Time Capsule: The Silver Chain - Trailer
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This episode is brought to you by The Hartford, a leading provider of employee benefits and income protection products that is dedicated to standing behind U.S. workers to help them pursue their goals and get through tough times. For more information about The Hartford, visit thehartford.com slash employee benefits. We've also got a link in our show notes. When someone says they're a swinger, we all pretty much know what that entails.

Very important in a party house, two bathrooms. And then on this side, it's kind of a television room, but it's also, well, if you'll pardon the expression, kind of a make-out room. As a younger kid, I didn't know what my grandfather did. I knew he had a big house, and there was this giant room with all these beds at different levels, and they were fun to go in there and jump around, you know? You know, I found them to be probably more accepting than any people I'd ever met.

But for a group of Minnesota couples who experienced the 70s as a time of free love, they believed they would take this story to their grave.

I'm Paul Diddy, and this is Time Capsule, Season 1, The Silver Chain. In the early 1990s, an envelope arrived at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Inside that envelope were the contents of an abandoned safe deposit box from First Bloomington Lake National Bank. And with the arrival of that one envelope, their collection now included newsletters from the 1970s. Mimeographed and folded like church bulletins and credited to an organization based in Bloomington, Minnesota, an organization called the Silver Chain Social Club.

Month by month, these newsletters chronicle family camping trips. We went tubing down at the Apple River. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Monthly dances. We always just referred to it as a dance club. And discussion panels like Women's Changing Role in Society and Don't Fuck Like a Truck. Because behind closed doors, the Silver Chain was a well-organized swingers group.

Comprising over 100 couples. For over a year, I've been scouring these old newsletters, these relics of 1970s Minnesota. And like any time capsule, the objects are the first thing that caught my interest. But it's the people behind the objects that became my obsession. Okay, I have a picture of me in this beautiful red dress. Pretty sexy. Yep. Ha ha ha.

Yeah, I mean, I read in the newsletters there are multiple times where they're describing your outfit. Really? Yeah, in detail. Oh my goodness. The further I delved into these newsletters, the more questions I had. But 50 years later, many of the Silver Chain's members are no longer alive. And for those who are living, well, they're not exactly excited to hear from a stranger who discovered a secret society that they thought was long gone.

Please delete me from your list and whoever else might be on your list that you haven't already contacted. Thank you very much. Goodbye. But for every person who does not want to discuss the silver chain, there are plenty of others who do. So many people that you just flutter around and talk to everybody. And yeah, it's just fun. I was kind of a social butterfly. And the more I dug...

the more questions I had. Somebody's daughter joined. I'm almost certain that it was Judy. Because the silver chain, it's a different type of whodunit. When you would have the parties at your penthouse, how many couples would you invite? Well, 20, 30. 30 couples? Yeah.

In a group based on secrecy, where members knew each other only by first name, what possessed someone to store these newsletters away? And how did a club like this function in a conservative Minnesota suburb? Well, Hal and Terry decided they were going to make a lot of money and they were going to manufacture ecstasy. Hal had the money. Terry had the brains. What happened to the club?

And what can we learn about ourselves and our own relationships from the experiences of our grandparents' generation? I didn't expect to tell my whole life story about my ex and my husband and all the sort of jazz. Well, you know, that's probably something that I wouldn't mind having the kids know about. Yeah. How mom went from dependent to a strong woman. It's a big deal.

In Time Capsule Season 1, we're time-traveling back to the 1970s, exploring the long-term effects of a suburban subculture, and discovering how these couples found a way to both connect and reinvent themselves. We'll find out the truth about the silver chain and what was left behind. Because in the case of the silver chain, some time capsules are never meant to be discovered at all.

Hello? This call is being recorded. Hi, Carol. You guys do not realize you're playing with fire.

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