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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V.

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Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We talked all this week

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Speaker 1: about Ida Tarbell and the history of the Standard Oil

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Speaker 1: company that she wrote Breakup of Standard Oil A really

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Speaker 1: weird coincidence, which was not why I chose this piece.

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Speaker 1: I chose it, as I said, because I was listening

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Speaker 1: to se Non Radio and I emailed myself from my

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Speaker 1: yard to be like, do this podcast. But literally, as

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Speaker 1: I was researching and writing it, a bunch of the

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Speaker 1: successor companies to Standard Oil, we're doing congressional hearings about

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Speaker 1: deceiving people about whether climate change is real. And I

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Speaker 1: was like, man, this is causing me to just have

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Speaker 1: a lot of feelings, a lot of feelings. Uh. I

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Speaker 1: had this like tandem feeling of like man's uh iditar

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Speaker 1: Bell did this all this amazing work. She she led

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Speaker 1: to the breakup of this company that had a lot

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Speaker 1: of unfair business practices, but also people involved with it

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Speaker 1: didn't really have any kind of consequences and made a

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Speaker 1: whole lot more more money. And now this is happening. Yeah, no, no,

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Speaker 1: repercussions there now a hundred and something years later. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was a lot of circular brain time spent on

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Speaker 1: that while working on this. Right, That's one of the

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Speaker 1: things I think we've all bumped up against it where

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Speaker 1: there's like the despondency of studying history and realizing that,

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Speaker 1: like the hubrisk of modern man is to always think

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Speaker 1: we have come farther than any previous people. Um, but

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Speaker 1: humankind is still making the same mistakes over a numbers,

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Speaker 1: sometimes even when you're waving a sign that outlines those

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Speaker 1: mistakes very clearly, uh, and be very very frustrating. This

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Speaker 1: was also an interesting episode for me to research because

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Speaker 1: a lot of what she was investigating, Uh, the reason

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Speaker 1: these practices were either frowned upon or illegal or both

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Speaker 1: was because of what the idea of capitalism is supposed

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Speaker 1: to be like in the United States, Like, there's this

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Speaker 1: idea that capitalism is supposed to involve healthy competition within

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Speaker 1: free markets, and it's like resting on that idea if

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Speaker 1: then you go and collude with the railroads to get

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Speaker 1: yourself rates that no one else can have so that

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Speaker 1: you have this unfair business advantage, that's totally the wrong

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Speaker 1: thing to do. But there were and still are people

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Speaker 1: who were like they were just doing maybe they were

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Speaker 1: making good business deals. They had the power to make

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Speaker 1: good business deals, so why not. Holly is making a

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Speaker 1: face that our listeners cannot see, but man, it is

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Speaker 1: a grimace, you know. It's that thing where there I

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Speaker 1: think two prongs to this that are inherently problematic, right.

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Speaker 1: One is that there is a tendency for some folks

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Speaker 1: to like trust in that, you know, good healthy competition

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Speaker 1: of capitalism, on the presumption that there will be enough

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Speaker 1: morality in play that no one will do things to

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Speaker 1: really hurt other people, which then gets kind of accluded

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Speaker 1: by that other thing you mentioned of people going, yes,

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Speaker 1: but they're just making good business decisions. The problem isn't.

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Speaker 1: On paper, things that are good business decisions in terms

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Speaker 1: of numbers and money are often terrible decisions for fellow humans, Yes,

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Speaker 1: including the entire planet at this point. Yeah, That's why

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Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna give another shout

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Speaker 1: out to the c Non radio podcast that inspired this episode.

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Speaker 1: The entire season as is not out yet as of

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Speaker 1: when we are recording this, and I think there's probably

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Speaker 1: an episode that that has not dropped yet that exists

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Speaker 1: as of when we are recording this behind the scenes. Um,

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Speaker 1: but the first four episodes are sort of a big

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Speaker 1: picture historical arc of like, how did we get to

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Speaker 1: this point where we are in the West's relationship to

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Speaker 1: the planet that is so contrary to the relationship of

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Speaker 1: so many UH indigenous peoples who are not lumped in

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Speaker 1: generally as part of quote the West. And then part

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Speaker 1: five starts with looking at things that are happening right

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Speaker 1: now in the Earth today where we can see what's

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Speaker 1: happening and we can like see the evidence of the

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Speaker 1: impact that the climate is happening. So it can be

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Speaker 1: tough to listen to, but also really important to listen

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Speaker 1: to and also incredibly well done. The other point that

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Speaker 1: I would want need to make sure to make was, Wow,

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Speaker 1: Ida tar Bell is just so fascinating and complicated to me,

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Speaker 1: because if you just take any one piece out of

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Speaker 1: her biography, like if you look only at writing the

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Speaker 1: history of a Standard oil company, she can seem like

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Speaker 1: somebody who was like a dedicated anti capitalist. Totally not

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Speaker 1: true if you look at just that and the fact

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Speaker 1: that she was an investigative journalist and had a college

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Speaker 1: degree at a time when most women could not go

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Speaker 1: to college because colleges weren't admitting women. Like you can

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Speaker 1: think that she was an early example of feminism when

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Speaker 1: she was decidedly anti feminist and a lot of her opinions,

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Speaker 1: there's so many pieces of it. If you just say

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Speaker 1: this one little slice, you get a very different picture

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Speaker 1: from like Ida Tarbell as a whole, which is is

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Speaker 1: there's a beautiful parallelism right between that and her research

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Speaker 1: in France where she was going and thinking she was

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Speaker 1: establishing Madame Roland in one way, and it was like, oh, no,

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Speaker 1: she's all complicated and contradictory, and I'm like, yeah, look

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Speaker 1: at yourself. All of us are. That's not even a

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Speaker 1: finger point. But like, no one is. No one is

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Speaker 1: a simple machine, right. We all have contradictory things that

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Speaker 1: we we hold in our hearts as though they are

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Speaker 1: completely normal to coexist. But it is very funny when

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Speaker 1: she's like, ah, this woman not what I thought. Oh,

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Speaker 1: by the way I thought was going to happen, women's

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Speaker 1: rights not so much. I also was just incredibly fascinated

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Speaker 1: by the story of her father having to return home

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Speaker 1: on foot and just stopping at small towns to be like,

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Speaker 1: can I teach your kids for a little bit so

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Speaker 1: I can earn enough money? Are like barter for some

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Speaker 1: new shoes. It's a different world. Can you imagine if

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Speaker 1: someone came to your door today, presuming you were a parent,

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Speaker 1: and said, can I teach your kids for a little while,

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Speaker 1: would you be like get Yeah? That Actually that came

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Speaker 1: up in her story and other contexts of like living

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Speaker 1: in an oil boom town in the latter half of

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. How it was just totally common practice

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Speaker 1: for people who needed money to show up on a

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Speaker 1: person's store step and be like, hey, do you have

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Speaker 1: any work I can do? Uh, you know, getting a

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Speaker 1: little money or getting a meal or whatever. How that

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Speaker 1: was just like how the world operated. And that is

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Speaker 1: not how the world operates here where we're living now.

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Speaker 1: I know in other places of the world that's not

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Speaker 1: necessarily the case. But yeah, it was like it just

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Speaker 1: this totally different way that society worked. So my last

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Speaker 1: thing that I just found so delightful was the story

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Speaker 1: about the fraternity pins. The weird dramas of different social

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Speaker 1: structures are ceaselessly entertaining. Yeah. Well, and also that was

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Speaker 1: like a slightly different nuance of wearing somebody's pin than um, Like,

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Speaker 1: I'm most familiar with the idea of getting pinned you

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Speaker 1: are now somebody's steady significant other, and this wasn't exactly that,

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Speaker 1: but also kind of had some of that flavor. And

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Speaker 1: so just wearing four different pins to chapel giant problem.

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Speaker 1: Can you imagine anyway, She's so complicated, but I still

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Speaker 1: really love her. So I'm glad. I'm glad. I emailed

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Speaker 1: myself from my yard to we like do this podcast? Uh,

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Speaker 1: if you'd like to send us a note, We're at

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Speaker 1: History Podcast at I heart radio dot com. And since

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Speaker 1: it's Friday, Happy Friday, everybody, whatever is on your plate

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Speaker 1: for the weekend. We hope it goes super well. We

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Speaker 1: will be back tomorrow with a classic episode from somewhere

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Speaker 1: in the back catalog, and we will be back Monday

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Speaker 1: with something brand new. Stuff you missed in History Class

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Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts

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Speaker 1: from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Speaker 1: H