Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
Speaker 1: I'm tray cy V Wilson. And we talked about Alger
Speaker 1: Hisss this week. Uh huh, who is fascinating to me?
Speaker 1: And as I said at the top of that, like
Speaker 1: I grew up hearing about him all the time. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. There were two things that I promised
Speaker 1: I would talk about. Well, I promised one and I
Speaker 1: promised myself the other. The verse was the typewriter. So
Speaker 1: the case that his lawyers tried to make to counter
Speaker 1: that evidence that had been introduced that that typewriter was
Speaker 1: the typewriter in their home was intense. They did a
Speaker 1: lot of work It actually went on for a couple
Speaker 1: of years even after he had been incarcerated, where they
Speaker 1: actually had like an expert put together essentially a new
Speaker 1: typewriter that could mimic exactly what his is home typewriter
Speaker 1: did to show like people could totally do this. They
Speaker 1: could have built their own copycat typewriter. And there was
Speaker 1: also like work done where they were trying to make
Speaker 1: the case that potentially the typewriter that was produced, wasn't
Speaker 1: even hit as part of evidence in court, wasn't even
Speaker 1: Hiss's typewriter, but one that had been altered to look
Speaker 1: like his typewriter. Like, they made a lot of efforts
Speaker 1: to show the ways that those documents could have been
Speaker 1: forged and made to look like they came from the
Speaker 1: Hiss home. Sure, but ultimately the judge that heard those
Speaker 1: appeals was like, I just don't think Whittaker Chambers had
Speaker 1: the time and energy to do something like this, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. I just find that fascinating. Like,
Speaker 1: I know what we'll do. We're going to hire a
Speaker 1: typewriter forgery expert to build a new typewriter. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. I'm not even dogging it. I just
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating. Yeah, the other thing I was going
Speaker 1: to mention was his is not divorce. So apparently several
Speaker 1: years after he got out of prison, he asked his
Speaker 1: wife Priscilla for a divorce and she said no, And
Speaker 1: it seems like he may have met his second wife
Speaker 1: already at that point. I don't have substantiation on this,
Speaker 1: which is why I didn't want to put in the episode,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting and that he had wanted to marry
Speaker 1: her then, but he couldn't because his wife wouldn't give
Speaker 1: him a divorce, and so then they just had to wait,
Speaker 1: and then when Priscilla died, they got married shortly thereafter.
Speaker 1: Just kind of interesting. Yeah, there's a part of me.
Speaker 1: I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but there is part
Speaker 1: of me that's like, he did seem to want to
Speaker 1: unearth so much stuff. That part of me is like
Speaker 1: he might have been innocent. Mm hmm, Like I can't imagine,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's one of those cases
Speaker 1: where if you are not innocent, why would you want
Speaker 1: to work so hard to have every possible document released? Right?
Speaker 1: But one thing that several historians have pointed out is that,
Speaker 1: you know, when like his lawyers, for example, would get
Speaker 1: information from documents, they would of course kind of cherry
Speaker 1: pick what made his look best. So it's like it's
Speaker 1: an interesting game of I don't know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: well we ever know conclusively? Probably not. Most people accept
Speaker 1: he was a spy of some sort, right, but I
Speaker 1: don't spies. Are you generally into Cold War history stuff?
Speaker 1: We haven't talked about it a lot on the show
Speaker 1: because it's so recent that really, in terms of like
Speaker 1: fictional depictions, I can find a good spy story really
Speaker 1: interesting and compelling. But I feel like having been born
Speaker 1: when I was born and kind of growing up in
Speaker 1: the very tail end of you know, the existence of
Speaker 1: the USSR and all of all of that, like we
Speaker 1: were not in the thick of the Cold War. Really,
Speaker 1: I would say that the things were a lot more
Speaker 1: heightened in terms of that earlier. But like I do
Speaker 1: remember sort of the looming fear of nuclear war when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and it makes it less of
Speaker 1: a draw for me, Right, I think probably having a
Speaker 1: dad that was in the military shifted that for me
Speaker 1: a little. Yeah, it felt very much like that was
Speaker 1: always part of our households discussions. Yeah, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating. Yeah. I love a good inconclusive story,
Speaker 1: though I do. I love a history mystery. I mean,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, like I just it's interesting to
Speaker 1: know that there there was obviously some group of people
Speaker 1: high up in our government that was communicating with the Soviets, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure the same was going on in reverse. Right.
Speaker 1: It's always just fascinating to me like that aspect of
Speaker 1: human nature where it's like you are in a seed
Speaker 1: of power and success and something about it makes you
Speaker 1: want to do dangerous stuff and like normalize dangerous stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm such a whimp. I want no part of dangerous things.
Speaker 1: So I'm always like, what is that headspace? Right? What
Speaker 1: is it like, Like how do you go about your
Speaker 1: day to day life. Does it constantly something you're thinking
Speaker 1: about or is it just like compartmentalized in a way
Speaker 1: that you don't give it a lot of thought beyond
Speaker 1: like the needs of the things you're doing in terms
Speaker 1: of logistics. I'm just I'm fascinated by it anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is why I wanted to do this one. Alger hisss.
Speaker 1: This is our on ramp to Halloween things. I promise
Speaker 1: Halloween stuff is coming, but this at least had pumpkins
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah. When I got the outline from you,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm surprised this is not more Halloween themed.
Speaker 1: I read through it was like, oh, there's a ghost
Speaker 1: story article at a pumpkin Well, and I will tell
Speaker 1: you that part of that is accidental because I had
Speaker 1: looked at our calendar a while back and calculated out
Speaker 1: how many episodes I had to have ready that were
Speaker 1: not Halloween before we got to October. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would talk about Halloween stuff year round, you know, but
Speaker 1: that's not really appropriate for most people I had. I
Speaker 1: have talked to several people lately who are like, I
Speaker 1: don't like the Halloween stuff in September, not related to
Speaker 1: our show, but just our life. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand. You get out of the car. I
Speaker 1: don't really You can like it or not. That's fine.
Speaker 1: I love it year round. But I just miscalculated. So
Speaker 1: I thought this was going to be the end of September,
Speaker 1: and then I realized, no, it's in October. But there's October.
Speaker 1: There's October coming, I promise, yeah, promise. Well, and I
Speaker 1: don't know what order we're going to put these in,
Speaker 1: but we also today recorded the one about the medieval
Speaker 1: and Early modern Animal Trials, which has some you know,
Speaker 1: witchcrafty witch trial. Yeah, parallel, so similarly kind of a
Speaker 1: on ramp. It's like ish, it's ish, it's in there.
Speaker 1: It's an on ramp. So hopefully you are ready for
Speaker 1: Halloween happenings. Listen, there's witchcraft coming up, there's some murder
Speaker 1: coming up. Wild things are afoot here at stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history glass. I don't know how wild it'll
Speaker 1: actually be, but hopefully you'll enjoy it. Oh, we talked
Speaker 1: about Carlos Jeswaldo this week. I don't know how he
Speaker 1: got on my list either. I feel like all of
Speaker 1: them lately, I've been like, where did I get this person?
Speaker 1: But I will say there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: while I was researching this that went on the list.
Speaker 1: Because there are people that got obsessed with him. Oh sure,
Speaker 1: and some of them are very interesting, So they may
Speaker 1: pop up this year and then maybe later we'll see, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see. Did you know about Carlosious wild Over Wore? No?
Speaker 1: I don't think this is even a name that really
Speaker 1: rang a bell from the music composition standpoint, definitely not
Speaker 1: the murder standpoint. No, the murder stuff is whoof yeah
Speaker 1: yeah woo. He is one of those figures that people
Speaker 1: just become obsessed with, and I understand why, because he
Speaker 1: was obviously eccentric, obviously capable of great violence. There is
Speaker 1: that natural instinct to want to pick apart. How a
Speaker 1: person like that ticks M. I think personally, for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, it's like actually a distancing mechanism, right
Speaker 1: when you're like, I want to know how this played
Speaker 1: out with this person, because that way I know that
Speaker 1: I am not like that, and people in my life
Speaker 1: are not like that. Like I think subconsciously, that's part
Speaker 1: of what you're doing. It's creating a space between you
Speaker 1: and something scary. Yeah, you and I don't live in
Speaker 1: a time and place where an honor killing is a
Speaker 1: legally acceptable remedy. Yeah, but there are places in the
Speaker 1: world where that is still the case the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So simultaneously hearing about it in this context was like,
Speaker 1: that is so bizarre to me that this would be
Speaker 1: People would say, oh, yeah, you did have the right
Speaker 1: to go and murder them, but like simultaneously acknowledging that
Speaker 1: there are places where like that does still happen and
Speaker 1: is still sort of seen as an appropriate legal action
Speaker 1: for something that either has happened or is alleged to
Speaker 1: have happened. Yeah, And what's interesting here, And I really
Speaker 1: appreciated the fact that there is a degree of nuance
Speaker 1: because there were people then who were like, nuh uh,
Speaker 1: that was not okay because of the manner that he
Speaker 1: carried things out, and because of the level of brutality
Speaker 1: of it, there was sort of a recognition that even
Speaker 1: with that pretty horrific acceptability level in place, that there
Speaker 1: were limits to it, which I just find interesting, right,
Speaker 1: And I also am kind of interested in this idea
Speaker 1: that for a time he essentially like blew up the
Speaker 1: social structure of Naples by like making the most powerful
Speaker 1: families all kind of have this really horrible and problematic
Speaker 1: issue at their core. That's very interesting to me. As
Speaker 1: far as how he got things chill enough with those
Speaker 1: families to go back to Naples, it's a little unclear,
Speaker 1: and I think I only found one mention of it
Speaker 1: where it was essentially like he eventually made peace with
Speaker 1: Maria's family, and I'm like, but how, how how did
Speaker 1: that work out? And I don't know. One of the
Speaker 1: other interesting things about his biography and particular is that
Speaker 1: it's a really good example of something you and I
Speaker 1: see all the time, where when there's a case like
Speaker 1: this that has some existing documentation on it, like the
Speaker 1: church's court records about what happened and their determination exists,
Speaker 1: that document remains. It's an Italian so I was reading
Speaker 1: obviously translations of it, but there aren't a lot of
Speaker 1: such documents about him, and so there becomes that sort
Speaker 1: of rabbit hop, a game of as you're reading one account,
Speaker 1: it's referencing another account that you already read, and that's
Speaker 1: tying back to another historian that has studied it, and
Speaker 1: like you kind of get the round robin of source
Speaker 1: names being like played out over and over. But what
Speaker 1: I also found really fun in this one, as much
Speaker 1: as you can find fun in such a grizzly tale,
Speaker 1: was about those relationships, because in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: it would be like, well, in this version that came
Speaker 1: out in the seventeen hundreds, they say this, but we
Speaker 1: all know that's wrong now, and then later on another
Speaker 1: historian would reference that person and say, well, you know
Speaker 1: that person that contradicted that, we all know they're wrong now. Like,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of interesting developments. One of the
Speaker 1: other things that I didn't work into the episode because
Speaker 1: it just was convoluted, but I thought was interesting is
Speaker 1: that that Alex Ross piece from the New Yorker mentions
Speaker 1: that even today there's sort of new information coming out.
Speaker 1: And I say today that was written in at twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: so fifteen years ago, but not quite fifteen. There are
Speaker 1: still new pieces of information coming out, and that it's
Speaker 1: possible that the building that still exists that everyone has
Speaker 1: believed forever was where these murders took place. Now there
Speaker 1: are some people that say that is not accurate, that
Speaker 1: it was actually a different building. And this becomes important
Speaker 1: because he was actually if that's the case, he would
Speaker 1: have been renting that home from a relative of Fabrizio.
Speaker 1: So just look to like further cement how intertwined all
Speaker 1: of this stuff was and how complicated it was socially.
Speaker 1: That struck me as fascinating. Yeah, hopefully that more Halloween
Speaker 1: will be fun and not so grizzly. I'm in a
Speaker 1: grizzly murder stage right now. I don't know why, just
Speaker 1: em Yeah. I always say I'm fine. I'm not, you know,
Speaker 1: going through anything. I just sometimes sometimes you gotta talk
Speaker 1: about a murder. Sometimes I like talking about dark stuff fascinating.
Speaker 1: I will add that I really appreciated the quote that
Speaker 1: was in here from WB Ober Yeah, about using what
Speaker 1: would have been modern methods in nineteen seventy three to
Speaker 1: try to diagnose him. Yeah, that whole field has come,
Speaker 1: of course through a lot many things have developed since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, But like a lot of the core
Speaker 1: things that he was saying are still absolutely true. Like
Speaker 1: even when we do know more about a person than
Speaker 1: we know about Gswaldo personally, like that still does not
Speaker 1: provide the same kind of background and depth as actually
Speaker 1: being examined by someone. Yes, I might ruin that moment
Speaker 1: for you in a moment, okay, because Ober said all
Speaker 1: that as sort of the precursor to go. But here's
Speaker 1: what I think it was. What would that cracks me up?
Speaker 1: But what did he think? I mean? He basically was
Speaker 1: making the case that Gisualdo probably had may have had
Speaker 1: some you know, repressed sexual issues that he didn't know
Speaker 1: how to express that like that he may have been
Speaker 1: He kind of makes the case that he may have
Speaker 1: been homosexual. He doesn't really say he could have been bisexual,
Speaker 1: but he does say, but he did father children with women,
Speaker 1: which is kind of interesting, and that he may have
Speaker 1: just had like some you know, very specific fixations that
Speaker 1: you can kind of see playing out in his later
Speaker 1: life when he's hiring people to beat him when he
Speaker 1: is having trouble you know, using the bathroom without that
Speaker 1: being in play, Like he talks it through, but he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I will only ever make a comment that
Speaker 1: is supported or based some way in something we actually
Speaker 1: know his approach to doing that and saying like it's
Speaker 1: worth talking about what was going on, but we have
Speaker 1: to be careful that he would never make a leap
Speaker 1: of faith and go, I think what's happening is he
Speaker 1: would say like this, this seems like it might be
Speaker 1: the case, but we have to also factor and these
Speaker 1: three things we know, like, who's careful about it? But
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It was still a but here's where he
Speaker 1: might have been there we could have been going on
Speaker 1: with him. Yeah, as a person who's not a psychologist
Speaker 1: but has read a lot of things about like trying
Speaker 1: to diagnose people from history and about the history of psychology,
Speaker 1: that feels like a pretty like dated interpretations. Well for sure,
Speaker 1: but the points about all of the severe limitations of
Speaker 1: trying to diagnose someone from three hundred and fifty years later,
Speaker 1: that all holds up. Yeah, in my opinion, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: almost like he's like, I know, this is what people
Speaker 1: want and that was all from a journal that was
Speaker 1: written about medicine and was about, you know, people trying
Speaker 1: to unravel this thing. So it is sort of the
Speaker 1: most responsible approach you could have had for it in
Speaker 1: the early seventies, although, as she said, some of those
Speaker 1: ideas are very outdated. Man, yeah, we'll never know. I
Speaker 1: think that was probably a tortured human who made a
Speaker 1: lot of chaos, A tortured human with time on his hands,
Speaker 1: who made a lot of chaos as a result. Like
Speaker 1: if he had been a busy bee, if he had
Speaker 1: had work to do outside of just being driven by
Speaker 1: his own stuff, he might have found more I don't know, structure,
Speaker 1: some sort of peace somehow, I don't know. He clearly
Speaker 1: did not have peace in his heart or mind. Just sad. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Carlo's Aswaldo. Don't be like Carlo. If you find him interesting,
Speaker 1: rest assured you can find hours and hours and hours
Speaker 1: of both musical analysis as well as you know, people
Speaker 1: looking at his life story YouTube has you covered? Man,
Speaker 1: You can listen to those madrigals for a long time.
Speaker 1: Although there are funny things that people write like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't listen to them for a long time. They'll just
Speaker 1: make you feel weird. And it's like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess I didn't feel weird. I had a lot of
Speaker 1: his stuff playing when I was writing, and some of
Speaker 1: it is quite striking, but I never felt weird. So right, Carlo,
Speaker 1: If this is your weekend coming up, I hope you
Speaker 1: find some peace in your heart and your mind and
Speaker 1: that you get some time to just relax, hang out. Man,
Speaker 1: we need it. If you don't have that kind of time,
Speaker 1: that's stinks, and I'm sorry, but I hope everybody's really
Speaker 1: nice to you, and that we're all busy taking care
Speaker 1: of each other. We will be right back here tomorrow
Speaker 1: with a classic episode and then a fresh one on Monday.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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