Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Behind the Scenes Minis: Complicated Werewolf About this episode Holly discusses the complicated nature of the Loudun possessions. Tracy talks about the ways that entertainment media can cause fear.
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Speaker 01 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
0:33 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare.
1:47 Tracy V. Wilson? Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:07 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:18 Holly Frey? Hello and happy Friday. I'm Holly Frey.
2:20 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:22 Holly Frey? Uh, we talked about the possessions at Luton this week.
2:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Yep.
2:27 Holly Frey? This is one that's been on my list for a long time and I find it super fascinating. One, it's, it's one of those things that I find myself getting frustrated at because people that are really into the occult will use these instances of historical mass possessions in religious orders as proof that, you know, it must be a real thing because they're religious, they're fighting against demons, and yet there they are. And I'm like, oh, we should have a discussion. This is, and that's why this is a good example, because there were people that came forward and went, no, this whole thing is being used as a tool to get back at people that other people don't like and to try to
3:11 Holly Frey? firmly entrench the Catholic Church as superior to the Protestant Church in this community.
3:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
3:19 Holly Frey? And I love it for that reason.
3:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, this is, the other episode that we are recording in today's session is about a similar place and time. And like, this was a chaotic, difficult time to live in.
3:35 Holly Frey? Oh, yeah.
3:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Like, we've got the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, large-scale disease epidemics, wars, like, so much stuff all happening. And then a group of people in a religious community, fairly isolated from everybody, adding a whole additional layer of like, the social and psychological things going on.
3:59 Holly Frey? Yeah.
4:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
4:02 Holly Frey? I mean, I, I think it also evidences, it's a very tricky subject because I don't want to denigrate or insult anyone's religious views. I do think, though, anytime you have an organization that puts itself...
4:18 Holly Frey? Beyond the reach of transparency and any legal repercussions by saying, no, we're inherently, we have to be secret. It's for the greater good. That's just like a hotbed of potential exploitation.
4:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
4:34 Holly Frey? And I really think, I mean, it seems so obvious to me, obviously, through the lens of the modern eye, to be like, oh, they recognize that Urbain Grandier was like, why don't we just throw open the doors, get rid of all of this dogma? We can talk openly about religion and what it means to be religious and not be so, you know, secretive about it. And they were like, that guy's got to die somehow. We have to figure out a way. Which is very fascinating. Listen, he also, though, was seemed perfectly happy to use his charms for his own wiles because he clearly wanted to get rid of the celibacy rule.
5:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
5:16 Holly Frey? To, to make it cool for him to have sexual exploits with a lot of people. Which also, you know, becomes a whole other issue to debate.
5:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
5:27 Holly Frey? Because there's a power dynamic involved in a religious figure. There's, there's a lot of problems there. Don't get me wrong. I'm, I don't want to make him into the hero of the story, although he did appear to be the victim. But this is also the, the thing, right? There's so much.
5:44 Holly Frey? Humans are inherently gonna mochinate for their own best interest.
5:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
5:49 Holly Frey? Or desires. And that's a, that's just inherently problematic. I don't know how to fix it. We haven't figured it out clearly in several hundred years.
5:59 Tracy V. Wilson? I was gonna say, it's been hundreds of years. I'm so tired.
6:03 Holly Frey? I'm so worn out. I really did do like reading a lot of the modern assessments of it that are careful and really thoughtful and try to take into account all of the things we do know while acknowledging all the things we don't and we can't.
6:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
6:20 Holly Frey? You know, that, there's also the element of some of the people involved in these claims of demonic possession. Were probably faking and knew they were faking.
6:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Sure.
6:31 Holly Frey? And others 100% believed they were possessed.
6:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
6:35 Holly Frey? And they are all grouped under one heading, so it makes it very hard to parse out and pick apart what was real and what was not.
6:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
6:45 Holly Frey? Because to them, some things were real that other people would say were not. And that makes it very tricky.
6:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. Well, and it's been a while since I've done an episode on this theme, but I have kind of a fascination with like, the especially medieval era mystics, some of whom were having experiences that to today's ear, like, they don't sound like a mentally well person.
7:12 Holly Frey? Right.
7:12 Tracy V. Wilson? They sound like someone who is having some kind of delusion going on. But I'm like, really interested in them and their experiences and how many of them like sincerely believed the things that they were describing to people. And how that simultaneously like grew out of the place and time they were living and set them apart from the place and time they were living.
7:37 Holly Frey? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I really am super fascinated by Jeanne Desange figuring out this path where she could say, no, no, I was in fact, once I was cleared of demons, there was divine spirit that entered me.
7:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
7:55 Holly Frey? I don't know what to make of the scars on her arm.
7:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
8:00 Holly Frey? It's the 1630s, so there's no photos. And also, this kind of master stroke of being like, I, I operate in this structure of the church where they are happy to suggest and believe and, and promote the idea that I was exorcised and that, you know, I then became in touch with higher angels.
8:24 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
8:25 Holly Frey? And also, by the way, my angel said, what you said was wrong, and now you can't fight me because you already validated him.
8:34 Holly Frey? I like, that is masterfully played. That, that part to me is very interesting. It's like she found this weird way through to empower herself. Yeah, it's all very, it's all very fascinating. I love doing any of the possession stories because.
8:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
8:53 Holly Frey? One, the beauty of them is that. Because of all of these psychological aspects we've mentioned, there's no one truth.
9:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
9:02 Holly Frey? So you can't say definitively anything and it just becomes a fun examination of what was going on.
9:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Especially the ones in long ago history.
9:10 Holly Frey? Yes. I do, I do like how much just legal battling there was in this one.
9:18 Holly Frey? I love the idea that Grandier was just like lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit, just throwing them out like shuffling cards. He just sued everybody that irritated him, which is kind of, kind of fu- fun. Probably not for anybody involved with his life, but fun to read about.
9:35 Holly Frey? Uh, I hope, I hope, I hope nobody's possessed. I mean, I have feelings. I have my own beliefs and thoughts. They may disappoint people.
9:48 Speaker 04 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
10:16 Speaker 05 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
10:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
10:39 Speaker 05 It was good arrival, anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
10:46 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
10:53 Speaker 06 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
10:59 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
11:02 Speaker 06 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.
11:07 Speaker 05 What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
11:10 Tracy V. Wilson? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.
11:13 Speaker 07 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
11:16 Tracy V. Wilson? So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue,
11:59 Tracy V. Wilson? you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown-Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
12:22 Speaker 06 Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
13:05 Speaker 06 This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
13:23 Tracy V. Wilson? We talked about werewolves this week.
13:25 Holly Frey? Sure did.
13:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Especially specifically a guy named Peter, probably, whose name was spelled so many different ways. We had to stop and have multiple clarifying conversations while we were recorded.
13:40 Holly Frey? Which, which pronunciation would you like me to use here?
13:42 Tracy V. Wilson? I was like, it doesn't matter. I don't actually know that that was really what his name was. But yeah, so I, I was just looking for stuff to talk about in October. And I stumbled across this and realized, I was like, oh, we haven't done this. And actually, we have not talked that much about werewolves. And I did kind, I wanted to talk about how like this, as the big witch trials in early modern Europe and North America were happening, there was also this werewolf focus. I wasn't quite prepared for the level of gory-ness, even though the last time we talked about a werewolf, it was Gilles Garnier, and that was gory. I just had kind of forgotten.
14:26 Holly Frey? I feel a little bit like a monster.
14:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
14:30 Holly Frey? Because I was like, I thought this was gonna be gory.
14:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Well, so the parts of it that really got me, the, like, the parts of me that I was like, oh, okay, I was not expecting that.
14:40 Holly Frey? Eating the brain.
14:42 Tracy V. Wilson? The, no, it was the, like, attacking pregnant women and tearing the fetus out of their body. Like.
14:48 Holly Frey? Oh, yeah.
14:49 Tracy V. Wilson? That, it was just, I was not, I was somehow, I was like, oh, that, that was more than I was expecting here. And then like, eating, eating the hearts of his victims. I was like, ah, not really.
14:59 Holly Frey? Yeah.
15:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Liking that. And had no idea when I got into it that there was also going to be like an incest element to it.
15:08 Holly Frey? Yeah, that's, the, the sexual assault and whatnot is probably the part that I find the, the most unsettling, but I don't, I don't know why I don't perceive it as gory, even though those are all horrific things. I think part of it is because I don't trust that any of this is accurate.
15:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, sure, sure.
15:26 Holly Frey? So my brain is just like, well, that's what they said, but I don't. It's not, it's not to diminish how frightening a possibility that is, but just like, I think because of the nature of like. These broadsheets and how many that we've, you know, discussed throughout the run of the show that are like, well, they kind of made stuff up to sell more copies that I I just perceive none of it is real.
15:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
15:50 Holly Frey? Which is, is why I think I'm like, meh.
15:52 Tracy V. Wilson? I have a different level of immersion in reading something versus if I'm watching a movie. Like, there have been movies that I have watched that I have, that have scared me so much that I have been able to like, feel the fear in my body.
16:13 Holly Frey? Yeah.
16:14 Tracy V. Wilson? As a physical experience. And I've read some books that are supposed to be really scary that like, that just has not been how I engage with like, the content of a book versus a movie that I'm watching.
16:29 Holly Frey? Right.
16:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Or maybe a TV show that's really scary. So anyway, I, we had a lot of things to read from. I tried to leave some of the like, atypical spellings in there.
16:44 Holly Frey? Yeah.
16:45 Tracy V. Wilson? But I did clean a lot of them up because this particular document had a lot of Vs that should have been Us.
16:55 Holly Frey? Right.
16:56 Tracy V. Wilson? And Us that should have been Vs. And a thing that took me a little while to remember, Js that looked like Is. There were a couple of words that I kind of stared at for a minute where I was like, I don't know what in the world this could possibly, oh, that's a J, not an I. Okay.
17:15 Holly Frey? What are you getting at?
17:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. We've talked about our love of unusual spellings before the push to standardize the spelling of everything in English.
17:31 Holly Frey? This whole thing just makes me think about what we do in the shadows, so.
17:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, yeah.
17:36 Holly Frey? That's where my brain was the whole time.
17:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Makes sense.
17:38 Holly Frey? It's werewolves, that's werewolves. Oh, how I miss that show.
17:43 Tracy V. Wilson? It's a very good show.
17:44 Holly Frey? I will say, I am less of a werewolf person if we're in the zone of, you know, classical monsters.
17:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
17:54 Holly Frey? Than some others, and I don't know why, but I do love the fact that a girdle makes you a werewolf. I know it's not the girdle in the modern sense.
18:02 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
18:02 Holly Frey? But it makes me laugh so hard. It makes me want someone to draw a cartoon of like someone in a granny style girdle.
18:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
18:10 Holly Frey? Turns them into a werewolf.
18:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. I originally was trying to figure out whether I needed to explain why sometimes it was described as a belt and what, why sometimes it was described as a girdle. Because at the time, sometimes those words could be used almost interchangeably. They're both like a, a sort of accessory. That makes a cinching part around roughly the middle of your body.
18:40 Holly Frey? Yeah.
18:41 Tracy V. Wilson? But like the belt and the girdle can have slightly different in terms of like the garment and what is being done with them. And then I was like, this is not actually that important to the story.
18:52 Holly Frey? I also, well, I, I mean, that's actually a thing that I find really fascinating because I also wonder about that particular type of garment being the one chosen that is transformative. Because of course, things that cinch in your body are transformative in some cases.
19:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
19:14 Holly Frey? Have not always been accepted. Like I, my tight lacing diatribe hasn't come up in a long time, but like we, we in the modern era, I say we in the grand sense of we, not, not me, because I read a lot about it. There is a proclivity towards talking about how tight lacing was this weird habit of the past. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, there were always people who were like, that's not good for you. And so this idea of something that transforms your body in a possibly painful way. Or an uncomfortable way, being the thing that makes you into a monster is just a fun avenue to explore.
19:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, sure. Sure. Like, there are also stories that are clearly fictional stories about werewolves, like werewolf lore, fiction, poems, things like that, from around this era and the medieval period, that it's also like a belt or a skin, like have some similar things to like these werewolf stories from contemporary with the witch trials. So it's like, is this sort of just a thing that was drawn from existing ideas or not? But I also liked how sometimes it's it's an ointment or an unguent, and either the devil gave you the unguent, or
20:31 Tracy V. Wilson? like, the devil gave you the recipe, so you could go make your own unguent to become a wolf.
20:38 Holly Frey? I feel like there is so much money to be made with a skincare line called The Devil's Unguent.
20:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
20:47 Holly Frey? Whoever among you is a modern apothecary of skincare elixirs, run with this. I will buy it all. I will buy-
20:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Holly has given you the idea.
20:58 Holly Frey? Will buy the entire line.
21:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. I also, it caused me to have various thoughts about the modern world that we're living in now. And having moved from print culture into online culture, and how easy it is for misinformation to spread and feed on each other into a cycle.
21:22 Holly Frey? Yeah.
21:23 Tracy V. Wilson? That the thing that is spreading with the misinformation then informs things that happen, and then that feeds back into the misinformation cycle, like as evidence.
21:33 Holly Frey? Yeah. I mean, it also, I feel like we are experiencing the parallels of what has come up in a couple of recent episodes, with times of great upheaval also being times when people cling to ideas of mysticism-
21:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, sure.
21:55 Holly Frey? Or, you know, magic being a thing. And I feel like we're in a little bit of that right now, so.
22:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did not choose this episode because of current parallels. I chose it because of werewolves.
22:08 Holly Frey? Not swearwolves.
22:13 Holly Frey? That's maybe why I don't like werewolves if they don't swear so much.
22:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
22:18 Holly Frey? I'm, I'm here for the rougarou and the rest. See ya.
22:25 Tracy V. Wilson? I was telling Patrick what I was working on and he was like, oh, is it a werewolf? Or is it a luguru? And I was like, oh, luguru is just a French werewolf. And he was thinking, I don't remember which video game he was specifically referencing, but like, there is some video game where like a werewolf is one tier of enemy. And a luguru is like a more difficult version of the werewolf enemy. It's got more hit points, got to take more damage.
22:53 Holly Frey? And then there's the Cajun rougarou that will just bring you fabulous food.
22:58 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. You went to the rougarou festival that time, didn't you?
23:00 Holly Frey? I haven't.
23:02 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
23:02 Holly Frey? I keep trying to go and the timing never works out.
23:05 Tracy V. Wilson? I thought you did get to go one time. I made up a fiction in my head where you got to do this thing that you have wanted to do.
23:14 Holly Frey? One year, it's gonna work for me.
23:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, that's our wandering discourse about werewolves and the rougarou festival. Whatever's happening on your weekend, I hope it's great. I hope if there is a strange werewolf running around your town, that it's just a person in an outfit, having a good time, not harming anybody in any way. Uh, we will be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow. We will have something brand new on Monday.
23:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
24:06 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
24:37 Tracy V. Wilson? You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.
25:13 Speaker 06 Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
25:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Long hours, work deadlines, family commitments. You give so much to everyone else. Isn't it time to invest in yourself? The University of Arizona Global Campus is built for working adults with flexible online degree programs designed to fit your life. Your previous education, training, and eligible experience may even help you earn college credit. At UAGC, you can take one accelerated course at a time, helping you move toward your goals in five- and six-week class formats. Visit uagc.edu today.
26:11 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Previous Peter Stumpp, Werewolf of Bedburg Next SYMHC Classics: Paul Robeson Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated