Where Superstitions Come From & What You Never Knew About Paul Revere

Shampoo, lotions, guns, knives and a lot of other things are confiscated at airport security checkpoints every day. What happens to all those things? Can you ever get them back? This episode starts by taking a look. https://www.rd.com/article/return-confiscated-items-tsa/ Even if you don’t believe in them, you probably participate in some superstitions. Maybe you knock on wood or avoid walking under a ladder or steer clear of black cats. Where do these superstitions come from? Why do they still exist since we know they don’t really do anything? Here to explain this is Arie Kaplan, who has written numerous books and graphic novels and is also a television writer. Arie is author of a book called The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions: Ancient and Remarkable Traditions That Will Captivate Your Mind (https://amzn.to/44xpZ8m). It is the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride through Boston. While you likely learned something about it in school, there is much more to the story you probably don’t know. Not only was Paul Revere a skilled horseman, he was also a “self-taught” dentist, bell maker and an excellent silversmith and engraver. And there is much more to his legacy as you will hear from my guest Kostya Kennedy. He is a former senior writer and editor at Sports Illustrated and has written books about Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio and Pete Rose. He is also author of the book, The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America (https://amzn.to/4klhtyY). What is the best way to construct a fire? There is one right answer whether you are building a campfire, a bonfire or stacking charcoal in your grill. What’s strange is – you instinctively know how to do it. Listen as I explain. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/461717 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! SHOPIFY: Shopify is the commerce platform for millions of businesses around the world! To start selling today, sign up for your $1 per month trial at⁠ https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠ INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Stick to the staples that last, with elevated essentials from Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! HERS: Hers is transforming women’s healthcare by providing access to affordable weight loss treatment plans, delivered straight to your door, if prescribed. Start your initial free online visit today at ⁠https://forhers.com/something⁠ DELL: The Black Friday in July event from Dell Technologies is here. Upgrade for a limited-time only at ⁠https://Dell.com/deals⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, what happens to your items that get confiscated by security at the airport? Then, the fascinating origins of superstitions like knocking on wood, the number 13, and why it's unlucky to walk under a ladder.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Because if a ladder was propped up against a wall, you had three sides, you had a triangle, and that was a sacred shape to the Egyptians because of pyramids. Walking under a ladder, stepping through a pyramid, it's thought to be disrespectful.

• 1:04Mike Carruthers?

  Also, the formula for building the perfect fire. And it's the anniversary of Paul Revere's Ride, made famous by that poem.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Listen, my children, and you shall hear the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the Longfellow poem. It's actually amazingly accurate for a poem. It wasn't pretending to be a piece of nonfiction account, but it is, by and large, accurate.

• 1:26Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:56Speaker 04

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life today. Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 3:09Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever wondered what happens to all those things that get confiscated at the airport by the TSA people? Well, you're about to find out. Hi, and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know. If you fly much at all, you've probably forgotten at some point to check your carry-on for forbidden liquids or whatever, and so they end up taking it from you at the airport. Well, can you get that back? Probably not. When you surrender an item, and by the way, they don't confiscate anything. You surrender them. There is a difference. I mean, you don't have to give them to them. You could give them, you could give those items to someone else at the airport.

• 3:52Mike Carruthers?

  You could take them back to your car and come back. You don't have to give them to the TSA people. You just can't get on the plane with them. But once those items are surrendered, the government has strict rules it has to follow for disposing of surrendered property.

• 4:08Mike Carruthers?

  Now, things like guns, weapons, and hazardous materials, or anything that's illegal, those are turned over to law enforcement. But forbidden liquids like shampoos, or gels, or lotions, those are just immediately disposed of. Everything else is turned over to state agencies, or kept by the TSA, to be disposed of through sales, destruction, or donations to charity. Now, if you had to surrender something that you really didn't want to surrender, but you had to catch your plane, you could try searching for your discarded property at govdeals.com, where some state agencies sell surplus goods via a bidding process.

• 4:53Mike Carruthers?

  But it's hardly foolproof, and you would probably have to buy your stuff back. Any profit from TSA sales of confiscated items goes to the US Department of the Treasury, and into a general fund to help pay off the national debt. And that is something you should know. Superstitions are weird. We all know, for example, that it's bad luck to walk under a ladder. But we also know that that's just a superstition, that it's impossible to scientifically connect walking under a ladder to really having bad luck.

• 5:33Mike Carruthers?

  We know it isn't so, and yet, many of us will avoid walking under a ladder. Which is really silly, but I guess the idea is, why tempt fate? So where do superstitions come from, and why do they still seem to have this weird hold on us, even though we know better? Here to talk about this is Ari Kaplan. He is a writer who has written graphic novels, he's written for television, and he is author of a book called "The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions: Ancient and Remarkable Traditions That Will Captivate Your Mind." Hey, Ari, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Mike. Thanks for having me.

• 6:15Mike Carruthers?

  So where do superstitions come from, and why do we have them?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  So superstition, in a way, is kind of a condescending term, because it comes from the Latin word "superstis," which means "left behind," or "obsolete," and it's... the idea is that these are... These are rituals, these are beliefs that are kind of left over from an obsolete or outdated belief system or religion. And that's not quite the case. In fact, that a lot of the time, people today are very superstitious, even though they might not realize it. And there's nothing to be ashamed of in terms of that. It's so common. Almost everyone is superstitious. Studies have shown that.

• 7:03Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, I believe that. I think everybody has some superstition that they cling to. And you see it in sports, when before the baseball player steps into the batter's box, or when the tennis player, before he serves the ball, they do a little, you know, superstitious thing, which I assume they believe is going to help, or at least it's not going to hurt. And it does something.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's true with a lot of actors. I also have a background as a stand-up comedian, TV comedy writer, and I know for a fact, a lot of actors and comedians have superstitious rituals that they act out before they get on stage. When I, I didn't really do this when I was doing stand-up, but sometimes, for a while, when I was doing speaking engagements, lectures, and I was about to go on a plane to do an out-of-town lecture, I would buy a blueberry muffin every time. And I realized after a while, oh, my God, I think this is a superstition with me. I think that the blueberry muffin is somehow lucky.

• 8:04Mike Carruthers?

  When you think of the more common superstitions people have, like, you know, knocking on wood for good luck, or the rabbit's foot for good luck, that kind of thing, do we have a pretty good idea where they came from and when? Or are some of them so old, we don't have any idea?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  For a lot of them, we do have a general idea where they came from. So I'll take these one at a time. For knocking on wood, I think we have a pretty good idea. In ancient times, and a lot of the pre-Christian civilizations in Europe, like, for example, the Celtic peoples, they believed that trees were home to fairies. Fairies lived in trees, and that was a common belief. And so if you were knocking on the wood, you were telling these fairies, these sort of forest spirits, that you were acknowledging their existence, you were making them feel seen. And so because of that... Knocking on wood became synonymous with good luck.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  And then later on, when Christianity spread throughout Europe specifically, people thought that knocking on wood was symbolic of knocking on the cross that Jesus was crucified on. And so it had its own good luck connotations because of that for early Christians. And so that just changed to, in modern society, just sort of having this nebulous knocking on wood superstition.

• 9:29Mike Carruthers?

  So numbers, let's talk about numbers because everybody's heard that, you know, 13 supposedly an unlucky number. And then people also have their lucky numbers and any number could be your lucky number. But but numbers seem to be particularly susceptible to superstition.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  That comes from the fact that a lot of civilizations, a lot of cultures, believe in numerology, which is the idea that numbers have a great mystical significance. And specifically the idea that the number 13 is bad luck, as in, you know, Friday the 13th is a bad luck day, that sort of thing. That actually comes from a couple of different sources. First of all, it comes from Norse mythology. Because there is a myth that Loki, the trickster god, some of you might know, listening to this might know from Marvel movies or from, you know, Norse mythology, where he originally came from. There's a story in Norse mythology where Loki wasn't invited to a party, but there were 12 gods who were invited to the party.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  And Loki crashed the party in disguise. He was upset, so he was the 13th guest, right? And he was so upset that he tricked a blind god, Hodor, into killing one of the most beloved gods, Balder, who was known to be brave and beautiful and kind hearted. And Balder's death was the inciting incident that kicked off a long chain of events that ended with Ragnarok, the end of the world, and the end of Asgard, this big apocalyptic cataclysmic event. And so because of that, it was thought in Norse culture, you should not have 13 guests at a table, you should not have 13 people at a meeting.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  And this later became a Christian superstition that was thought to have something to do with Judas being the 13th guest at the Last Supper. And of course, he betrays Jesus. So that's another reason why 13 became synonymous with unlucky.

• 11:27Mike Carruthers?

  So what's the deal with the rabbit and the rabbit's foot? Like, you know, it's... Why a rabbit?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of these superstitions have to do with the fact that, like I was saying, that they're so old, they kind of took the place of science originally, that people didn't know why some of these things that are happening in nature were happening in the first place. And so they assigned supernatural meanings to them. So rabbits are a perfect example of that. Because of the fact that rabbits can burrow underground, some cultures thought that they had a connection to the underworld. And because rabbits can thump with one of their hind legs and let other rabbits know about danger, a lot of different cultures in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, thought that

• 12:18Speaker 02

  rabbit's feet were specifically lucky. So that's how you get the concept of the lucky rabbit's foot, which has been sort of phased out of a lot of different societies. And I think that's obviously a good thing, because the idea of mutilating a rabbit and taking its foot is obviously a bad thing. Now, we're, on the whole, a more sensitive society, more sensitive to the plight of wildlife and of animals.

• 12:40Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, because I imagine animals get wrapped up in superstitions a lot. I'm talking with Ari Kaplan. He's author of the book "The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions: Ancient and Remarkable Traditions That Will Captivate Your Mind."

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• 13:56Mike Carruthers?

  So Ari, talk about another animal or other animals that are tied into superstitions.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  There are black cats is one of the most frequently called upon ones. And that's one that a lot of people still believe in today, even though the entire, the meaning for it has completely died out. Again, people, a lot of people don't know the original meaning.

• 14:18Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I don't think I do. So what is the original meaning?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Cats were thought to have some kind of mystical significance because they have such keen senses. And before people do, before there was such a thing as modern science where you could analyze a cat and you could say, oh, the cats can use their whiskers to sort of sense things that, and they have such sharp reflexes. Well, ancient Egyptians thought that there was something spiritually significant about cats, and sometimes they would be buried with their cats. And so cats were thought of to be these, this kind of link between our world, the world of living, and the world of the dead. So then you go a couple thousand years into the future, and you're at the Black Death

• 15:02Speaker 02

  in medieval times and in Europe, and people thought that black cats were unlucky. Why? Because they saw black cats wherever there was plague. Well, this was people reading the situation in completely the wrong way. Because what was really happening is the cats were there where there was plague because they were hunting the mice that carried the plague. And so a lot of really ignorant people started murdering the cats. And so then what happens? More mice, more plague, more people needlessly dying because these cats are, these poor cats are being persecuted. The other thing that was starting to happen around that time is that there was this smear campaign against witches,

• 15:43Speaker 02

  which had been these heroic figures in pre-Christian Europe, in pagan cultures like the Celts. And they were thought to be these healers, these people who were really in touch with the earth and wildlife and nature. And, but a lot of Christian communities were painting witches as evil, as a way to make people break with their pagan beliefs. And so, no, no, no, you shouldn't believe in a witch anymore because witches are bad, bad people. And so they spread the, the false idea that, that cats were somehow witches familiars, that cats had some link to the devil or some link to witchcraft. And so that, that's how we get this idea that black cats are somehow bad.

• 16:29Mike Carruthers?

  So if you break a mirror, you will have seven years bad luck. I think everybody has heard that. And many people probably believe it. And where did it come from?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and what's, what's fascinating to me is the fact that the seven years thing has held up all these centuries later. Because that actually started in ancient Rome. Because the idea was that if you look into a mirror, you're looking at part of your soul. And if you, because that's a concept that the, that the ancient Romans believed in. And they believed that life occurs in, in seven year segments. So every seven years is like a different segment. And so that's why if you break the mirror, you get seven years of bad luck. And so it's, it's funny to me that even though today, most people don't believe in that, that your life is, is measured in seven year increments. Well, hey, the, the seven years bad luck has somehow still survived.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  So I find that kind of fascinating.

• 17:27Mike Carruthers?

  And what about walking under a ladder? I never understood that one.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  That comes to us from ancient Egypt. So originally the significance was that in ancient Egypt, you didn't walk under a ladder because if a ladder was propped up against a wall, you had three sides, you had a triangle. And that was a sacred shape to the...

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Egyptians because of pyramids. And so you weren't supposed to mess with that shape at all. You weren't supposed to defile it in any way. Walking under a ladder, sort of stepping through a pyramid. And it's kind of, it's thought to be disrespectful to the pyramids. And to triangular shapes. And so that, that's why that was bad luck. But again, centuries later. And Christianity takes hold in a lot, in a lot of different countries. And that superstition acquires a different significance. Because the idea is that it forms a triangle shape. And triangles have three sides. And the number three has great significance in Christianity because of the Holy Trinity. So that's why it's thought to be, to be bad luck.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  So again, it kind of like, you see a lot of these superstitions kind of changing and adapting with the time. So I think that's interesting.

• 18:43Mike Carruthers?

  What about salt? You know, you throw salt over your shoulder and people still do that. And, and it is supposed to bring you good luck? Or does it ward off bad luck? Or what, what is it exactly?

• 18:54Speaker 02

  A little bit of both. So, all right. Salt first acquired sort of supernatural, spiritual significance in the ancient world. Because people thought, oh, salt has this mystical property to it. Why do they think that? Because they saw that salt could keep meat fresh for a longer period of time. Now, that's today, we know that that's because salt has preservatives. But in the past, they thought that, that, and I'm talking thousands of years ago. Like in ancient Roman times, they thought that salt had some sort of, something magical about it. Also, when you put salt in water, it seems to disappear. And then if the water evaporates, that's the salt crystals appear once more. So again, they thought that there was something magical about salt.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  In fact, they paid ancient Romans in salt. And that payment was called a solarium, which is where our current, our modern day word salary comes from. So all these things sort of conspired to, to create a lot of salt based superstitions. And so. You certainly weren't supposed to let your salt, if you had like a bag of salt, you weren't supposed to let it fall on the floor because that stuff is priceless. It's very valuable. So that gave way to the idea that if you let salt go on the floor, it's bad luck. But then if you throw some salt over your shoulder, that is good luck. And the reason is that if you let it fall on the floor, what's on the floor?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Things that are beneath us, like demons and ghosts and things like that. And there might be a ghost lurking at your shoulder, over your shoulder, specifically on the left side. And that comes with the superstition that the left side is bad, which is a whole other thing. And so if you threw some salt over your shoulder, it would blind whatever monster was hiding there, whatever demon, and that would be good luck for you.

• 20:51Mike Carruthers?

  So the superstition to do it correctly is you throw it over your left shoulder? And what happens if you throw it over your right shoulder?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  I guess it's not as lucky. But, you know, again, with the rules that these different superstitions have, most of the time, you are supposed to throw it over your left shoulder. I'm sure some people don't even know about that specific part of the rule. And that's also, by the way, where you come up with the idea that if you create a salt circle around you and the floor around you, demons and ghosts won't be able to break through it, which is seen in countless horror movies and TV shows.

• 21:29Mike Carruthers?

  What about superstitions regarding the moon? That people believed, and I think people still believe, that, you know, on the night of a full moon, that the moon brings out the worst in people. It makes people crazy. You know, the wolfman would show up, kind of thing.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  You know, if you thought that the superstition has left us completely behind, well, that's not true. There was a study done, the University of New Orleans, I think it was, in 1995, and 81% of mental health professionals believed that people's personalities were affected by the full moon and that the moon caused people to do wild, crazy things. In fact, a more recent poll, I think this is from 2009, of hospital workers and police officers, showed that the vast majority of them think that it's, that that communities become more unruly and more chaotic during a full moon.

• 22:28Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I know I've heard, maybe, maybe we interviewed somebody about this, I think, that statistically, it's not true. So it's really confirmation bias, that you don't remember the nights of full moon when nothing happened. You only remember the nights of a full moon when there was something that happened, and then you go, see, aha, it's the moon. So it is confirmation bias.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  It is confirmation bias. And by the way, Mike, I'm glad you brought that up, because there's a lot of that in superstition as well. There's a lot of, well, I guess this confirms what I already believe, and you don't, you listen to that instead of the facts. But there might actually be some scientific rationale for the whole full moon thing, because the phases of the moon can affect our sleep patterns. And so sometimes, if you're not getting a good night's sleep because of the moon, that can cause you to act erratically because of lack of sleep. So that's quite possibly the reason that people might act a little out of character, a little more wild when there's a full moon out.

• 23:31Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I'm not sure I'm buying that explanation, but it is an explanation. Well, it is fun to look at these things and talk about them, because we do all have them in our lives. We have our own little superstitions, maybe little personal ones, as well as the ones that are better known, as you've been talking about, and I enjoy hearing the stories about them. I've been talking with Ari Kaplan, and the name of his book is "The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions: Ancient and Remarkable Traditions That Will Captivate Your Mind." There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Ari, thank you for being here.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Mike. It's been a lot of fun.

• 24:12Speaker 00

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• 24:43Speaker 05

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• 25:15Mike Carruthers?

  2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's famous ride. We all heard about it, learned about it in school, but there's more to the story than you likely know that's pretty interesting, and maybe some things you think you know that aren't actually true. Well, here to tell the story and set the record straight is Kostya Kennedy. He is a former senior writer and editor at Sports Illustrated. He's written books about Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, and Pete Rose. He taught at Columbia University and New York University, and he is author of a book called The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America. Hi, Kostya, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  Hey, Mike, it's good to be on with you.

• 26:01Mike Carruthers?

  So I'm wondering if what I heard and learned in elementary school about Paul Revere is true, although I don't remember much, but I remember he rode through the streets, warning the colonists that the British were coming, "to arms, to arms, the British are coming." So did that really happen?

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Oh, that happened, yes. The poem, which is how most people learn it, I assume maybe that's what you're talking about when you say you learned. In elementary school, listen, my children, and you shall hear the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, the Longfellow poem. It's actually amazingly accurate for a poem. It wasn't pretending to be a piece of nonfiction account, but it is by and large accurate. There's definitely some inaccuracies in the timing and exactly the positioning, but the idea that Paul Revere went out and in seven hours, basically, you know, transformed America's chances in this ridiculous, impudent thing we were going to try to do, take on a British army, is absolutely true.

• 27:05Mike Carruthers?

  So who is Paul Revere? At the time of his ride, who was he and how did he get there?

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Forty-year-old man, son of an immigrant. His father was French, came over here at age 13. Revere grew up, unlike other leaders of the revolution in Boston, people like John Hancock and Samuel Adams and John Adams, Revere did not go to Roxbury Latin or some fancy prep school. He did not go to Harvard, as all the others did. He went to essentially a trade school. He became a silversmith, very good one. And he did a lot of other things. He was a self-trained dentist, not the kind of dentist I would particularly want to go to, but in those days, you took what you could get. And he was an engraver. And he had a family and lived in the North End of Boston, which is where he lived his

• 27:55Speaker 03

  whole life and was extremely involved in the resistance, in the rebellion against British rule. And he was an integral figure in, certainly in the ride, on April 18th, on the eve of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and even before that, very, very much involved in things like the Boston Tea Party and other acts of resistance.

• 28:15Mike Carruthers?

  So he was not, as I understand it, he was not the only writer. He got the most publicity, but he was not the only writer. So explain this network of writers, because I think people don't really understand that.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  Samuel Adams instituted a series of what was called express riders. And that were folks when the news absolutely, positively had to get there overnight kind of thing. They would report on red coat activity, other governmental things, a lot of times doing with the conflict of the British. And Paul Revere was the best they had. He was the single best express rider he was for many years. After the Boston Tea Party in 1773, which I mentioned, it was Revere who was chosen to ride to Hartford and New York and Philadelphia to give the news of the Tea Party. He was the guy. He was an incredibly skilled horse rider and he was very, very good at giving information.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  John Adams wrote to somebody, in a bit of context, but I think you'll get it here too, just simply, "Paul Revere will give you the news." He was very straightforward, direct, didn't leave stuff out, got the message across. And so he was very valuable. It was very intentional that he was the one who went and was sent out that night. And yes, there were other riders. The only other rider to leave from Boston, William Dawes, equally brave, just like Revere could easily have been killed that night. But he just wasn't, for various reasons, as effective in getting the message out. Revere went a slightly different route. And not only did he get to Lexington, but along the way, he alarmed people. Many of those people then got on their own horses and fanned out further and further

• 29:56Speaker 03

  across the countryside.

• 29:58Mike Carruthers?

  Where did the information come from? Paul Revere got on his horse and told people that the British were coming. Well, how did he know? Where were there spies in the British Army? Where did the information come from?

• 30:12Speaker 03

  It really came from the street, honestly. There were a lot of people listening. And we had spies, the colonists had spies, the British had spies. So yes, there were spies, the information. Exactly where they went is shrouded a little bit in mystery, because of course, nobody would want to be known for that. Certainly at that time, you would be tried for treason, you could be killed. There's a little wrinkle to this, which is that the... Leader of the British forces, a man named Thomas Gage. He was the head of the British Army in America. And he had married, he was married to a woman, an American woman, who was from New Jersey and her family had been in, in America for a long time.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  And Gage, while he did the bidding of, of London, he, he acted on what King George told him to do. So when it was time to shut the harbor, for example, he shut the harbor. But he also had a lot of sympathy towards the colonists. And some of that came from his wife, who he was very much in love with and who said as the war was, that things were beginning to heat up. She said to her husband, the head of the British Army, "I hope you won't do anything to hurt my countrymen." And those were, by countrymen, she meant the colonists. And she, her name is Margaret Kemble Gage. She described that the war was about to begin. She described herself feeling like a character from Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King John,

• 31:41Speaker 03

  a character named Blanche, who laments that she has been, they're going to war and her uncle is on one side and her brother is on another and whoever wins, I lose. And the pain of war is this poetic rendering in Shakespeare. And in those days Shakespeare was very popular. It's like quoting The Simpsons today or something. Everybody had a reference point. And she spoke to her friend personally about feeling this way. And I'm bringing her up because we know that Samuel Adams got information about the British intentions about two days before the British went out from what had been described as a woman of high standing who was, quote, "unequally yoked in politics."

• 32:24Speaker 03

  And it may well have been Margaret Kemble Gage who gave this information to Samuel Adams, who was then in Lexington, and he helped get the information out. Again, it's not known for sure. It's kind of like who fired the first shot, but there's incredible evidence that she may have been one of the people who spread the news.

• 32:44Mike Carruthers?

  And so the purpose of getting on a horse and going out and telling the citizens that the British are coming was to get the people, the colonists, to do what?

• 32:56Speaker 03

  To stand up and resist the British Army and not let them take the weapons or property that belonged to the colonists and conquered. We didn't want them to exert their will essentially. And there was no army. The Continental Army wasn't formed until much later. So the people who you were telling, some of them were in the Massachusetts militia, such as it was, they were officially soldiers. But many of them were just farmers and saddlers and whatever they did for a living. And they had a fowling piece for hunting or they, maybe they had some kind of musket left from the war of the French and Indian War. And they were rebelling against British control of the colony. And the British had taken increasingly more control in the years, going back to the late

• 33:41Speaker 03

  60s, where they'd begun occupying more of Boston, increasing taxes on certain goods and filling up the judicial system with their own people who were friendly to the Crown, friendly to the person in power. They would sort of stock up the judicial system. And all these things were not to the liking of many in the resistance. At that time, it wasn't as if everybody who lived in Boston or in the areas was against the British. Many were loyalists and many had loyalists and colonists in the same household or going to church together or to a tavern together or even doing military training together

• 34:23Speaker 03

  until just about a few months before this war began. Very close society. So it wasn't deep enmity between people on one side or the other at all. But there was a point sort of of no return and the colonists simply did not want the British to take any more control of the land or the politics or the goings on of life in fledgling America.

• 34:49Mike Carruthers?

  And when people were made aware of what was going on, did they do what was hoped they would do?

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Yes, I mean, listen, if I show up to your house and I say, I know you've got a farm and you've got a wife and three kids and everything, but go grab your gun, we're gonna go try to fight the best-trained, best-equipped army in the world. I'm sure there are plenty of people who said, maybe not tonight, man, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stay home. But many, many people did answer that call, and it's really an incredible, you think about what, what, they were giving up their lives, right? And for many people, they would have been just fine if the British had had more control. Maybe it would have paid a little more taxes or whatever it was, but their lives would have been fine, but they were standing up for a principle. And I want to say the importance of, of that ride, the importance of getting Paul Revere's ride and getting people to respond in the way they did, so that the colonists could

• 35:42Speaker 03

  have that kind of success right at the very first battles, was critical. Because if, if they hadn't had success, if the British had just kind of steamrolled them, it would have taken really a lot of the energy out of, a lot of the conviction out of, out of what was going on, right? Because you had to believe that you could actually do this incredible thing. And then at the Battle of Bunker Hill, another strong showing just six weeks later, the British actually won that, they, they did control the land they were looking for, but suffered far more casualties than the colonists. So that first battle, they did, to answer your question, they did respond, and they did, it was, it was a spectacular success, I think, more than anybody could have hoped.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  I mean, also tragic, right? People were being killed and being left for dead on the side of the road, on both sides. So, which is why nobody really wanted this to happen. Neither side wanted to fire the first shot, but it became too, too much to avoid war.

• 36:45Mike Carruthers?

  And so, prior to that, how often, if at all, were the British and the, the colonists fighting with guns? I mean, was this like the first time that people started shooting at each other, or was this a common occurrence, or what?

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Not at all a common occurrence. There were two previous events. So there may have been sort of on the street antagonism between loyalists and colonists, right? That kind of ad hoc stuff what was going on. There was something called a Boston massacre, which was in seventeen seventy, in which there was a huge mob of colonists who descended on a very small group of British soldiers who had guns. And the British soldiers fired on the colonists. And that was a big, big event. And it was, it was helped draw indignation on the part of the colonists that helped feed the rebellion. And then Revere went up to Portsmouth to alert that a

• 37:48Speaker 03

  kind of an armory, a fort there, Fort William and Mary, needed to be secured because the British were coming to try to take cannon and guns and everything from there. And so the colonists went to take that fort. This was December of seventy four. And it was a very small platoon of British. There were literally six British soldiers and some four hundred colonists. But the British soldiers who were guarding that fort, when the colonists came over the wall, they did fire at them and tried vainly to put up some resistance. Nobody was killed in that. They didn't, they didn't succeed in firing and the colonists didn't take any retribution, but it was a conflict. It was an armed conflict.

• 38:29Mike Carruthers?

  I remember hearing that what Paul Revere said, or what he yelled from his horse was, "To arms, to arms, the British are coming." Is that what he said?

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Well, he didn't say the British are coming. That's not in the poem and that was invented maybe eighty or a hundred years later. And he wouldn't have said that because they all still viewed themselves as British even at that time.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  To arms meant up to up into arms is what the poem says. And that's probably what he said. It means to arms means take up your arms, which are your guns or your weapons, whatever you might have. He probably said something like the regulars are out. The redcoats were known as the regulars because you would see them around in their red uniforms as sort of a regular presence.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  And, and he also wasn't yelling.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  You know, you're trying to get the message across while also not being detected. So you wouldn't go running through screaming at the top of your lungs because. As I'm saying, there are people loyal to the Crown were mixed in among the countryside as well. So Revere was on, one of his other attributes is he knew the countryside, knew who to go to. And he might go to one house but not go to the next because he knew who was sympathetic and who was maybe less so.

• 39:42Mike Carruthers?

  So the image I've always had in my head is that he just rode and talked to people, but that he never got off the horse, that he was too busy riding through the streets. But I'm sensing from what you're saying that he got off the horse, maybe knocked down the door and went in and said, hey, here's what's going on.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, some of those details of exactly when he got off the horse, when he stayed on the horse, you know, we don't know that exactly. But he went house to house. He said he went to every house on the way from Charlestown to Lexington. He gave a deposition immediately afterwards and then another one, and then about 23 years later, also told the whole story. And other stories were told by other people who had been alerted by him, or then other riders who joined with Revere later on in the ride. But they were very careful not to mention specific names unless they were volunteering themselves. Because, again, this was a great act of treason. Nobody, certainly two days afterwards when he was giving a deposition, he wasn't going

• 40:43Speaker 03

  to be, he wouldn't have said, I went by Mike's house, I went by Costa's house, you know, and they joined me because now those people would be susceptible to retribution from the Crown and would be traitors. So some of the actual details, we don't know exactly. But basically, as you say, he went from house to, sometimes he went to a tavern, he went to someplace, a gathering place. It was at night, so there weren't people outside of the market or a school. But there were some people in taverns, which were then also hotels largely, so travelers who would be staying there. And he warned pretty much, as best we know, every house on his route, about a 12 and

• 41:25Speaker 03

  a half mile route from Charlestown to Lexington.

• 41:29Mike Carruthers?

  And did he, when he did this, when he told people that, you know, we're getting ready for a fight here, were there instructions or did he just say, go fight?

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there were no specific instructions. He said, "Go to Lexington and Concord." That's what he said, and people went there and then sort of sussed out the situation when you got there. Again, there was no formal army. There was no kind of training along the lines of what the British Army had. There had been the French and Indian War, which Revere himself served in. That had ended in the 1760s, so there were some people with experience in that war. Whether or not they saw combat, it isn't clear, but there was some fighting experience. And there was something called a Massachusetts Artillery Company where they did sort of military training, but it was really just training exercise. They didn't even fire ammunition that much because there is a limited supply, so you

• 42:27Speaker 03

  didn't necessarily want to waste it. But it was a little bit of training to get people to understand how to fire a cannon and things like that. But for the most part, it was like, show up and do the best you can. And that's what people did.

• 42:40Mike Carruthers?

  Wow.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  That's what makes it so remarkable. They showed up in their clothes and their household gun and did the best they could.

• 42:48Mike Carruthers?

  And was this fight a one-time fight, or was this the beginning of a big escalation into a real war?

• 42:56Speaker 03

  This was where the Revolutionary War began, in Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775. And six weeks later was the next major battle, the Battle of Bunker Hill. And then as that year went on, and George Washington formed the Continental Army, and things intensified. But this was the battle that started it all. There was no going back after Lexington.

• 43:21Mike Carruthers?

  And what happened to him afterwards? Was he, I was gonna say revered, but you know.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  Well said. He continued as a businessman. He went on and lived a long life, so he was 40 when, on the night of the ride, and he lived until he was 83. He...

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Became a bell maker. There are still bells today in this country, many of them in New England, but but all throughout made by Paul Revere's Bell Company, church bells and the like. And he also learned to roll copper. Paul Revere was extremely industrious, and the copper that he rolled provided the copper for the War of 1812 for America's ships. And in some ways, some people say that might have been even his biggest contribution to American military. He stayed very active. He was a very popular, well-respected person. Hundreds and hundreds of people came to mourn him when he died in 1818. But the reason why we all know who he is, that every school child knows, and who Paul Revere is, is because

• 44:25Speaker 03

  of that poem, which was not written until 1860, published in 1861. And that lifted Paul Revere. If you were a studier of history and you really knew your Revolutionary War, you would certainly know Paul Revere without any poem or anything. But the general public would not have known him if not for that incredible popularity of that poem by the most popular poet in America at the time.

• 44:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and as you said, the poem is pretty accurate, but it's accurate as far as it goes. It doesn't tell the whole story. So I enjoy hearing the longer story, the longer version, the one you told, which fills in a lot of blanks. Kostya Kennedy has been my guest, and the name of the book is The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Kostya, thank you for coming by and talking about this.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  Thanks so much, Mike. Perfect.

• 45:25Mike Carruthers?

  For as long as human beings have been making fires, they've built them in the same way, and that is as tall as they are wide. Think about a campfire, or even a charcoal fire in your grill. You instinctively stack the charcoal about as high as the stack is wide. We all do it and have always done it, according to a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University. Now, bonfires are shaped as cones or pyramids, and they too are typically as tall as they are wide at the base. The reason is that that shape is the most efficient for air and heat flow.

• 46:06Mike Carruthers?

  Human beings' success in building fires has made it possible for us to migrate and spread across the globe. So we got really good at it very early on, and that design still works. There is no better design for a fire and likely never will be. And so it remains good advice for whenever you build a fire. And that is something you should know. Jennifer Brennan and Jeffrey Havison are our producers. Our executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 46:42Speaker 00

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• 47:13Speaker 06

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