Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - family leave week: two curated SIF bonus shows about bison

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Please enjoy this treat from Alex and Katie! It's two SIF bonus shows about bison, never before released to the general public. We hope this lets everyone enjoy a curated bison podcasting experience like never before. (And to hear more than 280 other SIF bonus shows -- and counting! -- please visit https://maximumfun.org/join/ )

Hey, this is Alex. I'm with Katie. And thank you for joining us for family leave weeks on SIF. Family time. We're each having a baby. Yeah. This is another intro that we're taping before the baby. It might feel like a million years ago now to me in the present as you hear it. It's interesting time travel. Yeah. We've we've we've we've we've each spawned a baby. We're kind of like having them battle a little bit like Pokemon's. They're not you know like I keep saying. like, you know, baby, use flamethrower and he just kind of sits there. So, you know,

I don't really know how to get this. Mine the Thunderstone has worked too well. There's big scorch marks all over the house. Right. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah. I mean, maybe it's because the baby's like a water type

baby. I don't really know how to get this. The battle babies to engage in battle. they seem mostly interested in sleeping, eating, pooping, and yelling. Has we keep on these intros coming up with brilliant business ideas. Has anybody done like a Dr. Spock parody where it's Professor Oak? If they haven't, that would sell truly millions of copies.

It's a really good idea. How to care for your Pokemon baby? Yeah. And then it's either a real baby book or just a riff, you know. Right. Like how to like deal with your like like expecting better except that it's like um poca battling better Dr. Emily Oak Oster. Oak is her nickname.

It's very confusing. Yes. Oakser, I guess is better. Anyway. Oakster. There we go. And this drop for you today. It is two SIF bonus shows.

So if you're a member, you've probably heard them in the past, especially if you're a long time member. And to all members, thank you so much. much especially for being with us in this time. And last week we feed dropped the first episode of my mini series about the Bison emoji featuring Katie. This is a package of two SIF bonus shows about Bison. So we're expanding your Bison feed in a curated way here. We're expanding your Bison Horizon.

Whoa. Right? Here I was failing to fight Oakster and you're on the next level. It was great. We're recording this in the past, so I'm surging with a baby hormones, which apparently is giving me a lot of good business ideas. Yeah, you're thinking as too, you know. It's great. Right.

Yeah. So powerful. One boss baby, hopefully not. I don't know. I think I might be having a boss baby. I'm a little worried about it. The sides are there. He's going to come out.

He's going to come out. He's going to have like a little suit on. I was going to talk about how cookies are for closers. And yeah, these two bonuses are from SIF 139 and SIF 184. 139, it's me and Katie, plus her friends, Christian Weatherford and Ellen Weatherford, from the amazing Max Fun Show, just the zoo of us. Yeah, they're so great. And it's about William Temple Hornaday, who is an amazing person in the history of taxidermy and zoos. and saving the bison.

Horn a day is such a good name for a taxidermist. Or a bison guy. I never thought about it. Yeah, exactly. Like one horn a day. And then the other one, SIF 184's bonus. It was the bonus for the episode about the name Katie. That's another, if you never heard him, we did an episode about the name Alex and then an episode about the name Katie.

Because we're very humble people. I think listeners pick both of them. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's your fault, guys. And, you know, Katie's based on Catherine and one of the other variants of those names is Catalina. And so the bonus is about Catalina Island. Yes. Which has its own herd of bison.

And then we also talk about how it got its name. Yeah. And they're all named Katie. Oh, I like that, actually. Yeah. I want that. Even the boy ones. Is it like Katie under number, you know?

No. Like Katie 187. They just know it based on. the way you say it. Like Katie. Katie. The Bison have 1,000 words for Katie. Yeah. Yeah. And we last week posted the first episode of that Bison menu series. This is kind of a curated further bison that has never existed in one shape. So I hope that's fun. It is material that maybe you've heard if you're a member. But if you're not a member, it's finally free to you. And if you are a member, maybe a revisit, maybe enjoy. Yeah. It's a cure.

curated bison. I've actually had cured bison before. I think I have too. I've had like bison sausage. Yeah. It's pretty good. We love the animal and we want them to be treated well. But if you do give me bison jerky, I will eat it. Yeah. And I hope I say on one of the bison things. I'm very open to a bison future that involves farming and eating them. Because that seems like a good way to do the overall picture. And I eat meat. So as long as it's not our current system of farming, a better system, a non, you know. That would be good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's think about the future and the past and everything in between of Bison. Here is back to back first William Temple Horn today with Ellen and Christian Weatherford.

And then me and Katie just together talking about Catalina Island. Please enjoy. Yeah. We've made it. We made it to the bonus episode, which means we're enormously thankful to you, especially on the heels of this maximum fun drive time. Thank you for your donations that make all maximum fun shows possible, such as Just the Two of Us, and secretly incredibly fascinating. And Christian, Ellie, we're going to talk about a guy named William Temple Hornaday.

What a name. And his name has animal parts in it, such as Horn. But he is also the key taxidermist who kind of accidentally saved the American bison in the process. Oh, really? Did he do that by like using a big taxidermy bison dress it up like with lipstick and mascara so that he could lead bison into a new territory that was safer for them going like, Hey, big boy. That's my guess.

Bison smuggling. That's my guess. I also imagined the dressed up lady bison seducing Elmer Fudd because I've seen Bugs Bunny do that so many times. There's a lot of ways this could go. A classic. Yeah, he will talk in a bit about how he's far from the only person who helped save the bison. But yeah, it turns out this guy lived 1854 to 1937 was primarily a taxidermist. And then because of things in his era and things he discovered about how life works ended up getting into conserving living animals kind of after that.

Interesting. A redemption arc. Yeah. Yeah. And kind of everybody in the United States and the late. 1800s got into that. But the key source here is a book called Wild Ones by journalist John Muellum. If people heard the high-fives episode, we used his different work on other stuff for high-fives. In general, like the colonization that created the United States was in direct opposition to keeping

Bison alive. We fenced off Western land. There were people who overhunted Bison for fun or overhunted them specifically to undermine Native peoples. And so we went from a conservative of estimate of 30 million bison down to maybe 100 bison around the turn of the century, probably closer to 600. So in any bison conservation story, the real heroes are native people who were stewards of the continent for centuries. And these other guys kind of helped resolve some big errors that happened after that. Yeah.

I mean, it is, it was a time where it was like, can we strip the earth bear of anything good? Yeah. If we can just make this a barren landscape devoid of any sort of life form, that would be ideal. Nice tree you have there. What if I cut it down, burn it, and salt the earth, and kill a cute rabbit while I'm at it? My homies hate rabbits. Yeah, it was, and in that time, a lot of people just didn't believe that we could drive species to extinction, even though we did. on all of your podcast.

We've talked about that. But this guy William Hornaday came around right when a lot of U.S. white people were starting to think, hey, maybe species can go extinct. And maybe Bison especially around the verge. Maybe there's a critical time. Like at what point did they go, oh, right, seems like these species are going extinct. Was it like the 50th animal that they made go extinct? Or like...

They're like, damn, that's wild how we stopped seeing those. That's so weird. Yeah. Passenger pigeons, you say. Used to be a lot of them. Don't know what happened. Yeah. Like, apparently in the 1880s, there was a theory about Bison, which is that, like, because

U.S. people were like, I'm not seeing a lot of Bison when I take the train through the West. And their theory was just that Bison got smart about railroads being a place they would get shot, so they were avoiding the railroads. Like, they're all still around. They're just like hiding when people took the train. They're just shone. They're just shod.

Very optimistic. Yeah. Yeah. And into this scene comes William Hornaday, who is a weird guy. He, starting in his late teens, started traveling the world to capture and taxidermy animals. He was immediately like, I'm going to be a taxidermist. And he also made ridiculous claims about it. He claims that as a teenager, he survived a jaguar attack, that he physically...

Where was he? Where was he at this time? All over the world, so probably where they live in South America. But, yeah. It'd be funny if he was like... Yeah. Right. Just real bad at recognizing cats.

Like, oh, a jaguar. My guy's in Connecticut. A raccoon. Yeah. Look at the stripes on that cat. I love stripes jaguars. It's my favorite. But he also told the story that he physically wrestled a crocodile and survived.

I could believe that. I could actually believe that. And it's now hanging from the ceiling of a church in northern Italy. All of you are making me think I could beat up a crocodile. Is that accurate? Like, throughout the show. There comes a point in a crocodile's life when it is too large for a typical person to be able to defeat it. But that's pretty late in its life.

I feel like for the first couple of years, you've probably got it. Okay. I think I could take on a baby. I just get one of those rubber bands that they use on lobster claws. Yeah, you just slap that on there. It's disarmed. Might be able to get it to choke on my carcass. Fight it from the inside.

There you go. That's right. The long game, yeah, sure. And here's my favorite Hornaday, Tall Tale. He said that he was out on the seas one time, and he encountered a manterey. that the Manta ray was the size of a small island. Oh. Well, they get big, but maybe not small island big.

Was this man perhaps seven inches tall? Oh. Is he just like really tiny? Yeah, he saw how a man am I. Big as big as my head. Biggest thing. Because that would also explain the jaguar attack, because maybe that was like a house cat.

I was wondering if maybe this guy's just tiny. Right. Or it's, he's just too small for these big animals to notice. Like I think it's a gnat or a fly. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But yeah, he's, he's this weird guy. And then he also plausibly said that one of his orangutans he caught, he personally gifted

to Andrew Carnegie. Like, it was this kind of era of like late 1800s, black and white photos of guys hunting everything they could. When there was no Twitter for people to call you out on, you could just, you could just, say stuff and nobody could verify it. That too. Right. Like, did you get my edible arrangement of oscillots? So in 1882, Hornaday gets appointed chief taxidermist of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. And so in the 1880s, like, he's at the top of the taxidermy game. And then as a result, starts getting interested in keeping living animals going.

I mean, that's pretty important, right? Like if your career depends on dead animals, you need live animals to then make them dead. That's true. You need a market. He basically comes into contact with bison through that logic. In 1886, he plans a trip to go west to both publicize the plight of bison and catch some specimens for taxidermy in case it doesn't work out. He's like, I'm going to do both things at once. I'm going to push for keeping them alive. I'm going to catch some in case we fail.

Hedging his bets. Yeah, I love that. Great. Cover all your bases. Yeah, and people were doing this with many species. And he, he, like, made a big press PR tour about this hunting trip. They built it as the last buffalo hunts.

The idea was both, let's not hunt these anymore, and there might not be any more to hunt. You know, it was a whole, both things at once, things. Mixed messaging. That's a real bummer of a name. Yeah. And, a spoiler for people, the story ends well, Bison are still around. But it is like, this was a really fraught time in the late 1800s.

And when they brought 25 specimens back to D.C. for taxidermy, Hornaday was working on them and he found that almost all the adults had at least one older bullet in them. Wow. Like, because he could tell what ammo they used. And so he came around to thinking that, wow, Bison are really on the verge. and also like the remaining ones must be some kind of survival of the fittest winners who are just like good at weathering the onslaught of human hunting. They're breeding a generation of bulletproof tanks roaming the Midwest.

That tracks, honestly. Yeah, with like a good reason for revenge as well. Very good idea. They're also bloodlusted, yes. Yeah, each of them is Rambo, essentially. Yeah, it's tough. But he, and then from there, Hornaday, he's at this elevated position at the Smithsonian Institution, which is also like always growing. There's always new museums even then.

And so in the process, he gets excited about after his trip starting a Department of Living Animals at the Smithsonian. And that results in a National Zoo in Washington, D.C., opened 1888. Oh. The living animals. Yeah. These are the alive ones. Yeah, like, it's like we were joking, basically. Like, he was such a professional taxidermist.

He was like, what if I branch out? And that's how we got the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. What if you take a dead animal, but alive it? Yeah. It's like when you, like, rehydrate a raisin. Oh. I do, I like the idea of an animal asking what year is it. Just something about that, you know, like the time traveler trope, something fun.

It's like that's seen in SpongeBob. Future. But, and this was happening when zoos were pretty new. Apparently the previous decade, 1874, the Philadelphia Zoo opened. It was the first, like, modern-style U.S. Zoo that was not just a guy with a zebra in his closet, like we were joking. And so these goals all kind of dovetail. And from their horn today ends up being a lot of the best and worst of late 1800s, U.S. naturalist stuff. He gets recruited by New York City to start the first New York City Zoo.

It becomes the Bronx Zoo. He pushes for that to be open and free to the public and works on a lot of animal conservation, but is also like writing newspaper editorials about how too many poor people are littering in his zoo. you know, it's a lot of like good and bad. Yeah. Oops. Couple problematic takes sprinkled in. Easily the worst one, just nothing funny about it is that he did put an African person in the zoo at one point.

You know, it was that time. It was awful. Oofters. That's a little bit of an oof. Jesus Christ. And then like along the way he helped spark seal conservation, bird conservation, especially for the sandhill crane. And then he did so much work on bison conservation that by the 1930s, his organization in New York had stocked six different U.S. preserves with bison. And he correctly believed that he'd laid the groundwork to keep the species going into the 21st century.

What a complicated man. Yeah, I was going to say, like, I still can't cheer for him, you know? Like, I can't give him any flowers for that. Yeah. Like with one hand, he's nursing an orphaned deer with those. bottle of milk and then the other hand he's writing a tirade against the Jews. What a complicated person. Yikes.

Yeah, when he was concerned about litter at the Bronx Zoo, he had them at one point remove most of the seating because he thought that would stop people from eating lunch and then they wouldn't litter. But at the same time, he was like, we must make the zoo free so all people have access to the treasures of the world. It's like every industrialist you read about or every powerful gilded age person you read about. I love mental parkour. Yeah.

It's like inside him both the desire to keep Bison alive and the desire to shoot them right in the head. Keep them alive so that I have more to shoot. But yeah, if people don't know, I made a mini series about proposing the Bison Emotiv. and Katie guested on it and got into some of the history of preserving the species. But in like making a taxidermy podcast, I thought a lot about how that went into this. And it's it's a weird thing. Like Muayalam describes Hornaday as thinking of zoos as a way to basically do living taxidermy. Like it's the same goal of having samples of a species for people.

And then it took like a whole other leap to think and zoos can help us increase the population of animals and be organizations that do things elsewhere in the world. And so it's weird looking at this step in the history of conservation. Yeah. I mean, it just reminds me of that scene in The Simpsons where Homer goes to that, like, cursed object store. And he keeps, like, talking about what the cursed item can do and then what it will, you know, the curse that'll happen. And Homer keeps going like, that's good. And that's bad.

That's good. What a double-edged sword. Yeah. I'm always just happy that we've progressed beyond it. That's true. Like we lucked out with the positive edge of the sword, is how I'm using the metaphor. And then we really expanded that edge. The other one's very dull now.

It's very beat up. It could still use a little more sanding down, I think. Yeah, always. Yeah, yeah. I just, I want there to be a sword that stops racism. that's how I'm doing this metaphor. You got it. You got there.

Good job. This is a sword that just says racism is bad on it. That's so brave of you. You're so real for that, Katie. It's got a lot of writing. Like those signs outside of houses, like in this house we believe in science and we don't. It's like all written down the sword. I would take those yard signs a lot more seriously if they were engraved on the blades of swords.

Yeah. I'd be like, oh, damn, you really mean it. You can't just put anything on a sword. That's true. It's a whole process. While you were doing sports, I was studying the blade. In this house. In this house, we study the blade.

In this house, we studied the blade, and we are inclusive. Love is love. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode. Get research sources and more at maximum fun.org. Next week, a whole new bonus. We made it to the bonus episode, which means we're enormously thankful to you. Your donations make secretly incredibly fascinating possible. That's why I get a whole other story that's great, weird, obviously incredibly fascinating.

Katie, what a joy talking about your name. We're going to talk about a very related thing, which is two astounding Catalinas. Cool. Catalina is a primarily Spanish variation of Catherine. I like it. And related to the name. It's got more syllables in it. Oh, it does have more syllables.

Wow. You were quick with the syllable count. I like it. Hey, you know. Wow. That's my second job, count in syllables. We were just talking about a very western town. I'm imagining you being the fastest syllable counter in the West.

That there's, that there's Katie. She's the fastest syllable counter in the West or East. Can't tell directions very good. On account of the Lyme disease we all have. Anyways, let's talk about Catalina's. Yeah, one of them is a place, the other is a person. Okay. And they're both probably named after St. Catherine, but by Spanish people.

Are we going to talk about Catalina Island? That's the place. Yeah. Yay. Yeah, it's very Southern California. Like you. Yes, I've actually been on a boat tour around the island. I didn't go on the island, but it was like a whale watching tour.

And we saw a ton of dolphins. We saw some, I believe, gray whales and a lot of birds and sea lions. And it was great. And I took dramine because I do get seasick. But what that meant, I was comfortably buzzed. I don't get seasick, but I hear dramamine makes people just like differently sick. It's like, oh, my whole hat is like foggy.

Really? I liked it. I enjoyed it. I didn't get, I did not get seasick. I didn't get sick from the dramine. I just felt comfortably buzzed. I don't think I would, I would not recommend taking it unless you need it because I was very sleepy and like basically would fall asleep and then my husband would wake me up and be like

Katie there's a whale outside. I'm like, all right. Well, let's go take a look at that whale. You're like, what a weird whale dream I'm having. La la la. Look at all these dolphins in my nighttime dream. That was great. I had a good time. Yeah, I've never been, but it's like it's very popular. And yeah, it turns out, I think most people don't know that Catalina is a Spanish version of Catherine. In 1602, a Spanish force renamed this island and the Gulf after St. Catherine. Is this going to be more colonizer nonsense? This element is partly that, yeah. And it also turns out they weren't even keeping track of the names they were doing for the island because...

Oh, my gosh. The first Spanish invader was a guy named Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo who visited. in 1542 and named it San Salvador, which was the name of one of his boats. He's just like, I'm going to name the island after my boat. Great. And it's a saint. I'm going to name after my favorite boat. And then that name just didn't get recorded in comprehensive Spanish records. And so a different Spanish force arrived one day before St. Catherine's Feast Day in 1602. And so they said, okay, because of the timing, we'll name it after St. Catherine. We'll call it Santa Catalina Island.

Okay. Well, you know, they could have used a syllable counter back in the day because I would have kept track of all those names. Count syllables, track and names. Yeah. Pee-poo. Looking at dolphins while slightly drugged. Yeah, and the island has been home to a few different native peoples. The Gabrieline Yorotongva people called it Pimu was the name. I like that name a little better, actually. Yeah, it feels good.

And more distinctive, yeah. Yeah, I like Catalina, but I feel like I like it for a person. Like Catalina is a nice person name. Pimu feels like a nice island name. Yeah, how about that? And yeah, and this island's other surprising thing has been looming large in Hollywood. Hmm. Because for one thing, a movie production in the 1920s used a group of Bison and then didn't

know what to do with them afterward. So they put them on Catalina. No, they didn't just, no, come on, guys. Oh, my God. But now we're approaching 100 years of conservationists caring for the bison introduced to Catalina. Just like dumping a bunch of bison on Catalina. So did they like, did the bison survive? Are they still there?

Yeah, they're still there. And the main debate is whether to add outside bison for genetic diversity. I see. Are they like, but they're not, I would imagine they are not native to that island, right? like they are an introduced species. So like are they a net positive or negative for that island? Because like adding a new species, especially something as significant in terms of terraforming as like a bison seems like that could have a pretty big impact on the local ecosystem.

Not to be a buzzkill because I know you love bison. No, it's true. They're much more of a plains kind of species and a small island is not where they're. tend to be. And yeah, according to the Smithsonian Magazine, there have been concerns over time about if there's too many of them, they'll eat too many of the plants. And also like seeds stick to their fur and get brought different parts of the island that they wouldn't otherwise go. So it's kind of a tricky place to have bison, but we've overall decided to keep them up as a thing there. Interesting. They were brought there for two Western film shoots in 1924. And so it's not their fault.

No, no, it's not the bison's fault. I imagine it's very confusing for bison because it's like they're, like you said, they're used to these wide open plains where they can go on these long migratory paths. And then they go on an island and they like reach the end of an island. They're like, no. And then they walk again. And then they reach the other end of the island and they're like, no. And it's just very confusing to be on an island.

I think about that like scene and what is it? It's Stitch and the girl. Lilo and Stitch. Lilo and Stitch. Yes, a great movie where the little alien guy is really confused that he's on an island, except it's just a bison going like, wait, what? Confused mooing? Oh.

Bison means family. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, and the other weird Hollywood thing with Catalina is in 2008, there was a comedy movie called Step Brothers. Oh, yeah, the one with Will Ferrell? Yeah, Will Ferrell and John C. Riley, yeah. Oh, the Catalina Wine Mixer.

Yeah, the key climactic scene is an event called the Catalina Wine Mixer that they made up because they thought it would be funny to have a Catalina Wine Mixer that everyone cares about. Uh-oh, is this going to have actual consequences? Nothing like bad, but in 2015, a resort operators started holding an annual Catalina Wine Mixer for real. And so we're approaching a decade of real Catalina Wine Mixers because of the fake Catalina wine mixer.

A decade? That movie came out a decade ago? No, they started doing real ones in 2015. The movie's from 2008. Oh, my God. Time you be a fickle mistress. Stepbrothers should not be more than 15 years old. It is.

It can almost legally vote. Oh, no. But so our other amazing Catalina is a person. And it turns out that, you know, Catalina is like Catherine. And there was one Catalina who had a relatively positive experience in the court of Henry the 8th. Unlike his three wives named Catherine, she had a pretty good time of it. Really kind of lucked out there because, yeah, I don't think ladies having a good time

at Henry the 8th's court is really like the thing because you're either getting your head cut off or dealing with like his gouty leg. There's a lot going on that's unfavorable. Yeah, and she had a bad time coming in, but then got out of it okay. Nice. And compared to the queens, that's pretty good. Yeah. Turns out there was a lady named Catalina of Motrille,

who was a servant, possibly an enslaved servant to a Catalina of the Spanish royal family whose name's been anglicized as Catherine of Aragon. and who was Henry VIII's first wife. I see. So it was Catherine of Aragon's servant was named also Catalina. Yeah, both of them, I'd always just thought of her as Catherine of Aragon, but she was also named Catalina as a Spanish kid. And then English people were like, I'm calling you Catherine.

I just feel like it. So, yeah, a lot of queens, they would get shipped to a different country and have their name changed a little or a lot. Oh, you're Catherine now. Yeah. Here's your tiara. Have a boy. And it's really amazing that Catalina of Motrille was not executed because she became someone

at the center of like international politics, just sort of by chance. You don't want to do that. It's never a good idea to be a woman in international politics in the 1500s. It's not good. Try to avoid that. Yeah. So what happened is Catherine of Aragon, if people are big Henry the Ath heads or Tudor heads, they might know this. I'm a bit of a tutor head.

Yeah. So Catherine of Aragon, they married her to two different English kings. She was first brought to England to marry the heir, a crown prince named Arthur. But then Arthur died a few months later. And England didn't want to find a whole new princess and do a whole new dress. and do a whole new dowry. So they just remarried her to Henry, the new heir, who becomes... It's called upcycling.

Right, they spackled her. Different coat of paint, upholstery. So they just remarry her to Henry who becomes King Henry the 8th. And the plan was, okay, she'll be the queen and make some male heirs. And she doesn't make male heirs. And then they're like, this stinks. What do we do? And so then what happens is Henry says, I'll get a divorce.

And everyone says you can't get a divorce. Like, Catherine won't do it. The Pope says you can't do it. And so then Henry says, I have a better idea. I will invent this like annulment of the marriage on the basis that her previous marriage to my brother did involve sex and therefore could not be annulled. But Henry says, I will invent a claim that Catherine of Aragon had sex with my brother, which would make that marriage real. which means the marriage to me never could have happened and I can get a new wife. If she was like secretly still married to Arthur because they had had sex,

then the marriage to Henry was never legal and he could just move on. I see. Like weird legal plan to get a different wife and a male heir. Right. How do you prove that? Like bring out a diary and where she was like, me and Arthur like totally kissed last night. Exactly. Exactly. So the way you prove it is you gather the servants from the time.

Like the key royal servants were very intimately involved in their lives and could have changed bedding that indicates sex happened or have even been in the room. Yeah, you have like a servant you're using as a nightstand and they're going to see everything. Right. And so the English government and in like a countersuit kind of way the Spanish government both say, we need to interview bedchamber servant Catalina. of Motreel, the servant of Catherine of Aragon. That's so for her. About the specific time and the Arthur marriage. And you're going to tell us whether they had sex or not. Oh, that sucks so much because you don't know where the, like, what to answer that's not going to involve

you getting like killed. Because it's like who, like what, like you don't, you obviously like you go with the answer where you are not going to be scapegoated and killed. But how do you know what that is? That, that sucks for Catalina. I feel for. Right. You would think 99.9% of servants in this situation would be killed for saying something.

Yeah. Like whatever they said. Yeah. It's like, um, I was sick that day. You're a demon and dead. Sick with demon. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And the thing we wish we had is her testimony. We don't know exactly what she said to Henry's people or to the Spanish people. But whatever she said, they said, we won't kill. you for saying this. Right. She's like, seriously, guys, don't kill me. And they're like, yeah, okay. What happened is she either refused to say anything or refused to say anything that would swing this.

Maybe she betrayed Catherine of Aragon in a way both crowns were okay with. But whatever happened, the authorities did not hold this against her. And later that year, she got to leave England. And she had been brought there forcibly. That is the greatest success story of all time. Being able to leave England. All right. No, I love, I went to, I visit London and it was lovely there.

But back in the day, if you're a servant that was basically kidnapped or enslaved, being able to leave England a great time. Get away from all that gout. Yeah, because also she's recorded as being Muslim and Amur. And so like a lot of those people were imprisoned or enslaved by the Spanish crown. And like she definitely didn't choose to do this job or go or anything. And then despite being put in a legal predicament where they would almost definitely execute you, nope, it was fine. She said something smart and got out of there and then became free. That was it.

If the medieval condom don't fit, you must acquit. And they were really impressed. Also, they really wanted airs. They hated condoms so much. They were like, no condoms for either of these people. I don't think they had that kind of, like, what would they use? Like, sheepskin? Yeah, none of it's good to think about.

And, and yeah, and we do have records of Catalina of Montreal, basically being freed because, like, tragically, Catherine of Aragon is removed from the marriage and spends her last years as a heartbroken prisoner and is cut off from her daughter. And it's horrible for Catherine Aragon. Yeah. But in the process, the English are like, you don't have to work for this lady anymore. Like, whatever. Get out of here, Catalina. And so she goes back home to Granada.

There's records of her marrying a crossbowmaker, having children being a free housewife for the rest of her life. Like, she just got to move on and have a life after this abduction and forced servitude. The nice thing about marrying a crossbow maker is the next time someone tries to abduct you, you got a bunch of crossbows. So, you know. Right. They're like, ah, I forgot about crossbows. We're going home. Forget it.

Oh, there's too many crossbows. Can't abduct you and slave you and make you the center of an international scandal. Dang it. She just got to have such a normal outcome in a way nobody else. does in that whole era of history. Good for her. Easily the happiest Catherine's story in the court of Henry the 8th. Yeah.

Because three of his six wives were named Catherine. We talked about Catherine of Aragon's hard life. His wife, Catherine Howard, was a lady in waiting to wife number four, then became wife number five, and then got executed for adultery less than a year into marriage. Yeah. She probably didn't do it. And that, like, even his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who is not, executed, Henry accuses her of heretical interest in different Protestant beliefs from his

Protestant beliefs. Yeah. And signs a warrant for her arrest that she just barely gets out of actually being arrested for. So he almost tried to kill the sixth one, too. It was a bad time. Yeah. You know, a man will kill 20 of his wives before he goes to therapy. Yeah, Roman emperors, King Henry the 8th, they're all kind of not amazing to be around.

Like Catalina Motrille is kind of a miracle. She just left and went home. Don't put women on wheels unless it's a cool car. I do want her to have driven into the sunset in anachronistic car. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the. bonus episode, get research sources and more at maximum fun.org. Next week, a whole new bonus.