Episode 400: The Oneida Community
/400 episodes. Wow. We decided for this one to talk about something that has captured our interests since before Spirits was even the thing - the Oneida Community. We talk about the Second Great Awakening, the Burned Over District, and the result: A well-known silver company.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of cults, explicit sex discussions, eugenics, sexual assault, rape, religious persecution, abuse, pregnancy, childbirth, child death, manipulation, and indoctrination.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends going to a local drag show!
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every year, every Wednesday for eight years, Julia, we have gathered to share a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. And this is the 400th of those stories, but I'm still Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm still Julia. This week, kind of to celebrate the fact that we've hit 400 episodes, which I still can't believe. That is truly wild to me. Can't believe we've been doing 400 of these. We are going to talk about a topic that may have inspired Spirits as a concept, and is something that just, I think, is near and dear to both of our hearts.
AMANDA: I know enough about it because it's an interest of yours and the thing that I have since been like— it's a fun fact I share at parties, but I'm so excited to get even deeper into this. I remember, I think, proofreading for you a college paper to have to do with this subject and so I am so, so excited. 10 years later plus from when you first learned about the story, to dive deep into—
JULIA: The Oneida Community.
AMANDA: Hey.
JULIA: Now, for those who don't know, the Oneida Community is a religious cult that existed in the mid to late 1800s. It was a perfectionist utopian attempt, society-wise. There's just so much about this that is so interesting. We— we just have to get started, Amanda.
JULIA: We just have to, and it's— it's not just any kind of utopian cult, it's the pride of New York State, by which I mean a— a deeply flawed example of the things that went on, what— what settlers tried to do in sort of like the— you know, just sort of industrializing, sort of turn of the 19th century, of trying to perfect humanity through commerce, which involves, to me, the major subplot of Spirits, which is capitalism and its discontents, because these folks ran a silver company making silverware of all kinds that you can still find at garage sales and in people's homes, and in the discount sections of stores. That is, to me, the like incredible modern twist, the capitalist twist that makes this just an irresistible story.
JULIA: Amanda, don't jump the gun. We'll get there. We'll get there.
AMANDA: So ready, Julia.
JULIA: I feel like I just put my hand out, like we're going to touch hands and then hold them as we jump into this void together.
AMANDA: That's exactly what we're gonna do.
JULIA: So we start with a man named John Humphrey Noyes. Now, Noyes is an interesting guy with an interesting background. Immediately. He is born in 1811 in Vermont to John Noyes and Polly Noyes.
AMANDA: Now, Julia, people with two names only, but he has three names, which is how you know that people in the news are going to talk about his crimes.
JULIA: It's also to differentiate him from his father, who has the same name as him, but I— I feel you. they are going to talk about him and use his full name.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, John Noyes, the elder, lived a lot of different lives. He was a teacher. He was a minister. He was a businessman. He even served as a member of the United States House of Representatives.
AMANDA: Oh,
JULIA: Polly Noyes had her own claim to fame. She was the aunt of Rutherford B. Hayes, who would become—
AMANDA: The president.
JULIA: He would become president 60 years after the birth of John Humphrey Noyes.
AMANDA: So he has, like, an adult nephew, or second cousin or whatever, who is doing some, like, deeply shady shit.
JULIA: Yeah. Like, imagine someone running for president today. I know our standards are very different.
AMANDA: Triggered. Triggered.
JULIA: You find out that his cousin ran a sex cult somewhere in upstate New York.
AMANDA: You know, Julia, at this point in our timeline, I feel like that would be a minor footnote.
JULIA: How about like in, like, 1880 something, you know?
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. In— instead of— right. Like, in— in the age of Kennedy, imagine someone being like, "One's a Catholic, but one's cousin runs a sex cult in upstate New York."
JULIA: Which one do you want?
AMANDA: Hard choice, hard choice.
JULIA: Either way, Noyes the elder served in the House of Representatives when Noyes the younger was a child, and then moved the family to Putney, Vermont in 1822.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Noyes the younger, John Humphrey Noyes was well-educated. He attended Dartmouth College studying primarily law.
AMANDA: Julia, I'm gonna say it. It's a red flag. It's a red flag for a man to go to Dartmouth.
JULIA: It gets worse. It gets worse. It was when he was 20 in 1831 that he came across the work of Charles Grandison Finney.
AMANDA: Three names, I'm on edge.
JULIA: He was a theological leader in the Second Great Awakening.
AMANDA: Oh, this bitch.
JULIA: Now, the Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival around this time, and it was a movement that focused on social reform within Protestant denominations, with a focus on salvation within the church.
AMANDA: Now, Julia, I— I don't know as much about this as you, so is it fair to say that this was like a sort of like evangelical inflection and insertion into Protestantism?
JULIA: Sort of, but not quite. Because a lot of times, we think of evangelicalism as a very conservative sort of branch of Protestantism. The Second Great Awakening was actually a very liberal social reform movement.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: That we'll get to in a little bit. But the— the Second Great Awakening led to a bunch of different religious movements such as, like, Seventh-day Adventism—
AMANDA: Ah.
JULIA: —and most notably, the Latter-day Saints.
AMANDA: Got it. So I'm sensing less of a like, you know, we have to, like, make our individual lives adhere to, like, a, you know, a certain conception of what should happen and more like, no, no, no, the Second Coming is coming, and we gotta, like, prepare for it in our way.
JULIA: Yes. And it really depends on the movement, because there is a lot of variety within the religious movements that came out of the Second Great Awakening. Let's— let's talk about Finney for a second, and then I— we could talk a little bit more about little bit more about this. But Finney was considered this kind of father of old revivalism, and he was extremely active in the burned-over district of Central New York between 1825 and 1835. Now, ConSpiriters at home, remember the burned-over district, because it is going to be important later.
AMANDA: We— we raise a glass, we raise our beers to this— the— the burned-over district. Incredible antiques, Julia. Incredibly affordable homes, and insane Wikipedia pages, just for you all at home to look up and start— start reading.
JULIA: Yes. So Finney was preaching in the burned-over district between 1825 and 1835. And in particular, he preached about, like I said before, social reform, abolitionism, equal education for women and people of color.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: This is a man who was really trying to, like, bring about change.
AMANDA: Yeah. The— the, like, fundamental tenets of Christianity and Jesus' teachings, as I will say it should be of, you know, caring for others, seeing others as your equal. You know, making sure they have what they need in the world.
JULIA: Yes. And this was the man whose work inspired Noyes' kind of religious transformation. So when he graduated from Dartmouth, he abandoned his study of law and he enrolled in the Andover Theological Seminary.
AMANDA: Julia, I will say, law school dropout, green flag.
JULIA: Green flag. Going to seminary, depends.
AMANDA: I can take it. I can take it. I'm not going to judge.
JULIA: However, his time in Andover was short lived, and he instead started studying at the Yale Theological Seminary instead.
AMANDA: Red flag. We're back to red flags.
JULIA: Yeah. See, I told you, it gets worse. So while he was there, he was attending Bible study, he was attending lectures, but he was also very much inspired by Finney's work to engage in politics. Specifically, he was part of the abolitionist movement, and he helped organize an anti-slavery society in New Haven, which is where Yale is, and where he was living at the time.
AMANDA: And I know he had a ton of really important work in the abolitionist movement, was the New Haven chapter, specifically.
JULIA: Yes. So it was at Yale that Noyes comes to the conclusion that would become kind of the basis of his own religious movement. So during his Bible studies, he attempts to determine the date of the Second Coming of Christ, which was like— obviously, it's a— a very important thing with big theological consequences, and it's something that a lot of theologians and also a lot of people who are studying at seminaries try to do.
AMANDA: And Julia, we've already lived through several, like, major milestones at which this was supposed to happen in Y2K, in 2012, all kinds of like white people talking about Mayan shit. Like, this is a hobby as old as time. So when did he think the Second Coming would be happening?
JULIA: Well, Amanda, as he's attempting to determine the date of the Second Coming, Noyes comes to the conclusion that the Second Coming wasn't going to happen because it already happened.
AMANDA: Plot twist.
JULIA: All the way back in 70 CE.
AMANDA: Wow. Really?
JULIA: With that conclusion, Noyes believes that humanity is living in a new age, and that they would be able to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
AMANDA: I am seeing now the utopianess ties where, like—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —what's stopping this from being heaven on Earth, if the thing that's supposed to foretell that already happened?
JULIA: Exactly. So Noyes is very much into this idea that we can create heaven here on Earth and bring about the New Kingdom of Jesus.
AMANDA: Okay. I mean, I— I definitely see how this ties into social work, too, where it's like, well, if this is supposed to be, you know, the— the best of times, then like, the hell are we doing with institutions like slavery and restricting the vote happening?
JULIA: Yes, exactly. So he becomes, when he comes to this conclusion, increasingly focused on his studies, and in particular, how one would gain salvation from sin. And that salvation, he concluded, came from perfection, because if you were perfect, you would be able to be free of sin.
AMANDA: And again, it— it follows that, like, throwing off the yoke of original sin and humanity is like propensity, depending on what exactly you believe to sin, that feels like a natural conclusion. But I'm— I'm curious and suspicious as to what exactly one needs to do to achieve perfection.
JULIA: That's an excellent question, Amanda, because that's something that a lot of perfectionist Christians have argued over, especially during this period of the Second Great Awakening.
AMANDA: And in a way, it's— it's like the human project, right? Is to, like, figure out, how can I— how can I harm no one? How can I help people? How can I be as happy as possible? How can I, you know, achieve perfection? Whether or not that's something a label that really groks with you. I think that is kind of the human drive.
JULIA: Yes. Well, Amanda, Noyes pretty quickly believes that he is perfect and he cannot sin.
AMANDA: Oh. Okay. Okay.
JULIA: Because he has surrendered his will to God, and all of his choices, therefore, are coming from a perfect heart.
AMANDA: Okay. All right. So the— the whole sort of, like self-reflection and desire to improve be better, that applies to other people, because, like, the Second Coming, he's already there.
JULIA: Yes. So this is what we would call perfectionism. This is the belief that human beings can be perfect and free of sin on Earth, not just in heaven.
AMANDA: Got it, but he already did it, and therefore, you'd have to be like him and serve his needs in order to do it yourself.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: I'm guessing.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. So this is where things kind of start going a little off the rails for him.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So he gets his license to preach from Yale revoked.
AMANDA: Whoa. That's like the title of a Fall Out Boy song.
JULIA: Because— because he's like, "I'm perfect and I can't sin." And they're like, "What are you talking about?"
AMANDA: Shout out to the Yale Theological Society for being like, "My guy, you are missing kind of the whole point of this whole forgiveness and God thing."
JULIA: So he gets his license from Yale revoked, and he returns back to Vermont, and he starts preaching there, despite the lack of license, because he's like, "The institution can't take away my ability to speak to people."
AMANDA: Sure. Okay.
JULIA: And he starts getting something of a following in Vermont. And things get even more interesting, Amanda, when he gets married. Now, it's 1838 and he marries a woman named Harriet Holton. For the most part, in the first six years of their marriage, they have a very traditional marriage. Harriet has some difficulty with childbirth, and though she gets pregnant several times over the course of those six years, only one of her children survives to adulthood.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, around this time, Noyes gets very interested in the role of sex within marriage.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: He concludes that based on passages from the Bible in which it is stated that there is no marriage in heaven. He insists that, therefore, there should be no marriage on Earth, because, again, he believes that we can bring the Kingdom of Heaven onto Earth. We can create heaven on Earth.
AMANDA: Ah, so if this is heaven already, then why am I limiting myself to one woman under US law?
JULIA: Exactly. And meanwhile, he's also like, "But also, just because there's no marriage doesn't mean there shouldn't be any sex."
AMANDA: Sure. I mean, listen, heaven also includes sex for me, so that part, I— I find relatable.
JULIA: So this is where Noyes conceives of the idea of complex marriage.
AMANDA: Hmm. I see what you did there. And also one of the great euphemisms of the modern age, in my opinion.
JULIA: This, Amanda, his ingenious concept of complex marriage, just happens to coincide with Noyes meeting the wife of one of his early followers, a man named George Cragin.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Tale as old as time.
JULIA: Now, he manages to convince both his wife and the Cragins that they should merge their unions to create the first complex marriage, in which both men are married to both women and that means they can all have sex.
AMANDA: Listen, absolutely nothing wrong with— with polyamory in this way. And absolute shout out to those who navigate the logistical hurdles of— of, you know, living a life with more than one partner. I do object to this sort of like religious manipulation that I am sort of smelling and sensing here.
JULIA: It definitely has that stank, doesn't it? So the two couples move in together, and Noyes starts preaching more and more, and gaining more of a following. And the way that he sells complex marriage to his followers is that he wants to create, again, this perfect society, one that rids people of selfishness in order to create this perfect society on Earth, which reflects the one that they would find in heaven.
AMANDA: I'm already smelling the sort of conflation with, like, self-respect and boundaries as selfishness, which— you know, not loving, but I'm— I'm going to watch out for that as time goes on.
JULIA: Now, also part of the complex marriage is something that Noyes firmly believes in, and we'll go into more detail in it later.
AMANDA: Making pretty forks, making good spoons.
JULIA: Not bad.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: The thing is, male continence, Amanda.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Which is sex without ejaculation to put it bluntly.
AMANDA: Okay. Rock on. Nothing wrong with that.
JULIA: We'll— we'll talk a little bit more about that later, because it does become an extremely important part of his religious movement.
AMANDA: I'm assuming, Julia, this isn't sort of like removing the pressure of like goal-based sex from sort of like pleasures of intimacy. Is that not what we're talking about here?
JULIA: I'll get into detail, Amanda. Don't worry. Don't worry.
AMANDA: Okay. All right. All right. All right.
JULIA: Save those questions for later.
AMANDA: Oh, I'm so interested. This is great.
JULIA: All of this is going on as Noyes' flock begins to grow. And as it does by 1847, Noyes is like, "Okay. So complex marriage shouldn't just be between already married couples, we should get all the single ladies involved as well."
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: And so they just kind of start adding widows and unmarried women into the complex marriage.
AMANDA: And for those widows and unmarried women, if they like it, I love it, all right? If— if they're able to have sex without the— the sort of societal stank of not being married on them, love that for them.
JULIA: I love that for them, too. But you know who doesn't love that?
AMANDA: Men, single men?
JULIA: The local officials in Connecticut.
AMANDA: Yeah. Okay. Yup.
JULIA: So word gets around to people in Connecticut, people in power in Connecticut.
AMANDA: Well, Julia, that was mistake number one, is leaving Vermont. The soul of which is—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —if it gets you through the winter, my man, enjoy, to Connecticut, an increasingly sort of like Puritan state. That was a mistake.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, you'll agree that it is quite Puritan, because Noyes then gets indicted for adulterous fornication.
AMANDA: There you go.
JULIA: So he and the rest of his flock bounced to New York, and in particular, to the burned-over district.
AMANDA: New York, whose motto Excelsior means ever upward in your goals for your own sex life and marriage?
JULIA: Now, Amanda, let's talk about the burned-over district.
AMANDA: Delicious.
JULIA: So we actually get the term for the burned-over district by the man who inspired Noyes, Charles Grandison Finney.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. All three name.
JULIA: Now, this refers to mainly the western parts of New York State, but there is kind of a batch in central New York as well that fall into the category of the burned-over district. It's interesting, because keep in mind, this is the early 19th century, early 1800s, the western part of New York at this point is not particularly colonized or developed yet. And so it's kind of that American vibe of frontier, Wild West kind of thing. Like, you can get away with a lot out there.
AMANDA: Yeah, it becomes sort of like the— the northern terminus of the Rust Belt after industrialization, but we're not quite there yet.
JULIA: Yes. Actually, the reason that people started moving to the western part of New— what would be New York State is the building of one of your favorite things, Amanda, the Erie Canal.
AMANDA: Ah, good old canal. Good old injection of industry.
JULIA: So a lot of folks, because of the Erie Canal, were beginning to move out there, which kind of created this New York, quote-unquote, "frontier."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But why is it burned-over, right? So this comes from a comment from Finney about how the area was a hotbed, forgive the pun, of spiritual movements during the Second Great Awakening. And that quote, "spiritual fervor" seemed to set the area on fire.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: And it wasn't just religious movements, though that's mainly what we're going to be talking about. Since Finney was involved, it's not surprising that there was also— it was a hotbed of reform movement, abolitionist movement, women's rights, and most important to our story, utopian social experiments.
AMANDA: That's amazing. Yeah. No, it's the home of Seneca Falls and, you know, women organizing for the vote of abolitionists like John Brown. And I'll say, too, like a hotbed of social movements now, like one of the strongest chapters of the Democratic socialists of America is in Buffalo, New York. You know, disproportionate to its population and sort of economics. People there want better for themselves.
JULIA: And I think that is a tradition that has kind of lived on from this period of the burned-over district and the Second Great Awakening to the modern day.
AMANDA: So it sounds like a really ripe sort of powder keg for the injection of somebody like Noyes.
JULIA: Right. And this is where Noyes and his followers moved to, which was historically the land of the Oneida tribe. And when Noyes moves there in 1848, it is originally called Oneida Depot.
AMANDA: Pretty rude.
JULIA: Because, like, it wasn't a real town at that point.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JULIA: It was kind of just like a collection of houses. It was a stop along the way of the Erie Canal, et cetera, et cetera.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So there were 87 members when the Oneida Community was established in 1848, but grew to 172 by February of 1850.
AMANDA: Damn. That's a lot of infrastructure.
JULIA: Yeah. And— and it was a commune in pretty much every sense of the word. There was communal property and possessions, and as we established earlier, the complex marriage, which meant all of the men in the community were married to all of the women in the community.
AMANDA: Oh, I thought there were like pods, but no, everyone is entering into the same communal marriage.
JULIA: Correct. That is more of a thing that is established later.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Like, several of the followers who joined the Oneida Community, when it was established in 1848, like moved there with Noyes, were in either traditional marriages or like little pods. And it wasn't until later, not much later, but a little bit later, where the community was just like, "Everyone's married to each other."
AMANDA: Yeah. So the— the polycules became a poly—
JULIA: Commune.
AMANDA: A poly commune, that's the one.
JULIA: This was also a place where everyone was expected to work towards the betterment of the community, with community members rotating through jobs that did not require a specific skill set. So like the guy who was the financial planner, the guy in charge of the money was always the guy who was in charge of the money.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But everyone was expected to help out with like farming, or housework, or as the community began to grow, the manufacturing.
AMANDA: And this is what kills me, Julia, I'm sure we'll— we'll touch on it later, but like so many of these instincts are good, in my opinion. Like, I think every company and organization would benefit if everyone had to try everyone else's job. It would just give you a lot more appreciation and respect, I think, particularly for those who are, like, overpaid and underworked at, like, the top of the hierarchy to be like, "Oh shit. Like, I— I should probably give raises to the, you know, line workers, because that's way more important and hard than what I do."
JULIA: Yeah. Shout out to one of my favorite book series and the particular book, which is Record Of Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers.
AMANDA: Becky.
JULIA: It really focuses on, like, yeah, in order to make a community in which there's very little infighting, you need to make sure that everyone does all the different jobs.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Even the undesirable ones.
AMANDA: And I— I imagine this did not end in sort of, you know, equally distributed wealth and— and social privileges for all, but they all start so optimistic, Julia.
JULIA: You— you know what, Amanda? We'll see. We'll see how it goes. Everyone is working towards the betterment of the community, and again, manufacturing comes into play, because even Oneida was not like self-sustaining. So Noyes had to start diversifying into different industries that created goods that could be sold to the outside world. You got leather goods, you had garden furniture. You had like straw hats and perhaps most importantly, starting only in 1877, Amanda, so quite late into the— the creation of the society was silverware. And we'll see why that's important later. But Noyes has, at this point, created this community with free love.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Which is a term he invented, by the way.
AMANDA: What?
JULIA: Scholars say that he coined the phrase free love.
AMANDA: Stunning. Hippies don't even know. Amazing.
JULIA: They don't even know. So he's created this free love community and he is striving for perfection, so what could possibly go wrong?
AMANDA: Since we all don't live in the Oneida Community, I assume that something did.
JULIA: Yeah, Amanda, it did. But I'll tell you what went wrong, but first, we gotta grab our refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
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JULIA: Hey, this is Julia. And welcome to the refill. Let's start as we always do by thanking our newest patrons, SKH and Megging. Thank you so much for going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast and giving us some of your hard-earned dollars. You are the lifeblood of our show, and we wouldn't be able to do this without you. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And you join the ranks of people like our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Arianna, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jeremiah, Kneazlekins, Lily, Matthew, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Scott. As well as our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. And you too, person listening to this right now, can go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast, check out those cool rewards. We have recipe cards for every single episodes. We have bonus urban legends episodes, and we have ad-free episodes. Those are just some of the awesome rewards you can get when you sign up for our Patreon. One more time, patreon.com/spiritspodcast. My recommendation for you this week is something that I did this weekend for my husband's birthday, and that was go see a local drag show, even if you think that it's something you probably won't enjoy. My husband was a little skeptical about us taking him to a drag show for his birthday. He had the best time. He ended up on stage with the queens. It was such an amazing, amazing day, and he has been talking about it all day ever since. So, hey, go find a local drag show that is playing by you, and go support your local drag queens. Make sure you bring some singles, because you got a tip, and have a great time. I think you'll also have a great time if you go and check out Big Game Hunger. Big Game Hunger is a weekly comedy show where Jenna Stoeber and friends craft the next big video game every episode. I was on one where we crafted a video game that was like hockey, but also Mad Max: Fury Road. Gritty was involved. So if you like any of those things— I'm not even a big sports player, but I loved making that video game. So they start with a randomly generated genre concept and vibe, and Jenna and a variety of funny and game-obsessed guests will take these ideas far enough that they can pitch it to a shadowy board of rich investors. By the end of the episode, they'll have honed an IP so irresistible, you'll be ready to risk $25 on Steam for it. So get ready to laugh about games that you love, learn about game trends, and yearn for titles that will surely never make their release date. New episodes every Monday, that is Big Game Hunger. Check it out. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables like? What is your like never skip leg day, but it's for therapy instead? Like, when your schedule is packed with so many different things, work projects, family obligations, and so much more, it is really easy to let your priorities slip. Even when we know it makes us happy, it's hard to make time for the things that do make us happy. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, the non-negotiables, like for me, therapy, are more important than ever. I know that when I miss therapy during the week, it— it really kind of bums me out. I'm like, I have all of these feelings that I want to process. Therapy has become such a important part of my weekly routine. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist any time for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/spirits today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, .com/spirits. And now, let's get back to the show.
[theme]
JULIA: Amanda, grab your beer. We've got more to cover.
AMANDA: Cheers, girl. Let's do it.
JULIA: So Noyes and the members of the Oneida Community, they are trying to create this perfect society, heaven on Earth, a perfect utopia.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, how does one go about doing that? We've already talked about Noyes' belief in free love and complex marriage. And I want to stress that complex marriage was also very consent-based.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Anyone was free to have sex with anyone else, so long as the other person consented.
AMANDA: Better than most cults.
JULIA: Pretty good. But also, everyone was expected to have sex.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Which is a little sketchy, but again, you had to consent, so it is a little bit of, like, a gray area.
AMANDA: It is, yeah. It's— it's not— it doesn't have a holistic understanding of, like, you know, the Ace-Aro spectrum. It is also 18, you know, 80s, so I'm— I'm giving them a ahead of the curve award.
JULIA: We also talked about Noyes' interest in male continence, which had not just a religious reasoning, but also a practical one. When you're encouraging a bunch of your followers to do a bunch of fucking, you might end up with a bunch of children.
AMANDA: That's true.
JULIA: And when you're starting a commune with not a lot of financial or, you know, established support, you don't necessarily want to be raising a ton of children.
AMANDA: Okay. So some family planning going on.
JULIA: Yes. So Noyes actually encouraged his followers to practice amative love, which is sex to express love, rather than what he referred to as propagative love, which is sex for the purpose of having children.
AMANDA: Okay. This feels like an important departure, because this is also sort of the idea that, for example, makes masturbation seem immoral, because it's not like, quote-unquote, "useful" where use is defined as procreation.
JULIA: Right. And it's very non-Christian, for lack of a better phrase.
AMANDA: Yeah. Compared to other denominations, this feels incredibly non-traditional.
JULIA: For sure. And for the purposes of birth control, it worked kind of pretty well.
AMANDA: Yeah. I mean, compared to nothing.
JULIA: So between 1848 and 1868, there were about 200 adults that were part of the Oneida Community, like on average. And in those 20 years, Amanda, there were only 12 unplanned births.
AMANDA: Fascinating. Is that, like, a self-reported number? So, like, maybe a little iffy, but still an incredible figure.
JULIA: It is a self-reported number, but at the same time, like you would have known if there was more births happening, because it was a very enclosed community, and there was only, at that point, 200 people.
AMANDA: That's really interesting. I— I hope that opened up some space for, like, people who are not fertile, for like queer people, for queer sex, for any— it's almost like inherently queer, I think, to open up the boundaries of sex to be defined by pleasure and not procreation.
JULIA: Yes. And I can't speak to— whether or not, there was, like queer relationships or queer sex happening within the Oneida Community. I don't think there's a lot of, like, research that has been done in that, so I— I can't say for sure, but it does feel inherently queer to me.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And again, part of this is Noyes has these really interesting thoughts about sex and pregnancy. Like, for example, he thinks ejaculation, quotes, "drains men's vitality and led to disease," which, at the time, the latter is not necessarily wrong.
AMANDA: That's true. Yeah, before germ theory, like he is correlating, you know, sex that is obviously by default, unprotected with multiple partners, as a potential vector of STIs.
JULIA: And then he also believed that pregnancy, quote, "levied a heavy tax on the vitality of women," which is also not untrue.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Go through a lot of changes and it's a lot of stressors on your body when you are pregnant and give birth.
AMANDA: And I feel like we are still sort of reckoning with, like, the emotional, physical, you know, psychological tolls of pregnancy, birth, miscarriage, all of that on pregnant people.
JULIA: Right. And he's— he's literally looking at the experiences that his wife had, Harriet, who you remember, went through a lot of very difficult pregnancies that kind of left her weakened. And he's like, "I don't want to necessarily see women go through that unless they want to."
AMANDA: I mean, okay, we were at the absolute baseline, but shout out.
JULIA: Yes. And that, and Noyes preached to his followers the importance of women's sexual satisfaction.
AMANDA: Okay. Wow.
JULIA: If a man failed to please a woman, he might face public disapproval, because word got around.
AMANDA: Julia, it's not perfect, but it's an improvement.
JULIA: Yeah. And women in Oneida, because Noyes was so involved in the social reforms at the time, had freedoms within the community that they would not have had out in society. They were allowed, and in fact, encouraged, to participate in all different kinds of work. They could be part of active committees that help shape the policies of the community. They could wear what they liked, they could cut their hair short if they preferred. And we mentioned, like, with a community that was all about free love, women had equal sexual freedom as men did.
AMANDA: And a real departure from, like, many other kind of like sexual cults and communities, or even cults and communities that are like patrilineal and involve plural marriage. I'm thinking a lot of like LDS, fundamentalist cults that I have, you know, read about and seen documentaries about where, you know, women are a resource useful only in their ability to procreate that, you know, men or a man is allowed to choose from. This is, in many ways, like, the closest to a sort of, like, progressive, you know, liberated consent-based, I don't know, community that we've seen in history.
JULIA: Yeah. And— and for the most part, these are all really good things, right?
AMANDA: I'm sure it doesn't stay that way.
JULIA: Yeah. This is where things get a little weird, and then go all the way bad. Noyes fully believed that male continence was the best way of maintaining relationships, but also realized that for younger men in the community that were learning the practice, it might be a little bit difficult and might lead to some accidental pregnancies, which they were actively trying to avoid. So he encouraged older women in the community, specifically women over 40 years old, to act as religious and sexual mentors to younger men.
AMANDA: Potential to be great. I'm also sensing that we did not, perhaps, have a modern idea of ages of consent.
JULIA: Yes. And then, similarly, older men were the ones who introduced young women to sex.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Noyes was maybe too involved in partnering people up within the community. Like, again, everyone is supposed to be having sex with everyone, but he would, like, encourage certain people to build relationships.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: So, like, sometimes it would be like, you'd get pulled aside to talk to Noyes, and he would be like, "Hey, I think you should have sex with so and so."
AMANDA: And this is where it gets, you know, very dicey, because there's no way in which the person in charge of your, like, financial and depending on what he's saying, spiritual well-being, quote-unquote, "encouraging" you to do something comes with strings that you can't really say no to.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah. And it— like, it was kind of matchmaker-y, but also sometimes it was done so that it would bring people further into the fold if Noyes believed that they weren't as devoted to the cause as— as others were.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And then Noyes began to get even more involved, Amanda.
AMANDA: Oh, sure. Maybe personally.
JULIA: So I mentioned earlier that up until 1868, there were only these 12 unplanned births, right?
AMANDA: You did. And I find that absolutely staggering.
JULIA: That's because that specific date, why we cut it off at 1868 is because in 1869—
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: —Noyes implemented a new community objective. I didn't put two and two together until you said that. And now I'm like—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —"Oh, okay."
AMANDA: Uh-oh.
JULIA: So he's implemented this new community objective, which is to create spiritually and physically perfect children.
AMANDA: Okay. Yup. We're— we're sounding the eugenics alarm. We're— we're not liking what— where this is going.
JULIA: So he devised a committee that community members who wish to be parents could go before, not as couples, but as individuals.
AMANDA: Yup.
JULIA: And then, based on their qualities, moral and spiritual, the committee, and especially Noyes, would then match up couples so that they could conceive the ideal child.
AMANDA: Yeah. This— this blows.
JULIA: Out of, at this point, almost 300 people, 53 women and 38 men participated in the program. More women than men. The result of the committee and this, like, eugenics program, basically, was 58 children.
AMANDA: Yup. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Kind— kind of average for the amount of people that we're— we're looking at here, right?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: That's fine and dandy, until you learn that nine of the children were fathered by Noyes himself.
AMANDA: Hmm. Yup. I could have predicted that one.
JULIA: Yes. So remember, Noyes was out there telling his flock that he could do no wrong, he could not sin. He had a pure and perfect heart, his pure and perfect heart, Amanda.
AMANDA: And, like, I'm sure that he, unbiased, thought he was pretty good-looking.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. So, yeah, this is eugenics, plain and simple.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And the fact that Noyes was so involved in it, and the fact that he thought he was so perfect that he was fathering a good amount of these supposedly spiritual and physical perfect children, not great.
AMANDA: I think a good media literacy lesson for us in— checks watch, in 2024, that the word perfect, perfection, heaven on Earth, et cetera, more often than not, signaling some eugenics-y behaviors going on.
JULIA: Yeah. The idea of making the perfect child does not exist, because that's eugenics, baby.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Who's determining what perfect is? That's the question to ask yourself.
AMANDA: Yeah, not— not people with disabilities, I tell you that much.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. This part is less fucked up, but the thing that would absolutely turn me off from joining a community like this, besides, obviously, the eugenics.
AMANDA: I can excuse the eugenics, but I stop at—
JULIA: The practice of mutual criticism.
AMANDA: Oh, that sounds terrible.
JULIA: So mutual criticism was basically like Noyes wanted to, in order to make a perfect society, eliminate undesirable characteristics amongst his community.
AMANDA: Yeah. Okay. Like dissent, probably?
JULIA: And in order to do that, often, there were community or committee meetings where any member of the community would be told essentially what was wrong with them and what they could be doing better.
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: Noyes, and really all of the community, was always watching, and no one was safe, not even Noyes from criticism.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Though, sources say that he received it far less often and less harshly than other members of the community.
AMANDA: Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure.
JULIA: There's a quote from a journalist who claimed that he had seen a general meeting in which a man named Charles was criticized by Noyes and the rest of the community. And I just have to read this, because it's my actual nightmare, and I need you to experience it with me.
AMANDA: Okay. Okay, I'm ready.
JULIA: "Charles sat speechless, looking before him, but as the accusations multiplied, his face grew paler, and drops of precipitation began to stand on his forehead. The remarks I have reported took up about half an hour, and now, each one of the circle having spoken, Mr. Noyes, summed up. He said that Charles had some serious faults, that he had watched him with some care, and that he thought the young man was earnestly trying to cure himself."
AMANDA: Absolutely brutal. That's like a— a candle lighting ceremony, but the opposite.
JULIA: But it's half an hour of people just saying like, "I really think that you should just, like, really focus in on these problems that you have."
AMANDA: Oh, boy. Yeah, that— that blows. Oof.
JULIA: I— I hate it so much.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: I really hate it. The free love stuff, okay. The eugenics, not good. This, also my nightmare.
AMANDA: Yeah. A lot of good intentions in terms of, like, you know, being open to, you know, again, change, self-improvement, all of that wonderful— you know, inviting the people you love and trust to tell you how you can be better in a relationship with them. All of that, great, but none of this is— is with the— the guardrails you need.
JULIA: And so everything we've talked about so far has been kind of internal, all about the community, but what was going on in the community pretty quickly started to draw the attention of the outside community.
AMANDA: Yes. You mentioned a journalist watching the meeting, which must be a fucking nightmare.
JULIA: Exactly. So at first, honestly, the outside world thought that they had some good ideas. So, like, interactions with the Oneida Community noted that the community was really good at conflict resolution. The community seemed quite peaceful. It seemed like while a weird place to live, not a bad place to live.
AMANDA: I could see some farmers being like, "You know what? They— they got some points. And furthermore, I like the silverware."
JULIA: But given the fact that they were really kind of flying in the face of society's expectations around marriage and sex, and child-rearing—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —and religion in general, the public started having kind of suspicions about what was going on in Oneida. And critics thought that they were, like, attempting to just end the institution of marriage, and that the sexual liberation, particularly of women, were, like, corrupting members of the community.
AMANDA: Yeah. Which, like, settler Christian nationalism absolutely cannot abide.
JULIA: The external criticism was further inflamed in 1851 with the legal battle over a woman named Tryphena Hubbard.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, I— I want to stress, like this part is a little bit triggering, and if you are, like, a survivor of a cult or something like that, I— like, if you're comfortable listening to that, that's great. But there is like parts about, you know, kind of indoctrination, being, quote-unquote, "driven to madness" and some, like, physical abuse and assault in this section. Just so everyone knows going into this. Now, Hubbard was a 21-year-old woman at the time that she found Noyes' writing in 1848. She was a local woman, too. So she— her family lived in the Oneida area, just not in the Oneida Community.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: So the community comes in and starts settling in the area in 1848, which is when Hubbard is introduced to the— the writings and preachings of Noyes. And so she was the community's first local convert when she joined the Oneida Community in 1848.
AMANDA: And to be clear, I am never gonna fault people who were like, "Oh, something better than the poverty, toil and repression of the society I live in. Like, might as well." I— I have absolutely no judgment in my heart for Tryphena or anyone else who reads that and is like, "Something might be better."
JULIA: Yes. Exactly. So when she joined, she married a man named Henry Seymour, because this was before Noyes in an effort to create the community's perfectionism that had banned traditional marriage.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So in early 1849, Hubbard's father heard rumors about the transition to the entire community being in the complex marriage and the rise of the free love movement, and demanded the return of his daughter.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Now, Hubbard, happy in the community and a true believer at this time, refused to return back to her father's household. But for two years, he was like continually harassing the community. He was trying to bring his daughter home, et cetera, et cetera.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Now, we mentioned the mutual criticism just now that the community would run.
AMANDA: A little shiver went down my spine when you said that, truly.
JULIA: It's not good. It's not good. In a reported community criticism, I'm not sure how it was reported, but we— we have reports about this criticism. There were reports that Tryphena had begun acting out. She was being insubordinate. She was showing signs of mental illness, though they wouldn't call it that at the time.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: This escalated further over the course of two years, until her symptoms got so severe that Henry Seymour, the husband that she had married originally in the community, reported to her father that she had, quote-unquote, "gone insane."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, the family was reunited with her, and seeing their daughter also discovered that Seymour had been physically violent with his wife, and so they filed charges against him. Seymour was indicted, and several other major members of the community were arrested as accessories.
AMANDA: Oh, God.
JULIA: It was done on her behalf too, by the family, because at that point, she was not in a state in which she could file the charges herself.
AMANDA: I'm kind of im— I don't wanna say impressed, but I'm surprised that domestic violence is actually being prosecuted.
JULIA: Absolutely. And while he was indicted, the case ended up being settled out of court, and it was for a total of $350 to pay for, basically, an asylum stay and treatment for Tryphena.
AMANDA: And probably a lever for, like, political action, right? Like, that's often how these things work.
JULIA: Well, luckily, she wasn't— like this— I think it ended up going on for, like, a year or so before she was released from the asylum. But this legal conflict kind of nearly ended the community. It shook the faith of a lot of, like, already questioning members, and it was a bad time for the Oneida Community.
AMANDA: I'm sure she did not have a— a happy time in that treatment, so I— I can't even say that— you know, at least she got some amount of treatment.
JULIA: However, things ended up calming and solidifying a little bit when Tryphena Hubbard, after being released from the asylum, actually returned to the Oneida Community, and like basically was reunited with her husband, had a child with him, and remained with the community until her death in 1877.
AMANDA: I hope she found some peace on that.
JULIA: I hope so, too. Okay. So that was kind of, however, the— the heralding of there are problems here.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: We fast forward a little bit to the community's height. In 1878, we have 306 members of the community from the original 87, 28 years prior.
AMANDA: It's like a— a bustling village, that's a lot of people.
JULIA: Now at this point, however, Noyes was growing older, and at this point, many of the original members were either very elderly or had passed away.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Noyes knew that kind of continuing the community was of the utmost importance, and so attempted to transition power and leadership to his son, Theodore Noyes.
AMANDA: One of many, many sons, I would guess.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Yeah, there's quite a few. Amanda, the problem was Theodore sucked.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: He was boring. He was not charismatic like his father. He was not a true believer. He was literally an agnostic in terms of religious aspects of the community.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: And he didn't want to do this fucking job.
AMANDA: Tough.
JULIA: And because of that, because Theodore sucked and didn't want to do this job, Oneida splintered into a couple of different factions.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: There were those who want to, like, follow the Noyes family and then there were others who wanted to follow the other religious commune leader, who was a man named James W. Towner.
AMANDA: Okay. Only a middle initial. I see why you're not at the beginning of the story, James.
JULIA: Now, James W. Towner, at this point, was like, "Let me be a leader." Noyes is like, "No, no. Teddy here is gonna do it." And so Towner and his faction eventually left the community, moved to California, where they created their own community in Orange County.
AMANDA: Oh, sure, Julia, the other hotbed of perfectionist utopian communes.
JULIA: They actually appealed to the local government there. It was like, "Build us a commune." And they were like, "No. Do it yourself."
AMANDA: The absolute audacity.
JULIA: So further division occurred as new generations and young members that were either raised in the community or had just joined, and they had different opinions on how they wanted to proceed with the community. They had different opinions on when children should be brought into the sexual aspect of the community and who should be their sexual and spiritual mentors.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: They also, as the younger members of the community, grew as well. Like, started growing into adulthood. They desired to move away from complex marriages and petition for them to be allowed to engage in traditional marriages or exclusive partnerships.
AMANDA: Yeah. I mean, you want it to be an option if that suits you, and not a mandate if it doesn't, along with, for example, the mandate that everyone has sex all the time.
JULIA: Yes, which is, you know, the problem with raising a children in that society. They don't necessarily want all that.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So all of this is going on, on top of that, Noyes is being targeted by this man named Professor John Mears, who is a professor and a pastor from Hamilton College who organizes a large group of clergy members to protest and speak out against the Oneida Community.
AMANDA: Sure,
JULIA: At the same time, Noyes is also being targeted by the law.
AMANDA: Yeah. You can't kind of get away with that forever.
JULIA: Yeah. They planned on charging him with statutory rape.
AMANDA: I mean, that's happening, yeah.
JULIA: So Noyes was, however, warned ahead of time that the charges were incoming, and so fled the community in 1897 to Canada, where he would eventually die without ever returning.
AMANDA: Oh, die in exile in Canada. Okay.
JULIA: In his final communication with the community via letter, he told everyone to abandon complex marriage, and the community eventually did.
AMANDA: You know, Julia, all that— all that stuff that outsiders observed about the community, about conflict resolution and peace, and like, you know, living harmoniously, it all really does depend on, like, the firm vision and sort of zealous adherence to a single leader. And, you know, you wrote about it, and we see it all the time of when there is not a firm succession plan in place, or even when the successor is just inadequate compared to the original founder. Like, things are gonna fall apart.
JULIA: Yeah, that is the thing— if you have ever studied cults, if you haven't, the thing that makes a cult a cult. There's a lot of definitions about what makes a cult a cult, but one of the things that is one of the definitions, one of the requirements to consider something a cult, is you have to have a charismatic leader. And if your charismatic leader either dies or is unable to kind of continue the line to another charismatic leader, your cult is doomed to fail.
AMANDA: Totally.
JULIA: So that is kind of what happened to Oneida here. So as a religious commune, Oneida ended towards the end of 1897 with some remaining members reorganizing, not as a religious group, but as a joint stock company.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Amanda?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: You speak business, what is that?
AMANDA: That's just a company, Juls. That— it's a public company with stock you can buy.
JULIA: Oh, okay. Great. That's what they did.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: And so, while their numbers dwindled, they definitely didn't have the 300 people that they had, you know, couple years prior. There were over 70 members of the former Oneida Community that remained together, albeit as part of traditional marriages.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Their focus then shifted with the rebranding from the Oneida Community to Oneida Community Limited.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JULIA: Which focused on selling, as we mentioned before, silverware.
AMANDA: Incredible. And this is where, you know, our grandmas had sets of Oneida silverware that we can whisper like, "You know, that was made by a cult." But I mean, presumably, most of it was made in the— in the corporate era.
JULIA: And you know what, Amanda? It's really funny, because, like, they tried a bunch of different stuff besides silver first.
AMANDA: Oh, really?
JULIA: They started doing stuff like animal trapping, you know, which worked until 1912. They tried silk, which only ran until 1916. And then they were like, "Oh, we'll do some canning." And then by 1915, they were like, "We're making no money off of canning. We can't keep canning things."
AMANDA: But the thing that they could make money on, silverware.
JULIA: Silverware. And they continued making silverware within the community, Amanda, until 2005.
AMANDA: Damn. Wow.
JULIA: That was when the US manufacturing ended, after 124 years of manufacturing silver. Though they are still technically designing and selling silverware, it's just being manufactured overseas nowadays.
AMANDA: I do think it's incredibly unjust that this is all named after the Oneida peoples who were, you know, forcibly displaced from their land.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Especially, because, like, what a legacy, and I feel like they were doomed from the start with that kind of beginning.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, Amanda, that's the story of the Oneida Community. It's this fascinating little blip in New York history. It is one of the more interesting but less well-known religious movements that came out of the burned-over district in New York. And personally, I think it is one that I wish more people knew about, which is why I wanted to talk about it so badly here in our 400th episode of Spirits.
AMANDA: I'm so glad you did. It is so wonderful to, like, have you take me through a story that, again, I remember you calling me from school, you know, going on, like 12, 13 years ago, and saying, like, "Would you believe?" And that— that, to me, is the— the animating impulse of this show. Every week I show up and get to have my best friend say to me, "Would you believe?" And every time I'm like, "Damn, girl, no. I— I cannot believe it." And I think that this story really touches on a ton of stuff that is close to home for us, for the things that fascinate us about the show, about, you know, the human desire toward peace and prosperity and improvement, and all of the human foibles that come in and sort of stand in the way of us actually achieving it. Plus, you know, all that great stuff, like the ways that law intersects with folklore and religious practice, and, of course, capitalism.
JULIA: Oh, man. It just reverted back to capitalism at the end. Isn't that the funny part?
AMANDA: Always. Listen, you gotta— you gotta make money in order to— to run a religious commune in today's day and age.
JULIA: I mean, shout out to all the queer people who are like, "We should just start a commune." It's not as easy as it looks, babes.
AMANDA: People worse than you have tried, so—
JULIA: It's true.
AMANDA: —if you got a business plan and— you know, again, so many examples of like, you know, socialist communes and, like, Catholic hospitality, and all kinds of traditions rooted in the religious desire to make the world better for those coming after us, involves some aspect of communal ownership, sharing of labor, pooling of resources. And so, it's— it's not as easy. I think that's why cults kind of fascinate us, and certainly why they fascinate me, is because they are, you know, definitionally, probably ill-fated human attempts to, you know, remake the world a little better. And I— I don't know, there's something just so human about that.
JULIA: But, Amanda, John Humphrey Noyes, he went to Dartmouth and Yale.
AMANDA: Red flag after red flag.
JULIA: Red flag all over. Red, red, red flag.
AMANDA: Well, Julia, thank you for bringing the story to us. And I also want to say thank you so much to everyone listening to us here at the, you know, very end of our 400th episode, whether this is your first episode of Spirits, in which case, welcome.
JULIA: Wild.
AMANDA: I'm so glad you're here. You've gotten a great sense of what our vibe is. Or if you've been with us since the very beginning in 2016, we so appreciate you. I know, speaking for myself, Julia, I am humbled and amazed that this remains my job, when it started out as something that we wanted to do to keep in better touch with each other, to work on a project, and for you to share some of the incredible stuff you learned about mythology and folklore with me.
JULIA: And now, I get to info dump about my special interests on a weekly basis.
AMANDA: That's podcasting, baby.
JULIA: That's podcasting, baby. And I'm so glad that I get to do this, and that people have listened to, if not all, 400 episodes, probably a lot.
AMANDA: Plus several 100 bonus episodes on Patreon. So it's— it's a legacy that I am so excited to keep creating with you, Julia. And folks, remember, next time you are at a garage sale and you pick up a spoon, and you turn it over, and what's that? It says Oneida?
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
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