Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio Happy Friday.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We returned to the world
Speaker 1: of Supreme Court cases again. I try to space out
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court cases. But as soon as the random
Speaker 1: algorithm showed me this clip. It was an audio clip
Speaker 1: with you know, a picture in the background of sodam
Speaker 1: Oor and Sour having this conversation about Thinned, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Thinn right now, because a
Speaker 1: lot of people had seen that clip, and I was
Speaker 1: not sure how many people had any idea what was
Speaker 1: being discussed in terms of Thinn right.
Speaker 2: So yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, I know the last time we had a Supreme
Speaker 1: Court episode, I said I was going to do one
Speaker 1: on Elk versus Wilkins, and I.
Speaker 2: Haven't done that yet.
Speaker 1: How dare how dare I still might at some time.
Speaker 1: The first time I ever heard about this case was
Speaker 1: back in twenty seventeen on a series from the podcast
Speaker 1: Seen on Radio, and it was there Seeing White series,
Speaker 1: which was on the sort of development of whiteness as
Speaker 1: a concept and the impact that concept has on life
Speaker 1: in the US today. And I had since that time
Speaker 1: almost a decade now, would periodically return to the idea
Speaker 1: of talking about this case in the show and then
Speaker 1: never made it up until now. I re listened to
Speaker 1: that one episode of Seeing White just because I was like,
Speaker 1: I want to refresh my memory on what exactly they
Speaker 1: said that made me think, Hi, maybe my show should
Speaker 1: talk about this eventually. And Bagat Singh Thin's son was
Speaker 1: interviewed on that and you apparently like this was not
Speaker 1: something that his father ever really talked about. He knew
Speaker 1: his father as a spiritual teacher. He really didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about this at all. And when they got into
Speaker 1: the the kind of ways that Thinned and other people
Speaker 1: from India would talk about their own race and talk
Speaker 1: about race in general while making the argument that they
Speaker 1: were white so that they could become citizens. There was
Speaker 1: just there was a lot of racism involved in those conversations, right,
Speaker 1: And he was like, that is not that does not
Speaker 1: sound like my father to me. He did not think
Speaker 1: of his father as someone to make those kinds of arguments.
Speaker 1: And there are a number of other podcasts besides ours
Speaker 1: that have spent sort of more time looking at that
Speaker 1: part of it. On the sort of the interconnection between
Speaker 1: different groups of people trying to move to become citizens
Speaker 1: of live in the United States and the intersections of
Speaker 1: these different types of racism involved with that. Well. And
Speaker 1: there are also things that happened that we talked about
Speaker 1: in this episode, right where like, within the legal framework
Speaker 1: that exists, you kind of have to go down a
Speaker 1: path that has racist tones to it and basically be right,
Speaker 1: I'm not black, you know what I mean, Like, there's
Speaker 1: inherently a racist element to that, but it's the only
Speaker 1: path available to somebody, right, which stinks. And it kind
Speaker 1: of gets to that bigger picture that always comes up
Speaker 1: when people are talking about issues of control and race
Speaker 1: and marginalized or perceived lower class citizens, that like part
Speaker 1: of the maintenance of power is turning people that don't
Speaker 1: have power against one another. And this is the kind
Speaker 1: of an elegant way that they managed to do it,
Speaker 1: which is it's just troubling and heartaching. Yeah, there's no way,
Speaker 1: there's no other path to walk, which stakes. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: didn't use the word socially constructed in this episode anywhere,
Speaker 1: but this case is sort of an example of how
Speaker 1: the idea of race is socially constructed, not something that's
Speaker 1: biologically immutable. And while the Court was not sort of
Speaker 1: making an argument about the social construction of racial categories,
Speaker 1: but that's basically what, you know, what the court was
Speaker 1: saying when the verdict was, well, he's not white, and
Speaker 1: a common person knows that. That was sort of the
Speaker 1: what it boiled down to. Also the fact that this
Speaker 1: was part of a pattern of whether the US government
Speaker 1: has viewed different people as white, and how a lot
Speaker 1: of time that has had to do with like whatever
Speaker 1: was most expedient with what the government.
Speaker 2: Wanted in that moment.
Speaker 1: And also the fact that the Supreme Court put out
Speaker 1: two different decisions in different like in a couple of
Speaker 1: months of each other, that were so contradictory, one of
Speaker 1: them being like no, no, no, no, only Caucasians can be citizens,
Speaker 1: and then a couple months later, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not that I've got that kind of Caucasian.
Speaker 2: Actually, I.
Speaker 1: Read some one of the articles that I read for
Speaker 1: all of this characterized it as judicial whack a mole.
Speaker 1: It was like if there had been another case that
Speaker 1: had come before the Court where someone had made a
Speaker 1: different argument and that was not somebody the Court thought
Speaker 1: should be a citizen. Then they would have come up
Speaker 1: with some other reason to like knock out that one
Speaker 1: part of the definition.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that came up in research that
Speaker 1: we didn't mention is that Charles Sumner, who we spent
Speaker 1: three entire episodes when they were debating the new naturalization
Speaker 1: law that extended the rights of naturalization to African and
Speaker 1: people of African descent, Charles Sumner was trying to get
Speaker 1: the law to just drop racial categories altogether, right, And people.
Speaker 2: Were like, na, man, you don't you are You're not
Speaker 2: in your right mind.
Speaker 1: They can we can just drop racial categories altogether. Those
Speaker 1: are important, yeah, to somebody. There's also a biography of
Speaker 1: Bogot Syncthned. It is called Doctor g The Life, Teachings
Speaker 1: and Legacy of Doctor Boggat Synthn. I did read the
Speaker 1: portion of it that is about his biography, because it's
Speaker 1: more focused on the teachings, right.
Speaker 2: I did read that.
Speaker 1: Doing research on the show, and ultimately only used it
Speaker 1: to confirm things like dates and places, because it does
Speaker 1: not read life like an impartial or probing account of
Speaker 1: someone's life. It is a lot more like a hagiography.
Speaker 1: It's very laudatory and how it talks about him. I
Speaker 1: think it was commissioned by his son, so that's not
Speaker 1: fully surprising. But if anyone went looking for more information
Speaker 1: and found that book, just wanted to put that out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah once again. In some ways humans move so far,
Speaker 1: they evolve and change and learn and grow. In another
Speaker 1: it's the same thing again. Oh yeah, yeah, an unpleasant noise.
Speaker 1: I just made sorry, kind of a growl and a sigh.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know. Wow.
Speaker 1: I know what episode is coming next after this one,
Speaker 1: and it will not have quite the number of heavy
Speaker 1: themes that this one.
Speaker 2: Dead huzzah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about the Carrington events this week. After
Speaker 1: looking at the globe and where the places we are going,
Speaker 1: I didn't actually look at the globe. I looked at
Speaker 1: at Google Maps, and then I was like, I still
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm looking at, and so I just
Speaker 1: started individually googling the like latitude and longitude of the
Speaker 1: places that we're going, and then I googled like Aurora
Speaker 1: chances at the places that were going, and then I
Speaker 1: felt a little silly. I was like, oh, these places
Speaker 1: are not actually that much farther north than we are
Speaker 1: but then I, you know, I reminded myself at the
Speaker 1: time that you saw the aurora at Tracy, you were
Speaker 1: at Helk, So yeah, I've only I've only really seen
Speaker 1: it once I was in Iceland. It was not our
Speaker 1: Iceland trip where we went aurora hunting. I was the
Speaker 1: cree Is time in May, which is not normally the
Speaker 1: time you would see them. Yeah, that was just a
Speaker 1: freakish good bit of luck that they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: the aurora's out. So when we went to Iceland for
Speaker 1: our honeymoon, it was very end of April beginning of May,
Speaker 1: and it was out while we were there, but we
Speaker 1: were in a place that was overcast when it happened.
Speaker 1: And the next night we were staying at a different
Speaker 1: place and they had this list at the front desk
Speaker 1: that was put your name on the list than if
Speaker 1: the aurora comes.
Speaker 2: Out, we will call you.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, I'm going to put our
Speaker 1: names on this list, even though I know it's not
Speaker 1: very likely. And the person at the front desk was like, actually,
Speaker 1: they were out last night and they were really bright.
Speaker 1: And when people found out, they were angry that we
Speaker 1: didn't have the list out and we didn't have the
Speaker 1: list out because like it's not the season anymore, Like
Speaker 1: we had reached the point of the year where it
Speaker 1: is not fully dark in Iceland anymore. Yeah, the darkest
Speaker 1: it is is twilight. Yeah, at that point we missed it.
Speaker 1: But there was one time that it was pretty bright
Speaker 1: in a lot of Massachusetts and I could see it
Speaker 1: a little bit with the unaided eye. At my house,
Speaker 1: I could see it through my phone camera exceptionally well.
Speaker 1: And when we went back to Iceland on the trip
Speaker 1: that we took for the show where we actually had
Speaker 1: an aurora chasing scheduled, Patrick and I arrived a day
Speaker 1: early to try to get a little acclimated, and we
Speaker 1: were walking around Reykiavic at night trying to see if
Speaker 1: we could see the aurora, and it really did not
Speaker 1: look like we could, And it also did not look
Speaker 1: like we could through the phone screen. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I looked more closely at the pictures. I think
Speaker 1: even after we were home that I was like, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: this is Aura. There's a little something something well something
Speaker 1: happening there that I could not see it all and
Speaker 1: could not see on the phone screen. I would see
Speaker 1: looking at the picture on the computer. So anyway, very
Speaker 1: much would be excited if I if we saw the
Speaker 1: aurora on the trip, but if we don't, it's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a good fortune thing. There is some speculation
Speaker 1: that Frederick Edwin Church's painting of the Aurora borealis, which
Speaker 1: is the painting that we have used for the little
Speaker 1: artwork for the show on our Netflix, that that was
Speaker 1: inspired by this. He was in Newfoundland and Labrador that
Speaker 1: summer when it happened, and then he painted this in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five. And I didn't have a good place
Speaker 1: in the episode itself to mention that. Just blurted out
Speaker 1: like I did that. I went to Galileos too, just
Speaker 1: blurt it out. I do blurt some things out that,
Speaker 1: like an aurora was a surprise to me. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're in Santa Croce, which is a basilica in Florence,
Speaker 1: we went because we were on our art pilgrimage and
Speaker 1: that is where Michelangelo is also buried. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: were there, but then we were walking along and I
Speaker 1: was like, is that Galilea. It's literally right there in
Speaker 1: the same right there, huge, huge, like you know, big
Speaker 1: monument and whatnot, as well as Machiavelli. It's a it's
Speaker 1: quite a gallery of people assembled there for their final
Speaker 1: resting place. Yeah, that's sort of like the Pantheon Parthenon. Pantheon,
Speaker 1: Pantheon Pan Parthenon. Which one is it. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: the two words over and over, the one where all
Speaker 1: the French people are.
Speaker 2: Entombed that Dale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you could say it the French way and
Speaker 1: it will sound. I know that those are two different
Speaker 1: things and they are very dissimilar from one another, but.
Speaker 2: The time too.
Speaker 1: Stupid, No, do not, do not, do not. I also
Speaker 1: love that we had a show out to Goddard Space
Speaker 1: Flight in this episode. Yeah, because I love them and
Speaker 1: have been lucky enough to go visit them. Yeah, way
Speaker 1: back when we were still house Stuff Works and we're
Speaker 1: doing video content separate from this show, we did a
Speaker 1: bunch of space stuff there at one and it was
Speaker 1: amazing And I love that entire team, so I'm glad
Speaker 1: they got a little shout out here. Is that the
Speaker 1: trip where you stayed at a place that I would
Speaker 1: call an affordable motel experience and someone who was with
Speaker 1: you was unhappy, Yes, I don't know if they were
Speaker 1: unhappy about that. Okay, they were unhappy about a variety
Speaker 1: of things. Uh huh, that is all but the nice
Speaker 1: thing and it wasn't it was. It's a hotel, but
Speaker 1: it's definitely not like a fancy pants unicorn hotel. And
Speaker 1: it's just the place that there is convenient to the yes,
Speaker 1: and there's not a lot near there. But what we
Speaker 1: kind of lucked out with is that that was also
Speaker 1: the same place that all the people from god Aard
Speaker 1: do their monthly social hour. Okay, it happened on the
Speaker 1: night we were staying there, so we got to hang
Speaker 1: out then. Listen, one of my proudest moments in my
Speaker 1: life is that I taught a bunch of engineers and
Speaker 1: scientists that if you salt your napkin before you put
Speaker 1: your cocktail down, it won't stick to your drink. And
Speaker 1: they were astounded by this. I love it, and I like,
Speaker 1: you are so smart about all the things, but I
Speaker 1: can't teach you drinking tricks.
Speaker 2: And that's all I had off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what an incredible group, And I know it's
Speaker 1: been a little stressful for them in recent years, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope they are all keeping their morale up as
Speaker 1: best they can. Yeah, if people are curious. The video
Speaker 1: game I was playing that suddenly reference to the Carrington
Speaker 1: event was The Long Dark, a game that I have
Speaker 1: played a lot over the last more than a decade,
Speaker 1: And in hindsight, that made total sense because one of
Speaker 1: the things that was introduced as part of that game
Speaker 1: was Aurora that cause electrical devices to work when they
Speaker 1: do not work in other circumstances. So like radios that
Speaker 1: are in houses, you can turn the radio on and
Speaker 1: music will play when there's no power in any other circumstance.
Speaker 1: In the new I knew it's a few years old
Speaker 1: at this point, a DLC there is a radio that
Speaker 1: is powered by the aura that you can talk to
Speaker 1: a trader and trade things with.
Speaker 2: And then the aura is beautiful, and.
Speaker 1: Then it also has effects that are a little different
Speaker 1: from reality. They make animals behave differently and be much
Speaker 1: more likely to kill you. And then yeah, there had
Speaker 1: been speculation for a long time that the Carrington event
Speaker 1: was going to have some kind of relation to the
Speaker 1: game Oh right, with its story mode, the last chapter
Speaker 1: of which just dropped, which was a controversial finale.
Speaker 2: The story mode of the game.
Speaker 1: And as is the case with so many fandoms that
Speaker 1: I have witnessed over my life. The response to it
Speaker 1: was disproportionate. Yeah, yeah, anything.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 1: I'm slightly envious. I feel like I used to play
Speaker 1: video games at a rabid rate, and I can't do
Speaker 1: that anymore. I have to stare the time and be like,
Speaker 1: these two hours, I'm going to play this game because
Speaker 1: I just have a mom, a busy bee, you have
Speaker 1: my hands and loves guys. However, the mention of animals
Speaker 1: behaving badly brings us to the confession that I mentioned
Speaker 1: I would make if you are interested in hearing about
Speaker 1: my cat. Yeah, okay, So, as everyone knows, we adopted
Speaker 1: three new cats last year. One of them, Jessie, is
Speaker 1: like kind of like I always joked that she's me
Speaker 1: as a cat, right. She's kooky, her noises are hilarious.
Speaker 1: She always sounds mad even when she's happy. But I
Speaker 1: love her desperately, And she's also a big, beautiful woman.
Speaker 1: She's tipping close to seventeen pounds and she's also a
Speaker 1: large cat. So one of my best friends, who I
Speaker 1: also love, who is like a sibling to me, watches
Speaker 1: our cats when we travel, and she has mentioned a
Speaker 1: couple times you know, I sometimes I'm a little afraid
Speaker 1: of Jessie, and I'm like, uh huh. She's all talk.
Speaker 1: She's a big cuddler, Like even when she's unhappy, she
Speaker 1: never lashes out at all. She's like super you know,
Speaker 1: she's like, I don't like this, but she won't do
Speaker 1: anything wrong. And then I got sent a video of
Speaker 1: Jeszi while we were away, and I was mortified because
Speaker 1: I was suddenly that parent. You know, we've all known
Speaker 1: that parent whose kid is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: terror and genuinely mean, and they're like, not my baby,
Speaker 1: not my precious baby. Yeah, my precious angel baby. JESSI,
Speaker 1: who I love desperately, was not just yelling at our
Speaker 1: poor cat center. She was hissing, swatting, and lunging at
Speaker 1: her with bared teeth, and I was like, oh, what
Speaker 1: the heck is going on here? And we have done
Speaker 1: some testing since then, Uh huh. She just does not
Speaker 1: like that person, which, like you know how people are
Speaker 1: like trust the instincts of animals, not this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every this is a person that stray dogs will run
Speaker 1: to for help, Like she is a cat whisperer. She
Speaker 1: is one of the kindest souls i've ever met. We
Speaker 1: had another friend of mine visiting right before I left
Speaker 1: for Italy. We went to Italy together and she flew
Speaker 1: here first, and so I was like, great, we can
Speaker 1: do an actual like control group situation test. Here's another
Speaker 1: person this cat is not even though our friend watched
Speaker 1: the cats is at our house a lot, she knows
Speaker 1: all of our animals. But I'm like, here's the person
Speaker 1: this cat isn't familiar with. She's met her before, but
Speaker 1: she's not here all the time, well cuddly as the
Speaker 1: day is long with her. And then our other friend
Speaker 1: walked in the room and the cat was like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: fied at my terrible child. Yeah, that is my confession.
Speaker 1: I have never I don't know what's going on with her.
Speaker 1: I don't know jealousy, jam, I don't know what's up.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This reminds me a bit of how I used to
Speaker 1: have a cat named Anastasia many years ago. You're scaredy baby, Well, no,
Speaker 1: Anastasia was. Anastasia was good. Cestina was scared of things. No,
Speaker 1: villain L was the most scared of thing. Yes, I
Speaker 1: was singing a villain L because I had watched your
Speaker 1: cats a few times. Yeah, villain l hid from everyone
Speaker 1: all the time, but Anastasia, so for a long time
Speaker 1: I had taken them to a cat only VET. And
Speaker 1: then I moved to Atlanta and asked some friends for
Speaker 1: vet recommendations. I was given a vet recommendation. I went
Speaker 1: to this vet one time. I think because I got
Speaker 1: there and I was like, I don't feel like this office.
Speaker 2: This office does not.
Speaker 1: Feel well maintained to me, and that makes me question
Speaker 1: other things. But then they were gonna get exams at
Speaker 1: shots and all of that, and the vet tech who
Speaker 1: was helping put on like the big gauntlets to handle
Speaker 1: my cat, and there had been no real indication for
Speaker 1: me ever that like any of the cats needed gauntlets
Speaker 1: to be examined, right, And I think the fact that
Speaker 1: they were in a place that they could smell dogs,
Speaker 1: which was not usual for them, and then was being
Speaker 1: handled with these gauntlets by someone who clearly thought there
Speaker 1: was a need for gauntlets. Anastasia lost it and I
Speaker 1: was like, bab I have never seen her behave like
Speaker 1: this in my life, very and like at that point,
Speaker 1: she was a fully adult cat and had plenty of
Speaker 1: VET experiences under her belt and had never behaved like that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is not right. Not the
Speaker 1: vet for me. We did have a cat that needed
Speaker 1: the gloves. And you know who I'm talking about, I
Speaker 1: absolutely do. Mister Burns, the scourge of veterinary science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the chillest cat I've ever met at home. But man, yeah,
Speaker 1: he hated the vets office.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was so bad.
Speaker 1: He was so bad. He drew so much blood.
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, he told me put the many stores.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I've shown you the picture of the space
Speaker 1: helmet they had to put on him to keep him
Speaker 1: from biting people. Yeah, which, if you've ever had a
Speaker 1: cat that has to wear the space helmet at the VET,
Speaker 1: it's quite entertaining but also bad. And he looks so mad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and my.
Speaker 1: Beautiful, amazing vet is just looking at him with such
Speaker 1: a loving expression while he's like, I will kill you
Speaker 1: the worst, Oh much beloved. Oh cats in astronomy together,
Speaker 1: A cat's an astronomy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think our previous episode this week, I talked about
Speaker 1: how I do know lawyers, that I could have asked
Speaker 1: technical questions about law I also could have asked an astrophysicist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I did not ask any astrophysicists questions about the
Speaker 1: Carrington event. So hopefully we did not upset any astrophysicists
Speaker 1: with our lay persons explanation of things. In my experience,
Speaker 1: they're a pretty chill group.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I agree. So whatever's happening on your weekend. If you
Speaker 1: love cats, I hope there are cats. If you want
Speaker 1: to see the Aurora, I hope it shows up. If
Speaker 1: you just want to chill out and play some video
Speaker 1: games or read a book or do some other quiet
Speaker 1: side thing, I hope that happens.
Speaker 2: And I hope.
Speaker 1: Everyone is great to you. And if you're working, I
Speaker 1: hope everyone is great to you at work. We will
Speaker 1: have a brand new episode on Monday. We'll be back
Speaker 1: tomorrow with a Saturday classic. Stuff you Missed in History
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