0:00

Welcome to the show, fellow conspiracy realist.

0:02

We are giving you a classic

0:05

episode, a conversation we

0:07

had with a longtime friend of

0:09

the show, Aaron Manke,

0:11

the creator of Lore and

0:13

Matt. You worked pretty closely with

0:16

Aard in the past, and I think we both

0:18

really enjoyed this exploration with

0:20

it.

0:20

Oh yeah. There are four seasons

0:23

of the podcast Unobscured. I

0:25

am. I think I'm credited as EP on

0:27

all of those, but this first season,

0:29

this conversation, we're talking about the Salem witch Trials.

0:32

For another friend of the show, Alex Williams, and

0:34

I traveled out to

0:37

Boston and the area out there, you know,

0:40

Salem and the places that were

0:42

actually Salem, the towns

0:44

that were actually Salem, and we went to libraries

0:47

and saw original documents, and

0:49

Aaron put all of this together in a show

0:51

called Unobscured. That is just

0:53

it's really great. It's the most

0:56

full picture of the Salem Witch Trials

0:59

that I had ever imagined

1:02

in my head when I listened to that show and

1:04

helped make it, and thankfully we got to speak

1:07

with Aaron about it for quite a while.

1:11

From UFOs to psychic powers

1:13

and government conspiracies, history

1:15

is riddled with unexplained events. You

1:17

can turn back now or

1:19

learn the stuff they don't want you to know.

1:35

Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.

1:37

Our compatriot Nole is off on adventures

1:40

in the meantime. They call me Ben when

1:42

you're joined with our super producer Paul Mission

1:44

control deck, and most importantly, you are

1:47

here and that makes this stuff

1:50

they don't want you to know. Today

1:52

we are exploring one of the strangest,

1:54

most infamous series of events in early

1:57

American history genuine

1:59

real life which trials, and nowadays

2:02

most people only know of these events

2:04

through wildly fanciful works

2:06

of fiction, film, books,

2:09

etc. So how do we separate

2:11

the fact from the fancy here? How

2:13

do we establish what really led to

2:16

these trials, what genuinely happened

2:18

to the victims, and how these events impacted

2:20

our culture and history from that

2:23

point onto the modern day. This

2:25

is admittedly a tall order, Matt,

2:27

and luckily, very luckily, we

2:30

are not tackling it alone.

2:32

We are joined by the creator, producer,

2:34

and host of the hit podcast Lore,

2:37

which has also been adapted into a

2:39

book series and a television series,

2:41

and as well as the creator of the brand new podcast,

2:44

Unobscured, Ladies and Gentlemen. Aaron

2:46

Manky, Hey, gentlemen, thanks for having

2:48

me.

2:49

Hey, is our pleasure to have

2:51

you on this show. Erin, And just a bit of

2:53

full disclosure here, I work with Aaron

2:55

in creating the show Unobscured. Just

2:58

lest you think we're a fast

3:00

one on you, We

3:03

work together on this, but the bulk

3:05

of the work is most certainly Aaron's.

3:08

But we had it was just

3:10

a fascinating deep dive

3:12

into the Salem Witch

3:15

Trials, right, and Aaron

3:17

Ben hit on it immediately at

3:19

the top of this show. But it's something I want to jump right

3:22

into. Just this fact that many of

3:24

us are introduced to the Salem Witch Trials usually

3:26

in at least in my case, an academic

3:28

setting. You take an early history

3:31

class about American history, then

3:33

you know you kind of have an understanding. But then

3:36

all of that gets shaped by all of this

3:38

pop culture and all of these other references.

3:41

So how has our understanding

3:43

of the real Witch Trials been

3:46

modified by this pop culture?

3:49

Well, I mean, I think you're exactly right. You know, there's

3:51

a lot of different factors that come into play

3:53

to I guess hide

3:55

the true story, and not always

3:58

intentionally. It's not like there's a dare

4:00

I say it on the show, But it's not like there's a conspiracy

4:03

to hide the the you know,

4:05

the true acts and deeds

4:07

and all that went on. You know, the

4:09

sale and witch trials was a

4:12

a you know, roughly thirteen or fourteen month

4:14

period of time that had a lot going on,

4:16

and so you think about maybe bumping

4:18

into it in a high school class on early American

4:20

history, and you know, it's one of, you

4:22

know, a couple a dozen things that you're going to talk about

4:25

that semester, and so by necessity

4:27

you sort of have to brush over it

4:29

and just mentioned a few things, like it

4:31

happened sixteen ninety two. Nineteen

4:34

people were hanged, one was crushed to death

4:36

by stones, and five died in jail. And

4:39

that's that's the story you hear, you know, and maybe somebody

4:41

throws in, well, you know, they

4:44

believe that there were witches and the church

4:46

one of those dead, and you know, we just we

4:48

sort of sum it all up into a couple

4:50

of sentences. And especially in this day and age of

4:52

you know, small character

4:54

count tweets and social media

4:56

posts, it's easy to try to summarize things up like

4:58

that. The other factory coming

5:00

into this. So, like you mentioned before, is pop culture, right,

5:02

like films and screens

5:05

like like The Crucible and TV

5:07

shows and even you know, bad

5:10

one hour documentaries. You

5:12

can cover something like Sale and Wich trials in one

5:14

hour. So you know that those

5:16

things all just sort of work to force

5:20

us toward an easy sound

5:23

bite answer, and when you do that, you

5:25

lose all of the nuance.

5:27

You know, something that a lot of people may not know.

5:30

It's something that I learned fairly

5:32

recently. You actually physically

5:34

lived within a very close

5:36

proximity to where the Salewich trials

5:39

occurred.

5:40

Yeah, yeah, can you tell us about

5:42

that? Well, you know, so you

5:45

hear about the Sale and Witch trials, and if you were to find

5:47

the location where a lot of the victims

5:49

came from on a map today, it

5:52

would come with the name Danvers as the town and not

5:54

Salem, which is sort of confusing, right You kind of

5:56

expect it to be Salem Salem,

5:58

which is a little bit more toward the east. But

6:01

back in the late sixteen hundreds, Salem

6:04

was like this territory, you

6:06

know, and you have the city, but then you have the bread basket

6:08

around it of all these different communities, places

6:11

that exist now today as their own independent

6:13

communities like Wenham and Danvers

6:16

and Beverly and Andover and Topsfield

6:18

and all these places slowly were chiseled

6:20

off of the Salem land mass and

6:23

became their own things. So what is now

6:25

today Danvers used to be Salem Village

6:28

and Salem proper today used to be

6:30

Salem Town because that was sort of

6:32

the built up, wealthier

6:34

town aspect of it all.

6:36

Ah See, this is going

6:38

to be new information for

6:41

quite a few of our listeners

6:43

here, you know, and it's

6:45

important, I would argue

6:47

for us to carve these

6:49

distinctions out and clarify them

6:52

because the last time that

6:54

we were in Boston we

6:57

learned firsthand from some

6:59

residents about Salem's

7:02

the current Salem's

7:05

pretty successful tourism

7:07

industry based off of this tragedy.

7:10

Is that a real thing? Is it still in full swing?

7:12

Oh? Yeah? Yeah? And you know, and we talk about

7:15

Danvers being old Salem Village

7:17

and Salem being old Salem Town and

7:19

that dichotomy between the two places. There's there's

7:21

a reason why their name is changed, and that's

7:24

partly to distance themselves from what happened

7:27

most of the Salem based because Okay,

7:29

so there were a lot of victims that came from other communities

7:31

and over Topsfield, all over the place,

7:34

Gloucester, but a

7:36

lot of the Salem victims came from

7:38

the Salem village area. So what is

7:40

now Danvers And a lot of the the

7:43

legal aspects, especially the Court of Oyer

7:45

and Terminer, which was sort of the the

7:47

higher level jury

7:50

plus judges system, and

7:52

then moving on to the Superior court, those things

7:54

all happen in Salem town. So you had victims

7:56

coming from one area and that's now Danvers,

8:00

and that's wildly generalized. I'm

8:02

just roughly saying it. And then in Salem,

8:05

basically all the bad guys, right, all the people that sat

8:07

in the jury or on the court and judge people and

8:10

sentenced them to death. So you have

8:12

these two towns, you know, three hundred and twenty

8:14

five years ago, we're sort of sitting next to each other,

8:16

and they've grown, they've grown up,

8:19

but they've also grown apart culturally, and so Danver's

8:21

changed its name and it sort of distances

8:23

itself from the idea that the witch trials happened

8:25

there like you can find things. Rebecca

8:28

Nurse is one of the victims. She was a seventy

8:31

five seventy six year old woman who her

8:33

crime was that she was too generous with one of her neighbors.

8:36

Back then, Puritans were incredibly

8:39

prejudiced against any other faiths,

8:41

and so even Quakers, which we

8:44

never think of Quakers as being like antagonists

8:47

or bad people, but in the Puritan mind,

8:49

they just they weren't Puritans, and so Quakers were bad.

8:51

And she took in a Quaker orphan and that sort

8:54

of sealed her fate. Among other things. She had

8:56

some rumors spread about her and whatnot.

8:58

Anyway, her house is still there. It's a

9:00

homestead, it's a museum. You can tour. Three

9:03

hundred and twenty five years later, it's still there, and

9:06

it's set up more sensitively

9:08

and as a as a museum as

9:11

opposed to the Salem Witch Museum, which

9:13

is you know, red lights

9:15

and dark shadows and witches

9:18

and cauldrons and things like that. And and

9:21

so there's this there's this dichotomy of

9:23

Salem sort of dodging the issue

9:26

and Danvers dodging the issue,

9:28

and Salem Town sort of rolling right into it. I mean,

9:30

there's a there's a statue of Samantha from

9:32

the the old TV show Bewitched in

9:34

the middle of town because she was

9:36

a witch, and let's put a statue out for her. You

9:39

know, Oh wow, makes sense?

9:40

Yeah, yeah, all right, Well you've hit on

9:42

something very important here,

9:45

and that's that dichotomy between

9:47

these two towns. But there's also a dichotomy between

9:49

what our understanding of what a

9:51

witch is now. That is again, have

9:54

it's been morphed and changed

9:57

over all of these years? What

9:59

was a which in sixteen ninety

10:01

two New England.

10:03

It's such a tricky question. Which

10:06

was I mean, you

10:08

know, in the religious sense. To the Puritans,

10:10

it was somebody who was working for

10:13

the devil to

10:15

tear down the Puritan mission of

10:17

this utopian society in the

10:19

New World. The reason why the Puritans

10:22

came over is because the

10:24

Anglican Church, which was kind

10:26

of a Protestant branch off of the Catholic Church,

10:29

the Church of England, that just wasn't pure enough.

10:31

It hadn't tossed off enough

10:33

of the Catholic trappings to be acceptable,

10:36

and the Puritans wanted it to be more pure.

10:38

Thus the name and among

10:41

all of the colonies that were set up in the sixteen

10:43

hundreds that were all sort of like either

10:46

endeavors of the crown or business

10:48

ventures. This was a business venture

10:51

that was run purely by the Puritans, and they

10:53

all the people that ran it essentially came over with

10:56

it and set up shop here. So it wasn't being run from

10:58

afar by the owners. It was being run here.

11:00

They had a charter from the king and you had to get that.

11:04

But they were they were this isolated

11:06

religious community, and anybody who

11:08

threatened their mission was potentially

11:10

a witch. They were an agent of the devil. And there

11:13

were all these cool little trappings that came with it that

11:15

we still have pieces of in our culture today. You know,

11:17

you think about how many times

11:19

you've seen a witch on TV with a black cat, right,

11:21

like that's just the it's the partner in

11:23

crime they always have. And that comes back to the idea

11:26

of a familiar, you know, an animal that is

11:28

a evil spirit in the form of an

11:30

animal that follows the

11:32

witch around, and that's just almost a

11:35

European and American

11:38

constant that you have familiars. There

11:40

are things like, well, we can tell you're

11:42

a witch if you have witch marks on you, which is supposed

11:44

to be like this little devil's teat

11:47

this this place where the demons

11:49

will will suckle from the witch and

11:52

they look like freckles or moles or skin

11:54

tags, and of course they found them on people because

11:56

everybody has those things. So you

11:59

know, it was this really tricky thing where,

12:01

yeah, they were enemies of the Puritan faith,

12:04

but after that it was just kind of hard to nail it

12:06

down, which created problems

12:08

for them.

12:09

You know, yeah, we can I

12:11

can totally understand this because

12:14

in the case of I

12:16

believe it was Sarah Osborne,

12:18

right, one of the first people accused of

12:20

witchcraft.

12:21

In her case, I.

12:24

Think one of the primary

12:27

causes for persecution or prosecution

12:30

was that she was suspected of living with

12:32

her second husband before they got

12:35

officially married.

12:36

And there was a little bit of that going on. Yeah,

12:39

she had a child with him, She

12:41

had a child from a previous marriage, she had

12:43

a child with I think before

12:45

she married her second husband. And

12:48

I'm not sure if I'm getting my people right or not.

12:50

Bish I think she might have been the one who, like one

12:52

of the kids lived at home and one of them lived in sort

12:54

of a boarding house situation. But yeah,

12:56

Sarah Osburne wasn't she. I

12:59

mean, she was also just outsider. She wasn't

13:01

respected, She didn't tow the line,

13:03

she didn't follow the rules, and people

13:05

then as people now lash

13:08

out against the outsider, they become a scapegoat

13:10

for our fears and our anxieties.

13:13

And there's something here to be said. I'm

13:17

trying to articulate this correctly Erin, but the

13:20

thin, somewhat non existent

13:22

line between religion

13:25

and the law within the

13:27

land and it's almost the same

13:30

thing in most respects. Yeah,

13:33

I'm trying to wrap my head around exactly what I'm

13:35

trying to ask you here, But I feel like that is

13:37

one of the major contributing factors, or at

13:39

least that's one of the things you think about nowadays

13:43

when you're imagining this time period.

13:45

How did that come into play with

13:48

setting up these trials? Like were the Oyer and Terminer

13:50

trials specifically a

13:54

law of the land kind of thing or was it a

13:56

religious law thing?

13:58

Well, I mean, that's

14:00

a forty five minute podcast in

14:02

that answer right there, But like, let's just let's

14:04

say it this way. So they had a charter

14:06

which was sort of a permission certificate

14:09

from the king to go create this

14:11

colony. The charter usually had

14:13

some laws and regulations that were in there,

14:16

and for the most part you were supposed to adhere to English

14:18

law, kind of defer to that. But because

14:20

of the way the Puritan colony of the Commonwealth

14:22

of Massachusetts was set up, it was just a little different.

14:24

They had a little bit more freedom and latitude,

14:27

and they were able to build their faith

14:29

into the laws a lot more tightly. So

14:33

when the Salem witch trials happened, it happens

14:35

in this you know, doctor Emerson Baker's

14:37

one of our historians, and he calls his book the

14:39

Storm of Witchcraft because

14:41

it's this perfect storm of ingredients.

14:44

Among all these other things, the fear of the wars

14:46

with the Native Americans to the north, the French

14:49

who were allied with them, a

14:51

harsh winter, all these different

14:53

factors coming together. You also had the fact

14:55

that the King kind

14:57

of in a power play, takes the charter away from

15:00

people shortly before the

15:02

witch trials happened. So they're essentially government

15:04

lists. They don't have any they don't have anything,

15:07

and there's this promise of a new charter,

15:09

but they haven't got it yet. So they're literally

15:12

there society that

15:14

has lost all their laws, and so they're leaning

15:17

on the people like John Hawthorne,

15:19

who you know him

15:21

and his father both worked with the Charter and

15:23

they knew the law. They're kind of leaning on these people

15:25

to help them. But you

15:28

know, their faith is permeating these things. They you

15:30

know, they have this fear of witches. And I mean even

15:32

when they sit down with a new charter and start to list

15:34

out, like, all right, we have to put together a list of capital

15:36

crimes, which they started doing in sixteen ninety two.

15:39

You know, witchcraft falls on the capital

15:41

crime list. You're not going to find that on the books today

15:43

because we have a very secular government,

15:47

but back then that border

15:49

between church and state was a lot more fuzzy,

15:52

and so things like you

15:54

know, being a witch became this capital

15:57

offense and it was executed,

16:00

executable by death with some exceptions.

16:02

The deeper into the trials you get and it just gets more complex.

16:04

Things like you know, at some point, if you

16:07

used witchcraft but you didn't kill anybody,

16:09

you could be punished, but you won't be executed

16:11

and whatnot. But yeah, the faith really

16:13

did it permeated

16:16

everything, really.

16:17

And it makes sense what you're saying

16:20

given the context of the time

16:22

when people are I think you hit

16:24

a really powerful point here when you

16:26

say that the people found themselves

16:29

governless right in a hostile

16:32

environment in terms of the ecosystem

16:35

they were surrounded by, and

16:37

if we're being honest, this

16:40

is in many

16:42

ways a group of what we would call religious

16:44

extremists today. So people

16:47

in a vacuum of organizational

16:49

structure would tend to fall back on

16:52

the number one organizational structure

16:55

that they considered their core

16:57

set of values, which personally,

17:00

and I don't want to inject too much of my opinion here,

17:02

is terrifying because it kind

17:05

of it sounds as if this is something

17:07

that occurs, you know,

17:10

in the distant past. But

17:12

it's very important for us to remember that people

17:15

are still people. We're still the

17:17

same cognitive machines. And yeah,

17:19

these sorts of things are

17:23

not as implausible in the modern

17:25

day as they were. You know, they're

17:27

not any less plausible, I should say, than they were

17:29

in the sixteen hundreds.

17:30

Yeah, absolutely, I mean one of the benefits

17:32

of I mean, think about how our government,

17:35

you know, the original American government was

17:37

put together. You had representatives who were

17:40

you know, chosen by the people to go to a continental

17:42

congress and they lay down laws and they

17:44

work together. They worked with a lot of existing laws

17:46

around Europe that they knew of, you

17:49

know, the magnet Carta was an influence and things like

17:51

that. But they were they

17:53

were a voice for the people as a collective

17:56

putting things together, and that made it a lot a lot

17:58

more infallible. You had

18:00

people saying, well, that idea sounds good,

18:02

but here are three problems with it, and that's this is how

18:04

it could go wrong, and so they could adjust things. When

18:07

you move to a society that's smaller, I mean,

18:09

Salem Village had about five hundred people in it, five

18:11

five fifty. Salem

18:13

Town I think had maybe two thousand

18:15

people in it. Now that's a smaller group

18:18

of people, with a smaller pool of

18:20

leaders making up laws and trying

18:22

to find their way. They're going to make a lot more mistakes,

18:24

and they're going to bring a lot more personal bias into

18:27

things, which is why, I mean, this is why dictatorships

18:29

go wrong, and why emperors and kings have

18:32

so many problems unless they have some sort of a

18:34

parliamentary system around them to keep them in

18:36

check, because one person making

18:39

choices is going to make a lot more worse

18:41

choices than that a group of people collectively

18:44

thinking being through with common sense. So this

18:47

is, you know, this is partly what plays out in Salem.

18:49

You have a bunch of people who they're

18:51

just kind of leaning on what they know and their

18:54

personal opinions and their fears and their

18:56

hopes and all this stuff, and we

18:58

get a mess and will

19:01

pause right there for

19:03

a quick word from our sponsor, and

19:12

we're back. This is a little bit biographical,

19:15

But what were

19:18

your primary inspirations

19:20

or motivations that set

19:22

you on the path to explore and

19:24

clarify this story? You know, I

19:28

mean I've made the podcast called Lore

19:30

for about three and a half years now, and Law is

19:33

essentially a dark historical

19:35

podcast. You know, I look for stories from history

19:38

that have a more unusual or

19:41

or dark is just the best word for it, a

19:43

dark bent that you know, that's the kind of stuff you're not going

19:46

to learn about in history class. You're not going to learn

19:48

about the drummer of Tedworth. You know, a

19:50

house haunted by a ghost that keeps making

19:52

a drumming sound and possibly

19:54

a haunted drum and all these You're not going to learn about

19:56

these things in history class and

19:58

and and that's why I

20:00

I do lore because I want people to hear

20:02

these great tales of things that happened

20:04

and people claim that they were

20:06

true, and I want to explore them. Most

20:09

of the time, I'm fine finding topics

20:11

that I can do in a half an hour. That's typically the format

20:14

of the show, you know, about thirty minutes

20:16

long, throwing some ads and some credits

20:18

and more good. And that

20:21

leaves out a few topics, you know. And

20:23

so from the very beginning, I thought, well, the Salem witch

20:25

Trials fits. You know that it has all

20:27

of these really great details.

20:30

There's good context lessons in here,

20:32

like learning about how witchcraft worked in Europe

20:34

and England, all these great things, but you couldn't

20:37

cover it in an hour or a half an hour. Even

20:39

so I just kind of set it aside.

20:41

And so for a couple of years I had

20:43

a folder on my hard drive that said it said

20:45

lower the Salem Project. And I had

20:47

this vision of maybe someday when I had free

20:49

time, ha ha ha. Because I

20:51

just got busier and busier as time went by, maybe

20:55

someday I'll be able to do like a little mini series on

20:58

Salem. And I didn't

21:00

know if i'd give its own RSS feed or if I would,

21:02

you know, maybe make it a paid only like you could go,

21:05

you know, download the thing, like an audiobook sort

21:07

of thing, because I didn't know what the material

21:10

would would turn into. So

21:13

it wasn't until you know, about a year ago

21:15

that I started working with some

21:17

of your folks over there at host Stuff Works and realized

21:20

that if we were going to build a network

21:22

of shows, one of those could very well

21:24

be a long form documentary series

21:26

that just takes time, you know, it gives these really

21:28

big stories the breathing room that they need and

21:31

let it go deep. And so that's that

21:33

was the perfect home for the Salem topic. And

21:36

not only that, but living in it and around

21:38

it here in my area, it

21:40

just made sense. And it's you

21:43

can't pass up a topic like this.

21:45

So jumping back, let's jump back

21:48

to sixteen ninety two Salem. It's

21:50

winter time. It's a freaking

21:53

cold out there, and

21:56

there's no central heating, there's no

21:58

electricity. The

22:00

only way to keep you and your family

22:02

warm enough to not die is

22:05

to have firewood. And one

22:08

thing that I didn't understand going

22:10

into this project was just how vital

22:12

firewood was as a commodity, as

22:15

almost a currency in a way. Can

22:17

you talk to us about the importance of firewood

22:19

back then?

22:21

Yeah, I mean, picture that post apocalyptic

22:23

movie that you love, where you

22:25

know there is no more US currency, the

22:28

global market's gone, and you need to

22:30

go buy food from some trader and it's

22:32

either a precious metal or it's a bullet.

22:34

You know, things like that that you're trying

22:36

to find ways, like what are valuable

22:39

commodities to trade for something, and firewood

22:41

was certainly I

22:43

wouldn't say it was worth its weight in gold, but it

22:45

was highly important. So to illustrate

22:48

this, you know, the minister in

22:50

Salem village, where a lot of the victims

22:53

came from, was this guy

22:55

named Samuel Parris who came from

22:58

I mean, his family was English. Obviously, his

23:01

uncle had purchased

23:04

or somehow acquired a plantation

23:06

on the island of Barbados, and then

23:09

he was really bad at running the business, and so he brought his

23:11

brother in, which was Samuel's dad, and

23:13

his brother saved it. You know, his

23:15

uncle eventually dies and so

23:17

Sam's dad inherits the place

23:20

and runs it well, but some natural

23:22

disasters happened. There's like this massive hurricane

23:24

and there's a drought, and I think some

23:26

sickness and smallpox maybe, And

23:28

eventually Samuel

23:31

Parris has found himself running the place and

23:33

he doesn't want to anymore. He realizes

23:36

it's going to kill him, so he sells it

23:38

and heads north. He

23:40

wanted to go to Harvard, and while his dad was

23:42

still alive, he was attending Harvard, which is really

23:45

really old school from the sixteen hundreds outside of

23:47

Boston. And so

23:50

when he finally sold the place

23:52

off for good, he moved back to Boston, maybe

23:54

thinking that he would finish school because he had stopped

23:56

a few classes, shy, maybe

23:59

just looking for work some of his money to set up

24:01

a business there. Finally, he ends up not

24:04

doing well at business and taking

24:06

the position in Salem Village as

24:08

their new minister. The negotiation

24:10

process for his contract took him over a year

24:13

because he was this super litigious,

24:16

like we have to get all the tea's crossed and the

24:18

ice dotted, and want to be taken care of. I think he had

24:20

some high aspirations, but one

24:22

of the things that he was super picky

24:24

about was firewood that he needed

24:27

his firewood delivered. And even after

24:29

becoming the minister there, it was a problem

24:31

constantly with you know, farmers

24:34

in the area. It was like their turn that week to bring

24:36

him a load of firewood, and they just they wouldn't do it.

24:38

He was hard to like, it was hard to get along with, and

24:41

some of them just sort of held it back as a

24:43

leverage over him. And there's

24:46

these stories of him writing in his study

24:48

upstairs in the middle of winter,

24:50

dipping his quill in the inkwell to scratch

24:53

on the book, and the ink in the inkwell

24:55

being frozen because it's so cold

24:57

in the house, and wood

25:00

just becomes this thorn in his side

25:03

for the entire time.

25:05

Just chop your own firewood, man.

25:09

You know, as a minister, you're giving the parsonage

25:11

to live in. There's no land with it. All

25:14

the land of Budding you is fenced off and it belongs

25:16

to somebody else, and they're going to cut down their

25:18

trees and use it. And he was sort of stuck.

25:20

But yeah, I mean I'd get a hatchet and go

25:22

out in the middle of the night and just you know,

25:24

start clearing branches off of trees and bringing them

25:27

home. Which, so

25:30

this is one thing that I think is

25:32

going to be fascinating to a

25:34

lot of our fellow listeners when they

25:37

are as they explore unobscured. Is

25:39

the process through which

25:42

you discover

25:45

these stories? Could

25:47

you tell us a little bit more about

25:49

the primary written

25:52

records that you found, or how complete

25:54

or incomplete they were, and how

25:58

you took this this vast

26:01

amount of uncollected

26:04

resources, like how did you arrange

26:06

them?

26:06

And what was the process? Like

26:09

was it all uphill? Were there

26:11

surprising fines? Were there times

26:13

where you know, it was

26:15

frustrating because again,

26:18

the great game of telephone that is human

26:21

history got in the way. I think we're

26:23

all very curious to learn about that.

26:25

Well, one thing to keep in mind is that toward

26:28

the end of the which trial period

26:31

of sixteen ninety two, it basically

26:33

starts in January sixteen ninety two,

26:35

it runs through itun till about May of sixteen ninety three, and

26:37

toward the end of that, the governor of

26:40

Massachusetts is this guy named Sir

26:42

William Phipps, and he

26:45

realizes that the public perception

26:47

of what's going on in the trials is

26:50

bad. In fact, at some point, the

26:52

judges involved in the trial hire a

26:55

minister from a prominent minister family. Their

26:57

last name was Mather. Increase

26:59

was the father. Cotton

27:02

was the son Cotton Mather. That's

27:04

right, Cotton and

27:06

Cotton was hired to basically write a

27:09

pr piece. It was a book in defense

27:11

of the sale Witch trials and write about

27:13

that time, Governor Phipps decides

27:16

it will be very bad if anybody else prints

27:18

things about this. We want this to be the only

27:20

thing out there. And so the governor outlaws

27:22

the press. They can't talk or

27:24

write about the sale Witch trials

27:26

anymore. So you have that which

27:29

limits the amount of stuff that's written about it

27:31

in sixteen ninety two, sixteen ninety three. Then

27:34

you have people with you know, let's

27:37

just pick a judge out of you know, like Nathaniel

27:40

Saltonstall or somebody

27:42

like that, or Samuel Sewell. There

27:45

are family documents that would have existed.

27:47

Personal journals was a big thing

27:49

for a lot of these judges. They wrote in their journals

27:51

every night, and a lot of them just go

27:54

missing. Letters between judges who

27:56

served on the trial and family members

27:59

kind of take a break for about a year

28:01

there where they just they've vanished. It's not like they stopped

28:03

writing. Somebody's gone in and they've taken

28:05

these sheaves of paper out and they've

28:08

destroyed them in some way. Samuel

28:10

Paris himself, the Minister for

28:12

you know, thirteen fourteen, fifteen months,

28:15

kept notebooks of what was going

28:17

on, and one page

28:19

was pulled out of a notebook at some point and taken

28:22

as evidence for something. We don't know how or

28:24

why. But all the rest of the notebooks

28:26

have vanished. It's not that they've been misplaced

28:29

or you know, that the family just won't

28:31

give them up. They just don't exist anymore. There's

28:33

this almost global

28:35

cover up of the documentation

28:38

of what happened. Once the

28:40

government gets on its feet in late sixteen

28:42

ninety two and the Oier Interminer is shut

28:44

down and it becomes the Superior Court,

28:46

essentially the state supreme Court,

28:49

the documents don't go away anymore.

28:52

Those become really official, and we still have all those,

28:54

but all the court documents from the Oyer and Terminer,

28:56

the big trial, all through the summer of sixteen

28:58

ninety two, it's just gone. So

29:00

there's not a lot to look at

29:02

there is stuff. I'm gonna

29:04

plug the website just because it's got great resources

29:07

on it. But if you go to History Unobscured dot

29:09

com, there's a resources page

29:11

and I can't remember if it's on there if I need to

29:13

put it on there, but there's a link to is

29:16

that the University of Virginia that has

29:18

a like a digital scanned in library

29:21

of every document relating to it. So things

29:23

like the warrant that was issued

29:25

for Reverend

29:28

George Burrows. Like you can see the warrant

29:30

right there, written out in handwriting, long form. It's

29:32

got dates on and everything. It's beautiful. It's

29:35

tragic. So there are

29:37

things that we have and we still find things.

29:39

You know, every year, somebody's bumping into a new document,

29:42

some family opens up a book in their

29:44

library and finds a warrant

29:46

or a letter that was tucked away, like it

29:48

happens. But a lot of it's just sort

29:50

of disappeared.

29:51

You know. I think this right here is

29:54

the stuff they don't want you to know about

29:56

the Salem Witch Trials. Can

29:58

you imagine now, in this in

30:01

modern history, if someone attempted to

30:03

do this, just if it was a

30:05

a year long process, somewhere and

30:07

someone said, oh, nope, we're going to strike

30:09

this whole thing from the record. Nope,

30:12

everybody put away your social media. Nope, we're

30:14

going to delete everybody's Facebook. It's

30:17

over. This didn't happen. Here's

30:19

the official account in this one ton or

30:22

this one blog. All right, carry

30:24

on. That's insane to

30:26

me that that could even happen. But

30:28

you know, we did. Where did

30:31

we go? We went to the Danvers Archival,

30:34

the Danvers Archival Center.

30:36

Yeah, so the Peabody Essex Library,

30:39

a Peabody Institute library that's in Danvers.

30:41

Peboty's another town, but the Danvers

30:44

Library is actually called the Peabody Institute

30:46

Library. It's confusing, but they have

30:48

an archive in the basement. They have an archivist. One

30:50

of our historians, Richard Trask, is

30:53

a you know, decades

30:55

long experienced historian. He's

30:57

also descended from a number of the victims

31:00

from the witch trials, and he lives within

31:02

blocks of where it all happened, in

31:04

a period home. He's a cool guy. I

31:06

like Richard a lot. And he sits

31:09

as the archivist down there in

31:11

the bowels of the library and

31:13

he manages all these amazing things

31:16

the church changed

31:18

locations. They moved across the street. A

31:20

few years after it was all over, they

31:22

got a new minister, Reverend Green, maybe

31:25

in the sixteen ninety

31:27

eight ninety nine range or so. He moved

31:30

the building across the street. And

31:32

then eventually that was, you know, tore down and they built a bigger

31:34

building because it's a church, and they grow and populations

31:37

grow. In the nineteen seventies,

31:40

I think there was a fire at the church and

31:43

Richard Drask went with the

31:45

fire department and was able to get in and

31:47

save some things. He saved

31:49

the original communion

31:51

where you know, like the chalice, the bowl, those

31:53

things they're made out of pewter. But they were in a box

31:56

right by the door, and on purpose,

31:58

like he told them to keep them by the door. And there was

32:00

a fire, and then two books were saved.

32:03

One is think of them both as like ship's

32:05

logs, you know, you think like Picard talking

32:08

to the computer in his ready room,

32:10

you know, ship's log date

32:13

whatever. So there was there was a log for the

32:15

church itself, and a lot of people wrote

32:17

in it, whoever were officers and important people would

32:19

write in there, like you know, we excommunicated

32:22

you know Martha Corey on this date, or

32:24

we brought in this member this date. It's sort of a

32:26

happenings of the church. That book

32:28

from sixteen ninety two was saved as

32:31

well as the Minister's Book, which is sort

32:33

of a ship's log for the minister, and

32:37

that has Samuel Parris's writing in it, detailing

32:39

things that are going on, writing about the events,

32:42

and when he left and Reverend Green came in, that

32:44

book was handed off to Reverend Green and then

32:46

he takes over writing in it, and it's

32:48

almost like a diary for whoever

32:51

holds the position of minister.

32:54

So cool.

32:55

Yeah, and to get to see them at hold

32:57

them and look at them, it's just they're amazing.

33:00

And we'll continue to explore this in just

33:02

a moment after a quick word from our sponsor, and

33:12

we're back.

33:13

One of the crucial

33:16

things about reading these

33:18

primary sources, finding

33:20

these contemporary

33:22

or near contemporary accounts, is

33:25

that because they are so much

33:27

closer to the time in which these

33:29

actual events occurred, they

33:31

do not suffer from some of

33:34

the frankly widespread misconceptions

33:37

that we have in the modern day, not just

33:40

in the world of Hollywood, but in the cultural

33:43

zeitgeist, even in academic settings.

33:45

So what.

33:47

If you could tell us here and what were some of the misconceptions

33:52

that you found in the course

33:54

of your work on Unobscured.

33:56

Well, you know, I have this belief

33:59

that people like to sum

34:02

things up into a sentence. You

34:04

know, we like to say, oh, I understand that, you

34:06

know it was this, it was simple,

34:08

right, Like to be able to declare something as

34:10

simple means that we've grasped it and were in

34:13

control of it. And you can't do that

34:15

with the Salem witch trials. It wasn't simple. It

34:17

was highly complex. So

34:19

one of the most common questions that I get,

34:22

whether it's social media or in person, regarding

34:25

the Salem witch trials is well, why did it

34:27

happen? You know? And I think that

34:29

that's our inclination. It's a noble question,

34:31

it's good, But it's people saying,

34:34

give me that one sentence that explains why.

34:36

What's the one answer? And there isn't There isn't

34:38

a one answer. Again, I harken

34:40

back to what doctor Baker wrote for his book

34:43

The Storm of Witchcraft. It's got this great

34:45

introduction by somebody else that talks about how

34:48

it's the perfect storm. Of all these elements

34:50

that come together before I go

34:52

on to what maybe they were misconceptions.

34:55

You know, the big one that I always get is, oh, it was just

34:57

rotten bread, right, It was that ergot

34:59

poison stuff, right, I

35:03

thought. We started doing the show, hopefully

35:07

you have learned. Yes, But

35:09

you know, ergot is this fungus that grows on grains.

35:13

We hear about it as rye, and people make

35:15

bread out of rye, among other things.

35:18

He makes a good bourbon on a rye. But this,

35:21

this fungus can cause

35:24

hallucinations. And the idea was

35:26

put forward in the mid seventies that

35:28

hey, what if these people

35:30

were having hallucinations and that

35:32

explains why they were behaving so bad. They can have

35:34

convulsions too, and you know, some of the afflicted

35:37

girls as we call them, the people who were

35:39

showing symptoms of being attacked by the witches,

35:42

they had convulsions and fits. They would fall on the floor

35:44

and thrash around. So, you know, hey, sounds

35:47

like Ergo explains this. And the very

35:49

next month after that was published in a journal,

35:51

the same journal published a debunking

35:55

of it. You know, two more scientists came on board

35:57

and said, no, look, it can't be er goot

35:59

point and here's why. Or

36:02

got poisoning reacts to

36:04

you one of two ways, depending

36:06

on how you eat. If

36:09

you are deficient

36:11

in vitamin A, you

36:14

will probably have hallucinations and convulsions.

36:16

They call it convulsing or got poisoning

36:18

something like that. But

36:21

that's only one of the ways the symptoms can present

36:24

themselves. The other way would be gangreen.

36:26

And I get that those are wildly disparate

36:30

responses for something in your body. You know,

36:32

you can either have convulsions and hallucinations

36:34

or you can have gangreen, you know, like pick and

36:37

I would certainly grab the convulsions myself

36:39

and skip the gangreen. But you

36:42

have to be deficient in vitamin A to have the

36:44

convulsions, and vitamin A comes

36:46

from things like seafood.

36:49

And Salem is a coastal town,

36:52

a ports city, and most of the victims,

36:55

the afflicted girls who have these symptoms are wealthy,

36:57

and they could have afforded to have good food

37:00

and would have been eating food from the sea. They

37:02

would not have been deficient to invite them in a so

37:05

because nobody ever gets reported as having

37:07

gangreen, we can ride away right

37:09

off or got poisoning. I

37:12

sometimes hear people, Yeah. I mean it's

37:14

kind of like a oh you pop my bubble, why'd

37:17

you do that? But we want there

37:19

to be the magic pill, right, We want to say, oh,

37:21

it was the one thing. And if we could go back in time

37:23

in a time machine and like in

37:25

one day, fix everything and make it not happen,

37:27

we'll just take away their grain because it's got focus

37:30

on it right. Well, it wouldn't work.

37:33

It's more complex than that, you know. And

37:36

you have a lot of people suffering

37:39

from what was essentially post traumatic stress

37:41

disorder, refugees

37:43

coming from the middle of

37:45

Maine down the coast back to New England,

37:48

back to Salem where they had come from years before,

37:50

because they kept trying to settle the coast

37:53

of Maine. But up there you had the Wabanaki

37:57

and the Algonquin, and you had the French who were

37:59

allied with them, and they were constantly hammering

38:02

back down to the south. And these

38:04

refugees, like they'd go up and they'd settle, and they'd

38:06

lived for a couple of years, and then they'd get raided

38:09

and attacked and they would flee back

38:11

south, having lost everything

38:13

they ever took with them and it was horrible.

38:15

It was it was warping. Some of them watched their parents

38:17

die, some of them lost children.

38:20

And so they come back to Salem and they

38:23

tell their stories, and you know, they

38:25

passed this trauma on to the people there. Everything

38:27

outside their borders was darkness and evil

38:30

and danger and they were afraid. And

38:33

of course we mentioned the lack of the charter. They didn't

38:35

have a government at the time. It was very, very tricky.

38:39

One of the things the government was doing is I

38:42

think it was with when Governor Andros took over

38:44

before Phipps, Like they started

38:46

to re tax property

38:49

that had already been taxed and so you had paid

38:51

your tax and you had your profit leftover and now

38:53

you're going to get taxed again. So financially they were

38:55

getting hammered. They had an

38:57

incompetent leader who didn't understand how to

38:59

goned because he had never done it before. Governor

39:02

Phipps. All these

39:04

all these pieces helped to

39:06

kind of mix in the bawl and be this perfect

39:09

storm that that in that window of time,

39:11

that's that's when it could have happened, and it

39:14

did.

39:15

Well well said well put this also

39:18

this this also reminds

39:20

me of a work by

39:22

the author Carol Carlson, The Devil

39:24

in the Shape of a Woman, that I

39:26

wanted to wanted to ask you about, because

39:30

in Carlson's examination,

39:33

uh, what what

39:35

this author is looking at is more

39:38

of a an emphasis on

39:42

how certain women, primarily

39:45

women, were chosen to

39:47

be accused of witchcraft, and

39:50

Carlson argues that

39:52

there is a

39:54

a violation of social hierarchy

39:57

that occurs in some case.

40:00

This is I think one of the specific

40:02

quotes is that the

40:04

accusers and the accused were

40:07

in a way in a negotiation about

40:09

the legitimacy of female discontent,

40:11

resentment, and anger, because it's

40:14

not too far of an assumption to say this was

40:16

probably a severely patriarchal

40:18

society.

40:19

Is that correct? Oh? Absolutely, yeah.

40:22

You know. One of the historians that we spoke to,

40:24

we spoke to six, did great interviews

40:26

with them. One of them is doctor Jane

40:28

Kamenski. She's a professor of history

40:31

at Harvard, which is

40:33

a school I think some people have heard of, but

40:35

she's also the director of the library

40:38

there, Schlushinger Library, which is essentially

40:40

a library devoted to women's studies through history.

40:42

So we wanted. We wanted a perspective,

40:45

a historical perspective on what

40:47

sort of a voice did women have in

40:50

that age, what was their place in society,

40:52

what was seen as wrong, what was seen as good? You know,

40:54

things like women in sixteen

40:56

ninety two would have been able to read

40:59

because they needed to read the scripture to

41:01

their family, but they wouldn't necessarily have been

41:03

able to write. So,

41:05

you know, years later, when Reverend Green takes over

41:08

the one of the afflicted girls, one of the girls who

41:10

accused people and got them killed,

41:13

wanted to join the church. And her

41:15

confession is in that churches

41:17

book that I talked about that saved from the fire,

41:19

but it's in the reverence handwriting, and then

41:21

she scrawls her signature underneath

41:24

it because she couldn't write. She could read, but

41:26

she couldn't write, And that was pretty common for women

41:28

back then. It was, you know, partly out of this,

41:30

you know, what was necessary for them, what wasn't

41:32

necessary. There's a little bit of control in there too. If

41:35

they can't read or if they can't

41:37

write, then they can't you know, get involved

41:39

in government and things like that. And so there

41:41

was a patriarchal you know, push

41:43

down on that as well. It is

41:46

really bizarre what happens in the Salem witch trials

41:48

because in effect, you have

41:51

not only women, but you have young women, girls

41:53

twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, who

41:55

begin to guide the process of the court

41:58

like their word is taken as law. And

42:00

these judges, these educated men, a

42:02

lot of them had gone to Harvard Divinity School,

42:05

like they were either just shy

42:07

of being ministers themselves or

42:09

could very well go out and get a job as a minister, who

42:12

were some of the most educated people of the day.

42:15

They were doing basically doing their bidding, you

42:17

know, And so these roles are reversed. There's

42:20

the shift there, and you have to wonder, like

42:22

you said, in a time when women

42:24

are told to shut up and be quiet, sit

42:26

down, and do what you're told, that they

42:29

have this opportunity all of a sudden, they

42:32

notice an opening right that they're being listened

42:34

to and things are being done based

42:36

on their stories. And you

42:39

have to think at least some of them sort

42:41

of leaned into that that I

42:43

have freedom right now, and I'm

42:45

going to use this freedom right now. And you

42:48

know, I haven't seen any study that

42:51

looks at the list of victims who are

42:53

accused by these people. But you know, I wonder

42:55

how many of them were sort of

42:57

like pro traditional women,

43:00

sort of women like you know, Rebecca Nurse

43:02

was seventy six, and maybe she was one of those

43:04

people that tow the line and say, look, I'm

43:07

a good, quiet Christian woman, I'm not going to

43:09

speak up. I

43:11

have to wonder if there's a little bit of a social battle

43:13

going on there. You know, we know that twenty

43:15

years before the Saling witch Trials, there was an event

43:17

in Grotten. One

43:20

of the ministers who pops up in the witch trials

43:22

is this guy named Samuel

43:24

Willard. I think twenty years before

43:26

he was in Groton, and he had a household servant

43:29

who was having fits and seizures

43:31

and was speaking about the devil

43:33

and the book like it's all these elements that

43:35

come right from the Sailing Witch Trials, but it was twenty

43:37

years before, and

43:40

I see a lot of

43:43

the servant speaking out

43:45

and having a voice for you

43:47

know, a few months. And

43:49

that's a pretty easy

43:51

way to view these things. I don't know if I'm reading into

43:53

it, if I'm applying my own perceptions

43:56

onto it, but they're certainly speaking out.

43:59

You know, another person we interviewed, Mary Beth

44:01

Norton, who's an author as well as

44:03

a professor. She makes

44:05

a great point about that consolidation

44:07

of power that you were talking about

44:10

erin where the same men who

44:12

are running the church are also the

44:15

judge, jury, and executioner essentially,

44:18

so like all four points essentially

44:20

are covered by the same old white men

44:23

who are the best writers and readers and

44:26

learned men of the time. And

44:28

it really does bring home that idea

44:30

of these young women fighting back

44:33

in any way they possibly could to be

44:36

seen and to be heard and to be known.

44:38

Right, Yeah, I mean, I think

44:40

the way she describes it as like, let's pretend

44:42

today that the presidents at his cabinet, Secretary

44:45

of Interior, Secretary of State, all

44:47

these this very small window of

44:49

people. They also all served as

44:51

the Supreme Court, and they served as

44:53

the legislative branch, and that was

44:55

the government, and that's what it was like

44:57

in sixteen ninety two. I

45:00

want to be careful with leading

45:03

people to believe that the

45:05

afflicted girls were a social

45:07

movement, because there

45:10

might have been part of that, but again, it's not

45:12

a neat and clean, black and white thing. Some

45:15

of the afflicted girls were literally refugees

45:17

from Maine who had come down having watched their entire

45:19

families killed and were afraid for

45:22

their life every single day. There was a lot

45:24

of PTSD in there. There were some

45:26

social things going on, some

45:28

of the better off families versus

45:31

competitive families, you know. So it's this big

45:33

mix. But I think it would be

45:35

wrong to say that there isn't some aspect

45:38

of this rebellion against the patriarchy

45:40

going in there. It's not the only thing, it's

45:42

not even the primary thing, but there's an

45:44

element of that in there for sure.

45:46

Well, Aaron, we were

45:49

coming to the end here, what

45:52

well? And which, by the way, Unobscured

45:55

season one about the Salem witch trials

45:57

is finishing. I believe when we're when

46:00

this episode is available, the last

46:03

major episode will be out.

46:05

So you can go and listen to all twelve episodes

46:08

right now of Unobscure. Yeah,

46:11

there are there are gonna be some other episodes

46:13

that come out though, right.

46:14

Yeah, So the season is

46:16

twelve episodes long, twelve episodes,

46:19

you know, the story from start to finish,

46:21

which, by the way, if like, if you want to get away from

46:24

the political arguments in your household,

46:26

grab your iPhone and your headphones, and

46:28

just go find a dark room and sit and binge listen

46:30

to Unobscured. It's a great way to do it. And

46:33

uh, because at least there's some hope at the end of the tunnel

46:36

on that one. And so when we get

46:38

back into the new year, we're gonna take those six

46:40

interviews we did with the six historians doctor

46:42

Emerson Baker, doctor Richard Trask, doctor

46:45

Jane Kaminski, Mary Beth Norton,

46:47

Marilyn k Roach, and Stacy Schiff.

46:49

Hey, I got them all, and we're gonna

46:52

we're gonna publish them weekly, one at

46:54

a time, all six of the interviews polished

46:56

up and put together nicely so that you

46:59

know, because Unobscured

47:01

is narrative storytelling. It's me telling a story for

47:03

forty five minutes, and then every now and then you'll hear like

47:06

doctor Baker jump in and talk for fifteen

47:09

seconds to get a point across for me. But we

47:11

never get all of his interview,

47:13

and it's it's a great interview. So this is

47:15

our way of sharing those big conversations

47:17

with people. And you can just sit in front of the fire

47:19

hose and drink and it's awesome. I

47:22

concur sounds like a plan.

47:24

So erin before we leave. What

47:27

is the one big lesson

47:29

that you have learned from making this

47:31

show that we should in turn learned.

47:35

That's wait, yeah, that's.

47:37

Right, teach us the secrets of the universe. Aaron, please

47:39

hurry.

47:39

Point of order, Matt Frederick.

47:43

Part of our exploration today was how

47:46

it was about how difficult.

47:47

And misleading it is. I know, thanks

47:50

absolute things.

47:51

I'm trying. I'm trying to get magic magic

47:53

out of this thing.

47:54

No, I hear you. No, Look I will

47:56

say that I'm ann echo something I heard somebody

47:58

say earlier. It's really really

48:02

important to remember that these were people that

48:05

we look back with three hundred and twenty six years

48:07

of distance and say crazy

48:10

like they shouldn't have done that. I would

48:13

totally do things different if I was in their shoes,

48:15

and you know what, you probably wouldn't

48:18

because of the way it was built, the

48:20

structure, the social, the religious,

48:22

the government, the wars

48:25

and the weather and all of those pieces. I

48:27

think we would all do the same thing. And I think it's important

48:30

for us in any historical situation, but especially

48:32

the same witch trials to look back at it and say, these

48:35

are just people. They have hopes and they have dreams,

48:37

they have fears, they have insecurities,

48:39

they have talents, they have desires to

48:41

be on stage, they have desires to slip

48:44

and hide under the radar, whatever it is

48:46

like, these are just normal people like us. And

48:49

if we forget that, that's when

48:51

we start to misunderstand history. And

48:54

that's one

48:56

of the biggest lessons that I can take away from this.

48:58

Oh man, that was so much more than I even

49:01

expected. Okay, thank you

49:03

Erin, You're very welcome, sir.

49:05

Yeah, sincerely, thank you so

49:07

much, and thank you listeners

49:09

for joining us today. As

49:12

we said earlier, can you

49:15

can, if need be escape holiday

49:17

time with your family or just

49:20

in interest of enjoying a fascinating

49:23

deep dive into a widely misunderstood

49:25

period of American history. You can

49:27

find Unobscured in its

49:29

entirety now wherever you find

49:32

your favorite shows and Aaron

49:35

mentioned earlier the website,

49:37

which is chock full of some

49:40

excellent additional resources,

49:42

including for our more

49:44

visually driven audience members, maps

49:47

and diagrams of the surrounding area

49:49

to really put you in the place.

49:51

Yeah, as well as books if you want to continue

49:54

your reading and learning.

49:55

So once again that

49:57

is unobscured season

49:59

one. I'm

50:01

not going to try to finagle

50:04

any juicy tidbits

50:06

about season two out just

50:08

yet, so you'll have to take

50:10

our word to stay tuned, look

50:13

forward. Let us know what you think

50:15

about Utam Steward. Let us know

50:18

which historical lessons you feel

50:21

can be drawn from this series

50:23

of events in sixteen ninety

50:25

two.

50:26

Again, Aaron, any last

50:28

words before we.

50:29

Leave, Have fun with the show, dig

50:31

in, listen and enjoy and learn something.

50:34

And thanks for having me on.

50:35

Guys, thank you so much for being with us.

50:37

All right, glad to do it if you don't want

50:39

it. And that's the end of this classic episode.

50:42

If you have any thoughts or questions

50:44

about this episode, you can get

50:47

into contact with us in a number of different

50:49

ways. One of the best is to give us a call.

50:51

Our number is one eight three three

50:53

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50:56

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50:58

old fashioned email.

50:59

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