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There's a vile sickness in Abbas town.

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Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky,

this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jules State and Ray Wise.

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Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of IHeartRadio.

Hey, Brainstuff, Lauren Wogelbaum here.

According to legend, the 12th century priest, St. Anthony, was once approached by a distraught

woman whose jealous husband was convinced that their newborn baby wasn't his, and had threatened

to kill them both. When Anthony visited the family, he turned to the infant and said,

tell me, child, who is your father? Miraculously, the baby pointed toward the jealous husband,

calmly replied, that is my father, and they all lived happily ever after.

So, yes, questions and drama about paternity go a long way back before daytime talk shows like

Mori. Though, as far as we know, St. Anthony never sold mugs or t-shirts emblazoned with a

catchphrase, you are not the father.

Until the advent of accurate DNA testing in the 1980s, there was no way to be 100% certain

of who a child's biological father was. But that didn't stop people from trying.

19th and 20th century scientists and pseudoscientists were obsessed with unlocking

the mystery of paternity and tried just about everything to discover the holy grail of heredity.

Meanwhile, newspapers fueled the paternity test frenzy by closely covering sorted stories of cuckolded husbands,

...