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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. Happy Friday, Everyone, I'm Tracy Vie Wilson,

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Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frying. One of the episodes that we

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Speaker 1: did this week was one which this episode a side

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Speaker 1: kind of a saga. This is actually something that I

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Speaker 1: wrote much earlier in the year. Um. Sometimes we write

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Speaker 1: episodes that are meant to be part of a sponsorship,

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Speaker 1: and then the pandemic happened and that sponsorship no longer

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Speaker 1: was the thing. It did eventually come back in a

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Speaker 1: different form, but it meant that, like I had to

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Speaker 1: totally change gears and put that episode to the side. Um.

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Speaker 1: And so it is just now back back when I

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Speaker 1: first wrote it, it was much more in the recent

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Speaker 1: past that our Saturday Classic on Hokusai had just been

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Speaker 1: in archive, like it was really going to be like

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Speaker 1: maybe three weeks after the Hocus episode came out, this

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Speaker 1: episode was when to come out. That's how it happened.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes that you're behind the scenes, um insight into how

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Speaker 1: the sausage gets paid. Yeah, sometimes we're working on sponsored

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Speaker 1: content that has to get shuffled elsewhere. Sometimes it doesn't

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Speaker 1: have to do with the pandemics and times things just

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Speaker 1: shift and like a company that might sponsor us decides

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Speaker 1: that they actually want to go in a different direction

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Speaker 1: with like they're creative, and it doesn't quite work with

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Speaker 1: our show anymore. And luckily you were able to repurpose

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Speaker 1: the work you had done into just a regular episode.

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Speaker 1: I just kept it on the on the back burner

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Speaker 1: for months. You I'm glad we got to talk about him.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad he didn't like wind up being shelved entirely.

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Speaker 1: Um because if you like, go try to dig up

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Speaker 1: some information about him, like there's there's not times sometimes

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Speaker 1: of it available, especially outside of Japan. But he really

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Speaker 1: is regarded as one of the founder ers of like

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Speaker 1: the Japanese technology industry, and his career spanned so many

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Speaker 1: different phases of the way people were using different types

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Speaker 1: of engineering in Japan, and the way people were using

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Speaker 1: different kinds of mechanization, and what society was like. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we are all products of the time that we are

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Speaker 1: living in in our lives changed dramatically based on changes

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Speaker 1: in the world. That's obvious over the last many months.

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Speaker 1: But I feel like he is a particularly standout example

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Speaker 1: of somebody whose life and work were changed so dramatically

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Speaker 1: by the factors of the world that he was living in. Y. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and he, I mean, to my mind, was obviously a genius, right,

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Speaker 1: so he was much like you were, able to repurpose

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Speaker 1: this episode, he was able to repurpose his knowledge of

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Speaker 1: engineering and how to create something both artistic and technologically

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Speaker 1: advanced and kind of like of all with the times

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Speaker 1: in ways that kept his work relevant, which is not

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Speaker 1: something everybody can do. Yeah, and there are I mean

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Speaker 1: we said in it that there are pieces that he

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Speaker 1: made that still work and still exist, and if you

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Speaker 1: google him you can find videos of many of them working.

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Speaker 1: I watched The Little Archer fifteen times in a row,

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Speaker 1: so fascinating. How could you not, I mean, like I

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Speaker 1: said in the episode, like he said of those people,

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Speaker 1: when I look at his work, I'm just like, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm a stupid person. I can never get what you

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Speaker 1: can achieve. No amount of art I ever make will

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Speaker 1: be this. Uh again, he's genius, literal genius. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: on Wednesday we talked about Nino TERRYL. Lawren. Yeah, who

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Speaker 1: caught my eye, like I said at the top of

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Speaker 1: the episode, because I had not really been aware that

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Speaker 1: there was part of the Voting Rights Act that was

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Speaker 1: amended to specifically rep and language minorities in the word

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Speaker 1: of the Act, and then she was a person that

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Speaker 1: came up a lot in conversations about that. Obviously she

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Speaker 1: she did not work on the Voting Rights Act specifically,

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Speaker 1: but like her work with Spanish speaking voters and suffrage

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Speaker 1: for Spanish speakers was related to all of that. I

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Speaker 1: found it a little frustrating that it took so much

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Speaker 1: digging to get into the more problematic and troubling aspects

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Speaker 1: of her career that were related to Indigenous people. It

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Speaker 1: is troubling, but not surprising. No, it's not surprising. It

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Speaker 1: was disappointing, and it was also disappointing. One of the

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Speaker 1: biographies that I used as a source for this episode,

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Speaker 1: it's not even that it was. It was from like

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Speaker 1: I think, and it had this sentence that was like,

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Speaker 1: there were some genuine heroes in her family tree, and

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Speaker 1: then it went on to reference the fact that like

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Speaker 1: all of these ancestors on one side of the family

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Speaker 1: had been part of the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

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Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't know that we can

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Speaker 1: just uncritically call that heroic because as with other nations

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Speaker 1: conquests in the Americas, there was a lot of genocide involved,

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Speaker 1: and like it just it made the whole Uh, it

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Speaker 1: made me have to really like read the whole biography

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Speaker 1: with an eye of being like our what are you

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Speaker 1: are you leaving anything out here? I feel like that's

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Speaker 1: the trick with most biographies, right, they'd lean one way

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Speaker 1: or the other. Yeah, in an upcoming episode that we're doing,

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Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that one biographer in particular would call out,

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Speaker 1: like this biography that I have also used as a reference,

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Speaker 1: really loves this person. This biography is the critical version

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Speaker 1: this Like they would kind of reference each of them

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Speaker 1: and tell you, if you want to get the take

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Speaker 1: of someone who feels this way about this this figure,

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Speaker 1: here's the one to go to. If you want the loving,

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Speaker 1: forgiving version, there's one to go to. Which was kind

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Speaker 1: of a cool breakdown that you don't always get that

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Speaker 1: those clear delineations when reading another biography of a person. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: in her her work, like her work at schools, superintendent um,

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Speaker 1: clearly she she had to walk this very fine line

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Speaker 1: where federal policy was that schools be taught only in English,

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Speaker 1: and like that was the policy that she was having

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Speaker 1: to work under a school superintendent. But like she also

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Speaker 1: seems to have been like just trying to protect Spanish

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Speaker 1: speaking students at the same time while trying to uphold

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Speaker 1: this policy, which was also really important because we didn't

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Speaker 1: really get into it in the episode, but like there

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Speaker 1: was a whole trendy is not the right word, Like

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Speaker 1: it was commonplace for teachers to wash students mouth out,

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Speaker 1: was soap for speaking Spanish at school, um, and so

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Speaker 1: she was advocating against that kind of stuff while also

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Speaker 1: just sort of trying to be this ridge between Anglo

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Speaker 1: and Hispanic worlds. And so her life followed this trajectory where, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, at first it was not permitted to teach

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Speaker 1: students in Spanish at all, and then during her lifetime,

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Speaker 1: the attitude started to shift a little bit in New

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Speaker 1: Mexico specifically to be like speaking another language as a gift,

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Speaker 1: and this cultural heritage that we have from having like

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Speaker 1: such a large Hispanic population is also a gift, and

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Speaker 1: we need to preserve that and not try to just

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Speaker 1: wipe it out. I'm mostly very excited about her um

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Speaker 1: basket of cocktails. Her she had such a you know,

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Speaker 1: in so many ways she was really defying convention. I

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Speaker 1: mean it was it was definitely social drinking was totally

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Speaker 1: accepted within her social circle, but of drinking basket cracked

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Speaker 1: me up. That's pretty good. That's a good detail. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and her um as as ethically, you could have ethical

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Speaker 1: and moral questions about telling people that you are widowed

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Speaker 1: instead of divorced, but the fact that she just maintained

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Speaker 1: that so that she could live her own life as

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Speaker 1: much as possible the way that she wanted to was

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Speaker 1: pretty captivating, uh to me. But then at the same time,

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Speaker 1: like it was clear that her younger sister Anita really

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Speaker 1: suffered because of the fact that they were all obligated

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Speaker 1: to do this with their uh you know, expectations within

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Speaker 1: the family. But like it really seems like, uh, Nina's

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Speaker 1: desire to go her own way meant that a whole

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Speaker 1: lot fell on Anita's shoulders that Anita really did not enjoy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is heartbreaking to me. It gets into a whole

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Speaker 1: other area of like familial obligation and relations and what

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Speaker 1: people value and how they value those things differently. And uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I mean I would probably be the horrible

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Speaker 1: I would be the horrible sibling that's like, sorry, y'all,

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Speaker 1: this is not for me. Yeah. So she's a complicated person.

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Speaker 1: I hope we, uh we did justice to the fact that,

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Speaker 1: like she did a lot of work that was really

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Speaker 1: important but also kind of a tangle. Yeah. So Happy Friday.

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Speaker 1: I hope everybody is having a you know, whatever whatever

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Speaker 1: is coming ahead of you this weekend. I hope it

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Speaker 1: is safe and pleasant and RESTful as possible. Again, I'm

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Speaker 1: always like, if you're working this weekend, I hope customers

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Speaker 1: are nice to you. Like, I've just seen so many

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Speaker 1: people talking about customers being mean lately, So if you're

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Speaker 1: going out to places this weekend, please be kind. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And you know, we continue to have our wish for

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Speaker 1: everybody to be as safe and well as possible, and

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Speaker 1: these times that are still continuing to be this way.

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Speaker 1: Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H