Some Interesting Curses

**Chuck** (0:01)
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

**Josh** (0:11)
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's here, and Jerry's here. So that makes this Stuff You Should Know.
And I guess we're just gonna call this one of our silly additions.

**Chuck** (0:23)
Well, I don't know if it's silly. I think it's kind of fun. People like hearing about curses, even though, you know, it's not a real thing, right?

**Josh** (0:31)
Yeah, yeah, but I would call silliness fun, inherently.

**Chuck** (0:35)
Yeah.

**Josh** (0:35)
Okay, well then we're in agreement.

**Chuck** (0:37)
I just wanted to clear up whether or not we were a cursed podcast, because we are we've had pretty good success. Is that our curse?

**Josh** (0:45)
Well, no, don't you remember? We have a curse on other people's TV shows and our own, actually.

**Chuck** (0:50)
Oh, that's right. When we would mention something, a TV show would get canceled, right?

**Josh** (0:55)
No, when we would go on a TV show, it would get canceled. Oh, that's right. Yeah, it happened to I don't remember the name of her program, but one of Soledad O'Brien shows.

**Chuck** (1:05)
Yeah.

**Josh** (1:05)
The Whatever Show with Alexis and Jennifer, Jeff Probst, Daytime Talk Show.

**Chuck** (1:12)
Yeah, Probst and It Up, I think it was called.

**Josh** (1:16)
I'm sure there's more, but all three of those, we went on and seriously within weeks, they were canceled or off the air or something.

**Chuck** (1:23)
Oh man, now I'm suddenly glad we never went on Conan O'Brien.

**Josh** (1:27)
Yeah, really. Yes, we have our own curse, which is hilarious and wonderful because I think that's just one more feather to put in our cap.

**Chuck** (1:35)
That's right. As you pointed out when we went on our own TV show, that was also canceled.

**Josh** (1:40)
Yeah, that was bound to happen.

**Chuck** (1:43)
Actually not canceled. I always say canceled. It was not renewed. There's a difference.

**Josh** (1:47)
Oh yeah, there's a big difference.
Cancelled is like just stop, stop, just stop. Yeah. Not renewed is like, you know.

**Chuck** (1:55)
We covered one show last week that had a radar show for MASH had a pilot and it got canceled.

**Josh** (2:00)
Yeah, it like mid-air basically.

**Chuck** (2:03)
Yeah, before it hit the West Coast. So that made me feel a lot better.

**Josh** (2:07)
So let's just say, let's just give a little heads up to everybody, especially the people who are like, all I want is science from Stuff You Should Know. This is, like I said, it's a little silly. You said it's going to be fun. A lot of this stuff is just legend. So we kind of tried to fact check as much as we could, but fact checking is a little bit beyond the point because when you start to look into them, everything just falls apart. So that's why we're basically doing an anthropological view of some famous curses or interesting curses that aren't necessarily famous.

**Chuck** (2:38)
That's right. We're going to start with the curse on Brunswick Springs, and that is a place in Brunswick, Vermont that has a spring. It has actually six of them. In each one of these, they're pretty great springs. They have some different minerals flowing out of each one, magnesium, sulfur, bromide, calcium, iron, and arsenic.
And because springs are a great place to heal oneself, depending on what's going on with you and what the spring can offer, and so obviously a lot of people over the years have tried to capitalize and charge money on these springs, but not anymore.

**Josh** (3:15)
No, they actually kind of stopped trying. And the reason why is because there's a curse on the springs.
We'll see what the deal is with that starting now.

**Chuck** (3:27)
Sound like you're going to say right after this break or something.

**Josh** (3:30)
So let's talk about the Abenaki, Chuck.

**Chuck** (3:32)
Yeah, they are an Algonquin-speaking tribe, and they have lived in that area. And Brunswick, Vermont is a lovely area, so I don't blame them, but they've been living there for about 12,000 years.
And they obviously were the first ones to say like, hey, this spring is pretty great, because they are an indigenous tribe, they consider it a sacred place. And they thought that the springs had mystical healing powers, and at the very least, they probably have some sort of health benefits.

**Josh** (4:00)
Yeah, sure. But this was like sacred ground of the Abenaki, it still is, as a matter of fact. And so as part of their oral tradition, and as far as legend goes, too, during the French and Indian War, the Abenaki brought a wounded French soldier.