Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracey V. Wilson
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about Unearthed all week
Speaker 1: long this week, Yeah, which is pretty much just how
Speaker 1: on Earth works Now. I felt like I struggled a
Speaker 1: little bit pulling this one together. Yeah, for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. One was that what I used to do,
Speaker 1: I would go through my whole bookmark manager of things
Speaker 1: I had bookmarked to potentially talk about in Unearthed, and
Speaker 1: I would go through them, and as I found ones
Speaker 1: that were interesting, I would write them up into the episode.
Speaker 1: And over the years I have shifted to I go
Speaker 1: through all of those links and the bookmark manager and
Speaker 1: I make one file that's the stuff I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: is going to make it into the episode, and I
Speaker 1: make another file that is maybe stuff to go into
Speaker 1: the episode. But I don't actually start typing anything up
Speaker 1: until I have made a whole pass of all of
Speaker 1: the bookmarks. Gotcha. As I was doing that this time,
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, I am making good time with this.
Speaker 1: I am going through them at a good clip. I
Speaker 1: am on task and doing well. And then when I
Speaker 1: went to step two to turn this thing into like
Speaker 1: a more workable episode. I realized I had just miscategorized
Speaker 1: some stuff in my haste. The section that we had
Speaker 1: about smells I thought was going to be longer than
Speaker 1: it was. I thought I had five or six things
Speaker 1: that were about smells. One of them I had noted
Speaker 1: as being about a first century Cologne No, it was
Speaker 1: about a dig of a first century site in the
Speaker 1: city of Cologne that had nothing to do with aroma.
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair accident when you're quickly filing
Speaker 1: zipping through stuff. A couple of the other ones, like
Speaker 1: just either turned out to be really confusing. One of
Speaker 1: them was something like all of them turned out to
Speaker 1: be simultaneously under the umbrellas of smells and updates, And
Speaker 1: one of them was something we actually really had talked
Speaker 1: about that exact thing before. It was not new information,
Speaker 1: So the smells section became short. I also, I have
Speaker 1: tried to be more aware of whether something that I'm
Speaker 1: reading might be generative AI oh yeah, created, And that's
Speaker 1: been the case for a while. And this is the
Speaker 1: first time that I have cut stuff from the episode
Speaker 1: either because the AI disclosure, like there was an AI
Speaker 1: disclosure on the paper that made me go, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't that was not okay, And then in one case
Speaker 1: the entire conclusion it was basically like, yeah, so we
Speaker 1: asked we asked AI to write what the rules for
Speaker 1: this board game probably were, and I was like, that's okay,
Speaker 1: I could I could ask AI what the rules for
Speaker 1: the board game probably were. So I cut that. I'm
Speaker 1: trying not to climb on my AI soapbox and be
Speaker 1: really irritated I have. So there have been times on
Speaker 1: the show before the development of large language model chatbots, yeah,
Speaker 1: where we have talked about things that were connected to
Speaker 1: something under the umbrella of AI or machine learning, right,
Speaker 1: And a lot of them have had to do with
Speaker 1: like there was one that was like, with the permission
Speaker 1: of the traditional owners, drones being sent into caves where
Speaker 1: there might be rock art and an algorithm helping to
Speaker 1: detect rock art that the human I might not be
Speaker 1: able to detect on its own, Yeah, and that being
Speaker 1: like the preliminary step for the researchers to then like
Speaker 1: look at that and work with the traditional owners to
Speaker 1: interpret the artwork. There are like uses of machine learning
Speaker 1: that are cool and interesting, but then when you get
Speaker 1: into things that are like and so we asked a
Speaker 1: chatbot what the rules for this game might have been.
Speaker 1: I was out. I was like, Nope, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not what I'm here for. I mean, here's my thing.
Speaker 1: I don't love AI because of how much theft is done.
Speaker 1: But yeah, even on a bigger issue, I hope you
Speaker 1: don't want your kids to have clean water, Like, It's
Speaker 1: just AI is really environmentally a disaster. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: know there are some companies in that space trying to
Speaker 1: figure out ways to mitigate it. But as they try
Speaker 1: to figure it out, a kajillion people asking chat gpt
Speaker 1: for casserole recipes are doing so much damage. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know that we'll ever catch up, So I get
Speaker 1: very frustrated. Yeah. One of the things that I'm frustrated by, Well,
Speaker 1: there's the thing that is people either asking chat gpt
Speaker 1: something that you also could have just put into a
Speaker 1: search engine and there would have been a high quality
Speaker 1: first result you could have read for yourself. There's that
Speaker 1: there is the number of absolutely laughably wrong things that
Speaker 1: AI summaries of search results have presented me. With being
Speaker 1: a person that plays video games, I've seen so many
Speaker 1: people show up in video games subreddits being like I'm
Speaker 1: really confused about what to do. I asked AI and
Speaker 1: it said this, and like what the AI has told
Speaker 1: them about video game is flatly wrong. Yeah, and human
Speaker 1: beings wrote a whole walk through, so that's what you
Speaker 1: could have done. So like all of that stuff is
Speaker 1: frustrating to me deeply, and like these are not good
Speaker 1: uses of technology. They're not good uses of the resource
Speaker 1: behind the technology. But then the fact that everything that
Speaker 1: relates to machine learning and algorithms and that, like it's
Speaker 1: all been lumped together under the umbrella of AI. So
Speaker 1: it's really hard to like talk about any of these
Speaker 1: things in a way that makes sense, because like, sometimes
Speaker 1: there are things that are not using they like they
Speaker 1: don't have the electricity and water usage concerns that generative
Speaker 1: AI large language models do, but because they are lumped
Speaker 1: under the umbrella of AI, like people hear about them
Speaker 1: and immediately are upset and all of it is the
Speaker 1: mess it is It is the fact that models have
Speaker 1: been trained on work that was protected by copyright. That's
Speaker 1: a big mess problem. The fact that so many things
Speaker 1: that we have to use in our daily lives now
Speaker 1: have an AI layer that we cannot turn off or
Speaker 1: get away from. A hate. Yeah, I like how we
Speaker 1: just definitely veered into the that's a planned to have
Speaker 1: an AI conversation. But here we are. Here we are.
Speaker 1: I have lots of art thoughts. When you're ready, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have two other things I had noted doubt, and
Speaker 1: then we will get to art. The first is the
Speaker 1: descriptions of the vile that contained fecal matter and essential oils. Yeah,
Speaker 1: gross number one, But the articles that I read about them,
Speaker 1: I felt that a number of writers used adjectives that
Speaker 1: were unnecessary and just made reading about it grosser. And
Speaker 1: I was like, I didn't need that evocative additional word there.
Speaker 1: We could have just left that out right. So I
Speaker 1: just tried to write that as straightforwardly but also non
Speaker 1: grossly as possible. Another reason that this became a difficult
Speaker 1: thing to work on is that, for some reason, for
Speaker 1: the first time in years of working on this, I
Speaker 1: just forgot to look at all of my unearthed sources
Speaker 1: for like a month. I think it was maybe when
Speaker 1: we came back from the holidays, I did the I
Speaker 1: wrote up the unearthed for the fourth quarter of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and then my brain just kind of checked
Speaker 1: out on Unearthed. And usually it is something that I
Speaker 1: look at at least once a week, and I gradually
Speaker 1: create this you know, list of links over the course
Speaker 1: of the quarter. But I just, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: forgot about it for more than a month, and I
Speaker 1: came to it and I had I had hundreds of
Speaker 1: articles that had kind of backed up, and in the
Speaker 1: course of going through them, I locked myself out of
Speaker 1: one of the websites that publishes things because I opened
Speaker 1: too many pages from them at the same time, and
Speaker 1: they thought I was a bot. So I've tried not
Speaker 1: to repeat that experience since that happened. Heavens, yes, you
Speaker 1: talk about art. I do. First, we was talking about
Speaker 1: a thing that's not really art but kind of art
Speaker 1: because you mentioned painting closets. Oh yeah, yeah. I used
Speaker 1: to be very like, why the heck would you ever
Speaker 1: paint a closet? And then I'm going to invoke our
Speaker 1: friend Lily once again. Oh I love Lily. We're going
Speaker 1: on a trip leader this year. I'm very excited. When
Speaker 1: she got her house. You know, we all were kind
Speaker 1: of like house planning to purchases and buying around the
Speaker 1: same time, like she and several of our other friends,
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of painting at each other's houses.
Speaker 1: And she was very insistent that we paint the closets.
Speaker 1: And I was like, this is a waste of time.
Speaker 1: Do you know what? Those closets are beautiful and like
Speaker 1: when you look in them, and one is like this
Speaker 1: beautiful raspberry color that has like gold trim on it,
Speaker 1: and it's the prettiest thing you've ever seen. I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we should all be painting our closets anyway, you have
Speaker 1: the energy. Yeah, So friends of ours bought a house
Speaker 1: and they, you know, had some some painting parties. Friends
Speaker 1: came over and helped paint. And what I remember was
Speaker 1: like I had painted, I had gone in slightly the
Speaker 1: wrong order. I had painted a bunch of walls that
Speaker 1: you would see if you opened the door to the closet.
Speaker 1: But then I realized I was like, oh, but this
Speaker 1: up over here behind me, like that also needs to
Speaker 1: be painted. And I had to kind of contort myself
Speaker 1: into the clear way. Yeah, and also try not to
Speaker 1: get onto the paint that I had already painted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just I just had sort of neglected to think
Speaker 1: about this one part of the closet wall. But the
Speaker 1: process of painting the closet was also just sort of
Speaker 1: tedious and awkward enough that the idea of painting a room.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's totally possible that room had another purpose
Speaker 1: before it was used as storage, but the idea of
Speaker 1: painting like figurative elements and cinnabar colored bars on the
Speaker 1: interior of the closet, I was like, Nope, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a little too much for me. Okay, now we
Speaker 1: have to talk about Salvador Dali. Okay, yeah, who I'll
Speaker 1: probably never do an episode on because I can't like,
Speaker 1: uh huh, it's too much I love. And he's made
Speaker 1: a lot of unearthed appearances. He has, he has, We
Speaker 1: did a really fun episode about him for Criminalia. This
Speaker 1: is not what I intended to talk about. But did
Speaker 1: you know that there was a Dolly, an original Dolly
Speaker 1: on Rikers Island? For years? I heard about this somewhere.
Speaker 1: It might have been from you, it might have been me.
Speaker 1: That he had made this piece of art for the
Speaker 1: prison because he was supposed to do an appearance there
Speaker 1: for like their art program, and he was sick that day,
Speaker 1: so he made them a piece of art. It ended
Speaker 1: up getting stolen. It's lost forever. We don't know where
Speaker 1: it is. I have a weird follow up that is
Speaker 1: I will tell you later because I met someone who
Speaker 1: claims to know someone who was involved, yeah, in the theft,
Speaker 1: even though they all got off Anyway, Here's what I
Speaker 1: want to talk about though, the scale of that painting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was acquired because one of the things if you
Speaker 1: go to Saint Petersburg, Florida, and you don't go to
Speaker 1: the Dolli Museum, whether you were a fan of his
Speaker 1: work or not, you're doing yourself a disservice. For two reasons. One,
Speaker 1: I have always contended that if Dolly were not as
Speaker 1: out going and flamboyant as he was, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to just keep his life on the DL, he could
Speaker 1: have been a completely rich art forger. Yeah, because when
Speaker 1: he was young, one of the things he did to
Speaker 1: learn his skill and to learn technique was to make
Speaker 1: copies of famous pieces of work. And they are good copies.
Speaker 1: Like he could like we think about his work and
Speaker 1: it being you know, his very surrealist stuff, but like
Speaker 1: this man could paint you a fake. Sayson and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't know the difference. He could paint you at Caravaggio
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't know the difference. But what really blows
Speaker 1: you away when you're in that space is the scale
Speaker 1: of some of his paintings, like Hallucinogenic Torriodor, which is
Speaker 1: my possibly my favorite painting on the face of the planet. Well,
Speaker 1: just rock you back. It's so big and there's so
Speaker 1: much visually to take in that. Now I'm like, I
Speaker 1: gotta go. Are they gonna display the because they have to,
Speaker 1: because I gotta go. I gotta go. And I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of where they would put it because it's
Speaker 1: not an infinitely large music like, it's a good size,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, where do you even put something like that?
Speaker 1: They'll figure it out. It'll be beautiful. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: The second thing I wanted to talk about is that
Speaker 1: I'm really excited because I'm going back to Italy, not
Speaker 1: for a work trip but with my best friend because
Speaker 1: we're going through our art bucket lists, like the things
Speaker 1: we want to see in person before we are no
Speaker 1: longer on this planet or you know, able to travel.
Speaker 1: And one of my big most of this is her
Speaker 1: list because I have been more recently than her. But
Speaker 1: my big thing that I'm doing on this trip is
Speaker 1: I want to compare the Caravaggio Judas laying halo fair
Speaker 1: names with the Gentileski. Yeah. I mean, I have looked
Speaker 1: at the images before, but I want to see them
Speaker 1: in person. You know. Part of it is that, like
Speaker 1: Gentileski is like twenty years later than him, there's actually
Speaker 1: a slight familial connection between her father and Caravaggio, and
Speaker 1: she really you know, took that concept of tenebrism and
Speaker 1: like went to a new level with it in some ways.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, he was a violent man, we know,
Speaker 1: very very prone to outbursts of violence. But I kind
Speaker 1: of chuckle because his version of that the women look
Speaker 1: a little almost timid about what they're doing, whereas we know,
Speaker 1: because we did an episode on Artemisia Gentileski that like,
Speaker 1: there are actually two versions of that biblical story that
Speaker 1: she's painted. One is the beheading, one is the slaying.
Speaker 1: Those are the two titles in there in different places.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to see the beheading hers, which
Speaker 1: we know was It has been considered over the years
Speaker 1: as a kind of a protest piece of art and
Speaker 1: a way to work through her feelings about having been
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted like those women are. One of the women
Speaker 1: is like kneeling on his chest like it is visceral,
Speaker 1: and so I cannot yeah wait to see these two
Speaker 1: in person. That's just me wanting to talk about art.
Speaker 1: But here's the question I want to ask you, Okay,
Speaker 1: because you also have some cool travel coming up. Are
Speaker 1: you going to go see the Elgin Marbles at the
Speaker 1: British Museum while you're in London? I don't know. We
Speaker 1: we have not planned anything other than we have plane tickets.
Speaker 1: We have a hotel for part of the stay because
Speaker 1: we are going because Patrick is going to be at
Speaker 1: an event. So that like that part of the hotel
Speaker 1: stay is purchased and the our air travel is purchased.
Speaker 1: And once I bought plane tickets, I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I got some other things that I need to work
Speaker 1: on right now. Will come back to planning the strip later.
Speaker 1: And I haven't decided what I want to do exactly yet.
Speaker 1: So I mean, the British Museum is a great place
Speaker 1: to get lost for the day. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting stuff you can go, you know, pay your
Speaker 1: respects to the ghost of Mike the Cat. You can.
Speaker 1: I certainly have a list of interesting things that I
Speaker 1: like to do. There are you gonna go see the dinosaurs?
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna do. I haven't decided anything.
Speaker 1: Uh uh, because you have some time to yourself right
Speaker 1: while he's working is yet. Yeah, well, but the time
Speaker 1: that I have to myself, we won't be in London. Ah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, we really need to sit down and
Speaker 1: like look at things. Because because I bought plane tickets
Speaker 1: and then was like, all right, we'll figure out all
Speaker 1: the other steps later, and then we have not figured
Speaker 1: out other steps. Eh, that's fair. I bought the plane
Speaker 1: tickets for our trip to Italy and then my best
Speaker 1: friend is handling most of the rest of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, bless you, you beautiful creature, because I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: my brain cannot right now. Yeah. My trips outside of
Speaker 1: the United States, with the exception of our honeymoon, for
Speaker 1: the last decade, have all been work trips. So there
Speaker 1: has not been a trip where we have left the
Speaker 1: country and and I have needed to plan anything because
Speaker 1: Michael has been planning it and you and I have
Speaker 1: been hosting it. Based on the work of Michael and
Speaker 1: Michael's team. Yeah, and our honeymoon. Patrick basically planned it,
Speaker 1: but we also had We went to Iceland, and we
Speaker 1: had kind of a bucket list of things that we
Speaker 1: wanted to do while we were there. But then other
Speaker 1: than that, we did not plan things other than where
Speaker 1: we were staying each night, and we just explored as
Speaker 1: we winged it. Yo, Like, we had our lodging arranged
Speaker 1: and we had some things we definitely wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and then we just like explored Iceland, which was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. You can do that in London, for sure.
Speaker 1: It's a ton of great places to eat. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: do need to figure out where we're staying. That's the
Speaker 1: thing that we should handle soon. Yeah, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know the rest of it yet. We
Speaker 1: did make one trip to Canada in that we flew
Speaker 1: to Buffalo Niagara Airport to go elsewhere in New York,
Speaker 1: and because we were right there, we walked across the
Speaker 1: bridge into Canada and had lunch in Canada and then
Speaker 1: we came back with the rest of the way to
Speaker 1: where we're going in New York. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: find out where all you end up going in London.
Speaker 1: I love that city so much. Yeah, there's so many great,
Speaker 1: great things to do there, just great places to hang. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great cocktail culture, great, great fun. I've had great fun
Speaker 1: in that city. We'll figure it all out. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as the world is still happening, lets us get,
Speaker 1: let us go. I will say, I just flew. We
Speaker 1: recently released an episode where we talked about the TSA
Speaker 1: and how easy Brosie it could be, and it was recorded,
Speaker 1: and we put a note in front of that behind
Speaker 1: the scenes that we had recorded it before the shutdown
Speaker 1: had ground everything to a halt and like Atlanta was
Speaker 1: having four and five hour weights and whatnot. But I
Speaker 1: recently traveled for we went away from my husband's birthday
Speaker 1: and we were like kind of white knuckling it because
Speaker 1: we didn't know if things would would be righted by then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a one minute weight at security. It worked out.
Speaker 1: We got so lucky. Yeah, so lucky. It was so
Speaker 1: easy for us that I almost felt bad. I had
Speaker 1: the early stage of it, yeah, where it was like
Speaker 1: a two hour weight, although I had ticket that let
Speaker 1: me not do that, Like I had a Sky priority,
Speaker 1: so I was not too bad. But I saw the
Speaker 1: early stage and I can't imagine the long ones. So
Speaker 1: my hat is off and my heart goes out to
Speaker 1: anybody that had to wait in those lines. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: had a trip that was similarly during the earlier stages,
Speaker 1: and it was none of my issues had to do
Speaker 1: with TSA or or wait times. There was a crew
Speaker 1: scheduling issue, and so my flight there got canceled, and
Speaker 1: then there was weather and my flight home got canceled.
Speaker 1: It's just bad luck. It was just yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: I fortunately had enough loyalty points to get a free
Speaker 1: hotel for the night that I was stranded in Raleigh. Anyway, anyway, Wait,
Speaker 1: the airline didn't put you up, no, because it was weather,
Speaker 1: all right. They did compensate me for the canceled flight.
Speaker 1: That was a staffing issue that was there. Gotcha anyway. Anyway,
Speaker 1: whatever is happening on your weekend, I hope there are
Speaker 1: no canceled flights and no delayed flights and no long
Speaker 1: lines of any kind. That things are going as well
Speaker 1: as possible. We are recording in the midst of just
Speaker 1: continual global chaos, but also the joy of spaceflight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, I hope you're able to find some joy,
Speaker 1: have some good things going on. We will be back
Speaker 1: on Monday with a brand new episode. You will also
Speaker 1: have a Saturday Classic tomorrow. Stuff You Missed in History
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