31st March: the Fox Sisters v Erik Prince

·13 min·1 clip

Two teenage sisters in 1848 New York start hearing mysterious raps that launch a spiritualist movement still active today.

The episode opens with hosts Jake Lamp and Nat Tappy introducing Datefight's format of comparing historical events from the same date. They first travel to March 31, 1848, in Hydesville, New York, where sisters Maggie (14) and Kate (11) Fox report mysterious rapping noises at bedtime. A neighbor investigates, and the raps respond to questions, sparking local amazement. The sisters move to Rochester with their sister Leah, where skeptic Isaac Post visits to debunk them but leaves convinced after supposedly communicating with his deceased son. Post rents a 400-seat theater to exhibit the girls, catching the attention of Andrew Jackson Davis, leader of the Spiritualism movement. The Fox sisters tour the U.S., holding three daily shows at Barnum's Hotel in New York. In Philadelphia, debunker Elisha Kent Kane fails to expose them and later marries Maggie in 1857, though she renounces spiritualism after converting to Catholicism. Kate continues performing but drinks heavily as spiritualism booms post-Civil War, reaching 8 million adherents by the 1880s. On October 21, 1888, Maggie confesses in a New York World interview and Herald speech that she faked the raps by tapping with her toes. Despite this, spiritualists dismiss her confession, and the movement persists, with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches buying the Fox house in 1999. The episode then shifts to March 31, 2004, during the Iraq war, when four Blackwater USA contractors are killed in Fallujah. It examines founder Erik Prince, who comes from a billionaire family and compares Blackwater to FedEx disrupting the postal service. Blackwater charges $1,222 daily per guard, six times a soldier's cost, and received $2 billion in contracts from 1997 to 2010. Prince attempted to create a private air force and is a Trump campaign donor. A birthday segment highlights Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, tutored by Chaucer and John Wycliffe. She marries King John I of Portugal 12 days before meeting him, forging the Portuguese-English alliance of 1386, the world's longest-standing alliance. She has nine children despite being told she was too old and dies of the plague with a disdainful smile. The episode concludes with the death of architect Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize in 2004, designer of the London Aquatic Centre and Beijing Airport, dubbed the Queen of the Curve. Hosts briefly promote their Radio 4 show Now Wash Your Hands before signing off.

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