Stuff You Should Know - Who was America's first murderer?

Episode Date: June 30, 2011

John Billington didn't just sign the Mayflower Compact -- he was also the colony's first criminal, and had the dubious honor of being the first European to be convicted of murder in this new place. But how did it happen? Tune in to find out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. 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. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know, episode 398. No, it's not. What I'm saying it is.

Oh, good. So now it's episode 398. Episode three something. Three, niner, eighter. That's good, Josh. Is that your intro? Rockin' in a rollin', splishin' in a splashin'. Over the horizon, what could it be? Look like it's gonna be a new country. You remember that one? No, what are you talking about? Like, I genuinely have no idea what it would be. That was the schoolhouse rock for the Mayflower voyage. Wow, really? Rockin' in a rollin', splishin' in a splashin'. You remember that?

Good coin. Oh, man. Over the horizon, what could it be? Look like it's going to be a free country. Nice. Or new country. Either way. It was both new and free. Probably new. Because it was not free for everybody. That's true. So you're talking about this because we're going to talk about the first murder, right? Yeah, and before we start, I want to ask, why has no one ever made a modern film about the

Mayflower voyage? It seems like a no-brainer, you know? Yeah, I don't know. Especially after- I think it's never gotten around to it yet. Like the awesomeness of Master and Commander? Did you ever see that? Yeah. The one with Russell Crowe? Yeah, it was very good. Surprisingly good.

Yeah, it surprised me too, actually. But I didn't get the colon. It made it sound like it was a franchise, but it was like the first of the franchise. It wasn't like, oh, I guess, I guess parts of the Caribbean did have a colon. The first one, didn't it? I don't know. But that was Peter Weir, Master and Commander, so it makes sense that it was awesome, because he's such a great director. And related to Bob Weir, I think.

Really? I don't know. I don't think so. I've always suspected. Did he do the Truman Show? That was written by- Bob Weir. Did Gadica.

I don't know who directed that. That might have been Peter Weir. But he did Gallipoli and scores of great movies. Well, cool. Well, thank you for joining us at this discussion of Peter Weir's films. He should direct the Mayflower movie. It was what I'm saying for goodness sakes. Oh, okay. They need to do it like a realistic, because when you learn about it in school, at least I did, I thought, you know, you learn about it from Schoolhouse Rock and you get the picture,

they sing songs and kind of rock and roll over the ocean and then ran into Plymouth Rock and shared Thanksgiving with the Indians. And they need to make a real movie about how it really was. Well, yeah, because, you know, that whole Schoolhouse Rock impression is pretty widely held, even among adults, educated adults. Yeah. And the reason why is because there's a very small amount of firsthand information that left Plymouth Colony, right?

Um, and was allowed to stand. There was a small group of people who were controlling all of the info about that place, and they were trying to paint it in as good a light as possible because they were trying to attract investors. Yeah. And these firsthand accounts that, you know, basically painted the Puritans as, you know, these hard, scrapple people who were guided by divine hand in the wilderness has stood all these centuries.

Hard scrapple. Hard scrapple. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that.

And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just, like, looting?

Are they just, like, pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app. Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, everybody. It's your boy, Michael Kaya, world famous.

Often talked about alleged comedian. Some of y'all know me as Mr. Whitaker from Martin. Some of you know me as Shobo from House Party 3. And yes, I have told you I'm crackers for everybody. And some of you don't know me at all. But you can come find out who I am on my new podcast called Michael Talks to Everybody. That's right. They gave me my own show, y'all.

Woo, woo, woo. Michael talks to everybody where every week we'll be interviewing some of the greatest artists in the game. Also, we'll be talking to ordinary people with extraordinary ideas. It's going to be off the chain. We're going to be covering all sorts of topics that you ain't heard of nowhere else. We're going to be doing a lot of laughs and a lot of talking. Most importantly, we're going to have a lot of fun when it's going to be off the chain.

So please check us out. Everybody, I'm telling you, it's crazy. It's bananas. It's Michael Talks to Everybody. I'm telling you, we got T.I., we got Michael Jackson. It's going to be just a comeback. He's just going to be here for a minute. Everybody, we're going to be talking to him.

We're going to be talking on this show. Listen to Michael Talks to Everybody on December 5th on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So let's talk about the pilgrims. The voyage, right? They landed in 1620 just as a quick primer. So says you. And they were pilgrims.

They were Puritans, separatists as they were often called. They were people who were so pious that no one in all of Europe was pious enough to contend with them. And they were like, I'm sick of all you sinners. We're going to go found a new republic in the name and for the glory of God. And we're going to be really, really good. And we're going to do it in the new world. Yep. And that's what they did.

They sailed over to Massachusetts and landed in Plymouth. Yeah. As it turns out, nice place to land, I imagine. And well, I mean, are we going to get to the murder again right away or should we just ease into that? Well, let's talk about who is there. It wasn't just Puritans. It wasn't just separatists. There's a whole other group of people who don't get talked about a lot.

And they were called the strangers. Yeah, that sounded really creepy when I read it for some reason. I think it sounds cool. I think it sounds creepy. Like they look like they should have been dressed in like the pilgrim black. Right. Like with a wide brim hat so you can't see their eyes. Yeah.

What was the deal with them? Were they Catholic? They were anything but the separatists, the Puritans. So they were Catholics. They were sailors. They were Africans. They were whoever, kidnapped Indians. I don't know if all those people were on the main flower, but there was a bunch of people,

you know, who got them over there, who went with them. And the Puritans were pretty rigid, obviously. They didn't like Catholics at all. They were indeed extremely rigid. But to this degree, as we'll see, they found that nobody's this rigid. And there were a lot of strangers who broke a lot of laws, but there were a lot of Puritans who did too. And they just kind of glossed it over.

They kept records, but these things just didn't get promoted, right? Right. Yeah. Mort's relation. Yes. That's what you're talking about? Yes. Mort's relation written in 1622 by William Bradford, who was clearly the governor,

longtime governor of Plymouth. Right. His cousin, George Morton, wrote, he was a separatist and he wrote this book or an account. And that was, that sort of looked at as the account of Plymouth. But as it turns out, as you point out, because you wrote this, Mort's relation was written to attract funding for Plymouth. So it was basically like a lengthy in depth brochure to attract investors. And what are you going to say?

You're not going to say we're starving to death over here. Right. We're having a really hard time. We're probably not going to make it. People are committing bestiality. Yes. Buggery is what they call that. Oh, really?

Uh-huh. And we'll get to that in a minute. Okay. And they're not going to say this. They're going to say things are great. We're really living by God's will. We're really just making it over here. And we need some more money.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what they did. So that means take it with a grain of salt. But they didn't just pretend like the strangers weren't there, but they painted some of the strangers in possibly a less than flattering light. Right? Uh, yeah.

I mean, are we at the Billington's then? Might as well be. The Billington's, the family. John Billington, his wife, Eleanor, his sons, little John, John Jr. Right. And Francis, who was a boy, his other son, they were sort of painted as like reading your, reading your article. They sort of seem like, on one hand, like the first white trash, you know?

That's the only way to put it. And then they also sort of seem like, no, you know, they might have been kind of cool and just rabble-rousers. Yeah. Or yes, I think that that's very accurate. But they definitely weren't any friends of Bradford. They, he did not like these people. No, he didn't.

He called, um, he wrote in a letter to a Mr. Cushing, I believe. Yes. That who had some sort of authority, I guess, in the, over the colony in, back in England, but he basically says that Billington still rails against you and that he's a naïve, which means a scoundrel. And he'll always be a naïve. He'll live and die as so. Yeah.

And, and as so, he'll live and die. Yeah. That was Cushman, by the way. Thank you. Same thing. And, uh, he also said, he, uh, quote, he said they were one of the profanest families to come to the colony. And it wasn't just John. I mean, they didn't, he didn't like any of them.

His kids were, were a bit of a handful too. Well, one of them, it doesn't say who in the record, but on the way over, um, decided that he was going to shoot off his father's musket. Yeah. Right. Gun in a cabin filled with people, which is bad enough. Right. But he did it right next to a open half filled keg of gunpowder.

Right. Right. So he almost just blew the whole Mayflower up. Yeah. And history would have changed forever probably. So that was the first thing that happened with the Billingtons and the rest of the people on the Mayflower. Yes.

No, actually it wasn't. There was part, there was a mutiny that John Billington, the father was involved in, um, and he was, uh, he was let off the hook because it was his first offense, but he, uh, he, he, that, that started tensions were already high. And then one of his sons, either Francis or John Jr. shot off the gun in the cabin. So you start to get an impression of this family, especially when you look at, you know, when you think of them bristling, not just the average person's, you know, right, ire. Yeah.

Yeah. But a Puritan's ire, right? Yeah. Because you can screw up like innumerable ways in the eyes of a Puritan. Sure. Especially if you're not a Puritan. That's right. And then once they got to the new world, uh, they continued their shenanigans.

John Jr. kind of wandered off one day, 20 miles worth and wandered into a Native American village. Right. And, uh, then he was taken to another village by those Native Americans and eventually they sent out a group to go find them and took them a little while. They set sail actually ended up on Cape Cod, what is now Cape Cod. Yeah. And, uh, said, you know, you're going to have to come back.

Yes. And they, they found him because of, uh, Massa Swat, uh, who is the great satum of the Wapanoag, Wapanoag. Yeah. Well, Penelog. Oh, we're getting an email for that one. Yep. Um, who, uh, was involved in the first Thanksgiving with these same people.

So he might've had something to do with that then, huh? Well, he did. He was already like, he, he basically was, um, trying to use the Englishman against his rivals. I think the Abenaki, um, to basically run them out rather than consolidate with the other Indians against the English. Gotcha. And basically that turned over the whole continent to Europe. Like that one act is largely considered as the deturning point.

Well, how about that? So he was already pals with them. Yeah. Um, and, uh, yeah. So we helped him find the boy. And if you're from Plymouth, if you live in the Plymouth area, then you might know, uh, Billington C, which is a pond and that's named for John Jr. Yeah.

Who wandered off, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that he might've found that. I mean, you know, he discovered the pond, but he may have discovered it on his wander. Right. His sojourn. Yeah.

If you will. But they found him and he was, uh, quote, be hung with beads. So apparently they, you know, kind of adopted him a little bit. Like he was the mascot of the village. Yeah. And then they gave him back. Yeah. And then the, uh, I think the colonists gave the Indians a couple of knives and said thanks

and went back to Plymouth. Thanks for the beads and the guy. But you have to imagine that mounting a 10 man sailing expedition into Indian country, because your kid wandered off. It's going to, you're going to, you're going to rub the back of your neck and be like, thanks a lot. Thanks again. Yeah.

You know, if you're a Billington, I'd be like, thanks for, uh, getting my kid back. You know, can I, do I owe you anything? Or, you know, not so though, because, uh, Billington, uh, had a bad reputation in that he scoffed at Captain Miles Standish and you don't scoff at Standish. Miles Standish, proud. Miles Standish was trying to get people to, uh, to, you know, serve in the military and Billington was like, no dude, I'm not doing that. Yeah.

He was a part of anti-government groups, government subversion. Well, there was, in 1624, there was what's called the Oldman Lyford conspiracy. That was the name of the two main conspirators. He was named as a co-conspirator and reading his history and then this, you know, the actual history of this conspiracy, which is a lot of secret meetings about how they should overthrow this Puritan regime and start governing this colony the right way. Right. He was probably a part of it, but he denied it and was let off the hook again.

Well, and he also apologized for the, um, for standing up against Standish and they said, they threatened him with hog time, which can actually kill you. I didn't realize that. I could see that because what you're, all your weights on your chest, right? Well, it's, they tie your legs together. They tie your arms behind your back and then they tie your ankles to your neck around your neck. What? So unless you stay completely arched like that, you're going to start cutting off

circulation like it's a form of torture. It's not just, oh, we're going to tie you up. Well, that, that whole second step has been kind of lost to history as I understand it. Well, now is it just tying the, the hands. You tie your, your hands and your, your wrists and your ankles together behind your back. And yeah, you're arched, but I don't know anything about tying the ankles around that. That's horrible. Apparently the old hog time is a little more brutal.

Yeah. Which makes total sense. Which also makes sense why he's described as basically like pleading for mercy, not to have that happen to him. And which is why they let him go. Yeah. Miles Standish is like, all right, but get out of my sight, Billington. The world hog time.

And I mean, like there's really, there's, there's, we can't forget, we can't leave out the fact that these people were original Plymouth colonists. Like they were the first. He's on the charter, right? The first European, the first English European Americans and the first, what would become one of the first states of America. Yeah. Like these are important people no matter what their reputations are.

He was the signer of the Mayflower Compact, which is the first European based governing law, I guess you would call it, set of laws. And he was, he was, he helped you, the colony out of the wilderness. He was one of the colonists, right? Yeah. And there's a PDF online. I found that traces his family tree and apparently James Garfield, the president, was a descendant of Billington.

Oh yeah. And it, I mean, if you're, I wish I would have written down some of the last names. I know Whitton was one of them, but I mean, there were people that it said, like still alive today. Oh yeah. There is a, apparently, I remember researching this. I couldn't find it when I re-research for this podcast, but there's like a whole group of people who are into that kind of thing,

who are proudly ancestors of Billington. This rabble rouser, the first like real troublemaker in America. Well, people are proud period just to be descendants of the Plymouth colonists, for sure. So what you, I hopefully everybody has like kind of an idea of how Billington and his family were regarded, right? Well, his, we didn't get to his wife and daughter. I know that was after what he did, but his wife was, Eleanor was locked in the stocks and whipped at one point.

She was also had to pay fines of five pounds sterling because she was found guilty of slandering her neighbors and his granddaughter, Dorcas. I love that name. There's only one way to pronounce that, right? Yeah. D-O-R-C-A-S. Dorcas. I'm going to bring that one back.

Yeah. If I ever have a daughter, she's going to be Dorcas Bryant. Dorcas apparently was sentenced to whipping because she had sexual intercourse when she was 22 years old and you didn't do that. So, yeah, the whole family was definitely not, they didn't fall in line with the rest of the crowd. Although that's not true because a lot of the rest of the crowd was doing even worse things as it turns out.

You just didn't read it in the brochure. Right, so can we talk about some of the stuff that people were doing? Please. Okay, so remember by 1690, there's still only 755 people in Plymouth Colony. 775. Okay, so this stuff's happening like 20, 50 years before that. There are way fewer people. Yeah.

And yet there were incidents where people like Thomas Granger, who is a servant, was indicted for buggery, which we established before it was bestiality, with a mare, a cow, two goats, diverse sheep, two calves, and a turkey. He fell in love with. He was sentenced to hang by, or sentenced to die by hanging. Wow. John Walker, the next year. Turkey.

He, yes, he was, he laid with a bitch as it's put, and of course we mean the, well, the pilgrims meant the dog, the female dog. Another guy was, he was held on suspicion of buggery with a beast. Another guy had buggery with a mare, and it just keeps going on and going on. So basically somebody would get caught sleeping with a dog and would be whipped, put into the stalks, pilloried, and it was just recorded but never talked about. Yeah, there was also rape and sodomy against humans going on. Yeah, the way they put sodomy was that they were, these John Alexander and Thomas Roberts back in

1637 were caught, and they got the hot irons, which, wow, is, that's rough. So you hear about this stuff, and you think Dorcas doing, you know, sleeping with a man, I presume, is a very normal thing for a 22-year-old middle-aged woman to do. Right. At the time. Yes. She's not, she's not playing down with turkeys. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs.

Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that, and I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just, like, looting?

Are they just, like, pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. It's your boy, Michael Kaya, world famous. Often talked about alleged comedian.

Some of y'all know me as Mr. Whitaker from Martin. Some of you know me as Shobo from House Party 3. And yes, I have told you I'm crackers for everybody, and some of you don't know me at all. But you can come find out who I am on my new podcast called Michael Talks to Everybody. That's right. They gave my own show, y'all. Woo, woo, woo. Michael talks to everybody where every week we'll be interviewing some of the greatest artists in the game.

Also, we'll be talking to ordinary people with extraordinary ideas. It's going to be off the chain. We're going to be covering all sorts of topics that you ain't heard of nowhere else. We're going to be doing a lot of laughs and a lot of talking. Most importantly, we're going to have a lot of fun, and it's going to be off the chain. So please check us out. Everybody, I'm telling you, it's crazy. It's bananas.

It's Michael Talks to Everybody. I'm telling you everybody, we got T.I., we got Michael Jackson. It's going to be just a comeback. He's just going to be here for a minute. Everybody, we're going to be talking to him. We're going to be talking on this show. Listen to Michael Talks to Everybody on December 5th on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

So Eleanor got put in the stocks for Slander, right? Yeah, yeah. There's no recording of what she said. Basically, we've reached this point here where we should probably talk about what John Billington did. Now that we've debunked the fact that not everyone was super pure and you can't necessarily read Mort's relation and the brochure and say, you know, everything was just Hunky Dory over there. Actually, maybe this is why the movie hasn't been made because he wants to see a guy sleeping with a turkey. I don't know.

I think you get your hands on those kind of movies. You paid a lot for it. You know what I'm saying? It's a market for that, but it's not box office grossing record-breaking numbers. Peter Weir wouldn't touch that one. Not with a 10-foot pole. So we should probably talk about how Billington became America's first murderer. It took place what, 10 years after he got there?

So you have to think like this guy's an original settler and he's been farming and hewing an existence out for himself and other people. And as an original Mayflower Compact Siner, he got a bunch of land parceled to him. Like this is the Paralygen's land now. So, but well, he made an enemy, clearly one real enemy. He made quite a few, Bradford being one of them, but he made one enemy named John Newcomen, who was a newcomer as it turns out to Plymouth. He hadn't been there for 10 years. And it seems like history is a little sketchy because, like you said, it's not all like recorded at that point. But one thing I read was it was possibly over hunting rights and I don't know how true that is.

It is very true. Oh, it is? Yeah, there's, when I was going back and reading the source material for this, I'm like, why did I, why was I so vague when I wrote this article? Oh, because it did that confirm, did it confirm that? Yeah. Well, so in the Bradford's version, basically it's like this, he, that Billington, waylade, Newcomen, right? We should explain what waylade is. Waylade is like basically lying in wait and then murdering.

Yeah, like hiding in the bush. It's ambushing somebody. Premeditated. It premeditated. It's huge. If you read a stranger's account, there's an account by a stranger. I don't know who. It's not in this, not in the source I cited, but it talks about how Newcomen was already known to Billington because he used to steal from Billington's traps.

He poached on his land and Billington had chased the kid off a bunch of times. Newcomen was 17 at the time. Gotcha. He's a little jerk. Basically, and he was what the strangers called a saint, which meant you were in good with Bradford because you were a Puritan and compared to a stranger, you had exponentially more rights and you got away with exponentially more stuff. Gotcha. Okay.

So here's Billington, who already has a bad reputation. And there's some little 17-year-old punk kid stealing from his traps who's chased off time and time and time again. And he's catches them there. So he goes after them with his gun. And the kid goes and hides behind a tree and Billington shoots at the tree. I don't know if he meant to shoot at the kid, apparently he was a pretty good marksman, but he hit the kid in the shoulder. Right. Not exactly a lethal shot today.

Sure. Well, the kid died in like three days of an infection. Uh-huh. That's how the America's First Murder took place. And it was apparently with a blunderbuss. Have you ever heard of these guns? Is that the one with the big muzzle? Yeah, it's short of.

Like you see Elmer Fudd as a pilgrim hunting with? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, it's not like an elephant gun, but it does flare out at the end. And it's sort of like what would be considered today is sort of like a sawed-off shotgun. So like it was a musket, but it was short and flared. And so I imagine it had a wider spray, even though it wasn't. Well, it wouldn't be a spray because they didn't use pellets, but they compared it to a sawed-off shotgun. Right. Hand on the pump.

Exactly. So that's how the First Murder took place. I get the impression Billington, who is also described as beloved by many in another account by a stranger, kind of a satirical take on Plymouth Colony. Yeah, Thomas Morton in the new English Canaan said that he was a beloved dude. He was beloved by many. Basically, if you were a stranger, you'd probably like Billington. He sounded like kind of a fun guy, to be honest.

Right. I know he's the First Murderer, but he was a rebel rouser. I tend to associate with those types. Well, Billington thinks that because of the fact that they need people there still, each individual is very important, and that this kid had been, really it was the kid's fault that he was on his property. Billington had warned him off that he would be spared his life. Well, no. Governor Bradford himself was the one who ordered him to death.

And he didn't like him to begin with. Right. Now he had his chance. Right. So this is what you could call unfair to a certain extent. Perhaps. And not only did Bradford sentence his longtime enemy or somebody he disdained for many years to death. He was also the one who literally wrote the history in addition to what is it?

Mort's what? Mort's retort. Not Mort's retort. I was kidding. Mort's relation. Okay. So in addition to Mort's relation, the other probably largest-cited firsthand account of Plymouth Plantation is called Of Plymouth Plantation.

It's Bradford's own journal. So he literally wrote the history for Plymouth. And of course he's going to paint it in his, he's going to paint himself and his fellows in the best light. And that's what we go on. And Billington in a poor light because he sentenced him to hang. Yeah. So I think if anything, this was the episode intended to tell you to always take historical accounts of the green assault.

Especially the old ones. There's always two sides to every story. And the three stuges actually get better as you age. Stuff you should know. You got anything else? Nope. If you want to learn more about America's first murderer type, America's first murderer. America.

I'm having trouble saying that these days. You can type that in the handy. You can type wherever you want, but you're going to get the best result if you type it in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. Sure. And that of course brings up listener mail. Yes, Josh. I'm going to call this nicotine poisoning from Aaron.

A couple of years ago, guys, I came home from university to find my Kiwi roommate working away in the kitchen. He decided to bake brownies for the first time. And I hurried upstairs to try some. Because he wanted to support his friend. Okay. Quickly, I was overwhelmed by sour taste, which was only mildly cancelled out by the cherries which were mixed in with the batter.

I was very close to spitting it out when my roommate walked in and said, What do you think? I didn't want to insult them. So I popped the rest of it in my mouth and said, Could use a little more sugar. I left the room and that's when everything got hazy. What I do remember is my roommates bursting into my room. This is crazy.

They found me curled up into a ball with my head between my knees rocking slowly. I was covered in sweat and muttering to myself, letting out loud moans, which is apparently what alerted my roommates. When they opened the door, they flooded the room with light, caused intense pain in my head. And for some reason in my stomach, not really thinking, I bolted to the bathroom and induced vomiting, trying to get all the evil out of me. I was exhausted laying on the floor, trying to figure out what was wrong.

Apparently there were two boxes on the table. Did you read this one? No. One containing brownies and one with chisha tobacco, destined for the hookah that they kept in their house. In my haste, I accidentally consumed about three ounces of cherry tobacco mix that was destined for the hookah. Not sure exactly how much nicotine my body absorbed in the hour or so.

It was in me, but when I stood up, I promptly passed out. And according to my roommate, started convulsing on the floor. They wanted to take me to the hospital, of course, but I refused. Being the bullheaded midwesterner, I sometimes can be or the college student who doesn't want to pay for that kind of thing. Right. When I did go to the hospital the next morning, explain the situation to the ER tech. They immediately took my vitals and said I was lucky to have survived

without any serious complications. That it very well could have been a fatal dose. You know that? That and all I can say is if you're ever in the same situation, Aaron on the side of caution, call poison control right away. Yeah. And he's lucky that his roommates, one of them had EMT training, because it could have gone the other way.

And Aaron might not be a fan of our podcast today. Man, the aide who gets back a pot that in his mouth and said it needs a little more sugar. Wow. So, okay. And if you are a member of the Billington clan by blood somehow or marriage, whatever we want to hear from you, send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House Dupark staff as we explore them as promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.

They call civil answer. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to look at the radio on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.