Listen to the episode here.

Welcome back to another week of unhinged stories.

Angie kicks things off by sharing the origins of high school football and cheerleading. She knew how much eye-rolling Theresa would do, and did it anyway. She does, at least, mention that football started in China as a form of soccer. Then she shares the nonsensical cheers of the first cheerleaders.

Theresa veers off in a wildly different direction by sharing the history of John Dee, court astrologer to Lizzie 1, or Elizabeth 1 of England for those playing at home. John Dee would lead a bizarre life after teaming up with Edward Kelly. He was convinced he found the language of the angels, but let a con man sleep with his wife, just to be sure.

This story pairs well with:
The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Elizabeth Bathory
Voynich Manuscript

Transcript

Angie: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast, the podcast for two absolute nutjobs are going to join forces. Mainline history stories, and then come together and tell each other’s stories we’ve only recently learned. I’m host one. I’m Teresa. And Matt in the track suit is host two. 

Angie: I’m Angie. Thanks for giving our audience the visual of me in a track suit. 

Theresa: You know, the fact that it just says juicy all across your rear. 

Angie: Okay, first of all, she’s lying to you. It does not. I am wearing a linen pants and a tracksuit jacket. Whatever. Hi, I’m Angie. 

Theresa: Way to ruin my fantasy. 

Angie: You know what? I’m sorry. There’s juicy all over my butt. You’re right. And it’s it’s bedazzled. That’s only needed. Um welcome. I’d ask how you’re doing, but I’ve I’d rather hear your story. Tell us how you really feel. Um I need you to know that I am wholly convinced that I am about to receive the biggest eye roll of the podcast so far. 

Theresa: Why do you think I said I needed to hear your story? Because you sent me that text. I was like, dear God, what is she brought now? Okay. 

Angie: Um today I am bringing you one of the most niche subjects I have done so far, but it has a very special place at my heart, and it can really only be considered unhinged because of how totally specific it is, and especially specific to this time of year. 

Sorry. Football families will tell you that football season is year-round, because it pretty much is, but this is the official start of football season. So with that said, I’m gonna tell you the history of American football highlighting high school football and cheerleading. Go ahead. I’ll Oh, wait while you roll your eyes. Um I’m too busy holding my breath. I swear to you, there’s parts of this that are actually really fascinating. 

Theresa: I’m I’m glad there’s only parts of it that are really fascinating. 

Angie: You’re so funny. Anyway, my sources, I am gonna subject you to this, and you’re gonna love it. My sources are USA Cheer.org, the history of cheerleading. Varsity.com has a cheerleading history um. 

And here’s the thing. This started because last year, uh Ian and I were seated in very close to the uh student run cheer section of the audience. And the question crossed my mind of I wonder where cheerleading started. And so I’ve been thinking about it ever since. 

So the story’s been on on my mind for a while. There’s an EBSCO article about sports and leisure, American football. There is a um for any of you high school athlete families, Max Preps is something that’s gonna sound absolutely familiar to you, but it also has some really great articles, including historical articles. This one is titled Most Influential People in High School Football, Teddy Roosevelt. Bill Knight headline the top 25 by Kevin Askland of this is January of 19 of this year, actually, not 1926, this year. There is a political article called How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football by David Dayen that is September of 2014. Theodore Roosevelt Center has a whole section about football. Britannica as well. 

I know. Uh Harvard University has a really cool uh biography uh about a man named Chester M. Pierce, uh he made history on the field and in the classroom. So with all that said, one of the things that I love most about history is that technically everything has history and every subject counts. 

So for me, this is one of those moments. There is evidence to suggest a rudimentary form of soccer that can be traced back to the second and third centuries BCE, all the way to the Han Dynasty in China. Um it was some sort of China. 

Yeah. It was a military exercise call exercise called Thu Xiao. Um basically it involves passing a leather ball through a one-foot wide opening. So definitely much smaller than our goalpost today for either soccer or football, but you get the idea. Now they say that you would be using your feet, your chest, your back, and your shoulders while the other players tried to block you from the target. So it’s some idea like this has been around for a very long time. There are early versions of both rugby and soccer that were played throughout Asia as well as Europe. And then by the 17th century, these ideas would make their way to North America. 

By the beginning of the 19th century, rugby and soccer would formally branch away from each other, and the rules for each sport would become formalized like across the board, so you weren’t just playing like house rules everywhere you went. 

Theresa: Don’t pass code, do not collect $200. You don’t get to collect everything all the free parking money. This isn’t that. 

Angie: Yeah, this we’re playing Uno. Um Yeah. In the early 1800s, 1800s, rugby diverged from soccer, allowing running with the ball in your hand, and by 1841, this becomes like the official rule of rugby. In 1863, soccer’s first governing body called the Football Association was established in England, and it that’s sort of been like the oversight for everything. 

Now, right about this time, there are early versions of American football developing across college and prep school campuses, like across across the board for America. However, the rules are wildly different from place to place. Some versions prefer to carry the ball while still others prefer to kick it. By the mid-19th century, more formal rules are developing. Avesco says, quote, the Boston game played on by the ONEDA football club on the Boston Common was one such example with its rules for kicking and carrying the ball, and soon other enthusiasts begin to adopt similar frameworks. 

Starting in 1876, and through the eighteen nineties, several rule committees as well as football clubs get together to establish like this more universal set of rules and regulations, like so you could play other players. And this is where a man called I can’t believe I get to say this name because you got to say it so many times last week, I’m gonna admit to being I think a little bit jealous. Walter Chauncey Camp. 

Oh Chauncey is such a fun name. Now, this guy, he is a very prominent athlete from Yale, and he offers rules and regulations that fully distinguish American football from rug my God. Rugby fully distinguish American football from rugby. I couldn’t say from and rugby at the same time. 

Now, these are still things that are in effect today. Things like the line of scrimmage, how downs work, the position of the quarterback, as well as the arrangement of the offensive players and things like that. So this is gonna earn him the title of the father of American football. 

Super creative, I know, but that’s what you get when you consider that for a couple of years the Washington’s football team was literally called Washington’s football team. So super crazy. 

Theresa: Yeah. This is why white people shouldn’t name things. Example 57. 

Angie: Boding McVeigh phase. So in my opinion, this is where it gets fun. In 1888, tackling below the waist is legalized, and this prompts plays like those plays you see where they dogpile like ten guys all jumping on one. But this also creates some issues of severe injuries, because it’s a little bit brutal, and they are not working with the gear that we’ve got today. At any rate, this is gonna nearly cause the sport to be banned in both the late 1890s and the early 1800s. So people are talking about it. 

Like we need to figure out something that’s gonna make this sport playable, but like less injuries. Now, huh? You might be asking yourself a couple of questions. One of them is why this topic, Angie, and I’m gonna tell you I’m not sorry. 

Theresa: Um I know why. It’s because your eldest is no longer playing, and you’re probably Jonesing for the soccer or for the football. My youngest plays. 

Angie: So we will never leave the football pitch, as it were. Um, No, it’s because I have literally been thinking about this for for a year. Um the other question is you said something about cheerleaders, Danji, I did. 

They were male. Varsity says that cheerleading cheerleading’s roots are closely tied with that of American football. So to give credit where credit is due, groups of people have been cheering for sports since the dawn of time, but cheer as we know it in the US since about the middle of the eighteen hundreds. In fact, quote, the first intercollegiate game was played in 1869 between Princeton University and Rutgers University in New Jersey. By the eighteen eighties, Princeton had a f had formed an all-male male pet club. 

Um History of Cheer website says that the first known cheer in the US was shouted from the crowd at Princeton in 1884, and the cheer says rah rah Ray Ray Ray, Tiger Tiger Tiger, sis sis, boom boom boom, Princeton, Princeton, Princeton. I don’t know what any of those words mean in any order. No. 

Theresa: I will say I’ve got a better one. It was given me by my sixth grade math teacher. Ra rahree, kick him in the knee, rah rah ras, kick him in the other knee. 

Angie: I love it. Umesco goes on to say that a graduate of Princeton, a man called Thomas Pebbles took the Princeton Cheers to the University of Minnesota where football and fight songs were becoming very popular. And then in eighteen ninety eight, the University of Minnesota was on a losing streak, and a medical student there named Johnny Campbell assembled a group to energize the team and the crowd. Johnny picked up a megaphone and rallied the team to victory with the first organized cheer of a rah-rah-ra, cisc um rah hoorah hoorah, varsity varsity, Minnesota. And I’m like, okay. So y’all are just making up sounds to yell into the microphone. 

Love this for you. Now, we have Teddy Roosevelt to thank because without him we would have lost football and probably cheer all together. And like I said earlier, I think MAPS Press is a hilarious site, but um anyway, they have a this wonderful article about him, and they talk about how um because nineteen oh five was such a rough year, it saw no less than nineteen deaths at the college level. So Roosevelt’s like hey, um, some things need to change. And he reaches out and he cautions college leaders to clean it up and reform the sport, or despite how much he loves the game, he’s gonna have to have it abolished. 

So this is a thing, right? David Day in writing for Politico says, quote, we were it not for the work of one man, football would likely be confined to the death span of history instead of the secular religion it is today. And honestly, that comment made me laugh so hard because truly it is. Friday night lights, Friday night under the lights can be just as spiritual as a Sunday morning. Like I think I had spent more time praying on a football field than I have ever spent in church. That said, Roosevelt, for his part, was a passionate fan, and he believed that the sport taught important life skills, which I cannot agree with more. So he really didn’t want to see it come to an end, but he also doesn’t want to see players coming to their end. So he’s like, things need to be changed. 

We need at which point some kind of padding. Um so he with that in mind, he meets with officials and coaches, and this is gonna lead to the creation of what will eventually become the NCAA, and the NCAA is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It is the primary nonprofit governing body for intercollegiate athletes in the United States. It oversees the academic eligibility, sports rules, and championships for over eleven hundred colleges and universities and more than five hundred thousand student athletes. So keep in mind, while they’re busy with college, this also trickles down into high school sports as well. So it’s it’s kind of a they’re like the governing rule body of the nation of sports, and then they’re each state has their own below them. Anyway, this meeting between Roosevelt and these individuals is gonna result in the formal legalization of the forward pass as well as the creation of the neutral zone. 

Very important. Additionally, other reforms that are gonna make the sport slightly less dangerous are developed. Thanks to Roosevelt and the coach’s work, the sport is allowed to prevail and would only rise in popularity during the nineteen twenties. 1923, and I can’t believe it took this long, But nineteen twenty-three, women would finally be allowed to join the ranks of the cheer teams. 

At the same time, cheerleaders add tumbling and acrobatics to their routine, but for the most part, the greater number of cheerleaders or yell leaders are still men, and it stays that way until World War Two. I was like, holy crap. Okay. Right? So when young men go off to fight World War II, women are like they do for everything else gonna fill the role of these positions of cheerleaders from the sidelines, right? Once the war is over, cheerleading remains overwhelmingly female. Today, females account for 85%. And I’m like, wow. 

Theresa: Honestly, that feels low. 

Angie: It feels low, but I, my senior year had two male cheerleaders, and I’ve seen a lot the last few years, so I’m like, okay, I can see that the numbers, it sort of makes sense, but it does feel low. Um, and I because I thought at this point I was thinking about how different football specifically would be without cheerleaders because it it’s part of the whole like aesthetic, if you will, and so I asked Ethan about it, like, is it different when you you don’t have cheerleaders? What’s that like? And he said, Well, I don’t know what it’s like to not have cheerleaders, but we do know what it’s like on quiet nights. We can hear you, and we need you to be pumped up. So those cheerleaders are doing a job, which I was like, oh, that’s really cool to know that that matters to them. 

Love that. Um, additionally, as the years have gone by, the cheer, the sport of cheer has also progressed to competitions that we see all the movies on and things like that, as well as everything you see on the sidelines. Now, for an interesting side quest, I’d like to point out that the civil rights are also involved in football, and it wouldn’t be right to not show you how. 

Okay. In eighteen ninety-six, Plessy versus Ferguson causes the judge, a man called Henry Billings Brown to write that separate but equal did not violate constitutional rights, which of course leads to the complete segregation of black and white students, and this is going to be particularly apparent in the South for the next seventy-five years. Britannica tells us that, quote, through the end of World War II, very few African American athletes had an opportunity to play mainstream football at any level. A separate and decidedly unequal black football world first emerged in the 1890s as part of the larger expansion of college football. Now, there are teams at the all black colleges, and the first documented game was in 1892, and it was played in North Carolina between Biddle University and Livington College. 

By 1912, you’re gonna have the first black college conferences, and this is the colored in a colle intercollegiate athletic association and the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conferences were formed all around the same time. So these are like big deals. Right. 

Theresa: They’re NCAA, They’re D1. Right. 

Angie: In 1920, you’d see the formation of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, and then in 1926, you’d see the Midwestern Athletic Association. So all of these things are forming and popping up. Around 19, this is this is crazy to me. 

I would not have expected this. The NFL was founded on September 17th in 1920 in Canton, Ohio, and it was originally named the American Professional Football Association, the APFA, and they would officially adopt the name of the National Football League just two years later in 1922. Shocker, but black college football is tragically underfunded. Are you at all impressed? 

Theresa: I mean, impressed, no. Surprised also no. Right. 

Angie: Um, but what it does have is its own all Americans as well as its own rivalries, such as Tuskegee versus Atlanta, which I was like, oh, that’s so fun. They also had all their own pageantry because football is nothing if not pageantry. All of this is sort of taking place on the periphery of a main like mainstream America, but it is totally covered and like deeply embedded into the very real and thriving black press at the time. This is one of those moments I wish we could, in fact, time travel so I could go back and see what that was like, because I think that that culture would have been so interesting to experience. Now, despite the fact that they have this thriving culture, they are still facing all sorts of indignities. There are some really amazing black trailblazers who are in fact playing on predominantly white teams and campuses, but this is an injustice in and of itself because when they play intersectional games that are scheduled between segregated southern schools and sort of integrated northern school, there are problems. Britannica says Britannica says, quote, typically the Northern school agreed to bench its one or two black players so as not to offend Southern sensibilities. 

Theresa: My absolute goodness. 

Angie: This infuriates me so much. But I’m not the only one because these incidents would cause local progressive students to protest, and these protests were covered by the black press, but mostly unreported by the mainstream coverage. 

Again, not surprised. The typical arrangement developed in the 30s was to hold back your black players for the segregated, but the black players could play at home. And this continued well into the 50s. 

This drives me nuts. However, the first integrated college game in the South did take place in 1947. It was between Virginia and Harvard, where Chester Price was recognized as the first African American to play in a college football game south of the Mason Dixon line at an all-white university. Pierce would go on to graduate from medical school, rise to national fame in the psychiatric community, and become a distinguished professor at his alma mater of Harvard, but before retiring in 1997. He has a peek into Antarctica named after him. 

Nice. And he even consulted on the creation of Sesame Street. But he couldn’t play ball with all white teams until 1947. This checks this enrages me. It checks, though. 

Anyway. Now, the North… for their part, solves this problem of segregation by simply not playing teams from the South. Okay, well then you can’t come. Yeah, I’m going to take my ball and go home. 

Pretty much. Britannica says the South solved this by quote, and bowl games likewise avoided racial incidences by matching up only Southern teams. They go on to say that the cotton ball was integrated without incident in 1948. The Orange Bowl in 1955. The Sugar Bowl was integrated in the University of Pittsburgh’s Bobby Greer in 19 by the University of Pittsburgh’s Bobby Greer in 1956. 

Only after Georgia’s segregationist governor, Marvin Griffin backed down from threats to keep Georgia Tech from playing. The integration of Southern College teams progressed gradually over the post-war years. The Big Since VI conference was integrated in 1947 and the Missouri Valley Conference in 1950. 

But the Atlantic Conference did not begin in great integrate until 1963, shortly followed by others in 66 and 67. So you still have these massive games that are not being played by all of these powerhouse players that could be simply because of the color of their skin. Now, this is gonna end, or at least the end of this is gonna start with Thoroughgood Marshall and the NAACP. You know, he’s the lawyer in the Brown B. 

Board case in 1954. Marshall uses previous court cases to dismantle this whole separate but equal thing, which is gonna result in the Supreme Court outlawing segregation in schools. This is going to take literal decades, but it will lead to the 1971 integration of TC Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. This integration is going to be the call consolidation of three high schools, TC Williams, Hammond, and George Washington. Now these three schools are formally competitive rivals, creating a ton of friction amongst the team that is going to be coached by Herman Boone, who happens to be black, and because of his efforts and that of his assistant Bill Yost, who happens to be white, to integrate all of their talented players, his team would go 13-0 and take the ch state championship, unifying the city, and making the TC Williams Titans legends. 

Theresa: Okay. I s I see what you did there. 

Angie: I love Remember the Titans, and for a really long time I wanted that to be a story, and I actually listened to like a two-hour conversation with the men that are still alive and was like, what? This was all their rivalry in the movie is sensationalized as a racial thing, but for them it was a rivalry thing. All three of these schools had to be integrated, and they were all formally huge competitive rivals of each other. So being like smashed together and told to play each with each other now was a whole thing they had to work through. 

And I was like, what? So not only is this like a sensationalized version, but it is based there is some truth to the story. That’s crazy. Now, it’s worth mentioning that the influence of TV in the 50s is gonna mark a huge turning point for football’s rise to popularity because it can be watched across the country. And it doesn’t take long for the then NFL commissioner Bill Bert Bell to realize that TV could like it could do some stuff, and Sundays haven’t been the same since. Then in 1958, there’s this NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. It is known as quote, the greatest game ever played. It is a huge boon for the sport. It basically goes into sudden death over time. It’s aired on national television and it hooks millions of viewers, proving that football can be a real TV spectacle as fans everywhere can feel the excitement right from their living rooms, including all of the drama and intensity. 

It is just translating perfectly through the screen. The game’s success shows the NFL just how much it can do with TV, and TV quickly becomes the key to growing the league beyond its regional roots. Networks start chasing football as prime programming, and the NFL signs bigger and bigger broadcast deals. By the 1960s, games are airing nationally, and this sends the league popularity like soaring, right? Like it’s it’s nuts. And the idea that people were watching football on TV in the 50s is wild to me. Like I was never a thought that crossed my mind, but I’m like, so Sunday morning or Sunday afternoons have always looked like this then, huh? 

Okay. Today there are 32 teams. The NFL is the largest football league in the United States. These teams are divided equally between the American Football Conference, BAFC, and the National Football Conference, the NFC, with 16 teams in each conference. And this is how you get the Super Bowl with its inaugural year of being 1967. Also wild. I thought it was much later than that. 

Theresa: They tell you every year what Super Bowl it is. You know, retracted. 

Angie: I could have, but I was like, meh, it’s I just need to know is Pepsi gonna be doing the halftime show. That’s what I need to know. Football continued to grow in size and popularity all throughout the 20th century, and then in 1970, the NFL merged with its rival, the American Football League, which in turn would make it the billion dollar industry of behemoth that is today. By 1972, football far surpassed the numbers of baseball, and it took the title of America’s Favorite Fast Time Pastime. It becomes the favor of the country’s favorite sport. According to a night uh 2018 Gallup, 30% of U.S. adults name football as their favorite sport to watch, followed by basketball at 11%, and baseball at just 9%. 

And this next part is for my son, because I didn’t know how to end the story. All of this is going to lead to the 2024 season, which will see a small town school in Central California going to state and taking the title for the first time for the town’s school, hundred plus year history, and going back and doing it again, becoming the number one small town football team in the nation. The Wildcats achieved an undefeated 15 and 0 season capturing back-to-back state championships and holding a 22-game winning streak. Their varsity head coach, Kurt Clifton, was named the small town national coach of the year. 

And my son’s best friend earned the all-American honors. Teddy Roosevelt said often the football phrase, don’t flinch, don’t foul, hit the larn hot hit the line hard was a good rule for life. And I couldn’t agree more. 

Theresa: Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. 

Angie: So that is the history of football. Well done. Well done. I roll complete. I knew you were going to eye roll so hard, but I was like, man, I really want to do remember the Titans and cheer so bad. 

Theresa: I just say I’m gonna go off in a wildly different different direction. I think is the understatement of the year. 

Angie: Deal is completely unnecessary, Unless you’re gonna talk about soccer. 

Theresa: So I’m gonna tell you about Cleveland’s ten cent beer night. 

Angie: No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because that would be right up. I was gonna say, actually, that would be the same ballpark, so you’re fine. 

Theresa: Right. Um but no, I’m gonna tell you the story of John D. 

Angie: Looking for I am so excited. 

Theresa: All right. My source is biography.com, John D. NIH. This caught me off guard. They had an article, John D and the Sciences Early Modern Networks of Knowledge by Jennifer N. Rampling. 

Angie: NIH is the National Health Institute, right? Yeah. Or National Institute of Health. 

Theresa: I translated. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you’re you’re not you’re not too far off there. Um there’s a blog called Notes from Hamlet County or Camlid Country, Wife Swapping and Summoning Angels to Supernatural John D. 

Angie: Y’all, this guy has his hands on the Voynage Manuscript. 

Theresa: Uh Historic Mysteries and Knock in John D. Magic and the Language of God by Robbie Mitchell and a couple of podcasts. I listened to Not Just the Tutors, Elizabeth One’s Conjurer John D, Lights Out, John D, the Royals Dark Musician Magician, not musician. 

Angie: That would have been awesome. Yeah. 

Theresa: Uh spent his whole life scrying and talking to angels and demons. All right. 

Angie: So I can take him off my list then, huh? 

Theresa: Yeah. Uh scrub him right out. This was suggested for me to cover. Uh it was someone on Instagram named Insanely underscore fair 33 said I needed to cover them. Okay, that’s fun. I love it. So here we are. Uh John D. He’s born July 13th, 1527 in London, England. Are you sure he had his hands on the Boy News manuscript? 

Angie: Uh Emperor Rudolph wanted to believe he did. 

Theresa: Oh, actually, yeah, that’s right. And okay, yep. All right. 

Angie: Wow. I can’t believe I pull I listened to that episode last week and I’m like, oh, wait, pull out that information, just remember. 

Theresa: Good job. Good job. Um John is born in England. His father’s name is Roland D, and Roland kind of bridged a couple of world worlds. Uh he was both in court and commerce. He’s serving as the steward for Henry the Eighth, and later as the King’s Packer. 

Unclear what the Packer is. Um but Roland’s career kind of goes the way of the dodo because he ends up in both financial and political disgrace. But he does, he is able to send John to university at Cambridge and equipped his son with the means of acquiring education and the social connections necessary to pursue his own career at court. Okay. 

Angie: Well, that works. 

Theresa: When he goes to St. John’s College, he describes himself as studying for 18 hours a day. I mean, I felt that way. So Bro is a nerd, but we love that for him. 

Honestly. In 1542, he’s earned a bachelor’s degree. And well, no, he goes to Cambridge 1542, earns the bachelor’s in 45. 

And then by 1548, he’s earned a master’s degree. Okay. To be fair, I didn’t realize it was that formal by that point. I thought you knew stuff, they you left saying you went there and that and you now know stuff, as opposed to I now have piece of paper saying I know X number of things. 

Angie: You know, I never really thought about it before, but yeah, okay. 

Theresa: He also is made a fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge, when it’s founded in 1546. And he furthered a bunch of scientific studies on the continent, which I knew would be a phrase you’d appreciate. 

Angie: I do, thank you. 

Theresa: Because he takes a short visit in 1547 and then has a longer stay from 1548 to 1551. And at this point, he’s studying under famous mathematicians and cartographers at the time. I didn’t put their names down because I don’t want to overcomplicate the story by saying one name once. Yeah, no, that’s fair. 

Angie: I had a lot I had a lot of players I could have named, but Pierce was the one. I was like, we’re gonna talk about him. He’s cool. 

Theresa: Dee ends up being presented with a mathematical professors professorship at the University of Paris in 1551. And he also gets an offer for the University of Oxford in 1554. But he turns both of these positions down because he is just eyes on the prize. He wants an official position with the English crown, like his daddy had. 

Good for him. So he returns to court, the England, and he is just vying to attach himself to that that royal coat, and he’s offering instruction in mathematical sciences to both courtiers and navigators. And you have to remember, during this time, when you have navigators that are going in boats around the world, they are hugging the coastline so that they can see things. They’re not venturing into the open ocean and going the straight line route. What? 

Angie: And our maps are still wonky. 

Theresa: Truth. So but for him to be like, no, no, no, I can show you how to navigate. I can show you how to do this. I have studied the maps. So this this seems important, right? He would go on to serve as the consultant and astrologer to Queen Mary the First. 

Which seems like a really cool thing. It’s like, well, uh, your horoscope of the day. I would say abstain from oatmeal and red roses. Mercury’s in the toaster, whatever the saying is. I don’t know. 

Angie: Um I don’t want to ha I’m gonna be honest, I don’t want to have a position at all in Mary the First’s uh court. I’m good. 

Theresa: Well, I mean, if you know history, yeah, of course, Mary the First is not where you want to be right now. Um he also he does something that is gonna get him in Dutch, and I think this is important to say specifically right after that statement. Uh he becomes ordained as a priest during Mary Tudor’s reign. 

Angie: Well, okay. Yeah. Good for him. 

Theresa: He he was playing the long game. Okay. Okay. Um and probably he because A, he’s Christian, really believes in it, and also thought, boy, this would engender me to the crown a bit more. Good on. him. But apparently, after um she no longer holds the crown, he has a hard time sta shaking off the stigmas of Catholicism with the successors. 

Angie: Weird. Surprise! Didn’t see that coming. 

Theresa: So small problem as well, because he did some astrology work, this lands him in jail in 1555 with the charge of being a conjurer, but he’s soon released. 

Angie: Dude, we do not have great charge names anymore. Could you imagine a rap like a 1555 rap sheet then versus what we’ve got today? 

Theresa: Okay, house of running a disorderly house. Yes. Okay, but that was a brothel back then, and now it’s like, girl, you’re living this way. When did we lose our whimsy? 

When did we lose our whimsy? Exactly. Uh it is partnering with Lizzie One that he helps Elizabeth the first choose a coronation date to ensure that it was suspicious. Oh, good for them. Which I kind of love that. 

Angie: So Mercury’s in Gatorade. This is a great day. Let’s go. Yeah. Oh yeah. 

Theresa: So when she takes the thorn in 1558, D becomes the scientific and and medical advisor to the Queen. And by the mid-50s, sixties, he’s established himself at Mort Lake near London. Mortlake, uh, he mom had gave him like titles and lands in Mort Lake. This is where he set up shop. 

Okay. It’s there that he built a laboratory of math, a the largest private library in England at the time, which was said to number more than 4,000 books and manuscripts. Which is a thing. Now, remind me to circle back on the books. He was generous in making his library accessible to scholars that he was uh as he was assisting in a numerous practitioners who applied for advice. 

Okay, so that one of the podcasts I was listening to. A huge bulk of the manuscripts we have from that time period come from his library. At some point, his library is like rampaged by everybody else and like just taken and like those books still exist. And it’ll be like, oh, that’s John D’s. What a coincidence Of course. period, of course, yeah. 

Angie: You open the book and it’s like this was Joe and D’s. Yeah. 

Theresa: Please refer to the. John D. Love Lizzie Warren. Yeah. Love it. 

Theresa: So as he’s going through all of these studies, he is pushing among all things genealogy. 

Angie: Yes. Because he’s looking at it. 

Theresa: He’s looking backwards, and he’s like, I think I think we can get there. And he claims that he descended from King Arthur, and he names the son after this. I didn’t know he had children. We’re going to circle back on put a pen in that one. 

Angie: Oh, okay. Let’s go. Um now. 

Theresa: D linked his own prehistory to that of his major patron, Lizzie One. And so he breaks her through a similar process, and he gets her working backwards to descend from a Welsh prince, Madog. Madog? M-A-D-O-G. It’s Welsh, so it’s probably pronounced Jared. 

Angie: It’s yeah, I was gonna say it’s definitely not pronounced how it’s spelled. We’ll call him Daryl. Yeah. 

Theresa: Um so this ends up, you know, giving her title Daryl’s or Jared or Medog’s Discovery of the into the new world. So basically he’s trying to link all of these things like we own North America because of all of these things. 

Angie: Correct, because isn’t there some there’s some idea that there is the Welsh made it to North America like a long time ago and integrated with a Native American Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

Theresa: Lots of lots of conspiracy theories that were running around in the 1500s. 

Angie: Right, but like that particular one I think is still pretty available today because there it that I wish I could remember what tribe it is, but that tribe’s language has like indrocentric sounds. Anyway, carry on. I I can’t remember what it’s called. 

Theresa: But either way, this makes Lizzie One and her ascension to the throne a bit more valid, and also gives rights to the entire continent. So she’s pretty thrilled with this, and I would be too. He also is pretty instrumental in laying groundwork for several voyages of exploration. He’s instructing the captains, the pilots, he’s giving them principles in mathematical navigation, preparing maps, and furnishing them with navigational instruments. He’s really associated with this expedition to Canada that’s led by Sir Martin Frobisher from 1576 to 78, and with discussions in 1583, when they were going back, uh, regarding a proposed but never commissioned search for the Northwest Passage. Okay. He also coins the phrase British Empire. So we have him to thank. Yeah, yeah. The the colonizing was named that. You know. Yeah. 

Angie: Everybody’s got to contribute to the colonizing. 

Theresa: It’s a full system compiled over years built brick by brick. And not only does he coin it, but he ends up advocating for this. It’s 1582 that D also recommended that England adopted the Gregorian calendar. Ada when we switch calendar. 

Angie: Oh. He had so many things going for him. 

Theresa: I mean, look, you can’t win them all, right? Yeah. I got a couple more problematic bits. So just to hang in there, Angie. It’s gonna get so much worse before it gets better. 

Angie: How many t how many episodes have have the potential title then it’s gonna get so much worse? 

Theresa: Good question. I’ll have to add another column in the spreadsheet. 

Angie: So he gets England to drop the Korean calendar. While the country does, the Anglican church is like, no, that’s such a popish invention. That This sounds right. 

Angie: Popish so popish or popish, popish. I don’t know. I it’s uh these are things. Um now as much as he’s doing, because I feel like he’s doing too much, he’s also prevent presenting views on natural philosophy and astrology. And he’s continuing to discuss his occult views. 

Angie: He is all over the place. Dude. Do you think you ran around undiagnosed? 

Theresa: You know, and it’s gonna be, you know, it’s hard to really look back at history and retroactively apply a label, but I think our boy was was definitely something. 

Angie: I love this for him. Good on him. 

Theresa: Now, he’s believing he okay, he uh he offers something called the hieroglyphic monad, which is a single mathematical magic symbol that is the key of unlocking the unity of nature. The Fibonacci sequence. 

Angie: Let’s go. 

Theresa: I mean, kind of, but this is much different. I don’t I didn’t include an image, so and that’s that’s my fault. Um he also, because again, doing too much, he prov he’s editing the first English translation of Euclid’s elements. Oh, okay. So all over the place. 

And he ended up doing an inf an influential preface that offered a powerful manifesto on dignity and the usefulness of mathematical sciences or mathematical sciences. And that sounds dry. And boring as hell. We’re gonna need a lot more occult sprinkled into the preface to get me to read it. 

Angie: And it’s the audiobook has to be narrated by Jude Law. I don’t write the rules, man. 

Theresa: Honestly, I I wouldn’t have picked that, but I agree to your terms. Thank you. Now D he believes in the utility of mathematics for mundane matters and expressed conviction in the occult power of mathematics to reveal divine mystery. 

I hate this. He’s probably the asshole that put symbols in math problems. Now, he’s probably really frustrated at his inability to arrive at these great understandings of natural knowledge. So he’s seeking divine assistance by attempting to converse with angels. If it were that easy. I, too, have struggled with math homework and have prayed. 

Angie: I do. So many times. Uh-huh. I wonder who the pain and saint of math is. Carry on. John D. No, I don’t think he was sanctified, but anyway, you keep it. 

Theresa: He was a Catholic priest, though. 

Angie: Um, but did he did he do his three miracles? Was he put up for sanctification? 

Theresa: You know, I just I just need to get a tall candle and I’ll paste my own sticker to it. I’ll wait for you to figure out who the patron saint of math is. 

Angie: Okay. Saint Hubert of Liege, best known as the paint saint of hunters, but he is the painter saint of math mat mathematics. His patronage was expanded to mathematics due to a popular medieval legend claiming he successfully solved an incredibly difficult mathematical equation proposed to him by the devil, which is obviously just his algebra teacher. You can find out more about his life on Wikipedia or Catholic online. Saint Hubert of Liege. Circa 656 to 727. 

Theresa: Okay, so long taken before John D entered the scene. 

Angie: Yeah. 

Theresa: So To the modern mind, we’re looking at John D trying to pray over math homework. And this is going to take him to some really bizarre levels because he believed that both math and communicating with the angels was going to help him understand the divine fabric of the world. 

Angie: So he makes sense. 

Theresa: I mean, I have believed some crazy things as well. So here we are. He is auditioning spirit mediums to help him because he believes that scrying, do you know you know what scrying is will help him communicate with the spirit world, but try as he might, stare in the little tiny crystal ball that he has, as long as he has, he sees Bupkiss. So he is interviewing spiritual mediums left and right, and nobody lives up to his expectations. Enter Edward Kelly, stage left, spirit medium who claimed to hold spiritual conferences with the angels in Enochian. The angelic language. The angels dictated several books to Kelly, and the spiritual conferences were taken seriously. 

Both men were invited to the court of the king of Poland. Who is Carrie? Okay. Now I need to kind of go into a little bit. Edward Kelly, his ears are deformed. Oh, okay. Not necessarily from birth. Post birth. In a way that would indicate he is convicted counterfeiter. 

Angie: Hey, you know what? God uses us all to speak. Hold that thought. 

Theresa: So they travel to both Poland and Bohemia, which is now the Czech Republic. And they’re there from 1583 to 1589. Now, everything that we read, D, super sincere, very devout in what he’s doing. Kelly, you may not so much. Chuck. Now, as they’re working together, the language of Enoch or Enochian emerges, and this is considered a unique language with symbols and rituals, and D believes that this has been divinely revealed to him in one of the podcasts. They talk about how you have Edward Kelly, who is just spewing some random snippet, and then you have our poor Rube over here, John, copying it down, trying to break these ciphers down, figure it out. Make it happen. He’s building his own Rosetta Stone, right? 

Okay. And he’s slowly compiling this language. Now he sees Enochian as this potent tool. This is going to help him get spiritual insights and harness supernatural powers. This is what he believes. 

Angie: Okay, this makes sense. 

Theresa: And since he has this language that’s been received from the angels, he thinks this is going to have literal magical properties. 

Angie: Of course he does. 

Theresa: Now, the the language itself has its own alphabet with 21 letters, sounds and words. Okay. Problem. Problem. Skeptics point out that Enochian sounds suspiciously like Middle English. 

Angie: Huh. Make it easier to translate, you know. 

Theresa: Yeah, yeah. Uh the grammar, which is almost non-existent, lacking articles and prepositions, while adjectives and pronouns are also quite quite rare. So they’re just missing. 

Angie: Fill it in with the periods at the beginning of the book. 

Theresa: You know, Lord Timothy Dexter figured it out. You print out all the punctuation, you print it on one page at the end, and you tell people to put it where necessary. 

Angie: You could do that with your articles and your pronouns too. Yeah. You write the book yourself. It’s fine. 1587. 

Theresa: This is this is where my jaw hit the floor. Hellie told D that an angel had ordered both men to share everything in common, including Dee’s much younger wife. Of course. 

Angie: That was probably the name all along. 

Theresa: He’s like, and it’s not my fault that she’s so newbile. 

Angie: And John D’s an idiot, so oh, this is gonna go, this is gonna go. Now he’s sorry, John D. 

Theresa: That this is a divine order. And so he complies. There’s one source that said when Mrs. D hears about this, she weeps for 15 minutes. 

Angie: I was gonna say, how does she feel about this? 

Theresa: She says, it’s off gone. Bye. No, um, she’s not thrilled with this idea. Um but there’s other sources that we don’t know how she feels, you know, who knows? Unclear, right? 

Okay. We do know that she died of plague in 1604, and there’s no evidence to say this was divine revenge. But I will say one of the sources that said that she weeped. Um after this encounter, uh she’s pregnant, she gives birth, she gives birth to a baby who strangely doesn’t look like John. Weird. 

Angie: And maybe it’s because you were sharing your wife with your assistant. He looks kind of like Edward. Hmm. Huh. Didn’t see that coming. Now maybe they didn’t. You think they were setting genetics at the same time? 

Theresa: I was gonna say maybe they were just studying uh charts and fertility and then went, oh, by the way, now’s the best time. I’m gonna shack up with your wife tomorrow night. 

Angie: Let’s see how this works. Either way. 

Theresa: their relationship, Edward and John, They kinda go, it kind of goes south. Shocking. Now, John D returned to England, his friends raised money for him and interceded with him, or on his behalf with Queen Elizabeth. Okay. Because he wanted to go straight back to the the court, and she’s just like, New phone, who this. 

And you are, I’m sorry? And so she instead appoints him the warden of Manchester College in 1596. And his final years are marked by poverty and isolation. By 1605, D’s got no royal patrons, and he’s basically relatively obscure. He truly final years, pretty destitute. By the end, he ends up having to sell off a majority of his possessions to support himself, and in the end relied on his daughter, Catherine, another kid, to look up look after him until his death in 1608, where he died at the age of 81. Wow. 

Now, he’s said to have died in Mortlake and have been buried at the Anglican church there. Okay. Yeah, no. 

There you go. Um, in his own time, and on this note, he was considered one of Europe’s foremost scholars, taken seriously by kings, queens, and religious authorities. After all, or he was, after all, a contemporary of Nordstromus. And sadly, Dee’s grave has been lost over time, but is buried at St. Mary the Virgin in 1609. The church itself was constructed in 1543 on the instruction of King Henry the Eighth. Well, okay. And that is the story of John Dee. 

Angie: Thank you for doing John D. He has been on there since we did the Voyage Manuscript. So a long, a long time. 

Theresa: Well, I figured if he was on your list, it was safe to do him right now. 

Angie: Because John D for me is a is a fall time character. 

Theresa: Does that make sense that he would be there? 

Angie: Well, because you have figured you have figured my timeline out, and I love that for me. 

Theresa: Like, look, I know when I can cover certain things and when I can’t. 

Angie: I’m here for it. I loved it. I also Googled who the King of Poland was while he was there, and guess who it was? Who? Stephen Bathry. 

Theresa: Oh. 

Angie: What? A turn of events. 

Theresa: All of our stories converge on a finite number of points. 

Angie: Where is the red string, man? We gotta get it out. 

Theresa: And for those of you playing at home, uh Angie ended up covering another bathroom where we cover her or we cover Elizabeth. Elizabeth Bathory in episode 165 and her uncle Steven, who just sounds like accountant. Like that was my my thing. Just Steven Accountant. 

Angie: He’s middle managed middle management accountant. And I think the Voyage manuscript is uh I’m trying to I’m looking. I think it’s episode 46 or 47, but I’m not sure, so I’m looking. It is there’s the battle facings. 

I could just do search, that would be doable. It was episode, oh I had my 64. I was 20 off. So there you have it. Thank you for doing John D. This makes my whole day. I’m not even a little bit upset that you beat me to it. I’m glad I could. 

Theresa: Yes. Well, if you’ve been interested, entertained, and you are thinking, well, this went different directions than I thought it was going. Rate, review, subscribe, send this to somebody else who probably needs to study more about the history of football and Queen Lizzie One’s court astrologer. 

Angie: At the same time, because here’s the thing. I have a very dear friend who is a football walking encyclopedia. So like for me it was it was a fun thing to learn about because you could ask him who was the tight end for the Raiders in 1975, and he could tell you exactly who he was and what ended his career. Yeah, okay. 

Theresa: There was you say that there was a fact hotline that I guess you could call. And this was somebody writing in about working there, and they said it was during one of the Super Bowls, and they get a call, clearly from a Super Bowl party. And it was who won the soup like ex Super Bowl, and it was just like, was it so-and-so or so-and-so? And they said it was the first one. And the person hearing that they were wrong, called out and claimed that they were correct. 

Angie: And hung up. Love that. Okay. bye. Yeah. 

Theresa: And the other person, like the person on the help desk was like, well, they’re lying. 

Angie: I I hope I get a check in the mail. They obviously won the bet. So on that note. So fun. Goodbye. 

Speaker 3: Bye.