendent of the Parisian cab company, M. Camille wrote,

845
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:17,359
Speaker 1: quote one horse that was to be shod went so

846
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:19,759
Speaker 1: far as to lie down and roll over and over

847
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:23,480
Speaker 1: on the ground, all the while struggling, defending himself and

848
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:27,359
Speaker 1: fighting against everything. Nothing could subdue him. I then had

849
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 1: recourse to m. Defoy's apparatus, and on the first trial,

850
00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:33,840
Speaker 1: much to my surprise, the feet of the intractable horse

851
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:36,920
Speaker 1: were lifted without any great difficulty. And on the second

852
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:39,239
Speaker 1: trial it was as easy to shoot him as if

853
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:43,239
Speaker 1: he had never made the least resistance. The animal was conquered.

854
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:48,120
Speaker 1: So we've reduced the noble spark to something that you

855
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:52,879
Speaker 1: just uh torment a horsewhip essentially just a bullwhip. Yeah. Well,

856
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:55,279
Speaker 1: and that actually comes in because m defoy went on

857
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:58,719
Speaker 1: to create another appliance along the same lines, the electric

858
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 1: riding whip, which is more or less like a taser

859
00:50:01,680 --> 00:50:05,480
Speaker 1: for horses. And if you're thinking, like what horror, nobody

860
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:07,520
Speaker 1: would ever do anything like that today. I mean, we

861
00:50:07,600 --> 00:50:11,560
Speaker 1: have electric fences for livestock today. Uh, there are shock

862
00:50:11,640 --> 00:50:15,200
Speaker 1: collars for animals. So I mean using electricity to control

863
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 1: and tame wild animal instincts is something that is now

864
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:22,759
Speaker 1: a grand tradition. It's not a very pretty one. We

865
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:24,480
Speaker 1: don't like to think about it. It It doesn't seem like

866
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: a nice thing to do, but it's a thing we

867
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:29,840
Speaker 1: do with the electric fire that used to be such

868
00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:33,160
Speaker 1: a cosmic mystery. Yeah. And you know, also when it

869
00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: comes to taming horses, you know, not not every method

870
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:41,400
Speaker 1: is that uh you know, lovable and horse whispery. But

871
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:45,840
Speaker 1: this begins to get at something that that really comes

872
00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 1: through in an essay we mentioned in the last episode

873
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:50,840
Speaker 1: and we're going to refer to again now by a

874
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 1: Nicholas Ruddick called Life and Death by Electricity in eighteen ninety,

875
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 1: the transfiguration of William Kimmler, Like we mentioned, in the

876
00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:01,880
Speaker 1: last episode. This is a really great paper. It's worth reading.

877
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:05,839
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting history of what was happening with

878
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 1: the power of electricity in the late eighteen hundreds. Well,

879
00:51:09,680 --> 00:51:13,479
Speaker 1: he points to an eighteen nineties Scientific American article that

880
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:15,640
Speaker 1: it does a great job of just laying out just

881
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 1: how much electricity is in the average person's life. It

882
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 1: wakes him up in the morning, it cooks their breakfast.

883
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: It's on their right into work. It's all over work

884
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:25,200
Speaker 1: when they go to church, their electric bells or an

885
00:51:25,200 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: electric oregon, and on up into your death. When you die,

886
00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:32,320
Speaker 1: an electric apparatus is used to carve your name into

887
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 1: a tombstone. So it we we give this enormous power

888
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:39,439
Speaker 1: over our lives. Right, It's used in medicine. It can kill,

889
00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:43,399
Speaker 1: it can it can be a communication technology. And yet

890
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 1: at the same time it has lost its spiritual and

891
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:50,720
Speaker 1: symbolic luster, hasn't it. Yeah, Like the poetry is seeping

892
00:51:50,719 --> 00:51:52,799
Speaker 1: out of it, you know, and uh, and and a

893
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:54,520
Speaker 1: lot of it just has to do with the fact

894
00:51:54,560 --> 00:51:56,560
Speaker 1: that maybe all the poetic things that can be said

895
00:51:56,560 --> 00:51:59,040
Speaker 1: about it have been said. Like the language that we

896
00:51:59,080 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 1: used to describe it as getting a bit dull, even

897
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:04,359
Speaker 1: even if it seems exciting to re explore it from

898
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: a modern perspective. And then yeah, it's also just everywhere,

899
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:10,880
Speaker 1: Like how mystical can it be? If it cooks your toast,

900
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:14,200
Speaker 1: how mystical can it be? Um, you know if it's

901
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:17,520
Speaker 1: if it's just lighting a light bulb while you read something,

902
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 1: and I think to put a cherry on this. Uh.

903
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:24,880
Speaker 1: This transformation into an utterly mundane and dirty, down in

904
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 1: the mud kind of force of nature was when it

905
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:32,759
Speaker 1: was finally used in illegal execution. Yes, which again brings

906
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:37,040
Speaker 1: us back to William Kimler, first man executed by electricity

907
00:52:37,120 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: under the world's first electrical execution law, New York State,

908
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 1: January one, eighteen eighty nine. And like, the history of

909
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:48,319
Speaker 1: this is really interesting. For instance, just how how did

910
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: we come to the point where that was even on

911
00:52:49,760 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: the table? Well? Why why why use electricity? Well, apparently

912
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:57,799
Speaker 1: the key arguments for this were coming from prominent supporters

913
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:01,960
Speaker 1: in Buffalo, New York. And that's because Buffalo was really

914
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:03,799
Speaker 1: close to Niagara Falls, and there was a lot of

915
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:07,279
Speaker 1: hydroelectric work going on there. The damn that they began

916
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:11,560
Speaker 1: the damn there in six and so they considered themselves

917
00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:15,360
Speaker 1: to be on the cutting edge of technology. Uh, you know,

918
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,439
Speaker 1: it's like the Silicon Valley of the day. And uh

919
00:53:18,520 --> 00:53:21,240
Speaker 1: and and so in particular, you have one Dr Albert

920
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 1: Southwick who was lobbying, um with with New York state

921
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:31,719
Speaker 1: representatives for electrical execution. Why with the state sent it's crazy, yeah,

922
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:34,520
Speaker 1: we'll be I mean yeah, I mean it sounds like,

923
00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:38,279
Speaker 1: for instance, if Silicon Valley big shots were lobbying for

924
00:53:38,360 --> 00:53:42,120
Speaker 1: execution by virtual reality or maybe streaming video today, right, Like,

925
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:44,880
Speaker 1: can you imagine where they're saying, Hey, we got this technology,

926
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:46,759
Speaker 1: why aren't we you going it to kill people? Right?

927
00:53:47,160 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 1: Death by social media? Yeah. So, but they had some

928
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 1: core arguments for it. They said that, all right, this

929
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:57,400
Speaker 1: is a humanitarian advancement. Forget hanging. Hanging. You know, hanging

930
00:53:57,440 --> 00:54:00,920
Speaker 1: has all of these horrible associations with the past, particularly

931
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 1: with America's pass. Let's move beyond it. Let's use something

932
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 1: new and exciting to kill people that has less weight

933
00:54:07,719 --> 00:54:10,799
Speaker 1: to it. I think there was inherently some sense that

934
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 1: low tech things were less desirable, Like it wasn't it

935
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:17,800
Speaker 1: didn't even have to be that it caused less pain.

936
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:20,839
Speaker 1: It was just more dignified to be killed by this

937
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 1: apparatus of science and technology, rather than the creepy, low

938
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:27,359
Speaker 1: fi image of a hangman's news. Yea. And they also

939
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:29,760
Speaker 1: added that, hey, if you're if you're gonna hang somebody,

940
00:54:29,800 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 1: you might something might go wrong. You have an accidental

941
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 1: beheading that takes place, or if you're actually doing a beheading,

942
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:39,280
Speaker 1: there's could be an arterial spray. This is hygienically sound.

943
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:41,960
Speaker 1: It is very signed to the electric chair. The electric

944
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:45,759
Speaker 1: chair is the hygienic, scientifically sound way to go. And

945
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 1: since electricity had been observed to kill rapidly and seemingly painlessly,

946
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:53,960
Speaker 1: it seemed like like another perfect way to avoid any

947
00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:57,920
Speaker 1: messy accidents during an execution. Don't worry about the you know,

948
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:00,720
Speaker 1: something going wrong with the way you've you've you've presented

949
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:03,600
Speaker 1: the gallows. This way you just turn. It's basically the

950
00:55:03,680 --> 00:55:07,319
Speaker 1: off switch for life. Do you think they believed these

951
00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:11,560
Speaker 1: arguments they were making or is this just completely mercenary

952
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:16,000
Speaker 1: trying to get I don't know. I get the sense

953
00:55:16,160 --> 00:55:18,840
Speaker 1: that they believed it in the sense that you know,

954
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:21,080
Speaker 1: there was data supported. I mean even just reading over

955
00:55:21,080 --> 00:55:22,799
Speaker 1: what I what I just heard. It's like if you're

956
00:55:22,840 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 1: if you're already on board with the idea that criminals

957
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 1: must be executed, then the most humane argument within that

958
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:34,440
Speaker 1: mindset is, well, let's make it painless, let's make it quick,

959
00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:37,960
Speaker 1: let's make it hygienic, Let's do all of those things

960
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 1: that makes it less less horrible. You know, Well, was

961
00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:45,440
Speaker 1: anybody at this point still trying to hang on to

962
00:55:45,560 --> 00:55:50,120
Speaker 1: the sacredness of electricity? They actually were, and that and that,

963
00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 1: and this is interesting because yeah, there were there were

964
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:55,319
Speaker 1: others who were saying that this was a degrading use

965
00:55:55,640 --> 00:55:59,040
Speaker 1: of miraculous energy. Kind of I guess kind of like

966
00:55:59,080 --> 00:56:02,840
Speaker 1: the last of message of that earlier enthusiasm for it

967
00:56:02,880 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 1: that her people think, oh, you're gonna kill people with it. Now,

968
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: that's too far. Now, you've just really taken it into

969
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:12,160
Speaker 1: an unfortunate area. Even Edison was against it. The man

970
00:56:12,239 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: who electrocuted, you know, numerous animals during the War of currents. Uh,

971
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:20,680
Speaker 1: they're not topsy the elephant, apparently, despite some popular coverage

972
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:23,400
Speaker 1: to the to the contrary. Huh. Yeah. So anyway, it

973
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:27,319
Speaker 1: was a year before the conviction um of Kimbler was

974
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:30,360
Speaker 1: finally upheld. Oh yeah, Kimmler had a lot of Litigation

975
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:32,799
Speaker 1: and Appeals, Right, yeah, yeah, I mean this was a

976
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:34,359
Speaker 1: kind of a big case. It went all the way

977
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:37,239
Speaker 1: to the U. S. Supreme Court in eighteen ninety and

978
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:40,520
Speaker 1: a lot of the litigation was presumed to come from

979
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:44,799
Speaker 1: Westinghouse Electric Company. Is they were displeased to know that

980
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:48,520
Speaker 1: their A C. Dynamos would be used in the execution,

981
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:52,200
Speaker 1: having been obtained by three prisons in New York State.

982
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:55,440
Speaker 1: So they were afraid of bad press for their electricity,

983
00:56:55,960 --> 00:56:58,600
Speaker 1: and they paid this guy's legal bills to try to

984
00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:01,439
Speaker 1: prevent it from from being used to kill him. Yeah.

985
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:03,640
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like, we create this product,

986
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:06,239
Speaker 1: this podcast, what have we found out that prisons had

987
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:08,719
Speaker 1: subscribed to the podcast in order to use it in

988
00:57:08,760 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: some sort of sonic death device for execution, or to

989
00:57:12,160 --> 00:57:15,319
Speaker 1: take in another direction. You know, we have musicians such

990
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:18,800
Speaker 1: as Trent Resner who were outraged when they found out

991
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:23,320
Speaker 1: that their music might be used by interrogators in certain situations,

992
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:26,720
Speaker 1: or rock musicians who have politicians they don't like using

993
00:57:26,720 --> 00:57:29,640
Speaker 1: their music at campaign rallies. Exactly, You've created this thing

994
00:57:29,680 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: for one purpose, and here someone's gonna use it for

995
00:57:32,200 --> 00:57:36,880
Speaker 1: this this this rather despicable purpose. Over here, and then

996
00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:40,640
Speaker 1: there's this No one knew exactly how electricity would kill him.

997
00:57:40,720 --> 00:57:44,080
Speaker 1: Oh what a crazy controversy. Yeah, they didn't know what

998
00:57:44,160 --> 00:57:47,360
Speaker 1: electricity did the due to the body to cause death.

999
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:49,640
Speaker 1: They knew it could cause death, right, but what did

1000
00:57:49,720 --> 00:57:51,600
Speaker 1: it do? Yeah? I mean yeah, we knew that, we

1001
00:57:51,720 --> 00:57:53,880
Speaker 1: observed it happened. We knew that happened. But but experts

1002
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:59,320
Speaker 1: were split on exactly what would happen um to kimmeler Um.

1003
00:57:59,520 --> 00:58:02,160
Speaker 1: Doctors and knew that the body uti utilized electricity in

1004
00:58:02,160 --> 00:58:05,320
Speaker 1: the nervous system. Some physicians even employed it again as

1005
00:58:05,320 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 1: a curative measure, as we've discussed, some even taking the

1006
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:10,120
Speaker 1: view that the body was like a battery that needed

1007
00:58:10,120 --> 00:58:13,040
Speaker 1: regular recharging. That goes back to the medical electricity we

1008
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:16,200
Speaker 1: talked about, Shock me, make me better. Yeah. So, and

1009
00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:20,480
Speaker 1: then other experiments had proven electricity's ability to revive dying dogs.

1010
00:58:21,080 --> 00:58:23,240
Speaker 1: Uh and and as well as some of these uh

1011
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:25,800
Speaker 1: these experiments we just solve that like the animation of tissue.

1012
00:58:26,240 --> 00:58:29,000
Speaker 1: Uh So, perhaps he would enter into a state of

1013
00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:31,840
Speaker 1: what they referred to as electrical asphyxia, where he would

1014
00:58:31,880 --> 00:58:35,000
Speaker 1: be rolled out to the morgue while still alive and

1015
00:58:35,240 --> 00:58:39,560
Speaker 1: presumably like screaming inwardly. Um. They weren't sure if if

1016
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:43,120
Speaker 1: he would die destroyed vital organs, if he would asphyxiate,

1017
00:58:43,520 --> 00:58:44,960
Speaker 1: And then they didn't know if they should use a

1018
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 1: C or DC. At first, they ended up going with

1019
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:49,680
Speaker 1: the former, as it was considered more dangerous a wasp

1020
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:53,440
Speaker 1: that would strike multiple times rather than a beasting. So

1021
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:57,200
Speaker 1: they constructed the A C dynamo at Auburn Prison UH

1022
00:58:57,240 --> 00:58:59,640
Speaker 1: in order so that it would deliver a maximum of

1023
00:58:59,720 --> 00:59:02,920
Speaker 1: six hundred and eighty volts. They killed a horse with it.

1024
00:59:02,960 --> 00:59:05,040
Speaker 1: They killed a cow with it to test it out.

1025
00:59:05,560 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: Thousand volts would kill a horse, five hundred would kill

1026
00:59:08,800 --> 00:59:12,720
Speaker 1: a dog, so surely the full UH eighty would kill

1027
00:59:12,760 --> 00:59:16,640
Speaker 1: a man without any difficulty. Okay, So what actually happened

1028
00:59:16,680 --> 00:59:19,200
Speaker 1: when it came time for the execution? All right, So

1029
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:21,640
Speaker 1: they turned it on. They gave him seventeen seconds of

1030
00:59:21,680 --> 00:59:25,200
Speaker 1: current and he was pronounced dead. And they think, all right,

1031
00:59:25,200 --> 00:59:27,680
Speaker 1: we've done it. That was that sounds that seems perfectly reasonable.

1032
00:59:27,800 --> 00:59:30,760
Speaker 1: Seventeen quick seconds of powerful current kills him dead. But

1033
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:35,600
Speaker 1: then a witness protests, stands up and says, he is alive.

1034
00:59:35,640 --> 00:59:38,240
Speaker 1: I see him breathing and indeed his chest was moving.

1035
00:59:38,280 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: He was still alive, so they panicked and they had

1036
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:43,720
Speaker 1: to turn it back on. And this is where things

1037
00:59:43,720 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 1: started getting horrible. Blood pours from the ruptured capillaries in

1038
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:50,880
Speaker 1: his face, an unpleasant smell builds up, like I think

1039
00:59:50,880 --> 00:59:54,200
Speaker 1: it was described as worse than unpleasant. Yeah, yeah, and

1040
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:58,480
Speaker 1: we'll read some of the quotes from from individuals who

1041
00:59:58,520 --> 01:00:01,160
Speaker 1: witness this. Yes, like a stench of singed hair and

1042
01:00:01,240 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 1: flesh and all told. At the end of it, Kimler

1043
01:00:04,160 --> 01:00:07,840
Speaker 1: received eight minutes of current, and they later realized that

1044
01:00:07,880 --> 01:00:11,600
Speaker 1: the electrodes didn't make full contact, so he didn't receive

1045
01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:13,960
Speaker 1: the full power of the current, so they were just

1046
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 1: shocking him at a lower voltage. Yeah, and uh yeah,

1047
01:00:17,720 --> 01:00:20,280
Speaker 1: I think back to the breathing on the frog. Remember

1048
01:00:20,640 --> 01:00:23,320
Speaker 1: breathing that the moisture of one's breath under the frog,

1049
01:00:23,360 --> 01:00:27,040
Speaker 1: and it was enabled, you know, full contact to be

1050
01:00:27,120 --> 01:00:30,000
Speaker 1: made with the electrodes on the frog. Similar here, they

1051
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 1: say if Kimmeler had sweated more, or if they had

1052
01:00:32,520 --> 01:00:35,440
Speaker 1: greased him up or something beforehand, that would have made

1053
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:38,160
Speaker 1: the difference. But instead they just end up roasting him

1054
01:00:38,160 --> 01:00:41,439
Speaker 1: at a slower rate with with a lower voltage. So

1055
01:00:41,680 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 1: yet again, this sounds kind of like the definition of

1056
01:00:43,800 --> 01:00:47,280
Speaker 1: cruel and unusual punishment. Yeah, exactly the opposite of everything

1057
01:00:47,320 --> 01:00:50,800
Speaker 1: they preached about. A swift, hygienic death. In fact, we

1058
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 1: have a few quotes from it. We're gonna read from

1059
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 1: me now, and this is from Kimmeler's Death by torture.

1060
01:00:57,000 --> 01:01:01,000
Speaker 1: That's the headline, New York, Harold August out of eight nine,

1061
01:01:01,560 --> 01:01:05,360
Speaker 1: men accustomed to every form of suffering, grew faint as

1062
01:01:05,400 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 1: the awful spectacle was unfolded before their eyes. Those who

1063
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:12,000
Speaker 1: stood the site were filled with awe as they saw

1064
01:01:12,040 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 1: the effects of this most potent of fluids, which is

1065
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 1: only partly understood by those who have studied it most faithfully,

1066
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: as it slowly disintegrated the fiber and tissues of the

1067
01:01:22,640 --> 01:01:26,040
Speaker 1: body through which it passed. The heaving of a chest, which,

1068
01:01:26,080 --> 01:01:28,240
Speaker 1: had it had been promised, would be stilled in an

1069
01:01:28,280 --> 01:01:31,400
Speaker 1: instant piece as soon as the circuit was completed, the

1070
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:35,160
Speaker 1: foaming of the mouth, the bloody sweat, the wriothing shoulders,

1071
01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 1: and all the other signs of life. Horrible as these were,

1072
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:42,520
Speaker 1: they were made infinitely more horrible by the premature removal

1073
01:01:42,520 --> 01:01:45,240
Speaker 1: of the electrodes and the subsequent replacing of them for

1074
01:01:45,280 --> 01:01:48,000
Speaker 1: not seconds but minutes, until the room was filled with

1075
01:01:48,040 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 1: the odor of burning flesh, and strong men fainted and

1076
01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:54,760
Speaker 1: fell like logs upon the floor. And all this done

1077
01:01:54,920 --> 01:02:00,240
Speaker 1: in the name of science. Yes, quite a spectacle and

1078
01:02:00,280 --> 01:02:03,520
Speaker 1: again quite the opposite of what everyone was promised with this.

1079
01:02:04,120 --> 01:02:06,400
Speaker 1: And then of course they ended up doing an autopsy.

1080
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:09,960
Speaker 1: They found that the small blood vessels between the brain

1081
01:02:10,040 --> 01:02:13,640
Speaker 1: and the skull, that that all the blood was like charcoil, charcoal,

1082
01:02:13,680 --> 01:02:17,120
Speaker 1: but not burned ash, but the fluid had been evaporated,

1083
01:02:17,560 --> 01:02:20,840
Speaker 1: and the skull itself been badly burned. So yeah, all

1084
01:02:20,880 --> 01:02:24,080
Speaker 1: these gory details made it out into the press, and uh,

1085
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:27,400
Speaker 1: it was kind of a pr nightmare for for the

1086
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:31,400
Speaker 1: electric chairs first entry into the modern world. And I

1087
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:34,120
Speaker 1: think Nicholas Reddick is making the point in his paper

1088
01:02:34,760 --> 01:02:37,840
Speaker 1: that this is sort of this is the death blow

1089
01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 1: to the to the sacred spirituality of electricity, all of

1090
01:02:42,040 --> 01:02:45,520
Speaker 1: the mystery, all of the metaphorical sense in which it

1091
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 1: embodied virility, fertility, spirituality, the great unknown, the power of

1092
01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:54,040
Speaker 1: the universe, the power of God, whatever it was that

1093
01:02:54,120 --> 01:02:57,400
Speaker 1: you thought was imbued in this force. It was kind

1094
01:02:57,440 --> 01:02:59,600
Speaker 1: of all gone by this point. Yeah, we've taken this

1095
01:02:59,680 --> 01:03:04,960
Speaker 1: divine energy and we've like imperfectly tamed it. We've tamed it,

1096
01:03:05,000 --> 01:03:08,160
Speaker 1: but then in trying to utilize it, utilize it poorly

1097
01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:11,360
Speaker 1: and our just the most base purposes. Yeah, and and

1098
01:03:11,400 --> 01:03:13,320
Speaker 1: again needlessly. It's not like we didn't know how to

1099
01:03:13,360 --> 01:03:16,280
Speaker 1: execute people beforehand. I mean again, you can certainly give

1100
01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:19,320
Speaker 1: credence to these cases that we needed more modern, hygienic

1101
01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:23,880
Speaker 1: uh and dependable means of of carrying out these sentences.

1102
01:03:23,920 --> 01:03:26,600
Speaker 1: But it's it's hard to argue that too much in

1103
01:03:26,640 --> 01:03:29,880
Speaker 1: the face of of the results there, those those those

1104
01:03:29,920 --> 01:03:33,320
Speaker 1: minutes and minutes of roasting electrocution. Yeah, but it also,

1105
01:03:33,680 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 1: Reddick points out, wasn't just the this use, this barbaric

1106
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:41,320
Speaker 1: use of electricity. It was also something about the familiarity,

1107
01:03:41,600 --> 01:03:43,880
Speaker 1: you know. He comments that by the eighteen nineties, as

1108
01:03:43,880 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 1: electricity came more and more into our lives, he says, quote,

1109
01:03:47,160 --> 01:03:51,560
Speaker 1: it was becoming increasingly difficult to talk about transcendental matters

1110
01:03:51,600 --> 01:03:55,000
Speaker 1: in electrical terms. And I think that's really saying something

1111
01:03:55,040 --> 01:03:58,680
Speaker 1: to me that suggests that there's something, uh, we we

1112
01:03:58,760 --> 01:04:02,720
Speaker 1: sort of alluded to this early, but about holiness itself.

1113
01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:06,880
Speaker 1: The concept of holiness and mystery. Uh, that is the

1114
01:04:06,920 --> 01:04:10,960
Speaker 1: same as strangeness and otherness and familiarity with the thing

1115
01:04:11,560 --> 01:04:13,960
Speaker 1: is death to a sense of the holy and the

1116
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:16,520
Speaker 1: sacred about it. Yeah. Again, if it's cooking your toast,

1117
01:04:16,800 --> 01:04:19,360
Speaker 1: it's hard to find the divine in it. Of course.

1118
01:04:19,360 --> 01:04:22,600
Speaker 1: Then again, I often think about how that's a lot

1119
01:04:22,640 --> 01:04:25,560
Speaker 1: of what we do on this podcast is exactly challenging

1120
01:04:25,600 --> 01:04:30,800
Speaker 1: that impulse discovering the divine. Exactly. I often want to

1121
01:04:30,840 --> 01:04:33,720
Speaker 1: take a thing that's familiar and make it strange again,

1122
01:04:34,600 --> 01:04:37,280
Speaker 1: to revisit something that we we might think of as

1123
01:04:37,320 --> 01:04:42,200
Speaker 1: being utterly mundane and rediscover what's fascinating and very unsettling

1124
01:04:42,240 --> 01:04:46,080
Speaker 1: and weird about it at So maybe in these episodes

1125
01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:50,240
Speaker 1: we've helped you find something strange and fascinating about that

1126
01:04:50,320 --> 01:04:54,400
Speaker 1: very force that cooks your reggo waffles. Hopefully so this

1127
01:04:54,440 --> 01:04:58,520
Speaker 1: episode not paid for by Ego. Yeah. So there you

1128
01:04:58,560 --> 01:05:03,080
Speaker 1: have it. Um, the role of the transformer is complete. Um,

1129
01:05:03,200 --> 01:05:06,240
Speaker 1: the spiritual has become the mundane. And if you want

1130
01:05:06,240 --> 01:05:08,880
Speaker 1: to check out more about this topic, be sure to

1131
01:05:08,960 --> 01:05:10,840
Speaker 1: check out The Landing Paige For this episode of Stuff

1132
01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:12,560
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. Dot Com will include links to

1133
01:05:12,960 --> 01:05:16,720
Speaker 1: related content, links out to that house Stufforth article about electricity,

1134
01:05:16,880 --> 01:05:20,520
Speaker 1: to some of the sources we've used in researching the

1135
01:05:20,560 --> 01:05:24,680
Speaker 1: episodes as well. Um and you'll also find other podcast episodes.

1136
01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:27,000
Speaker 1: You'll find blog posts, you'll find videos. You'll find links

1137
01:05:27,000 --> 01:05:29,680
Speaker 1: out to our social media accounts such as uh Facebook

1138
01:05:29,720 --> 01:05:31,640
Speaker 1: and Twitter. We're blow the mind on both of those.

1139
01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:35,600
Speaker 1: On Tumbler, we are stuff to blow your mind. And hey,

1140
01:05:35,680 --> 01:05:37,960
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to us, if you listen to us

1141
01:05:38,000 --> 01:05:41,760
Speaker 1: on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify or any of the

1142
01:05:42,800 --> 01:05:45,760
Speaker 1: really cool platforms that are rolling out seemingly every week,

1143
01:05:46,040 --> 01:05:47,800
Speaker 1: be sure to give us a little love there if

1144
01:05:48,080 --> 01:05:50,360
Speaker 1: they have the ability for you to do that, if

1145
01:05:50,360 --> 01:05:53,320
Speaker 1: they have some sort of rating system, review system, give

1146
01:05:53,400 --> 01:05:55,800
Speaker 1: us some love. It helps support for podcast. Yeah, it's

1147
01:05:55,800 --> 01:05:57,680
Speaker 1: the easiest way for you to help the show. And

1148
01:05:57,720 --> 01:05:59,640
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us with

1149
01:05:59,720 --> 01:06:02,480
Speaker 1: any feedback about this episode or other recent episodes, or

1150
01:06:02,520 --> 01:06:05,840
Speaker 1: give us your favorite story or anecdote from the weird

1151
01:06:05,960 --> 01:06:09,080
Speaker 1: history of electricity, you can email us that blow the

1152
01:06:09,160 --> 01:06:21,360
Speaker 1: mind at how stuff works dot com for moralness and

1153
01:06:21,480 --> 01:06:23,960
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot

1154
01:06:24,040 --> 01:06:47,040
Speaker 1: com