There’s a lot written about Weyman. The most fun things to read are the original newspaper accounts (there’s a fun one from the Milwaukee Sentinal on google books; you can find his obituary on NYtimes.com). But the most comprehensive thing I read was from a New Yorker profile from 1968 (which, incidentally, spends pages on literally psychoanalyzing Weyman).

There’s plenty of great stuff written about the Fox sisters, including a book-length take (Talking to the Dead, by Barbara Weisberg) which appears to be all that. I’ll recommend a dynamite book called Occult America: The Secret History of how Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, which despite its hyperventilating, Dan Browny spoooooooky conspiracy title, is great and readable and scholarly at the same time. Great context. And, this is sort of an standing order: go to the NYTimes’ pre-1981 archive. There are some vintage stories about the Fox Sisters there.

I love this story. I think my version’s pretty good, but the I love the story of John R. Brinkley. So much good stuff had to be left out to keep this podcast tight. There was a big biography that came out a few years ago called Charlatan that is very comprehensive. But I’d like to give a special shout out to a book called “Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves.” Hell, I’ll even give it an Amazon link. Because it is good (and tells all about Brinkley and the other people who followed his lead and broadcast from Mexico) and because one of its co-authors, a guy named Bill Crawford, gave me one of the best days I had in the last several years when he and a friend/colleague drove me down from Austin, past Brinkley’s Mansion in Del Rio, and down across the border to Acuna (where I interviewed the blind, current manager of a station that descended from Brinkley’s). Then back later that day through the high desert where we came up around this bend and I looked out and saw herds of animals grazing at sunset and learned that they were all Indian and African gazelles and Ibix and whatnot brought in to be hunted–turns out only native Texas animals are included in seasonal hunting laws. After which, I no longer mess with Texas.