What I'm trying to remember. Do you have any celebrity impressions that you do?
No?
Didn't you used to do celindio?
No, I used to.
Do that the theme song to the Titanic.
No, that was Karen.
Karen used to.
Sing that song.
Karen does sing that song.
Does she have a nice voice?
No?
Because guess who I have on the other line. Karen? Did that scare you?
Did it give me a little nervous?
Did it not make you feel alive?
Oh?
Get a little scared?
A little scared.
Yeah, she doesn't have a nice voice.
I mean she can wait.
A second, She's back on the line. It's Karen. Oh, Jackie, how could you say that about my singing? From Gimblet Media, I'm Jonathan Gold and this is Heavyweight Today's episode the Elliots. Right after the break, I get a lot of emails from people looking for help, but Dylan's stood out. Dear Jonathan, It read I have a big one for you, the heaviest weight yet. Dylan's email was over the top clickbaity even Hi Dylan, how are you?
Jonathan?
But who among us is inured to the lure of clickbait? Dylan Elliott lives in Dublin and the story he tells me you'll have to hear to believe. Dylan says that when he and his family get together, their favorite thing to do is share stories of their misfortune, mysterious ailments and plumbing disasters, near drownings, and dental procedures gone terribly awry. They always come away from these sessions wondering the same thing, how can one family have so much bad luck?
So a few years ago, mostly large family gathering.
Dylan says that at a recent family wedding, he and his brothers were going around the table enumerting their woes as usual wrong in their lives, when their father suddenly interrupted them.
And then my dad came out and said, well, they don't know about the curse, the Elliot curse.
Dylan and his brothers looked at each other. What elliot curse? They'd never heard of such a thing, And so their father offered what would prove to be a unifying theory of their terrible luck. He began at the beginning.
The very beginning is fifteen twenty five.
About five hundred years ago, Scotland and England were at war over the territory along their border. The people who lived along these borderlands were hardest head.
And so they were left in this nomadic position where the only living they could make was by going back and forth across the border and thieving.
Thieving, in pillaging, in maiming, as well as murdering.
What they had to be as a culture was extremely friendly but also really murdery, because like, if you've got to be in moving from area to area, you had to be very open to people because there could be trades going on, but if they wrong you, you've got to kill them immediately.
And these people, these friendly, murdery people who lived along the border were called border reavers. You say reavers, Yeah, reavers? What are those?
It's kind of like the exact opposite of a weaver. So weavers makes clothes. Reavers were kind of like murderers.
Wait, weavers make clothes, but revers are murderers. Yes, which technically isn't the opposite of making clothes.
It's quite far away, though, in fairness.
It is it is. But probably the opposite of making clothes would be like maybe ripping.
Up clothes and stealing.
I guess, yeah, again, not necessarily the opposite, but I get it. Yeah, it's the other end of the spectrum. Sorry, thank you. That's the opposite of a curse, by the way. To bring it back to opposites, Dylan says there were a number of Reaver family clans, but one of the biggest, most notorious, least weavery, and most murdery of all were the Elliots. And that's you. You're You're Dylan Elliot.
Yeah.
In fifteen twenty five, the then Archbishop of Glasgow, desperate to deter the Reavers, placed a curse on them, the aforementioned Elliot curse. I should read the cris to you please. I curse their heads and all the hairs of their head.
I cursed their face, their brain, their mouth, their nose, their tongue, their teeth, their forehead, their shoulders, their breast, their heart, their stomach, their back, their womb, their arms, their legs, their hands, their feet, and every part of their body from the top of their head to the soles of their feet, before and behind within them without as a jew raised on Yiddish curses, my bubb is, may you hang upside down like a chandelier, most often
levied against my grandfather for losing the TV remote. Was about as bad as I got it sounds worse than Yiddish, but still it's nothing compared to this curse.
I cursed them going, and I curssed them writing. I curst them standing, and I cursed them sitting. Curse.
This curse reads like a children's book written by a serial killer. I would curse them here or there, I would curse them anywhere.
I curse them within the house, I cursed them outside of the house. I cursed them at home. I cursed them away from home. I cursed them rising, their cattle, their wool, their sheep, their barnyards, their cowsheds, their cabbage patches, even their cabbage patches, their horses.
And it's not just the Reavers themselves that the Archbishop damns, but anyone remotely associated with them.
I forbid all Christian men and women to have any company with them, eating, drinking, speaking, crying, lying, going, standing under the pain of deadly sin.
And just when you think there's nothing left, a curse, okay.
Made the thunder and lightning which rain down upon someone.
For a full three minutes, Dylan continues on with wildfires and dyspepsia, pestilence, and plagues, until finally I.
Condemned them perpetually to the deep pit of hell, there to remain with Lucifer and all his fellows, then ripped and torn by dogs until late forbear They're and sins and make satisfaction at Bennett's.
Yeah, that's a curse. Back at the family wedding, seated around the table, Dylan says he remembers that when his dad was done reciting excerpts from the curse, he was met with stunned silence.
You almost expect people to laugh when hear curs. Liked that, but there wasn't really a laugh. The reaction in the room with this kind of aha moment reference like this makes total sense. This explains why so many weird things of mont Our family.
Weird and also weirdly specific to the curse. Dylan tells me about the soles of his feet he was born flat footed, and his tongue he was born tongue tied, and regarding the I curse you away from home part of the curse.
Pick up mugged three days in a row in Paris, Oh my, And each morning I went out and I bought the slightly shittier phone than I had previously, until eventually I had a phone, which is like an old person's phone with giant buttons on it, and I got mugged for that one as well. So I got mugged three days in a row in Paris.
Like three separate occasions by three separate muggers.
Yeah, three separate muggers, three nights in a row.
What is that?
Doesn't that's insane? Like I think the other I was trying to work it out. I think the odds of getting mugged in a given year are zero point three percent, So what of the odds are getting mugged three days in a row. It's like getting struck by lightning. I'm winning the lottery at the same time or something.
And Dylan says it's not just him. He tells me about his brother, a talented gardener who can grow anything except cabbages.
The one thing that's mentioned in the Curse. The curse says I cursed their cabbage patches, and he can't grow cabbages. He can't grow brascas at all.
I've been pretty successful growing all different types of vegetables.
This is Dylan's younger brother, Rory Elliott.
But like the cab in particular, like always seemed to be afflicted by some kind of like mold or fungus.
Then there's Rory's feet.
My mum always said that my feet were like out of a Buzzet's pretty much Talon's.
Yeah, and his eyes.
I tore my cornea.
I had to wear an eyepatch. And mouth I've had so many mouth sulcters. I'm just being worried that it's like the cur is trying to stop me. Talk to you guys.
Rory is a scientist, so he knows that believing in curses is crazy, but he also knows the value of hard data and the evidence is semi undeniable, Like how the archbishop curses them going and curses them riding.
I see them that he had riding horses, but I guess it covers bicycles.
Okay, what has happened?
Like, for instance, one time I was cycling to get some seaweed to put on my crops because they weren't.
Doing very well, his crops being the cabbages. He was getting seaweed for his cabbages.
And there was an iron bar in the ground and then I ended up going like head over the handlebars on like flying headfirst into a dog food factory.
Sorry, did you say you you flew into a dog food what a.
Dog food factory?
Yeah? Okay, broke my raist, I broke.
My arm, need a lot of sticks. That was fairly cursed.
Oh my god.
Logical level not superstious at all, but I am a little bit superstious.
This is Dylan's other brother, Tim Elliott. Tim is waiting to receive funding for his pH d in history. In the meantime, I'm.
A sort of.
Just a freelanced person.
What do you freelance at?
Oh, not really much.
If Dylan is rather ere like and Rory is something of a negative nelly, then Tim is like Charlie Brown. If Charlie Brown were looking for PhD funding.
I'm given the curse, well, I mean, who would have much hope for that?
Like his brothers, Tim lists off sorrows specific to the curse. He went bald in his twenties, has teeth with holes in them, in his feet.
When I was born, my feet pointed outwards, and then I was putting these shoes, so you think, okay, here comes a solution. But then they pointed inwards and we're overcorrected.
Then there's the muggings. While Dylan's been mugged a poultry three times, Tim's been mugged five times.
Oh yeah, one of them. I was mugged while I was dressed as a robot.
I'm so sorry.
That just really surprised me. It feels wrong to laugh at someone's misfortunes. But then when the follow up question you're forced to ask a grown man is why were you dressed as a robot, it seems acceptable somehow.
This was Halloween.
I was dressed as a robot called it's a tim Tron five thousand. I mean, I put so much effort into it. I had a set of light going on in my chest, drinking. I had a police sir on my head.
I'm imagining you, like in a box, wrapped in a tinfoil or something.
You're exactly.
I was with a group of friends, all dressed differently. I think there was a bumblebee there as a pirate. There was.
I'm sorry, Yeah, so the tim Tron five thousand, The Bumblebee and the pirates were walking along when they were suddenly approached by a group of kids. And when I say kids, there were.
Young fellas who are fourteen.
Really, Yeah, the ringleader demanded Tim hand over the beers he was carrying, but Tim refused, So he pulls out.
This pocket knife and he says, I'm gonna you know, what do you think about this?
Now?
If you recall John said I'm wearing nothing for cardboard boxes.
Oh, I recall.
So the bumblebee, the pirates disappear, and I'm not quite as sleep of foot, and I get pushed onto my back like a tortuous completely unable to get up.
The kids pulled the siren from Tim. Tron five thousand's head roughed him up a bit. Did you report it?
Yeah, we got the police and they sort of just said, well, I mean, what do you.
Expect with my family? It's like.
It's shorthunt. Now here's Dylan again, like we just.
Rule arizing and goes, oh, fucking curse.
The misfortunes that you they you mention, I mean, do you literally feel like they're connected to this five hundred odd year curse.
I think it's like this Jonathan in my head is like, if you've got five hundred years of people wishing you ill, it cannot be good for your soul.
Dylan says that since the old archbishop of Glasgow levied the curse. The present day archbishop is the only person with the power to lift it. Others have made appeals to him, but he's never responded.
What I love is the curse to be lifted. We will do anything to lift this curse.
And so Dylan has come to me for help. They did notice that there were something in the curse about anybody who helps you, I think their curse too.
It's any Christian man. All Christian men who speak to me are cursed by proxy. I think being Jewish, you're actually excused.
Oh, because I am not Christian. It gives me a leg up, I think. So, yeah, is that the loophole here? Is that why you came to me. It wasn't because of my previous good works. It was just because I'm a jew, which brings us back to his email about how lifting the curse would be the biggest heavyweight yet, because the curse isn't limited to just the Elliots, it encompasses all the reaper families.
I mean, there's three hundred thousand elliots in the world. How many Armstrongs and Scot's and Nixon's and Dixon's and Springles.
Not to sound like one of those CD personal injury lawyers. But if your name is Scott or Douglas, Reed or Robson, Nixon or Dixon, you may be entitled to karmik compensation. I'm trying to find the exceptions to the rules, you know what I mean. Like you mentioned pringles, Like, well, you know they had those canisters of chips, so they probably did.
Okay, can tell me you've had the pocket fringles not fell a little bit cursed afterwards?
Well put, Dylan and his brothers are tired of their mouth ulcers and tooth holes, tired of wearing eye patches and getting beaten up by children. They're ready to live their best lives. If we got this lifted, what would the ensuing days look like? If you had to speculate for me.
It'd probably be getting funding.
To do your PhD.
Yes, Well, when I'm be able to grow cabbages because I actually love cabbage, I don't know. I would just love to be able to grow.
Cabbages, Okay, cabbages and what else?
Yeah, mainly the cabbages, Like I really, I really love cabbages.
It's like a stir fry soup. But I don't know. Yeah, most the cabbages.
We're gonna get you, Elliotts turned around.
We're gonna good to hear it.
Erase the chalkboard, a fresh news start. The curse still in red to me, and it's dizzying entirety comes from the Elliot Clan Society website. It turns out there's a whole organization of descendants of Border Reavers named Elliott. The site contains a history of the Elliott family, a map of Elliott Territory, and a list of famous Elliots like Ts Eliott, the poet who dared not eat a peach, and Sam Elliott, the push broom mustachioed actor who safe
to say, should probably also stay away from peaches. And then there's the page with the transcript of the curse. Underneath it there are rems and realms of comments. Stephen Kyle Elliott posts that he's the only member of his family in four generations that hasn't been to prison or had problems with drugs. I try to do right and be a good person, but I always seem to have the most bad luck possible, he says. Mary Elliott cites cancer, airplane crashes and fires. Long before I ever heard of
this curse. I felt a curse had been put on our family, she writes, Believe me, the curse is alive and well. Hello, Hello, Is this Margaret Elliott? Yes, it is Margaret Elliott is the chief of the Elliott Clan society. This is Jonathan Goldstein calling from the American podcast.
I'm marri Heartrising.
It is my held belief that setting off on a quest to lift a five hundred year old clan hers requires the blessing of a clan Chieftainess. Margaret Elliot sounds like someone who owns at least a dozen and a half Welsh Corgies, and like real nobility.
She says.
She inherited the role from her father, who was chief before her. With the title, does there come a dwelling like the way the President of the United States gets to live in the White House? No, I'm fortunately not to begin. Margaret proudly shares some fun facts about the Elliott family.
The Canadian Prime Minister was an Elliot. His middle name was Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau traced his lineage back to the Elliot clan. I didn't know that, Yes she did. Yeah, my middle name is Stuart it is. When I get down to explaining my mission, Margaret tells she's known about the curse her whole life. It's a part of Elliott history. But at the same time, I.
Don't pay this any attention at all. Yeah, I mean, this is the first time I've ever actually talked about it. I've never thought it was remotely important.
It's important to her constituents, though. I tell her about Dylan and his brothers, the eye patches, the constant muggings, the cabbage problems.
Which I don't think he can plain it. I think maybe he's got the wrong sort of grand for cabbage.
Yeah, the cursed kind. Although Margaret doesn't put stock in curses, she still blesses the mission and even offers to help.
Well, I mean, I.
Could probably get the archbishop on the phone.
Do you think you can get an archbishop on the telephone?
Why not?
Wow? I really appreciate your good old American moxie on that one.
What does that mean?
What does good old American moxie mean, Margaret? It's throwing a bottle rocket into a trash can just to see it go boom. It's staring down your enemies while picking your teeth with a corn dog stick. It's sowing a Canadian flag onto your backpack when traveling through Europe. So when you toss a bottle rocket into some Parisian poobell, Canada looks like the idiot Moxie is getting a bishop on the horn and greeting him with a big fat
American howdy. Do have you ever reached out to an archbishop before?
No?
I know Bishop wil too, but no I don't have.
It'd be interesting.
I will follow it up. You've inspired me.
Wow, Okay, that isn't often what I do, So I appreciate that.
Very good.
Margaret is on the case. But before getting off the phone, she counsels me against talking to other elliots about the curse if they're blissfully unaware. She says, why share something that will only trouble them. To illustrate her point, Margaret tells me about an art installation memorializing the curse. It's called the Cursing Stone, and it's a fourteen ton granite boulder with the curse inscribed upon it. It was commissioned by the City of Carlisle in two thousand and one.
Tasa was fairly unwise. Why why they believe in this curse, but there are people who do, like your friend Dylan, and I think it is unwise to bring it out again because it alarms people.
But the follout caused by the stone suggests it more than alarmed people. Following its installation, the city experienced the series of disasters, the worst flood in two hundred years, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, numerous businesses and factories shutting down, among them notably a bar called the Reaver Pub, and the local soccer team, Carlisle United, lost so many games they were relegated to a lower league. So I speak with the artist who sculpted the cursing stone,
Gordon Young, of the Border Reaving Young Clan. But despite the biblical plagues unleashed by his art, Gordon doesn't put any stock in the curse at all. Do you think there's anything suggestive about the timing, you know, like just after the unveiling of your work and all of these misfortunes occurring, do you see anything not at all? In then you don't admit that the timing is sort of an interesting No, Do you feel like you've been affected
by the curse? Like, do you feel that you're unluckier than your friends.
I feel a lifelong sighting would be if I fell down a toilet, come up smelling of roses on a field. I have been very, very, very lucky all my life.
Gordon's answer surprises me, so I conduct an informal survey. Turning to the phone book, I dial random Elliots to see how unlucky they are. Hello, is this Dale Elliott?
Yes?
Hello? Is this Tanya Elliott Hensby? Yes? I even phone a real estate agent on a lawn sign Elliott, and I reach out to Margaret's Elliott Society clan officers all across the USA. You're a state commissioner for Alabama, Arkansas.
But yeah, I'm a chemist for Clan Elliott in Texas.
Yes, yes, I'm the Northern California commissioner for it.
I ask if any of them have experienced the things the Elliot brothers have, the inability to ever grow cabbage, any dental problems. You own cattle or sheep growing cabbage? Are you bald? But it seems they haven't.
Nope, Nope, no, no, I'm a gorgeous ready.
So I find myself wondering whether ill fortune might be less a border Reaver problem, and more a Dylan, Tim and Rory problem. What was going on with the Elliott brothers, why all the bad luck? And was the curse really to blame for it? Since Dylan, Tim and Rory's dad, David, was the one who first told them about the curse, I wonder if he would have any insight. So I reach out to David, but at the last minute he balks. Dylan says it's because his dad is nervous that even
talking about the curse could exacerbate it. But in David's stead, Dylan's aunt Joe, agrees to talk to me.
Hello, Johnson, how are you?
I'm okay? How are you today?
Not too bot I'm very loud of Friday.
In the background, I can hear Joe pouring something into a glass. What is it that you're drinking? Oh, pino, Gricia, It's absolutely okay.
Yeah.
I sometimes think that I could tell what someone's drinking, but it's a little piccadillo of mine. I asked Joe about her family whether they are a bunch of magical thinkers, like say, someone who thinks he can tell what beverage someone is drinking over the phone. Maybe they've over indexed on this whole curse thing. Was your upbringing superstitious? Did your parents have rituals and stuff like that?
Well, I was brought up on my grandparents.
And then Joe tells me the reason she was raised by her grandparents.
Our parents died when we were all very young.
Your parents died around the same time.
Yeah.
Yeah, they died in a car accident.
Oh my, I'm so sorry. Yeah, and they were together.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did that Has that ever struck you as a It was a bit of bad luck.
It was really bad luck, right, I mean, the worst luck ever almost.
Joe was only four years old at the time of the accident, so she doesn't remember the day, but she does remember learning about the death of her parents for the first time.
I was able to read. So I must have been about six, and I've found a newspaper cutting in my grandmother's chest of drawers, and I could see that my name was in there, and my sister's name was in there, and I could see it as talking about two people, and I wasn't sure who theirs names were.
But it sounded really sad to me.
And it's had this really big long word at the top of it. So I went to mask my grandmother what it was, and she said, well that that word is an obituary, and these people are your mum and dad and their dad. I do have a few memories. So my dad used to go out to work. I used to have to help them put the socks on. Today, my dad went in to tell the teacher off in
school because she was really horrible to me. And I remember being woking up in the middle of the night to come downstairs and see the new toys that my dad had brought home from work. It was a little red teeth set. I remember the first time I tested Chinese food because my mom was ill in bed and my dad brought me in to tasted Chinese food and there was pineapple on it, and I'd never had pineapple before.
Joe says that after her parents' death, she and her six siblings were all split up, sent to different relatives. It took them many years, not until they were adults, to all reconnact. Do you think this this family trauma has kind of cast a Paul over David's kids.
There is no day in our family that our parents' death was, oh my goodness, catastrophic. In a lot of ways.
It was terrible.
It's a big soddness, and I think they picked that up when you're a kid.
It's a scary thing to learn that tragedy can strike at any moment for no reason, that there's no insulation between you and the darkness. Joe doesn't think the curse caused the accident, but the accident might have given the idea of a curse a certain allure. It offered an explanation for something unexplainable. Growing up, Dylan and his brothers heard about their grandparents' death. Were raised with the feeling of a vague dark cloud that hung over the family.
But now they've given that dark cloud a name, the Curse of the Eliots. And what you can name, you can vanquish. What do you think that lifting the curse might change for David or for your nephews.
It might.
Gives a breathing space.
And I don't know why I've said that word or that phrase, but that's just what it feels like.
A breathing space.
Yeah.
Regardless of how Margaret Elliott or any of the three hundred thousand Elliots feel about the curse, these three Elliots, Dylan, Rory and Tim Elliott, they believe in it, and I'm going to help these elliots by lifting this curse once and for all. My greatest hope for lifting the curse lies with Elliott clan chief Margaret, who promised me a bishop. But at this point I haven't heard from Margaret in weeks, so I send an email asking for a progress report.
When she replies, I'm surprised by her terseness. No bishop, She writes, I really think there is no point in pursuing this, and your friend who complained about his baldness and not growing cabbage will have to put up with it and not blame an entirely irrelevant sixteenth century curse. I'm not sure how to account for the shift in Margaret's tone until I read this. I would be grateful if you would not contact any more clan officers and
alarm them unduly. It seems some of the elliots I spoke to, ever loyal to their chieftain, ratted me out, telling Margaret how I'd been pestering them about their bad luck. As chief, Margaret wants to protect her flock and not from the curse of the archbishop. But from me, it looks like I'm on my own on the Archdiocese of Glasgow's website, I find the name of the Archbishop's director of Communications, mister Confrey. Hi, thank you so much for talking to me.
No problem at all. I'm glad to be able to chat.
I explained to Ronnie Convrey about Dylan and his brothers, the robot muggings, the dog food factory.
He's worried the curse from whatever five hundred years ago is affecting his daily life.
Yes, hardy, harharr if you will, Ronnie Convrey, But I thought stuff that happened hundreds of years ago and still affects daily life is the Church's bread and butter. Of course, I'm too cowardly to actually say that, but I do say this, I'll be it mincingly. Why can't the archbishop just lift this one little old curse, just this one little old time.
It's not going to happen. It's not like, you know, the archbishop puts on a stool and goes into the cathedral and mutters a few payers in lot and then sprinkle some holy water around and everything stakes. I mean, there is no such ceremony for lifting curses.
And even if there were a ceremony, Ronnie says there's no one to perform at the last archbishop died just recently, and appointing a new one can take months, even years. Is this something that the Pope could lift?
I had no idea, to be honest, I were you, I wouldn't waste trying to figure out how.
You could speak to the Pope. You know you'd be here to.
Goomsday and that you wouldn't get a nail the Pope on something like this.
Yeah, he's a he's a busy man. I'm sure. I mean, it's not like you could just call the Vatican switchboard and has to speak to the Pope.
Absolutely not.
Turns out you can call the Vatican switchboard, but the problem not in Italiana. Is there anybody that spinks?
Uh?
My sisters taking English? It's okay?
At yes, okay. I never imagined the Vatican to be the kind of mom and pop operation where you'd have to wait for somebody's sister to get back from her lunch break at the Vatican. Quiz No's when I phoned back Trey hours later, though the person who picks up doesn't know what I'm talking about. She was like, Yeah, my sister's going to be here, later.
That sounds like Italy to me.
Yeah, is that what it is? This is my gimlet coworker Valentina. She was born in Florence and speaks Italian, and agrees to help me. Phone back a few weeks later. Have you ever called the Vatican before?
No.
It turns out that while there isn't an office at the Vatican for curse removal, there is a department for papal blessings. Maybe a strong enough blessing can wipe out a curse. Love KOing hate kind of thing. So Valentine and I phone up the Office of Blessings.
Yes, hello, okay a lot of.
Valentina explains the details of my problem, the cabbages and cankers, but the operator says, we need a different department.
It's an exorcism office.
Oh so getting a curse lifted is that falls under the department of exorcism.
Yeah, that's there's that's the old department that can you know, deal with that because we are exactly the oppos.
You know, of course, bless you blessings are the opposite of courses.
In general.
So I call the switchboard back and ask for the Department of Exorcism. Why the operator asks, and so yet again I explained the ulcerated mouths, and Talento's.
It's really absurd.
Absurd.
In twenty twenty one, we are still thinking about a curse dating back to fifteen twenty six. Oh it's five.
Centuries, yes, and so it's about time.
If both Francis hears about that, I don't know how he would react.
How would he react?
I don't think he will react in a good way.
Are there special circumstances in which you know someone could speak to the Pope?
It's not as easy, but it's happened, It may happen. It's not so easy.
What are the circumstances in which you pass? Does he have a cell phone? Does the Pope have a cell phone? To people that he travels with have a cell phone? Is it just a landline?
What do you want to I don't know what you really want to do.
When I tell the operator about the original reason for my call that I want to be put through to the Department of Exorcisms, I learned there is no such department, or there is, but it's a department of one. There's only one exorcist for the entire Vatican.
And he has a portable number.
You want the number of the.
Portable cellular device of the Pope's personal exorcist. Uh, yeah, yes, please, oh oh one, okay, thank you very much for your health. Yes, God bless thank you. Wow, it's really great. This is really great. So should we try the try the welcome to Verizon Wireless.
Your call cannot be completed as the called party is temporarily unavailable.
Is that a good sign? It's not a good sign. Once a week for the next eight weeks, Valentina and I try calling him back. The call never goes through. When I phone the Vatican switchboard again, the operator directs me to the Secretary General of the Diocese of Rome, who says I'll need to speak with a Padre Milily. No, Mi Lily. But Padre Mediately's secretary says he's not the right person either, apparently, since the curse effect not just the elliots of Rome or Dublin, but all elliots everywhere.
My problem is an international problem.
She says, we need to call the Association of International Exorcists.
Oh, come on, it's called a ya aie Association internationalities. She just made that up. But it turns out that the International Association of Exorcists, has over eight hundred members, publishes guides for exorcists around the world, and is accredited by the Vatican. The AIE and I email back and forth, but eventually the Exorcists start giving me the brush off too. It's been nearly a year of unreturned emails, wrong numbers,
and all around royal runarounds. I've been waking up at four am to call the Vatican so often that at this I'm basically on Italian time, which is kind of like being on a vacation in Italy with none of the Italy but all of the sleep deprivation. It's while complaining to my wife one day about how sleepy I am all the time, how badly my neck and back hurt, that I'm forced to ask myself did I have the Elliott Curse. If I did, it wouldn't be so bad
if I had anything to show for it. As it is, though, I feel like I'm in a Dan Brown novel, but the boring parts like the table of contents or the author's note that nobody reads. And to add insult to injury, I've been at this so long that a new Archbishop of Glasgow has finally been installed. So I phone Ronnie Convrey and leave half a dozen messages over a number of weeks. When someone finally does pick up, rather than being granted an audience, I'm granted this.
Good afternoon, Ar's Diocese of Glasgow.
Hi, there is Ronnie Convy there.
I believe he is.
Can I ask who's calling?
Sure?
It's Jonathan Goldstein?
Right?
Can yield for a moment?
Certainly?
Hello?
Yes, you must have stepped away from his desk.
Do you think it would be okay to maybe try him a little later?
His schedule is quite unpredictable, that's the only thing. He's in and out quite a bit.
Yeah.
The only thing left to do is admit defeat. Except for the fact that, unbeknownst to Ronnie Convrey, the Archbishop, the Vatican and even me, in the Battle of Goldstein versus the Curse, the curse was on the ropes. This might have been the heaviest weight yet. But that's the thing about heavy's weight. When you hoist them, there's no finer feeling. But the only thing I've succeeded in hoisting is myself by my own batards. And so, without another choice, I phoned Dylan to tell him I failed.
Hello Dylan, Yeah, Hello, how are you?
More importantly, how are you? It's been fourteen months since Dylan first reached out to me, Another cursed year has come and gone. The thought of how violently, excruciatingly Baldy must be at this point is frankly too much to bear. But what Dylan says next, you'll have to hear to believe. How are things really good?
I've got a pretty great second half of a year, to be honest, really yeah, it's everything seems to be going a bit better.
You know, well, you sound different. I mean, your energy feels different.
Y seem totally different. I feel kind of much much better. I was kind of one a minute. Was there anything in the background, of course?
Wise?
Because that's a really really good second half of the year.
I never dreamt of hearing the words really good, let alone really really good come from the mouth of Dylan Elliott. What was going on? And on top of that, it's not just Dylan who's been feeling better.
It's on some quite good shape at the moment. Like I mean, my brother Tim, he's accepted onto a PhD course and he's got funding for it. It's going fantastic.
This is Tim using the word fantastic.
I'm suddenly working for myself, meeting offs of new interesting people, having a really lovely time.
Is there a moment where you feel like things started to turn?
I think probably beginning a still year in September, so.
Like in the fall. Yeah, this is a different you know, a different Tim from when I spoke to you last Yes. Yes, no muggings in the past year, zero zero muggings. That's a net positive. How are things for Rory?
Oh, Rory's having a great time.
He just sent me a picture He's made.
Friends with a donkey. I think it is.
It's very small.
So what what?
What?
What? What does that mean?
When you just it's certainly a picture of.
Him and his friend, who is a donkey.
I guess.
Okay, where where is Rory?
I've moved to the West of Ireland. I'm really happy.
This is Rory living here with my partner, the donkey, injury free. What about the mouth ulcers? Have they cleared up?
I don't have any any of them.
Incredible For months, and perhaps most importantly and to my mind, most insanely.
My ability to grow cabbages as really improved. Like this season, my cabbages have been amazing.
And as a victory, lap Rory made wine from cabbages.
Mean it tastes like really strongly alcoholic fermented cabbage juice.
That's fair City.
When I just looked up cabbage wine, it seems as though like one makes it with sixty percent cabbages and forty percent grapes.
I'm filled cabbage.
You're going one hundred percent cabbage.
I'm fill cabbage.
Dylan sounds like a new man. Tim's doing his PhD. Rory's dating a donkey. Even the Reaver Pub in Carlisle that closed down just this year it reopened. What has changed? Was it merely my trying to get the curse lifted that perhaps weakened. It is lifting a curse like attempting to open a pickle jar when it's just so impossible that you give up and accept that you're never going to eat pickles ever again. But then someone comes along and pops it open. No problem because of all your
hard work. Had I loosen the pickle jar? I returned to the Elliott Clan Society web page to reread the curse for clues. Maybe while high stepping around like a jackass, I'd inadvertently, Crane kicked some satanic goblin in the privates, knocking him into a key structural beam of the Curse's complex architecture. But when I get to the Curse's website, I'm shocked by what I find, because what I find is nothing. In big block letters across the screen, it
reads error four O four page not found. The curse has been removed.
Hello.
Hello, is this miss Elliott.
This is Marlbur's idiot speaking here.
And so I phone Margaret Elliott, chief of the Elliott Clan Society slash web page. Oh hello, this is Jonathan Goldstein calling. I don't know if you remember me, the American podcaster.
Yes, yes, I remember.
Hi.
I'm sorry to bother you. Might you just have a couple of minutes to speak? I just had a I mean.
Yes, I've got I'm not terribly keen on talking about this curse anymore.
I long for the olden days when Margaret was terribly keen on talking about this curse.
Perfect well, I mean I could to get somebody on the phone.
My middle name is Stewart.
You've inspired me.
Now all I have is a dumb old montage. I've made enough calls to people desperate get off the phone with me to know that I only have a few minutes before Margaret hangs up. So I launched right into my question why was the curse taken down from the Elliot Clan website?
I asked for it to be taken down.
Uh, just had a pure curiosity. Was it taken down because of me?
Yes?
I think you probably triggered something and maybe think all the more deeply a budget and that I wanted to anyway, So yes, it was you, awfulled.
It wasn't my ability to procure a papal blessing, archbishop's recantation or priestly exorcism that in the end got rid of the curse. It was simply my ability to be annoying. I annoyed that curse right out of existence on the internet.
It was all due to you.
You mean, knew take responsibility, I mean not to not to you know, take all the credit.
But yeah, yeah, did take all the credit.
Why since the Elliot brother's luck began improving in the fall, I run my donning theory about why by Margaret, I wonder, well, this might seem silly to you, but might it correspond to the fact that the curse was taken off the website.
I wouldn't think so.
No, but the intersection of the Elliot brothers change in luck and the change in the web page is just too tantalizing for me to let go of. So I can't help but continue to toe dance on Margaret's last remaining nerve. Do you remember the day that it was removed? No?
I did, Like I remember, do not put the two together.
Dylan Elliott's luck started to change around the end of last year. I think the fall going into winter was that I'm.
Not going to be sucked to this. I just absolutely think it's entirely relevant.
But was that that wasn't around the generally the.
Okay, when I hope this is all done and dusted now, yes, I think so good? Great, all right, have a nice day.
Okay, Yes, and tutelou, as they they.
Say, exactly, we say that all the time.
After speaking with Margaret, I searched the Internet archives and discover in fact that indeed the page of the curse was removed around the time of the Elliot's change in fortune. Okay, now I'm going to ask you to try to find that page about the Elliott curse. Together, Dylan and I turned to the page of the curse on the Elliott Clan website.
Gone, let me see.
What do you see?
I can't find that page.
That's right, you can't find it. It's been removed.
Why how comes lifted?
Lifted? Not from reality technically, but from the.
Internet twenty first century.
Can we just at this point safely say that the curse has been lifted?
I mean, yeah, actually definitely can. I think?
And when I ask Rory if he buys the whole internet exorsus my idea scientist that he is, he carefully analyzes the empirical evidence.
I mean, you know, it's definitely possible.
You know, in fact, it's probable.
In fact, I think it's definitely the case.
Next time I'm in Carlisle, I'd like to buy you a pint at the Reaver.
Pub, you know, yeah, I'd like to offer you a glasses champaign.
Plans with the girlfriend to go off to brying a camper van.
Very shortly, here's Dylan again, a camper van.
Yeah, we're going to take it in the road and kindick with traveling. It's just feeling the immense feeling of freedom. It's been kind of incredible.
Are the Elliott Boys better off for anything I did? Who knows? And frankly, at this point, they probably don't even care. When things are going well, we don't think too hard about the why of it. It's only when things are bad that we do. That's when we seek out therapists to analyze and exorcist to exercise. When things are going well, we just enjoy them for as long as they last, which usually isn't very long at all. But for now, there's breathing space. When is your girlfriend do over?
Oh?
Imminently?
Oh?
Okay, enjoy the rest of your day with your girlfriend.
Thanks a million, that's quickly, Okay.
Take it easy, Dylan, bye bye.
Now that the furnitures returning to its good will home, now that the last month's rent is skiming with the damaged, possible.
Take this moment to dissolve.
If we met him, if we tried, we felt around for five.
From the names at Accid and Leaves. This episode of Heavyweight was produced by supervising producer Stevie Lane and me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Mohemy mcgauker. Our senior producer is Khalila Holt. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Valentina Powers, Max Green, Domiano Marquetti, and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Michael Hurst, Sean Jacoby, Blue Dot Sessions, and he himself,
Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, Gimletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by the Weaker Than's courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight. This was the last episode of the season, but we're already looking for stories for next year. So if there's a moment from your past that you need help resolving, please send us an email at Heavyweight at gimlet media dot com. Have a happy and safe holiday season?
Uh?
Should I ask Aggie if he wants to come up here and wish everyone a happy holiday season?
Ai?
Do you want to be in the credits? Have a happy and safe holiday season, Ogi
And will see you next y