Stuff You Should Know - How Freemasons Work

Episode Date: August 26, 2010

There are lots of conspiracy theories about Freemasons, but how much do you really know about this secretive order? In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a comprehensive look at the origins, history, practices, beliefs and famous figures of Freemasonry. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that would make this... Stuff You Should Know. Yes, the stuff they don't want you to know edition. Yeah, kind of.

Whoa, there. Sorry, everybody. Sorry, Chuck. We should apologize for cutting in like this. I know. We have some important information that we usually reserve for the end of our show, but we realize that some people tune out, so it's at the beginning this time. Yes. We have... Well, we're going to South by Southwest. We're hoping to, right? Yeah. We're up for an interactive panel, and we need everybody's votes. The last chance to vote is today, the day this comes out. Actually, tomorrow. It's Friday. Oh, is it Friday? Okay. All you have to do is go to panelpicker.sxsw.com slash ideas slash views slash 6817. I guess that's ours.

Yeah, that takes you directly to the page where you can vote on us, and when you try to vote, it'll say, oh, wait, you got to register, and it takes like 40 seconds to register, and they will not spam you. Right. So basically, please go register for us, because we'd love to have a panel in South by Southwest. It's just cool. We want to go. And, Chuck, South by Southwest reminds me of something else. That will conclude our national tour, which we're kicking off here in Atlanta on October 13th. Yes. We are having, like we did in New York, we are having an all-star trivia event here in Atlanta, October 13th, and five or six other secret to be named later cities, right?

Yes. We're going to be all over the place. We're going to be touring the country, playing people in trivia, having a good time. Wow. It'll be fun. It'll be during the week, kind of break up that weekday monotony kind of thing, probably Wednesdays or something. Yeah, with the next, well, up until March, so between now and March. So keep an eye out, because we actually did spread it out geographically, as much as we could to get as many people there as possible. Yeah, details will follow, and it's going to be a lot of fun. Okay, that's it, right? Yeah, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Let's avoid the whole conspiracy thing. I don't even think we should bring up any conspiracies. Sorry. It's going to happen. Yeah, it's a little difficult to talk about free masons, which is what we're talking about today, without talking conspiracy, and for good reason too. They are one of the more secretive orders ever created. What have you just talked about, like brick and stone work the whole time? You got to get the proper mixture, and you got to get the trial just right. I know how to make mixed mud is what it's called, mortar.

Yeah, it's fun. I can whip up a pretty good batch of it, man. Well, you built a fire pit, right? I did. I've built walkways, walls, all sorts of stuff. I guess you could call me a mason butt chuck. I would be a rough mason. Yeah. Not a free mason, which is the big distinction that we'll get to eventually, right? Yes, we will. But first, let's talk about what's going on in Boise, Idaho right now.

That had no idea what's going on there. Well, I can tell you, there's a guy named Crispin Hartung, and he was summoned to Boise Lodge Number 2, Agent Free and Accepted Masons of the Grand Lodge of Idaho, basically to explain himself for going ahead and founding another lodge called the Praxis Lodge, which is considered a modern lodge. Uh-huh. And the brothers at the Boise Lodge Number 2 wanted to know why he'd done this because it basically flies in the face of the tenants of Free Masonry,

at least as far as the York, or no, Scottish Rite Masonry goes, which I guess is what most American lodges are, right? Yeah, because they were from England. The Scottish Rite is England, and the other one is French, right? Right, so the Praxis Lodge is aligned with the Grand Orient of France, and basically, they don't require that there be volume of sacred law present as part of the indispensable part of the furniture of the lodge, I'm quoting. This Praxis Lodge allows discussion of religion and politics.

Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. No, and it doesn't require that members believe in a supreme being. So he's not a Mason? No, he was, and he went and founded a Praxis Lodge, a secular lodge. The guy's a secular humanist, and he was excommunicated, expelled from the Boise Lodge Number 2. Did they burn his bowels? They didn't because he didn't share any secrets, but this kind of stuff

actually gives you a glimpse of what the Masons are all about. Chuck, secrecy. So they are a very secret order, but over time, little things have come out in this article will reveal the name of God, the secret word that gets you to the next level after the third degree. There's all sorts of, it's the least secret secret of order as far as, you know. I would think they would have changed this stuff. If you can read these secret passwords on our website, wouldn't they have changed it by now?

But think about it. I mean, like, are you going to change God's name? You can't. It's just kind of like, and yeah, everything you've heard is true. This is God's name. Aren't you glad you made it to the fourth degree now? So let's talk about the history of the Masons, right? There's a lot of competing theories of where the Masons came from.

Yeah, they range from ones we won't talk about as much like ancient Druids or the Isis Osiris cult in ancient Egypt to my favorite story. And this one, I think, holds a little bit of credence for sure, because they still part of their rituals involve this story. Yeah. So it seems like it might be the way to go. Or else they just selected the story and they're sticking with it. Yeah, maybe so.

Way back in the day, King Solomon's Temple in 967 BC was built in Jerusalem, and there was a master builder, a master Mason named Hiram Abif, who claimed to know the secret to the temple. Because you've got to have a secret if you're going to build a temple, or else it's just just a temple. And three men kidnapped him one day, threatened to kill him if he didn't reveal the secret. He apparently said, no way. I'm not going to do that.

So he was promptly killed. And then King Solomon heard about this and ordered some Masons, and these were stone Masons at the time, just regular stone Masons. It was before the whole Freemason thing, right? I don't know. Well, that's where I'm going with. And he said, bring his body back here and bring back the secret of the temple. That did not work.

So he says, well, you know what? I'm going to establish a new secret. And here it is. And here it is. It is mahabon. That's the secret. The secret is a word, and the word mahabon means the grand lodge door opened. And the secret is the password that they used to enter the third degree of Masonry.

So if you were thinking, I'd like to become a Mason, but I want to start out at the third level. I don't want to become an apprentice, right? No. Just go ahead and go into a Masonic lodge and say mahabon, and they'll be like, I would say mahabon and they would like, you mispronounced it or you just leave the H out. It'd be like mahabon and your bowels. Right. So that is the that's the that's the party line of the masons of where they came from.

Probably the more likely explanation is the I eat boring. Right. I think it's kind of interesting though. I like it because most of the teas are crossed and the eyes are dotted, but in the Middle Ages, masons were a well, there were two kinds. Like we said, yeah, there were rough masons like me, just jerks who knew how to mix mud together and could, you know, work with stone that was pretty tough to screw up because they were so big. Or there were free craft masons or free stone masons or free masons that worked with intricate

carvings and soft stone. Yeah, free stone is like the soft stone that you can actually carve designs into. And it took some serious skill. Right. So to protect their wages, to make sure that they were differentiated in the minds of employers like and their secret or right. They initiated trade guilds. Right. It's like a union sort of exactly. These trade guilds founded lodges where they store their tools, their secret tools, and they ate and basically hung out together. And then after a while, they just went the extra mile and said, you know what, I want to make sure that there's no rough masons at our lodge. So we're going to come up with secret handshakes, passwords, that kind of stuff.

And the masons were born. Yeah. And that one makes sense too. And then we can't talk about any of this without talking about the Knights Templar for a second, because we've gotten railed about the Knights Templar with the Friday the 13th show. Yeah, we have. So for goodness sakes, the Knights Templar is another theory. And the deal there was the Knights Templar, there were monks that basically guarded a passage from Jaffa to Jerusalem to protect Christians on their way. And they were pretty rough apparently. And they at one point discovered King Solomon's riches in the temple. They're like, there's the real secret. Yeah. And it was apparently the biggest, you know, stock of cash. It was probably just dollar bills,

is my guess. Right. And they took it all and King Philip, what is that, the fourth of France, said, arrest all those dudes so I can get their money that they just stole. And they were imprisoned. And then there's a bit of a mystery of what happens. But one theory is that after they were released from prison, they went into hiding and emerged as Freemasons later on. Right. That's one theory. That's just yet another theory. And King Philip IV may or may not have had them arrested on a Friday the 13th. Oh, is that the deal? So Chuck, there's a couple of theories and probably the likeliest theory of where Freemasons came about. We know that modern Freemasons, we can trace their history pretty well. Yeah. Over time, you know, we've got these

Masonic lodges and they're just kind of hanging out and it's really like a trade guild. Right. And only what are called operative masons could join. Yeah, that's literally people who were Stonemasons. Right. The thing was, is these these free Stonemasons or Freemasons kind of fancy themselves. Like I think they cultivated their intellectualism as if we were to further separate themselves from rough masons. Right. And so they started like having discourse at these lodges and right talking and they developed because they were so smart. They developed a philosophy, right. And one of the one of the big, I guess, tenants of Freemasonry is religious tolerance. Right. Yeah. While being they're very liberal, religiously speaking, they didn't like the

hardcore Catholic rules. Right. And later on, I think, well, a couple of things happened. Catholics were forbidden to join Freemasons at one point by one of the popes. Right. And then I think that went away. And then at one point they were accused of not allowing Catholics in as a Freemason, but they said that's not true either. Right. And again, we saw that in that thing that's going down in Boise right now that you that to be like a typical Masonic Lodge, you have to have a sacred volume. Right. But in keeping with that religious tolerance idea, there it can be anything like the Koran. It can be the Jewish Old Testament, the Talmud, right. Pretty cool. Or the New Testament, the Bible. But you have to believe in a Supreme Being. That's another major tenant of Freemasonry.

The thing is, it wasn't necessarily like the Christian God and the idea of religious tolerance of believing in what's called the Grand Architect. Right. That definitely jibes with Enlightenment thought. So these Masonic Lodges where like you had to be a Mason who could carve into stone started attracting people who were basically tourists. Yeah, like artists and aristocrats. All of a sudden there was this cool club and they says, well, I want to be a Mason because you guys get together and you're all smart and you talk about stuff that's neat and secret. Right. And so they started letting in speculative instead of operative Freemasons. They started letting in speculative Freemasons. And speculative with as a word, as a word.

Yes. And it became basically like the fraternity gentlemen's type of club that it is today. Right. That was like the beginnings of that. Gentlemen's Club is a, well, gentlemen is the operative word because the Freemasons have never allowed women in except in some very, very unique circumstances. There was one famously a woman named Elizabeth Aldworth who was caught eavesdropping on a Masonic, I guess, discussion or whatever in a lodge. And they found her and said, okay, you can join. So they inducted her. I think it was one of those deals where like, well, gosh, she knows the deal now. Right. But I guess the, I don't know if funny is the right word, but the reason that they gave

for not admitting women was they were afraid that women were going to distract the guys from their intellectualism. There's clearly a division of the higher self and the lower self and they associated the lower self with women. And then secondly, that women were too gossipy and would reveal their secrets. Right. And apparently Elizabeth would like go around town after that, wearing her Masonic clothes. Her apron. Yeah, her apron. Really? That's what I heard. God just told me like, yeah, who did you put the sword on the street? Um, Chuck, go ahead. Well, I was just, I should mention officially, in 1723, their Constitution was written by a Scottish Freemason named James Anderson, almost said Alexander. And he, this

was basically the first official set of like laws and rituals and stuff. Yeah. So that's in place in 1723. Right. And five years prior to that, four Masonic lodges in London combined to form the first grand lodge. Yeah. And that tradition's been followed in the States. There's typically one grand lodge in a state. And you got to answer that lodge, right? Especially if you start a secular lodge. Right. We should mention quickly too, though, since you mentioned the female member, there are a couple of sort of spinoffs that are all females called, one's called the Order of the Amaranth and one's called the Order of the Eastern Star. And those are for the ladies that want to get all Masonic. Right. So Chuck, let's talk about American Freemasonry. Yeah,

why not? So like we said, the whole Enlightenment movement really became fond of the ideas of Freemasonry. And there's a lot of conspiracy theory about whether or not America was founded by Masons. And yes, it indeed was. Yeah, to a large degree for sure. George Washington, you could make a case that he helped found America. Yeah. He was a Mason. Benjamin Franklin, Mason. Yeah. And several other guys who signed the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And 10 of them signed the articles officially. So some people say it's one of the myths that like everybody that was signed the Constitution was a Mason, not true. No, but enough where that you could say they had a real hand in shaping the United States. And actually, like the dollar bill,

the pyramid with the eye above it is about as Masonic as it gets. The Masons love their symbology. Oh, yeah. And I read an explanation in US News and World Report, which means it's true, by a guy who has written about mysticism in America named Mitch Horowitz. And he basically explained that what the unfinished pyramid with the eye floating over it means is as humans are capable of great acts of engineering and technology and probably you could extend that to kindness and generosity. Sure. But we couldn't finish anything unless it's blessed by Providence, which is represented by this eye. So it's a hopeful symbol and that just pyramid will eventually be finished. We will eventually be successful because Providence winks upon us.

All right. That's one explanation. I'm sure there's like five million other explanations that include everything from like the Nazis to Coligula. But that's what I understand that means. For the Nazis to Coligula, that's a pretty wide range. The point is, though, is that there is a Masonic symbol on our dollar bill, which makes me wonder if the Knights Templar found the dollar bills at the Temple of Solomon. Maybe they got that. That's so that all the singles. They're like, let's make it rain. It all makes sense. There's also a theory that they were some Masons were had actually organized the Boston Tea Party and the French Revolution. Yeah. At St. Andrew's Lodge in Boston. And there's a couple of reasons they point to one is that they did not meet the

night of the Boston Tea Party. And then there was some letter T on one of their scrolls. And that's sort of been called out as maybe there were some there, maybe there weren't. But amazingly, the Boston Tea Party has still remained a secret to this day. Like all those dudes saw secrecy and with 100% verification cannot happen at this time. That sounds pretty Masonic. Yeah. That's true. So after the American Revolution, the successful Masonic overthrow of the British rule, basically the American Mason said, hey, we were under the purview of the provincial lodge. We gotta go. We gotta make a clean break with everything here, including Masonry. So they formed their own official lodges in the United States. And it kind of took off. In America,

you've got the York right and the Scottish right. And the York, like you said, is French. And the Scottish right follows the English traditions. And apparently the French tradition is the one that's secular. Scottish tradition, you have to have that sacred volume and a belief in a supreme being. And you can't talk about religion or politics under the Scottish right, right? Yeah. And we have the Scottish right hospital here, too. I never really thought about that until I read this. Yeah. I think in the Shriners as well. That's another example of their Masons. Yeah, that was kind of an offshoot of Masons, the Shriners with their fun little cars that they drive around in parade. And their fezzes. So Chuck, let's talk about religion, right? Okay.

A lot of people think that it is a that that Freemasonry is a religion in and of itself. Probably not true. Yeah, I mean, they say this is what I don't get. They say that you have to believe in God under the Scottish right. Well, yeah, that's the first question they ask you when you get in, you know, in your little ceremony there. But if you're if you're following a Scottish right, exactly. But then they also on the other hand say, but we're not even allowed to talk about religion in our meetings. Right. So what's going on there? I don't know. I think it's probably like one of those things where they just figured out pretty early on after having held meetings for centuries that they're like, you just can't bring up religion and politics. It takes everybody

off. Believe me, don't go there, friend. Right. They also don't follow the traditional um, Judeo Christian view of God as a supreme being necessarily because they call God the great architect of the universe, which actually sounds pretty deist to me. Yeah. Right. That's a good point. Um, but again, you have to believe in God. You can't talk about it, but you have to swear an oath upon a sacred, sacred volume, right? Or book of the sacred law, which could be a Koran at the Talmud or the New Testament. Yeah, they're kind of open-minded. To an extent as long as you believe in God. Right. And as long as you don't tell any secrets, because we'll burn your bowels. Right. So if you want to become a Mason, right, and you have picked

up that you've said that your bowels may be burned if you give away secrets, you've come to terms with that. You want to enter the brotherhood. What do you do? Well, you have to be sponsored. You have to fill out your application basically. You got to get two sponsors from the same lodge to say, you know, to vouch for you, I guess. Then you're voted on, voted in by a secret ballot. You are asked whether or not you believe in God and you have to answer yes. I imagine if you say no, then they'll just say it's probably isn't the place for you then. They'll point you to the French Orient. And you have to have a little bit of money. I mean, you don't have to be rich, but you have to pay the dues and keep your dues up like any club and

you're expected to be philanthropic too. And if you don't take part in that stuff, it's probably frowned upon. So you got to have a little bit of money. Right. And once you are accepted, you start out as an inner-deprentice and you're initiated, right? Yeah, this is pretty fun. And they do the, they have to, you have to tell the story of the King Solomon's Temple and Hiram Abiff and basically you act it out. You act out this tradition. Yeah. And blindfold. And then you are Hiram Abiff or Abiff and you are murdered and you pretend like you're dead and you're reborn and you're a Mason now. Yeah. I'm really curious about the, you know, like the artistic leeway they give you there. Yeah. And also, I can't, I can't get the image of slacks

out of my head. Like there's some guys wearing the clothes that he was wearing at work, which is he's going dockers high. Yeah, slacks. Right. And, and like a short sleeve button down. Right. Acting out that he's just died and is reborn. I'm hoping that there is like a robe involved or something. Yeah. Just kind of dead in any, any fashion choices. So that's kind of, you know, it's interesting, ritualistic for sure. Then, then you begin your, you know, your rise to the top, although they say that most Freemasons don't get above like what, like three degrees out of the 30 what? There's 33. Well, there's 13 in the French tradition. Right. But the, I guess the Scottish right is 33 degrees of Freemasonry. And as you graduate, you get more

secrets told and more threats against telling those secrets. Well, go ahead and tell them the threats. I know you're chomping at the bit for that. And the, the Masons, we should say, by the way, deny this. They, this is, this is speculation, but this is come out supposedly from other Masons that this is the punishment for revealing secrets. Yeah. So apparently, if you're an apprentice, which is the first level and you tell secrets, your tongue is torn out, free craft, which what number is that? That's, as a second degree. Oh, really? Wow. They will actually tear your heart out, which you'll probably end it for you. Right. And then the master Mason is the famous bowel burning that I've been speaking up for 15 minutes now. And one,

one has to imagine that they're burning your bowels alive. It's not like they suffocate you with a pillow and then burn your bowels. Like you're probably alive while your bowels are being burned. Yeah. And the first time I read this, I thought I said your bowels are turned. And I thought that was some ancient like, like being drawn in quartered. I was like, Oh my gosh, your bowels are turned. That must, that must be awful. But then I thought was burned, which is even worse. They just go, Joan Collins. And you're like, Oh, my bowels are turned. And then if you're a royal arc, then you have the top of your skull sliced off, which is no fun for anyone. No. Again, presumably you're alive. And we should say the Mason still

say this is not true. But when you get to that third degree, the end of the third degree, the master Mason degree, and you have kept the secrets of your bowels are intact, your heart's fine and your tongue's fine. You finally get the name of the great architect of the universe as part of your initiation to the Holy Royal Arch, which is like the fourth degree, right? So Chuck, what is the name of the great architect of the universe? Are we going to reveal this? It's in the article. It is Yab Yabulan. That's what it is. I know. And apparently that stands the JAH stands for Yahweh, which is the Hebrew God or God for Hebrew in Hebrew. Right. Yahweh meant I am in Hebrew. Oh, really? And the BUL is for is for Baal,

which is the ancient Canaanite fertility God. And then on is Osiris. You did not mess with. No, you don't mess with him. Right. And on is for Osiris. Yeah, the Egyptian God of the underworld. Right. So basically what you've got is like this three different aspects. You have like life, death, sex, existence, you know, embodied by these different gods, and then all combined together. Yeah. Which is convenient. Yeah. So which degree is your favorite? Did you look these over? Yeah. My favorite is King of the Brazen Serpent. That's the 25th degree. Oh, yeah. My second favorite was the Intimate Secretary. Nice. There's also the 18th degree is the Knight of the Pelican and Eagle

and Sovereign Prince Rosecraw of Herodom. Yeah, that's pretty good too. Yeah. There's so many Masons that are like, you guys are making fun of us, you jerks. We're not. I'm not. Timothy Hutton's out there angry. Is Hutton a Mason? Turk 182 is livid right now. He's a Mason? Oh, yeah. Wow. I got a list. We'll go over that later. Okay. And I'm sure that you have movie references too, I expect. No, not really. Crazy. So Chuck Flintstones, what was that, the Royal Order of Buffalo? That was their little... I totally forgot about that. Yeah, they were the big... Yeah. Buffalo hat. They had fezzes, right? With like horns coming out of them. Was it the water buffalo? It seems like water buffalo. Maybe it was water buffalo.

Wow. Yeah, you just blew my mind, man. I forgot all about that. I did too until just now. So Chuck, you've entered a lodge. Okay. Let's say you're up to the third or fourth degree. Sweet. You're not running around Idaho forming, quote, irregular lodges. No. And you are vying for office, let's say. What are some of the positions available to you at a typical lodge? Well, it starts up top with a senior warden. Well, I'm sorry, there's a master. Right. That's the top. That's the guy who's running the show at the lodge. Making sure everything is abided by, abode by. So you got the senior warden after that. Right. And a junior warden. Right. You got a treasurer, of course. There's always a treasurer.

There's a secretary that writes down everything that's going on. You've got a senior and a junior deacon. Now, I've met a senior or a junior deacon. I don't know which one he was, but you and me and I toured the George Washington Memorial Masonic Lodge in Alexandria, Virginia. It is awesome. Cool. I'll put that on my list. Yes, you should. On my bucket list. We actually signed up Ben Bowlin from Stuff They Don't Want You to Know. That really? To their email list. That's awesome. Yeah. We'll talk about that in a second, too. And then it depends on where the lodge is and how their structure, but you can also have an inner guard who's like a sort of, like a bouncer, a chaplain, director of ceremonies, and an organist. Yeah. Just for fun.

Just for flair. That's what I would do. You know I had quite organists with slacks. Do you? All I think about is baseball. I used to think of church and I don't think of baseball. Let's talk quickly about the symbology. There's so much to it, but the very standard, if you look at the Mason symbol, it's a right angle ruler, a compass, and a G, right? Yeah. Take it away, Chuck. Well, the G stands for either God or geometry, which was obviously a pretty sacred thing to a Mason, a stone Mason. Right. And they, you know, it's either God or geometry. My money's on geometry. I would say geometry, too. Yeah. And the square actually means something. It encourages you to be a square dealer, essentially, like Slingblade says. And

then you have the compass, which stands for creating boundaries in life. Right. And there you have it. There you have it. That's their symbol and what it means. All right. I guess it is time for conspiracy theory, maybe? Yeah. We got to throw this in there. If you ever suspected the Masons of having in their past an allegiance or a Confederacy with a group called the Illuminati, who was bent on throwing over the church and government and establishing a new world order, you're actually right. Let's hear it. There was a guy named Professor Adam Weishaupt. Weishaupt. Weishaupt. We'll go with that one. Who in the 18th century founded this group called the Illuminati? And the Illuminati basically said we think that government's corrupt.

We think that the church is corrupt and we need to get rid of them, but this is not something that you can do in the open. So we're going to form a secret society. And speaking of secret societies, we like you Masons in Bavaria. So let's hook up. Let's do this together. Yeah, you're really doing it right. So the Masons in Bavaria and the Illuminati hung out for a while, joined forces, and then the Masons realized that these guys were going to get them all killed. Yeah, they're crazy. And they broke off their engagement with the Illuminati and their date with destiny was postponed, right? Yes. So what I thought was nice was the government of Bavaria said, no, no, no, Illuminati, you need to disband, which they supposedly did. And some people still

think that they're... And seen. Yeah. But since we're talking about conspiracies, we need to say some people still think that they're involved together and that they're trying to control. That was implied by my pregnant pause at the end. They think they're trying to control the banks of the world and the governments of the world all secretly together. Right. One view of the Masons is that the Masons that you see every day with the stickers or the magnets on their cars or the Shriners and their little cars are basically just distractions in that these people at the higher levels, the 33rd degrees, they're actually running the show. Right. It's all a big front. Right. And these are the people who actually run Goldman Sachs and decide that the euro's

going to happen or whether or not Greece is allowed to exist as an economy, that kind of stuff. And I think now is when we should bring up our cohort to stuff they don't want you to know, which for those of you not in the know, it's one of our video podcasts that a couple of our you know, video dudes do a great job and it's very awesome. Yeah, it's cool and it's you know, they have a lot of fun with it and they're not like they don't believe all this stuff necessarily, but it's fun to dig it up and do fun little videos about it. Fun. Yeah. And they did one on Masons and one of the theories is that the layout of Washington DC was designed in such a way by Freemasons to align with lay lines and lay lines are these supposed energy forces like electromagnetic

lines. I think so. Supposedly and they did a couple of cool shots of like aerial shots from Google Maps where they line up these pentagrams, the streets in DC you've been there. It's like it's crazy. I've seen that. We saw that episode together. Remember they debuted it for us. Yeah, it's good. I just watch it again today. And if you if you line these streets up, supposedly they match up with lay lines in accordance with the Washington, they call it the Washington Ibelisk, not the Washington Monument. Right. And those connect to like other power points in the in the on earth like Stonehenge or Mr. Convenient Truth or exactly. And they concentrate energy and they say that they can use this energy in DC to do everything from cause natural disasters to hallucinations.

And these are lay line theories. And yet they can't come up with a decent left handed can opener. I know. Crazy. So we don't I don't believe that stuff. It's all a bunch of bunk if you ask me. It is. But I mean, you know, thinking about Freemasonry in the United States is kind of a national pastime among the 16 to say 34 year old set. Right. Yeah. And it hasn't always been this way. You know, we went from Mason's founding the United States to the point where at now, which is, you know, hey, Mason's, how's it going? You guys just do your own thing. Thanks for being philanthropic. Right. To somewhere in the middle, there's a bump where there was a real movement that was anti Masonic that was so strong and pronounced. It had its own newspapers. Yeah.

And a political party based on anti Freemasonry. Yeah. Right. For good reason. In this one case, at least. Yeah. Well, there's a guy in 1826 who is named William Morgan. And he came out of the book called Freemasonry Exposed. And it basically laid out a lot of the secrets that we now know today about Freemasonry. And that kind of got the public sentiment whipped up. Like, who are these people? Why do they believe this stuff? This is kind of weird, right? Yeah. And I saw a couple of things that I saw. One thing that said that he was tried to get in and couldn't. And that's why I wrote it. And then I read a thing that said that he was actually a Mason and couldn't. They didn't allow him above a certain level. So he got all ticked off and said, All right, I'm going to expose

all your secrets. Sure. I mean, there's sour grapes written all over that book. I'm sure. Oh, yeah. But and probably I think some people may have taken that whole thing with a grain of salt had it not been for what happened to William Morgan. Like he disappeared? Yeah, he was abducted and taken to the Niagara River. Yeah. And that this is again, there's varying accounts on what happened because they can't there's very little evidence in this case. But the story goes that he was arrested, formally arrested for a debt that he owed to an innkeeper, which this alleged debt was a very hinky thing. And they put him in jail and the jailkeeper took the night off and had his wife sit in for him. And these three Masons came to the wife and said, Hey, can you give us this

guy? Can we can go into our custody? And she said, Sure. And then they stuffed him in a trunk, drove him to Canada and either paid him to stay in Canada or drowned him in the river. Right. We don't know what happened. Depends on how much money they had. Yeah, I guess so. But I took it that they never found William Morgan's body then. I don't think so. If he conceivably lived his life out in Canada or he drowned that would indicate that they never found him. Yeah. But he disappeared right after he wrote this book. Yeah. And that whipped up a frenzy of anti Masonic sentiment, basically. Right. And so that in New York State, the number of lodges went from 480 in 1825 to 75 in 1835. It's a big drop. Just a decade, right? So it went kind of, it went south, it went

pear shaped for him for a little while. And the Civil War was such a national horror that everybody kind of forgot about how much they hated the Masons and the Masons were allowed to flourish again. And here we are today. Yeah. And some, you know, there's other weird theories about bad things they've done like they were in on the Kennedy plot, the Kennedy assassination plot, or the Jack the Ripper murders. Right. But there's no water that can be held with any of that. No. But if you really, really want to learn about masonry, Freemasonry, right? Yeah. Apparently the Freemasonry for dummies and the Complete Idiots Guide to Freemasonry are dead on because in the list of complaints against him, the former master of a lodge in Boise, who was basically calling out

this guy and telling him he had to come to a Masonic trial, cited specific page numbers in these two books. So if you really want to understand masonry, get the Complete Idiots Guide or the Mason's Guide to Dummies or Masonry for Dummies. Freemasonry. Both of those. Yeah. I have one. Do you really? I got it from Matt Friedrich. Really? That's just so into that. I do have a list and, you know, if you go, there's an official list on the Internet of like hundreds and hundreds of famous men that have been Freemasons. But I just earmarked a few that I thought were interesting. But Abbott of Abbott and Costello, mason. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, both Masons. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt, but we should say that the Masons were very much down

with the abolition movement. Oh yeah. They allowed, I guess, the African Lodge number one to be established in Boston in 1775. They're very forward thinking in a lot of ways. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And that became the Prince Hall Freemasonry, which is segregated, but like a huge part of the abolitionist movement. And we're talking a century before the real deal. Yeah. Wow. And you know, I also read a thing that should mention that they were targeted during the Holocaust as well. Really? So you add them to the list of homosexuals and Jews and, you know, anyone that had crossed eyes that the Nazis were like, let's kill them. You know, cross-eyed is called strabismus. Did you know that? We're just throwing the knowledge out today.

So next on my list is Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. Henry Clay. How about that? Wow. He was the Speaker of the House. He was hawkish, right? Yeah. He was actually the Grand Master of Kentucky. Wow. And our buddies, I guess, and the Henry Clay people, that was enough for them. Are they from Kentucky? No. Okay. They're from LA. Yeah. Weird. Cecil B. DeMille, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Elway, and Scotty Pippin. Free Masons. Yeah. How about that? Harry Houdini, Timothy Hutton, as I already said. Yeah. Jesse Jackson and Peter Sellers, Harpo Marks. And then of course, for some reason, Mark Twain and John Wayne, just I was like, well, of course they're free masons. Yeah. They just kind of fit. And that's just a few. I mean,

they're J. Edgar Hoover, Clark Gable. There's tons and tons of these famous dudes back in the day were free masons. Well, it was the hip thing back then. Well, that's free masonry. Attention, all free masons. If you're going to send guys to kill me and Chuck, please at least let it be Scotty Pippin and Timothy Hutton, okay? To burn my bowels. What if Scotty Pippin burned your bowels this weekend or next week when this is released? I'd be upset. That'd be quite a story. So that's it. If you want to learn more, you want to see that all 33 degrees of free masonry, you can type in how free masons work in the search bar, howstuffworks.com. And I guess then it's time for Listener Mail. It is Josh. I'm going to call this one of a couple prison emails that we're going to be reading.

I'm going to stretch these out over a few weeks. We got some awesome email from former inmates that set us straight in a few ways and also I'm going to say we were dead on. Yeah. I think what we learned or what I learned from the email was it's hard to do a definitive prison podcast because they're all a little bit different. Like this one girl wrote in, she's like, they're not allowed to have cigarettes in prison. And I replied, oh, yes, they are with a link. And it just depends on what state and what prison it is. Each prison has its own personality. They do. This is from anonymous. She requested or he requested. Thank you for the prison podcast guys. I grew up in Attica, New York, not in the prison. My father was a correctional officer until he retired just this

year. I lived about a mile away from the prison. And when I was a kid, they used to tell me that it was a castle. Sort of is standing in my yard, you could hear the guards speaking to the prisoners in the yard. And we even went to an annual picnic for the guards and their families every year. On the prison grounds. It was always surreal to ride in a hay wagon around the prison grounds and see the prisoners behind razor wire, razor wire playing basketball and hanging out. No one had ever escaped at that, you know, during my stay there. But when I was in high school, a few prisoners did escape from the minimum security prison that's behind Attica. And they were caught very soon after. And their bowels were burned. They were burned by Scottie Pippin. It is hard to feel any

sympathy for these prisoners for me because I grew up in the shadow of this institution. And when you know families that are affected by the death of the guards during the riot, you know, it changes your outlook. I think people want to root for the underdog and believe that there are so many wrongly convicted innocents in prison and the guards are evil. But in reality, most of the guys are pretty bad guys. And most of the guards are just trying to do their job. In fact, no one mentions the stress that the guards go through working in a place like that every day. My dad used to have nightmares. He once grabbed my mom while he was asleep and told her to lock in. So that's sort of like our sleep thing. It's a parasomnia. And she said it's almost like they have sort of

like a post-traumatic stress disorder. When my dad finally retired this year, it was as if a huge burden was lifted. He was less irritated and he was less snappy with the people around him. So kudos to the men and women who go to work at these places day in and day out working midnight shifts and holidays so we can all be safe. And that's from Anonymous. And that's a very good point. Thanks a lot for the email, Anonymous. Appreciate that. It's a weird name. It is. It's so unique. Yeah. If you want to send us an anonymous email, that's perfectly fine. Just say Anonymous because we'll be able to tell from your email address who you are. You can wrap it up and send it to us at StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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