Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Frye. This weeep. We talked about the nineteen forty
Speaker 1: six Oakland General strike. You sure did. I do want
Speaker 1: to say again, I would love at some point to
Speaker 1: do an episode on the women's day off in Iceland
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. The very basics are around easily
Speaker 1: accessible in English. I feel like that episode would be
Speaker 1: best if we had a lot more detail about, like
Speaker 1: how it was organized and how it was planned, because
Speaker 1: it was not a situation where somebody said ladies were
Speaker 1: not working this day right then, and then like someone
Speaker 1: flipped a switch, the women didn't work that day. Like
Speaker 1: there's a whole organizing and planning effort, and the details
Speaker 1: of that I think do exist in icelandic so much
Speaker 1: in English, though, at least at this moment when we're recording.
Speaker 1: So while this episode was something that I chose in
Speaker 1: part because we cannot do this one, I was also
Speaker 1: really interested in this on its own merits. To be
Speaker 1: very clear, I was really interested in how much of
Speaker 1: the focus was on workers in retail trying to organize
Speaker 1: because we still have a lot of workers in retail
Speaker 1: and a lot of workers in food service trying to
Speaker 1: organize today in the world that we're living in. And
Speaker 1: then also it being the last really major general strike
Speaker 1: before Taft Hartley, I wanted to tell that story. Also,
Speaker 1: something I found frustrating and the research process of this
Speaker 1: was I found a lot of quotes from people who
Speaker 1: were active or were leaders in the other unions that
Speaker 1: went on strike to support the retail work during the
Speaker 1: general strike. I really did not find people talking to
Speaker 1: those retail workers and their union leaders. I think I
Speaker 1: found at most one or two quotes that came up
Speaker 1: in the context of a documentary, and then when I
Speaker 1: went back to try to find them to be like,
Speaker 1: can I find out more about this person, I had
Speaker 1: lost track of where specifically I had found those couple
Speaker 1: of quotes, and everything else was primarily quotes from people
Speaker 1: in other unions who like that's part of the story too.
Speaker 1: But I do wish we had I had I had
Speaker 1: been able to find more things from the retail workers
Speaker 1: whose strike really started this whole thing. I have a
Speaker 1: theory that had a lot more women in that one,
Speaker 1: right didn't the retail workers have more women, So it
Speaker 1: was probably like, we want to talk to menfolk, not
Speaker 1: the lab Well, so yeah, a lot of the when
Speaker 1: I did find like statements from the union, a lot
Speaker 1: of times they were statements from the attorney who was
Speaker 1: a man, or they were statements from management from the
Speaker 1: store who were men, or they were statements that were
Speaker 1: sort of a statement from the union that did not
Speaker 1: name a specific person as a spokesperson. Right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I like gender was specifically a part of it, and
Speaker 1: the fact that this was a union effort that was
Speaker 1: largely led by women was also something that made this,
Speaker 1: you know, really interesting story to me because a lot
Speaker 1: of the stories that we have told about labor rights
Speaker 1: and unionizing and strikes, a lot of those have been
Speaker 1: unions that were either primarily or exclusively men at the time.
Speaker 1: So we've done a lot of strikes about railroad workers
Speaker 1: and auto workers, and we've talked about how all of
Speaker 1: those strikes were only possible because of the efforts of women,
Speaker 1: sometimes intentionally organized women's auxiliaries to do things like support
Speaker 1: the striking workers, keep everybody fed, keep everybody sheltered and clothed,
Speaker 1: and all of that while the strike was going on.
Speaker 1: But we have not had as many episodes that are
Speaker 1: like about the women themselves at their workplace organizing. Right.
Speaker 1: The one thing I can think of off the top
Speaker 1: of my head is the London match Girls strike, which
Speaker 1: we have covered on the show before. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: another one of those where I'm it makes me go, yeah,
Speaker 1: we haven't made any progress. Yeah, Yeah, I'm not laughing
Speaker 1: that we haven't made any progress. I'm laughing at the
Speaker 1: absurdity of the human condition. You know, We'll keep trying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll keep trying. Having been through the whole process of
Speaker 1: organizing a workplace and bargaining our first union contract, sometimes
Speaker 1: when I read about, you know, historical union efforts, sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm like, yep, that feels so familiar. I will say
Speaker 1: that in the this wave of strikes that happened in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties overall did not have as much violence
Speaker 1: as some of the earlier strike waves that we have
Speaker 1: talked about, Because we've talked a lot about ones in
Speaker 1: which the National Guard or some other force was like
Speaker 1: called out to deal with this strike and that it
Speaker 1: led to injuries and even deaths. Right, this one did
Speaker 1: not seem to have an escalation of violence, even though
Speaker 1: there were some unfortunate parts of it. Yeah, I read
Speaker 1: or I got access to a paper that talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about why that is, and after reading it,
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't feel like I feel like
Speaker 1: this was kind of speculative in some of its reasoning
Speaker 1: about why this particular wave of strikes did not have
Speaker 1: the level of violence that some earlier ones did. So
Speaker 1: I did not try to get into that in the
Speaker 1: episode itself because I did not feel like I had
Speaker 1: a good that becomes like a whole other sociology examination
Speaker 1: of like group behavior and leveraging of power that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily about the labor movement anymore, right, Right, There's some
Speaker 1: greater societal patterns involved. So yeah, I am glad that
Speaker 1: I got this one up to the top of my list.
Speaker 1: Me too. We had our live show from Indiana Comic
Speaker 1: Con about Kurt Vonnaget this week. Yes, yes, oh, Kurt Vonneguet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you blessing upon us all. Yeah, it was really really
Speaker 1: nice to revisit his work. In preparation for this, I
Speaker 1: finally got to see Robert White's documentary about him that
Speaker 1: he had been working on for decades on and off
Speaker 1: as they became close friends, which was very moving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was lovely. I'm now re listening to all of
Speaker 1: his stuff in order on audiobook, so it's just a
Speaker 1: I'm in mckurt era apparently again. One of the things
Speaker 1: we mentioned going into that show was how a lot
Speaker 1: of people find Kurt Vonnegut as teenagers, right and how
Speaker 1: they really connect to him, And I mentioned it in
Speaker 1: the show when we record this. I haven't heard the
Speaker 1: final edit, so I don't know if it's still in
Speaker 1: there or not, but I will invoke a completely other
Speaker 1: author in why I think that's the case. Okay, there
Speaker 1: was a great interview with shel Silverstein that I think
Speaker 1: ran on NPR a while back where he said someone
Speaker 1: asked him why do kids love your books so much?
Speaker 1: And he said, because I don't bs them, sure, like
Speaker 1: I'm straightforward with kids. I don't lie to them ever,
Speaker 1: I think he said bys but in the actual, you know,
Speaker 1: setout version, which would include swearing. And I think Kravoniget
Speaker 1: is the same like for teenagers that come to him.
Speaker 1: It feels like an adult in the literary world who
Speaker 1: is very direct and does not mess around and tells
Speaker 1: the truth, even through very fantastical stories. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: very it's very nice to have to not unpick like, oh,
Speaker 1: the allegory of blah blah blah, which is not to
Speaker 1: say any of that is bad in literature, but when
Speaker 1: you're a teenager to be like, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: very decorated literary person and he's just directly telling me
Speaker 1: what is going on right on and sharing some very
Speaker 1: real truths, it's very refreshing. Yeah, yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 1: I did not happen to discover Kurt Vonnegut as a teen,
Speaker 1: and I could not one hundred percent confidently tell you
Speaker 1: whether it was college or immediately post college, like in
Speaker 1: very early twenties, very first living on my own land.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I was a teen. I don't
Speaker 1: remember reading any Vonnegut in high school, but I do
Speaker 1: remember by the early twenties years, like I vividly remember
Speaker 1: reading Slaughterhouse five for the first time and just being
Speaker 1: enraptured by what I was reading. Yeah. Yeah, I carried
Speaker 1: around a copy of Kat's Cradle I think for two
Speaker 1: years straight in high school. Now I am like it
Speaker 1: was always in my per to the point that it
Speaker 1: was like a joke because it was one of those
Speaker 1: small size, mass market paperbacks, like the famous cover that
Speaker 1: everybody sees that's just the the the orange with the
Speaker 1: art on it. And then I also had the similar
Speaker 1: series Breakfast Champions, also jangled around in my purser backpack
Speaker 1: most of the time, and then Slaughterhouse Five for quite
Speaker 1: a while. One of the things I love about his
Speaker 1: work is how he how interconnected A lot of it is.
Speaker 1: It's not none of the words that we would associate
Speaker 1: with someone who is creating a whole fictional world, like
Speaker 1: a George R. R. Martin or you know, even a
Speaker 1: George Lucas or even a you know, I'm forgetting the
Speaker 1: name of the woman who wrote the Twilight books because
Speaker 1: those are not my jam But anyway, like that idea
Speaker 1: of like world building and like we're putting together this
Speaker 1: entire world and everything, and his did that, but nobody
Speaker 1: was ever really talking about it, all right, And part
Speaker 1: of it was I think also that he self inserted
Speaker 1: quite literally, right in some ways, Billy Pilgrim is his
Speaker 1: self insert and Slaughterhouse five as he works through the
Speaker 1: trauma of having gone through the war. But then there
Speaker 1: are a lot of times where it's like, Hi, it's Kurt.
Speaker 1: I bet you're wondering why I wrote this this way,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, And and I think that is
Speaker 1: wildly charming. Yeah. I had a discussion with someone during
Speaker 1: the convention, like over dinner one of my friends, where
Speaker 1: we were debating over whether some of the things that
Speaker 1: Kurt Vonnaget said in his lifetime come off as sexist
Speaker 1: or not. Okay, and I see how many could be
Speaker 1: interpreted that way. He would talk a lot about whether
Speaker 1: women were pretty or not, blah blah blah, and like
Speaker 1: you know how he was secretly in love with almost
Speaker 1: every woman he worked with. But it never felt disrespectful
Speaker 1: in the way that I associate sexism with. And it
Speaker 1: was never super crass, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 1: was never like so I feel like no, but but
Speaker 1: but I see where people could get that way, and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna you know, yeah, yeah, ever, you know,
Speaker 1: tell somebody they're wrong for their interpretation. We did not
Speaker 1: talk about in the episode that we recorded it Indiana
Speaker 1: Comic Con because you have limited time, you know, even
Speaker 1: more so like when we record our show, if we
Speaker 1: run long, fine, I cannot run long when you have
Speaker 1: more panelists coming into the room. The room, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get the heck out of there. So we didn't get
Speaker 1: time to talk about Ida Young, which is a pity,
Speaker 1: and I feel like she just would have merited more
Speaker 1: time than a quick This is a person, but she
Speaker 1: was a person that Kurt vonna Get invoked many times
Speaker 1: in interviews as being the person who raised him and
Speaker 1: gave him his sense of morality and his ideology about
Speaker 1: always caring about others. And that was a black woman
Speaker 1: who was the housekeeper in his family home and the cook.
Speaker 1: And her name was Ada Young. And she even in
Speaker 1: the Vonnegut Museum and Library, which is in Indianapolis and
Speaker 1: is a really lovely space. There's a whole area that's
Speaker 1: just about Ida's influence on him and how important that was.
Speaker 1: And I really love that she gets included in that story.
Speaker 1: And like I said, there's not enough time and a
Speaker 1: short thing to like go down the rabbit hole of
Speaker 1: who she was and whatnot. So I want to do
Speaker 1: more research on her and see what I can find,
Speaker 1: because you know, surely she had a life outside of
Speaker 1: the Vonna Get home. I always marvel at how in
Speaker 1: interviews he would say all of the horrible things that
Speaker 1: happened to him were fine, they didn't really bother him.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, have you read your own books? Maybe
Speaker 1: yes they did, They're on the page. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: really good interview in that Whitey documentary, which is pretty
Speaker 1: easy to get a hold of. I think I found
Speaker 1: it on Amazon Prime, but there are other places you
Speaker 1: can find it as well, where he's talking about some
Speaker 1: of those experiences and he's saying the words of like
Speaker 1: it's fine, it was all fine. It didn't really bother
Speaker 1: me at the time, but his eyes like tell a
Speaker 1: whole other story. He kind of gets the thousand yard
Speaker 1: stare and he looks very morose for a moment before
Speaker 1: he picks up and makes a joke. And I'm marvel
Speaker 1: that he never cared to let on that his whole
Speaker 1: life was kind of like his whole career really was
Speaker 1: him dealing with trauma with trauma and the only way
Speaker 1: he knew which was to write about it as like
Speaker 1: another person's event, just its own sociological fascination. YEAHR Vonniet,
Speaker 1: I love you. I unlike what happens sometimes when one
Speaker 1: of us has done an interview and the other one
Speaker 1: was not there for the interview. This is a case
Speaker 1: where I actually have listened to the episode before coming
Speaker 1: in here to record the behind the scenes. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed listening to this. I enjoyed how clearly you and
Speaker 1: Brian are both talking about someone who's work you love
Speaker 1: so dearly. Yeah, and we're also interested in, like telling
Speaker 1: the truth of his story as a person. I liked
Speaker 1: it a lot. Yeah. I mean, he's a fun one
Speaker 1: to talk about because he was such a character and
Speaker 1: I certainly would not say he you know, he was
Speaker 1: a human, Like I said, there were discussions about whether
Speaker 1: or not the things some of the things he said
Speaker 1: were sexist at the con, but he he was so
Speaker 1: focused on wanting to find ways to teach people the
Speaker 1: ideas of like loving your fellow man should be your
Speaker 1: highest calling. Ever that he's a nice one to talk
Speaker 1: about in that regard, Yeah, there's no surprise. Oh and
Speaker 1: he actually, you know, was a racist and kicked people like,
Speaker 1: there's none of those So he's a nice you know,
Speaker 1: it's always nice when someone that you admire turns out
Speaker 1: to not be a monstrous jerk. I have some issues
Speaker 1: with what happened with him and Jane, sure, but that's
Speaker 1: not my marriage to have issues, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there. Yeah, it's fascinating to watch interviews with
Speaker 1: his kids, right and have them talk about him, and
Speaker 1: how you know they we mentioned it in the show
Speaker 1: that like his daughters were like, I had no idea
Speaker 1: what he went through in the war until he published
Speaker 1: Slaughterhouse Five. We just didn't know. He just came home
Speaker 1: and there's a mention of him. I think I mentioned
Speaker 1: it in the episode as an aside, and one of
Speaker 1: the biog that I read where it was like he
Speaker 1: tried to tell someone immediately after he got back from
Speaker 1: the war about a man that had been shot for
Speaker 1: allegedly I think he took something that he shouldn't have
Speaker 1: or whatever, and he just couldn't and he never talked
Speaker 1: about it with anybody ever again other than through his typewriter,
Speaker 1: which is pretty right fascinating. I spent an unconscionable amount
Speaker 1: of money in the Vonnegut Library and Museum gift shop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said. I don't know if that made it into
Speaker 1: the final cut of the of the episode or not,
Speaker 1: because that I have not heard. I've only heard the
Speaker 1: raw audio of the panel, but I was very I
Speaker 1: was like, what all did Holly buy? I bought many
Speaker 1: T shirts. I bought a pint glass that has the
Speaker 1: quote about I have a problem with alcohol and the
Speaker 1: telephone at night. I bought a really beautiful book that
Speaker 1: his daughter Edith has put together that's the love letters
Speaker 1: between him and Jane from the nineteen fouries when they
Speaker 1: were when he was at war and they were very young,
Speaker 1: which is really beautiful. I haven't gotten very far into
Speaker 1: it yet. I got a pen, I got a pack
Speaker 1: of cards I got. I feel like I bought other
Speaker 1: things that I'm not remembering. I was just very grabby,
Speaker 1: handsy because we also I was trying to be conscious
Speaker 1: of time because we did have to get over there
Speaker 1: in the morning, look around, get back to the convention center,
Speaker 1: and you know, we had multiple panels that day that
Speaker 1: we had to do, so I was trying to drag
Speaker 1: my feets. But what a delight. I want to go
Speaker 1: back and spend more time there because it's lovely and
Speaker 1: they have a cute cafe in there. They have like
Speaker 1: a little lounge where they do book events sometimes. It's
Speaker 1: a very cool space. So highly recommend to anybody that's
Speaker 1: in the area and is interested in Vonnegut, or even
Speaker 1: if you're not, you're just curious. They do a lot
Speaker 1: of fun interactive things there, like prompts that are based
Speaker 1: on the writing of Vonnegut, to like get kids involved
Speaker 1: in expressing themselves. And it's just a cool space. I
Speaker 1: love it, so kudos to the people that run it.
Speaker 1: I think that's it. I've probably waxed rapsotic enough. O.
Speaker 1: Dear Kurt Vonnegut, I love you. I hope you know.
Speaker 1: I hope if there's an afterlife. I hope if you're
Speaker 1: on trel Fammador right now, you feel that people love
Speaker 1: you since you experienced time, apparently in different ways than
Speaker 1: the rest of us. I like to think of him
Speaker 1: out there somewhere, just not here. If you are headed
Speaker 1: into your weekend, I hope that you can take time
Speaker 1: to read something that you love, or visit a museum
Speaker 1: that might delight you and spark ideas in your mind
Speaker 1: and just make you feel a little more at peace
Speaker 1: with the world if you do not have time off.
Speaker 1: I really hope everyone abides by Vonaget's ideology of training
Speaker 1: people kindly. We all need it. Everybody be cool to
Speaker 1: one another. It's the only way we're going to get through.
Speaker 1: We will be right back here tomorrow at the classic
Speaker 1: episode and on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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