Épisodes

  • From Respectability to Ruin to Ripper Victim: The Whitechapel Murders and the Precarity of Poverty in Victorian London

    From Respectability to Ruin to Ripper Victim: The Whitechapel Murders and the Precarity of Poverty in Victorian London
    Feb 3 2025
    Crime and Punishment Series. Episode #1 of 4. In 1850, a bright-eyed eight-year-old girl walked across London Bridge in her carefully maintained school uniform. Her teachers called her promising; her siblings found her delightful. No one could have predicted that decades later, she would die violently in Mitre Square, known to history only as one of Jack the Ripper's victims. But this isn't another story about Victorian London's most notorious killer. Instead, we're exploring the lives of five women – Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane – before they became infamous crime statistics. Their stories reveal a London where respectability and ruin balanced on a knife's edge, where one misfortune could send a family spiraling into poverty. Join us as we peel back the sensational headlines to discover the real women of Victorian London's East End, their dreams, their struggles, and the system that failed them. This isn't a story about how these women died – it's a story about how they lived. This episode is based on Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five which you can buy at your local bookstore today! Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    58 min
  • Ghosting the Patriarchy: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights Movement

    Ghosting the Patriarchy: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights Movement
    Nov 25 2024
    Spiritualism's Place. Episode #4 of 4. In honor of our new book, Spiritualism's Place, we're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes about Lily Dale. Today we're revisiting our exploration of the close association of Spiritualism and the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    49 min
  • Plastic Shamans and Spiritual Hucksters: A History of Peddling and Protecting Native American Spirituality Re-Release

    Plastic Shamans and Spiritual Hucksters: A History of Peddling and Protecting Native American Spirituality Re-Release
    Nov 18 2024
    Spiritualism's Place. Episode #3 of 4. In honor of our new book, Spiritualism's Place, we're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes about Lily Dale. In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize - or didn’t care - that much of this spirituality was based on the spiritual faiths and practices of Native American tribes. Frustrated with what they called “spiritual hucksterism,” members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) began protesting - and have never stopped. Who were these ‘plastic shamans,’ and how did the spiritual services they sold become so popular? Listen to find out! Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h et 12 min
  • Julia’s Bureau: The Temperance Virtuoso, the Father of Journalism, and Life after Death in the Spiritualist Anglo-Atlantic Re-Release

    Julia’s Bureau: The Temperance Virtuoso, the Father of Journalism, and Life after Death in the Spiritualist Anglo-Atlantic Re-Release
    Nov 10 2024
    Spiritualism's Place. Episode #2 of 4. Enjoy this re-release of one of our favorite episodes in celebration of our newly released book: Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale. For three years before his untimely death on the Titanic, British newspaper man W. T. Stead gathered the bereaved and curious in a room in Cambridge House so they could communicate with the dead. Several psychics, including the blind medium Cecil Husk and materialization medium J. B. Jonson, worked these sessions which had become known as Julia’s Bureau. After Stead’s death, Detroit medium Mrs. Etta Wriedt sought to channel the dead newspaper man. Wriedt was also known to channel a Glasgow-born, eighteenth-century apothecary farmer named Dr. John Sharp. Other frequent visitors include an American Indian medicine chief named Grayfeather, the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, and a female Seminole Indian named Blossom who died in the Florida everglades as a young child. But the bureau’s most important spirit visitor can also be said to have been the founder of the bureau, Julia herself. Who was Julia? And how do these seances fit into the long history of Spiritualism? Find out today! Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    55 min
  • Spiritualism's Beginning: Kate and Maggie Fox

    Spiritualism's Beginning: Kate and Maggie Fox
    Nov 4 2024
    Spiritualism's Place, Episode #1 of 4: Enjoy this re-release of our episode on Kate and Maggie Fox, the "founders" of Spiritualism. Averill wrote this episode in preparation for writing about the Fox sisters in Chapters 2 & 3 of Spiritualism's Place. This time around, you can listen for the context and history that didn't make it into the book! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    47 min
  • Kitsune and Kitsunetsuki: A History of Japanese Fox-Witches and Fox Possession

    Kitsune and Kitsunetsuki: A History of Japanese Fox-Witches and Fox Possession
    Sep 30 2024
    Witches Series. Episode #4 of 4. This episode tells te story of one of Japanese folklore’s most infamous yokai (supernatural beings). The kitsune, “fox-spirit” or “fox-witch” has deep roots, millennias-old, in central Japan. The use of the word spirit conjures ghosts to western minds but the Japanese are using it to mean “supernatural or enlightened being”. This is why kitsune is also translated to fox-witch and, in many ways, this is a more accurate name within the western context. This shapeshifting spirit was believed to be the most cunning of yokais, its abilities only increasing with age. For centuries, kitsune have been suspected of performing kitsune-tsuki or “fox possession,” which were made easier by its ability to shapeshift into the form of a human woman. For this last episode on our 2024 Witches series, we’re tracing the history of Japanese fox-witches and the phenomenon of fox possession. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    59 min
  • The Salem Witch Trials of 1692

    The Salem Witch Trials of 1692
    Sep 23 2024
    Witches, Episode #3 of 4. The Salem witch trials lasted from late February 1692 to May 1693 in eastern Massachusetts Bay Province. This event resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of at least 155 individuals. Of these people, thirty were found guilty, with nineteen meeting their end by hanging. One man suffered a gruesome death by crushing under stones, while five others perished in jail due to harsh conditions. Although modest in scale compared to the extensive witch-hunts in 17th-century Europe, the Salem episode stands as the most severe witch-hunt in American history. It surpassed all previous New England witchcraft trials in terms of accusations and executions. The aftermath of the Salem trials marked a turning point. No further witchcraft convictions occurred in New England after this event. Moreover, the Salem crisis ultimately contributed to the downfall of the Puritan government in Massachusetts, signaling a significant shift in the region's political and social landscape. Bibliography Kamensky, Jane. Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England. Oxford University Press. 1997. Moyer, Paul. Detestable and Wicked Arts: New England and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Cornell University Press. 2020. Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Vintage Books. 2003. Ray, Benjamin C. Satan and Salem : The Witch-Hunt Crisis Of 1692. University of Virginia Press, 2015. Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. Oxford University Press. 1980. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    55 min
  • Spectral Evidence, Floating Witches, and Angry Neighbors: The Other Witch Panic of 1692

    Spectral Evidence, Floating Witches, and Angry Neighbors: The Other Witch Panic of 1692
    Sep 16 2024
    Witches Series. Episode # 2 of 4. In 1692, the unusual behavior of a young girl was explained as the result of the evil trickery of a witch. Soon, people were naming culprits, and those accused were on trial for their very lives. You’re all familiar with the story, right? But today we’re not talking about the famed witch panic that gripped Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 - no, we’re talking about the other witch panic that took place that very same year, 200 miles away in Stamford, Connecticut. What can this concurrent, but very different, witch panic teach us about ideas about witchcraft in colonial New England? Find transcripts and show notes at: www.dogpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h et 2 min