The Subway
“A big humbug” – that’s how one critic described America’s first subway system. Other opponents were more hyperbolic. It would release dangerous underground air, some said. It would disturb the dead, others said. A religious leader in Boston declared it a project of Lucifer himself. Why were people so opposed to this new form of transportation? To understand it, we have to rewind centuries – to a time when people thought that Earth was hollow, and that hell was directly under their feet.
EPISODE NOTES
• Andrew Rabin, University of Louisville
• Natana Delong-Bas, Boston College
• William Beckford’s Vathek
• Fred T. Jane describing the early subway experience in “The Romance of Modern London”
• Article covering Mr. Lansing’s anger over the flooding of his office
• Novelty Over, The Boston Globe, September 1897
• To See the Devil, The Boston Globe 1895
• Round the Underground on an Engine, Fred T. Jane 1884
• Doug Most‘s book: “The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry that Built America’s First Subway”
• Readers: Paul Blanchard of “Media Masters” (and hear the episode with Pessimists Archive host Jason Feifer!), Roberto Scalese
• Music this episode: Caspar Babypants (theme music), Daniel Birch’s “In Pursuit of Silence”and “Sleep”, Ben Folds Five’s “Underground”, Megadeth’s “Go To Hell”, and John Philip Sousa’s “Opus 5″
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