WEBVTT - Dear Diary... 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:03.880 Hey, everyone, Josh and Chuck here to remind you that 0:00:03.960 --> 0:00:06.480 our last three shows of the year. Boy, this is 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:09.239 a good show this year are taking place very soon 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:10.560 and tickets are still available. 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:12.840 Yeah, so get in the saddle and come out and 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:16.680 see us partners in Orlando, Atlanta, and Nashville. 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:19.160 Just go to stuff youshould know dot com and click 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:20.960 on the tour link and you can get all your 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:26.560 tickets right there. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:30.960 production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:36.800 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.640 Charles W. Chuck Bryan is here and this is Stuff 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:43.400 you Should Know. Dear Diary edition. 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.199 Well, I guess I'll just ask the obvious question. Have 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.080 you ever kept a diary of any kind, any kind 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:52.480 of journal? 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:54.240 Yeah? I think I did when I was younger, but 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:57.200 I haven't in a long long time. And it's one 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:58.840 of those things like I'm like, gosh, this is such 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:00.800 a great idea, do it a couple of times, and 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:03.240 then just fall off, Yeah, fall off the wagon. 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.240 I think it's one of those things that you can 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:09.640 either be inclined to be one of those people that 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:11.720 does it and keeps up with it or not. But 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:15.839 you can also learn to do it, I think, with practice, 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.200 like anything else, by setting that habit. And the reason 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:23.440 I assigned this idea to Livia, who did a great job, 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:28.120 is because my good friend Mike Anderson has kept a 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:34.600 daily journal since nineteen ninety one. Dear Mike, it's pretty amazing. Obviously, 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:37.440 never read it, but it's just it comes up. It 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.120 comes up every now and then because it's it is 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.640 a journal of his life. But what it serves, as 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:47.240 far as the friend group goes, is a journal of 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.680 all of our lives to a certain degree. And sometimes 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:52.560 we'll be talking, we'll be camping or just hanging out 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:55.480 or something, and we'll be talking about something that happened 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.200 in the old days and we won't be clear on it, 0:01:58.240 --> 0:01:59.920 and Michae will just be like, you know, I can 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:04.080 find that out for us, and it's just it's cool. 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.320 It's a it's a bit of a time capsule, and 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.520 you know it's a he's he's currently getting them, i think, 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:14.359 digitized from his old handwriting days, oh handwritten days, rather 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:18.000 and I was like, you know these are important, right 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:21.200 and you need to make sure you know, we're all 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:23.760 getting older, and like, what if a UFO picked you 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:25.200 up and took you away, and he's like, I got 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:28.000 that cover of my friend there going to his daughter 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:32.359 already there will be preserved by her. And I would. 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:37.440 Mike's a crazy, weird, creative genius, so I would. I'd 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:38.760 like to see these like published one day. 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.120 Yeah, that's who you want to keep a journal for 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:42.040 that long? For sure. 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.440 It could be one of those things that comes out, 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.760 you know, one hundred years from now, and that's when 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:49.799 he becomes famous. 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:51.560 What year did he start? 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:55.400 Nineteen ninety one, so it's twenty twenty three, So do 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:55.799 the math. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:58.239 No, wait, thirty eight years? 0:02:58.880 --> 0:02:59.560 Do the math? 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.080 Are you sweating my upper lip is? 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:06.720 Anyway, So this is on diaries And this actually turned out, 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:10.280 at least in the history section, to be way more 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:14.160 woman centric than I imagined it would be. But it 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:16.040 makes a lot of sense now that I see the 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:16.600 history of it. 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:22.160 Well, yeah, and if you kind of dive into tenth 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:26.240 century Japan, which we'll talk about in a second, there 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:30.359 was a kind of a movement of journaling. What a 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:33.440 lot of people point to is the first real historical 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:38.200 example of people using diaries. They're writing because they're not 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:42.640 allowed to be externally, So the only way to share 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:46.840 themselves is to write to themselves. And women have so 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.400 long been repressed by men that I could see journaling 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:59.000 being a largely woman affair for most of history. 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.600 I should say, yeah, I mean we can actually start 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:08.280 with that, because the earlier examples aren't really diaries. Like 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:13.080 we're talking about a papyrus logbook by an Egyptian official 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:17.839 named Marror about limestone blocks being delivered for the pyramids 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:18.800 at Giza. 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:19.359 Not a diary. 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:22.320 Not a diary because there's nothing you know, A diary 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:25.919 is something personal about someone's experiences. So he wasn't like 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:30.080 ten blocks delivered today, also feeling a little depressed. If 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:35.760 anyone cares, it was just recording of things. Marcus Aurelius, 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.919 the Roman Emperor, got a little closer with his meditations 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:43.599 because he did talk about things like here's how i'd 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:47.360 like to I'd like to develop these character traits and 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:50.479 cultivate these things in my life. But it still was 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:54.680 sort of abstract. It wasn't like today, this happened and 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:56.840 I felt this way about it. So it's kind of 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.080 these pillow books that are kind of the first diaries. 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.599 Right, Yeah, and again they came up among the ladies 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:08.200 of the court in Japan in the tenth century, and 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:12.279 again they were extraordinarily repressed, but they were able to 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.599 share themselves so eloquently that a lot of these these 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:18.800 what are called pillow books survived, and one of them 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:21.839 was essentially so they would kind of veer into fiction 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:25.159 and poetry and stuff in addition to recording, you know, 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:28.400 historical events at the court, both large and small. It 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.080 could be gossip, it could be the death of an emperor. 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:34.599 They're really good historical records, but they're also really good 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:40.480 inward records of historical figures who otherwise wouldn't have who 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:44.080 would have been lost to history, and that from that 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:46.800 tradition of kind of veering into fiction a little bit 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:49.680 was considered. The first novel, The Tale of the Genji, 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:57.159 came out in the eleventh century by Murasaki Shikibu. I 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:01.000 think I got that right, and that was basically the 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:02.960 first novel. It came out of the pillow books. 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:06.520 Yeah, and there was there were the pillow books, which 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:10.320 were written by many women. They used a specific writing 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:14.120 system that was I think the first purely Japanese system 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.080 called hira guna. I'm probably going to get a lot 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:20.640 of the stuff wrong. And that was compared to the 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.599 official writing system called kanji, which I think was derived 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:28.320 from Chinese and used exclusively by men, and this other 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:30.960 writing system was used only by women, at least at first. 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:33.640 I'm not sure if that changed, and I think it 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:35.960 was a little simpler, but what it allowed for was 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:39.039 if you weren't like formally educated, you could learn this 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.440 writing system and it allowed for more expression of emotion 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:46.400 and like inner thoughts than it seems like Kanji was 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.960 a little more rigid and didn't have words and characters 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:52.920 for that stuff pretty neat. So they wrote these pillow books. 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:56.200 There's also one called the Pillow Book, and that was 0:06:56.240 --> 0:07:00.720 a specific book written by how would you pronounce Sei 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:06.480 as a first name? Say saye, say say e? Shona 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.880 Gun And that was made into a movie in nineteen 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:14.000 eighty six, Peter Greenaway the Pillow Book with what's his face? 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:20.360 Obh oh, what's the guy you? And McGregor was in that. 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:23.680 I thought he was talking about Sir Alec Guinness. No. 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:27.560 Uh, Europe. They started doing this in the Renaissance, right, 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:28.280 started journaling. 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.400 Yeah, And what's interesting about that is this is when 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:36.320 journaling really kind of became more widespread because the idea 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:41.000 of individualism became more widespread around the Renaissance, so people 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:44.680 started reflecting on their own experiences rather than you know, 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.120 just counting themselves as part of the crowd. It became 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.520 it mattered how they felt about something that happened. Then 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.280 they started writing it down. So even though the pillow 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:55.600 books kind of really kicked it off, there were several 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:58.120 centuries where that just kind of fell away, and then 0:07:58.160 --> 0:07:59.840 it was picked up again and really kind of took 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:02.480 off off, at least for those of us in the 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.960 the West, beginning in the Renaissance. Renaissance Europe. 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.280 Yeah, around the same time Puritans started doing the stuff, 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:13.280 Quakers started doing it, but these they were diaries, but 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:16.160 it was a little more of a you know, how 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:19.239 can I be a better Puritan or a better Quaker? 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.360 And you know, very sort of religious based rather than 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:27.040 just like hear my feelings about you know, Goodie Procter exactly. 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:29.080 They Oh my god, I can't imagine they would write 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:29.760 something like that. 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.559 The French got really into it too during the French Revolution. 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:39.720 Right, Yeah, I don't know exactly what kicked that off, 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:42.680 but they came up with what's called the journal Intimate, 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.800 the intimate journal, and the British also said, hey, that's 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.280 a pretty good idea. So they're writing about their inner lives, 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:53.400 their inner feelings, thoughts, experiences. This is the I guess 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:58.600 the early nineteenth century and that same century, so this 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.920 is so now people are like everyday people are writing journals. 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.160 So there are suddenly self important. And one of the 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:09.840 other big things as far as diaries and journaling are concerned, 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.800 that came about in the nineteenth century was publishing old 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:18.000 journals in diaries. Yeah, as not just historical records, but 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.480 it's like kind of like for mass consumption as well. 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:26.280 Yeah, which is really interesting because I think it's super 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:28.360 cool that you can go back and read first hand 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:34.120 accounts of the westward expansion, and again a lot of 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:37.720 these were written by women and what they were going 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.160 through at the time. It's just a fascinating peak into 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:44.199 these times that you can't get any other way. I mean, 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:48.400 you can get artifacts, you can recreate scenes in a museum, 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:52.240 you can paint pictures of stuff that happen, but like, 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:55.040 there's nothing like being able and I know they say 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.800 pictures worth a thousand words. But I think it's kind 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.080 of reversed in this situation. I think it diary is 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:02.640 worth like a gazillion pictures. 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:05.319 Very nice. You know, I was going to say a 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:07.040 thousand words and a diary is worth. 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.360 A picture, right, you have worth one picture. 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.080 But the idea that people were now willing to publish 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:17.960 other people's journals and diaries that were not intended for publication, 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.559 it actually created a new form, a new literary form, 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:28.720 the journal, the diary, usually historical, and Olivia points out 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:31.480 that that kind of raised the question from that point on, 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:34.040 like are you really just writing for yourself? 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:34.720 Right? 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:37.600 Or can you ever overcome the idea that if you 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:41.160 don't destroy these before you die, that there's a chance 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.199 that somebody might discover them and find them worth publishing. 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:46.480 And so are you paying attention a little more to 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:48.920 sentence structure, to grammar, to the words you're using. You're 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:51.920 trying a little harder than you would and therefore is 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:56.520 it a little less of something than it was before 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:58.040 people started publishing these? 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.080 Yeah, yeah, I get that question. There's one of our 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:05.600 old favorites, Oscar Wild. There's a very funny line and 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.679 the importance of being earnest when a character won't let 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.520 another read their diary and she says it is simply 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:13.880 a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.400 and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form, 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:18.880 I hope you will order a copy. 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:21.120 Pretty hilarious. 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:22.600 It's good stuff, very oscar wild. 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.600 So the importance of being earnest came out in eighteen 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.800 ninety five, which means that that idea was established by then, 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.800 very well established, and not a lot happened for about 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.160 a century, and then blogging came along in the late nineties, 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:39.240 and all of a sudden, the whole point was to 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:43.760 share your diary, your journal, your innermost thoughts. The thing 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.320 about doing it online, though, is now you had an option. 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:49.280 You could share it with your intimates, your closest friends 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:54.719 and family, or and like keep everybody else out. I 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:58.199 don't know through password protection, who knows. Or you could 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:02.280 go the other way around and blog anonymously and share 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.120 it with everybody, but your closest friends and family have 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.240 no idea to you. If you do it correctly. Either way, 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:12.960 you're sharing things in ways that that diarists never ever 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:13.679 did before. 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:18.360 Yeah, or blog non anonymously for just anyone to read anything. 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:20.280 And that's kind of what social media ended up being. 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:22.400 Yeah, just like all hang out there. 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.160 And isn't it great? Yeah that happened. 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.960 If everybody's ruining their own life, then nobody's ruining their 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:31.120 own life. 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:37.000 Uh, all right, baby, let's take an early break. Yes, okay, 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:39.199 we're gonna take an early break, and we're going to 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:43.200 talk about some of the more famous historical diaries out there. 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:11.160 All right, we were talking before the break about historical 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.240 diaries and how I haven't ever really read one. I've 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:17.600 read memoirs and things, which is fine. 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:18.400 That's different. 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:21.000 Yeah, it's a different deal. I'd love to read one 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:24.320 of these. It really like prime to my pump. 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:28.000 Oh yeah, did that happen while you were letting it 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:28.760 all hang out there. 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.439 There's a naval administrator, a very famous person named Samuel 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:39.080 Peeps who wrote a journal for about nine years in 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:43.840 Shorthand even and this is sort of a classic example 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.840 of a historical diary because he wrote about you know, 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:50.440 restoration and the Great Plague of London and the Fire 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:53.959 of London, and so not only do you have that stuff, 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:56.880 but you have this stuff from his perspective, and you 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:02.480 also have him getting annoy in his marriage and talking 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.440 about how excited he was about his new watch and 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:06.600 like kind of fun things like that. 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:10.720 Yeah, he's considered the greatest English diarist, and I'll own it. 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.720 Last time he came up, I called him pepees I 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:17.000 think probably, but people wrote in and corrected us, so 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:18.360 we got it right this time. 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.360 Yeah, this watch. Can you read that? That's a pretty 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:24.520 fun entry. I think about his new watch. 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.520 But lord to see how much of my old folly 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:30.680 and childishness hangs on me still that I cannot forbear 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:33.040 carrying my watch in my hand and the coach all 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.960 the afternoon and seeing what o'clock it is. One hundred times. 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:39.600 That was my Samuel peeps. 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:42.240 I love it. That's fun. He's like, what that does 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.000 is that makes it relatable because everyone has gotten a 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:50.040 new watch or a new shirt that they're like, I 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:51.360 gotta look in the mirror again and see how this 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.000 thing looks like. People get excited about that stuff, and 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:56.720 it's fun to see someone write about, you know, the 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:59.360 fire of London in one hand and also talk about 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:01.040 how excited it heard about their new watch. 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:05.040 He wrote more than a million words dude, which on 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.680 its face sounds like a lot. But get this, the 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.480 entire Harry Potter series is just over a million words. 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:15.320 So he wrote about the same amount of words as 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.360 the entire all the books of Harry Potter by hand, 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:23.400 in less time than JK. Rowling wrote them. 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.800 Oh, all right, pretty nuts, little shade. 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:30.359 Uh No, not really. I'm just it's a good touchstone. 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:33.360 Sure, plus we could shade her for all kinds of reasons. 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.920 Sure that don't involve speed of writing, if you really 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:38.840 want to do that. Who's the Game of Thrones guy? 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:45.400 That's what everyone's mad at him? Cc cc deville. 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:47.880 No, it was his named George R. R. Martin. 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:50.520 Yeah, are they still mad at him? 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:52.520 Cheeses? People give him a break? 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:54.520 I mean, isn't that the deal. I don't even know 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.440 anything about that stuff, but I think everyone's just like, 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:58.040 why aren't you finishing yet? 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:01.720 Huh? Well? What about Michael Schiner Chuck? 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:06.360 Yes, he was an enslaved person in Maryland and in 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:09.520 eighteen oh five was eventually a freeman. But he worked 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:14.520 at the Washington Naval Yards for many decades and ended 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:19.920 up keeping a fifty six year diary that was maybe 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:24.000 like my friends Mike one day that'll be published after 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.800 he died by historians. So all of a sudden, you 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:33.080 have this amazing account of the life of an enslaved 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.640 person over fifty and then a free person over fifty 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:36.280 six years. 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.240 Yeah. He also was not educated. Born a slave, you 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.040 typically weren't educated. In fact, that was usually illegal to 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:46.400 educate a slave at the time. So he taught himself, apparently. 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:50.720 So he uses his own spelling, his own grammar, very 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:55.600 little punctuation, and he had to conserve paper as much 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:58.920 as possible, so he would kind of like write stuff 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.960 wherever there was space on an old page that he left. 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:03.440 Oh wow. 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.880 And yeah, I think his grandson came along and kind 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.600 of organized it and it ended up being published. 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.320 That's amazing. Yeah, And that's one thing you'll see as 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:16.520 a tip later on, is to is to write as 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.080 good as you can write. If you're not some fancy 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:20.679 great writer, like, don't worry about it. 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:24.359 Yeah, I mean, you can just write punctuation and academics 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.840 centuries later will come along and digitize your stuff and 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:31.480 translated essentially for everybody. It's it's that it can be 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:32.320 that important. 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:37.680 Yeah. Absolutely. Josie Underwood is another great example, probably the 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:42.320 most famous civilian account of the Civil War. She was 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:46.000 au in a unique position because she was from a 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:49.320 Southern family in Kentucky, very prominent family in Bowling Green, 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.199 of slaveholders. But she was sympathetic to the Union cause. 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:57.960 And you know, she writes a very sort of honest 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:01.320 first person account as someone from that perspective throughout the 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:03.160 Civil War and it became very famous. 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:06.400 Yeah. But then interspersed with that with being occupied by 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:09.400 the Confederate Army and then the Union army, she also 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:13.159 like talked about normal life for like a society person 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.440 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where you know, going to parties 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:18.760 or things like that, or looking for what she called 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:22.520 her true prince a husband. So it has it's very 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:26.879 much like Samuel Peeps. There's historic events, but it's written 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:29.680 from the perspective of the individual who also writes about 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:30.280 themselves too. 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:34.320 Yeah, and this stuff is this is history. I mean, 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:36.320 this is how we learn about history. If you read 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:39.320 history books and they describe in great detail about how 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:43.400 life was. Some of that is from research and clues 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:45.040 and things like that, but some of that is from 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:46.040 first person accounts. 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:50.440 Yeah. There was another very very famous journal I don't 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:52.639 know if you'd call it a diary, but it was 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:58.240 from Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who led an expedition to 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:01.439 the South Pole in nineteen twelve, was trying to be 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:03.560 the first expedition to the South Pole, and in fact 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:06.680 they reached the South Pole to find that a rival 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:09.840 explorer had beat them by one month, and so they 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:12.560 had to make it back to civilization. They never made 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:17.320 it back, so Scott chronicled their slow demise over weeks 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:20.680 trudging through the Arctic or the Antarctic, I should say, 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:23.879 just trying to get back to safety and then just 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:24.600 not doing it. 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:26.360 I bet that's a heavy read. 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:30.160 It is. I was reading it today and it's just it's, yeah, 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:33.280 it's crazy to put yourself in that situation, which he 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.040 makes it easy to do in just these little, you know, 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:43.199 few sentence what do you call them, not inscriptions or installations, entries, 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:47.720 just a few sentences each typically, But yeah, it really 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:50.280 kind of draws you into like inside the tent where 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:52.840 blizzard's going and one guy's nose is falling off because 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:55.400 it's so frost bit, and everybody's trying to keep their 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:58.439 spirits up kind of thing. Like he really, it's a 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:00.600 really moving journal. For sure. 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.320 There's another one. And I never knew how to pronounce 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:08.680 his name A nice nin But I finally, do they 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:12.680 listen to who the men? On YouTube? Yeah? You ever 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:15.399 listen to that guy? Yes, today we will learn to 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.920 pronounce the name. Who is that a real person? 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:21.760 I don't know anymore, No one knows anymore. 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:25.080 I gotta figure that out. That'd be a good short stuff. 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:28.359 Maybe even who's real? Who is that person? 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:30.679 Okay? Who are these people? 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:36.360 All right, we'll do it as Jerry Seinfelcker. Anyway, he said, 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:38.760 it was pronounced a nice nin. And this was the 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.000 course of very famous diary that she kept from age 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:45.520 eleven until and this is nineteen fourteen until she died 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.399 in nineteen seventy seven. And it was noteworthy and that 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:52.240 it was very sort of body stuff for the time. 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:56.480 She talked very personally about, you know, sort of romantic 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:59.520 escapades that people did not talk about at the time. 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.320 It was published in sixty six like a sanitized version 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:08.840 and was a big hit with the ladies largely, and 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:12.159 then she said, hey, after I die, why don't you 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:14.680 publish the full and uncensored version. 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.680 But even the sanitized version was like, I've been ing 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:20.920 a double life. I've been having this affair. I'm married 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:23.440 to two guys. I've split my life between New York 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:27.439 and Los Angeles, and my husband doesn't know, like just 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:31.040 all sorts of stuff. And she purposely published them while 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.600 she was alive. And I mean, that's a tremendous amount 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:36.320 of risk that she took on. She ended up becoming 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:38.760 a feminist icon, like basically overnight as a. 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:45.080 Result, another icon. You can't talk about diaries without talking 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:50.200 about Anne Frank. And this is something that I never knew. Obviously, 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:52.879 if you know, we'll tell you who Ann Frank is, 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:55.760 because I always think everyone knows, even because it's the 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:58.159 second most widely read book in the world after the Bible. 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:02.760 But Anne Frank wrote a diary between nineteen forty two 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:06.640 and nineteen forty four as a teenager, started at thirteen 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:11.200 hiding from the Nazis with her family and wrote this diary. 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:15.280 The thing I never knew is that she had planned 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:18.320 to publish it. As the story goes, she was inspired 0:22:18.560 --> 0:22:21.560 by a radio transmission in nineteen forty four from the 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:25.720 Dutch government that said, hey, collect this and put it 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:29.760 on paper. All this everyday material about Nazi occupation, like 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:33.080