Ep.7 - A Not-So Minnesota Goodbye
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A luau party at The Thunderbird Motel unexpectedly becomes The Silver Chain’s last dance. Paul pieces together the story of what ultimately led to the cherished club’s demise.
Episode 7 Transcript
COLD OPEN
MALE READER: Dear Executive Committee, We just received your newsletter and do want to comment on the article that appeared in the Minneapolis Tribune. The article itself was well-done in an open-minded way. It was a shock to see such an article until we read it in its entirety, which brings me to the real reason I am writing.
It’s September 1977, and the members of The Silver Chain are nervous. About a cover story in September 16th’s Minneapolis Tribune titled: “Mate Swapping Clubs: Family that Plays Together…” written by staff writer Harley Swenson.
ANCHOR: You probably have seen them. They picnic at Minnehaha Park. They float on innertubes down the Apple River in Wisconsin. They sit around large tables in bars and restaurants throughout the Twin Cities, eating, drinking, talking and having a good time. They range in age mostly from the mid-20s to the late 40s. They hold all kinds of jobs. They live on farms, in quiet suburban neighborhoods or in midtown apartments. They look, talk and act like anyone else. But, in one respect, they are different. They are' Swingers." They swap mates. Or, as they prefer to say, they "share" their husbands, wives or lovers with other people, for sexual purposes.
The article cites multiple swing clubs in the Minneapolis area, ranging in names from Friends of the Flame and The Swing Set to the more straightforward cheeseburger of the group, Midwestern Swingers, and includes interviews with three swinging couples – who to protect their identities – go by the pseudonyms “Art and Alice,” “Bert and Betty” and “Carl and Cindy”.
Of the three couples, it’s “Carl and Cindy” – a couple in their 40s living in suburban St. Paul – who decline to name the club they belong to “because they often reserve facilities under the club’s name and fear problems if the name of the club becomes public knowledge.”
There’s that word again - facilities.
CLIP from Ep 3: “I must say they had very nice facilities.”
I’ll never know for sure. But could this Carl and Cindy ACTUALLY be Carol and George?
MALE READER: We were happy, relieved even, that the name of the club did not appear. We suffer from small-town-itis and deal constantly with the people in the post office and bank. Thanks for using good judgment. Those of us who must be ultra-discreet appreciate your thoughtfulness.
In the week following the article’s publication, The Minneapolis Tribune also receives their fair share of letters on the topic,
EXASPERATED FEMALE WRITER: If people wish to “tomcat,” why treat their actions as something to be given such ‘royal treatment?’ I know you won’t publish this, you would be ashamed to do so.
DISAPPOINTED MALE WRITER: Your article was too much for us. What do you think you get out of this trashy mess?
So Carl and Cindy’s instincts were correct in keeping the name of their club unpublished. And without The Silver Chain’s name listed in the paper, the club remains happily beneath the radar. For almost a decade.
Until November 1986.
Tom Brokaw (NBC News): And federal officials issued another AIDS warning today. They said that members of sexual swing clubs may be at higher risk of getting the disease. Apparently, there were bisexual members of these so-called swing clubs. The warning was issued after the AIDS virus was found in two women who belong to swing clubs in Minnesota. Officials found that members of the clubs were not aware that they could be in danger of coming down with AIDS. Both clubs now have been closed down.
I’m Paul Ditty, and this is Time Capsule: The Silver Chain.
ACT ONE
When I started looking into the past of The Silver Chain, I definitely did not expect to find myself digging up old clips of Tom Brokaw anchoring the NBC Evening News but here we are.
And while we’re here, let’s pause for just a second on the fact that we have an answer: after all of this questioning, all the red herrings – we are back where Jack El-Hai left it in his article. The Silver Chain ended due to AIDS. Just not as early or the way he suspected.
And now that we all know what shuddered The Silver Chain, let’s go back to how our beloved club got to this nationally televised moment.
Tammy: Do you go to the airport and your flight is late. or something? There's that one little person standing there that you yell at. That was me.
This is Tammy, who we met in our last episode. Just a quick reminder: Tammy and her husband Henry were one of the four executive couples who took over The Silver Chain in December 1983 when the remaining founding couples decided to step down.
When not raising her kids or partying like a rock star with her fellow swingers, Tammy also held down a full time job. As an often yelled at ticketing agent for Northwest Airlines.
Tammy: I don't know if you're aware, but the airline has a very, very, very big gay group. I mean, most people. Not most people, but a big percentage of the people that I worked with were gay.
Yeah
There was one guy in particular that he got AIDS and he kept coming to work. He wasn't admitting that that's what he had. And I mean he basically rotted away in front of our eyes. It was horrible.
And then I had another friend out there. He was gay. It's just like one of the funniest people I've ever known. I just love this guy. And he got it and died, like in a matter of just a few months.
Then when you started to learn that, you know, how you get it and that, you know, it wasn't just gay.
So everything Tammy is seeing at work weighs heavily on her when off the clock as well. She brings her concerns home to Henry, and the couple do what they feel is the most responsible thing to do as leaders of The SIlver Chain: they begin talking with other members about the threat of AIDS.
Henry: That was the time when I said, Oh, let's hold up here a little bit and rethink what we're doing here in all the time., I mean, as far as slowing things down and being a little more cautious and, you know, using condoms and that type of thing.
Tammy: Henry was emphatic that, you know, people had to be careful and that this was serious. And there were so many people that didn't… I don't know if they didn't want to know but they just, they refused to listen.
Henry: There were some people who just didn't think it was necessary and they thought they could just keep on going.
This is when Tammy and Henry realize they have to take more drastic measures.
Tammy: When we got in the club, we were told about the red door that you could go there anonymously and get tested for anything and all that. And so I think it was some kind of a partnership that they had established long before we came along.
So people could go in there and discretely be checked out for things. And so when the AIDS issue happened, Henry arranged for them to come, and we had a room off of the main room where the dance was at the Thunderbird. And they did HIV tests on people. I mean you didn't have to, but we highly recommended that. everybody do it because for safety reasons.
Henry: I think that the department called me. If I remember correctly.
Dr. Henry: The swingers became known to me because the nurses knew many of them quite well because they were frequent fliers in the STD clinic.
This is Dr. Keith Henry, who was 32 years old at the time and heading the St. Paul Health Department’s venereal disease clinic.
Dr. Keith is a young doctor, specializing in infectious disease, when he makes a pivotal career decision:
Dr. Henry: I told the person who is head of infectious disease that I wanted to focus exclusively on AIDS. And he and many others were not that interested in AIDS, frankly. It required getting emotionally involved with challenging patients who are likely to die. And so plans were made for me as a first year infectious disease fellow to start the first AIDS clinic in the state. So the hospital was quite worried about that. Having that publicly out there that their have an AIDS specialty clinic. So we called it the Immunodeficiency Clinic. It began late in my first year in 1985.
Dr. Henry: This is at a time when the Reagan administration was doing nothing about HIV aids by anybody's standards. And so and it just fit this is a gay disease. You know, it's for, you know, other people, the public's not at risk. You don't have to put a lot of money into this.
The public perception of AIDS as a gay disease was so prevalent at the time that until July 1982 it was referred to simply as GRID: Gay Related Infectious Disease.
Dr. Henry: HIV hadn't even been named yet. The virus had been identified, and so the transmission risks were somewhat well understood.
Back then, it was still a little primitive. And again, testing was a brand new thing, wasn't being used a lot
Learning how HIV is spread leads many in Dr. Keith’s field to raise concerns about the risk of contracting the disease in heterosexual populations. But just like the members of The Silver Chain, no one is listening.
Dr. Henry: They knew that people heterosexually were getting infected, but it wasn't sticking. I mean, there wasn't, you know, a lot there.
When Dr. Keith notes that several of the patients being tested at the STI clinic appear to be everyday professionals, it’s his nurses that inform him that many of these upright-appearing citizens belong to local swing clubs.
Dr. Henry: And I would go visit with them and talk to them about HIV AIDS risk, at which they had no knowledge that it total denial. And like I said, they even had their jargon,, anal sex was called Greek sex. And safe sex meant you couldn't get pregnant.
And by talking with them about the type of activity which included anal sex and obviously bisexuals were in the mix, they often would say that they could recognize somebody if they were of that type. I mean, you know, totally meaningless interpretation of risk. So that's how we cooked up the plan to go and test some of them at one of their social gatherings on a Saturday.
Henry also agrees to give Dr. Keith time prior to the dance to do a presentation on how HIV/AIDS is spread. So Dr. Keith and his nurses pick up shop and head to The Thunderbird Motel.
Dr. Henry: The marquee outside the hotel that they were staying at actually had welcome blah, blah, blah on the marquee.
You heard that correctly. The Silver Chain’s monthly dance is featured on the Thunderbird’s marquee, in plain sight to all motorists traveling the 494 freeway.
Dr. Henry:They just knew them as good customers who spent a lot of money or rented out the party rooms and you know, added a fun festive air to the hotel. So that's pretty striking if you think of the whole the whole thing.
Some came up to me and, you know, I'm a dentist, I'm a judge. And then again, one of them actually said, don't be offended if people hit on you and told that to the nurses as well. That's just what we do. That's not my usual conversation anywhere. You know, so it was like a different set of rules, was operating in a different universe a little bit way outside my my element, to say the least.
I was wearing a blue blazer. That's that classic issue with a tie and slacks. And you walk in and everybody in the club was wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis and was already. Tipped kept partly tipsy. I'm not a big drinker or anything like that. So this is a party atmosphere. So when they had to have me speak to them, you know, everybody calm down. You're going to hear a lecture. This is already, you know, out of their element, too.
About half of the partygoers attend Dr. Keith’s presentation. Swingers dressed for what sounds like a Luau-themed night, watching Dr. Keith’s dry slide show on the transmission of sexual disease?
Dr. Henry: I had a handful of people that after I spoke, came up and said that they feel like just some people in the group that males that had some of those symptoms and characteristics. And so there was a subset that were plainly worried, and they hadn't been worried before, but they were worried after my talk. So my antenna went up that indeed, there's people who are in that room that were at risk for having HIV.
Dr. Keith and his nurses set up a testing area behind a screen just within view of the beer kegs. According to the book “Burning Desires: Sex in America” by Steve Chapple and David Talbot, fifty one of The Silver Chain’s members line up to have their blood drawn, where at one point a man who’s described as a “Rodney Dangerfield-type partygoer” tells Dr. Keith to “have a beer” and not to mind everyone looking at him like he’s a “piece of meat.”
Tammy: They administer these tests. And then couple of weeks later or a week later, they got the results and they didn't tell us who it was. But there was someone that was positive.
And it was, it was just sad. It was really sad.
ACT TWO
Tammy: I always thought that I know, knew who it was that tested positive and I think I was right. This is that person did later die. But it was a relatively new couple and the last couple of you would have expected they were very young and they were very active. So, yeah, a lot of people would have got it.
They were new and they were from some small town. Far, like three hour drive. And I met them at a party. And I was almost with this guy. That's the weird part. He was young. He was charming. And they were real bubbly and fun and I don't know why I didn't end up going with this guy, but I didn't. Thank God. Because I think that was the couple.
Next, Dr. Keith gives the same presentation and tests the members of another swing club, Sugar and Spice, where one of their members also tests positive. One other thing these members have in common - both of the positive cases are women.
Dr. Henry: The positive results, you know, drew their attention, you know, immediately, because as it's been said, there were essentially no women at the time, even with the blood donors being tested that had been positive yet in the state of Minnesota.
When delving into the sexual history of both women, Dr. Keith finds that they shared multiple sexual partners, including some men who were known to be bisexual.
Dr. Henry: One of the sexual partners, you know, who had some of those ARC symptoms traveled around the world and ultimately surfaced. You know, at another institution. At one of my colleagues and so I know that, you know, wound up being diagnosed years later with HIV and AIDS.
And that’s it.
The Silver Chain members find out that a woman has tested positive for HIV/AIDS in their club. So it’s time to either turn to safer practices or end the sexual element of the club altogether… right?
Tammy: Another couple that were in the club. Bonnie and. Terry. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. They were big in the club. Terry. Even though he was in the club with Bonnie. He cheated on her, you know, behind her back, he, and behind her back, he was seeing this girl that I think was one of the positive people. And. Even after he knew there was suspicion that she was the person. And Bonnie divorced him over it. Because she was so angry about the AIDS and that he would, you know, subject her to that and. She divorced him.
I remember we went to a party. And. They were still swinging at this party. And I remember one girl said, I don't know why, but I'm just not afraid of it. I don't think I'll ever get it. And we were kind of almost like not wanted and because we were reminding people that this is a very real thing and that people could die. And there was you know, a mindset among some people. They didn't believe it. So we were not popular then.
Henry: I was getting a negative feedback on, I said, that's enough in all because you're not smart enough to look at the warning signs. You know, I don't need to be here.
Tammy: We were almost, like physically thrown out of a party for bringing up such an awful thing.
I never went to another party again after that.
Dr. Henry: These are intelligent people. And they didn't want to be seen as sanctioning, you know, more risk behavior.
MUSIC
MAN’S VOICE: July 22, 1986. Dear Members and Friends, We on the Management Committee have been deeply concerned that there are some members of our club who still do not understand the seriousness of the situation and are continuing to swing without taking any safe precautions.
With Dr. Keith’s help, Henry writes a letter, and sends a copy to every one of The Silver Chain’s members.
MAN’S VOICE: We have been faced with some difficult decisions in the past several weeks. We are canceling the annual summer campout and suspending all further club activities. We have disconnected the club telephone and closed the club mailbox. We have made these decisions after much deliberation, and truly believe they are for the best interest and protection of all our members and friends.
Tammy: Even today, I wouldn't do any I wouldn't do that any different. I would, I'd still do the same thing. I mean, you just couldn't know then. And it wasn't worth it.
Dr. Henry: I'm not trying to spoil people's fun. I'm trying to protect people's health and have them aware and they can make their informed choices.
As The Silver Chain folds in July, Dr. Keith is ready to release his results to the public. He submits an article to a weekly journal distributed by the CDC.
Dr. Henry: Once they had the article, there was negotiations about wording and editing. And then it actually, I recall, got kicked up to the secretary of state and the Reagan administration got involved. We initially, if I recall, had the swingers clubs in the title and that oddly worded heterosexual social sexual clubs that came from trying to tone down and get through a political filter at the time.
While Dr. Keith’s article is harbored by political red tape, he sets out to get ahead of the article’s release by extending outreach to the swinging community on a national level, thanks in part to his interviews with The Silver Chain’s members.
Dr. Henry: They had alerted me to the fact that there was a national meeting of the National Association of America, NASSCOM, in Las Vegas…
We didn't want them to be broadsided by this report and the media coverage would likely occur. So we thought it was both for information purposes, for public safety and awareness, but also a sense as a courtesy, as a heads up. This is happening and all the clubs are going to have to be reacting to this in their own way. But, you know, this is what's happened in Minnesota and the Twin Cities.
MUSIC (TRANSITION)
Paul: Do you recall anything shifting within your organization as a result of AIDS or HIV?
Bob: I can't pin down. A particular item, but. As I said, our world is not the same.
Geri : People just. Didn't do anything anymore.
That’s Dr. Robert McGinley and his ex-wife Geri, who I interviewed and inquired about the impact of AIDS on swinging, well before learning about Dr. Keith. So imagine my surprise when I learn that these two men crossed paths at Bob and Geri’s 12th Annual Lifestyles Convention, held at the Hacienda Resort and Casino in August 1986.
According to the book “Burning Desires”, Dr. Keith first connects with Dr. Bob over the phone, where Dr. Bob explodes, telling Dr. Keith that there’s no way this Midwestern clap doctor is going to come to Las Vegas event and ruin everyone’s fun. But finally, Dr. Bob relents, agreeing to let Dr. Keith give a presentation to a luncheon meeting of swing club presidents hailing from all around the country.
Dr. Henry: I think it was, you know, not an unwise PR move, you know, to let people know about us so they can. Prepare for a media onslaught if it happens.
Dr. Bob refuses to let Dr. Keith set up a blood testing booth at the convention because hello buzzkill. But he does gladly take Dr. Keith’s money for an exhibit table to display pamphlets warning about the risks swingers face in contracting AIDS.
Dr. Henry: It was a room that had all these sex oriented booths, I mean, chocolate dildos, vaginas, every kind of vibrator dildo, device cruises, you know, sex, social club cruises and, you know, all sorts of lingerie and you name it, lips, masks. And then there's my card table and me wearing a blue blazer.
Let’s just say that Dr. Keith’s black and white handout, loaded with words like “infection” and “body fluids” – it doesn’t draw the same audience as the porn stars and sex gadgets he’s competing with. But finally, Dr. Ketih has his moment in the spotlight. At the club presidents’ luncheon.
Dr. Henry: There's 150 presidents of swing clubs there and I'm near the front
Mr. McGinley, you know, briefly introduced me and I gave him maybe just a five minute summary of risk.
He did let me speak. It wasn't for a long time. I didn't have slides, but answered a few questions. And then end of the day, I folded up the card table and flew back to Saint, you know, Minneapolis, Saint Paul.
I give him credit for the opportunity to speak.
I saw him on some TV interviews and other interviews here and there where he felt that he would he said that I was an opportunist, you know, seeking publicity and that the risk were overblown.
To be more specific, McGinley claimed that Dr. Keith’s work was rooted in his “flaming ambition” and that his pending article was simply a way for the young doctor to get his name in print. According to McGinely , Dr. Keith’s desire for recognition was the real cause in the destruction of two harmless swing clubs.
But by the time Dr. Keith’s article is finally approved for November release – that’s over five months since the positive test results – the impact of his words is unavoidable.
Dan Rather (CBS News): Meanwhile, the National Centers for Disease Control warned members of some 100 so-called swing clubs across the country that sexual promiscuity increases the risk of AIDS. That warning followed a report that two sexually active women in Minnesota swing clubs tested positive for antibodies to the AIDS virus.
Dr. Henry: Dan Rather broke the embargo the night before the article was officially published on the CBS Evening News. Which really blew it up. And there was there was an article in the local newspapers that was in the Wall Street Journal, I believe, and maybe The New York Times. And again, it got lots of attention because of that kind of the stereotype shattering aspects of the story.
Within a year, swing club leaders estimate that attendance is down 50% at their parties. In some swing houses, bowls of condoms are set out on the customary snack table. And even Dr. Bob holds The Lifestyle Convention’s first ever open session on AIDS, where one physician on the panel declares: “There’s nothing that’s completely safe. If you want to live in a risk-free world, don’t ever get in your car, damn well don’t smoke cigarettes, don’t walk down stairs, don’t ever get off your chair.”
You can put any spin you want on this. But the writing is on the wall: swinging, as we know it, is over.
ACT THREE
Tammy: So then when the club folded,
It was hard. It was really hard because we went from this constant social life to all of a sudden we were like normal married people and like I remember the first New Year's Eve. Oh, my God. It was us and I think Rich and Sharon. It was just quiet. New Year's Eve, and we knew there was this huge party going on. But we didn't go.
Imagine being Tammy and Henry – who went from heading this group of friends and having the time of their lives to being outcasts, practically overnight. The way that they’re treated is jarring and, let’s be honest, not very Minnesotan. There’s zero passiveness in the aggression this couple is feeling from their former friends.
Tammy: Everything happened at once. I mean, that happened. And it was like all these activities that we had been in. Every day, every day, every day. Boom! They're gone. They're dead. Everybody's mad at us. And then he smashed up my car.
Henry: I just remember there was something that had something to do with the car. And I'll be damned if I can remember what it is.
It wasn't like I smashed her car up. She had a nice car. I'm nice. El Camino.
Tammy: Smashing up. My Trans-Am was like the last straw. So to this day, I still don't think he understands. He tells people that I divorced him over a car. It was much more than a car.
Henry: [01:20:48] Women have a better memory. They don't forget anything.[01:20:50][2.3]
Tammy: I always wanted a nice car. So when I got that car, I said, could this just be mine because he was awful – still is – on vehicles. I mean, he just trashes them in in a minute. He just couldn't let it be.
He just couldn't let it be. He had to drive it. And he. He hit a kid on a bike. The kid went up onto the hood and it put holes in the hood of the car and smashed up the front end.
Luckily, the kid was fine.
But it was like my life passed before me that day. When that happened, I thought: ‘He has no license. It's your car. You could go to prison’ and there'd been so much stuff like that.
I walked in the front door. He came in the side door and I looked at him and I said, I want you out of my life. You're not a husband. You're a fucking liability. And that was the end of our second marriage. Well, that was it. We were done. I just. I loved him, but I could not handle any more of the legal implications that came with being married to him. He had liens against him. He always drove without a license, never had insurance. He lives like other people could never get away with. He does. I can't live that way.
So then I took the Trans-Am over to this person's dealership and bought an IROQ-Z. And I got personalized plates that said: ‘Mi ne.’
I probably could not have succeeded in just a normal marriage. Just him and me. I mean, we still could be really good friends, but I mean, it's because we have fun together. You know, we have stuff in common. But no, we wouldn't have been enough for each other. Just. Yeah, but the club made it work and made it really good. Yeah. I never thought about that before, but. Yeah. Because we were married the second time. We were married about six. years, I think. And it was really good. Up until the very end.
Ok. The Silver Chain is over, and so is Tammy and Henry’s second marriage. And the car of course. So I’m sure you’re ready to check in with me and say “Paul, how are you doing with all this?” Which I really appreciate. I feel like I have closure about this question that’s been eluding me for so long: I know when and how this beloved club ended. But I’m also completely miserable because I now know when it ended and the horrible circumstances that caused it.
Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to move beyond this story. Almost two years of conversations with total strangers, whose lives now inhabit my brain. People I reach out to periodically to check in and update them on the progress of this podcast.
Paul: Hi, Pam.
Pam: Yeah, Nice to meet you, too. I have us outside, but meanwhile, go inside. But.
Nora: Five is a different story. Than four.
Paul: Oh.
At some point we won’t have anything to talk about. I won’t really have a reason to call them nor them me.
And in that respect, I feel like I can at least kind of identify with Tammy at the moment her social life and marriage ended so abruptly. I have to wonder, as the years passed, was she able to salvage any of the bonds she had in the club.
Tammy: I have very, very fond memories of Rich, especially Rich.
Paul: And have you talked to Rich?
Tammy: No. The last time I saw Rich or talked to him, him and Sharon had split up.
And I think it was like the week the Mall of America opened. He called me and asked me if I'd like to go look at it with them. And I said, okay and that was the first I'd seen him in years. And we went to the Mall of America but it was just kind of weird. We went and got a pizza, and then I never saw him again and never heard from him again.
Three decades after The Mall of America’s opening week, I tried contacting Rich for an interview. He admitted to being in The Silver Chain, laughed and said he had some good times, then said he had to go, started his lawn mower while I was speaking and hung up.
Despite things not clicking with Rich, Tammy does eventually remarry. To someone who is Henry’s total opposite. A man who goes to bed at nine, is clean cut, responsible, and has money in the bank. Is the fifth time the charm?
Tammy: I'm more content now. To be by myself. I entertained myself much better. In the eighties, I had to be on the go. Every minute of every day. Just go, go, go, go, go, go. Party, party. Party, party.
I think when you get older, you. You need security. Stability and so you’ll settle to have that. So I have that now. But I don't have any fun anymore. Yeah, it's just very routine. Everything is there. I know what every day is going to be like. I don't like that.
In my next life, I'm not going to get married ever. Because I find it to be an unnatural. It's unnatural. If God wanted us to be married, he would have made a Siamese twins. He didn't. He made a separate. You know. I don't care who you are. You can't just be. Rely on one person for everything. It's too much strain on that person. And it's unrealistic on your part. It's just. So I don't think I was cut out for marriage.
Fortunately for Tammy, she does have at least one friendship that keeps her life varied, fun, and unpredictable.
Henry: Two marriages, and we're still the best of friends. How did and I'm sure if you asked her and if you ask her this, you probably tell you the same thing. I'm her best friend.
Tammy: I never was able to break away from him ever. Because he fascinated me. He always fascinated me. He was just free and fun. And the marriages were a catastrophe. But the funnest time I ever had in my life. You know, just to this day, he's my very, very, very best friend. And that's sad because I'm married to somebody else, but.
We're like soulmates forever.
MUSIC
I’m Paul Ditty and this is Time Capsule: The Silver Chain.
Time Capsule is hosted and written by me, Paul Ditty
AND is a production of Diversity Hire Ltd and CYSA Productions, in collaboration with Feelings & Co.
Our Executive Producers are Jennifer Goyne Blake, April Shih and Jack Huston.
Our Producers are Marcel Malekebu and Nora Mcinerny
Jordan Turgeon and Eli Makovetsky are our co-producers AND
Our Engineer is Eric Romani
Time Capsule Theme Music is composed by Louis Stephens
Want to read the letter that ended The Silver Chain? Visit us at timecapsule.substack.com for newsletter excerpts, listener discussions, bonus episodes and more.
We used several sources in our reporting, including the book “Burning Desires: Sex in America” by Steve Chapple and David Talbot as well as Dr. Keith Henry’s professional files from the 1980s.
This show is inspired by a GQ article titled “The 70s Swingers Club and the Secret Archive it Left Behind” from writer Jack El-Hai.
Special thanks to Lori Williamson and The Minnesota HIstorical Society for access to The Silver Chain’s newsletters, and the Vanderbilt Television News Archive for broadcast clips from 1986.
Segments from this episode were recorded at Podcast Place Studio in Long Beach, California.
Next Time on Time Capsule: The Silver Chain:
Paul Ditty (Lori W): From the records that you have, is there a way to. Identify who owned the safe deposit box.
Lori Williamson: Um. Let me see here. Yes.
