Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Frye. We add our quarterly installment of Unearthed this week.
Speaker 1: We did beginning with just an incredibly long introduction on
Speaker 1: my part, because who knows this could be the last Unearthed,
Speaker 1: saying yeah, yeah, great. Obviously, I want to reiterate again
Speaker 1: that is not everything that is happening in the world.
Speaker 1: I know, it's not everything that's happening in the world.
Speaker 1: I feel like the one of the things that has
Speaker 1: happened in Internet culture that I really hate is the
Speaker 1: thing that has started to be summed up as the
Speaker 1: oh so you hate waffles discourse. Yeah where this is from.
Speaker 1: I think back when it was Twitter, someone's Twitter tweets
Speaker 1: in which they talked about people saying I like pancakes
Speaker 1: and the response in places like Twitter being oh so
Speaker 1: you hate waffles. And sometimes it feels like there is
Speaker 1: a jump to if you don't specifically mention something an
Speaker 1: assumption that you don't know or care about it, or
Speaker 1: if you say that you like something an assumption that
Speaker 1: you hate some something else, or in this case, if
Speaker 1: you list off a ton of things that are affecting
Speaker 1: your work directly, an assumption that you don't know or
Speaker 1: care about all of the other things also concurrently happening. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's not the case. This happened to quite recently
Speaker 1: on the internet. Oh yeah, do you want to have
Speaker 1: detailor just yeah, just how it's going? Yeah, I mean minor.
Speaker 1: I'm unconcerned with that particular iteration. Yeah, that just made
Speaker 1: it an incredibly weird time to be working on this.
Speaker 1: This has been a weird time to be working on
Speaker 1: this podcast. Like ye acknowledge that before, Like in the
Speaker 1: early weeks of the COVID nineteen pandemic, we talked about
Speaker 1: how incredibly bizarre it was to be working on something
Speaker 1: while clearly living through like a historic moment. This is
Speaker 1: clearly also a historic moment. I am not enjoying it. No,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to finish my work a few minutes early
Speaker 1: today so that I can get on a train and
Speaker 1: go to a protest. It feels like every time I
Speaker 1: turn around there's yet another thing, and a lot of
Speaker 1: it is incredibly disruptive, not just to our work, but
Speaker 1: also to our work. So I had a very difficult
Speaker 1: time focusing on putting these Unearthed episodes together. And then
Speaker 1: I also felt like in some ways it was weirdly
Speaker 1: conspiring against me to try to work on Unearthed. Like
Speaker 1: we mentioned that we have comparatively fewer than normal shipwrecks,
Speaker 1: Well there's only three in this in this episode, which
Speaker 1: is like not many compared to a lot of our
Speaker 1: Unearthed discussions. I had a whole lot more than three
Speaker 1: bookmarks about shipwrecks, but they turned out to all be
Speaker 1: about the same three things, right, But they were like
Speaker 1: written or framed or headlined in a way that they
Speaker 1: did not sound like all of the same three things.
Speaker 1: And so it was as I was writing up the
Speaker 1: shipwreck part that I was slowly winnowing down the number
Speaker 1: of links to only be the ones that were the
Speaker 1: same three things. And I was like, do we really
Speaker 1: only have three right now? That's weird. We found all
Speaker 1: the ships? No more, there's none, none left to look at,
Speaker 1: no more ship out there. I really did not realize
Speaker 1: that the stuff that everybody was talking about regarding Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper seems to have traced back to something that
Speaker 1: was published in twenty nineteen something. Elderly, Yeah, yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: And here's how this came out in my life. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I have a friend who has long had like
Speaker 1: a pet project that they're working on that involves a
Speaker 1: fictional interpretation of the Jack the Ripper story and they
Speaker 1: have you know, done a ton of research and they're
Speaker 1: always you know, working with the latest of to date.
Speaker 1: And they messaged me and they were like, I don't
Speaker 1: believe this person did it. I'm so mad. And I
Speaker 1: was like, my darling, please look at the date. It's fine, Like,
Speaker 1: it's fine, Yeah, don't sweat it. This changes nothing from yesterday,
Speaker 1: I promise you. Yeah, the various articles had just expressed
Speaker 1: it so confidently. Yeah, I was like, I was like,
Speaker 1: number one, I'm pretty sure that other sources are gonna
Speaker 1: not be so confident about it. That was not surprising
Speaker 1: to me at all. But yeah, I just I was
Speaker 1: unaware that this was really something about research that had
Speaker 1: been done years ago. Similarly, I was really into the
Speaker 1: research into how many of the medieval illuminated manuscripts were
Speaker 1: created by women scribes. Yeah. I love those manuscripts, and
Speaker 1: you know, I like when it has come up on
Speaker 1: the show that you know, various ones that have been
Speaker 1: created by women or you know, by a religious order
Speaker 1: that was a women's religious order. So I thought the
Speaker 1: research to try to sort of quantify, like what was
Speaker 1: the contribution of women here and something that is stereotypically
Speaker 1: thought of as like like there are even illustrations of
Speaker 1: the monks with their tonsures over or the thing drawing
Speaker 1: on them. So like the idea of like, let's quantify
Speaker 1: just what was women's contribution here. Some of the headlines
Speaker 1: about that research made it sound like it was really
Speaker 1: women all along, and I was like, Okay, now it's
Speaker 1: still a small percentage overall that were created by women.
Speaker 1: It's not nothing. It's still important. But this did not
Speaker 1: fundamentally rewrite our understanding of illuminated manuscript production, although it
Speaker 1: gave me a great idea for a story. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to do a fictional a movie that all
Speaker 1: of the very charming times we have seen illustrations of
Speaker 1: cats in illuminated manuscripts does seem odd and slightly out
Speaker 1: of place. Are a secret code among the women illustrators
Speaker 1: that are all communicating to one another like this is
Speaker 1: my work, this is my work, this is my work.
Speaker 1: It's their whisper campaign of kitties. They're the original cat ladies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is my fanciful Blogoney. Please don't anybody take any
Speaker 1: of that as informed information. Mary Robinett khol who has
Speaker 1: been on the show before, has suggested some of the
Speaker 1: topics we have covered on the show, has a short
Speaker 1: story that is set in a world in which the
Speaker 1: giant snails that you see in illuminated manuscripts are real
Speaker 1: things that people have to contend with. Oh, it's slight story.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit here. I'm going to Google to see
Speaker 1: if I can google the name of it. Mary Robinet
Speaker 1: Khalal snail story Marginalia was published an Uncanny magazine. If
Speaker 1: you want to go look that up again. Marginalia by
Speaker 1: Mary Robinett Khlole. I would like to thank Google for
Speaker 1: actually delivering a great result to me with what I
Speaker 1: put in. Mary Robinett Kohlal snail story. One of the
Speaker 1: weird rabbit hole isn't the right word. The thing that
Speaker 1: we talked about that was about the tent, the real
Speaker 1: tent probably depicted in a fresco in Italy. The news
Speaker 1: releases about that research kept describing it as an Islamic
Speaker 1: tent and I got very tangled up in whether that
Speaker 1: is correct terminology, Like, definitely, this is a tent from
Speaker 1: the Islamic world, but like, did this tent have an
Speaker 1: Islamic religious purpose? Right? And that I did not really
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of. But boy, did I spend
Speaker 1: just an inordinate amount of time thinking about whether that
Speaker 1: was the way that made sense to describe that, because
Speaker 1: I immediately was like, how exactly was the tent Islamic? Right?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember if I had anything else from
Speaker 1: our unearthed things that I really wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: in our behind the scenes today. I have two things,
Speaker 1: Oh tell me so. One is the Luxury Bathing Complex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's you know, we talked about in the thing
Speaker 1: that it is off of a banquet hall, and I
Speaker 1: just had that moment of Hey, you guys, you want
Speaker 1: to come under my house and dinner and take a
Speaker 1: bath with me? Yeah? How weird that is to me culturally? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not even like a spa person, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't the idea of it's going to be a
Speaker 1: very luxurious night at so and so's house, We're all
Speaker 1: going to have a spa together, And I'm like ending
Speaker 1: in a cold place. It's a hard pass no thank you.
Speaker 1: I am a small, a spa person, So the general
Speaker 1: idea of that did not seem that strange to me. However,
Speaker 1: the fact that, like the banquet hall is connected to
Speaker 1: the changing rooms, and at least I don't recall there
Speaker 1: being it did not seem like there was a sense
Speaker 1: of privacy in the changing rooms. It seemed more like
Speaker 1: it was like a room with benches and like a
Speaker 1: big locker room like. Yeah. And I was sort of
Speaker 1: reminded of on our trip to Iceland last year when
Speaker 1: we went to Blue Lagoon. Yeah. And the way it
Speaker 1: works at Blue Lagoon, or the at least the way
Speaker 1: it works when we were there, is that you are
Speaker 1: given your towel, like you have to go and wash
Speaker 1: your body before you get in the water. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you are not given a towel or a rope unless
Speaker 1: you have paid extra for a robe, Like you don't
Speaker 1: have a towel or a robe or whatever. So there
Speaker 1: are just periods of time that you need to be naked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was not prepared to just be naked around the
Speaker 1: people who were on the trip with them. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a little weird, and I was you know, I
Speaker 1: had a moment where I felt kind of hung up
Speaker 1: on it, and then I was like, we're all gonna
Speaker 1: be naked. Yeah, exactly. Listen, I'm practically a never nude right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: me and Tobias get each other. I never take My
Speaker 1: feet are never uncovered, my body is never I don't
Speaker 1: want to touch the outside world with my person, right
Speaker 1: even Like having been to massage school and having practiced
Speaker 1: as a licensed massage therapist for several years, like I
Speaker 1: just I got very accustomed to nudity and bodies, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, we also took a lot of
Speaker 1: care to make sure that the parts of people's bodies
Speaker 1: that we think of as private were covered, right, and
Speaker 1: so like there was just there was not a lot
Speaker 1: of walking around completely unclothed in front of other people.
Speaker 1: That part is actually not so bad for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like the idea of modesty and nudity in front of
Speaker 1: other people. I credit this to when I was much
Speaker 1: much younger and I danced ballet, and I danced kind
Speaker 1: of as a junior member of a ballet company for
Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, and like you just got to change backstage,
Speaker 1: and sometimes everything is coming off down to like tights
Speaker 1: or sometimes to nothing before you can whip it back
Speaker 1: on and go back on stage. And so I was
Speaker 1: a little inured to that. I just as I've gotten older.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm Howard hughesing out or what,
Speaker 1: but I don't want anything touch I don't want to
Speaker 1: be exposed. Yeah, it's less of like a yeah, A
Speaker 1: part of it is just like I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want to accidentally be upbraided by anything. I don't want
Speaker 1: any discomfort to surprise or sneak attack me in any way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I was in high school and I did drum corps,
Speaker 1: I got very used to just like being in the
Speaker 1: locker room changing clothes in front of other people. But
Speaker 1: that was still sort of a like that was a
Speaker 1: group of people that I was used to being around
Speaker 1: in those contexts, right, Not so much the people who
Speaker 1: were on the trip with us also not so much.
Speaker 1: If I were invited to a nice dinner at a
Speaker 1: politician's house and then everybody else from the political dinner
Speaker 1: is going to go, I would, in my modern sensibilities,
Speaker 1: be kind of like, ah, I gotta think about the
Speaker 1: fact that now we've all seen each other naked. Well,
Speaker 1: I also am like, the last thing I want to
Speaker 1: see or be around after a rich meal is the
Speaker 1: naked bodies of all those people who have eaten that
Speaker 1: rich meal. That's just not for me, makes sense? I
Speaker 1: sound so hung up? Yeah, that one just got me.
Speaker 1: I had another big thought though, which might have more levity,
Speaker 1: or maybe that had levity, okay, ogle painting. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea of like, it's not clear how the theft happened. No,
Speaker 1: of course not. But having done an entire season of
Speaker 1: Criminalia about art thefts, uh huh, it's shocking how many
Speaker 1: famous art thefts literally constituted. I just took it off
Speaker 1: the wall and walked out, right, I'm like, I can
Speaker 1: tell you how it probably happened, youoin, like somebody just
Speaker 1: walked out with it and covered a magazine print out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this also is one of those things that gives me
Speaker 1: hope from another story that was in that particular season.
Speaker 1: Have we talked about this? Do you know that there
Speaker 1: was for a while a salad an original Salvador Dali
Speaker 1: on display at Rikers Island. No, he did this piece
Speaker 1: of art for the incarcerated men there because he was
Speaker 1: supposed to go and give a talk to an art
Speaker 1: program that they doing, and he was sick that day,
Speaker 1: so instead he made a quick piece of art, which
Speaker 1: was an interesting choice. It's like a crucifixion piece, and
Speaker 1: sent it to Rikers with you know, his compliments to
Speaker 1: the people who were part of that program. And it,
Speaker 1: for a long time was displayed in the mess hall
Speaker 1: over the trash can, so it got splattered with stuff,
Speaker 1: and then it got put in storage, and then someone realized,
Speaker 1: we have an original DOLLI. We should put it on
Speaker 1: display in the admin building, and they did, and then
Speaker 1: it got stolen by three of the guards. Okay, it
Speaker 1: has never been recovered. They may have destroyed it, and
Speaker 1: that breaks my heart because like, yeah, but then we
Speaker 1: have stories like this, and I'm like, maybe maybe they
Speaker 1: palmed it off to some dude and he's got it,
Speaker 1: and one day we will find it accidentally on loan
Speaker 1: from a private collector to use, or somebody's heirs will
Speaker 1: be cleaning out their estate. I hope, I hope. There
Speaker 1: are several pieces that you know, have never been recovered,
Speaker 1: and we hope and hope. But this reminded me a
Speaker 1: little of the DOLLI. For some reason, there's been sort
Speaker 1: of speculation on and off about whether the painting's stolen
Speaker 1: from the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum still exists or not.
Speaker 1: Did we talk about I haven't seen any updates. Several
Speaker 1: weeks before we are recording this conversation, there was some
Speaker 1: video that was all over social media of an art
Speaker 1: exhibit in I think it was in Soho in New
Speaker 1: York that was allegedly like authorities walking into the art
Speaker 1: exhibit and taking a painting off the wall because it
Speaker 1: was Christ on the Sea of Galilee. It was that
Speaker 1: painting from the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum. But the thing
Speaker 1: is everyone was like, is this a piece of perform's art?
Speaker 1: About that theft? Is this really something happening at this gallery?
Speaker 1: Galleries wouldn't show a piece of art that they knew
Speaker 1: was famous and stolen it. I'm like, yes, they would,
Speaker 1: but but I never saw a follow up on it,
Speaker 1: and I haven't dug around, and I didn't know if
Speaker 1: you had seen that. I did not. I somehow missed
Speaker 1: all of this. Let me see if I can look
Speaker 1: for it really quick. As as I said, I was
Speaker 1: struggling with focus while working on this, so it would
Speaker 1: not surprise me if there were a big thing that
Speaker 1: should have wound up in the episode that did not well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the fact that you didn't see
Speaker 1: anything of it makes it seem like that might have
Speaker 1: been a hoaxy hoax hoax. Okay, Hold on, NBC has
Speaker 1: a thing. NBC Boston says the date on it, this
Speaker 1: was just from the the Thing March seventeenth, So it's
Speaker 1: literally in reference to that. Okay, but nobody seems to
Speaker 1: think that's really what happened. The video, it's a marketing video.
Speaker 1: The video I'm quoting from NBC Boston quote. The video,
Speaker 1: which depicts FBI agents confiscating the stolen Rembrandt masterpiece from
Speaker 1: an art gallery in New York City, is part of
Speaker 1: the marketing strategy for Eric Aronson's new movie any Day Now. Ah, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what's up. Well, all right then, somehow that's local
Speaker 1: to you, theater od I do miss living in Summerville.
Speaker 1: I got priced out of that place when we were
Speaker 1: ready to buy a house. Yeah, but I'm still there regularly,
Speaker 1: and I still have friends who live there. All of
Speaker 1: them are renting. I think nobody who's the house in Summerville.
Speaker 1: Everyone's all furious about a Fulbright scholar basically being snatched
Speaker 1: off the street. Yeah, of course over I have read
Speaker 1: the op ed that she co wrote. I found it
Speaker 1: to be not even that radical. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: people should be disappeared for radical speech at all, but
Speaker 1: I found the op ed to be a pretty even
Speaker 1: handed criticism of the Tough's administration's response to resolutions passed
Speaker 1: by the Student Senate related to Israel and Gaza. And
Speaker 1: as I understand it, like the Student Senate debated over
Speaker 1: these things throughout the night before voting on them, and
Speaker 1: the op ed was basically like, to have gotten this, really,
Speaker 1: you know, flat dismissal from the administration almost immediately does
Speaker 1: not seem like you actually listened to what the students
Speaker 1: were saying. And while graduate students were not part of this,
Speaker 1: we're still part of this university. It did not to
Speaker 1: me say anything that would be cause, in any circumstance
Speaker 1: for six plain clothed officers to be snatching somebody off
Speaker 1: the street. Yeah. The only circumstance I can think of
Speaker 1: that that might be appropriate would be someone making active
Speaker 1: threats of violence and a need to take that person
Speaker 1: into custody. Right now, which is not what was happening
Speaker 1: in any way. Right. So, anyway, my entire friend community
Speaker 1: is outraged and heartbroken. That's how we're all feeling right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just for that reason, but that's one of the reasons.
Speaker 1: So you're saying you hate waffles, I don't. Actually you're
Speaker 1: gonna say, I don't actually like waffles. I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of something funny to append to that, and
Speaker 1: I just I didn't. I didn't. The only waffle maker
Speaker 1: we have in our household currently is a little mini
Speaker 1: waffle maker, and that's time I make eggs in the morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have so many waffle makers. Yeah, it does mean
Speaker 1: when sometimes Patrick wants to make waffles, there's a lengthy
Speaker 1: waffle making process because of our one little mini waffle
Speaker 1: My gosh, I have so many. I have so many,
Speaker 1: it's silly. I love a novelty waffle maker I got.
Speaker 1: I got my Grogu ones, I got a million Star
Speaker 1: Wars ones, I got Halloween ones, I got hanted Mansion ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I finally re homed my Hello Kitty one
Speaker 1: that I had for a long time. I love a
Speaker 1: waffle maker. I'm gonna tell you BB eight is maybe
Speaker 1: my favorite, very exciting. Yeah. So I can make all
Speaker 1: the waffles of all the shapes in size, but I
Speaker 1: usually make savory ones, not sweet ones. Yeah, waffles is
Speaker 1: definitely a more fun way to close out this little
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, I will just say we're recording this
Speaker 1: on April the first. It's gonna be two solid weeks
Speaker 1: before these episodes come out. Who even knows what is
Speaker 1: happening in those two weeks, Oh, there's literally no telling. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: whatever's happening on your weekend? Boy, do I just have
Speaker 1: thoughts of peace and love, especially for anybody who is
Speaker 1: struggling with anything. The list of people who are struggling
Speaker 1: with things just increasing for me every day. So I
Speaker 1: hope what's happening on your weekend can have a moment
Speaker 1: of like rest. You gotta take a moment of rest
Speaker 1: sometimes to keep yourself going. We will be back with
Speaker 1: a Saturday Classic tomorrow. I think I've lined up a
Speaker 1: couple of Saturday Classics that are related to things that
Speaker 1: came up today. We will have a brand new episode
Speaker 1: on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.