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I recently discovered This Week in Fandom History, a podcast exploring the history of fandom, internet culture and the communities that grow around the things people love. It felt like such a natural fit for the Artifacts audience that I wanted to introduce you to the show properly.

For this bonus episode, they've put together a special 10-minute cut of one of their recent episodes.

A quick heads-up: this episode contains some adult language, which is natural to This Week in Fandom History but a little different from what you'll normally hear on Artifacts.

If you enjoy it, be sure to check out the full show and its back catalogue.

Mentioned in this episode:

• This Week In Fandom History | Discover Fandom Stories — Listen Now

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Hey there, Danny here. This is a little bit different from the usual Artifacts

episode, because today I've got a bonus episode from another podcast that I

recently discovered and really enjoyed.

It's called This Week in Fandom History, and I thought it was a particularly

good fit for the Artifacts audience.

It digs into the history of fandom, internet culture, and the communities that

grow around the things that people love, which is pretty close to a lot of the

territory I explore here.

So when I found the show, I thought, Rather than just telling you about it,

why not actually give you a taste of it?

They've put together a special 10-minute version of one of their recent episodes

for me to share with you as a little bit of bonus content between Artifact Seasons.

One quick heads up before we get into it. There is some adult language in the

episode, which is completely natural to the hosts and their audience,

but it's a little different from what you'll normally hear on Artifacts.

So, if you've got younger listeners who usually listen along with you,

consider this your warning.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this.

I'm V. Arrow. And I'm Emily Jay. And we host This Week in Fandom History.

We take a weekly deep dive into the events that shaped fandom as we know it,

and we look at why those moments still matter today.

From Starsky & Hutch fans inventing VHS smut to the immortal ebony darkness

dementia raven way, we get deep into the who, what, and why behind fandom's

highest highs and weirdest lows.

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm excited about this episode. This week in fandom history,

we are talking about on September 1st of 1850. Wow! Which is so long ago.

It's definitely our oldest episode. So long ago.

September 1st of 1850, opera singer Jenny Lind landed in America for her first

national tour, but like she obviously was not going to like the West Coast because

it would have taken her like a year and a half because it was 1850.

She would have had a full-on be on a wagon train. It was 1850. There was no railroad.

By national tour, they meant like she's playing both New York and Boston.

Golly gee. I don't even know what accent to do for 1850. The way that I found

this event even because it's so old, obviously it's not on fan lore because it predates,

the word fan. There weren't Jenny Lind fans because that wasn't a thing people fucking said.

Weirdly, fandom as a word did exist. Really?

Yeah. Didn't shorten it to fans. No. That would have been crazy.

Crazy talk. What Daniel Cavicci says is the generally accepted origin of the

term fan is fanatic, but it actually may have come from the fancy, a

more benign English sporting term from the early 1800s, indicating those who

shared a preference for a specific competitor.

And it was generally used in both pigeon racing...

And boxing. So if you fancied, if you were a fancier or part of the fancy of

a certain boxer, then you were a fan of that boxer. So if you were a fan of

Jenny Lind, you'd be like a Lindian. Yes.

Yes. Okay. And also, Jenny Lind was so big that we had full-blown Lindmania, which is super fun.

And like I reading about this, her tour in 1850 was the fucking era's tour of.

1850 and also like blows the era's tour out of the water.

It was really, really fun to read about because this tour was also one of the

first times that there were concerts that were not invitation only.

So it was really the beginning of music being able to be like a public pastime

that wasn't just going to church and listening to hymns.

Right. The first part of this event that I read about that I just like lost

my mind reading about because it is so crazy to me is.

Not quite this week, but in September of 1850, a couple of weeks after she landed

in New York, she was playing shows in New York.

She was going to go and play shows in Boston. And one of the things that P.T.

Barnum did that was really, really brilliant as a marketer, because he was a

brilliant marketer. He was a terrible guy.

But he was a brilliant marketer. And one of the things that he did that was

really brilliant was because these were public concerts for kind of the first

time, he would have auctions

for basically what we would today call a backstage pass or a meet and greet.

Yeah. So in each city, in each show that she played, one person would get to go meet her.

And they would auction off the ticket for going to see her.

And they would auction off not even like a bad ticket. So the average salary in 1850.

For an American was $7 a week. Okay.

Wow. Yeah. And the tickets that they were auctioning off were tickets that their

starting price was $3. So not a bad ticket. Like that's a very expensive ticket. Yeah, for sure.

Wait till you hear how much they fucking auctioned for because I lost my fucking mind. Okay.

So at the end of her New York stay, when she started, so rewinding a little

bit, when she started in New York.

So on September 1st of 1850, the first of these auctions for like a meet and

greet with Jenny Lind was held. And a hatter, which is not a profession that

people have anymore. Like a haberdasher? Yes.

Yes. I was going to say a milliner, but yes, a haberdasher.

A hatter is how he is credited. Named John either Gannon or Jenin.

I am not sure which. Won the first ticket, the first meet and greet ticket to

meet Jenny Lind for $225. Oh my God. When he was earning less than $7 a week.

Oh my God. This obviously.

What? Sensational news story up and down the East Coast, which is as far as

news could go in 1850, because it would take weeks to get further than that

because it's like the Pony Express. Literally.

Sensational news. Everybody's like, oh my God, New Yorkers are crazy.

I can't believe somebody spent $225 on anything. Like, my house costs less than

$225. Jesus Christ. What the fuck?

But then, of course, Bastin.

Bastin was like, well, New York ain't shit.

We can do better than that. We got crazier people up here. We got crazier people.

We want to meet Jenny Lind more.

She's going to remember Boston more than she's going to remember New York.

So in Boston, there was a small literary magazine editor named Ossian Dodge,

which is such an 1850 name.

Ossian E. Dodge, just to give him his name. E. Dodge. Ossian. Yes.

Yes. And he showed up at this auction for her first Boston show.

And he claimed at first that he went just to be able to write about it for his

literary magazine, which makes sense. Okay, sure. This auction, P.T. Barnum was there.

He was the auctioneer. And Jenny Lind herself was not there.

But, you know, tons of people showed up hoping she would be there just so they

could get a glimpse of her knowing that they wouldn't win, but like wanting

to see her. She wasn't there.

And the crowd was made up of, and I'm quoting here from, uh,

from Kavici's book, merchants, speculators, clerks, lawyers,

writers, teachers, and music lovers all.

Most people, so they showed up hoping to see her, but also just wanting to be

part of the sensation. Yeah. Like they just wanted to be part of the crowd.

Sure. That's how, that's fandom, you know?

You go to the midnight showing, not because you wanted to stay up till midnight

to see Avengers Doomsday, but you want to be part of the crowd.

You want to be in the room where it happened. Yeah. Ossian Dodge is one of

the people who showed up.

And he knew the story of the $225 winning bid in New York.

And he was like, nah, I can do better. I'm going to do better.

Oh my God. So Ossian Dodge is watching this frantic auction and it should

have been a $3 starting bid. So you'd think that the next bid would be like,

I bid $3 and a penny. Right. No.

It immediately jumped from $3 to $50. And Ossian Dodge was like,

whoa, this is for real, real.

And it went, you know, $50, 51, 52. It went up over some time.

And when it hit 75, Dodge lost his motherfucking mind.

And he jumped up on his seat and swept off his top hat and shouted $225,

which, if you will notice, matched the New York amount.

Yes and so the next person said that they would bid 275 and then okay it jumped from 275

to $550. What the fuck? Again, people are earning $7 a week.

I did some quick math, okay? And given what I, like, before taxes and whatever,

like, between all my jobs, like, that would be the equivalent.

What the $225 guy, $225 for a $7 a week milliner.

Right, right. Would be the equivalent of almost, of like $45,000.

$45,000. Yep. to meet somebody that I don't know whose music I've never heard.

Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. What is going on? Just wait.

So Ossian Dodge, still hatless, still out of his fucking mind.

The rogue. The rogue. He's lost it.

He's just, all of his body heat is coming out of his head is the only explanation

of this because he yells 575 and the crowd just goes silent for a second.

And then they started shouting at like repeating all of his bids,

which is confusing the fucking auction because that's not how an auction works.

Oh, you yelled 575. I was just yelling it. Well, you can't do that at an auction.

You can't do that. You have to be quiet if you don't want to bid.

The competitor who is not named, who is bidding against Dodge,

waits a second and then says, quietly, says, six hundred,

And the crowd all turned as one to Ossian Dodge. Fucking Boston, man.

He tipped his hat, still not on his head, and he smiled calmly.

And then it says, in a triumphant crescendo, he said, $625.

Which that's ERA's tour today money. And it's too much.

Yes. Yes. Ossian Dodge ran a small literary magazine in Boston in 1850.

He did not have this kind of money. I will just say it now. He did not have

this money. It was over two years of what would have been his annual salary.

Oh my God.

And there you go. That's This Week in Fandom History. I hope you enjoyed that little detour.

If you did I definitely recommend checking out the full show there's a whole

back catalogue waiting for you with plenty more stories about fandom,

internet culture and the communities that grow around the things we're really really into,

you can find This Week in Fandom History wherever you listen to podcasts or

head over to thisweekinfandomhistory.com to find out more. and I'll leave a link

to that in the show notes so be sure to check them out.

As I mentioned I thought it was a great fit for Artifacts so I'm glad I could

introduce you to the show, and thanks for giving this bonus episode a listen.

I'll be back with another Artifact story when Season 3 drops later this month.