Time Capsule: The Silver Chain - Episode 1: The Silver Chain
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Hi there. It's Nora McInerney. What you are about to hear is the first episode from a new show that we've been working on. It's called Time Capsule. The first season is about the Silver Chain. This is a secret swingers group that existed in 1970s suburban Minnesota. We are sharing this with you like we shared the trailer because we've been working on this since

A quick warning. This episode contains material not suitable for children. ♪

When I was a kid growing up in northern Minnesota, I decided to start my very own detective agency. There were just a few obstacles. We lived in the woods, 10 miles from the nearest town. Also, I made this decision in the dead of winter.

And my neighbors, many who lived miles away, they were A, annoyed by my unannounced house calls, and B, let's just say unamused by the big announcement that I, a nine-year-old, was available for hire. But that didn't stop my pitch. Missing valuable family jewels? Searching for a long-lost spinster aunt? I'm your guy. And gradually, after more than a few slam doors...

I realized that the people who live in the woods reside there for a reason. They want to be left alone. And after all that literal legwork and frostbite, I had zero clients. Little did I know, decades later, I'd have another shot at my dream. In the early 1990s, a safe deposit box at First Bloomington Lake National Bank in Minneapolis went unclaimed.

For months, the rent had not been paid, and per the bank's policy, the contents would be sent to the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Inside this slim metal box in a nondescript bank, the employees found something that definitely caught their attention. I'm Paul Diddy, and this is Time Capsule, The Silver Chain. This story begins with a text message from my friend, April Shi. ♪

Have you heard of the Silver Chain Social Club? April's a writer for TV and film and co-founder of her own production company, Diversity Hire Limited. We've been friends for 10 years and even formed our own writers group because, well, I'm also a TV writer. I have not. Immediately after my reply, April sends me a link to a 2017 GQ article about the Silver Chain Social Club.

titled The 70s Swingers Club and the Secret Archive It Left Behind. In the early 70s, four satiated but dissatisfied couples on their way home to Minnesota from a social event in a distant state reignited a conversation they'd been having about their gripe. Having to pack up and travel to meet like-minded people was a big bother.

Surely there was a way to meet more people like them close to home, other swingers. So they made a plan. If they combined efforts, they thought, they could start their own swingers club and create a scene right in their own town. They could swing more often and with more people. These couples called themselves the Executive Committee of their new outfit.

The article, written and read here by Minnesota journalist Jack Elhi, pieces together a story from a collection of 18 of the Silver Chain's newsletters, dating from October 1976 to June 1978. Newsletters that found their way from a safe deposit box to the Minnesota Department of Commerce, and then finally becoming a part of the collections at the Minnesota Historical Society Library.

In the article, Jack Elhye shares what he knows about the Silver Chain. It was a couples-only swing club that held the majority of their monthly dances at the faux-Indian-themed Thunderbird Motel in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington. New members were allowed in by referral only, and club-sponsored events like dances, picnics, and sports leagues were for socializing only, as in no sex.

That's right, the members were left responsible for partner swapping and sex on their own time. And then there's the name the silver chain itself, which originated from the idea that members could identify one another by wearing a silver chain with a distinctive round pendant containing the number 77. The meaning behind the number 77?

As one clubgoer explains, it's like 69, only you get eight more. As in A-T-E more. I know. Try forgetting that one. But within the article, Elhai also shares what he doesn't know. Was the final newsletter an indication of the club's demise? Who was it that placed these newsletters in a safe deposit box only to abandon them?

And when, why, and even if the club ended at all? Finding the answers to these questions is especially challenging for Elhai because in the Silver Chain's effort to preserve anonymity, members are identified both in the newsletter and at the monthly dances by first name and last name initial only. As I read Jack Elhai's article, my world completely stops.

April, she totally knows me. This article checks all the boxes. My home state, the 1970s, my favorite decade, and most of all, the real-life mystery within those newsletters. The idea of a swing club holding monthly events out in the open in the conservative suburbs of Minneapolis sounds so preposterous that I'm instantly hooked.

April tells me she has plans to partner with actor-producer Jack Houston and develop the article into a TV series. But the best part of all is that she wants me on board. So over the next couple of weeks, we work on a pitch and then set up a meeting with Jack Houston to discuss. Well, everyone's here. This is so exciting. I know, finally. This is so great. Hi, Jack. Paul. Nice to finally meet you. Oh, it's so good to meet you, too. Well, I've heard a lot about you.

Yeah, well, obviously, I'm just really honored that you both shared this with me. And I'm just really curious, like, how did you come across this article? I always have an eye out for things just sort of, you know, being in the business as sort of actor, writer, director, that kind of thing. So I love to read everything from all sort of walks of life. But I just was fascinated at this article.

about Minnesota back in the 70s. I agree, too. It's like, I'm very fascinated by it because I feel like for suburban, you know, Minnesota life, this is such a progressive stance. But then you realize that they were young. They were exactly like us and they were young

excited and wanted to explore and do fun things. So I think with something like this, it opens up such a new understanding of who our grandparents and parents really were. Yeah, I love how it's both sexy and unsexy at the same time. And I think we each walk away with an idea of what swinging is. Yeah.

I feel like what we're missing is we don't really, like we can glean things from the newsletters and from like what we understand the swinging lifestyle to be, but we don't really know what it was like. All we have to go by is like our preconceived notions of what swinging is. And my preconceived notion of swinging is it must be incredibly messy. I don't know why.

To myself, I'm like, you think of these rather prim and proper and, you know, like the ideals of the day, but like it's, there's something rather messy about it. I think I wish I was the type of person that could like,

participate in something like this but I'm way too prudish and like feel like I would get jealous like I wish I was the type of person that was more progressive you know what I mean I'm trying to imagine like first of all how did they have time to do all of this fucking like who has time yeah I barely even have time to like yeah

Get coffee in the morning. Yeah, by the way, I think that's brilliant. Just that question. How did they have time to do all this? And they have kids. They have children, these people. I know. I can't even keep a plant alive and I don't have sex. So how did you do it?

Part of our collective curiosity during this call is that in recent years, phrases like open relationship, polyamory, and ethical non-monogamy have gradually woven their way into the conversation. In our recent survey, we actually found that 52% of Americans, a majority, said they tried something new in the bedroom during the pandemic. I am looking for Saturday night orgies and white picket fences. Like...

How we define ethical non-monogamy for us is that we are romantically monogamous and sexually non-monogamous.

You look at the calendar, like, oh, tomorrow so-and-so is coming over and Bridget is hosting. That means that I need to find something to do. This is far more than just about sex or just about casual sex. These are people who are actually committed. They've agreed that they will have multiple partners. And I know it sounds like a lot from the outside looking in, but at the end of the day, ethical non-monogamy is what makes us happy. So does swinging as we know it even exist today?

Or has it gone the way of the rotary dial phone or the VHS tape? Something so archaic that we find it entertaining yet somehow inaccessible. Kind of like that key party scene in Ang Lee's film, The Ice Storm. Oh, my own husband. Isn't that against the rules? Try again. No. No, no, no, thanks. That's fine. Or those late night ads I used to see on cable TV.

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Dan and Lacey, aka Northern Guy and Southern Girl, are the married hosts of the Swing Nation podcast and are two of the most prominent voices in the swinging community today. I found this community of people that kind of looked at life and sex and relationships in a slightly different manner. And I was like, that's really cool that couples can be open with each other and can kind of explore sexuality together and experiment together. I'm like, that's a really cool thing.

I started doing research into the lifestyle. Like, what is this? I started listening to podcasts and Googling and found SLS, which is swinglifestyle.com, which is one of the biggest platforms and made a profile. And the next thing I know, I had couples messaging me. Okay. Lacey gets buried in messages because she's a unicorn. That's swing code for a single female swinger.

Was it overwhelming to be a unicorn? Very much so. I mean, truthfully, the options were endless. I could just open my inbox at any random time and just scroll down and pick one. You know, I mean, if you're a single female in the lifestyle, people just flock to you. And Dan, being a single male, is a bull.

I went out and met a bunch of couples as a single man, which was, you know, coming out of a long-term monogamous relationship was an interesting way to explore my sexuality and to have some experiences. And for me, it was very positive. And then I met this one. Dan is on a work trip in Lacey's hometown when she first messages him. And they hit it off.

From that point on, they meet up every time he's in town. And it's kind of perfect. It's just such a refreshing, I think, change of pace for me. It's very rewarding. You know, you just feel like you're not weird, you're not strange. You know, you feel like you fit in and that it's more normal than what you think. And with that comes an exploration of how to navigate their sexually adventurous sides with a growing emotional bond.

We were like, oh, we're both swingers and we've been having sex with all these other couples and stuff. We're just going to be in an open relationship. We're going to have no rules and no boundaries. You do what you want to do. I'll do what we want to do. Then when we're together, we'll be together. It's all going to be great. It was terrible. That was a nightmare. You know what I mean? It was just...

It just was crazy. We had to deal with jealousy. We had to deal with insecurities. We fought and bickered. I think we knew we couldn't be monogamous, but we weren't sure how to manage this non-monogamy and where the rules were and where the lines were and where the boundaries were. Wow. So an open relationship is not the same thing as swinging. This is total news to me.

Up until this point, I considered open relationships, polyamory, and ethical non-monogamy the same thing as swinging. But the difference with swinging is that the couple is on this journey together. And this ultimately is what works for Dan and Lacey. In fact, they only play with others when both of them are in the same room.

In talking with Dan and Lacey, I find out they host swingers weekends all around the country and even publish a magazine about the lifestyle, which is how this community refers to their way of life, the lifestyle. And the lifestyle is now Dan and Lacey's full-time job, which gets me thinking even more about their predecessors, who are now

Like, how does Dan and Lacey's experience compare to what it was like to be one of the four founding couples organizing the Silver Chain? I mean, if you think about it, their newsletter was, in a way, the 1970s version of a podcast. The early 70s were free love, suburban suffocation, and feminism on the rise. All over America, people were reexamining relationships and marriage.

Swinging might have spun out of the organized partner swapping of U.S. military pilots who flew in World War II and the Korean conflict. It blossomed during the decade, along with communal living, gay liberation, and extra-legal domestic partnerships, all attempts to break the numbing shackles of buttoned-down lifestyles. That's Jack Elhigh, once again reading from his GQ article about the silver chain.

In the mid-1990s, Jack was working on a book titled "Minnesota Collects," detailing the Minnesota Historical Society's vast collection, when he asked one of the curators a question. What are some of the most interesting things you know of in your collections and maybe things that aren't accessed as much as they should be? And this reference librarian immediately mentioned the club's records.

What did you think when you first saw the newsletters? It's a feeling I've had when I come across something and it's like an egg cracks open and I see a yolk that is of a different color than I've ever seen a yolk before. But it's mainly a feeling of, oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? ♪

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What Jack gets himself into takes 20 years to get out of his head and onto the page for GQ. He'd go back to the newsletters from time to time, looking at the pixelated black and white photos of the club's members, wondering, who are these people? Why did they join the group? And what is the real story here?

Were you able to contact anyone that was in the group? I can't remember if you were able to or not. The only one I tried to reach was the treasurer because her name was given in full in some of the newsletters and hers was the only one. And I tracked her down to the senior residence where she was living. I called there, asked for her.

She was put in touch with her daughter who said that she was not in condition to speak. Yeah. Did you tell her that it was because of the silver chain? Yes. I know I mentioned to her the name, Silver Chain, but I didn't say Swingers Club. And I noticed when I was talking to her on the phone that she didn't flinch or even ask, what's the silver chain? Mm-hmm.

But I didn't take it any further with her then. Yeah. After we hang up, Jack sends me a PDF of the newsletters, ranging in date from October 1976 to June 1978, along with a copy of the group's bylaws. And these newsletters? They're like a total time capsule, giving me this glimpse into a world I'd never know anything about without their existence.

On the surface, they look like they could be any community newsletter. There's this heartfelt, ingrained earnestness that prevails, despite the club's after-hours practices. There are surveys, dance announcements, oh, and a recurring feature on the Silver Chain's Personality of the Month, which is always a woman who is typically gorgeous and, most importantly, never misses a dance.

There's also tons of admin, like tersely delivered details on why it takes so dang long to get your membership card, and a somewhat desperate article titled, Do You Really Want or Read Your Newsletter? And my answer to that question is a resounding hell yes. But somehow, having all these copies of the newsletters, it does very little to quell my curiosity. In fact,

It completely tips the scales. I've officially become a silver chain fanatic. The more I read the newsletters, the more questions I have. Like, what did people want from this group? Aside from the obvious, are the newsletters even an accurate representation of what it was like to be in the silver chain? And Jack's question, when did the silver chain end?

Was it in June 1978, the date of the last newsletter on record? And why did it end? These are questions that reveal the newsletter's limitations, or maybe the limitations of any time capsule. Without context, these are just artifacts. And the only way that I can answer these questions is to do the impossible. 50 years after the club's inception,

I have to track down the Silver Chains members. The one thing I forgot to mention about that Zoom development call with April and Jack and about TV development in general is that you never really know how everything will work out. You pitch projects that never see the light of a television screen and often toil over scripts that end up in your trash can or on a pretty bookshelf.

But once I decide to locate the Silver Chains members, that uncertainty morphs into determination. I mean, there has to be a story here that goes beyond anything I can dream up, right? And April? She agrees. We have lunch and think, what if this project is a podcast? So, I start recording everything. And I pick up where Jack L. High left off. Just a couple issues.

First, the group, as we know, was anonymous. The newsletters only identify members by first name and last initial. Secondly, five years after his article's publication, these people are not getting any younger. They have to be in their 70s, 80s, 90s, maybe even pushing 100, if still alive. And a lot of them aren't. That treasurer that Jack L. High mentioned is

the one who wasn't in a condition to speak in 2017, she's dead. But she does have a Facebook account with 33 friends. For someone who headed a social club of over 100 couples, this friend count is a bit underwhelming. Nonetheless, I get to work. Actually, before I get started, one quick note.

As the newest self-appointed honorary member of the Silver Chain, I'll be sticking to their code of ethics for the duration of this series. Members will be identified by first name only, and in some cases, I'll use an alias if requested. Okay, back to it. I cross-referenced the names of the treasurer's Facebook friends with the names from the newsletters on the off chance these relationships survived the past 50 years.

I just started making a list. Like I would section each one off by the couple's name. And then when I found something, I would like paste it there. I had like, I think three different times where I thought I found Sharon and Don. And I'm like, this is the Sharon and Don, I know it. And then I realized it wasn't. The first person I found was a guy named Michael. And I looked at his profile and then I saw his wife's name was Mary. And I'm like, well, there's a Mike and Mary in the group. So then I looked at, you know, I looked at Mary's profile

And then I saw Mary's mutual friends and I kept seeing like a pattern of familiar names as I would look at people. People that I hadn't even discovered their names in the newsletter yet. Another search turns up, yet another obituary. This time it's for Mike, barely a year earlier. My only hope now is to speak with Mary. As the phone rings, my heart starts to race. I'm nervous.

I'm even actually a little relieved when the call goes to voicemail. She's kept her husband's name in the voicemail greeting. These are people I don't even know, but that fact just breaks my heart. Hi, Mary. My name is Paul Diddy. I'm a writer based in Southern California.

And I'm reaching out because I'm doing some research on documents I received from the Minnesota Historical Society. I place additional calls to other potential Silver Chain members, and what I receive are refusals to talk, a lot of disconnected phone numbers, and I even get catfished by a bored teen pretending to be an octogenarian named Bruce. This is not going well. I take a few days off, and then try again. Hello? Hello?

I tell April about my entire process so far. All the dead ends, the hang-ups, and how Mary finally answered.

And then when I say the name of the group, The Silver Chain, she lets out this really, like, audible gasp. And I was like, okay, this is the right person, obviously, right? Oh, shit, she's totally caught. Yeah. She was very, very nice, but also made it really clear that this is something that she did not want to discuss. And yet...

In true Minnesota fashion, we stay on the phone for 30 minutes. She tells me that she and Mike were founding members, one of those couples Jack L. High wrote about in his article. And mostly, they joined because it was something Mike wanted. And Mary loved Mike. She tells me they stayed in the silver chain until Mary became pregnant with their second child, and their five-year-old started asking questions about what was going on in the basement during their parties.

But again, Mary doesn't want to talk about it. She says that if anyone's going to give me information, that it's Carol. Carol. That's the same name that I've been seeing as a byline in practically every newsletter. And I have to say, more than any other contributor, I feel like it's Carol's words that paint the picture of the Silver Chain as a warm, loving, and progressive group.

Carol and her husband, George, are one of the four founding couples of the Silver Chain. Carol leads the group's monthly discussion panel called New Horizons, where the topics range from proper consent to the dynamics of an open marriage, and is the sole member to attend an international swinging conference, the Lifestyle 77 Convention in San Diego. It's Carol, more than any other contributor, who makes her presence known in these newsletters.

There's something about Carol's writing and the topics she chooses to write about that provides a heartfelt yet cerebral approach to the lifestyle. Through Carol's contributions to the newsletters, you can totally sense her excitement. Not necessarily for partner swapping, but for the fact that she's found a way to express and expand herself. I find out that Carol's husband George is no longer alive, but that Carol is.

I feel like Carol will definitely shed some light on things. She's very, I have no doubt in my mind that she'll give me a very thorough discussion. I call every Carol in Minnesota, and there's a lot of them. And then I realize Carol's not even in Minnesota. She lives in California, where there are even more Carols. But I won't let that stop me.

I am determined. And guess what? After seven weeks and thousands of phone calls, I think I found her. Hello? This call is being recorded. Hi, Carol? Carol, the one person who holds the answers to all my questions, hangs up on me. This is a major setback for me, and I'm really...

I kind of feel, honestly, I'm feeling right now like this is just a lost cause. I feel like I'm hitting a lot of dead ends right now. And I feel really fucking discouraged. But at the same time, you know, this is this person's life. And I don't want to be someone that's going to violate someone's privacy or

I always went into this thinking that I would reach people that would say, oh, yes, I did that, and would talk about it. Like, I just, I thought that I would find people that would be open to having discussions with me and maybe even be proud, for lack of a better word, about it. And

Man, I'm just not finding those people. I don't know if they're in existence. And if they were, I don't know if they're still alive. I just... This is rough.

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Maybe this was it. Like, maybe this was all the story that I was going to get from living people and that I just had to accept that. What could be there is just not something that I can retrieve. And yet, there's a part of me that just can't leave this alone without answers. And I really have to consider, why am I so obsessed with this? And I think it's a combination of things. The time, the place,

and this one element that I realize I'm most drawn to: the act of leading a secret life. As a gay kid growing up in the late 70s and 80s, I can relate to this need to keep a part of myself secret. Leading a double life to keep judgment at bay was crucial to my survival in Bemidji, Minnesota, the small town I grew up in. A small town that felt worlds away from the excitement and promise of the Twin Cities.

There's something I've learned as an adult about nine-year-old me. My obsession wasn't really with mysteries. I went door to door to those homes in the woods because I wanted to be welcomed in. I wanted to see how others lived because a part of my life at the time just didn't feel right. And I wondered if there was even a world that I could fit into. I believed that a life in the Twin Cities held the key to happiness.

And now, decades later, I'm seeing that many of its inhabitants were also seeking a sense of belonging and still harboring their own secrets. It was a notion I hadn't considered at the time, that we all feel disconnected in some way. We're all looking for a connection to feel seen and heard and known. This is the part I can't let go of.

So, I call Carol again. And this time, while she doesn't hang up, she keeps it brief. She sounds a little bit like a stern, mildly irritated schoolteacher explaining a lesson for a third time. Total Mrs. Thompson from second grade vibes. Then, she tells me she's having medical issues and says for me to call back in a few weeks. I don't trust a whole lot of what's going on at her house right now.

That's Kimmer, Carol's neighbor and daughter. After Carol's initial hang-up, I expand my search beyond the silver chain and reach out to Kimmer. And to my surprise, Kimmer was well aware of her parents' involvement in the silver chain. She even encourages Carol to talk to me.

I was excited. I'm like, oh, look, somebody wants to talk to you about something you've done. And isn't this cool? And yada, yada, yada. And then like a couple of days later, I got a text, I think, that said, when you have a chance, would you come over and talk? Because I really need to talk. I'm like, OK, yeah.

So when I got over there and talked to her, she wanted to tell me about how squeaky clean the Silver Chain was and that it was just a dance club. Squeaky clean. Those are the exact same words Carol said to me.

Carol picked up and it's been two weeks. She's feeling better, but still has a lot of doctor's appointments. And in talking with her, we spoke about 10 minutes. She let me know that what set this organization, the silver chain apart from other groups like it is that they kept it squeaky clean. And, um,

The second time she said squeaky clean, or the third time, I asked her what she meant by that. And she said no drugs, no violence, and no club-sponsored interactions of any kind. So we can assume what that means, right? Okay, I'm totally confused. This is not what I was expecting at all.

Is the same Carol who wrote about alternative lifestyles, consent, sensual touching, and female empowerment, the woman I believe to be so open-minded and ahead of her time, now clutching her pearls and flat-out denying her participation in a group she co-founded? Maybe it's her participation in another group that's holding her back, one that's given her a newfound sense of belonging.

with a whole other set of bylaws. To be very honest, I think the Christian thing is why mom is dodging you. Because the last God knows how many years of their lives, mom and dad have been totally into listening to gospel music and going to gospel things. And it's like, uh, okay.

And now that dad's gone, I think she's still in that phase. So it doesn't really fit with swinging. And then finally, Carol agrees to meet with me. Carol's daughter, Kimmer, also arranges to give me some of her time. So I book a flight to Sacramento and get a rental car to complete the drive to Modesto. A few days before the trip, I call Carol's number to see if I can bring lunch for our meeting.

Carol's grandson, who is also her caregiver, picks up the phone. They tell me they'd like Arby's roast beef sandwiches. Well, gotta admit, I do love their curly fries. So my bags are packed. I'm in front of my computer with the production team, and I'm doing a final run-through of all the questions I have for Carol when I hear the ping of an incoming email. You guys aren't going to believe this.

But just while we were talking, I got an email from Kim, Carol's daughter. Yeah. And she just let me know that Carol was taken to the hospital on Sunday night and they found it necessary to put her on a respirator. No. Yeah. It says she's currently stable, but the nurse says she has a hard road to recovery.

Yeah, and she wrote, I'm sorry that you won't get to chat with her, and I'm not sure that she will recover enough that you will ever be able to. This season on Time Capsule, we'll find out what happens when an archive that was never meant to be found is discovered. And while I learned that many people do not want to talk, You guys do not realize you're playing with fire. there are also plenty of others who do.

It was very odd the first time I went because my parents were there. In an ecstasy, yes. There was a little bit of that floating around back then. This is a real party. He just had to fuck everything. He probably would fuck a snake if you held it still. Time Capsule is hosted and written by me, Paul Diddy, and is a production of Diversity Higher Limited and SISA Productions in collaboration with Feelings & Co.,

Our producers are Marcel Malakibu and Nora McInerney. Jordan Turgeon and Eli Makovetsky are our co-producers, and our engineer is Eric Romani. Time Capsule theme music is composed by Louis Stevens. Curious to hear how Swing Nation's Dan and Lacey came out to the world as swingers? Visit us at timecapsule.substack.com for newsletter excerpts, listener discussions, bonus episodes, and more.

This show is inspired by a GQ article titled The 70 Swingers Club and the Secret Archive It Left Behind from writer Jack L. High that will be linked in our show notes. Jack's research was extremely helpful as we dug into this project. So thank you, Jack. In addition to Jack's article, special thanks to Lori Williamson and the Minnesota Historical Society for access to the Silver Chain's newsletters. Segments of this episode were recorded at Podcast Place Studio in Long Beach, California.

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