John Murray Spear's Excellent Adventure Part I (Premium E343) Sample
About this episode
Jack begins the saga of John Murray Spear, exploring his life as a preacher, reformer, and his quest to build a 'mechanical messiah'.
This week, Jack begins the strange saga of John Murray Spear: Universalist preacher, abolitionist, prison reformer, anti-death-penalty agitator, spiritual medium, and eventual would-be midwife to a “mechanical messiah.” Before Spear tried to build the “New Motor” (a living machine meant to channel divine electricity and inaugurate a new age) he spent decades pursuing radical reform in 19th-century New England. Jack traces Spear’s working-class childhood, his years in the Universalist movement, his “missions of love” to prisoners and the poor, his work against capital punishment, his involvement with abolitionism and the Underground Railroad, and the mob beating that nearly killed him in Portland. Then things get weirder. Enter the unfortunately-named Andrew Jackson Davis, Emanuel Swedenborg, the Fox Sisters, mesmeric trances, automatic writing, spirit healing, Benjamin Franklin from beyond the grave, psychometry, sulfur springs, and the “Association of Electricizers.” By the end of Part 1 of our story, Spear has been selected by a committee of dead reformers, scientists, and Founding Fathers to help remake the world through electricity, spirit communication, and one very…
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