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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Delaine to Chalko Reboarding. And

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Speaker 1: earlier this year, some interesting news came out of Georgia

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Speaker 1: Tech here in Atlanta. Researchers there announced that they'd come

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Speaker 1: up with a texting app called Brail Touch, which applies

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Speaker 1: computer brail, you know, a specific type of brail to

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Speaker 1: touch screen devices. And the app has mostly been in

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Speaker 1: the news because it has potential as a general eyes

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Speaker 1: free texting app, even for people who aren't visually impaired.

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Speaker 1: You could text under the table or something. But for

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Speaker 1: folks who are visually impaired, a Brail app could really

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Speaker 1: mean a lot less stuff to lug around, no keyboard,

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Speaker 1: just a phone, and easier communication. And it really got

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Speaker 1: me thinking about how much communication has improved for people

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Speaker 1: with visual disabilities in the past century. Yeah, and today

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Speaker 1: we're going to revisit a subject that we touched on

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Speaker 1: briefly in our Dickens Visits America episode, and it's kind

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Speaker 1: of related to that topic of communication. It's about Laura Bridgeman,

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Speaker 1: who was the first deaf blind person to learn language,

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Speaker 1: also to communicate with letters in writing, and to be educated.

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Speaker 1: And she didn't use the now ubiquitous brail system that

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Speaker 1: we just talked about, which was only beginning at the time,

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Speaker 1: but instead she used the manual alphabet to spell out words,

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Speaker 1: and she also read from raised Roman text and I

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Speaker 1: learned to hand right with a special grid system. So

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Speaker 1: Bridgeman was about fifty years older than the more famous

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Speaker 1: Helen Keller. But if you remember from that earlier episode,

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Speaker 1: their stories are really closely connected, aside from the fact

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Speaker 1: that young Helen Keller annoyed Bridgeman by stepping on her

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Speaker 1: foot when the two of them met. But while Keller

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Speaker 1: really became a champion of disability rights and an international

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Speaker 1: figuring as somebody who's internationally famous, Bridgeman was on the

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Speaker 1: earlier end of the disability rights story. And in fact,

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Speaker 1: when she started school in the eighteen thirties, people were

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Speaker 1: just starting to believe blind people could be educated, so

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Speaker 1: the idea of educating a deaf blind person the deaf

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Speaker 1: blind girl seemed completely impossible. Yeah, so we're going to

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Speaker 1: tell you a little bit about her early story and

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Speaker 1: the challenges that she had to face. Before we get

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Speaker 1: to that story of her learning. Laura Dewey Bridgeman was

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Speaker 1: born in December twenty one, eighty nine, near Hanover, New Hampshire.

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Speaker 1: Her parents, Daniel and Harmony, had a farm, and Laura

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Speaker 1: was their third daughter. She was a pretty baby with

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Speaker 1: bright blue eyes, but she was really sickly. At twenty

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Speaker 1: months she finally started getting bigger and lively. She was

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Speaker 1: chatty and seemed very smart. But at twenty four months

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Speaker 1: she and her two older sisters came down with scarlet fever.

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Speaker 1: Her two sisters died, but for Laura the fever went

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Speaker 1: on four weeks after that, and when she finally started

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Speaker 1: to get better, she was blind in one nearly blind

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Speaker 1: in the other death, and she had very little of

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Speaker 1: her senses of smell and taste left. Her vision in

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Speaker 1: her non blind eye was destroyed when she walked into

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Speaker 1: the spindle of her mother's spinning wheel. So a really

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Speaker 1: sad start here, But remarkably, by age four she had

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Speaker 1: recovered the strength she had lost during the fever. She

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Speaker 1: was strong again, and while she wasn't talking anymore, she

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Speaker 1: was still very smart. She was still displaying that interest

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Speaker 1: she had as a two year old, and everything she

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Speaker 1: came across. She would touch everything she encountered. She had

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Speaker 1: cling to her mother and feel her arms in her

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Speaker 1: hands and try to mimic her mother's hands. So she

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Speaker 1: learned how to help out with housework that way. She

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Speaker 1: even learned how to knit and too so and from

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Speaker 1: a workman on her family farm, Asa Tenny, who himself

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Speaker 1: had some impairments that made speech difficult for him, she

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Speaker 1: did pick up some ability to communicate, or at least

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Speaker 1: communicate more fully with her family. She he had a

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Speaker 1: way of sort of understanding what she was going through

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Speaker 1: and helped her perfect this basic sort of sign language.

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Speaker 1: And so each family member had a name sign that

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Speaker 1: they could respond to, and a pat on her head

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Speaker 1: meant yes or okay, a pat on her back meant no.

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Speaker 1: She had a way of expressing really basic needs at least.

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Speaker 1: But by age seven, she started throwing these really violent

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Speaker 1: temper tantrums. She'd only obey her father, who would stomp

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Speaker 1: on the ground when he was upset with her. And

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Speaker 1: she'd reached the limit of communication basically with her family,

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Speaker 1: and she was just overwhelmed, and they were overwhelmed too.

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Speaker 1: They were busy farmers and they didn't know what they

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Speaker 1: were going to do to help her. So fortunately at

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Speaker 1: that time an article was written by a Dartmouth professor

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Speaker 1: on Laura's ability to sign, and that got the attention

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Speaker 1: of Samuel Gridley how And a few years earlier, actually,

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Speaker 1: the very same year Laura was born, how had founded Perkins,

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Speaker 1: which was a school for the blind, and it had

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Speaker 1: open for students in eighteen thirty two with a mission um,

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Speaker 1: not just to educate blind children, that's kind of how

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Speaker 1: you'd feel it today, but to really prove that blind

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Speaker 1: children could be educated and could become independent adults. Kids

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Speaker 1: at the school learned everything from history to philosophy, plus sports, music,

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Speaker 1: including piano tuning, and domestic work. So it was really

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Speaker 1: a very broad education getting them ready for life. How's

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Speaker 1: quite a character himself, we should mention. He idolized Lord

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Speaker 1: Byron and fought in the Greek Revolution where Byron died.

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Speaker 1: He financially supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and he was

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Speaker 1: married to Julia Ward, who wrote The Battle Him of

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Speaker 1: the Republic. But he was also a proponent of education reform,

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Speaker 1: and not just for blind students. He wanted wrote memorization

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Speaker 1: replaced with a curriculum following the child's interests. He disliked

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Speaker 1: John Locke's idea of the tabula raza the blank slate,

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Speaker 1: and instead thought that the mind came with certain innate facilities,

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Speaker 1: something in line with the pseudoscience of phrenology. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: when How heard about Laura, he realized that she would

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Speaker 1: really be his perfect subject. She was an opportunity for

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Speaker 1: him to do good and clearly he was very interested

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Speaker 1: in that. She was excellent pr for his school, and

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Speaker 1: she'd be a way for him to test his theories

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Speaker 1: on the mind, and probably most importantly, a challenge for him.

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Speaker 1: At this point, he was doing so successfully with his school,

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Speaker 1: he wanted a challenge. So Laura's parents met with How

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Speaker 1: and they agreed to send her to Perkins and Laura

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Speaker 1: arrived there in October eighteen thirty seven, when she was

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Speaker 1: just shy of eight years old. She just got a

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Speaker 1: little bit of time to settle into her new surroundings.

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Speaker 1: She was obviously very scared, very disoriented, but How gave

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Speaker 1: her two weeks to get used to the new world.

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Speaker 1: So after that generous two week period that she got

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Speaker 1: he started to teach her. He quickly decided to scrap

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Speaker 1: the basic sign language that she'd been using at home

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Speaker 1: and instead teach her English. So here's kind of how

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Speaker 1: it worked. He would give her something basic like a

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Speaker 1: key or a fork or a knife that was labeled

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Speaker 1: with embossed writing, and then after she familiarized herself with

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Speaker 1: the objects, he'd separate the object from that label and

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Speaker 1: she would have to match them to each other. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and he wrote of this time quote, it was as

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Speaker 1: though she were underwater and we were on the surface

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Speaker 1: over her, unable to see her, but dropping a line

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Speaker 1: and moving it about here and there, hoping it might

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Speaker 1: touch her hand so that she would grasp it instinctively,

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Speaker 1: hoping that she would put two and two together and

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Speaker 1: realize it wasn't just a matching game. These labels actually

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Speaker 1: signified something about the objects that they went with. But

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Speaker 1: according to Jane seymour Ford and Perkins, how believed that

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Speaker 1: her ability to match really was just kind of a game.

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Speaker 1: It was just memorization. At this point, she liked getting approval,

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Speaker 1: so she knew the knife label went with the knife,

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Speaker 1: and and so on. So the next step for him

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Speaker 1: was to cut up the labels into their separate letters,

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Speaker 1: and he would spell out the word that she was

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Speaker 1: familiar with, and he'd jumble them up, and then he

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Speaker 1: would leave Laura to figure out how to piece them

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Speaker 1: back together again into something she was familiar with. And

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Speaker 1: he described the aha sort of moment when she finally

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Speaker 1: got this that letters made up words, and words signified things,

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Speaker 1: and he wrote quote, the truth began to flash upon her.

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Speaker 1: Her intellect began to work. She perceived that here was

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Speaker 1: a way by which she could herself make a sign

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Speaker 1: of anything that was in her own mind and show

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Speaker 1: it to another mind. And at once her countenance lighted up.

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Speaker 1: So from there Laura tried to learn the name of

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Speaker 1: every single thing that she encountered. Communication got faster when

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Speaker 1: she learned the manual alphabet and could put aside those

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Speaker 1: embossed letters that she had initially learned with. She only

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Speaker 1: needed about a year of instruction and vocabulary building before

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Speaker 1: she could join in the regular classes for the blind,

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Speaker 1: and she would have a personal teacher with her who

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Speaker 1: was fingerspelling everything out for her so that she could

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Speaker 1: follow along in class. But other than that, just following

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Speaker 1: along with the lessons pretty remarkable. One thing to mention here, though,

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Speaker 1: how promoted Laura's ability that ah sort of moment he

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Speaker 1: he promoted that is something innate, like she just had

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Speaker 1: the capacity for language there, but two of her recent biographers,

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Jeter and Ernest Freeberg, suggests that she probably did

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Speaker 1: have some distant memory of spoken language before she was deaf.

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Speaker 1: Even if she might not have remembered being two years old,

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Speaker 1: she probably had something left in her head, and Jeter

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Speaker 1: also thinks that she had likely been imprinted with the

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Speaker 1: capacity for grammar, since her later ability to understand all

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Speaker 1: these different complex tenses um kind of put her apart

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Speaker 1: from a lot of other deafline people who've learned language,

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Speaker 1: which to me just sounds like another way of saying

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Speaker 1: innate ability. So maybe so we should also a point

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Speaker 1: out that while Braille was by this point being used

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Speaker 1: in some parts of the world, Laura and the other

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Speaker 1: students that Perkins read with raised Roman letters, which was

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Speaker 1: known as Boston line type, and it made for some

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Speaker 1: really huge book because they had to blow up the

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Speaker 1: letters so big that you could actually feel the differences

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Speaker 1: between them, and Laura would write with a grooved guide

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Speaker 1: that was slid under her paper, so you'd write a

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Speaker 1: letter in one of the grooves cover it and then

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Speaker 1: move on to the next letter. And it was called

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Speaker 1: square handwriting because it has this very strange sort of

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Speaker 1: square look to it. You can you can see letters

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Speaker 1: that Laura herself wrote, and it is a very unusual

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Speaker 1: looking hand but pretty remarkable. It sounds pret time consuming,

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Speaker 1: it does, but apparently she was a voracious letter writer,

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Speaker 1: so she must have gotten pretty fast at it. And

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Speaker 1: while she studied reading writing in geography and algebra and

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Speaker 1: geometry and all the other subjects in the classroom, she

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Speaker 1: would pepper her teachers with questions at the same time

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Speaker 1: outside of the classroom, things like why don't flies have names?

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Speaker 1: Why can't we sail to the sun and boats? If

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Speaker 1: I eat fish hooks, could I be dead? Questions? Yes,

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Speaker 1: And she flourished socially too. She could recognize people that

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Speaker 1: she hadn't seen in a long time by feeling their faces.

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Speaker 1: She made distinct noises for friends, which were kind of

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Speaker 1: like individual names that people could recognize other people. And

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Speaker 1: how describes this sort of girlish social butterfly behavior that

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Speaker 1: Laura had um in a passage I really liked, he said,

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Speaker 1: quote when Laura's walking through a passageway with her hands

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Speaker 1: spread before her. She notes instantly everyone she meets and

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Speaker 1: pass with them with a sign of recognition. But if

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Speaker 1: it be a girl of her own age, and especially

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Speaker 1: if one of her favorites, there is instantly a bright

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Speaker 1: smile of recognition and intertwining of arms, a grasping of hands,

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Speaker 1: and a swift telegraphing upon the tiny finger. So I

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Speaker 1: think that really conveys how happy she was to finally

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Speaker 1: be able to communicate with people and say what was

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Speaker 1: on her mind and hear what was going on in

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Speaker 1: the world. And um, she'd joke around too. That's another

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Speaker 1: important thing to mention, because she does have a reputation

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Speaker 1: being older as kind of severe. But as a kid

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Speaker 1: she'd joke around. She'd purposely misspell words and then strike

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Speaker 1: it out with the other hand, or she would spell

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Speaker 1: with her nose when finger spelling instead of her fingers. Um,

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Speaker 1: she'd spin donuts on her finger, something that she actually

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Speaker 1: did her her whole life. And when she was alone,

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Speaker 1: she could entertain herself. She liked to always be able

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Speaker 1: to ask people questions, but she could entertain herself. She

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Speaker 1: kept a journal her whole life. She would practice new words,

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Speaker 1: spelling out the names of new words. She would carry

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Speaker 1: out these sort of private dialogues, and she would knit

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Speaker 1: and so and had a very strong sense of fashion.

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Speaker 1: She was always very neatly dressed, very stylish. She'd sew

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Speaker 1: all her own clothes and had some things that almost

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Speaker 1: sound like amazing party tricks. So she could thread a

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Speaker 1: needle with her tongue. Um, just really cool talents that

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Speaker 1: kind of get overshadowed by some of the other abilities,

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Speaker 1: but just these everyday things she was also able to

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Speaker 1: do an addition to reading and writing. But even in

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Speaker 1: spite of these more entertaining aspects of her personality and

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Speaker 1: that sense of humor that she had, Laura would also

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Speaker 1: still sometimes throw tantrums. And this was something that how

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Speaker 1: of course, didn't cover much in that pr campaign that

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Speaker 1: made Laura so famous. She had hit students, sometimes shoved teachers.

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Speaker 1: She would get very upset with slow finger spellers too,

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Speaker 1: And since she'd work so closely with her teachers, sometimes

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Speaker 1: spending twenty four hours a day with them, she had

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Speaker 1: also formed these really deep attachments and really truly suffer

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Speaker 1: when changes happened. In her time at Perkins. As a student,

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Speaker 1: she had four main teachers, Lydia Drew Morton, Eliza Rodgers,

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Speaker 1: Mary Swift Lambsome, and Sarah White Bond, and she stayed

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Speaker 1: lifelong friends with all of them, but when they leave

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Speaker 1: agains to marry or to get new jobs, she would

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Speaker 1: beg to go with them. And when she would get upset,

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Speaker 1: when things like this would happen, she wouldn't be able

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Speaker 1: to eat. And one of those really traumatic transitions came

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Speaker 1: when How himself Mary Julia Ward in eighteen forty three.

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Speaker 1: Laura had of course been How's pet project. He promoted

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Speaker 1: her in medical journals, periodicals, children's magazines enough to make

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Speaker 1: them both internationally famous. People from around the world would

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Speaker 1: come to see her, sometimes just visiting, but sometimes just

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Speaker 1: watching her behind partitions, which Ray it reminded me a

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Speaker 1: little of some of the Varnum episodes we've been talking about,

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Speaker 1: which this is around the same time, and um, I

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Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's a more disturbing side of the story. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And another kind of disturbing aspect of this. According to

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Speaker 1: Louis Menand in The New Yorker, she was so well known,

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Speaker 1: little girls would poke out their dolls eyes and name

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Speaker 1: them Laura. A very special kind of fame there, yes,

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Speaker 1: but Laura also had kind of become How's adopted doll

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Speaker 1: her by this point. According to seymour Ford at Perkins,

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Speaker 1: she even lived in his apartment with him and his sisters,

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Speaker 1: so they were really very close. So Laura was really

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Speaker 1: feeling kind of abandoned when How married and spent a

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Speaker 1: year and a half after that on a working honeymoon

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Speaker 1: in Europe. She wrote to him constantly and often asked

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Speaker 1: questions about one subject that she was particularly interested in

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Speaker 1: learning more about, and that was religion. So How had

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Speaker 1: always planned to include religion in his process of educating Laura,

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Speaker 1: but he had kind of strange ideas about it. You

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Speaker 1: normally think of a religious education starting as young as possible,

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Speaker 1: but he didn't think she should have any kind of

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Speaker 1: religious instruction until her mid teens, after her physical and

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Speaker 1: intellectual educations were complete, at least to his idea, So

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Speaker 1: he hoped that just as she had shown people possessed

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Speaker 1: some sort of natural innate understanding of language, or at

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Speaker 1: least he believed that she would also eventually show that

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Speaker 1: people possessed in innate understanding and love of God. That

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Speaker 1: was his hope. So his plan when he came back

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Speaker 1: from his honeymoon was to present her. You know, he

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Speaker 1: had a plan. Just like his labeling system, he would

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Speaker 1: present her with these everyday miracles instead of everyday items

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Speaker 1: like forks and knives, in this case, it would be

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Speaker 1: something like plants growing from seeds. And he expected that

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Speaker 1: if she was presented with enough of these, ultimately she'd realize,

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Speaker 1: just as she'd realize those significance of those embossed letters,

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Speaker 1: that there was something divine about these things, something divine

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Speaker 1: about the whole process and also according to Menand he

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Speaker 1: hoped that these innate inclinations and understandings of hers would

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Speaker 1: match up with his own Unitarian beliefs rather than more

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Speaker 1: serious evangelical beliefs. So to make sure that this plan

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Speaker 1: of education worked, he knew that she needed to have

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Speaker 1: no sort of religious instruction beforehand, so he banned her

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Speaker 1: teachers from discussing religion while he was gone, from answering

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Speaker 1: any kind of questions, and while she was writing him

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Speaker 1: about religion, he himself didn't really answer questions in the letters,

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Speaker 1: so she was left pretty frustrated and wondering what was

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Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, knowing curious Laura, by this point, you

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Speaker 1: can probably guess what happened. She managed to get something

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Speaker 1: out of her teacher, Mary Swift, and she was also

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Speaker 1: secretly visited by a group of evangelicals who were protesting

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Speaker 1: How's methods. She was attracted to what they told her,

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Speaker 1: and evangelical religion became a major part of her life

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Speaker 1: from then on. When How finally came back, he was

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Speaker 1: disappointed that his plan had been wrecked and he kind

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Speaker 1: of wrote the whole thing off as a failure, not

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Speaker 1: just the religious education, but educating Laura almost Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: became more distant from her after this, and according to

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Speaker 1: men and he even said that her religious education was

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Speaker 1: the greatest disappointment of his life, and it caused him

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Speaker 1: to take back some of the praise he had for

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Speaker 1: the blind in general. So he took a very extreme

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Speaker 1: took it pretty hard, got finitely. But when Laura was

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Speaker 1: about twenty years old, her last and favorite teacher, Sarah White,

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Speaker 1: left to be married, and at this point, especially considering

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Speaker 1: that she and How had drifted apart by this point,

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Speaker 1: a little bit um school was going to be over

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Speaker 1: for Laura. So she stayed on at Perkins for a time,

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Speaker 1: but she really found life a lot lonelier and isolated

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Speaker 1: without having a constant companion with her anymore. So it

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Speaker 1: was thought best by everyone that she'd go home to

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Speaker 1: her family farm. That didn't really work out either. The

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Speaker 1: family was too busy running the farm, doing their everyday

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Speaker 1: things that they did, and um, they didn't have time

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Speaker 1: for the twenty four hour companionship and the constant questions

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Speaker 1: that she was used to, and so she started to

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Speaker 1: get depressed, she started to get sick, and how eventually

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Speaker 1: got worried enough to loop in Dorothea Dix, who we've

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Speaker 1: talked about on an earlier podcast, UM, who was also

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Speaker 1: a friend of Laura's, to help raise the money for

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Speaker 1: a lifetime endowment for her to live at Perkins as

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Speaker 1: long as she wanted to. She ended up staying there

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Speaker 1: for the rest of her life, returning to her family

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Speaker 1: farm only for summers. As an adult. At the school,

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Speaker 1: she lived in a cottage and she taught needlework. Apparently

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Speaker 1: she was a really strict teacher too. I think we

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Speaker 1: mentioned that before. At the point if you if you

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Speaker 1: didn't have neat stitches, she'd just make you rip the

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Speaker 1: whole thing out and start over. That's tough, but she'd

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Speaker 1: also read a lot. She'd write letters constantly, she'd travel

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Speaker 1: occasionally to she'd knit, she'd embroider, she'd make lace and

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Speaker 1: so things to sell to people who came to see her.

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Speaker 1: Often she would include an attached autograph with that, and

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Speaker 1: she liked having money of her own. She liked having

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Speaker 1: some money to give to charity and buy presents for

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Speaker 1: her friends while she was home. One summer, she was

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Speaker 1: baptized in a brook near the family farm, and she

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Speaker 1: also convinced the pastor's wife to learn the manual alphabet

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Speaker 1: so that they could communicate and that way Laura could

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Speaker 1: get more religious instruction. And we mentioned this a little

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Speaker 1: bit when talking about her her sense of humor. But

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Speaker 1: to strangers she did seem less friendly and less pleasant

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Speaker 1: as she grew older, but perhaps that's in part due

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Speaker 1: to all her losses. She got very close to her

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Speaker 1: younger sister on these trips back to the farm um

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Speaker 1: and her sister passed away, how died in eighteen seventy six,

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Speaker 1: and just within a year or so after that, two

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Speaker 1: of her teachers died. So at age fifty nine, Laura

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Speaker 1: got sick with erysipolis, which is a streptococcus infection and

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Speaker 1: died May eighty nine. The last word that she spelled

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Speaker 1: out was a mother. A year before she died. Though

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Speaker 1: Laura did meet Helen Keller, and as we mentioned, the

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Speaker 1: eight year old annoyed Laura by stepping on her foot.

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Speaker 1: Bad first impression. But Keller's parents, who were dealing with

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Speaker 1: the same tantrums that Laura's family had dealt with years earlier,

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Speaker 1: happened to read Dickens eighteen forty two American Travels, where,

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Speaker 1: if you'll remember from the Dickens podcast, he wrote at

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Speaker 1: length about the then since sational twelve year old Laura

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Speaker 1: who was imprisoned in a quote more marble cell. He

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Speaker 1: was very poetic in his descriptions of her, and the

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Speaker 1: promise of Laura's story made Keller's parents contact Perkins, where

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Speaker 1: they were connected with recent grad and Sullivan a good

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Speaker 1: friend of Laura's and someone who was familiar with Howe's

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Speaker 1: method of instruction. So the famous ah ha moment in

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Speaker 1: Keller's story came when Sullivan spelled out water on Keller's

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Speaker 1: hand while running water over the other. It's a very

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Speaker 1: famous scene that I think we all probably learned grad

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Speaker 1: school yet exactly and Keller is though I guess I

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Speaker 1: should say Bridgeman is so closely connected with Keller because

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Speaker 1: of that link in her parents and Dickens and all

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Speaker 1: of that. But Keller did always acknowledge Bridgeman's earlier education

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Speaker 1: and its effect on her own life. But Laurie's story

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Speaker 1: is maybe best summed up with something that she said

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Speaker 1: as a child, when her teacher was explaining to her

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Speaker 1: that while most people had five senses, she just had

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Speaker 1: three senses. And according to Krista de Luzio in American

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Speaker 1: nineteenth Century History, Laura thought about this for a moment

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Speaker 1: and then she answered her teacher that no, she actually

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Speaker 1: had one more sense than that. She had the sense

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Speaker 1: of touch, She had taste, smell, and then a fourth sense,

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Speaker 1: which she called think. And I mean that, how does

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Speaker 1: that not just sum up everything she learned and did.

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Speaker 1: That you can think, but if you have the ability

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Speaker 1: to express it, you can live a full life. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And it really was kind of sense for her and

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Speaker 1: made her be able to function in a way that

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Speaker 1: you know, quote typical people could. It did so, UM,

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Speaker 1: I found Laura Bridgman's story very interesting and UM, maybe

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Speaker 1: still consider doing something on Helen Keller uh Louis Braille

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Speaker 1: to another another I ran into in this research process,

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Speaker 1: all very interesting characters. But I think that's probably a

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Speaker 1: good time for us to go to listener mail. So

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Speaker 1: this email is from Matt and he wrote to us

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Speaker 1: about our real life Indiana Jones episode. And here's what

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Speaker 1: he had to say. I'm a professional archaeologist who spends

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Speaker 1: a good deal of time trying to explain what my

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Speaker 1: job is really like. Field work is a part of

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Speaker 1: what I do, though it is a professional undertaking and

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Speaker 1: not an adventurous one. But I also spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of time writing reports, researching regulations, in speaking with government officials.

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Speaker 1: In other words, my job better resembles an episode of

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Speaker 1: Parks and Recreation than Raiders the Lost Ark, of course. Um.

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Speaker 1: He went on to say. I've also discovered that being

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Speaker 1: listed in the phone book under archaeologists often results in

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Speaker 1: odd people bringing odd objects to my office. A few

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Speaker 1: weeks ago, I was called over to the office of

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Speaker 1: one of the other archaeologists who works for my company.

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Speaker 1: A woman was sitting in his extra chair while he

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Speaker 1: stood over his desk, staring down at three items spread

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Speaker 1: out on it. A large chunk of sandstone with a

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Speaker 1: crude face carved on it, a pestle carved from an

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Speaker 1: unknown stone with a strange ridge pattern on the handle,

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Speaker 1: and a soapstone carving of a crouching man with his

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Speaker 1: hands clenched at his chest. My coworker took photos and

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Speaker 1: we both asked questions. Seems the objects were given to

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Speaker 1: this woman by an elderly lady who had once lived

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Speaker 1: on a large estate in Mexico. However, our visitor's grasp

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Speaker 1: of Spanish, couple with the donor's grasp of English, were

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Speaker 1: insufficient to allow a more detailed description of the item's

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Speaker 1: provenance to be gained. So we have sent the photos

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Speaker 1: onto a few people we know who are experts in

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00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:40,399
Speaker 1: Aztec and Mesoamerican archaeology. Well, this will of course have

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Speaker 1: a mundane resolution. We'll find out what these objects are

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00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:45,760
Speaker 1: and let her know, But it should be noted we

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Speaker 1: will not describe the monetary value of them, as we

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Speaker 1: do not want to encourage looting. This seems like the

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Speaker 1: sort of thing that belongs in an adventure movie. A

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Speaker 1: woman who naturally was a redhead, dressed all in black

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00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 1: comes by our office asking our opinion about three serious

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Speaker 1: artifacts that came to her by way of a convoluted route,

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Speaker 1: and she can't find information on what they are or what,

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00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 1: if anything, they mean. I spend a lot of time

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00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:13,200
Speaker 1: trying to disabuse people of the notion that my job

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00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 1: in any way resembled an Indiana Jones's story. And then

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Speaker 1: that happens. So we thought that was pretty funny. And

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Speaker 1: he said that one of these days they're just expecting

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Speaker 1: some guy in a trench coat to come by and

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Speaker 1: and um, you know, you can imagine the restaurant there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if any funny super drama would start. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So thank you Matt for writing in and sharing. Sharing

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Speaker 1: a little peek into the life of a real archaeologist

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00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 1: sounds pretty fun, it does. It sounds more exciting than

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Speaker 1: I think you think your job is. I mean, we

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Speaker 1: sit in cubicles all day, so we do so. Yeah,

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00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:53,960
Speaker 1: parks and recreation sounds pretty good. That's true. So if

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00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 1: you'd like to write with us and share some personal

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00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,440
Speaker 1: experiences you have that are related to podcast topics we've done,

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00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 1: or maybe you us have a top podcast topic that

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00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 1: you want to suggest, you can write to us and

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00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:07,400
Speaker 1: let us know we're at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.

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00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: You can also look us up on Facebook and we're

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00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Myston History. And if you want to

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00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,040
Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about Braill, we do have

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00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:16,959
Speaker 1: an article called how Brail Works. You can look for

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00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:20,040
Speaker 1: that by searching for Braill on our homepage at www.

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Speaker 1: Dot How stuff works dot com. For more on this

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00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how staff works

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00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:52,919
Speaker 1: dot com.