Something You Should Know - Where Superstitions Come From & What You Never Knew About Paul Revere

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

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

It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavours. So, what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. 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. 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. Also, the formula for building the perfect fire. And it's the anniversary of Paul Revere's ride, made famous by that poem. Listen, my children, and you shall hear of 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. All this today on Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Adam Gitwitz, host of Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest. On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times. No, we tell the real grim fairy tales. your children have heard so many times. No, we tell the real Grimm fairy tales.

They're funny, they're weird, sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry, we rate every episode Grimm, Grimmer, or Grimmest, so you, your child, your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you. Tune in to Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest and our new season available now. 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. 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. 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.

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 U.S. 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. 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. Thank you very much, Mike. Thanks for having me. So where do superstitions come from and why do we have them? 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 the idea is that 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, 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. 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 and it does something yeah and that's true with with a lot of. 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. 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. 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? 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, 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 feelies, 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. 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. So numbers, let's talk about numbers, because everybody's heard that, you know, thirteen supposedly an unlucky number, and then people also have their lucky numbers, and any number could be your lucky number, but numbers seem to be particularly susceptible to superstition.

That comes from the fact that a lot of civilizations, a lot of cultures believe in numerology, which is the idea that numbers have great mystical significance, and specifically the idea that numbers have great mystical significance and Specifically though 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 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, 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

twelve gods who were invited to the party, 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, Baldr, who was known to be brave and beautiful and kind-hearted. And Baldr'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, 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. So what's the deal with the rabbit and the rabbit's foot? Like, you know, it's, why a rabbit? 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 rabbits' 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. 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. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods,

The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longestshortesttime.com. From the podcast that brought you to each of the last lesbian bars in the country and back in time through the sapphic history that shaped them comes a brand new season of cruising beyond the bars. This is your host Sarah Gabrielli and I've spent the past year interviewing history-making lesbians and queer folks about all kinds of queer spaces from bookstores to farms to line dancing and much more. You can listen to Cruising on

Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes air every other Tuesday starting February 4th. So Ari, talk about another animal or other animals that are tied into superstitions. There are black cats as one of the most frequently called upon ones. And that's one that a lot of people still believe in today, even though the the entire the meaning for it has Completely died out again people a lot of people don't know the original meaning. Well, I don't think I do So what what is the original meaning cats were thought to have some kind of mystical significance because they have such keen senses and Before people knew 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 living in the world of the dead. So then you go a couple thousand years into the future and you're at the Black Death 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, 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, 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, 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 false idea that cats were somehow witches familiars, that cats had some link to the devil or some link to witchcraft. And so, that's how we get this idea that black cats are somehow bad. So, if you break a mirror you will have seven years bad luck. I think everybody has heard that, many people probably believe it, and where did it come from? Yeah, 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 believe that life occurs in in seven years segments so every seven years is like a different segment and so that's why if you break the mirror you get 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 funny to me that even though today most people don't believe in that your life is measured in seven-year increments, well, hey, the seven years of bad luck has somehow still survived. So I find that kind of fascinating. And what about walking under a ladder? I never understood that one.

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 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's why that was bad luck. But again, centuries later, Christianity takes hold 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 bad luck.

So again, it kind of like, you see a lot of these superstitions kind of changing and adapting with the times, so I think that's interesting. What about salt? You know, you throw salt over your shoulder, and people still do that, and it is supposed to bring you good luck, or does it ward off bad luck, or what is it exactly? A little bit of both. So alright, 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, the salt crystals appear once more.

So again, they thought that there was something magical about salt. 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 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?

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. 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? 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, which we've seen in countless horror movies and TV shows. What about superstitions regarding the moon? That people believed, and I think people still believe, that on the night of a full moon, that the moon brings out the worst in people, it makes people crazy,

the wolf man would show up kind of thing. You know, if you thought that the superstition has left us completely behind, well, that's not true. There was a study done at 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 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. Well I know I've heard maybe I 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.

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 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. 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. Thank you very much, Mike. It's been a lot of fun. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family friendly show, we count down our top 10 list of all

things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week we deliver four fun-filled shows.

In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong? which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally wrap up your week with Fisting Friday where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

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 Kastya, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hey, Mike. It's good to be on with you. 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, two arms, two arms, the British are coming. So, did that really happen? 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. The Listen My Children and You Shall Hear of 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 transformed America's chances in this ridiculous impudent thing we were going to try to do, take on the British Army, is absolutely true. So who is Paul Revere? At the time of his ride, who was he and how did he get there? 40-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 selfversmith, 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 he 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 whole life and was extremely involved in resistance, in the rebellion against British rule. And he was an integral figure in, certainly in the riot on April 18th, on the eve of the battles of Lexington and Concord, and even before that, very, very much involved in things like the Boston Tea Party and other acts of resistance. 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. Samuel Adams instituted a series of what was called express writers, 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 time dealing with the conflict of the

British. 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. 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 out, who 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 across the countryside. Where did the information come from?

And 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? 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. 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 was married

to an American woman who was from New Jersey and her family had been in America for a long time. And Gage, while he did the bidding of London, 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's very much in love with and who said as the war, the thing 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 my 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, 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 the 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. 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 some credible evidence that she may have been one of the people who spread the news. 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? 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 settlers and whatever they did for a living, and they had a fouling piece for

hunting or maybe they had some kind of musket left from 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 60s, where they began 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 were 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 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. And when people were made aware of what was going on, did they do what was hoped they would do? Yes. I mean, listen, if I show up to your house and 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 stay home. But many many people did answer that call. It's really an incredible. You think about 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 they 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 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 have that kind of success right at the very first battles was critical because 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 it, a lot of the conviction out of what was going on, right? Because you had to believe that you could actually do this incredible thing and then, a lot of the conviction 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 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 a spectacular success, I think more than anybody could have hoped. 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 much to avoid war. And so prior to that, how often, if at all, were the British and 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?

Not at all a common occurrence. There were two previous events So they 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 1770 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.

That was a big, big event, and it helped draw indignation on the part of the colonists and helped feed the rebellion. And then Revere went up to Portsmouth to alert that a 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 74, and it was a very small platoon of British. There were literally six British soldiers and some 400 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 succeed in firing and the colonists didn't take any retribution. But it was a conflict. It was an armed conflict. I remember hearing that what Paul Revere said or what he yelled from his horse was, two arms, two arms, the British are coming.

Is that what he said? Well, he didn't say the British are coming. Is that what he said? Well he didn't say the British are coming. That's not in the poem and that was invented maybe 80 or 100 years later. And he wouldn't have said that because they all still viewed themselves as British even at that time. To arms meant up to up and to 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 red coats were known as the regulars because you would see them around in their red uniforms as sort of a regular presence. And he also wasn't yelling. 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 that 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. 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 on the door and went in and said, hey, here's what's going on. Some of the details of exactly when he got off the horse, when he stayed on the door and went in and said, hey, here's what's going on. 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 gonna be he wouldn't have said I went by Mike's house I went by costas house, you know, and they and they joined me because now those people would be Susceptible to retribution from the from the crown and would be traders. So Some of the actual details, we don't know exactly. But basically, as you say it, he went from house to house. Sometimes he went to a tavern, he went to some place, a gathering place. It was at night, so there weren't people outside at a 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 12.5 mile route from Charlestown to Lexington. 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? Yeah, so there were no specific instructions. He said go to Lexington and conquer.

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 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. called the 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 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. That's probably what makes it so remarkable. They showed up in their in their clothes and their household gun and did the best they could. And was this fight a one-time fight or was this the beginning of a big escalation into a real war? This was this was the first 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. And what happened to him afterwards? Was he, I was going to say revered, but you know. Well said. He continued as a businessman.

He went on and lived a long life. So he was 40 on the night of the ride. And he lived until he was 83. He became a bell maker. There are still bells today in this country, many of them in New England, 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.

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 schoolchild knows who Paul Revere is, is because of that poem which was not written until 1860, published in 1861, and that lifted Paul Revere. If you were a studyer 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 the incredible popularity of that poem by the most popular poet in America at the time. 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, longer version the one you told which fills in a lot of blanks Costia 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 Costia, thank you for coming by and talking about this. Thanks so much, Mike. Perfect. 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. 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. 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. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. There is so much going on right now in the world of reproductive health, and we're covering it all.

Birth control, pregnancy, gender, bodily autonomy, menopause, consent, sperm, so many stories about sperm, and of course the joys and absurdities of raising kids of all ages. If you're new to the show, check out an episode called The Staircase. It's a personal story of mine about trying to get my kids' school to teach sex ed. Spoiler, I get it to happen, but not at all in the way that I wanted. We also talk to plenty of non-parents, so you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships, and, you know, periods, The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longestshortesttime.com.