Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, Fun Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hello and Tracy Wilson. About six months ago,
Speaker 1: we put out an episode that was called Six Impossible Episodes,
Speaker 1: and it was six subjects that are really frequent listener requests,
Speaker 1: but for some reason or another they could not really
Speaker 1: stand on their own as individual episodes. And people seem
Speaker 1: to enjoy that one. And since then we've collected another
Speaker 1: heaping handful of topics that people are asking for a lot,
Speaker 1: but which we can't quite be a whole show on.
Speaker 1: So today six more Impossible Episodes. All right, These are
Speaker 1: fun because it's a you know, a little less intensive
Speaker 1: than digging super deep in like a long, full length episode,
Speaker 1: and it's like a nice little shworket sport. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I am writing on an airplane four times in six days,
Speaker 1: so that's why we're doing this today. Yeah, there, it's
Speaker 1: going to be super fun. I love it. So. First one,
Speaker 1: anytime we say anything about Paul Revere on our Facebook
Speaker 1: posts or anywhere else on the internet, really at least
Speaker 1: one person, but far more often it is more than
Speaker 1: one asks the same question, which is, how come nobody
Speaker 1: ever talks about Sybil Luddington, and so in case you
Speaker 1: maybe aren't from the United States, on the eve of
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War, Paul Revere was part of a now
Speaker 1: famous ride to spread the word of an impending attack,
Speaker 1: and later on in the war, Sybil Luddington also made
Speaker 1: a different but far less famous ride. So anytime we
Speaker 1: say Paul Revere, it's like a call in response somebody
Speaker 1: else says Sybil Lendington. You could use that as the
Speaker 1: alternate to Marco Polo is a pool game, I'm pretty sure. So.
Speaker 1: Sybil was born in Connecticut on April fifth, seventeen sixty one,
Speaker 1: and when she was still a abe, her family moved
Speaker 1: to Duchess County, New York, which lies along the New
Speaker 1: York Connecticut border. Her father, Henry Luttington, had decades of
Speaker 1: military experience, so as war loomed between Britain and its
Speaker 1: colonies in North America, he quickly became a colonel and
Speaker 1: was put in command of a regiment that was responsible
Speaker 1: for guarding territory along the New York Connecticut border. This
Speaker 1: is a pretty critical piece of land because it was
Speaker 1: one of the primary ways that the Loyalists could reach
Speaker 1: Long Island Sound from elsewhere farther inland. That's why when
Speaker 1: Governor William Tryon and his men rated Danbury, Connecticut in
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy seven, a rider was sent from Danbury to
Speaker 1: the Luddington home in Duchess County to ask Sybel's father
Speaker 1: to send help. Danbury was also strategically important, and it
Speaker 1: was home to several Continental Army storehouses that were full
Speaker 1: of food, munitions, and other supplies. So this rider that
Speaker 1: had been dispatched was too exhausted to continue by the
Speaker 1: time he got to the letting and home, and Colonel
Speaker 1: Luddington needed to prepare for battle, so he sent his
Speaker 1: oldest child, Sibyl, to muster his forces so they could
Speaker 1: go to Danbury's aid. It's not totally clear whether she
Speaker 1: volunteered for this task or whether she was sent, and
Speaker 1: at this point, Sybil had just turned sixteen, and her
Speaker 1: ride wound through forty miles of mostly wooded territory at night.
Speaker 1: So Sybil's age and the length of her ride, which
Speaker 1: was longer than Paul Revere's, are often held up as
Speaker 1: reasons why she is really more deserving of a claim
Speaker 1: than Paul Revere was. And then there's often this undertone
Speaker 1: of well, she should have had that acclaim, and she
Speaker 1: would have if she were a man. But as most
Speaker 1: of these things go, there's more to it than that.
Speaker 1: Paul Revere's ride is famous largely because of Henry Wadsworth
Speaker 1: Longfellow's poem, first published in eighteen sixty one, and that
Speaker 1: is the one that starts with listen, my children, and
Speaker 1: you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Speaker 1: It's not a very historically accurate poem, which is why
Speaker 1: a lot of people remember wrong things about Paul Revere's ride,
Speaker 1: including that he was not the only one that was
Speaker 1: on it. Right, the poem is only about him. But
Speaker 1: this poem was written more than eighty years after the
Speaker 1: ride in question took place, and it was written after
Speaker 1: Longfellow visited the Old North Church in Boston, which is
Speaker 1: more more formally known as Christ Church. And the Old
Speaker 1: North Church is the one where the one if by
Speaker 1: Land too if by Sea signal lanterns were hung. And
Speaker 1: there are several likely reasons why Paul Revere is the
Speaker 1: star of this poem and not someone else. Apart from
Speaker 1: his ride to warn of the attack, he was a
Speaker 1: prominent Boston citizen and an active participant in other parts
Speaker 1: of the Revolutionary War. For example, he made an engraving
Speaker 1: of the Boston massacre that we talked about in our
Speaker 1: episode on that event. Paul Revere also served with Longfellow's
Speaker 1: grandfather in the service, And just to be really basic
Speaker 1: about it, I think we should add that Revere is
Speaker 1: easy to rhyme things with. It is much easier to
Speaker 1: rhyme things with than Luddington. So when Longfellow was writing
Speaker 1: his poem about someone he had a family connection to,
Speaker 1: whose ride connected to a place he had just visited,
Speaker 1: Luddington's story hadn't even been written down yet. It survived
Speaker 1: as family lore for roughly one hundred years before it
Speaker 1: was actually published anywhere, and Sybil's great nephew, historian Lewis S. Patrick,
Speaker 1: wrote about it in nineteen o seven, at which point
Speaker 1: school children were already memorizing the Longfellow poem. So you
Speaker 1: could totally make the argument that Civil Lettington's gender meant
Speaker 1: she could not make a name for herself the way
Speaker 1: Paul Revere did and later become famous thanks to a
Speaker 1: historically inaccurate poem. We just don't really know anything about
Speaker 1: her beyond the fact that when the war was over,
Speaker 1: she got married to a Revolutionary word veteran named Edward Ogden.
Speaker 1: They had a son, and they later opened a tavern,
Speaker 1: and she died on February eighteen thirty nine. Just was
Speaker 1: not the sort of prominent, publicly facing citizen that Paul
Speaker 1: Revere had been, and we don't have any primary source
Speaker 1: documentation about her ride at all, and even tiny details
Speaker 1: like how she spelled her name are different based on
Speaker 1: the things like her tombstone, her signature, and census records
Speaker 1: literally spelled differently in all of those places. So in
Speaker 1: terms of no one talking about her, there are many
Speaker 1: many children's books about Sibyl Lannington, and she was commemorate
Speaker 1: commemorated on a bicentennial postage stamp in even when she lived,
Speaker 1: George Washington himself came to her home to thank her
Speaker 1: personally for having written to muster all the men after
Speaker 1: the Battle of Danbury. There is a particularly fierce looking
Speaker 1: statue of her in Carmel, New York, along with a
Speaker 1: number of historical markers along her ride route. So her
Speaker 1: story just was not well known at all outside of
Speaker 1: her family and maybe local neighbor from the area when
Speaker 1: the poem that made Paul Revere famous was written. Like,
Speaker 1: that poem was solidly in the collective memory of America
Speaker 1: before Sibyl Luddington's story was even written down at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that poem has great scansion, and so it's really easy
Speaker 1: to remember and it's really kind of engaging. But as
Speaker 1: the sort of sad coda as well, Colonel Luddington's efforts
Speaker 1: were also too late to save Danbury. The British burned
Speaker 1: thousands of barrels of food along with tents, shoes, and
Speaker 1: other supplies before Luddington and other reinforcements were able to arrive.
Speaker 1: So that is the story of Sybil Lettington and also
Speaker 1: why people talk about Paul Revere more. Uh. Next up,
Speaker 1: we have one that was requested first by Diane long
Speaker 1: enough ago that it is number fifty six on our
Speaker 1: listeners submitted Ideas list, which is now hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of ideas long. It is the Capuchin Catacomb in Palermo, Sicily,
Speaker 1: which are home to about eight thousand mummies. The Capucin
Speaker 1: community in Palermo was established in fifteen thirty four at
Speaker 1: the Church of Santa Maria de la Pacha. At first,
Speaker 1: the Friars who lived there were buried in what was
Speaker 1: essentially a mass grave, but about sixty years later the
Speaker 1: monastery outgrew. That's that mass burial site, so the Friars
Speaker 1: decided to dig a larger set of catacombs using natural
Speaker 1: caves that already existed in the area. Doing this required
Speaker 1: them to exhume the bodies that had already been buried,
Speaker 1: and when they did, they found that forty five of
Speaker 1: them had been naturally preserved and we're just in a
Speaker 1: really pristine condition. Their bodies had dehydrated rather than rotting.
Speaker 1: They interpreted this as a sign from God, and then,
Speaker 1: rather than proceeding with what had essentially been planned as
Speaker 1: a bigger mass grave, they decided instead to keep the
Speaker 1: exhumed bodies intact and displayed them as religious relics, and
Speaker 1: the new burial site that they created was built with
Speaker 1: that end goal in mind. They also gradually refined the
Speaker 1: caves natural preservation process into an intentional mummification, which included
Speaker 1: removing the organs and stuffing the cavity of the bodies
Speaker 1: with straw and placing the bodies on terra cotta tubes
Speaker 1: to help them dry faster. The Friars used a number
Speaker 1: of other preservation methods as well. Sylvestro of Gubio was
Speaker 1: a sixteenth century Capuchin monk, and he was the first
Speaker 1: to be buried in these new catacombs. Originally, the only
Speaker 1: bodies that were placed in the catacombs were those of
Speaker 1: Friars who were part of the Order after they died.
Speaker 1: But eventually, as words spread about the catacombs, being mummified
Speaker 1: and placed there after death became a mark of high status,
Speaker 1: so the bodies of nobility and famous local citizens joined
Speaker 1: that those of the Friars, and eventually the Order began
Speaker 1: allowing the burial of anyone who requested it in seventy three.
Speaker 1: One of the things that makes this place so compelling
Speaker 1: is that the bodies, which are very well preserved, are
Speaker 1: out in view you. They're dressed. Family members would even
Speaker 1: come to change the body's clothes. And some are on shelves,
Speaker 1: some hang from hooks, and some are in open coffin
Speaker 1: like containers. Some are posed almost as though their taxidermy displays.
Speaker 1: And there's one hall that's entirely the bodies of infants,
Speaker 1: some of them in cradles, and although they're arranged into
Speaker 1: approximate categories like professionals, priests, monks, virgins. Relatively few of
Speaker 1: these bodies are actually identifying. The Friars stopped burying new
Speaker 1: bodies there in eighteen eighty, and they made only two
Speaker 1: exceptions afterward. One was Giovanni Patterniti, who was buried in
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, and the other was Rosalia Lombardo, who was
Speaker 1: two years old and placed there in nineteen twenty. The
Speaker 1: monks teamed up with the European Union to start a
Speaker 1: conservation project on the site in two thousand eight, because
Speaker 1: it has become a major tourist destination, but very little
Speaker 1: had been done up to that point in the centuries
Speaker 1: since it was first built to preserve it. We're going
Speaker 1: to put an image gallery of some pictures of this
Speaker 1: place on our website because it is incredible to look at.
Speaker 1: But most of the information that's available about it in
Speaker 1: English as of right now is sort of like travel
Speaker 1: god type of stuff. It's it's a tourist attraction at
Speaker 1: this point, and most of the things that are written
Speaker 1: about it are written in that vein, so I could
Speaker 1: not find enough richer information to make a whole episode
Speaker 1: out of it, but so many people have asked, we
Speaker 1: want to spend a whole time today. Cool, So before
Speaker 1: we go to our next impossible episode, you want to
Speaker 1: pause from a brief word from a sponsor sounds good.
Speaker 1: Our most recent requests for our next subject, who is
Speaker 1: jean Ditisson, came from Laramie and Mary and two different
Speaker 1: emails very recently, and she, unfortunately, is yet another person
Speaker 1: who falls into the not enough reliable information available in
Speaker 1: English category. We've had some folks right in to tell
Speaker 1: us that we just need to hire some people who
Speaker 1: speak other languages, y'all. It's just the two of us
Speaker 1: and NOL. Like, we don't have like a staff budget. No,
Speaker 1: we we don't have a translation staff. We literally look
Speaker 1: so many things up and we still get them wrong
Speaker 1: because we are not fluent speakers of every language, because
Speaker 1: it is just the two of us and NOL. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we do try to outsource whilm we can, but
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just not feasible right when you're working, uh so.
Speaker 1: Jeanne de Clisson was a noblewoman and a pirate. In
Speaker 1: THTT three, her second husband, Olivier, the third Lord of Clisson,
Speaker 1: was executed for treason upon the orders of King Philip
Speaker 1: the sixth of France, so n pulled her money. She
Speaker 1: bought a fleet of ships, She rallied the support of
Speaker 1: other discontented nobles who were unhappy with Philip the six
Speaker 1: for some reason, and then she went on a rampage
Speaker 1: of terror and piracy. She purportedly painted her ships black
Speaker 1: and died their sales red to make her fleet extremely impressive,
Speaker 1: and she was nicknamed the Lioness of Brittany. I can
Speaker 1: see why lots of people want to hear about her.
Speaker 1: She's fabulous, though a little cutthroat and blood thirsty. M
Speaker 1: She was so successful in her revenge campaign that she
Speaker 1: won the support of King Edward the third of England,
Speaker 1: who loaned her more ships and weapons so she could
Speaker 1: more effectively fight against France. When she was done with
Speaker 1: seeking revenge, she sought and gained sanctuary in the English Court.
Speaker 1: And people like to send us Wikipedia articles at starting points,
Speaker 1: which thank you, but we actually do not use Wikipedia
Speaker 1: for our research, and we're going to talk about our
Speaker 1: research a little bit more later. Uh. And the Wikipedia
Speaker 1: entry for Jenne Dilisson does have more details about her life,
Speaker 1: but they are basically sort of scattered sentences, and it's
Speaker 1: not really documented in terms of sourcing. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: not really a valid source for us, and it's it's
Speaker 1: not even the thing the thing that you can do
Speaker 1: we can see what the sources were and start from
Speaker 1: there because it doesn't say where these random sentences of
Speaker 1: facts came from. Who knows. So moving on. Uh, that
Speaker 1: I think is the briefest of our six impossible episodes today.
Speaker 1: Moving on, So we're not sure when the first request
Speaker 1: came in to talk about the Kentucky meat Shower, but
Speaker 1: there were a whole lot that came in after X
Speaker 1: K c D put out comic number fifteen O one,
Speaker 1: which is called Mysteries, and that charts a bunch of
Speaker 1: historical mysteries based on how weird they are and whether
Speaker 1: they can be explained or not. So the Kentucky Meat
Speaker 1: Shower is in the quadrant for stuff that's both really
Speaker 1: weird and also explained. And we have episodes about several
Speaker 1: of the other mysteries that are in that comic, including
Speaker 1: the Mary Celeste D. D. Cooper, the Oak Island money Pit,
Speaker 1: I think, the delf Pass incidents, a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: a lot of them, really, So yeah, I thought about
Speaker 1: doing a whole episode that was just on the mysteries
Speaker 1: from the comic that we haven't covered, And I think
Speaker 1: some people actually did ask for that specifically. But some
Speaker 1: of them are extremely recent and others are basically summarized
Speaker 1: in a sentence. So on March three, eighty six, the Crouches,
Speaker 1: who lived in Bath County, Kentucky, witnessed what appeared to
Speaker 1: be meat falling from a clear sky. And these pieces
Speaker 1: of meat were in various shapes and sizes, some of
Speaker 1: them just little meaty whisps, and some chunks as big
Speaker 1: as a person's hand. The New York Times later wrote
Speaker 1: about this event under the headline flesh descending in a
Speaker 1: shower and all capital letters. So it also sounds like
Speaker 1: a weird um, like the kind of play that you
Speaker 1: would see in an experimental college theater. Oh yeah, So afterwards,
Speaker 1: Alan Crouch and his wife found that a strip of
Speaker 1: their land about a hundred yards long and fifty yards
Speaker 1: wide was just covered in chunks of this meaty substance.
Speaker 1: Neighbors came by to look at it. Their cat ain't
Speaker 1: some of it? Yeah, some people tasted it also. Uh.
Speaker 1: They came up with various theories for what they thought
Speaker 1: it tasted and smelled like, including mutton, venison, and bear,
Speaker 1: and eventually people gathered up pieces of it and sent
Speaker 1: it to various labs for testing, and the various labs
Speaker 1: came back with various results, including that it was dried
Speaker 1: frog spawn, that it was nostock, which is a cyanobacteria
Speaker 1: that forms this gelatinous protective coding, or that it was
Speaker 1: some actual type of animal flesh, And eventually the prevailing
Speaker 1: theory became that it was actually brace vomit, my least
Speaker 1: favorite thing in the world, vulture vomits, which would explain
Speaker 1: why the cat was so drawn to it from from
Speaker 1: vultures that had overindulged on something they had scavenged. That
Speaker 1: makes it super gross. As we said that the cat
Speaker 1: and a number of people ate some of it. So
Speaker 1: there are not really a ton of books or historical
Speaker 1: papers or peer reviewed whatever on this event. It's the
Speaker 1: sort of thing that would be really fun to research
Speaker 1: by going through old newspaper archives to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what people were saying about it at the time. And
Speaker 1: the thing is, a writer named Matt Soniac has already
Speaker 1: done that in the pages of Mental floss, so trying
Speaker 1: to get a whole article together based on that exact
Speaker 1: same process, which just feel a little bit too much
Speaker 1: like we were cribbing off of his work. There is
Speaker 1: a preserved piece of this meat at the Monroe loos
Speaker 1: Nick Medical and Science Museum at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: If you are yearning to see what the vomity meat
Speaker 1: looks like, I'm not look on your face pretty much
Speaker 1: says it. Also, I won't say the V word anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and we have two more impossible episodes, one of
Speaker 1: which makes us really sad that it's impossible, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about them after another brief word from
Speaker 1: a sponsor. Uh. That particular sponsor at this moment is
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Speaker 1: Build it beautiful. Okay, as we said before the break,
Speaker 1: our penultimate impossible episode makes us so sad that it's
Speaker 1: been possible. One of our most frequently requested episodes, at
Speaker 1: least after we did one on the night, which is
Speaker 1: so people stopped requesting that one is infamous serial killer Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: or more accurately, Elizabeth Bathory. And Elizabeth Bathory was actually
Speaker 1: the second subject ever covered on our show, so when
Speaker 1: people ask for an episode on her, we point them
Speaker 1: back to that one, which being the second episode ever
Speaker 1: on our show. It is only three minutes long, and
Speaker 1: we don't normally put out duovers of previous hosts episodes.
Speaker 1: History is basically infinite, and even if we would have
Speaker 1: approached the subject in a different way from a previous
Speaker 1: host take on it, there's just so much to cover
Speaker 1: that we haven't already done. Uh. There is an exception.
Speaker 1: I did a review of m um one of them, Zenobia,
Speaker 1: just because that was like a personal zone of super
Speaker 1: interest for me. But normally we don't usually backtrack on
Speaker 1: those um But when it comes to Elizabeth Bathory, we
Speaker 1: get so many requests and so many disappointed follow ups
Speaker 1: when people realize that the old episode is quite brief,
Speaker 1: that it made sense to at least talk about it. So.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bathory was born in fifteen sixty into Transylvaane, his
Speaker 1: ruling family. She was very wealthy, very beautiful, and very
Speaker 1: well educated, and when she was eleven or twelve, she
Speaker 1: was betrothed to a member of another prominent family, but
Speaker 1: a couple of years later she actually had a child
Speaker 1: by a different man, who her fiance purportedly killed by
Speaker 1: having him castrated and then ravaged by dogs. Bathori's illegitimate
Speaker 1: child was kept secret from the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: and her marriage went ahead is planned when she was fourteen.
Speaker 1: Her husband died when she was forty three. In between
Speaker 1: their marriage and his death, she had four children. By
Speaker 1: the time of her husband's death in sixteen o four,
Speaker 1: there were rumors spreading that she was sadistic and cruel,
Speaker 1: and these rumors really escalated after his passing. There were
Speaker 1: stories that she tortured her servants and the daughters of
Speaker 1: peasants who were living in the area. She was rumored
Speaker 1: to drink their blood and bathe in it in order
Speaker 1: to preserve her beauty and her youth authorities actually investigated her.
Speaker 1: In sixteen ten, Count Georgie Thursoh, who was Bathori's cousin,
Speaker 1: was sent by King Mattias to find out what was
Speaker 1: going on, and he reportedly walked in on Bath three
Speaker 1: conducting a torture session. He took depositions from people both
Speaker 1: within and outside of the estate, and he concluded that
Speaker 1: Elizabeth had killed six hundred girls with the help of
Speaker 1: her servants. She was placed under arrest that December. Four
Speaker 1: people who were reported to be her accomplices were tried,
Speaker 1: and three of them were executed. One was sentenced to
Speaker 1: life in prison. She herself was never tried, but she
Speaker 1: was confined to a window room in the castle for
Speaker 1: the rest of her life, which ended in sixteen fourteen.
Speaker 1: She was found dead on August twenty one of that year.
Speaker 1: There's some evidence to suggest that the claims against Bath
Speaker 1: three were deeply embellished, or were in fact slander. King
Speaker 1: Matthias owed Bath three a great deal of money, and
Speaker 1: her family apparently waived that debt in exchange for getting
Speaker 1: control of her captivity. Those same family members also got
Speaker 1: control over all of her land, so unfortunately it became
Speaker 1: clear almost immediately when trying to research a full length
Speaker 1: episode on Elizabeth Bathory that it just was not going
Speaker 1: to happen. There are several brief articles about her from
Speaker 1: reputable sources, but the couple of books that have been
Speaker 1: written about her in English were both self published. Now,
Speaker 1: we're not knocking the idea of publishing your own work
Speaker 1: or of reading self published work. Of course, you may
Speaker 1: do what you want, but since we are not experts
Speaker 1: in a lot of the things we talked about, we
Speaker 1: take a number of steps to try to ensure that
Speaker 1: the work we do you has been approached with a
Speaker 1: high degree of ecademic rigor. We did, actually, very late
Speaker 1: in the game find out about one non self published
Speaker 1: book in English. But then, uh, neither of us is
Speaker 1: really comfortable sourcing an entire podcast from one book whose
Speaker 1: facts we can't verify through other independent sources. So that's that, uh,
Speaker 1: and that brings us to impossible Episode six. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of people ask us to do an episode that's
Speaker 1: about research tips or ideas on where they can find
Speaker 1: information on particular subjects, and we talked about this a
Speaker 1: little bit in our Listener Male f a Q episode
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. But that one was more
Speaker 1: devoted to our process of making podcasts, and having a
Speaker 1: whole episode on research tips seemed like stretch. But since
Speaker 1: we're having to round out our six and to tie
Speaker 1: onto the one we just talked about, uh some tips
Speaker 1: for research. So when it comes to two books, for me,
Speaker 1: the books that I read for episodes are usually person's
Speaker 1: memoirs that they wrote themselves about their own lives. And
Speaker 1: often if there is some contention about whether the person's
Speaker 1: memoirs are embellished, we will say that yes, um and
Speaker 1: otherwise most of the books, there are some exceptions, but
Speaker 1: most of the books that I used for the podcast
Speaker 1: have been published by academic presses, and so you have
Speaker 1: some confidence that there has been like an editor involved
Speaker 1: in fact checking and helping to make sure that the
Speaker 1: whole thing is is as accurate and uh correct as possible.
Speaker 1: That's like one of the steps of making sure that
Speaker 1: the information that we're getting is right, which is why
Speaker 1: for our podcast specifically, I wouldn't normally use the self
Speaker 1: a self published book unless it was somebody's own self
Speaker 1: published memoir. Yeah, and one of the things that I
Speaker 1: do usually it's unusual that I think either of us
Speaker 1: would just use one in book for an episode. Uh So,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I do, even when they
Speaker 1: are meeting all of the criteria Tracy just talked about,
Speaker 1: is I kind of do a little pattern recognition, like
Speaker 1: where are there some things that come up slightly different,
Speaker 1: because I try to trace those back to the root
Speaker 1: and find out what is consistent across all of them
Speaker 1: and where they may have diverged and what may have
Speaker 1: caused that. Um. Because there are cases where things get
Speaker 1: a little wiggly, uh in part just in the writing process,
Speaker 1: as as one person tries to tell the story of
Speaker 1: someone and another person does that, they may use language
Speaker 1: that kind of maybe not always even on purpose, conveys
Speaker 1: a different meaning in the historical record. So we try
Speaker 1: to really root those out across multiple sources. And this
Speaker 1: is where I am going to advocate for your local library. UM.
Speaker 1: Which may sound ridiculous that a lot of people think
Speaker 1: about going to the library and checking out books, but
Speaker 1: most public public library systems at this point have databases
Speaker 1: that anyone with a library card can access where you
Speaker 1: can get a lot more academic information on subjects, things
Speaker 1: that have been through peer review, things that have been
Speaker 1: through some kind of like more stringent editorial process to
Speaker 1: make sure that what is on the page is as
Speaker 1: accurate as it can be. So usually my uh, my
Speaker 1: research process involves books when they are available, and then
Speaker 1: from databases any number of uh like academic papers on stuff,
Speaker 1: and then um, when there are not those sorts of
Speaker 1: things available, things that are from people who, in one
Speaker 1: way or another are the experts in that particular field. Right, So,
Speaker 1: local library, that's my big research tip. Anytime anybody emails
Speaker 1: us and says, can you give me research tips, local library,
Speaker 1: It's gonna help you out a lot. That's usually a
Speaker 1: reference librarian who can help you with lots of tips
Speaker 1: about like what your specific library system offers. UM being
Speaker 1: now in a totally different public library system than I
Speaker 1: was when I was actually living here locally to our
Speaker 1: office where I'm recording this episode from today. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: different libraries can have vastly different offerings in terms of
Speaker 1: exactly which databases they offer and what other services they have.
Speaker 1: So each library system's reference librarian will help you out.
Speaker 1: And I will say this having um worked in a
Speaker 1: library for more than a decade and having still a
Speaker 1: lot of friends who are librarians and specifically reference librarians.
Speaker 1: They often love it if you go to them with
Speaker 1: a juicy research topic. They get so excited because a
Speaker 1: lot of times it's just people wanting to like put
Speaker 1: together something simple for like I have to do a
Speaker 1: research paper, or I have a reference librarian friend who
Speaker 1: finally had to put the kaibosh on the person who
Speaker 1: kept coming in to do her son's homework. But but
Speaker 1: she gets really excited when someone comes to her with
Speaker 1: a really interesting research topic. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of times if you develop a relationship with your local
Speaker 1: reas librarian, don't drive them crazy. But certainly those are
Speaker 1: people you want to make friends with because they can
Speaker 1: help you find stuff you never would have even known existed. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: my fiance is a librarian and most of his library
Speaker 1: work involves more the curation of data than book stuff
Speaker 1: at this point, So whenever we are talking about podcast
Speaker 1: things and I bring up some weird subject, he gets
Speaker 1: super excited and it's like I'm gonna go into the
Speaker 1: stacks and see if i have anything on that. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I didn't ask you to do that. Just remember that's
Speaker 1: the person that is drawn to the library sciences. My
Speaker 1: other big one is I love to find if it's
Speaker 1: all possible, uh, contemporary newspaper. Yeah, yeah, that that, and
Speaker 1: there are a number of services that will help you
Speaker 1: with those, like subscription services. I don't want to name
Speaker 1: them my name, just because I don't endorse any particular one.
Speaker 1: The different ones off for different benefits. So but if
Speaker 1: you find one you like, like, that's a gold mine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times your local library will have
Speaker 1: an archive of the newspaper, like your local newspaper, and
Speaker 1: then often some other big name ones like the New
Speaker 1: York Times in the Boston Globe. Uh, some of like
Speaker 1: the biggest, most long standing newspapers for US people. So
Speaker 1: those are some research tips. I hope they're helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing to always be careful about
Speaker 1: is not looking for research that backs up what you
Speaker 1: already think, but actually reading the research. It's easy to do,
Speaker 1: so easy to do, but yeah, you have to kind
Speaker 1: of keep your mind as objective as possible. That's how
Speaker 1: we keep winding up with episodes that we thought were
Speaker 1: going to be a ralicky good time and they were
Speaker 1: not and turned dark and stormy. Yes, so I have
Speaker 1: a couple of emails that are actually kind of related
Speaker 1: to this last piece of Impossible episode, and they are
Speaker 1: both pretty short, so I'm just gonna read them both.
Speaker 1: The first one is from Catherine, and Katherine says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy, a kind of the only made on
Speaker 1: your recent USS Cyclops episode about a book she had
Speaker 1: consulted for source material reminded me of a question I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to ask you all for a while, and
Speaker 1: looking through the blog entries and sources for program content.
Speaker 1: As an aside, coming from a research profession, I cannot
Speaker 1: tell you how much I appreciate that you publicly document
Speaker 1: all of your source material on the blog. I noticed
Speaker 1: that in your research you often make an effort to
Speaker 1: read inside at least one book on the subject in question.
Speaker 1: Given all the books you've consulted during your time working
Speaker 1: on the podcast, I was wondering if you had any
Speaker 1: favorites that you can suggest to some of your BiblioFile
Speaker 1: listeners such as myself. Thanks again for all you do
Speaker 1: to make the podcast of Delight, Sincerely, Catherine Um And
Speaker 1: then she mentions having read one of the books that
Speaker 1: we read for one of the episodes, which was pretty cool,
Speaker 1: And then the other one is for Monica, and Monica says, hello, ladies.
Speaker 1: I recently discovered your podcast about two weeks ago, and
Speaker 1: I am obsessed. I am probably about halfway through the
Speaker 1: archived episodes, and I'm already dreading the day when I
Speaker 1: can no longer binge listen to new episodes. I was
Speaker 1: a classic studies minor in college, but have a great
Speaker 1: passion for history, especially European. I'm also absolutely obsessed with
Speaker 1: British history. I was curious to know if anyone in
Speaker 1: your office has a book recommendation or authors that refer
Speaker 1: to the Dark Ages in Europe anywhere in Europe, maybe
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire, or perhaps a book of maps that
Speaker 1: shows Europe from eleventh centuries to twenty one century. I'm
Speaker 1: always losing myself in the geography of the time, so
Speaker 1: to Monica, I'm opening that question up to listeners. If
Speaker 1: listeners have recommendation for this books and nothing immediately came
Speaker 1: to my mind, um so if you have book suggestions
Speaker 1: for Monica sent us a note history podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot com and for Catherine's note. We did write
Speaker 1: Catherine back with some things that immediately came to mind,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to read her note for two reasons.
Speaker 1: One thank you Katherine and to um. A lot of
Speaker 1: folks don't realize that we have show notes for every
Speaker 1: episode that we do in our blog, and the show
Speaker 1: list out all of the sources, and those sources include
Speaker 1: basically everything that we read. So going all the way
Speaker 1: back through the Tracy and Holly era, if there are
Speaker 1: episodes of the podcast that you listen to and are
Speaker 1: interested in and you want to know more, you can
Speaker 1: find out where you can read more by looking in
Speaker 1: all of those uh and the show notes post for
Speaker 1: that particular episode. Um. The the thing that gets tricky
Speaker 1: is at this point you and I have each researched
Speaker 1: an episode every week for many months, and so it
Speaker 1: takes like I am sure that I forgot many many
Speaker 1: great great books when I emailed Catherine back, I just
Speaker 1: like the two that sparked into my brain immediately were
Speaker 1: the ones that I said, but me too, Yeah, my
Speaker 1: brain just at this point when we get to the
Speaker 1: end of recording, sometimes I have forgotten literally the subject
Speaker 1: that we talked about by the time we're in uh
Speaker 1: the studio next well, and I think to um, part
Speaker 1: of it for me is like, UM, very topic specific.
Speaker 1: You know, like I can tell you what some of
Speaker 1: my favorite Disney history books are, or my favorite Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria history books are, right, but those might not be
Speaker 1: the kind of history books that you want to read.
Speaker 1: So if we just pick a few off the top
Speaker 1: of our heads, like I would probably never pick one
Speaker 1: that's just a vast general history book, which isn't to
Speaker 1: say that those aren't great, but those wouldn't probably be
Speaker 1: the ones that nestle in my heart as favorites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the books that I recommended to Catherine, we're both
Speaker 1: ones where they were memoirs where the person speaking had
Speaker 1: such a lovely candor, yeah, that it sounded like I
Speaker 1: was like sitting down with that person and hearing him
Speaker 1: tell me a story. They were Frankie Manning and Luis Alvarez.
Speaker 1: There was those two memoirs that I recommended just because
Speaker 1: those both had just a casual, lovely conversational tone which
Speaker 1: may float your boat and may not anyway. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's one of those ones. It's a little bit tricky,
Speaker 1: I know, for me, because everybody's taste is different, particularly
Speaker 1: on the um when you're reading on the page. The
Speaker 1: things that resonate with one person or not, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be the same things that resonate with someone else. Yes.
Speaker 1: So if you know of great, awesome resources for the
Speaker 1: things that Monica asked about regarding the Dark Ages in Europe,
Speaker 1: please write to us. Or if you want to recommend
Speaker 1: other books, please write to us. If you UH have
Speaker 1: awesome questions that you want to ask, you can please
Speaker 1: write to us. We're History podcast at how stupwork dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss
Speaker 1: in history and on Twitter at miss in history. Are
Speaker 1: tumbler is miss in history dot tomber dot com, and
Speaker 1: we're also on Pinterest at pentriest dot com slash missed
Speaker 1: in History. We have a spreadshirt store at miss in
Speaker 1: history dot spreadshirt dot com. You might be tired of
Speaker 1: me saying miss in history, but I'm gonna say it
Speaker 1: one more time, which is that our new instagram is
Speaker 1: at missed in history. If you would like to learn
Speaker 1: a little bit, we'll were about what we talked about today,
Speaker 1: just it's tiny bit more. You can come to our website,
Speaker 1: but the words Elizabeth Bathory in the UH the search bar,
Speaker 1: and you will find the article that actually sparked for
Speaker 1: the original very shorts A minute was at the Bathory episode.
Speaker 1: You can also come to miss the Mystery dot com
Speaker 1: and you will find show notes that list all of
Speaker 1: our sources, including lots and lots and lots of books
Speaker 1: that you might love, uh, an archive of every single episode,
Speaker 1: lots of other cool stuff we do. All that, and
Speaker 1: a whole lot more. How stuff works dot com or
Speaker 1: missed in hisstory dot com for more on this thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com