July Bonus Episode: Digging Into Exhumed with Aaron Mahnke

- Hey, Weirdos, I'm Ash. - I'm Melina. - And I'm Aaron. - And this is Morbid. (gentle piano music) A very special Morbid. - A special Morbid, welcome, Aaron. - Thank you for having me. - Thank you for coming. Weirdos, today we have Aaron Manky on the show. You probably know him from his award winning podcast, lore, or perhaps the author of some of your favorite titles. And we have exciting news. Your latest book, Exumed, comes out August 4th. - It does. - So soon. - So soon, too soon. - Congratulations. (laughing) - Thank you, thank you. - You're welcome. - This book is amazing. I got an early copy of it. I feel very fortunate. - Yeah, you're on, you're on the back. - Oh, that's so cool. I didn't even know that. - Right, right at the top. - Oh, look at that. - Look at that. - You're on there with Amy Bruney. - Oh, yeah. - From Kindred Spirits and Ghost Hunters and Josh Gates. - Oh, so cool. - So good company. - Good company. - I feel good about that. - The very top. - Oh, look at me. - Look at you big Brad. - I love that. - It's an amazing book. It is like lore on crack. - Yeah. - Like it is so much information that is so interesting. It had like my husband started reading it and he was like, this is amazing. - It's stolen at one point. - Yeah, it's phenomenal. - Thank you. - So good. - So years ago, a couple of years after I started lore, I created a podcast called Unimscared. And the idea was, we spent 30 minutes on a topic on lore, but what if we spend a whole season on the topic? And the first season is on the Salem Witch Trials, which still people listen to like every year that we get questions about it all the time. It was 10 episodes, you know, like 45 minutes a piece. And there was so much fun in spending just all that time exploring a big topic. Like you can really take your time and dig deep, build the house, right? You can take your time. And we did four seasons of that. And then I heard canceled it, but exhumed in some ways as sort of like a fifth season. - Yeah. - No, it is 20 lore episodes. - It feels like that. - It is, yeah. - That's why I loved it. It was like very homey. I was like, ooh, I'm ready for this. - Yeah. - It's cozy. It's like a good read for like a thunderstorm, you know? That's the vibe of it. - Yeah, yeah. And I like to approach my writing style for things like this as a little bit more lighthearted. And I don't want people to get bogged down in technicality. - Right. - While at the same time, there is some teaching that has to go on in the book and we can explore that. - Yeah. And you know, when you say that, that is what I noticed immediately about the writing style. Is it doesn't bog you down with all these like technical things, but it's giving you the information, but I felt like you were talking to me about it. - Yeah. - Could you have like a little side where you'll be like, right? Like you know what I mean? - Yeah, yeah. - It felt very comfortable to read. - And there's a few dad jokes. - Yeah, I apologize. - I love it. - You got to throw in the dad jokes where you can. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I expect it. - It's my right. - Yeah, absolutely it is. (laughing) - So, in exhumed, you examine the mercy brown case. - Yes. - But that's not all. It also really examines like the attitudes about life and death that led up to and continued after that case. You've been asking on lower the question, why for a long time, what was the thing that made you want to explore it? - So deeply here. - Well, mercy brown was the very first episode of lore. So, we're talking March of 2015. - Yeah. - You know, almost 12 years ago. - Yeah, yeah. - I probably wrote it about 12 years ago this coming November. - Oh wow. - And at the time, it was a cool, creepy story. - Yeah. - It's really all that it was. - And it's local. - Hey folks, if you ever heard of this before, let me tell you about this, right? And you know, and I built that episode, it was only like 12 minutes long. 'Cause I was still trying to get my feet on the ground. Like, what is this format even supposed to be? So there's a little bit of vampire and premature bear, there's some safety coffin stuff in there. But it's mostly about mercy brown. And when I wrote and told the story in the podcast, I thought, folks just need to hear this wild story. But then what happened is, I kept making lore. And as the years went by, I would write and publish another episode and think, you know, that kind of, this sounds weird. It kind of smells like the mercy brown story. There's some aspect of it that, it's almost like, it's from the same family. I wonder why I feel like those are connected. And I like puzzles. I like, I like riddles. I grew up playing games like Mist in the 90s. - Mist, holy shit. - Oh my gosh. So it's like, you have to pay attention to sounds you heard in what you've seen and then you're using them as a code somewhere else. And I was just filing away certain episodes as I went through making lore. And I thought, oh, this, this really does feel like it might have some bearing on the mercy brown story. And I just kind of gathered those pieces together. And at some point a couple of years ago, I realized, this is a book. I need to write about it, you know. - Oh yeah. - And so the idea was, yes, we've got the mercy brown story. And I can tell it, actually, I tell it in the very beginning, kind of in the format that people typically bump into it with errors and all. And then at the end of the book, the last 20% is really covering mercy story. But that first 80% of the book is all those other stories that I bumped into along the way that help explain the why. Like you said, why was it thought that what they did to her post death was an okay acceptable thing to do? - How was that a very old question? - Yeah, that was a question. - That was a question. Why did they think, okay, let's do that, you know. - Right, it really works too in the book because like you said, it begins with her and ends with her. And when you eat up all that in the middle, when you get back to her, you're like, oh, okay. Like it does, but you're like, oh, shit, okay. This doesn't seem as crazy when you put it in the context of all this other stuff. - Exactly. - You know, once you talk about talking blood, it's like, oh yeah, that's not weird anymore. - We want to talk about talking. There's a lot of blood in the book actually. - There is a lot of blood. - I'm a metaphor guy and I tend to tell people that when we talk about context, what you're talking about is like 3D glasses at the movie theater. You know, if you watch the movie without them, it's going to look a little weird. You're not going to get the whole picture. - No, that is a good way of it. - But when you put the 3D glasses on, all of a sudden, like things are moving at you and you really get a sense for what's going on. - Yeah. - That's what context does to a story. - Yeah, absolutely. - Whether it's fiction or it's a historical exploration like this. - Yeah. - So for me, I had to equip people so that, yes, by the time they get to that last section of the book, oh my gosh, I have all the tools on my backpack that I need to, you know, go through this mission. I can do this now. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It lets you appreciate the story more. - It does. - Because you can like, weirdly sympathize with other people in the story. - And that was one of the surprising things about it as I wrote it. I realized, oh, they aren't like dumb barbaric people. - Yeah. - Right? - Because it could come off that way at first when you hear the story. - Absolutely. - Villagers cut open a dead woman's chest and, you know, burn her heart. - Yeah, what the hell is that about? - Right, what is that? It sounds barbaric, but when you actually dig into it, it's really human. - Yeah, absolutely, it is, which is so scary. - Yeah. - No, speaking of that, the monsters and things that people believe in often tell us a lot more about people than they do about the monsters. What do you think vampires in the panic around them reveals about the fears of people in 19th century New England? - Well, they were dealing with a lot of disease. You know, at the time, tuberculosis was, it had been a thing for a very long time, but there's just something about, you know, late 19th century that TB was really just having fun. - Everything was just gross. - Living its life were just did, right? - Yeah. - And so there's this idea that there's this invisible thing that's robbing their loved ones from them, robbing their livelihood in some ways. It's funny, like just a few years before, maybe it was a few months before Mercy's mother died in the early 1880s, they had actually figured out what was causing TB, scientifically, but that was in Europe. And it was, you know, it was like a world away from this farming village outside of Newport in Rhode Island. - They didn't get the CNN update. - They did not get that. - Yeah, today. There was no alert on their phone to follow. - No, BBC wasn't just coming up. - Yeah, so there's like this, it's like a, it's like having a phone call with somebody and there's like a massive delay. And they just, they just didn't know. Even by the time Mercy passed away, and in early 1892, they really weren't putting the pieces together. And at the same time, even if you explain it to them, what they were being told is there's this invisible thing that is making you sick. And at the end of the day, but it also sounds a lot like what they thought of vampire was doing. - Absolutely. - Or what is the supernatural force. It is an invisible thing that is sucking the life out of them, just in a different way. - Yeah, a little more scientific, you know? - Yeah, yeah. - That makes more sense. I feel like a vampire is way more fun. - Yeah. - So it's a little more fun. - I'd rather go at the hands of a vampire than TB, you know? - I would have fallen victim to this whole vampire panic. Just, I think I would have wanted for the fun of it. Like I think I would have chose to. - Yeah. - Even if I was like, yeah, it's probably for the theater. - Yeah, just for the theater of all. - Like let's go. - The historian in the writer of me wants to say that like, she was the end, she was the end of like a century of stories like hers. Back to the 1790s was Sarah Tillingast. Also in Exeter Rhode Island, by the way. - Oh, really? - Lookended by this little village in Rhode Island. And then in between, they were all over Vermont, New Hampshire, everywhere. And we call it the New England Vampire Panic, but there's not a lot of evidence that people were out there at that moment saying so and so's a vampire. What they were saying was, one of the people in the grave who died before the sick person who is currently dying is somehow so. sucking the life out of people. - What is that? - And we know that the word vampire has a history of appearing on the public record, but we also almost immediately see it being used as a metaphor, and I talk about this in the book. You'll see it in newspapers being used as a metaphor for politicians, for, I was at Oliver Wendell Homes used the word vampire to talk about women, which was the most sexist thing. - It's a rude. - I hope his wife gave him help for that, but it was being used as a metaphor, and you can't have a metaphor unless people understand what the word is supposed to mean. - Yeah. - So there's the assumption that it was floating around outside of Prince long before. But there's really no record of, it was kind of imprinted on Mercy's story by an outside newspaper when you first see the word vampire show up. - Oh, okay. - To them, it was just sort of like, there's something supernatural going on. - Yeah, there's something sucking the life out of people. - Exactly. - Like a blood sucker. - Yeah. - Or a true blood of Fanger. - A Fanger. - Yeah. - Fanger. - So just in the book as a whole, was there a chapter that like challenged a belief you held previously? Just kind of like rocked your worlds a little bit when you researched it? - I, that's a good question. The hardest chapter to write was probably the one that was all the philosophy about the human soul. - Hmm. - I loved that. - That must be fast. - Yeah. - It did challenge a lot of like preconceived notions I had going in, which was, oh, they always assumed it was in the heart, you know, that kind of thing. And they did cut out mercy's heart. So I'm gonna find that. But what I found instead was that it was just everywhere. - I was gonna say so much more complicated. - Yeah, different cultures had different ideas. - Yeah. - Same cultures with your multiple ideas. Some cultures there were multiple souls. Like in Egypt, it was, you know, at the very minimum nine different souls that had different functions. - That's wild. - Yeah. - So that one really, it was hard to write too just from a philosophical standpoint. - Yeah. - Like I can explain creepy history and some science, but we get into the realm of the soul and what is the difference between each of these nine? - It's a little murky. - Yeah, yeah, it takes a lot out of you. - Yeah. - We always say that. - Because several souls. - I have a lot of souls. - Okay, nice. - So she'll flip into an accent. Sometimes I'll really like, was that a soul? - It just happened. - Like it happened today. - Yeah. - So just know it's a soul, you know? - So it's a no, she's got a few. (laughing) - Yeah. - I have to say one of my favorite chapters in the book was Corpse Medicine because we covered that pretty recently. - Yeah. - And I fell down so many different rabbit holes with that. - That's so fascinating. - What was the most absurd medical practice that you came across in your research? - Absurd. Well, so-- - It's all pretty absurd. - Yeah, it's all pretty absurd. I mean, we can get into blood later. But I think about the English king, was it Charles II who had the drops that he carried with the king's drops. - Yeah. - And the first hand accounts of people who had consumed them and what it was doing to them. And then you realize that the two main ingredients were like high-proof alcohol in opium. - They were just fucked. - They were wasted. - And every time he felt like a twinge of pain, he was going through like a looble drop. - Yeah. - Just give me the whole bottle. - Oh, I'm just drinking about a skulls too. - So no wonder it worked, right? - Yeah. - It worked in air quotes. - For a little while. - Yes, exactly. You throw enough opium in anything. - Yeah. - It's going to numb out. - It's going to work. - That I found you over for some time. In the end, I think he ended up dying of seizures, right? - Maybe. - I think he did. - I don't remember. - Yeah. - After long-term use of-- - I would assume. - He was also a hobby alchemist. And at that time, alchemists in general tended to work a lot with mercury and like boiling it and creating vapors from it. And so they just consumed so many toxic chemicals. - I mean, Isaac Newton was gray and I think in his 30s. - Wow. - When some of his journals went up for auction back in the 90s, it was in the 90s or the 80s, they opened up one of the books and found strands of his hair in there. And they had him tested. And they were, their mercury levels were off the charts. - Oh my god. - It's crazy. - It's no wonder he couldn't eat. He had digestive issues and died young. - Oh my god, mercury will mess you up. - Yeah. - We just talked about that at our live show. It's called the Mad Hatter, Mad Hatter. That pattern was being poisoned by the vapors from mercury. - Yeah, exactly. - It's crazy. - That's nuts. - Yeah. - I think that's what happened in that podcast, Estoun. Do you remember that podcast? - I do remember that. - I haven't finished that. - Estoun. - I don't know. - It was some kind of poisoning like that. That made some shit go down. - I'm actually kind of surprised that I haven't got mercury poisoning because I love sushi. So. - I'm actually surprised you. - Yeah. - I know. - You love the sea, fingers crossed. - Yeah. - But I don't. - It's one of those things that we look back now and we say. - Yeah. - My gosh. What were you thinking? - Yeah. - It's like a liquid metal. - I know. - Did you notice people dying from that? - Yeah. - Right. - But it's like radio, I do. - Like, in 100 years are people going to be looking at us and saying, "Khemotherapy, are you kidding me?" - Probably. - Like, you poison the body to the point of death to kill cancer? - Yeah. - What were you thinking? - Yeah. - But for seven, what's that time in your pocket, next to your vital organ, like putting it in your bed, next to your face? - Yeah. - But they didn't know better. - Yeah. - You know, they just didn't know any better. - Yeah. - The worst part is we kind of know better. - I know. - We do know a little. - Yeah. - But more will come out, I'm sure. - Yeah. - Sure. - They'll find out how stupid we are later. It's just, it's the next generations that. - Yeah. - It'll be, they'll do with it. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Now, another chapter that I really loved was the hand of glory. - Oh my gosh. - I love the hand of glory. - For people who love to accessorize. - It does. - Like this is your chapter. - And I do. - I do. - And I do. - I do. - I do love it. Now for people who are listening who don't, are like a hand of glory, can you give us a little synopsis of what it is? - Oh, definitely. So a hand of glory was a tool of folklore. Now there's a couple different purposes with, or uses with it. But it starts with literally a human hand. Okay. Often the hand that was cut off of a thief. - Yeah. - Because it's an example of what's known as sympathetic magic. And sympathetic magic is built on the concept of like is connected to like. There's also a branch of sympathetic magic that's like things that have touched something, have passed on some of their power to things. But a good example would be, most people have heard someone say eat walnuts, they're good for your brain. And then they'll point to an open walnut and say, look, it even looks like a brain. - It looks like a brain. A lot of herbs, if you go look through the vitamin section at a CVS or something, you'll see things like bloodwort and like a word with wort after it. And it's often named after a body part. And it's because somebody looked at the plant and said, wow, that looks a lot like the human body part. Let's name it after that. And I bet it's useful in treating that. Right? So that's sympathetic magic. It's this idea that God wrote the purpose of a thing into its physical appearance. So within this realm, we have the hand of glory. And the hand of glory was a hand, a human hand that was often dried, pickled, you know, they drain it of blood. They set it out in the sun. There's a whole recipe in the book, you know, quoting from somebody from a few hundred years ago. You know, hang it on your door for a while and, you know, the end result. - Like a full bowl of flowers. - Yes. It's on the door knocker, you know. - You can use it in the meantime. - And what you end up with is essentially a mummified hand. And that either wicks are attached to the fingers. - I love that. - So that you can burn the fingers as candles or the hand is dipped in wax and you simply like the fingers on fire themselves. Like, either way, because of its association with theft, you had a couple of uses for hand of glory. One is that you could, as a thief, carry one with you. And if you had it when you broke into somebody's house, no one would be able to wake up from their sleep. It was like cart blotch freedom to do whatever you wanted in your house, right? So it was like, you imagine somebody with it on a chain hanging off the hip like, I am all set. - Like a rabbit from God. - Yeah. I've got this dead hand with me. - Yeah. - But then you could go wrong. On the other side of it, also connected to theft, people who had a home and wanted to protect themselves could have a hand of glory in the house and that was supposed to ward off evil. - Like a talisman. - If there was a hand hanging off your door, I'm not hitting you up, I'm not gonna break it up. - Absolutely. - That would make sense. They mean business. - Yeah. - So they're not messing around. - I take it makes sense. - Yeah. - I love it. - It's delightful to think that people had this hanging around. - Mounted human hand with some half-burned fingers on them. - I love that. I'm sorry. I have to go here. The smell. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That was not a Yankee candle, right? - No. - That's not what I look for in a candle. - Yeah. - Everything smelled. - That's true. - So maybe I think it wouldn't even. - Oh yeah. - Like you'd be like, that's just another smell. - Yeah. - Maybe the wax like slightly obscured the dust. - Maybe. - Right. - Yeah. - You never know. - They all smelled. - Oh yeah. - That is for sure. - It might have improved things. - Honestly. - Exactly. - So at least you're getting like a burning smell. - You know of something. - The cancel out. - Everything else. - Yeah. - The poop in the streets. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You know. And you know, every version of a hand of glory, I feel like they have like a slightly different one historical account of like a recipe or a hand of glory situation. That makes you be like, that's enough research for today. I think I'm going to check out. - Through the magic of editing, I am going to look really quickly here. - It looks like I got this. - Yeah. - You just cut out the next 10 minutes of me flipping through. I mean, so chapter six is called overly sympathetic. And there's a lovely drawing of a hand of glory. of a little hand of glory, and you know, I start out with that. - What if I'm talking about like why hands? Because hands were like this really symbolic thing in a lot of belief systems. - I get that too. - Other examples. - You know, like hands, I feel like are individual. - I'm a Gemini. So Gemini rules the hands. - Oh, I didn't know that. - Yeah. - I always look at people's hands. - I know. You are fastening by a hand person. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Maybe it's not in the italic that I want it to be in, but there is a really good recipe in here that I just, I was struck by the deliberate nature of it. I mean, it's like Betty Crocker's step-by-step. Here are very specific things that you need to do. - Don't measure with your heart. Like you have three quarters of a cup of blood, please. - And it isn't like vanilla extract. - It's really eye-opening. So I highly recommend getting that chapter. - Yeah, get into that chapter. 'Cause yeah, chapter six, everybody. Hands of glory forever. And what's crazy about hands of glory, like we were just talking about, is that people really believe to this worked. Like, really believed. - Absolutely. - Like, step fast. - Why do you think that people put so much faith into that specifically? - So, if all you need is a handful of moments where it seems to have worked for people to say, see. - Point two. - So like, you know, one of the things that I have in the book is an article from an Irish newspaper from mid-1800s where they're, it's like the police blotter in your local newspaper, right? It's so-and-so had I break in at her house. But they attempted to use a hand of glory and, you know, they did X, Y, and Z and the thieves were thwarted. And, you know, you throw a couple of reports like that in a newspaper and people start to believe that, yeah, this is, this is gonna work. - Yeah. - Yeah. I mean, it's like confirmation bias, right? - Yeah, it's actually one of those, yeah. - But it's also gross enough that very few people actually win about making them. - That's true. - So there aren't, there's like a pub in England that used to have one on display. - Oh, cool. - They claimed to have found it in a wall, but then it was stolen, irony of ironies. That's how it was meant to get stuffed, was stolen a couple decades ago and they've never, never got it back. - Oh, bring it back. - There's also a museum that has one, but there aren't a lot of them extant. So it's, we also look at that and say, is it just a lot of story with very few examples? - That's true. - People believe that it would work. - I mean, yeah, would you have fallen for it back then? Do you think? - The back then, probably. It made sense. - It was ready to just, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. - It's a hand of a thief. - That's the thing. It's so-- - I don't believe it now. - Yeah. - Like you said, you put that on your door. I'm not coming over. - No. - It kind of makes sense. - Yeah. - I don't know if I believe it for the thief. I believe it to thwart again. - To thwart. - Yes, that's right. - I think like it. - Also, the weird thing where you have to douse the flame, like, there's a story in there about, and it's a, it's kind of legend, it's kind of fact, but of a pub that was being robbed by a traveler who came, set up the hand of glory, that everybody in the house who was asleep, state of sleep, but the housemaid who had been instructed to stay awake and take care of this traveler's needs was still awake, so she didn't go to sleep. And she was able to run to the kitchen and get milk and extinguish the flames. 'Cause that's what you do. You use milk to extinguish the flames. - Obviously, it's a place to use milk. - So hand of glory is lactose intolerant. - Okay. - There you go, Darian, tolerance, there we go. - Yeah. - Hey, let's go. A lot of us are. - Yeah, I mean, you know, that's when the club-- - It would work, it wouldn't work in my house. - Now, you have researched for lore as well, some really crazy cursed objects. Where do you think the hand of glory rinks among those objects? - It's definitely on the far side of like the gross scale. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. There are other, I guess, more neat and clean cursed objects, sort of like the car that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in, you know, was said to be very cursed and James Dean's car, things like that. But as far as like gross cursed objects, yeah, it's-- - That's high up there. - It's right up there. - I would say so. - Yeah. - It's a tough one to make. - Yeah. - Like, you gotta get a curse that you can take their hand. - Yeah. - So that's a lot. - Yeah. - You gotta commit to it. - Yeah. - I made a lot of hand puns in that chapter and I just want to-- - Love it. - Preemptively apologize to anybody. - They hit every chapter. - Don't even apologize. (laughing) - It's what you have to do. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Never for dad jokes and never for puns. Do you apologize here? - Sometimes they just resent themselves and you have to-- - You gotta take 'em. - You have to take 'em. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Okay, you can't let 'em pass by. - You're speaking Arlington. - You really are. - We love it. - Yeah, that would be too. - I feel like we've kind of foreshadowed this topic a bit. Talking blood. I love this concept. - Yeah. - I never heard of it before the book. So tell me, do you think that people genuinely expected the blood to reveal the killer? Or do you think it was more about putting this like psychological pressure on somebody who might confess? - It's hard to say a couple centuries later, because I don't want to spoil stuff, but there were some fairly recent examples, non-European examples of people thinking that the blood of a murder victim would cry out who their killer was. - I'm very obsessed with that. - I do really wish that the social aspect was understood and known because the idea, so just to quickly summarize this, there was this idea that someone who was murdered, the blood in their body would react to the touch of the killer. So people have heard the phrase, "Trial by Fire." There's a whole different group of trials. There's "Trial by Water," you know, the whole witch thing where they duck the witch on the water, does she float, does she not? That's a trial. There's a whole series of trials and they're usually founded in some aspect of Christian theology. And "Trial by Blood" is also known as "Cruentation," and it just has to do with this idea that you find a body. Somebody got stabbed and let's bring all the suspects in and they'll touch the body and something will happen if the killer touches the body. The wound that has been closed up will bleed fresh blood or the flesh will bruise. And it won't do that for innocent people. That was the belief. God was going to speak a truth through some physical reaction. They really did believe it. Like they really did believe that there was a religious aspect of this and that it was happening. But I, there's really a part of me that I want there to have been like a manipulation going on as well of, you know, the story that I told in the book of one "Cruentation" had the entire village processed through the hall first. Before the guy that everybody suspected, he was the last, he had a stand-in line. He had to doubt, just wait it out. And I want to believe that that was on purpose. Yeah. It has to be, right? It's a force and confession of, you know, like, I won't do it, guys. I won't do it. I'll just confess right now. Yeah, right, you know. Or just watch him like physically melt down as he's about to. It's like, yes. Innocent people would be like, all right, well, it's not going to happen. I didn't kill this person. Yeah, yeah. I guess we'll just get this over with. What a weird practice. But there were instances where it was used and they used the results from these orientation tests in court. Right, not really. Like, by the way, you're going to the gallows now, because you touched a body that had a sewn-up wound and blood came out. And a little trickle of blood. So they clearly did this. Yeah, clearly it was you. Wow. That's like spectral evidence in the sense exactly. Exactly, exactly. It's like, that's wild that that was just used legally. Right. But they also used to think, like, in some places or times, they used to think that, like, the last image of someone's killer would be captured in someone's eyes. And I loved that. That is, right? Next level. Did they do all sorts of photography experiments trying to catch you that? Yeah, they would try to see. Oh, that would be a great episode. I know it's not really an episode. Yeah, it's super interesting. No, I wonder-- I mean, you answered this question in your book. But why do you think blood specifically became the thing that people thought would reveal this truth? So there were moments in writing the book where I thought, why am I talking about this topic? For reference, I sat down with my research assistant, Sam, and I said, here is where I think we need to go. Let's build an outline. You'll start researching. We'll find places where maybe we're a little off and we need to adjust or we'll expand that kind of thing. And every now and then, I had this thought of, is this really important to Mercy Brown? But what you had to understand about Mercy Brown's story was that they were looking for signs of fresh blood in the corpse of the supposed, you know, call them vampire, call them a, you know, whatever. Well, why were they looking for signs of fresh blood? Well, blood meant something to people in previous eras. And it's because they believed that the blood-- the human blood was like the connective tissue that held the soul and the body together. And that gave blood a very special power. It was the glue that you had a layer of the human body and you had the soul, the material and the spiritual. But there had to be something that glued them together. And what was it? This is why epilepsy comes up a lot in the drinking of blood in the book. Because for like 2,000 years, people believed that what was happening in an epileptic's body when they were having a seizure was that they were somehow-- they weren't dying. They weren't dead. They were like one scholar called it quasi-dead. Come on, I'm dead. Oh, no, not dead yet. All right, you know, they were almost dead. Because what was happening physiologically, their soul and their body were separating. And they needed an infusion of fresh blood to like re-glue them back together again. So blood became this really important thing in a lot of cultures for a lot of reasons. But it was because there was some vitality in the blood. Right. And that's where, like, you have a dead body, but the blood is still-- there was an assumption that when you died, There was a linear process at life, you have runny blood. And as your body decomposes that like congeals, it becomes thicker and thicker until it's just a dry dust in your veins. But in reality, what happens is you decompose and it gets a little thicker. And then you decompose some more and it actually thins up more. They went in with this false pretence of, well, if it's runny, it's got a lot of life left in it. And so that life could communicate things to us. God can use that and point to a killer. It's so fascinating. Isn't it? That's so crazy. I understand why they believed it to some extent, you know? Yeah. You can see where it comes from. Right. Like, it's not crazy. No. But it is crazy. It's not that they sat down and said, what is the most that shit idea I deal with? Right. They worked through it with logic. They did. They were doing the best they could with what they had to do. The tools they had. They had no way of knowing that it, it goes from runny to congealed and thick to runny again. And how would it, so when they see it go runny again, they're like, well, something made that happen. Exactly. Because that's not natural. There must be life left in there. Yes. Yeah. Like, that's wild. It is. You also see this in a lot of early vampire folklore in like Serbian culture where there are people who are deemed just more likely to become a revenant or a vampire after death. And alcoholics, people who are irreligious, it's essentially like you run through the list and you realize it's all the social outcasts, it's all the people who did bad things. Yep. Well, it turns out that people who do bad things in society two, three, four hundred years ago, they don't get buried in the same way. They don't get put in a nice shroud in the coffin and bury the ground at a good depth. They're usually thrown in with just a piece of cloth around them. What happens is that makes the decomposition process very different. Maybe they open the grave by mistake or they go to check on something and they find that the body has done something very unusual. Well, of course, it has. Yeah. It's totally different from that. For this moment, to have this unusual state. So they. They're them. Exactly. Yeah. Confirmation bias, essentially. Right. Yeah. They built the system that created the bodies that made them believe in vampires by labeling. It's just. Yeah. It was all set up. They're set up to fail. I was just going to say they're working again for themselves. They're set up to be vampires. Right. You know? Right. Now, moving just like parallel here to talk a little bit about lore. I love lore. Thank you. This podcast I ever listened to. And I have to thank Deb Deb or his friends who introduced me. She wanted to be here today because she was like, "I want to meet her and thank you. You could get childcare." Thank you, Deb Deb. See you soon. She'll die. No, don't die. Don't die. I'll say it less. I'll say it less. Yeah. But you've been doing lore for over a decade now. How long has it been? It'll be 12 years in March. That's crazy. So I have to ask, what made you start the show to begin with? I know you started with Mercy Brown. What made you want to go further? I wanted to be a novelist. I wanted to write, you know, like Stephen King type, you know, spooky stories, right? I feel like you could. Yeah. And he dips a lot into folklore, you know, like pet cemetery. Yeah. He's dipping into a gonquin mythology and stories. And I self-published a handful of thrillers like that. And what I tried to do is I would go look for good New England things like that and weave them in. And when you weave the man it kind of grounds it like it, people say I've heard of that and it makes the rest of the story more believable. But I would find more than I needed. And so I had this like overflowing folder of stories of like real life things that had happened. And I thought I can't use all of these. But I was also self-published and, you know, you'd write a book and sell five copies as little disheartening. So if I could increase my email list because, okay, we have to remember this is like before the podcast wave. Yeah. So it was back when you were at the very beginning. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, MailChimp was barely a thing. Yeah. I don't remember how I was doing my email list at the time, but I thought I like 60 people on my email list. And if I could increase that, then I've increased how many people might buy a book. Yeah. So I thought I'll give them something for free that will be of value and they'll sign up for my email list in return and I'll sell enough books to buy a cup of coffee. They go. When, when. When, when. That's all we want. So I wrote one. It was the Mercy Brown story. And then I wrote another. I think I wrote four of them and I looked at the PDF. At some point I realized, holy crap, this is 10,000 words. And at the time, cell phones were like half the size that they are today. Oh, yeah. You know, they were tiny. And I thought I'm going to be giving people a PDF to pinch and zoom and read on this tiny little smartphone. It's just not worth it. And so I gave up. I'll just tell it to him. Yeah. I gave up. I gave up the icon for this page's file over to my trash can as I got to my go. And I thought, well, wait a minute, I listened to audiobooks. Maybe it would be more convenient if people listened to me tell them these stories. So my next plan was to record the stories, put them in a zip folder and give them a link to download it. Oh my gosh. Just like, oh my gosh. From Gum Road or someplace like that. And that was my grand plan. And the audio was so horrible. Oh. So horrible. I was in a, the attic of my old house was horsehair plaster, hardwood floors, Ikea furniture. Yep. Everything was reflective. Oh, it was pretty much our first house. I was at the laundry room. Yeah, in a laundry room. In a laundry room. Yeah. In the attic. In metal appliances, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Things just digging off of everywhere. I might have been actually reading the script off of a glass fronted monitor. Yeah. Like, pick all the things you could do along. I did them wrong. Yep. And so I had to put some music underneath it. That's one of the things I love about lore. It's so cool. It's the echo and take care of that tinniness. And then I sent a couple of them to a buddy of mine and I said, what do you think? And here's my plan, zippling, you know, they're going to download the file and they can listen to it however they want. And he said, don't do it. Don't do it. This is a podcast. Can you go what? What's that? No, a podcast is like a couple of guys sitting around talking about technology. Yeah. That's what it was. That's what it was. A really long time. Yeah. That's a highly technical thing, hosting your file broadcast in an RSS feeds signal on the internet. Yeah, you weren't just doing it from your, you guys don't realize what goes into it. Yeah. That's a little bit easier now. It is easier. A bit. Yeah. Maybe too easy. I know. That's why there's 40 million. Absolutely. There needs to be a tax on a microphone. I think that's what I think. So yeah. Yeah. But I took him at his word. I said, okay. You know, I think he mentioned serial of the time, he's like, no, there's a serial they're like playing with storytelling within podcasting. Yeah. This is storytelling. You should do it. I'll try it. So at the time, I was a graphic designer. I did branding for companies. So making the podcast artwork was no problem. I went to Squarespace because I had already been here and ads for them elsewhere and set up a website and figured out how to work through iTunes at the time, not Apple Podcasts, but iTunes. Oh, yeah. When I get it all broadcast, I hosted it on a libson. There's like five bucks a month, unlimited downloads. Oh, my God. Yeah. It was great. What was our first one? Was it blueberry? Blueberry, yeah. Blueberry, yeah. I remember them. Yep. Yep. And then I launched it. And that day, that first day, I had nine downloads. Oh my God. That's a big deal. Day one. Day one. Day one. Day one. Yeah. I might have been one or two of them, but whatever. Whatever. Yeah. There was still a few more. Yeah. I love people who've said, oh, I was, I listened to you since day one. Yeah. I love the, I love the idea of it. I don't know. You couldn't have all done it. You're like, actually only seven of them. Yeah. That's it. I'm one of the nine. Yeah. I need to know the seven people need to stand up right now. Yeah. I need to see. Yeah. So, um, yeah. That was, that was it. I love that. March 15th. What a cool way to start it, though. That's a great way to start. And thanks to the friend that made you do that. Seriously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the music. It's Chad Lawson, right? Chad's amazing. Who does the score? Yeah. The scoring. It is, if you're not listening to Laura, I don't know what you're doing right now because it is the coziest, like my kids, like there's certain episodes that I'll let them listen to if they're not too spooky. Yeah. And they love it. It's like very soothing in the car. Like the music. Yeah. Your voice is very soothing. There's an ASMR quality, too. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And is there a topic that you've covered on Laura that you, it was like a rabbit hole that you just couldn't get out of and like constantly find yourself going back to it? Well, yeah. I mean, maybe not to my listeners delight. I, if I've gotten any compliments, sorry, any criticism over the last decade. It has been, why so many witch stories? Oh. That will never be criticism here. Because there are a ton of them. And they're fascinating. They're fascinating. They are. They're often like about a single community. And they have their personal community personality as being projected onto the events that happen. They, they're always fascinating. And every time a new one comes up, it has a new spin. And they're always different. They're always different. We're telling the story again. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And we've told quite a few witch trials. Yeah. And they're all different and all horrible. Yeah. But fascinating. And I think the Salem witch trials. I'm like, I don't know how anybody gets sick of learning of that. They're hearing about that. No. I learned something new about that all the time. Yeah. I think that is one of the most fascinating things. It is. Yeah, and one of my personality traits is I like to tell people they're wrong about something they thought they knew. Yeah, I don't I take great delight in that. You guys have that in common. You guys absolutely have that And I'd like to say that it's because I want to be a teacher. Yeah, that's a nice way. I'm saying. Yeah, I just I like to say That's not right. What's your star sign? What's that? Uh, Leo. Okay. There. There's that fit I don't know anything about that. Yeah, okay. I think so and not in a bad way. Yeah, so like with the Salem, which trials You'll hear people say oh, it was just moldy bread. Yeah. Why are you spending so much time talking about it was moldy bread? No, not so much more to it. And moldy bread was a theory for like one month in I think 1976 Somebody put it forward in a journal and a month later it was retracted. Yes, that was it. Yeah, but it's a simple answer Right, and simple answers have the longest legs they go the distance. It pleased the master's Yeah, which is why so much of what happens in exhumed Stuck around for salon because in a way they were very simple answers. Yeah, right. They're easier to digest Yeah, people can be like oh moldy bread. That's why that exactly. Yeah, we'll do that. Yeah, or it was a property dispute Yeah, it wasn't a property just wasn't it. There's so much more that goes in that's also horrifying if it was Damn. Yeah, yeah, that honestly those are also probably my rabbit holes and probably yours too Yeah, this is a way trial somewhere. I I can't you can't look away. I have to know what's going on I love a witch trial and I love a scandal. I love a good scandal. You do love it Yeah, like an old money scandal. Those are the rabbit holes. I fall down. Yeah, so dig into there's an Italian witch trial I want to say 1500s in a town called triory TRI I ORI We had that suggested. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that one's it's just so different Okay, it's like a very different aspect of your being culture and I think it has a little bit of the drama of life You know a nasty priest who is you know, there's abuse and yeah a lot of You know patriarchy in full display. That's go alley. Yeah, let's go. I love a messed up priest. So yeah, I do love a messed up priest. Yeah That's why I love midnight mass. Yeah, I get to see that. I will say watch that the newest knives out Wake up dead man. Oh, I haven't seen the newest one. It's really good. It's so good. Okay. Yeah, I'll be right up your alley Yeah, you need to watch midnight mask. Okay, it's like it's like yeah, it's like a spooky little New England village too Like fishing so it's got those vibes. Yeah, but widow's Bay is next to my list. Oh my god. I see any of it So we've been yelling at Eden to watch widow's Bay. I actually watched it all in one day. Oh my gosh Yeah, we had a day off it was raining and I said I know what I'm doing Yeah, it took John and I like so long That I don't suggest watching it all in one day because now I'm like I want to do it all again Yeah, I'd like to stretch it out. Yeah, it's so good that we are and we never get to watch it like John and I will take 100 years to watch a show because the kids go to sleep. We'll sit down to watch it inevitably One of them will come down and eat something or have a stomach ache or a nightmare Yeah, we'll have to do the whole day dairy So we get like 10 minutes of a show at a time. Yeah, we can like stretch it out And widow's Bay was like just enough where we were able to finish it But even now I'm like I want to start it again and rewatch. I do too. That's how good that show. Yeah. Yeah. That's an immaculate show I think too. It's one of those shows where on a rewatch you might pick out things you didn't the first time. So I love that Yeah, yeah, so fun. And it's got really good new England vibe. I was literally you took the word on my mouth I was just gonna say that. Well, and I'm not sure I've driven south to be with you. Yeah, but Rockport and Gloucester where they filmed it or like I was just in Rockport a couple weeks ago Yeah, we want to go because you can just like walk around all the filming. Yeah, I can't wait to watch the show and Picture it from that. Yeah from that angle Because we're up there. It's widow's Bay. Like it's just that's amazing That's it. You're gonna see it and just be like, oh, that's that's probably like I've been there and everybody in that show feels like they're from New England Yeah, they just it's right. My girl. Yeah, I love Rosemary. Yeah, like I just get it. I love it But speaking of New England. Yeah, it worked out. It kind of worked out perfect Why do you think that New England is like such a hub of the spookiest legends and stories? So a lot of folklore comes from fear right and There's a there's a lot of the United States that was settled in relative safety um There's a lot of nuance to that and people can pick that apart but but in New England it was sort of like You were on the edge of the known world in the early 1600s and there was a lot more danger I mean when people want to talk about what really caused the Salem witch trials one of the big factors was that There were settlers So what is now the state of Maine used to be part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts like extended all the way up there And there were settlers way up in like wells who were essentially At war with the Native Americans because they had wandered in the Native American territory and started to take land Yeah, they were rightly defending themselves so these white Christian colonists Were were referring to the Native Americans as the devil and that the devil was out to get them And the conflict was so bad that they were actually like Reverse migrating back down to Salem and so you had in Salem people flooding in having lost family members They were wounded. They had been fighting with the devil like talking about the devil here was like this Mist all around them Just trapping them in and that's I think in in New England a lot more common than you might find in like where I grew up Illinois, you know By the time my hometown was settled like The United States had forced Native Americans far far away and so that element of fear wasn't there um I think in New England you just get a lot of it. You also get a mix of a lot of different. There's a mix of of faiths You've got Protestant cabinet. Yeah, the Puritan elements of that There's there's mixtures of cultures There's different waves of it and It fear just becomes this really common thread through it all yeah And it's a monster Because when you're afraid and you don't have the answers yeah, the human instinct is to invent an answer That fills in the gap, you know and so You see that with Mercy's family. Yeah, right? You see Um, you know George Brown loses his wife first Uh, about a year later he uses he loses his oldest daughter and then um his son his only son gets sick and There's some weird Stuff going on here. He's the only one they send out to Colorado to get better. Yeah, right? Yeah, the man can go He gets to breathe fresh and while he's gone mercy gets sick and dies. He comes back after her death They're afraid, right? Like they've lost in it's interesting. I I wanted a I wanted to make sure that I I noted this so Whenever you hear Mercy Brown story you hear about those four you hear your your Georgia's got a wife who dies The oldest daughter Edwin is sick and then Mercy dies. That's all you ever hear, but there are so many other kids So Marializa is the mom Mary Olive is the oldest and then you've got Edwin Annie Mercy, Hattie, Jenny and Myra. I mean when when George's wife dies There's a two-year-old in the house. Yeah, that that's how like people picture just a couple of teenagers But it's like this bustling farmhouse, right? Yeah a couple of years after his Wife dies his father dies not from tuberculosis, but still like that grief thread is still there And I think Georgia's mom is living in the house with them And so you've just got all of this this fear being mixed up and it's really the community who's afraid at some point They're like hey, there's a lot of browns who are dying So let's let's take care of this fear yeah by doing this thing, right? Yeah And what's ironic is that it doesn't work, right? Like Edwin spoiler alert dies And then after that Three years later in 1895 both Jenny and 25 year old Annie also pass away from consumption in 1899 their younger sister Myra dies from Consumption as well like so tuberculosis is taking all of them out. Yeah, only one to live is Is Hattie who actually lives until 1954? That's crazy I put in the book here because I like I like putting people in like a frame of reference to help people understand She Learned about her sisters and her mom being exhumed to look for signs of What was essentially a vampire and live long enough to see the premieres of I love Lucy the Ed Sullivan show in American band stand when you can Telephones. Wow. Yeah, it's mind-boggling. So she lived through it. Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, I would say so She's the definition of I've seen some shit Yeah She said you don't know what I've been through. Yeah, she said it wow So yeah in fear is that the as the heart of what was going on? It is like reacting to a fear inventing an answer To calm fear. Yeah, right to make you feel better about what's going on In some ways that makes what I do for living kind of boring It's like yeah 12 years of making more but the answer at the end of the day is people were afraid of the story right? Yeah, but our brains do some messed up things when we're afraid You know that's a thing the way people react to fear is so scary. I mean the Salem which trials Puritans are Wild wiles. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Haven't stopped doing it since nope. No, we keep on doing it. No, we don't learn the dancing Yeah, mister your beats itself sure does yes Now what would be the creepiest legend that you feel isn't talked about enough was there one that you saw that you were like Why is this not bigfoot That's the one. Yes, creepiest legend. I mean I some of the creepiest get talked about because they're super cute. Not Markman for example. Oh, yeah of Mothman, like the scene Mothman is like a portent of doom and then looking at the events that happened, there's some really creepy things going on there. - Oh yeah. - I love an omen, like a harbinger. - Yeah, harbinger. - Yeah, absolutely. - Creepy in a different sense. Have you ever done the story of Mary Toft, the woman who gave birth to rabbits? - Oh my God. I was just reading about that the other day. - I could say, so strange you brought that up. It's creepy in a different sense, I mean. - Sure is. - It's spooky. - I think it's got something. - What she did with those rabbit parts. - Yeah. - Girl, what she did. - The girl. - That is another one we need to cover. - I've definitely covered that on my list recently. - Yeah. - Although I have to say, I'm surprised that Gwyneth Paltrow hasn't, you know, tried some of those. - Figured that out with Gwyneth. - Hasn't added into the Gwyneth for me. - With the G company, she has time. - Yeah, you know? - T.M. - There you go. - There's a Paltrow. - Yeah, I wonder because this happens to us a lot. Have you ever started researching one topic and then you fall into a completely different topic that you stumble upon along the way? - Yeah, and so a decade ago, I thought that was distraction. Like the inability to focus on something. But the more episodes you make, you know this, that you need more episodes if you're gonna keep going. You start to realize that those moments are the moments where you need to make a note, put a pin in it, set it aside, follow that rabbit trail later, and that becomes another episode. - Yes. - Because the best stories are found in the midst of researching a story, right? - Yeah. - Like it's the side thing, the related thing. Which is, I mean, it's why this book is what it is. Because you research one thing and you realize that there's five other things connected to it. - And those are the side things that you reach on. - And they become something later on. - Yeah. - So for lore, we do, I don't know how you guys plan out stuff, but like we do an annual writer's room. - Whoa. - And so cool. - I'm not gonna talk to that. - We do lore every other week, and then in between we do lore legends. And those tend to be a little bit more toward like the urban legend, maybe a little less factually grounded. The idea that there's still valuable stories to tell, right? Music's slightly different, formats the same. And so we'll do an annual writer's room for lore and then six months later, one for legends. And it is the whole team of researchers and writers together pitching for like a day or two straight over video chat, pitching a story idea. Like here's my micro outline for it. I think that we should do act one on this, act two on this, act three. The epilogue at the end of the episode can be about a related story about this. - Oh, that's cool. - And then we brainstorm and throw sources at each other. And we'll try to, over the course of maybe a day, day and a half, lock down 25, 30 stories. - Oh wow, that is so fun. - So I'm planned out to the beginning of 28 right now. - Oh, wow. - I'm planned out to like a couple weeks from now. - I'm gonna say, I'm living on the edge. - And honestly, that's us being like, look at us. - Yeah, that's us being like, whoa, look at us go. - That's a cool concept. We're gonna give that a try. - I know. I feel like that's such a better way to do it. 'Cause sometimes we're like, we're like mood podcasts. - We are mood podcasters. - We're like, we'll be like, I don't feel like telling the story today. So I'm gonna switch at the last second. - Oh, sometimes I'll have a completed story and then I'm like, I don't want to tell it today. I'm gonna move on to this one. - Oh, wow. - Which is not the way to do it. - No, if I'm being quite honest. I mean, there's something to be said about it sometimes. I work said something. - You have to talk about it. So if you're gonna talk about it, you might not want to move it. - Right, exactly. You have to be in the mood to talk about it. - And the good news is it's done when you are in the mood. - That's the thing. - Yes, exactly, it's there. - It's waiting for you. - That's the thing. - That's what I always tell myself to myself for. - Yeah, it's done, so you can use it. - Right, exactly. - There we go. But yeah, we're constantly on the edge. We do that a lot. - No, I wonder because again, this has happened to us. Is there ever a piece of folklore that you stumble across, that you either desperately want to debunk but can't, or that you almost don't want to debunk that you do? - Oh. Wanting to preserve that raw innocence of people believing something. - Right. - Right now, again, back to my personality trait of liking to burst people's bubbles. (laughing) I don't know that I've ever wanted to preserve the belief in something. - Oh, I can't say I don't know how it feels. - Let's see, I'm the total opposite. I'm like, no, I don't want to ruin this for you. It's so fun. - I'm like, (laughing) but I'll handle it as a storyteller. - Yeah, of course. - I will tell people in an episode, but that's not true. But I'll do it after I've told them the story - And they've had the fun. - From a point of belief. Like, here is the story that people tell and cling to. And I really want them to experience the story. - Almost like you set up Exumed. - Yes. - But that story. - I'm just sorry to say that, like, - It didn't go that way. - It didn't actually, and here is the three reasons why. - Right, you're like, am I really sorry to say? I don't know. - Because I like fact. I like research. And if the research says that can't have happened. - Yeah. - You know, there was a story we did of a haunting in DC, like one of the mansions in DC. You can do a ghost tour of it now. And the basic gist of it is that this family had two daughters when they were in their teens or so. Each one, like, years apart, fell down the stairs and died. - Okay, damn. - And yeah, they lost both their kids falling down the stairs. And so, of course, they tell you this story on the stairs during the ghost tour, right? - Of course. - Well, fun. - Those daughters are in a graveyard, and their gravestones have dates on them. - Uh-oh. - And the dates do not match up. - Uh-oh. - Stories and it turns out that we know how they both died. One of them was from an illness like tuberculosis. - Yep. - You know, so it's quaint to hold on to that. I can see the drama and, like, the appeal of a story like that. Go ahead and tell the story all you want, but at the end of the day, the evidence is there that says it didn't happen. - Right. - And I feel like I wouldn't have integrity if I didn't, at the very least say, by the way-- - We do have this great day in your line, too. - I have to tell you the truth. - We do have records. Have you ever come across the story of the Cascade Girls in New Orleans? - Yeah. - That one is so interesting, but then you get through it and you're like, yeah, that probably didn't happen. - Exactly. - I think I know it all. - So many people love the idea of that story. - It's so fun, the idea of it is awesome. - 'Cause how fun is that? - Like, especially with New Orleans. - But then it feels a bit, it is pretty awful. - Yeah, the price is way worse. - Yeah. - That's why it's a lot of fun to lean on the fun of it all. - That they were vampires or just smuggling them. - Yeah. - You know what, I want to give those women that power back. - Yeah. - 'Cause yeah, you were vampires destroying the village. - Hell yeah. - Now, what episode of lore would you say are you most proud of if you could pick one or even two? - So, proud from a couple different aspects. So, I'll say from a research standpoint, Emily Segey and the doppelganger folklore. - Okay. - Because when I sat down, when I made that episode, it was still in the realm of me doing everything. I found the topic I researched, did I wrote it? I published it. That's why it was every other week initially. - Yeah. - It's a lot of work. - It's a lot of work to do, yeah. And I wanted to do the research right. So, I would, as anybody does, start online and look for resources for Emily Segey, whether it was a book or an online article, it was always the same story. It was the same details rearranged by some new writer, but they only had a certain number of Lego pieces to work with. So, the story always had the same pieces. And that frustrated me because it made me feel like there wasn't a core original, more nuanced version of the story. And I really, I don't know how, but I pushed until I found a German book that was available on like books.google.com. - It's always on like the 11th page of Google. - I was going to say, yeah. - And I remember having my laptop open to this German book and then holding my phone with like Google translate app pointed at the screen and reading the German words being translated into English on my phone and realizing I had found source material behind the story that had more names, more dates, more places. - The thing is better than that. - It just feels like, not respect, not is like that is. - That's top notch. - I'm proud of that one. - Did I invent a new medication for some horrible disease? No, but I found some sources when what felt like no other writer about that story felt like it was worth time spending to find and had gone that far. - And I was proud of that. From a storytelling aspect, I love episode 12, Half Hanged. - Oh, I know that one. - Mary Webster. - I love that one. - 17th century woman in Colonial Massachusetts accused of witchcraft and there's the victory and like the middle finger to the establishment that that story is. - Oh, such a good story. - Half Hanged Mary. - Yeah. - Talked about that. - We have talked about that. - Yeah. - I love that story. - And she was a real woman. Margaret Atwood is descended from her. - That's so great. - And Margaret Atwood wrote a poem in like in 12 stanzas about the last 12 hours of her life and at the end of the poem. You know, this is a woman that was accused of being a witch and she's like, I'm not a, like they shipped her off the Boston and then for a court and she came back acquitted. She, you know, nobody's like-- - Yeah, you guys got to be kidding me. - Right, it was just 'cause she was cranky. She wasn't religious. She wanted people to get off her property like-- - For her. - You know, she was standing up for some-- - She sounds like me. - She was a powerful woman. - She was like me. - She was poor and the powerful people in town wanted to just blame everything on her and they blamed her for the illness of their town leader, you know, their court leader. And they hang her and he still dies from his illness. But in the morning, she gets up off the ground and walks away. And so atwood's poem, she ends with this line that's something like, I wasn't to witch before, but now I am a witch. - Hell yeah. - I love that when you hear it. - She looks so good. - I love it. - So good, that's so good. Would that be the first episode that if somebody was just starting lore today? - Yeah. - Dig it. - Dig it. Also from a formulaic standpoint, like you'll get a good sense of how Laura's structure. I'm gonna give you a lot of New England, kind of like which legends, there's even some wizard legends in there, which you don't bump into a lot. - No. - And then you dig right into the context of Mary's story and what happens. - Yes. - Yeah, I like it. It's a good place to start. - All right, I think so too. I heard it here first. You did. (laughing) - Now a lot of your stories revolve around people having a lot of faith in things. Like we talked about the hand of glory. And we can look back on that and we can laugh at it. - Sure. - What do you think is gonna be our hand of glory in 200 years that people are gonna look back and be like, "Are you guys serious?" You thought that would work? - Yeah, we talked about chemotherapy already, right? And surely there has to be a better way. - Yeah. - I imagine a century from now, I hope it's less than that. - I was gonna say hopefully it's a decade from now. - That'd be great. - That'd be great. But we would have to fund the sciences, wouldn't we? - We sure would. - But we would. - Yeah. - That's a set. - We're not really down to fund anything right now. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - We're funding something. - Well, but you know, a good fund crypto. I guess that one, that one, that one. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not science. - Right. - But I think that that's one of the big ones, just the extremes that we're going to for something. You know, I think about some of the early material in Exoom talking about blood transfusion. And they were on, like the right path. - Oh yeah. - Of course, sheep's blood might not have been the right path, but. - You know, you have to start somewhere. - I get why they thought blood blood. - Yeah. - But it's pyramids. - But we don't think at all about blood transfusion today. - No. - It's just a normal part of medicine. - Yeah. - And I, it does make you wonder what are the things that we'll look back on and see as either, they were right on, they had it. They just didn't fully understand it. Or boy, where they weigh off face. - Right. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's what I'm excited to see. It's the thing that's like blood transfusion where we're like, oh, you were so close. - Right. - Yeah, what are we so close to right now? - Yeah. - I'm also still freaked out by like, I love blood transfusions like A plus A for blood transfusions, but I have O negative blood. So I can only take O negative blood and I can give to anyone, but I had to have a blood transfusion after I had my twins and I like panicked. And I was like, I can only have O negative blood and they were like, I know we went to medical school. We know that. And I was like, are you sure you're gonna poison me? Like I freaked out. - Well, most likely when you do get a blood transfusion, aren't they going to likely give you O negative since you don't know what they usually are gonna give you? But I just was so freaked out about being poisoned by someone else's blood. I was like, I just had my first children don't kill me. - Don't kill me. - Yeah. - It's like, oh my God. - It's solid. - It's weird. Anybody who's had a blood transfusion, it's weird. 'Cause I hope that you don't need one. - I'm just getting someone else's blood. - Yeah. - Or people who have an organ from someone else. - Right, it must be so strange. - Yeah. - But like, thank goodness we can do that. - Mm-hmm. - That's it if we could. - It's a dive down. - Yeah. - It is. - Did I touch on that in the book? I feel like I talked a little bit about-- - You did talk about-- - There's this ideal image of a complete body. And even when we, you know, you're a healthy person who's gotten a kidney from somebody else, you frequently talk about, you'll, decade later, you'll still talk about it as someone else's kidney. Like you are an incomplete, your life has been saved. It's a miracle of medicine. But there's still something about it that like doesn't jive with our ideal of the perfect human, intact human body. - It's not mine. - It's not mine, yeah. - Yeah. - It is strange how we think that. - Yeah. - It is. (upbeat music) - Now, and after all these years, what do you think folklore says about people, about humans? - We're very creative. We're very hopeful. You know, we can focus on fear. That's fine. But I think the answers that people have invented over the centuries or millennia, there is a hope kind of lingering in the corner that, hey guys, we figured it out, you know? Or we can conquer this challenge or problem or get around this unknown. There is a hope there that I think is really admirable. - Yeah. - Going through the book and writing the story in that order really made me appreciate how very much not barbaric these people were. If I comparison, yeah, there's some weird stuff. - Yeah. - But they were just trying. They were human. They wanted to be hopeful and find a solution. And, you know, I think that's something to take away and say, I hope we always are. - Yeah. - A very hopeful species. - And yeah, if we lose that, what do we become? - Yeah, what do we have? - Yeah. - Yeah. - I like that. - And there's also, at the same time, we are, we as people are just lovers of story. You know, whether you want to write them or you just enjoy them, very few people would say, I don't want to deal with stories. - Yeah. - Those are weird people. - I was just going to say, I don't want those people to help me. - There's something sociopathic about that. - Yeah. - I don't want to watch TV or movies or read a book. - Yeah, I don't want to care. - What do you do then? - We, for the most part, love story. - Yeah. - And I love that, something like podcasting where, yes, we're sitting around microphones talking and sometimes there's cameras involved, but we could have a campfire in between us. - Yeah. - You know, it would be the same vibe. - And we'd be doing the same thing that our ancestors did. - Yes. - You know, 20,000 years ago, or 100,000 years ago, telling stories, right? - Yeah. - So. - I love that. - Yeah. - I think that's perfect. - I think that's a perfect answer. I love it. - Awesome. - Pat myself and the solar. - We're not talking with you yet because there's always end on a game. - Oh. - So, are you down for, would you rather? - Yes. - Okay. - That's good. - Unless the question is, would you rather play a game or? - Imagine if you just said no. - Right. - Actually, no, I'd rather you're like, no. - For those who can't see, she's just handed me a hacksaw and I'm, I'm very worried. - What's going to happen there? - Keep your left foot or keep your right foot. - What do you think? - Surprise. - We've decided to become jigsaw. - Yeah. - All right, so inspired by episode two of lore, the bloody pit on the Hussak tunnel. A really good episode. Great episode. Would you rather hear phantom voices calling your name whilst inside the tunnel? - Okay. - Or see somebody standing at the entrance, but they disappear every time you blink. - I think the more preferable would just be to see something. - Yeah. - Hearing things? I'm sorry. - It's a lot. - It's overstimulating. - Yeah. - That's really overstimulating. - No, I'm out of adult diapers could help me. - No, truly. - What do you think? - I'd probably feel the same way, just because sound overstimulates me. - Yeah. - So as soon as voices started, I'd just be like, ugh, like that would be it. - I'd be useless. - I picture this as like a lot of voices like disembodied. - Yeah. - Just imagine that in what is essentially a man made cave. - That's right. - That's the echoing, the resonance. - Yeah. - And here's the thing, that would freak me out. But what if there's a real person that I'm seeing and I have to deal with them? - I get that. - I'd much rather deal with the disembodied voices. - Right, 'cause you could reason that away. - Right. - It's an echo of my footsteps or whatever it is, but when you see something, that's harder. - That's a lot harder. - Yeah. - If you have a voice, so then you're okay. - I usually do. - Yeah. - So you might be all right. - Does mace work on a ghost? Have you guys confirmed this? - I have never maced a ghost. - Okay. - So I do not know that. - But what if it's not a ghost? - That's true. - What if the person that you see at the end of the tunnel is real? - Like years ago, you and I talked about doing an episode of Morbhead and coming on and talking about just an old, creepy, true crime case. We talked about the Hammer Smith ghost. - Yes. - Hammer Smith or Hammer's Field? - Hammer's by Fear. - Hammer Smith. And I think I've done this as a live show story before, where this was in London and the people kept seeing this white apparition walking around and like in, I don't know, true, go get 'em fashion. People formed mobs to go out and hunt down this ghost. - Of course. - Apparently somebody found him and shot the ghost. And the ghost died. And the ghost bled. Because the ghost was a guy who worked-- - I was just a guy. - He was a mason who worked with stone dust all day in white clothes. - Oh, he was just covered in the dust. - He looked like a Scooby-Doo cartoon, right? - Oh, poor guy. - And he got killed because people thought he was a ghost. - That's actually on my list, too. Your name and all my things. - I'm sorry. - No, it's great. It's like foreshadowed away. - Yeah. - I love the ghost. - Stay tuned. - Yes, exactly. - It's true. All right, my next one is inspired by episode three, a beast with it. - Oh, yes. - Now, would you rather travel through a medieval German forest at night or spend one night inside Bedberg while everyone to believe there was a werewolf afoot? So you're either with people or you're alone in the woods? - See what you're asking me is, would you rather endure the company of fearful, suspicious people? - Yes. - Or the dark woods and whatever they contain. - Yes. - Yeah. I think I'd rather be in the dark woods. - Yes. - That's a, would you choose the bear question? - Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah. - Absolutely. - And also the people are a German forest at night. - Yes. - You can take the German forest. - I'll take the German forest. - I'll take the German forest at night alone. - That's unanimous. - Yes. - I think we fall agree with you. - Just like I choose the bear. - Yeah. - Yeah. (laughing) - Bedberg was mind-baggling because not only was it a whole community people who thought it was all real, but the guy that they accused thought it was real too. - Yeah. - He's like, guys, I put a belt on and I rub my body with some self that I made. - Like I think you're right. - It made me turn into a wolf. - Yeah, I think I tell you. - Yeah. - Like, who doesn't want that? - You couldn't win. - No, I'm really gonna back that. - Yeah, 'cause even the guy that they're accusing is crazy, I can't believe I did this. - We're all in on the joke here, right? - Sure. - All right, next one is inspired by episode 113. word of mouth exploring Corpse Medicine, and we're giving you three options here to be nice. -Okay. -Would you rather be prescribed powdered mummy, moss from a hanged man's skull, or a human fat ointment? -Okay, we can toss the human fat ointment out the door, because that's literally just like reduced human fat. -Eel. -Yeah, to the point where-- -That's it. -Yeah. -Oh, and just greasy. -Like a lotion you can rub on your hands. -Yeah, and really what's that gonna do for you? -It's greasy. -I'm afraid of mushrooms, and I know that that's not moss, but I was-- -Similar. -You know mushrooms were in there. -Yeah, so it's like, "What I want to eat some strange moss, I don't know that I want to do that, so I'm gonna go with mummy powder, and I'm gonna say that because sometimes it was ground up mummy, and sometimes it was ground up bitumen, the black substance that was used." -Right, that's a fascinating bit of folklore that I-- -Yeah, it is. -I don't know if it's hard to capture it in a story, but in the book I covered this idea that like, the asphalt on our roads, it's a petroleum product, right, and it's come up out of the ground all over the world for forever, and they used to call it bitumen, and for early days of Egyptian mummification, they actually covered the bodies in it to seal and preserve them, but it happens to look a lot as a sticky black liquid, like what would happen if you just mummified somebody without it and let them sit in the grave for a long time, the body fluids come out, and they kind of congeal into a black sticky substance. -Like tar? -Like tar, and so people started to confuse that stuff with actual bitumen, which like, early Arabic writers prescribed as medicine for all sorts of things, and so eventually that bitumen started to be confused with this exudate that came out of the bodies, and so people were taking that instead, and then they were like, well, if we're taking this, the body itself that it's on is probably useful as well. -Must be useful. -And so there's a Persian word for bitumen that is mummia, and that started to cause the powder to be called mummy, and then the bodies were called mummies, and now we call all preserve corpses mummies. -It's just a mistranslation. -Yeah, exactly. -Yep. -But every time you drive on the road, you're basically driving on something connected to that folklore, which I think is great. -It's all out of force. -Yeah, so all that to say, if I had to pick between the three of them, I would pick the mummy powder, because there is the chance it's just a natural substance. -You know, I think I'm going to go with your answer for not very reason. -Yeah, now that I know that, I'm like, all right, that's a risk. -Yeah. -It's a risk, but the other ones you know what you're getting at. -That's a thing. -Yeah. -Just like I know you're getting straight up moss from a skull, or human fat appointment. -Anything greasy, I'm out, like greasy on my skin. -I know. -I guess the only plus for the human fat appointment is that you're not ingesting it. -It's going on your skin. -See, I have a thing with my hands gripping anything on them, or like greasiness on me. I have like a texture issue. -But even the powdered mummy, sometimes they just like packed wounds with it. -Yeah. -You could also do that. -That's true. -Then you're not ingesting it. -That's true. -Yeah, I'm sticking powdered mummy. -Yeah. -I think I'm going to go with that too. All right, look at us. You know how to miss again. -All right. -Now the next one. -Okay. -Is inspired by chapter one of Exhumed. -All right. -And it's called Blood and Glory. Would you rather witness George Washington's bloodletting to his death, or witness the meeting where people seriously propose trying to reanimate his corpse? Both are pretty interesting. -Yeah, they are. I mean, they essentially drained half of his body's blood over the course of a day. -That's unbelievable. -And he was up walking around, dictating his last will and testament to his wife. -That's no. -I would be unconscious. -Yeah. -Yeah. -Yeah. -I don't know how much I lost when I had the twins, but I was so scared. -You were so scared. -I'm getting a coffee. I'm out of it. -Literally, right? -If I didn't get eight hours of sleep, I'm not sure if I could have water the other day, and I thought I was dying. My urine was like, you're dead. -Yeah. -Something's happening. -Exactly. So he didn't have enough blood, and he was dictating his will. -Yeah. -So there's a part of me with some morbid curiosity, lowercase M. -Not to you. -Don't hit me with the loss of it for using the word. I would just, yeah, I kind of want to see that whole process. -Yeah. -I also ask this question in the book, and you have to wonder, what did they do with all the blood? -I wonder that. -They really just tossed it out the window. -I mean, that's what Logic says. -Yeah, yeah. -This was the era of Gardy Lou. You fill a chamber pot. -That's what I was going to say. -Did it just throw out 80 ounces of blood? -Of George Washington's blood shoes. -A George Washington's blood shoes. -It might have. Because I think they were past the point of, you know, drinking it, or doing anything with it. -There's a historical thriller in there for you. Somewhere in the American, and you see, and there's like a vial, like a box of vials of his blood. -Someone finds it. -Yeah. -Someway random. -We're going to clone George Washington. -Inventory clerk. -Oh, my gosh. -Yeah. -Dan Brown, if you're listening. -Yeah, call me. -So, while it would be fun to listen to the doctor's arguing, especially when the whack job shows up at the end, and he's like, "No, let's put some sheep's blood, and we can still bring it back to life." -Yeah. -That would be fun. I want to see what -- I want to see the blood works. That's what I want to see. -Yeah. What about you? Are you going with bloodletting? -This is a tough one, because I hate to say this, but I think when they were trying to re-animate him, it might have been to hear those conversations and to hear the thought processes. -Yeah. -Might be pretty fascinating. And I don't really love blood. I'm a little squeamish around blood. -So, that would get you around that. -Yeah, that would be some of that. -Yeah. -That's a tough one. I think I'm going to go witness the meeting where we're coming up with ideas. -Yeah. -Yeah. -I can see it. -Yeah. -Yeah. -Yeah. -I'm going with the bloodletting. -Yeah, I mean, you were an autopsy technician. -Yeah. -I feel like I should be there. -Yeah, yeah. -It just makes sense. -I think so. All right, next one, "Inspired, Aaron, by your overall vibe." Would you rather have front row seats to one of history's most famous autopsies? Or one of history's most famous sayances? -Oh. -This one's hard. -This is so easy for me. -I mean, I know what I would pick, but yeah. Everybody listening knows what you and I would pick, too. -I think a sayance in the, in the heyday of the spiritualist movement. -Yes, with table tipping. -Yes, with like one of the key celebrity mediums at the time. -Yeah. -Maybe some actoplasm coming out somewhere. -I just got to say that. That's another topic that I dipped into a lot over the years with Laura. Various celebrity mediums in the rackets they ran. -Oh, that's fascinating. -Yeah, that'd be fascinating to do. -Terrible people. -Yeah. -Terrible people. -Yes. -But yeah, I agree, sayance, for sure. Terrible people, I mean, they were charlatans, but so creative. -Oh, absolutely. -The very things they did, the tools they created. -It was actually brilliant some of the things they did. -It was like, you should have used that for better, for like better society. -Seriously. -I know, I guess, in a way they're trying to make people feel better. -Yeah. -You know, we could spend all day talking about that. -Yeah, you absolutely could. I, you know, my initial inclination is autopsie. -Yeah. -Because that's what I thought you would spend. -But I'm like, I've seen a lot of autopsies. -Yeah. -So now I'm sitting here. After you guys just thought I was like, you haven't seen that. -I haven't been around historical sayance. -Right. -So are we all joining each other? -I think I'm going to join you guys. -All right. -Yeah. -This is great. -If we're requesting attendees, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have to be at the table. -Yeah. -Absolutely. -He was all in on spiritualism. -Oh, hell yeah. -Attended them constantly. -He'd be like, let's go, girls. Let's do it. -I feel like I would have done that back then too. How do you stop going to one once you see one? -Right. -Right. -Right. -Once you start, like, I got to see this next one. What's this all about? -It's all about that. -Yep. -It's true. -It's the next high. -Yeah. -Yeah. -More ectoplasm, please. -Yes, please. -Now, my next one is inspired by chapter 18 of Exhumed, "Peaces and Players." -Okay. -Would you rather explain germ theory to an 18th-century physician or explain vampire folklore to a modern infectious disease expert? I feel like I know what this will be. -I think I'd rather explain the vampire folklore. -Yeah, that's what I thought you was. -Because it's kind of what you're doing. -I feel like the audience would be receptive. -Yeah. -I don't think going back in time and explaining germ theory would have, I could have been burned as a witch. -I was going to say they may have just hanged you. -Yeah. -I know. That's, see, I love nothing more than to make someone understand something that's touched on that. Like, so I feel like my inclination is like, I want to make you believe germ theory. Like, I could make you believe it. -You think you could? -I feel like I could. -I'm really persistent. -That's true. -I know that. -I will not stop. -I mean, the frustrating part is that there will be listeners not listeners of the show. But if you go back in time and you talk to people, there will be people who listen to you and say, "Sorry, I don't believe it." -Just no. -All the facts can be presented. -Yes. -And yet, they believe this very, very, it's like bizarre a world. -Yeah. -That doesn't happen anymore. But back then, that's a problem. -Yeah. -That never happens. -The cemetery scene where Mercy's body is ex. When they exume her mom and then her sister, and then she's brought out of this above ground, essentially a walk-in freezer, where she's been for a couple of months, that scene is a great example of that because, you know, you've got the doctor who is always portrayed as like this old dude. He's a young doctor who worked in New York City, and he was from the Providence, area so he came back. So he's like this young, up on modern science, physician, working in a small village, and they have begged him to do this. They've begged him to exhume the bodies and look for signs, and he's like, "Eyes, you're not going to find what you're looking for. It's scientifically, what you believe does not exist." They're like, "We don't care." And we don't care. So finally, they convince George Brown, and he's like, fine, if you guys want to do it, you guys can do it. He's not going to be there. All the stories say that George is in the graveyard. He was not there that day. The doctor is finally convinced by giving money. They're like, "We'll pay you to do it." He's like, "Okay, fine. I'll do whatever." I'll indulge you. He cuts open mercy's body, and he says, "Look, signs of tuberculosis. All of the pieces are here. This is exactly what you'd expect for a body that was kept in a cooler for two months and not burying in the ground." And everybody looked at it and said, "Signs of a vampire," or whatever they were calling it at the time. They didn't use that word, like "Supernatural. This is all supernatural." And then they all coughed up blood into their hanker chips. That's right. Yeah. They had the evidence, like, literally right in front of them. Staring them out of face. Cut open and presented to them, and they could not believe it. Well, like you said, the same thing happens today. It's true. And it's because fear, it all goes back to fear, I think. Yeah, it does. Fear and simple answers. Yes. Yeah, those are easier paths to follow. And that would make me crazy. Because when someone simply will not take, like that's how you've seen me in that situation, where somebody just refuses to take facts, it will drive me to the-- I've done it for fun sometimes. Yeah, it's never fun. No, it's never fun. Imagine you are a visitor from the future in 1892, and you're trying to explain this to people, and they will not believe you. That would make me crazy. That would cause madness. And you're a woman, so they just kill you. They would just burn me at the stake. Right, yeah. It would really not work out. I was going to say it would work out better if you were a man, and then you told us that story. Yes, so that one worked either. I think you need to shit. You got to shift. Oh, damn. I think so. I really want to convince them, but we could have been unanimous. I mean, you can stick with it. All right. OK. I'll give it a try. Inspire it again by your overall vibe. What would you rather time travel to witness one famous historical mystery, or solve one famous historical mystery today from your desk? Well, solving it today would be a lot of work. And I'm busy. You are busy. You have a lot going on. I got you. I've got a book tour coming up. I'm not really sure. I've got that on my screen. How do I squeeze that in? Yeah. But then going back in time and witnessing a mystery kind of suggests that you're like you're watching a murder happen, and you're not doing anything to stop it. Yes, that's true. There's some moral ambiguity there. There is. Yeah. Because it feels like a Jack the Ripper thing. Like you go back to that. That's exactly what I think that's saying. How could you not stop that? Yeah. Yeah, I would have to. How could you now? Let me compromise and say I would have liked to have gone back to the beginning of the Jack the Ripper investigations and help them make smarter choices. Yeah, I think you feel exactly the same. Steer them in a different direction. Yeah, yeah. We don't know so much of that story because of incompetence. Yes, yeah. And I feel like if somebody just went back in time and slapped them around a little bit. Yeah. And what are you doing? Yeah, they need like a parent back there. They do like, all right, sit down. We got to get this under control. Yeah. You're all being crazy. Maybe you could appeal to them with dad jokes. Yeah, I could. You know, get your way in there. He's a metaphor too. I'm good at that. There you go. I think that would work. Yeah, yeah. I think I would want to go back in time. Yeah. And do something about it that will add that piece onto it. Yeah, yeah. That's true. Because I feel like solving one today would be really cool. But then like what happens after? I'm actually surprised you two didn't pick that. Because then you have to convince people why you're correct. But and that's the thing. I feel like you really have to be solid. Because like how many people have thought they'd solve Jack the Ripper? A million. Don't get me started on that. And they never have. And they never probably will. But and you'd have to convince them of it. And it's the same thing as the term theory. Yeah, I feel like people are just sitting their way. They are. So I don't know. Yeah, so we can go back and try to change it. I'm going back and I'm watching and trying to. Yeah, if I can partake. Yeah, in trying to change it. Yeah, just sick of foot out and trip. Yeah, there you go. But then it's like the butterfly effect there. Right. You just like ruined the rest of it. I'm sure you heard the entire timeline. What happened? Like the tapestry of the rest of the world. Yeah, I know. But I don't know. Now in 2026, I'm like, maybe it'd be better if you changed the-- Maybe I will do that. Maybe I will trip someone, but let's see what happens. See how it shakes out? Yeah, you know? Let's just try. Now the next one is inspired by "Exoomed Again." Would you rather have to diagnose an illness before a germ theory or a murder before fingerprinting? Ooh. Not diagnose a murder, but it's all one. I think I would rather diagnose the illness. So Galen is sort of thought of as like the father of modern medicine. Of course, he was about 2,000 years ago. And he was very evidence-focused. If I remember correctly, no. Hocrities was. And then Galen was like, oh, let's talk about humor. Let's do this stuff. And there was in a lot of illness diagnosis, sort of a flow chart approach. You look for these pieces of evidence. And then you find them on your chart, whether it's literal or in your brain. And then you follow the options over. And then they eventually lead you to, well, this is what you do. That's what it is. And then all the answers were bloodletting. OK. So that's what I'm saying. There you go. Let's just take the blood. Right. Well, people talk about the four humors. And it's like black bile, yellow bile, blood. And then there's-- I forget the other one. But you can also refer to them as-- another term for them was all blood-based. Yeah. It was like black blood. Yellow blood? Yellow blood. Like this is all blood. Eventually, all came down to blood. Which is why they just bloodlet everything. Yeah. Yeah, the word plethora that we used for today, we have told you plethora of stories. Right. Plethora literally meant you had too much blood. No way. I never knew that. I feel like you got to get rid of them of that. We got to have some of that. Let's have some of that out. Well, man. Sure. So I guess in some way, I would like to go back in time and diagnose it. And all this because I could just close my eyes and say, all right, give me two ounces of blood and then we're done. That kind. Yeah. There you go. There you go with it. Yeah. I feel like, yeah, because that would be really easy. Just go and then then everybody claps for you and you get to what an amazing position. Yeah. Well, that's true. That's true. I feel like I would want to solve a murder. I agree. I look forward to fingerprinting. I agree. Because for me, tell those stories that are so fascinating, like the how they actually got anything solved. Right. Would you use cruintation? Cruintate. What is cruintation? Oh, that's the blood. That's the blood talking. Yeah. Yeah. I would. Just bring them in. Bring them in. Have them touch the body. See what happens. I would want to use. I would want to use it as like a social tool. Yes. To force a confession. Yes. I want the psychological aspect to be present. Yeah. I don't want to stand in court and be like, look, the body bled. So he's the killer. Yeah. I don't want to do that. Yeah. I want to witness what's going on right now. I want to manipulate the criminal. I want someone. In fact, I'm going to see that spot. And I'm going to hold my hand over your pulse. Yes. And I'm going to feel it. What's going on there? Yeah. I want everybody observing the sweat that's stripping down the brow. I want all of that. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I'm solving a murder. Period. Let's go. All right. Our next would you rather is inspired by Elena's deep obsession? Would you rather know exactly what Jack the Ripper looked like or know exactly what happened at Rowan Oak County? Oh Rowan Oak hands down. That's exactly what I was excited. Yep. I mean, what the guy looked like. Doesn't do much. It doesn't do much. We're definitely drifting into like the realms of fernology. Like if your head was shaped like this, you would get a propensity toward this. That was, I don't want to dip into that. I want to know. I think we know what happened at Rowan Oak. They went and integrated into the Native American population. And they tried to leave a note. It's a tradition named the tribe they merged into. But I want, I want to see the cause, the process. I would love to watch that. Yeah. I'll play out. Watch the person's like, inscribe it on the tree. Yes. And I would also like to be there like 50 years later when Elizabeth Dare is, you know, this, you know, older blonde-haired white woman living in a community of Native Americans speaking their language. Yeah. You know, she's probably got tattoos. Oh, yeah. Like, like, I want to witness the last remnants of the English settlers as they're being absorbed into a more diverse culture. Yeah. That would have been really cool to see. That would be very documentary. Yeah. Yeah. Because there are legends of like blonde, sorry, a blue-eyed Indigenous people in that Virginia area. Oh, sure. So that does make sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I like that. That's a rabbit hole. I'd like to get out of this. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I agree that because it's like, it's not saying no who Jack the Ripper is. Just what he looks like. What do you going to do with that? And at that point too, back then, you're like, I don't know. Probably had a mustache. He looks like some guy. Probably had a mustache, you know? Top of he looked like H.H. Holmes, you know? Literally. How he was not. Yeah, no. Don't get us started. Yeah, don't worry. I agree. And honestly, it's so dark back then. You're really only going to see like the outline of someone saying, I don't know, it's a person, I guess. - And to know it's Jack the Ripper, are you also witnessing a brutal murder? - Yeah, like, what am I gonna do here? - Were you just watching a meat fish and chips? - Yeah, I don't really want to watch anyone. - Which I don't really want to watch anyone. - Yeah. - Murder a filet headache? - Yeah, what am I watching? - Yeah, what is this? - Everyone knows it is. - Yeah, 'cause if I can't have a name and identity to come back with, I don't want to see it. - This doesn't happen that often, that we're so unanimous in these. - And mine have evolved, I think, 'cause for you, girl. - Look at me, growth. - All right, now we're gonna do a quick, little rapid fire this or that. - Okay. - Okay, so, okay. - Through the magic of editing, I will answer quickly. - Really quick. - Salem Witch Trials or New England Vampire Panic? - New England Vampire Panic. - Ah, Salem Witch Trials. - Salem Witch Trials for me. - All right, ghosts are cryptids. - Cryptids? - Um, ghosts. - Oh no, I think I'm going with ghosts. - Yeah, yeah. I think I've been cryptid. - Ooh, that's a tough one. - It's a tough one. I thought about it as I wrote it. - I thought I knew that one. - See, I'm working with possibilities, okay? So, New England Vampire Panic and Salem Witch Trials, we really know a lot about the Salem Witch Trials at this point. I mean, it's been studied ad nauseam. The New England Vampire Panic has so many unanswered questions. - True, that's true. - That's what's more fascinating to me. There's just a crap ton of what in the world caused this to happen. - Yeah. - We still don't actually know where they got the information to even suggest. Well, dig the bodies up and cut them open and look for it. - Right, that was like, where did that come from? - The signs they were looking for was known in Europe. There's this weird thing that happened in writing the book. I got about, I don't know, three quarters of the way through and I realized, I was summing up a bunch of things in one chapter and I realized, oh, all of those are German details. Just very, very weirdly, those are all like paracelsis. The executions where blood was being drunk at the execution site, like all of these things were, like German footprints were everywhere in the room where it happened. - Yeah. - And I want to know why I do. - Yeah. - That's interesting. - The first recorded New England Vampire Panic like Examation was late 1700s, like 1790s. And we're talking like a generation after the Revolutionary War, the British brought Hesse and Mercenaries over. Actually, I was in the UK last week, was speaking with archaeologists because that's the program that one of my kid I was wants to go into. - That's bad. - And this archaeologist was dealing with a military site outside of Winchester in Southern England that was a staging ground for those Hesse and Mercenaries that came over and I was able to ask him, would they have brought German physicians with them? - Oh, shit. - And he said, "Oh, absolutely, I would have had them." And it was common for those Hesse and Mercenaries to get to a place like North America and say, "I kind of like it here, I want to stick around." - So there you go. - So my theory, my working theory is that some doctors, it could have only been one or two, stayed after the Revolutionary War and just wander the countryside, helping villages out with medical problems. - Oh, shit. - And they passed it on to, you know, through practice, they passed some of these beliefs on. At the time you get to like 1790s, it's starting to become a common thing. - That makes a lot of sense. - That really does, yeah. - So for me, when you say Salem with Strauss or the New England Vampire Panic, there's so many more questions I want to answer with the Vampire Panic that that's why I go that way. - I got that, that makes sense. - And then what was the second one you asked me? - Ghosts are cryptids. - Cryptids just have more possibility. I feel like they're very deep. - We've been trying to tape and photograph and record ghosts for so long, but we keep finding new species of creatures out there. - That's what got me like, I was like, I just have so much fun with ghosts. - Ghosts are so fun. - I know. - And a lot of times I feel like cryptids like you said, it's like just an animal we haven't discovered yet. - Sure, yeah, a little bit of a disappointment at the end of that. - Yeah, it's not a. - It's just the lemur. - Yeah, exactly. But I want to believe in Bigfoot so much. - Yeah. - But is he just like a bearer? - No, I think he's a Bigfoot. - See a bearer that he hooked up with like a, 'cause I need I guess, I don't know. - I don't know. - Is he some branch of like a homo erectus or like is it? - Yeah. - Like a deer. - That like didn't evolve in the same way. - Yeah, it was the denovians and Neanderthals and there's all these different branches and there were hybrids and like is it from. - Is it hangin' around? - Yeah. - It's like Nessie. - It is like Nessie. - She's just hangin' around in there. - Right, it's true. - Yeah. - It proves that all these questions that it is interesting. - I'm gonna go cryptid. - I love ghosts. - Like if I think it depends also on like what I'm, why I'm choosing. - I love ghosts. - Yeah. - But there is a lot more to ask about cryptids. - I'd like to spend more time with ghosts. - That's true. - And I've seen ghosts than I know it. So, you know. - I struggle with that one. - I love it. - No, I've seen them. - I don't know. - No, I mean I struggle with like which I'm gonna pay. - Oh, I was like a struggle with ghosts. - No, no, no, no. No, I've seen some of that shit. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - All right, galvanism or alchemy. - Alchemy. - Yeah. - Yeah. - There's so much more. - It's more punk rock, isn't it? - It's all loopy. - It's all loopy. - It's all loopy. - Alchemy is just somebody sticking a corpse with an electrified rock. - We know the moves. - But, yeah, but boy, alchemy. - Alchemy. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That's rock and roll. - Fun fact. - And I cover this in the book. The philosopher Stone wasn't a stone. It wasn't a rock. It was a powder. - So it's like why? - Why? - They call it a stone because it had a, a stable state. - Oh, that makes sense. - It's like a stone. - Oh, okay. - But you always picture like a, I see a picture like a smoothie. - Like a powder. - Yeah, like a river rock. - Yeah, like smooth. - Yeah. - I gotta skip it. - Yeah. - I gotta skip the philosophers though. - Yeah, alchemy across the world. - Yeah. - Finally, very last question, number 13. Medieval Germany or Victorian England. - Ooh. - Medieval Germany. - I think I would go there too. 'Cause again, we know a lot about Victorian England. - Yeah. - It's fascinating. - And a culture that employed a town executioner. - Yeah. - Who carried like a three and a half foot long sword. - Yeah, I wanna know about that. - I just-- - Tell me more. - Yeah. - Yeah. - What other weird shit did you do? - Yeah, I don't know about that. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Look at all in a green mind. - We were unanimous. - Look at all many of those. - You were quick too. - You were really quick. (laughing) - We were just watching the episode of Friends Less Night where Phoebe has that game where she's like, "All right, I'm gonna ask you these questions "and you have to answer right away." - That's stressful to me. - You know, meter vegetables. Me, you know, and you're going through the thing and that's what we just did. - That was what that was. See, you prepared. - Yeah. - You were ready. You didn't even know it. That was so much fun. - Thank you so much for hanging out with us. - Oh, this was a blast. - Yeah, this was awesome. We have to do this again. - We should. - Yeah. - I recorded by myself. So I don't get to talk to other weirdos. - See? - I brought you here for that. - Yeah, we gotta bring you out of the cage. - Oh, thank you. - You're part of us. - Everybody go getting zooms and can order it right now. You can pre-order it and it will be available on his fourth. - Yes. - Yeah, it's either fourth or the sixth. We've got the events on the fourth. - Yeah. - We should talk about this for a second. - I was just gonna say we're gonna be at the Wilbur. - So obviously we're in the Boston area. There's a great theater in Boston called The Wilbur and it seats like 1,000 people. And Alain is gonna join me there on the fourth, which is it a Tuesday night? - I think it is a Tuesday night. It's like a book with ticket event. So you buy your ticket, but you also get the book. And then I'll be there. My philosophy for signing things is I'll stay until everybody's taken care of. - That's bad. - So if you get a book and you want me to sign it, I will sign it for you there. - Oh yeah. - But we're gonna talk more in depth about it. - Yes. - Revisit some of these questions and ideas and have fun with it. - Yeah. - It's gonna be a blast. - It'll be fun. - So I'll probably do a reading or something from the book too. Maybe read like the initial false version of her story from the prologue. - Oh, I love them. - Just to set that up. So that is August 4th, pre-order link for the book, tickets for like that event, or any of the other book tour events that I've got on my schedule. Just go over to aronmanky.com/exoomed. - Yes, perfect. - And these amazing ladies will put links in. - Yes, we will. - Yeah, but it's just my name, aronmanky.com/exoomed. - You can remember that. - The thing that you know that a lot of people don't know is that for pre-orders, like you can put a book up for pre-orders for like 10 months. All of the pre-order sales count toward the very first week of this release for book sales. That's how people hit the New York Times bestsellers list. - It's a big pre-order. We gotta get you there. - Pre-order, pre-order, pre-order. So I'm begging the morbid army to go up there and let's go and help. - And this will come out beforehand, so you know your job. - Yes. - You know what you have to do. - Yeah, yeah, for sure. - Yeah. - All right, well thank you again for joining us. - You're welcome. - And everybody, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. - But not so weird that you don't pre-order Aaron, Mickey's book and get him on the New York Times bestseller list of authors. - Of authors. - Of authors. - Otherwise I'm gonna skip you ahead with the other one. - Yeah. - So you're gonna have a hand of glory on the list. - That sounds like a weird. - It did sound you feel like. - Yeah, I'm not gonna give anybody a hand of glory. - I won't do that, I'm gonna. (gentle piano music) 2 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 [Music] [Music]