CLASSIC: The Ridiculously Laxative-laden Journey of Lewis and Clark

Summary

Ridiculous History: "CLASSIC: The Ridiculously Laxative-laden Journey of Lewis and Clark"

Podcast: Ridiculous History by iHeartPodcasts
Hosts: Ben Bowlin & Noel Brown
Date: August 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Ben and Noel trace the bizarre and essential role of laxatives—specifically, Dr. Benjamin Rush's infamous "bilious pills"—on the historic Lewis and Clark Expedition. They explore how these mercury-laden pills affected the explorers’ health, how their residue in the ground literally helped archaeologists retrace the group’s route, and the less-glamorous realities of life on the American frontier. With their signature humorous banter, the hosts dig into medical misconceptions, the gritty details of 19th-century exploration, and the unexpected ways bodily functions enter the historical record.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Context: Toilets, Expeditions, and Bodily Perils

• The episode kicks off with tales of modern bathroom emergencies as a segue into "the untamed wilds" faced by Lewis and Clark—where finding a restroom was the least of their worries.
• Ben: "They were worried about their continents on the continent." (01:27)

2. Medical Prep for the Wild: Dr. Rush’s Bilious Pills

• Dr. Benjamin Rush supplied the expedition with his “bilious pills,” which were marketed as a remedy for various ills but contained a significant amount of mercury.
• Mercury, then widely used, was believed to "purge" the body, despite causing severe side effects.
• Ben’s faux-ad for the product:
  “If so, fret not good friends and neighbors. Dr. Benjamin Rush has discovered a brilliant, innovative solution to all your ills... bilious pills...” (05:31)
• Noel points out the problematic ingredient:
  “Yeah, there was a little bit of a PR spin there. Noel, what was that key ingredient that got left out?” (06:10)
  “I think it was mercury, Ben.” (06:16)

3. The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Myth vs. Messy Reality

• The journey began May 14, 1804, took 28 months, and miraculously only lost one member, Sergeant Charles Floyd, likely to a ruptured appendix ("bilious colic").
• The hosts debunk the sanitized version of the expedition, noting:
  • Severe dietary changes (including eating dog meat)
  • Widespread digestive distress

4. Explosive Effects: The Pills in Daily Life

• Dr. Rush recommended the pills for nearly any indication of sickness, especially constipation.
• Nicknamed "thunderbolts," the pills worked "fast and furiously," causing days of incapacitating purging.
• Noel: “They took so much of it that they would spend like an entire day... just purging. Spray and pray is what I like to call it.” (13:16)

Latrines and Camp Hygiene

• Mercury-laden excrement contaminated campsites. Proper procedure called for latrines to be dug far from camp (preferably ~100 yards), though Ben and Noel debate the practicality of this in wilderness.
• The duo joke about the ordeal:
  • Ben: “The groans of anguish, human misery and like cartoonish splattering sounds. Can you even imagine, Ben?” (14:44)
  • Ben: “I can. And it bothers me.” (14:51)

5. Archaeology by Poop: Mercury, Maps, and History

• Archaeologists later used mercury concentrations at suspected campsites to definitively trace the expedition’s route.
  • “For a long time, archaeologists were attempting to trace the exact path that Lewis and Clark took... This all changed when a vapor analysis verified this unusual amount of mercury there.” (21:14)
• The tell-tale mercury enabled new discoveries about the journey and its campsites.

6. Other Medical Uses: Mercury and Syphilis

• Beyond constipation, mercury was prescribed as a treatment for syphilis—another common affliction on the journey, due to unprotected sex with locals.
• Clark’s journal notes sexually transmitted infections:
  • “Their women were very fond of caressing our men... men were generally healthy except venereal complaints, which is very common amongst the natives here. The men catch it from them.” (25:09)
• The hosts critique the scapegoating of Native populations.

7. Sacagawea, Dogs, and Discipline

• The expedition’s cuisine included various unpalatable meats, notably dog.
• Whiskey was highly prized; stealing it led to harsh punishment—“50 stripes on the back with a cat o’ nine tails.” (26:44)

8. Legacy and Deaths: Myth, Downfall, and Mental Health

• Despite their fame now, Lewis and Clark’s achievements went underappreciated for decades.
  • “It only became popular relatively recently, like 50 years ago or so.” (32:53)
• Meriwether Lewis’s death was likely by suicide, with evidence of long-term depression, substance abuse, and stress over publishing his journals.
  • Noel shares Jefferson’s words:
    “Governor Lewis had from an early life been subject to hypochondriac affections...” (33:36)
  • His ghastly, prolonged demise (via failed suicide attempts) is described in detail. (35:01)

9. Mammoths, Megafauna, and Comics

• Thomas Jefferson hoped the expedition would turn up living mammoths or other giant beasts (“megalonyx”).
• The comic Manifest Destiny is recommended for a fantastical take on the journey:
  • “In this story... the expedition does run into megafauna... But they also keep finding these structures that look like the Gateway Arch...” (39:15)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "They were worried about their continents on the continent." – Ben (01:27)
• “Thunderbolts, yeah. It sounds like some kind of like truck stop speed, doesn’t it?” – Noel (11:08)
• "Spray and pray is what I like to call it." – Noel (13:16)
• "You could call it a pile of human excrement in a hole in the ground situation." – Noel (20:26)
• “There was so much mercury running through these poor guy's bodies that the mercury stayed in the ground… like an unusual, cartoonish, I'll say it, disgusting amount of mercury.” – Ben (21:05)
• “Syphilis and mercury poisoning. I would imagine by the end of this journey these dudes were not well, right? Mentally.” – Noel (25:00)
• On punishment for whiskey theft: “He got 50 stripes on the back with a cat o’ nine tails or some such, you know, bullwhip.” – Ben (26:44)
• “Growing up here in the States, when you hear about the Lewis and Clark expedition, you just hear the bare bones and … sometimes it’s a little romanticized… we skip over a lot of the nitty gritty details. The epidemic of syphilis, the epidemic of diarrhea, the mercury in the ground everywhere, the dog eating…” – Ben (27:01)
• On Lewis's suicide: “So he did it again, and that didn’t quite take either. So he decided to go to sleep. He went to sleep and he woke up not dead. And then he apparently ran out into the hallway and said, quote, ‘Give me some water and heal my wounds.’” – Noel (35:01)
• “One of the big things [Jefferson] was super excited about them finding on this expedition was like giant animals.” – Noel (38:05)
• Comic recs: “We highly recommend [Manifest Destiny]. I’m so glad you mentioned this on air… I was rereading it last night.” – Ben (39:15)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–01:30 – Opening banter, segue into expeditionary bathroom woes
• 05:31 – Intro to Dr. Rush’s bilious pills (mock 1800s ad)
• 06:10–06:16 – Mercury as key ingredient revealed
• 07:52–09:42 – Basic expedition timeline, scurvy, and preparation
• 10:26–13:36 – Pills, side effects (mercury, thunderbolts), camp hygiene
• 19:12–21:14 – Mercury in the ground and archaeological significance
• 23:09–25:51 – Mercury’s dual use: constipation and syphilis, transmission on the trail
• 32:53–34:39 – Shifting public appreciation, Lewis's depression and tragic death
• 38:05–39:33 – Jefferson’s hopes for megafauna, Manifest Destiny comic rec

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Tone, Language, and Style

Ben and Noel infuse irreverent humor alongside candid historical analysis, not shying from bodily topics or the messier realities of "exploration." The exchanges are relaxed, with playful jabs at each other and the idiosyncrasies of 19th-century medicine and ambition, punctuated with the type of wry, anachronistic asides fans love.

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Final Thoughts

The episode leaves listeners with a fuller understanding of what exploration actually looked (and smelled) like, highlighting science’s hilarious, disgusting, and serendipitous role in uncovering the literal path of Lewis and Clark. Plus, listeners get a nudge toward fantastic comics and a reminder not to mess with mercury—or, perhaps, the heroic myths of American history.

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Comic Recommendations from the Episode:

• Manifest Destiny (Image Comics)
• The Black Monday Murders
• Locke and Key (by Joe Hill)

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“Does it bother you? Casey?” “Yeah, I'd say that bothers me. It's been Casey on the case. It is decided: it's an unpleasant thing to be around.” – (15:04-15:13)

Transcript

[A]

Folks, it's your pals at Ridiculous History with a classic episode for all our travelers out there, all our nomadic friends. You know, one of the worst things that happens when you're on the road is when you have to use the wash closet and you can't find one.

[B]

The wc.

[A]

The wc. The water closet. The restroom. I'll tell you, the head, as they.

[B]

Say in nautical parlance.

[A]

Yes. Familiar to all the sailors. That'll make sense later in October, by the way, folks. But I gotta tell you guys, this recently happened to me. Not too long ago. I was in a very crowded city for a world expo, like the modern version of a world's Fair, and I swear I walked more than three miles trying to find a toilet.

[B]

I'm glad you didn't poop your pants, Ben.

[A]

Me too. Me too. And thank you, Noel. Why are we telling you this TMI information?

[B]

Well, we're talking about another example of walking very long distances and not pooping one's pants. Or perhaps maybe a little. Pants were pooped in the case of Lewis and Clark, the famous explorers expeditioners who took to the western side of the continent, trying to prepare in advance for every possible contingency, including constipation.

[A]

Mm. Yeah. They were worried about their continents on the continent. Oh, yeah. They also were exploring North America at a time when laxative technology just wasn't as sophisticated as it is today.

[B]

No, they were dealing with. They were playing with live fire in laxative form.

[A]

And weirdly enough, as we discover in this classic episode, the use of their dangerous laxatives is part of the reason why we know so much about their journey today.

[B]

Oh, man. Let's get right to it. This is an I Heart podcast.

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[A]

Ridiculous history is a production of iHeartradio. Foreign is your crew of otherwise intrepid adventurers, soldiers and scouts falling prey to the depredations of life. On the edge of the map are the challenges of the untamed wilds. Leaving your men with syphilis, constipation, scurvy brain, shudder, sticky knee, Welshman's ear, and the other tragic, painful conditions so common to modern explorers. If so, fret not good friends and neighbors. Dr. Benjamin Rush has discovered a brilliant, innovative solution to all your ills. Dr. Rush's world famous bilious pills use a proprietary combination of pure ingredients to gently purge the body of excess bile and contaminants that cause these dreadful incommodious conditions. Hi, I'm Bet.

[B]

Who was that, though?

[A]

Oh, that was an advertisement for Dr. Benjamin Rush's bilious pills.

[B]

Not Dr. Benjamin Bolan's bilious pills.

[A]

No, no. He beat me. He beat me to this one. Noel.

[B]

To the gut punch.

[A]

Yes, to the gut. To the thunderclap.

[B]

Oh, my goodness gracious. So I think he left out a key component in that ad, though, Ben.

[A]

Yeah, there was a little bit of a PR spin there. Noel, what was that key ingredient that got left out?

[B]

I think it was mercury, Ben.

[A]

I believe you are correct, my friend. We are here at Ridiculous History, along with our super producer, Casey Pegram. And I don't think we told Casey what this episode is going to be about.

[B]

No, I think from our pre pro conversations, he sort of gleaned that it was something to do with mercury and poop and possibly exploration.

[A]

Yes, possibly exploration. Probably exploration. Definitely exploration. Can you take us back, Noel? Where are we headed? Who are our protagonists today?

[B]

Okay, Ben, for today's episode, we are, in fact going to time travel so that we can physically travel along with our companions for the day. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Otherwise known as Lewis and Clark.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

And there's an amazing Superman spinoff television program called Lois and Clark that they were really capitalizing on. People having fond memories of this intrepid traveling duo. But this is in 1804, and that was more like in 1994, I want to say. So this is the important pair. So we've got Lewis and Clark, who go out on a journey. It's sort of like a Lord of the Rings esque journey to Mordor, only it's to survey this land that President Jefferson, you know, basically bought from Louisiana. In another creative title for an event, the Louisiana Purchase, he purchased some land from Louisiana and they called it that. And so this journey started from St. Louis and very, very slowly and deliberately made its way to the West Coast.

[A]

Right.

[B]

The Pacific.

[A]

They wanted to. They were tasked to find a passage from the Missouri river to the Pacific. And they left, as you said, May 14, 1804. It took them 28 months to complete the journey. They lucked out, though, because almost everyone survived, which was amazing when you consider that they were going through the untamed wild.

[B]

I think they only lost one person.

[A]

Mm. Just one. Yeah.

[B]

How'd he go?

[A]

On August 20th, Sergeant Charles Floyd died of what they called at the time Bilious corlick.

[B]

Interesting. Wasn't that word in the name of that pill that that disembodied announcer gave.

[A]

Us at the top of the show, bilious pills. Today we call bilious Corlick. C H O R L I C. By the way, we call that a ruptured appendix. Really?

[B]

So bilious, referring to bile.

[A]

Correct. Absolutely.

[B]

And that's what your appendix is Kind of chock full of. And it is a poisonous substance if leached out into the body.

[A]

Right, right, exactly. Bilious is a word that can trace its origin back to the old belief in. The old medical belief, the humors. Yes, exactly. The four bodily humors would be black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. So you might be flesh, phlegmatic, you might be bilious. And when Lewis and Clark set off with their 30 odd people, they wanted to really be boy Scouts about it. They needed to prepare as much as possible for any contingency. And one of the things that they were very concerned with was the possibility of growing sick, like indigestion, diarrhea, constipation. Constipation, mainly.

[B]

Right, yeah. That's the big one. Because. How many months was this journey again, Ben?

[A]

28.

[B]

28 months. So, you know, it would be almost impossible to bring enough food that would not. That would keep for that long, let alone that you could actually carry through the completely untamed wilderness that they were traveling through. So they had to be prepared to have to catch their own food, which would end up being like super kind of gamey stuff. I believe they ended up eating a lot of dogs on this trip. Yeah, that was a thing. And this led them to having some pretty severe tummy troubles, most specifically constipation. So they packed these pills in large quantities?

[A]

Yes. Yeah. The weird thing about the bilious pills is they were actually in effect, anti bilious back then. A patient was said to be bilious when supposed. Poor flow of bile in their body gave them any number of symptoms. Headache, lassitude, constipation. And Dr. Rush had actually spoken to Lewis, to Meriwether Lewis, before they left, and he said if you see a sign of an approaching disease, if you see one of these symptoms pop up, headaches, constipation, just hand them one or two of these pills. But they had that nickname, right? Thunderbolts.

[B]

Thunderbolts, yeah. It sounds like some kind of like truck stop speed, doesn't it? Like Mini Thins or something.

[A]

Yellow jackets.

[B]

Yellow jackets, that's the one. But here's the kicker, though. It contained something called calomel, 10 grams per serving, which the active ingredient in calomel is in fact, mercury.

[A]

Mercurous chloride. Yeah. And this calomel stuff had been used in medical practice since the 1600s because it was actually a milder form of a mercury compound. The liquid metal. Mercury had been applied externally in different ways since ancient times to treat a variety of skin diseases. And then because it had been used so often externally, it evolved into an internal medicine.

[B]

But wasn't the problem with mercury is that, sure, it does knock out some conditions of the skin, for example, but it also, like, poisons the person that's taking it.

[A]

Right, right. Like the. The old haberdashers who would go crazy from exposure to mercury. Right, yeah.

[B]

Like that guy that killed John Wilkes Booth we did an episode on back in the day.

[A]

Oh, that's right.

[B]

His name, yeah. You know, the guy who castrated himself, Thomas Corbett. Corbett, that's right.

[A]

That's right. So we know that mercury could actually treat some medical conditions. People used it often to combat syphilis, for instance. But we also know that this stuff had a range of terrible, terrible side effects. If you took small doses of this mercurous chloride, over time it would give you mercury poisoning. We just didn't call it that at the time. You would have a lot of saliva, your gums would get sore, your teeth would loosen, your breath would smell like metal, which is super gross, and you would have discolored stool. But in large doses, this stuff acted very quickly as a laxative, Right?

[B]

Yeah, it absolutely did. And that is, of course, the purposes that was being employed for here with the Lewis and Clark team. They took so much of it that they would spend like an entire day. They would lose to multiple party members. Just purging spray and pray is what I like to call it.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good one.

[B]

But thankfully, there was a popular kind of wisdom, I guess, surrounding camping, that you should dig your latrine a certain distance away from your campsite.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

As not to contaminate your food or, you know, just. Just to keep things not gross.

[A]

It's a quality of life.

[B]

It's especially if you got a dude, like, hovering over this, like, hole in the ground, just like expelling his bowels just explosively. Nobody wants to be around that. How do you remember how far it was? What was the recommended distance? I would think surely given the circumstances, they would have, like, up that, whatever it may have been.

[A]

Yeah, it may have changed depending on their terrain, but the rule of thumb nowadays is about a hundred yards away as a minimum, in a secluded area. They were probably not that far away because a hundred yards, that's a football field. You know what I mean?

[B]

Well, and exactly, like, if you were in some kind of small clearing, like in a wooded area, you might not have that much space to work with.

[A]

Yeah, it was probably just far. It was at least far enough away that you wouldn't be haunted by the.

[B]

Smell or the sounds. The horrible, horrible sounds.

[A]

Right?

[B]

The groans of anguish, human misery and like cartoonish splattering sounds. Can you even imagine? Ben?

[A]

I can. And it bothers me.

[B]

Bothers me too. Does it bother you? Listeners let us know.

[A]

Does it bother you? Casey?

[B]

Yeah, I'd say that bothers me. It's been Casey on the case. It is decided it's an unpleasant thing to be around.

[A]

Right? We took it to the highest authority in the land as far as this podcast is concerned.

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[A]

The weird thing about these pills is that it was a large enough dose of mercury to actually kill a human being. But it went through their body so fast, right?

[B]

Just lickety split and one end out the other. Because it was fast acting too. That was another part. That's why they were called lightning pills, I imagine, right?

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And they had to be named after the sound, you know, which just still bothers me a little bit, Noel. But here's some things.

[B]

Are you saying it sounded like lightning when they evacuated their bowels?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Sounded like the clap of thunder, you know, Got it. Like, is a storm coming in or is Louis sick again? You know? But here's something that hopefully made the pain of the journey worth it for these intrepid explorers. For a long time, archeologists were attempting to trace the exact path that Lewis and Clark took. And these guys stayed at over 600 different sites. So you might know the general Trend. And you can see some stuff that they have documented themselves. But if you want to find the specific, actual facts, Campsites, you're looking at a needle in the haystack situation, or so one would assume.

[B]

Or you could call it a pile of human excrement in a hole in the ground situation.

[A]

That's true. That's probably more accurate. More accurate.

[B]

Which honestly seems to me would be pretty difficult to find as well. But find it. These intrepid archaeologists did, did they not be.

[A]

They did, Noel. They did. And they did it with the incidental help of Dr. Benjamin Rush's bilious pills. Because remember how just a moment ago we said that these things are like 60% mercury, 60% mercurous chloride or calomel. There was so much mercury running through these poor guys bodies that the mercury stayed in the ground where their latrines were like an unusual, cartoonish, I'll say it, disgusting amount of mercury.

[B]

And that is how, given the opportunity, archaeologists could differentiate between the Lewis and Clark poop and the poop of others who may have passed through a similar location. But Ben, they had to have had a vague idea. They couldn't just been like, you know, going willy nilly to every random campsite like this. Seems like an insane process. How did this go down?

[A]

It's a good question, my friend. There's a writer for the Chicago Tribune named Maurice Postley who walks us through a little bit of this in his journals. Meriwether Lewis refers to a campsite near a place called Lolo Creek, which is just a few miles south of Missoula. And he calls this place Travelers Rest. And they all thought, everybody thought for a long time that this camp was at the confluence of the Bitter Root river and Lolo Creek, about a mile and a half away. But this all changed when a vapor analysis verified this unusual amount of mercury there.

[B]

Aha. It was that much that a vapor analysis would do it. It was like, in the air. That's crazy.

[A]

They were able to analyze the soil pretty easily. And once they find that one site and they're like, oh, this proves it. Let's see if we can test other.

[B]

Specific sites for traces of mercury and maybe. And maybe get to the source by seeing how the concentrations change, Right?

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

You could, in theory, I guess, find that. That hole in the ground by tracking, like, the concentration of mercury.

[A]

Yes. And there's an interesting thing here that you and I have talked about off air. We've been mentioning mercury as a treatment for constipation, but it was Also used to treat an entirely different medical condition.

[B]

That's the thing. They were getting this mercury from two different sources, the bilious pills, which was kind of considered a cure all. But then they also had a cache of another type of medication that was specifically designed to treat syphilis because they were. They basically kind of prepared for the fact they were going to have a lot of. What other kind of sex was there at the time? Unprotected sex with some native women.

[A]

There's an article in the Atlantic that came out in 2016 that seems to dispel this belief for a while. People believe that syphilis actually came somehow from the new World, but all the evidence indicates we still don't know exactly where syphilis came from. And I think you and I had always assumed that syphilis came with the Europeans into the new World, which I know we're not supposed to use the term new world anymore, but that's what they called it at the time.

[B]

We know what we're talking about.

[A]

Yeah. So the disease already had a long history in Europe, but maybe the syphilis epidemic seemed like a new disease at the time because it previously been mistaken for something else, you know, or maybe it was a particularly virulent strain of syphilis.

[B]

Whatever the case may be, these travelers knew damn well that they were going to be exposed to this condition, but they weren't going to let that stop them from, you know, having a nice fling with an attractive lady. And they took this stuff to either. I guess it wasn't really. It could be a safeguard against it. I guess they just accepted they were going to get it. Apparently they were just okay with that. They just resigned themselves to their syphilitic fate. Which is no joke, right? Syphilis is the one that like, can kind of like make you go insane over time, right?

[A]

In the late stages, yeah.

[B]

So they had syphilis and mercury poisoning. I would imagine by the end of this journey, these dudes were not well, right. Mentally.

[A]

Right. And let's see, it was even just in the first year of the expedition, on October 15, 1804, Clark writes down that the party had arrived at a place called the camp of the Arikara. And that, quote, their women were very fond of caressing our men and company. And by March of 1805, he noted that the men were, quote, generally healthy, except venereal complaints, which is very common amongst the natives here. The men catch it from them. So they were blaming the native population. But, you know, it was just out. It was apparently Just crazy talk for them to, you know, not pursue these flings.

[B]

I mean, they had to occupy their time somehow, I guess, Right?

[A]

So they were just on this cycle of unprotected sex. Syphilis and mercury.

[B]

Wild times, my friend. And eating dogs.

[A]

And eating dogs. And just laying some epic flatulations.

[B]

What? I don't know about this.

[A]

What? The. The farts, the thunderclaps.

[B]

Oh, that's different.

[A]

It was Manafort Destiny.

[B]

Oh, Ben, that's. That's adorable. I love you so much. There is another thing too, about the. The times that they spent on the. On the old rugged trail. Apparently every man got a ration of whiskey. They had barrels of whiskey. And that was a really important part of their staying sane in these intense circumstances. And one man, I believe was caught taking more than his fair share of whiskey. And he got 50 stripes on the back with a cat o' nine tails or some such, you know, bullwhip.

[A]

Oh, wow. And that's.

[B]

They took that stuff really seriously.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, that stuff left scars.

[B]

Oh, big time.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

But I mean, that. That was like the. The height of punishment. And if they did that for just, you know, taking a little extra shot of whiskey, I can't imagine what they would have done for more severe crimes.

[A]

Right. And this is fascinating, I think, to both of us, because growing up here in the States, when you hear about the Lewis and Clark expedition, you just hear the bare bones and it's sometimes it's a little romanticized. You know, it's like this noble group of people who are the harbingers of western civilization at this point, trying to explore a great unknown, at least unknown to Europeans land. And as so often happens in so many stories like this, we skip over a lot of the nitty gritty details. The epidemic of syphilis, the epidemic of diarrhea, the mercury in the ground everywhere, the dog eating, the dog eating.

[B]

None of that's very sexy at all.

[A]

No, that's not what you want to think about. But when you think about this, we're.

[B]

Left with this image of conquering, you know, the great outdoors. And you've got these trails named after Lewis and Clark. And now we know that they went to, I think, more than 600 campsites throughout this journey. And like travelers, rest because of these intrepid archeologists and their ability to analyze some of these sites for mercury content. We know a little bit more about where these folks passed through. Yes.

[A]

And we have also learned that what, you know, neither of us are doctors. Cayce is not a doctor either. We've also learned the perils of mercury. Don't take it. Don't break the thermometer and play with it. Did you ever do that as a kid?

[B]

No, but I've seen videos of it. It looks pretty cool. It's like the T1000.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah, but it's still not worth it. It can do horrible things to you. It just happened in today's episode. To preserve for posterity the details of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

[C]

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[A]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

[B]

You know how waking up from a.

[A]

Dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[B]

Get back everyone. He's gonna die.

[A]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town. As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil Walks in Amberstown so what happened to Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to.

[B]

There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.

[C]

Left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think in the New York Daily News.

[A]

It's Teddy Escapes Blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that.

[C]

Sort of tells you the story really.

[A]

Became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become President?

[B]

Kappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.

[C]

And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal.

[B]

The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America. Royal family.

[C]

Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever.

[A]

You get your podcast.

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Check out behind the Flow, a podcast documentary series following the launch of San Diego Football Club. We go behind the scenes and explore the stories of those involved.

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San Diego coming to MLS is going to be a game changer because this.

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Region has been hungry for a men's professional soccer team.

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We need veteran players and we need young players.

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Like you're building a team from scratch.

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And so the succession plan of long term success needs to be defined. We need to embrace this community. When I was 13, my uncle took.

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Me to a qualifier and we watched.

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Paraguay against Chile, pouring rain.

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Just watching the fans jumping up and.

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Down, I think that was definitely a.

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Watershed moment for me.

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Not only was that going to be.

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My game, but it was going to be my life. Listen to San Diego FC behind the flow now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

And one thing that's surprising is although we, we hold the Lewis and Clark expedition in such high regard today, it only became popular relatively recently, like 50 years ago or so.

[B]

Well, I think when these men returned, they expected like a hero's welcome, right? And it just never really came. And Meriwether Lewis, in fact, his death has been a source of much speculation, but one very plausible one is that he kind of spiraled into despair and self doubt and that he ultimately took his own life in quite outlandish brandished fashion.

[A]

Walk us through it.

[B]

Yeah. Well, so Thomas Jefferson himself had reported that Lewis's family had a history of depression, bipolar disorder specifically, and that he himself, Lewis, had been suffering from this condition himself since he was a child. And here's a quote from a great article on history.nd.gov where Jefferson says this. Governor Lewis had from an early life been subject to hypochondriac affections. It was a constitutional disposition in the Nearer branches of the family of his name. It was more immediately inherited by him from his father. While he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times sensible depressions of mind, but knowing their constitutional source, I estimated their course by what I had seen in the family. This is really interesting because this idea of mental illness having such stigma, it's still around today. I mean, it hasn't gotten that much better. So back in these days, it certainly wouldn't have been something that you would have talked about. But yeah, so he suffered from these, you know, great highs and great lows. And the story of his demise goes like this.

[A]

Oh, we should also mention, just to interject, that his rediscovered letters show that he had written his will before the journey. And he also attempted suicide on the expedition, but was restrained.

[B]

Yeah, well, good thing he had his bros around him to kind of hold him, pull him back from the ledge, I suppose.

[A]

So what happened? How did he pass away?

[B]

So the story goes like this. He had booked himself a room at an inn, a tavern, and he shot himself. But that didn't take. Cause, I guess, I don't know, maybe those little musket balls, those guns don't always discharge properly. Maybe it just didn't. Wasn't a death blow. And so he did it again, and that didn't quite take either. So he decided to go to sleep. He went to sleep and he woke up not dead. And then he apparently ran out into the hallway and said, quote, give me some water and heal my wounds. And all the guests were freaking out. And he went back to sleep and then woke up and someone witnessed him, quote, cutting himself from head to foot. So it took about 12 hours of time, two bullets, a little bit of sleep, and a blade for Louis to finally die. And that is like some tortures of the damned kind of stuff right there. Good Lord.

[A]

Self inflicted is the belief. Right? This was at the Grinder stand. It's an in on the Natchez trace. And I believe he had one gunshot in the head, one to the gut. And you know, as you said, he ran out and scared the hell out of everyone. Nashville newspaper had reported that his throat was cut. There is one complicating factor here. Money that he had borrowed from a guy named Major Gilbert Russell to complete the journey was missing.

[B]

Uh oh, the plot thickens.

[A]

The plot thickens. And Thomas Jefferson, as you pointed out, along with some modern historians, generally accepted the idea that Lewis died of suicide. But there's still a debate, there's still people who say it was homicide for one reason. Or another.

[B]

That is pretty fascinating. It does seem like the groundwork was laid for him, having already demonstrated suicidal tendencies. But this whole missing money business really muddies the waters, doesn't it?

[A]

Well, he might have spent it because the historian Paul Russell Cutright completely believes this was suicide. And he has a pretty detailed takedown of the murder robbery theory. He says Lewis had a lot of debt. He was a heavy drinker. He may have been using morphine and opium. He was running late preparing the expedition's journals for publishing. He just couldn't get a romantic partner. And he was on the outs with Thomas Jefferson. Their relationship was going downhill. So he's saying that it's plausible that Louis, given his history. Right. His own mental struggles, he's saying it's more plausible that Louis eventually took his own life.

[B]

Well, that's a real bummer. And that is surely a downer way to end this episode. So I'm just going to throw in one more thing to kind of like change gears.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Like a palate cleanser.

[B]

A little bit of a palate cleanser. And that is the fact or the idea that Thomas Jefferson, one of the big things he was super excited about them finding on this expedition was like giant animals.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like mammoths.

[A]

So American, right?

[B]

Yeah, big time. And something called a megalonyx or a megal. Megalo. Yeah, Megalonyx, which is like some kind of giant cat. And he described it as preeminent over the lion in size, as the mammoth is over the elephant. And if you want to see a really cool exploration of this as if it were real, there is a comic book series called Manifest Destiny.

[A]

Yeah, I've read it. It's on issue 36 right now.

[B]

It's ongoing, but you can get the collected trades or whatever.

[A]

Have you checked it out?

[B]

I've read the first trade. Oh, it's great. And it's really cool, but it has some of these crazy creatures.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

It's a big part of it.

[A]

In this comic they're finding. Well, I'll tell you this without spoiling it. In this story, in the graphic novel comic book Manifest Destiny, the expedition does run into megafauna, just a generic term for large animals. But they also keep finding these structures that look like the gateway arch there in St. Louis. And you know what? If you're a fan of good stories, we highly recommend that. I'm so glad you mentioned this on air. I was reading it. I was rereading it last night.

[B]

No way. Yeah, in prep for the podcast.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All that good historical data in there, because I think there is some stuff in there that is historically accurate, but it's largely a fictionalized version with some of these more high and lofty ideas of what this. This unsettled wilderness might be like. So pretty cool stuff.

[A]

Yeah. Check it out. I like that we. I like that we made a good comic recommendation.

[B]

We do whenever we can. Have we made one before?

[A]

We may have mentioned comics we like, but I don't know if we out not recommended one.

[B]

I pledge from this day forth to always recommend a comic on every episode.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

No, that's too much.

[A]

No, no. As long as. Caveat. As long as it doesn't have to completely tie in with the episode.

[B]

And we're gonna do an episode on every state and we're gonna complete it by the end of this year.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

No.

[A]

Too much. I don't know if we can make it.

[B]

Am I promising too much?

[A]

We're only coming out twice a week at least.

[B]

Forget it's under promise over deliver.

[A]

Under promise over deliver. So there's also another comic called the Black Monday Murders. Has nothing to do with today's episode, but you will thoroughly enjoy it.

[B]

And I'm a fan of Locke and Key, which you loaned me recently.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[B]

I've been trying to get my way through it, but it's by Joe Hill, who is Stephen King's son. Nothing really like anything Stephen King ever did, though. He's got his own thing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Joe Hill is a fantastic writer. You know what? Let us know what comic books you.

[B]

Like, historical or otherwise.

[A]

Yeah, and you can let us know right now as you're listening to this episode. All you have to do is hop on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, especially our Facebook community page, Ridiculous Historians.

[B]

Or you can write us a good old fashioned [e-mail] we'd love to thank super producer Casey Pegram. I'd like to thank you, Ben.

[A]

I'd like to thank you, Noel, along with Alex Williams, who composed our track. Our research associate, Gabe, who does just an amazing job.

[B]

That's right. And big shout outs to Christopher and Eves, who have done an incredible job up this point. I still think we've got a few of their ideas kicking around in the can, so we'll make sure that we shout them out when those happen.

[A]

And a shout out to Dr. Benjamin Rush. I don't know if you meant to be in the history books this way, doc, but congratulations nonetheless. Casey, can we get an appropriate sound cue?

[B]

Ew.

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[A]

There's a vile sickness in Amstown. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. From AB iheart Podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

Why are TSA rules so confusing?

[A]

You gotta hoodie on, Take it off.

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I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin, and we're best friends.

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In journalists list with a new podcast called no Such Thing, where we get.

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Hi, my name is Enya Umanzor. And I'm Drew Phillips. And we run a podcast called Emergency Intercom.

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Open your free iHeartradio app, search emergency Intercom, and listen.

[C]

Now, Betrayal Weekly is back for season two with brand new stories. The detective comes driving up fast and just, like, screeches right in the parking lot.

[A]

I swear I'm not crazy, but I.

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Think he poisoned me.

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I feel trapped.

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My breathing changes. I realize, wow, like, he is not a mentor. He's pretty much a monster. But these aren't just stories of destruction. They're stories of survival.

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I'm gonna tell my story and I'm gonna hold my head up.

[C]

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio.

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App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

This is an iHeart podcast.