Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly fry Back. At
Speaker 1: the end of May, we talked about how we're probably
Speaker 1: not going to go on a tour with a live
Speaker 1: podcast this year because of the ongoing pandemic. We're gonna
Speaker 1: tour my living room no yet, to an audience of cats. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We've had a couple of people ask if we have
Speaker 1: considered doing like some kind of virtual live show, and uh,
Speaker 1: we did have an incredibly brief conversation that was basically like,
Speaker 1: what if we did a virtual thing, how would that work?
Speaker 1: And then we both got so swamped with just keeping
Speaker 1: the show going that we have not explored that further.
Speaker 1: It's not impossible, but like it also can't really predict anything.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the point the win is one of the
Speaker 1: best things about touring really is talking to listeners, answering
Speaker 1: questions about things people are curious about about the show,
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. So we put out a
Speaker 1: call for listeners submitted questions for a Q and A
Speaker 1: episode and here that episode is, Um, I pulled this, uh,
Speaker 1: this together. We got a lot of questions, UM, and
Speaker 1: in pulling it together, I paired down some of the
Speaker 1: longer questions for length, and there were definitely cases where
Speaker 1: we got a whole lot of similar questions about the
Speaker 1: same thing, and I kind of merged those things together.
Speaker 1: I hope I got everyone. I'm very sorry if I
Speaker 1: missed anyone. As we go through these questions to be answered.
Speaker 1: So first off, we get a lot of questions always,
Speaker 1: and we got a lot of questions with this query
Speaker 1: about our research process, how long it takes to make
Speaker 1: a typical episode, how we managed to do it so quickly,
Speaker 1: and how detailed our notes are. And these questions came
Speaker 1: from us, did people? I hope I pronounced all these
Speaker 1: names properly Lydia, Alison, Andrew, Harma, Hack, Amberley, Asaki, Jin Elizabeth, Rose, Susan, Carol, Sarah, Lee, Molly, Zenia, Jessica,
Speaker 1: Justine and gin So Tracy. Yeah. How do we do this? UM?
Speaker 1: I think this is one that every Q and a
Speaker 1: session that we do, someone asked something along the lines
Speaker 1: of this UM, and we have similar but not identical processes.
Speaker 1: I think each of us does a preliminary Google search.
Speaker 1: Mine is is to just make sure is there going
Speaker 1: to be enough to do this, because sometimes there's not
Speaker 1: enough enough information to do that. And then I go
Speaker 1: through a whole process of UM, a lot of searching
Speaker 1: through Google, bookmarking things that are from UM Academic, incredible sources,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff from j Store. Very lucky to
Speaker 1: have some very good, robust J Store access. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are requests from the library. With the pandemic happening, those
Speaker 1: are only reachable right now if they're digitally available, which
Speaker 1: is has been very handy that I'm married to a
Speaker 1: university librarian. UM. When it comes to getting some of
Speaker 1: these materials, I go through all of that. There's a
Speaker 1: whole phase where I have like twenty seven tabs and
Speaker 1: fifteen different PDFs open on my computer, and I make
Speaker 1: all these notes from that and then try to work
Speaker 1: it into a narrative that has the beginning, a middle,
Speaker 1: and an end. Yeah, I do a similar thing. I
Speaker 1: think my process probably would feel a little more frantic
Speaker 1: to Tracy UM because I tend to like, I look,
Speaker 1: I do the same thing where I look and I'm like,
Speaker 1: is there really enough material that I can get access
Speaker 1: to for this? And then I try to find one
Speaker 1: really good comprehensive article, again from like a good credible source,
Speaker 1: and I just read through it to familiarize myself with it,
Speaker 1: and I try very hard to us and intuitively to
Speaker 1: my gut that goes, wait, is that is there part
Speaker 1: left out here? Is this? It seems like there could
Speaker 1: be more there um, And I write out an outline
Speaker 1: based on that, and then I kind of chuckle. I'm like,
Speaker 1: just twenty seven tabs because I have a tab problem.
Speaker 1: And if you ask r I T person, they will
Speaker 1: roll their eyes and be like, holly um, because I
Speaker 1: I tend to have a cajillion open and then I
Speaker 1: sort of always liken it to piecing together a puzzle
Speaker 1: where and I also, lately, like the last probably seven
Speaker 1: to eight months, I've gotten really into always wanting a
Speaker 1: book in the mix, which adds a whole other layer
Speaker 1: of like juggling and confusion because then I often have
Speaker 1: like a book spread out on a table with me,
Speaker 1: and I'm paging through that and pulling from that at
Speaker 1: the same time I'm I'm pulling from articles, and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of can tell where I'm at in the process
Speaker 1: by how many tabs I've closed, because as I exhaust
Speaker 1: a source, I note that source usually, and I close
Speaker 1: that tab, and and I can kind of, over the
Speaker 1: course of of my writing process see where I'm at.
Speaker 1: It means I I never reboot my computer again to
Speaker 1: the bane of our I t people. That's more or
Speaker 1: less how mind does, although lately there have often been cases,
Speaker 1: especially I think this happens to you too, Tracy, when
Speaker 1: you travel and you'll stumble across something that is of
Speaker 1: interest and maybe pick up a book or something along
Speaker 1: the way, and then you know, I'll be reading that
Speaker 1: or what not about whatever place I have visited, And
Speaker 1: sometimes that kind of seeds an episode that goes much
Speaker 1: more quickly when the writing actually happens. Yeah, because I've
Speaker 1: kind of lived with that content for a little bit
Speaker 1: longer and in a different sort of way. Yeah, Lately,
Speaker 1: I've also gotten into this thing where I've I've picked
Speaker 1: some topics that I thought were going to be relatively straightforward,
Speaker 1: and then they've turned out to just be a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated, and in the like later writing steps, I've
Speaker 1: gotten into this thing where I've been trying to simultaneously
Speaker 1: fact check stuff to make sure it's it's correct and
Speaker 1: also fill in holes that I didn't really realize I
Speaker 1: had until I started the writing process. And it's like,
Speaker 1: I'll get a browser open with so many tabs in
Speaker 1: it that there's not even a letter visible in terms
Speaker 1: of what the label on each tab is. That many
Speaker 1: tabs open, and then I'll be like, this is too
Speaker 1: many taps, and I'll just open a whole new browser window.
Speaker 1: They gets more, and then I'm like, what is wrong
Speaker 1: with me? That seems absolutely correct me. Um. On a
Speaker 1: similar note, both Evie and Jackie asked where do you
Speaker 1: you get your ideas and your topics for podcasts and
Speaker 1: how do you pick between them? All over the place? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all over the places. Right. We have a listener suggestion
Speaker 1: list that has more than a thousand things on it,
Speaker 1: and that's that's not a made up number. It's more
Speaker 1: more than a thousand, um, And so that if like,
Speaker 1: that's a go to place a lot of times, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not really feeling anything on my short
Speaker 1: list because my short list in quotation marks has like
Speaker 1: a hundred things on it, which is two years worth
Speaker 1: of my episodes. So uh, it's not a very short
Speaker 1: short list. Um. And in terms of picking between them,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff that I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do, Like I want to try to make
Speaker 1: sure that we get a broad range of places and
Speaker 1: time periods and people and races and ethnicities and religions
Speaker 1: and all this different stuff. Um. And so sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: look back at what we've been doing, uh recently and
Speaker 1: been like, Okay, this has been a whole series of
Speaker 1: things that were all in the nineteenth century, and there's
Speaker 1: like there's a reason it was all related to the
Speaker 1: pandemic in some way, but like, let's let's break out
Speaker 1: of that. And like, that's one of my deciding factors
Speaker 1: in trying to make sure that we have, um a
Speaker 1: broad selection of things on the show. Uh Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I try to keep my brain open to ideas
Speaker 1: as they appear before me in the world. Um. For example,
Speaker 1: I have an idea for an upcoming episode which I
Speaker 1: won't say what it is, but I was reviewing a
Speaker 1: script for another podcast that I'm executive producing, and it's
Speaker 1: a fiction podcast, but it makes reference to a historical
Speaker 1: figure that I had never thought about before, and there's
Speaker 1: some salacious events that happened in that person's life that
Speaker 1: are just casually mentioned in this other script and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, is that real? And then I looked
Speaker 1: it up and it is. And then I was like, well,
Speaker 1: that goes down the list. Yeah, this happens to me too.
Speaker 1: I have even when I'm on vacation, like it's on
Speaker 1: my phone from when I was just on vacation pleasure
Speaker 1: reading something and there was a side reference to some
Speaker 1: historical event and like I make a note for later,
Speaker 1: like look at this, what was this about? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I'd have a similar thing to Tracy. I
Speaker 1: have my own little short list that seems like a misnomer, uh,
Speaker 1: and I try to figure out, you know, what's going
Speaker 1: to feel right for that week. I also sort of
Speaker 1: am always compiling a list of October episodes, always, all day,
Speaker 1: every day forever. This dovetails This next question dovetails on
Speaker 1: all of that, which is, how do you go about
Speaker 1: even finding missed in history topics from outside of the
Speaker 1: Western world. What is your process to start looking for
Speaker 1: interesting people or events? How do you handle research or
Speaker 1: resources about these topics events, people that may be very
Speaker 1: Western centric or have been strongly shaped by or Western influenced. Um.
Speaker 1: That is from Marissa. We also had a very similar
Speaker 1: question from Melanie's. It is it's really hard, uh. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where, you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about it on the show all the time. When we
Speaker 1: reference an event that happened in another place, that one
Speaker 1: we're probably reading something written by either a native English
Speaker 1: speaker or a white European that got translated into English. UM.
Speaker 1: And so like that has inherent bias to it, and
Speaker 1: we try to always acknowledge agen note that as we're
Speaker 1: going along in the the show. Yeah, some of this UM,
Speaker 1: I have relied on listeners suggestions for um because like
Speaker 1: it's it's not possible for any one person to have
Speaker 1: a thorough historical knowledge of everything in the entire world.
Speaker 1: Like that's just not feasible. It's not how the human
Speaker 1: mind works, and it's not how history works. History is
Speaker 1: is infinite and lifetimes are finite. UM. So whenever we
Speaker 1: have asked for listeners suggestions, like one of the things
Speaker 1: that we've said a lot of the times is, hey,
Speaker 1: we would really love to hear about things that were
Speaker 1: are outside of these areas that we have been talking
Speaker 1: about a lot um, And sometimes we'll get responses back
Speaker 1: that are are sort of along the lines of I'd
Speaker 1: love it if you did more African history, and it's
Speaker 1: like we would too. But when that's the starting point,
Speaker 1: it's not like finding a needle in a haystack. It's
Speaker 1: more like it's all, hey, and you've got to figure
Speaker 1: out which, Hey, is there enough information about that's in
Speaker 1: English available to us and not written from a racist,
Speaker 1: colonial perspective, which is just really challenging. It is. And
Speaker 1: that's like one of those things that's like a shortcoming
Speaker 1: that we recognize in ourselves and our education and the
Speaker 1: society as a whole um that like we work to
Speaker 1: try to balance out. But um, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: they're uh, it's it's that has challenges through the whole
Speaker 1: entire process. Well, one of the challenges we don't i
Speaker 1: think often talk about in that is that the turnaround
Speaker 1: time on episodes is quick. Yeah, right, Like if we
Speaker 1: were like I'm setting aside the next six months to
Speaker 1: find out about this part of you know, history in
Speaker 1: a place that is not an English speaking country and
Speaker 1: really fair it out like the best possible resources that
Speaker 1: are not, like you said, from a biased or colonial perspective,
Speaker 1: that would be cool, But we're doing two a week. Um,
Speaker 1: so the turnaround is so fast that from a research perspective,
Speaker 1: it makes those harder and harder. And sometimes we both
Speaker 1: have ones that kind of bubble along in the background
Speaker 1: that we're working on. But even so, like we never
Speaker 1: get a chance to just dedicate weeks and weeks at
Speaker 1: a time to one topic that really would benefit much
Speaker 1: more from that the format that we have, which is
Speaker 1: a little bit quicker. I also always have the question
Speaker 1: in my mind of like, do I even have the
Speaker 1: cultural competence to talk about this at all? And if
Speaker 1: I don't, uh, like, is there someone that we might
Speaker 1: have on the show as an interviewee, like somebody who's
Speaker 1: written a book about something. So it's like we we
Speaker 1: have tools to to offset the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: we are too human beings with the education and background
Speaker 1: that we have. Um, but still it's the whole, it's
Speaker 1: the whole process. Uh. I love this next question. It
Speaker 1: has a very easy answer. It's from Ian who asked,
Speaker 1: have you ever had a topic that you were told
Speaker 1: you couldn't do? I wasn't thinking of something scandalous, but
Speaker 1: more of someone your bosses, editors, whatever the title is
Speaker 1: of person above you in the company, thinking that isn't
Speaker 1: really of interest to anyone in his way? Too obscure. Um, No,
Speaker 1: no one has ever told us we can't do anything. Uh,
Speaker 1: we are show at this point. We have been working
Speaker 1: at it while it has been owned by multiple different companies,
Speaker 1: and we have been extraordinarily fortunate to just have creative
Speaker 1: control over it. Um that whole time. Yeah, I think, Uh,
Speaker 1: it would be weirdly I am suddenly one of our
Speaker 1: bosses it was like, hey, I mean we don't even
Speaker 1: tell them ahead of time normally what we're working on.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of autonomy, which is really nice. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be super strange. I would literally be like,
Speaker 1: what is what is going on? Uh? If that kind
Speaker 1: of dialogue were introduced? Where this come from? Are you
Speaker 1: very concerned about my future and the future of the
Speaker 1: It would be super weird. The next one is do
Speaker 1: you have a time period or type of episode like biographies, battles, uprisings, etcetera,
Speaker 1: that you find yourself biased towards or against? If so,
Speaker 1: what are they? That's from Olivia? I feel like I
Speaker 1: know your answer. Well, I mean, I definitely love biographies.
Speaker 1: I always talking about how I'm I love Queen Victoria
Speaker 1: complicated and wrong. She's not. Uh, their problems with Queen Victoria,
Speaker 1: But I mostly just love the Victorian era. It was
Speaker 1: such an exciting time in human history. And of course,
Speaker 1: like give me that, gave me that eighteenth century France
Speaker 1: all day. Um. I'm trying to think if I have
Speaker 1: any that I'm biased against. Well, I feel like that
Speaker 1: I do, know, Yeah, okay, I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of our our biases toward include things that a lot
Speaker 1: of times are not talked about as much. So we
Speaker 1: talk about a lot of social history, and a lot
Speaker 1: of reformers and a lot of writers and artists and
Speaker 1: folks like that who Um, at least when you and
Speaker 1: I were growing up, we're not the focus of history classes,
Speaker 1: which does mean that we're not necessarily doing biographies of
Speaker 1: people we might classify as like great European generals, right
Speaker 1: that was? Which is funny because when we get review
Speaker 1: copies of books from publishers, um, often it is a
Speaker 1: gigantic stack of generals and presidents and kings um. And
Speaker 1: those are just not the ones that we do the
Speaker 1: most often. Um. I have I ever told you about
Speaker 1: the game we play in the office. So the fabulous
Speaker 1: colleague that sits next to me these days because we've
Speaker 1: shuffled around a little bit. Mike and I have this
Speaker 1: game and uh Sam, one of the people from marketing,
Speaker 1: where when I come back in particularly if if I
Speaker 1: have been traveling a lot, which I normally do during
Speaker 1: normal times, and I come back and there's literally, like
Speaker 1: my first day back, always a pile of books on
Speaker 1: my desk, And we play this game that are from publishers,
Speaker 1: and we play this game called Um Hitler Churchill General,
Speaker 1: And so we have to guess just based on the
Speaker 1: exterior packaging, which of those topics it's gonna be UM,
Speaker 1: and we keep like a very casual rolling tally of
Speaker 1: our success. Last year was a big Churchill year. Everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to write about Churchill. So that's why that that
Speaker 1: became a category. I'm just gonna put it out there.
Speaker 1: We we get a lot of like automated emails, like
Speaker 1: mass distribution emails from publishers and publicists and folks like that, Um,
Speaker 1: if you represent authors of color or queer authors or
Speaker 1: authors from outside the United States and Europe and Canada,
Speaker 1: and folks that are writing about history that is the
Speaker 1: history of people of color and queer people and women. Um,
Speaker 1: if you rep these authors, feel free you pitch them
Speaker 1: to us, because overwhelmingly, when we have had anybody on
Speaker 1: the show as an interview subject who was not white,
Speaker 1: like that's somebody we hunted down the publicist ourselves. Not
Speaker 1: a hundred percent of the time, but like significantly yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, which I mean we're happy
Speaker 1: to do. But like, also we're way more aware of
Speaker 1: the stuff that actually shows up in our inbox than
Speaker 1: the ones that we have to go don a quest
Speaker 1: to see, like who's publishing books this week? Do you
Speaker 1: have bias against any time periods? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: apart from the whole general's thing, not like not a
Speaker 1: time period that I can think of, see, I feel
Speaker 1: like there is this thing that goes on where the
Speaker 1: time period I'm kind of shruggy about is one that
Speaker 1: you're into. So it covers our basis. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really love researching medieval stuff, Okay, I don't.
Speaker 1: It's not like I have like dislike of it. I
Speaker 1: don't have active dislike. It's just not the thing that
Speaker 1: usually like sparks my excitement, even though there's a lot
Speaker 1: of cool stuff in there. Um, my proclivities lean in
Speaker 1: other directions, so I'm always kind of excited when you're like,
Speaker 1: here's here's a Tyler like great. Um, next we have
Speaker 1: a question from Tyler, who says your audio sounds so
Speaker 1: crisp and clear, it almost makes me think you two
Speaker 1: are together recording. What software or devices do you use
Speaker 1: to help with the clean audio quality? Um? I don't
Speaker 1: think we can speak as much to the software because
Speaker 1: our amazing producer and editor, Casey, is the person who
Speaker 1: does the actual audio editing. But we do both have
Speaker 1: like the same microphone, which is a professional microphone plugged
Speaker 1: into a digital recorder. Um. Previously, before the pandemic, you
Speaker 1: were recording in a studio and our offices, and then
Speaker 1: I was recording in a home studio. But still we
Speaker 1: had like the same microphones so that our sound would
Speaker 1: sound the same. Yes, Um, and now we have them
Speaker 1: and I'm in a shoe closet. Yeah. Right after the
Speaker 1: pandemic started, there was a brief window where like I
Speaker 1: was on this mic and you were on a USB mic,
Speaker 1: and UM, probably like very finely tuned audio people could
Speaker 1: hear that a little bit like here the difference, but UM,
Speaker 1: like it was not. It was not like it sounded
Speaker 1: like I was in a studio and you were sitting
Speaker 1: in front of a fan on a beach with an
Speaker 1: echo chamber around you. Or well, and Casey too will
Speaker 1: like run filters that kind of normalize the sound and
Speaker 1: makes them sound similar to one another. So there isn't
Speaker 1: that discordant weirdness to it. Um specific filters I would
Speaker 1: not know a last are. The next question is are
Speaker 1: there any subjects or topics you absolutely will never do
Speaker 1: a show on for any reason? So alarly, is there
Speaker 1: a topic you want to do a show on that
Speaker 1: you haven't been able to? Um? That is from Brianna.
Speaker 1: Karen asked a similar question to the last part of that. Uh,
Speaker 1: you usually say the Quints, right, Yeah, there's the dion Quints. Who.
Speaker 1: Um We've mentioned this on a show. I can't remember
Speaker 1: which episode it was on, but um, the dion Quints
Speaker 1: a set of five quintuplets. Uh what obviously because they
Speaker 1: were quints, um, two of them as of the last
Speaker 1: time I checked, we're still living and have really just
Speaker 1: said they want their privacy and part of their whole
Speaker 1: story is that their privacy and their freedom was totally
Speaker 1: stripped from them because of the fact that they were
Speaker 1: a set of five babies who survived, which um was
Speaker 1: an enormous charity. I think we talked about it in
Speaker 1: the episode about the incubator Baby side shows that seems correct.
Speaker 1: Another thing on the same line of thought is Henrietta Lacks,
Speaker 1: which we've actually gotten an uptick and Henrietta Lacks questions lately. UM.
Speaker 1: Henrietta Lacks was a Black woman who died of cancer
Speaker 1: and the cells in her cancer became a cell line
Speaker 1: that was used in pharmaceuticals. UM. And it is a
Speaker 1: super important story, but it's also a story that involves
Speaker 1: a lack of consent and an invasion of her privacy. UM.
Speaker 1: And that just feels weird for us to dive into,
Speaker 1: especially because what we would mostly be doing is kind
Speaker 1: of a synopsis of Rebecca sclutes book, The Immortal Life
Speaker 1: of Henrietta Lacks. And so like that's the case to
Speaker 1: like go to that source, Like Rebecca Sclute worked with
Speaker 1: the family, she did all that primary research her on
Speaker 1: her you know, for her book, UM, and and like
Speaker 1: it would just be us, it would be a book report,
Speaker 1: it would be a book report. UM. So like we
Speaker 1: absolutely agree that that is an important story that's worth telling.
Speaker 1: And in more recent years her family has has talked
Speaker 1: about like wanting people to understand what happened with that history,
Speaker 1: but like that that is a case where someone else
Speaker 1: did all the work, um, and that is the person
Speaker 1: who's work should be showcased. I'm trying to think if
Speaker 1: there's anything that we wanted to do a show on him,
Speaker 1: we haven't really been able to. Uh, those tend to
Speaker 1: fall over to six impossible episodes. Yeah, they get into
Speaker 1: six impossible episodes a lot. Um, So I I perpetually
Speaker 1: have a list of things that I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I have quite enough information for that are over on
Speaker 1: that little Maybe one day it's a six impossible episodes.
Speaker 1: Amy asks, what's the craziest thing you've done in the
Speaker 1: name of research? Was there a time you found yourself
Speaker 1: chasing a bit of history somewhere so unexpected that by
Speaker 1: the end you thought, how did I get here? Or
Speaker 1: what have I done? Um? My answer to that is
Speaker 1: from while we were still technically working the same job,
Speaker 1: but before we had the podcast. Um. Because like as
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, like our our show and previously
Speaker 1: are like website employer has been sold a series of times.
Speaker 1: I was working on an article when we were still
Speaker 1: part of How Stuff Works, part of that website, and
Speaker 1: I was still writing articles, and I don't remember exactly
Speaker 1: what the article was about, but there was a um
Speaker 1: an interview that was critical for me to read and
Speaker 1: it had been published in Playboy, and Playboy was blocked
Speaker 1: on the corporate network and I had to fill out
Speaker 1: a form to get I t too unblocked Playboy for
Speaker 1: me at work, and I was just like, I can't
Speaker 1: believe this is happening to me right now, like it's
Speaker 1: and it was like there was I had to have
Speaker 1: this one specific interview because it had to tails in
Speaker 1: it that just weren't available anywhere else UM And at
Speaker 1: that point I did not have all the same library
Speaker 1: resources that I have now. I might have had other
Speaker 1: ways to get to this one article rather than having
Speaker 1: Playboy unblocked on the corporate machines. And I think I
Speaker 1: wound up with this like you have a one hour window,
Speaker 1: get this article. That's it. UM. The only thing I
Speaker 1: thing I mean, I I UM crazy things are relative,
Speaker 1: so what seems crazy to some people may not seem
Speaker 1: crazy to others Um. I do remember at one point
Speaker 1: when I was working on the ax Man of New
Speaker 1: Orleans episodes, calling a New Orleans public records office about
Speaker 1: an old death record that like, the information I found
Speaker 1: online was a little bit glorpy, like it wasn't clear
Speaker 1: if it had been misentered or what. And so it
Speaker 1: did not go anywhere successful because I was like, does
Speaker 1: it say anything about whether they died of blunt force
Speaker 1: trauma to the head? And I just got like, I
Speaker 1: just got like, ma'am what I was just never mind?
Speaker 1: Never mind? Um So I kinda I kind of whipped out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um uh at like that story. So our next question
Speaker 1: is what is your opinion on judging historical figures with
Speaker 1: modern criteria, in other words, applying modern moral criteria to
Speaker 1: historical figures or actions. For example, George Washington had slaves
Speaker 1: and that whole Columbus issue. Are they simply products of
Speaker 1: their time? That is a question from Paul um So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, like the judging is the right word?
Speaker 1: Um like that that that word comes up a lot,
Speaker 1: and it sort of has connotations that people are trying
Speaker 1: to like retroactively shame and embarrass a public figure from
Speaker 1: beyond the grave. Um. I think what really is important
Speaker 1: is having like an honest reckoning with a person's life
Speaker 1: and work and legacy and their impact on the world.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times like that has not happened
Speaker 1: with figures who's like people who have been memorialized with
Speaker 1: the statute but whose own views were apol ng um.
Speaker 1: And another important thing to keep in mind is that
Speaker 1: there have always been people who were advocating against slavery.
Speaker 1: For example, there were abolitionists from the start. They were
Speaker 1: also products of their time. So trying to say that
Speaker 1: somebody was a product of their time erases all the
Speaker 1: other people who were also there, um who either were
Speaker 1: the people who were enslaved or the people who were
Speaker 1: uh fighting against slavery, and some of those were the
Speaker 1: same people. It just it raises all of that and
Speaker 1: sort of makes it seem like, uh, these ideas of
Speaker 1: racism being wrong and slavery being wrong are like newly
Speaker 1: invented concepts and they really aren't like that that they
Speaker 1: were all there the whole time. Yeah. For me, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you hit on it. Where the word judging
Speaker 1: is tricky, It's really about contextualizing, right, Like we have
Speaker 1: to step away from kind of the really uh some
Speaker 1: times overly a brilliant accounts of somebody's life if they
Speaker 1: achieved something, often like any of the negative stuff kind
Speaker 1: of has gotten pushed to the side, and many many
Speaker 1: tellings of their story and we've it's more about like
Speaker 1: cataloging and contextualizing all of the reality of of who
Speaker 1: they were and what they did, and it it's um
Speaker 1: it becomes difficult because I think we are, by nature
Speaker 1: humans want to categorize things for their own ability to
Speaker 1: parse files, right Like I want to be able to
Speaker 1: say this person was a good person, this person was
Speaker 1: a bad person. That helps me like order history and
Speaker 1: and how it all shook out and and my view
Speaker 1: of it. But the the irritating and marvelous thing about
Speaker 1: humans is that it's all nuance, and good people often
Speaker 1: have bad behaviors involved in their their life story, and
Speaker 1: people that we might categorize as villainous also often have
Speaker 1: done really wonderful things. Like there are very few people
Speaker 1: that are just pure and good or evil. So it
Speaker 1: does become about context and nuance at that point. So
Speaker 1: the last, the last question that we have in this
Speaker 1: first time before we take a quick break is from Emily,
Speaker 1: and Emily asked, are there any episodes you wish you
Speaker 1: could go back and rerecord with a different tone, use
Speaker 1: of terminology, et cetera, given how much has changed culturally
Speaker 1: since you started the show? I think artists said That
Speaker 1: was from Emily. That answer is yes. Um My. My
Speaker 1: biggest example on that is our episode on Alan L. Heart.
Speaker 1: Alan L Heart fits into the umbrella of of trans history,
Speaker 1: although he lived before the idea of transgender as an
Speaker 1: identity had really evolved. Um. And when I worked on
Speaker 1: that show, I thought I knew enough about trans issue
Speaker 1: to like have the starting point. I got in touch
Speaker 1: with someone I knew who was a trans woman, who
Speaker 1: very graciously agreed to answer a couple of questions for
Speaker 1: me because I wanted to make sure that I was
Speaker 1: handling things thoughtfully and sensitively. Um And in hindsight, it
Speaker 1: was like I didn't quite know enough to know which
Speaker 1: questions to ask her. Um. And consequently, looking back on
Speaker 1: that episode, I feel like it it reinforces some misperceptions,
Speaker 1: like it puts way too much focus on Alan Hart's
Speaker 1: body and on the idea of surgery, and like there's
Speaker 1: just a lot more nuance that it could have gotten
Speaker 1: into UM. And so that's one that if I had
Speaker 1: a time machine, I would have handled some things differently, UM,
Speaker 1: because it was like I didn't even know what I
Speaker 1: didn't know going into it. I mean there are a million, right,
Speaker 1: Like they're a million episodes. I would change update. I
Speaker 1: always UM. We have talked about this so many times
Speaker 1: on the show before, but I always kind of did
Speaker 1: there when it comes to like what I go back,
Speaker 1: for example and like change an episode where we had
Speaker 1: a pronunciation error, UM, and part of me is like, oh,
Speaker 1: of course, and part of me is like, you know what, though,
Speaker 1: like I feel like in a way, uh, because neither
Speaker 1: of us, I don't think would bill ourselves as a
Speaker 1: history expert UM or a historian, but we are history enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: and we research and we learn, and so I feel
Speaker 1: like in some ways that is a record of our
Speaker 1: own learning process. So I'm not I'm not as twitchy
Speaker 1: about those things or as like fretful that we should
Speaker 1: redo them as I may be used to be. And
Speaker 1: if people want to judge me on something I mispronounced
Speaker 1: five years ago, that's fine. I mean I can't I
Speaker 1: can't undo that for anybody. And I certainly have made
Speaker 1: so many mistakes in all parts of my life over
Speaker 1: the years, but that's part of the record of like
Speaker 1: grow oath and I in some ways doing the show
Speaker 1: is what informs that because as we have discussed, UM,
Speaker 1: I feel like in a way that would be rewriting
Speaker 1: that moment of our learning process and discovery and making
Speaker 1: it seem like we knew more than we did for
Speaker 1: example in right. Yeah, that's actually something that I really
Speaker 1: have uh appreciated observing an other podcasts that I've listened to, Like,
Speaker 1: I have seen how other podcasts also evolve and how
Speaker 1: they talk about different issues. UM, and so I think
Speaker 1: I am incredibly critical of my own self and in
Speaker 1: a way where I extend grace to other people. So
Speaker 1: maybe that's to be my key takeaway from this conversation
Speaker 1: is to extend some more grace to myself for mistakes
Speaker 1: for years ago. Do you want to extend into grace
Speaker 1: to a listener break? Yeah, let's have a quick listener
Speaker 1: break for a sponsor. Okay, so we are going to
Speaker 1: get back to our listeners submitted questions this next chunk
Speaker 1: of stuff. Previously, before the break, we had a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that was about like the show and topics
Speaker 1: and how we do it now. We have a few
Speaker 1: things that are more about us as hosts. And the
Speaker 1: first came from a several people, um, including John, Luca,
Speaker 1: Amy and Morgan, who said, throughout the shows you mentioned
Speaker 1: a few things from the past. I'd be curious would
Speaker 1: if you'd be willing to give us a brief synopsis
Speaker 1: of where you grew up, the path you took, how
Speaker 1: it led to YouTube being history podcast host. Did you
Speaker 1: major in history in college? Um? We did not major
Speaker 1: in history in college. I majored in literature with at
Speaker 1: a school that had a big humanities component as like
Speaker 1: the the core general education requirements, And I feel like
Speaker 1: the humanities and literature are like first cousins to history
Speaker 1: and has a lot of the same stuff about close
Speaker 1: reading of texts and putting things in context and uh
Speaker 1: analyzing sources from the past like that that all fits
Speaker 1: together from my point of view really well. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: majored in theater and film study in English with a
Speaker 1: miner and dance. Um, so yeah, not so much with
Speaker 1: the history. Um, I grew up all over. My dad
Speaker 1: is Air Force, so I would probably say the formative
Speaker 1: years were on the floor to panhandle. But I also
Speaker 1: lived in Arizona. I lived in just outside Seattle. You know,
Speaker 1: we scooted around. Yeah. I was in North Carolina my
Speaker 1: whole entire life until moving to Atlanta about a year
Speaker 1: before I got hired at How Stuff Works. UM, and
Speaker 1: I had I had tried to use my literature degree
Speaker 1: to get a job as a writer, and when I
Speaker 1: was living in North Carolina, most of our writing jobs
Speaker 1: were like business to business communication and I did not
Speaker 1: find that satisfying. UM. So I went on kind of
Speaker 1: a winding road, wound up in Atlanta, got hired at
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Worked my way from being a staff
Speaker 1: writer to the senior staff writer, and then I moved
Speaker 1: into management UM. And then uh well, one day had
Speaker 1: this kind of weird existential crisis where I was listening
Speaker 1: to an episode of Stuff You Should Know while driving
Speaker 1: on a highway and a gigantic truck drove by me
Speaker 1: and threw up just a wall of water because it
Speaker 1: was draining really hard, and I had this moment where
Speaker 1: I could not see anything on the road and I
Speaker 1: was like, I might die, and my job is spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: Uh and again, but I came back to work, and
Speaker 1: I was like, look, uh, my boss conall, I would
Speaker 1: really like to have some kind of creative project added
Speaker 1: back into my workload. And then at some point after that,
Speaker 1: he heard the two of us um just talk and
Speaker 1: trash at an employee party and suggested that we have
Speaker 1: a podcast. And that podcast it was a totally different
Speaker 1: podcast from this one. It was called pop Stuff. It
Speaker 1: was about pop culture. I feel like I remember seeing
Speaker 1: a question in the inbox about whether we might bring
Speaker 1: that show back, and that's like a thing that you
Speaker 1: and I have asked ourselves repeatedly. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know how we might make that work in our time
Speaker 1: at this moment. Uh yeah, it would be tricky. I
Speaker 1: mean I have the bad habit of all. I was going, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll make it work, and then I have like, uh
Speaker 1: days where I'm like, I'm going to cry. I'm so
Speaker 1: stressed there showing the next eight hours what's going on?
Speaker 1: I can't possibly answer all these Yeah. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think somebody also noted that UM, like the RSS feed
Speaker 1: for that show has either vanished or it doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 1: UM and I I have conflicted feelings about trying to
Speaker 1: restore that because I have learned a whole lot of
Speaker 1: stuff the last seven years, and I said some appalling
Speaker 1: ignorant crap on that show. So anyway, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the how we got to hear um, which leads us
Speaker 1: into the next question, which, uh, which I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and read because it's so related. And that was the
Speaker 1: two of us know each other before the podcast, how
Speaker 1: did you meet? And that was from Teresa and Jean. Yep, Yes,
Speaker 1: we met in line for Lord of the Rings trilogy Tuesday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were each going to watch all of the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings movies in a row on the same
Speaker 1: day out a movie theater. Yeah. Um, which was the case.
Speaker 1: It was not a random meeting. We had mutual people. Um.
Speaker 1: I look back on that and I'm still shocked that
Speaker 1: I did it, because I'm not that big of a
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings person. I was in a costume,
Speaker 1: but I I mean, you know, I will do all
Speaker 1: of the nerdy pop culture things, so that must have
Speaker 1: been the driver there. Yeah. Um, I would be a
Speaker 1: costume if it were a Star Wars event. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: kind of ran into each other periodically because we had
Speaker 1: some of the same like some overlap in our social circles,
Speaker 1: but we did not really get to know each other
Speaker 1: that much more until we were working together. Yeah um,
Speaker 1: and then also got to know each other a lot
Speaker 1: more working together on podcasts. I have that weird memory
Speaker 1: of us running into each other at the Renaissance Festival
Speaker 1: in the tea room. Wow, I don't even remember that
Speaker 1: you had we're still had a leg injury because you
Speaker 1: still had your gin. You were still rehabbing. And I
Speaker 1: just remember I had eaten like I hadn't eaten this much,
Speaker 1: but it felt like I had eaten a dozen Scotch eggs.
Speaker 1: It's just full and cackling, uh, and hanging out with
Speaker 1: our mutual friend and and yeah, it's a weird. I
Speaker 1: don't know why that imprinted on my brain so hard,
Speaker 1: but here we are years later. I think what imprinted
Speaker 1: on my brain is more when we were backstage at
Speaker 1: the costume contest at Dragon con Um. I think that
Speaker 1: was the year that you all did the Muppet Band,
Speaker 1: but it might have been the year that you did
Speaker 1: Nightmare for Christmas. No, it was Muppets, which those are
Speaker 1: always very blurry for me. In case anybody does not know,
Speaker 1: I used to do I used to make with a
Speaker 1: bunch of my friends, like giant, crazy mascotty kind of
Speaker 1: costumes a lot of the time, Like we would do
Speaker 1: big storybook characters or whatever, and we did the Muppets
Speaker 1: When You're in Tracy kind of did a ride along
Speaker 1: and was like like writing about it for how stuff works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I the thing is that, like anytime I'm in
Speaker 1: that situation, like when you're in those costumes, a lot
Speaker 1: of times, there's like this whole sensory deprivation thing, Like
Speaker 1: it all becomes a blur. So I have no memory
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, I know you were there, but
Speaker 1: like in terms of specific moments, I could not conjure
Speaker 1: a thing. Um. So that's your renaissance tea room where
Speaker 1: is Yeah? Uh. The next question is have you guys
Speaker 1: gotten created with any self care stuff while having so
Speaker 1: much more time at home? Also, are you sick of
Speaker 1: your own cooking? That was asked by Anna and Jamie
Speaker 1: asked about self care in the context of researching difficult
Speaker 1: material Um. The biggest thing for me in self care
Speaker 1: and these pandemic times was moving an exercise bike into
Speaker 1: my office. Um, because my husband is also home all
Speaker 1: the time and we had our exercise stuff, and this
Speaker 1: weird little corner in our attic space. Um that like
Speaker 1: isn't really useful for anything, but it's just the right
Speaker 1: size to like stick an exercise bike and stuff. But
Speaker 1: it's adjacent to what is now his workspace, and I
Speaker 1: felt like I couldn't exercise without bothering him at work.
Speaker 1: That's fair, So moving an exercise bike down here was huge. Uh,
Speaker 1: and like made it much more possible for me to exercise.
Speaker 1: And I just feel a lot better when I exercise.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean I don't. I don't know I
Speaker 1: have said I don't know if I've said it on
Speaker 1: this show before. Pandemic aside and our current um unrest
Speaker 1: over ongoing racism in the US and around the world aside,
Speaker 1: this has been a shockingly delightful time for me. Like,
Speaker 1: I think because I was traveling so much, I had
Speaker 1: gotten to the point where, like I would get in
Speaker 1: from wherever I was on Saturday or Sunday, I would
Speaker 1: spend all day Monday writing an episode we would record
Speaker 1: Tuesday morning, and I would leave from the studio to
Speaker 1: go to the airport and do that whole cycle over again.
Speaker 1: And I had gotten to the point where that was
Speaker 1: almost every week. So for it to then be like, no,
Speaker 1: you get several months at home with your husband and
Speaker 1: your cats and all of the things that you love
Speaker 1: in your home. For me, that's been sort of like
Speaker 1: a weird forced self care that I never would have
Speaker 1: taken on my own. UM. So that's been really really
Speaker 1: marvelous because I love my husband. I want to hang
Speaker 1: out with them all the time. UM. I have joked
Speaker 1: several times that this whole pandemic was uh invoked by
Speaker 1: me every day when I left and said I don't
Speaker 1: want to leave. I want to be with you all
Speaker 1: the time. And now I get to be and it's great. UM.
Speaker 1: I have not gotten tired of my own cooking. I
Speaker 1: love to cook. You and Patrick also cook a lot.
Speaker 1: We cook a lot. Our cooking has gotten a lot
Speaker 1: more adventurous, Like Patrick has learned to make several things
Speaker 1: that he didn't know how to make before. Um. He
Speaker 1: learned to make nioki, and he learned to make bagels. Um.
Speaker 1: And we've also had to get really creative with stuff
Speaker 1: because we've been a lot more intentionally focused on not
Speaker 1: wasting food. So there have been a whole lot of
Speaker 1: times when we look at what's in the fridge. And
Speaker 1: then there's a step of like googling egg potato carrot
Speaker 1: recipe what we get. There is a cap that does that,
Speaker 1: where you check off the things that you have on hand,
Speaker 1: and it'll be like, here are four things you can
Speaker 1: make out of that. And I can't remember the name
Speaker 1: of it. Now that sounds awesome. I'll have to look
Speaker 1: it up. Jeff asked. Something I picked up on while
Speaker 1: listening to your host picks is your change in delivery.
Speaker 1: And some of these you have the NPR styles delivery
Speaker 1: of soft spoken, relatively monotone. Now you use what I
Speaker 1: assume as your natural speaking voices. Was this an intentional
Speaker 1: shift or is it more of an evolution as you
Speaker 1: get more comfortable as hosts? For me, both uh. And
Speaker 1: also when you and I joined the show, we got
Speaker 1: a lot of feedback that was very very very negative. Um,
Speaker 1: and people described our voices as shrill and unlistenable. And
Speaker 1: so I had this part of my mind that was like,
Speaker 1: if I am trying to sound like a radio person,
Speaker 1: and this is the response I get, how about I
Speaker 1: just try to sound like myself, Because clearly trying to
Speaker 1: sound like a radio person is not working um and
Speaker 1: then also uh, at one point I intentionally did a
Speaker 1: lot of self study about about podcasting and radio and
Speaker 1: audio storytelling and that kind of stuff, and I tried
Speaker 1: to incorporate the things that I learned into how I
Speaker 1: record shows. Yeah. Um, there are a few different factors
Speaker 1: in it. For me. One is that when we came
Speaker 1: onto the show, we were inheriting someone else's show. I
Speaker 1: did not feel comfortable just being myself on someone else's
Speaker 1: show for a while. That was part of it. Yeah. Two,
Speaker 1: and this sounds really like sad and poor me, and
Speaker 1: I just want you to know I'm fine, But I'm
Speaker 1: just explaining this transition that Jef has heard. Um. As
Speaker 1: Tracy mentioned, we got a lot of really really harsh
Speaker 1: criticism at the beginning. I had literally picked a date
Speaker 1: on my calendar that was several months out and wrote,
Speaker 1: if you still hate it, you can quit. You're not
Speaker 1: a quitter. You just know that you need something else.
Speaker 1: Because it was miserable. And so there are some of
Speaker 1: those where I'm just like white knuckling it through the
Speaker 1: thing to like get it recorded and get it done,
Speaker 1: because the whole thing became so stressful for a while. Um,
Speaker 1: it is fine. I mean I I um, I have
Speaker 1: said on the show before, right, like I am a
Speaker 1: filthy potty mouth. So there's always like a section of
Speaker 1: myself that I have to wall off, right Like we can't.
Speaker 1: This is an educational show in some ways, and like
Speaker 1: people listen with families, which is wonderful and hum It's
Speaker 1: something I take to heart and take very seriously and
Speaker 1: am very trying to be very respectful of. But it
Speaker 1: is very funny when my friends are like that, that
Speaker 1: is not the holly I know, because he didn't drop
Speaker 1: any bombs in there at all, and none of that
Speaker 1: was really crude. Um. So it it is also a
Speaker 1: balance of that, right, like trying to to be genuine
Speaker 1: and not be constant le code switching, but also be
Speaker 1: conscious that my very natural speaking is uh is not
Speaker 1: appropriate for all audiences. Yeah, it's I have some of
Speaker 1: the same feelings. Our next question is from Mary Lee,
Speaker 1: and it is I am dying to know if either
Speaker 1: of you have ever taken the Jeopardy online test. If so,
Speaker 1: have either of you been selected for an audition? If
Speaker 1: you have auditioned, what happened next? I am the one
Speaker 1: who has taken the Jeopardy test. I took it I
Speaker 1: think twice, so long ago that it was not online yet.
Speaker 1: You had to go to a place UM and take
Speaker 1: the tests in a room with other people, and I
Speaker 1: did not do well enough. There was like a second
Speaker 1: phase where they had kind of like a mock Jeopardy game.
Speaker 1: I think I did not do well enough to make
Speaker 1: it to that UM, and then I I stopped pursuing
Speaker 1: my dream of being on Jeopardy. Uh. My answer is no, UM.
Speaker 1: I am one of those people that loves a lot
Speaker 1: of trivia stuff, but if you actually put me on
Speaker 1: the spot, I go completely cold and I'll be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know kittens like I have no It's like
Speaker 1: my brain just goes I'm sorry, man, we've locked this down.
Speaker 1: You can't access it. So that was never going to
Speaker 1: be a thing for me. I can yell the answers
Speaker 1: from my couch like a yeah, like nobody's business. But
Speaker 1: but I know that's not a place where I would thrive.
Speaker 1: Our last question before we take another quick break is
Speaker 1: I would love to know which period in history you
Speaker 1: would each travel to if you could. And that was
Speaker 1: from Kristen. That's also super obvious, right, I think I
Speaker 1: think your answer might be, I mean it would be
Speaker 1: a difficult decision between the Court of Louis the sixteenth
Speaker 1: before things go really downhill, and or you know, Louis
Speaker 1: Louis Catturs is also very fun. Again, these people are problematic,
Speaker 1: but just from a design perspective, I gotta be there. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know Victorian England would be spectacular.
Speaker 1: I'm in it for the bustle gowns. Um. At this moment,
Speaker 1: I'm actually just I'm more curious about the future, Like
Speaker 1: I wish I could see what everything is going to
Speaker 1: look like in fifty or a hundred years from now. Um,
Speaker 1: But a lot of that is influenced by what's happening
Speaker 1: in the world right now. So it's I think if
Speaker 1: I had a time machine, that's that's the direction I
Speaker 1: would go at this moment. Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: This last chunk of questions that we are going to answer,
Speaker 1: um are just ones that I found to be more
Speaker 1: on the fun and quirky side. And the first one
Speaker 1: was from Emma, who asked if there was one historical
Speaker 1: person you could go back in time and slap in
Speaker 1: the face, who would it be? Was there anyone you covered.
Speaker 1: He was just so annoying that you want to give
Speaker 1: them a quick smack. Yes, I think I said it
Speaker 1: Um on the episode we did about him, Thomas Day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Thomas Day was really so. If anybody doesn't remember, Thomas
Speaker 1: Day was the man who um in the seventeen hundreds adopted,
Speaker 1: essentially to girls from an orphanage, with the idea that
Speaker 1: he would train them both to be what he thought
Speaker 1: was the ideal wife, and then at the end of
Speaker 1: the experiment, he would pick the best one to marry.
Speaker 1: And he abused these poor girls terribly and was a
Speaker 1: jerk of the highest order. That is the kindest thing
Speaker 1: I could say about him, because I really wanted to
Speaker 1: hit him. I agree with that assessment. I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: this next question because it was actually for you specifically,
Speaker 1: Which is what inspired you, Holly to start sewing? And
Speaker 1: where can people see your work? That was from Heather Um,
Speaker 1: I don't really remember, because I started sewing when I
Speaker 1: was three. I grew up in a house where like
Speaker 1: my mom sewed and my siblings sewed, and so it
Speaker 1: was kind of like in terms of family culture, it
Speaker 1: was just there. Um, And like when I was three,
Speaker 1: I asked my mom if I could just have some
Speaker 1: fabric and a needle and thread. And she was a
Speaker 1: little wary about giving a needle and thread to a
Speaker 1: toddler essentially, but she's like, you can do it if
Speaker 1: I can watch you use it. And I was like cool,
Speaker 1: And I made this little stuffed fish out of like
Speaker 1: this quintuple knit horrible polyester, which I think my dad
Speaker 1: still has and I've been sewing ever since. Um, where
Speaker 1: it really really took off for me was when I
Speaker 1: was probably like thirteen and fourteen, and like, we did
Speaker 1: not grow up with a ton of cash, but I
Speaker 1: got really interested in fashion. I was like, I cannot
Speaker 1: afford clothes, but I could probably make some cool stuff,
Speaker 1: and so I started making most of my clothes at
Speaker 1: that point. Um, like for my senior year of high school,
Speaker 1: like as a gift to me, my mom gave me
Speaker 1: her credit card and dropped me off at the fabric
Speaker 1: store and said, get whatever you want up to this
Speaker 1: dollar amount, like I trust you. And that was huge,
Speaker 1: and so I just like bought a bunch of really
Speaker 1: really lux fabrics to make myself like a little wardrobe,
Speaker 1: which probably still was like at that point in time,
Speaker 1: you know, a fraction of what a normal person would
Speaker 1: spend on their school close for the year. But and
Speaker 1: it's just never ended from there. Um. As for where
Speaker 1: you can see my work, I have a sewing blog,
Speaker 1: but I'm not awesome at keeping up with it, which
Speaker 1: is um at so s ew dash nerdy dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's tutorials of stuff I've made. Uh if you
Speaker 1: follow that on Twitter. I'm not really active on Facebook
Speaker 1: at this point, but on Twitter I post a little
Speaker 1: bit more, but usually it's, um, I'm really to fabric
Speaker 1: design right now. So um it's usually like me designing
Speaker 1: fabrics and I'll post a picture of something I'm working
Speaker 1: on periodically. But yeah, it was because I wanted things
Speaker 1: I couldn't have, and so I was like, well, I
Speaker 1: will make them. So I kind of got to see, uh,
Speaker 1: sewing as as almost an art of conjuring, because it
Speaker 1: was how to get things I wanted that I would
Speaker 1: not normally have access to. That's cool. Uh so uh.
Speaker 1: The next question is from Evan and he says, what
Speaker 1: is your favorite nonfiction history book. I had a memoir
Speaker 1: which I I feel like it counts because it's about
Speaker 1: a historical person that's Frankie Manning's memoir which is called
Speaker 1: Frankie Manning Ambassador of Lindy Hop And I really think
Speaker 1: that is like my favorite book that I have read
Speaker 1: while working on the show. I um mind dovetails on
Speaker 1: my last answer sort of. It is a book that
Speaker 1: if you listen to address they have talked about this
Speaker 1: book before. It's The Corset, a cultural history steel and
Speaker 1: it's just a really cool examination of course a tree
Speaker 1: from way way, way way way back to modern times
Speaker 1: and how you know a foundation garment has shifted in
Speaker 1: shape and also been misunderstood culturally and also become fetishized
Speaker 1: in some ways. And it's just a really interesting examination
Speaker 1: of how we interact intellectually with clothing and specifically with
Speaker 1: underclothing and the taboo of it. Um and I just
Speaker 1: I love that book. Cool. Next we have from Shelley,
Speaker 1: what are your favorite alternate history or historical fiction books,
Speaker 1: TV shows, podcast, movies, etcetera. For history nerds. I really
Speaker 1: love all of Mary Robinett Coal's books. She's been a
Speaker 1: guest on the show before, and uh like those those
Speaker 1: are a long time favorite of mine. Um and it
Speaker 1: suddenly all other writers went out of my head. Um uh,
Speaker 1: I'm just laughing because that happens to me all the time. Well,
Speaker 1: and we also in our recording session today, we put
Speaker 1: this one first so our brains would still be working
Speaker 1: the best, and so that's just evidence of how quickly
Speaker 1: the brain is, like, no, I'm done. I really really
Speaker 1: love it's a film. I really love Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette.
Speaker 1: It's so fun and it's it's largely based on Antonia
Speaker 1: Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette, which is I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of of it's a lot more fact than
Speaker 1: fiction in many ways, but the movie plays with it
Speaker 1: in a way like there is a moment where you
Speaker 1: see a shot of converse high tops in the shot,
Speaker 1: so obviously like they're not being super anal retentive about
Speaker 1: sticking to historical accuracy. And I just love it. It's
Speaker 1: like a feast for the eyes and it's really fun
Speaker 1: and an examination of Marie Antoinette from an angle that
Speaker 1: she hadn't had for a long time. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of opened my eyes in some ways about
Speaker 1: really thinking about historical figures from multiple angles and not
Speaker 1: just the broad brush strokes that we often get with them. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll go with that for our next question. It's from
Speaker 1: page and page as Has doing the podcast change the
Speaker 1: way you watch historical movies or television shows, for instance?
Speaker 1: Has it enhanced your enjoyment of it with a greater
Speaker 1: understanding of context because you know so much, or does
Speaker 1: it make it frustrating when things aren't quite right because
Speaker 1: you know so much. There's a lot of stuff in
Speaker 1: movies and books and TV shows and stuff like that
Speaker 1: I don't care about. I don't care if like people's
Speaker 1: hairstyle is not period accurate. I don't care if like
Speaker 1: minor details are shifted. I do care when historical fiction
Speaker 1: presents things in a way that our damaging, Like like
Speaker 1: if a TV show is portraying indigenous people in a
Speaker 1: way that reinforces racist stereotypes, Like that's the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that I will get really frustrated about. Um when
Speaker 1: it comes to like whether the battle really happened on
Speaker 1: this day or that day, like I super do not care. Um. Conversely, though, wow,
Speaker 1: do I care about the Spanish moss in the trees
Speaker 1: an outlander when that's supposed to be happening in western
Speaker 1: North Carolina? Like that? Is just my biggest pet peeve
Speaker 1: of that sort of nature, which is not really about history.
Speaker 1: It's more about North Carolina geography, which the Outlander TV
Speaker 1: show is very confused about. Yeah, I don't. I honestly
Speaker 1: think I'm more relaxed about it than I ever used
Speaker 1: to be. Um. You know, I kind of came into
Speaker 1: history through clothes in many ways, and so for a
Speaker 1: long time it would drive me bananas when there would
Speaker 1: be like historical issues with costumes in film. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't really feel that way anymore. And part of it
Speaker 1: is because when you make content for a while, you
Speaker 1: just realize that everybody's just trying to make content. No
Speaker 1: one is like I'm gonna flip the bird to history
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna do whatever I want. Like they're they're
Speaker 1: trying to do their best, and they may or may
Speaker 1: not make missteps. Um, but it's it's I can't think
Speaker 1: of a time where unless they're really trying to rewrite
Speaker 1: history in a way as Tracy mentioned that is damaging.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to tell their story. I'm much more
Speaker 1: interested in whether it's telling a good story than about whether,
Speaker 1: like they have the year correct on the day that
Speaker 1: the pivotal historic moment happened. Yeah, I mean I do.
Speaker 1: There is one thing and I don't even um fault it.
Speaker 1: And I love this movie, but there is one moment
Speaker 1: in a historical film that I always chuckle at because
Speaker 1: it it's shifts things in a way for dramatic effect
Speaker 1: that never ever happened, and it's young Victoria. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I love that film. Let me be very clear, I
Speaker 1: really love that film. Um, there is a moment at
Speaker 1: the end where Albert takes a bullet Victoria that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: There was an attempt on her life, but he did
Speaker 1: not get hit. Um. It was a very flawed and
Speaker 1: bungled attempt in the first place. Uh. And so that's
Speaker 1: just one of those things that I'm always like, he
Speaker 1: didn't have to do. This is good on its own.
Speaker 1: But again, I still love the movie without reservation. So
Speaker 1: there you go, yeah, Katie. And similarly, Kathleen asked a
Speaker 1: question which is, if you have the opportunity to sit
Speaker 1: down and have dinner with one historical figure from one
Speaker 1: of your episodes, who would it be and why. My
Speaker 1: answer is, I would love to go to Edna St.
Speaker 1: Vincent Malay's house and have dinner and cocktails with her
Speaker 1: by their outdoor pool, because I love her and that
Speaker 1: that would just be the most beautiful, wondrous day. I'm
Speaker 1: I wonder if I will surprise you with this answer today.
Speaker 1: I think you've heard me say this answer before. But um,
Speaker 1: like most people would expect me to say Queen Victoria
Speaker 1: right now. But what I'm gonna say is Charles Adams.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's a little history crush for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we did that episode, I think you said something similar. Um,
Speaker 1: I was expecting you to say Vincent Price. Oh well,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean, of course, of course, of course
Speaker 1: I would just talk about art with him forever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I'd flirt with Charles Adams. Would be fun.
Speaker 1: We'll crush on him, can't help it. Um, this is
Speaker 1: a question from a Katie, not the same Katie as
Speaker 1: the last question. Uh Anna and Tyler also asked a
Speaker 1: very similar question, which was if each of you had
Speaker 1: to pick the next next destination for a stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history class trip, where would it be. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're still hoping that we will go to Italy, but
Speaker 1: we don't know what's going to happen. We're we're keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on the situation. Yeah, um, but where would
Speaker 1: you pick? Tracy? Well, we had talked about what if
Speaker 1: we went to Japan, which is super interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I would also really like if we had like a
Speaker 1: South America somewhere trip um, because there's just so much
Speaker 1: uh so much that overlaps with some some of our
Speaker 1: more interesting episodes, like in that part of the world,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a place that I've never been. Um,
Speaker 1: what do you think? Uh, you know, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit pat from an American tourist perspective, but I would
Speaker 1: really love to go to Egypt in the Nile Valley.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, um, yeah, that would be spectacular in my book. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean I want to go to Paris once a year,
Speaker 1: but that's not a destination. So we got this question
Speaker 1: from Lizzie and a similar one from val Alery, which
Speaker 1: is whitchcrafting based episodes. Were your favorites? Which crafts would
Speaker 1: you like to do an episode on? And of the
Speaker 1: episodes we've done so far, which actual things would you
Speaker 1: get into yourself? Similarly, what historical stuff have you baked
Speaker 1: or so or made after researching it for the show
Speaker 1: a super long time ago. I intended to make beer
Speaker 1: from an Egyptian recipe that never happened, did not get
Speaker 1: around to do it. Um. I used to knit, and
Speaker 1: I feel that we did a knitting episode right, but yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah. The irony there is that I'm not a knitter.
Speaker 1: I know how to knit, Uh, it's not it doesn't
Speaker 1: have the same appeal for me as sewing. Like I
Speaker 1: remember my grandmother taught me to knit, and I remember
Speaker 1: at one point looking at her and saying, I can
Speaker 1: make three gowns in the time it takes me to
Speaker 1: make this one thing, and she was like, yeah, that's knitting,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is not for me. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: it was all about wanting more clothes. But I loved
Speaker 1: researching that episode and it was super duper fun. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of anything. Uh, if we've baked
Speaker 1: or sewn things. I mean I've definitely made clothes that
Speaker 1: we're kind of historically inspired after um talking about things,
Speaker 1: but none of them were like historically accurate clothes. It
Speaker 1: was more like, oh, what I really want, like right now,
Speaker 1: I want to make a split skirt of Victorian split skirt,
Speaker 1: like the kind you would make for wearing for riding
Speaker 1: a bicycle, but you can button it down the front
Speaker 1: and it looks like you're just wearing a regular skirt. Um.
Speaker 1: I just want one of those for daywear that's not
Speaker 1: even for like costuming or like historical events, literally just
Speaker 1: to like exist in the world because I think they're cute. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's got to be a baking thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not remembering, but well, we had all of the
Speaker 1: the Ann Burn interviews. Yeah, I've definitely baked from her
Speaker 1: books for sure. For Shore, I still say the caramel
Speaker 1: sauce in her I think it's her cake book is
Speaker 1: like transcendental, Like it's the best, It's so good, it's
Speaker 1: so good. Uh. Who is your favorite villain figure from history?
Speaker 1: This is uh from our listener Daria, and she says
Speaker 1: minds Catherine de Medici. Um. I have the division between
Speaker 1: like kind of um like villainous figures from history that
Speaker 1: I have a weird affection for, and then like what
Speaker 1: actually I think is the worst villain. White supremacy is
Speaker 1: the worst villain. But I don't I don't love like
Speaker 1: I would not characterize white supremacy is my favorite thing. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I feel like I have to acknowledge Queen Victoria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think she saw herself as a villainous, and
Speaker 1: I don't think she was always cognizant of the ways
Speaker 1: in which things that were going on in her name
Speaker 1: and the decision she was making were in fact very
Speaker 1: bad for people and more harmful. But I think we
Speaker 1: have to recognize that whole imperialism thing is very bad.
Speaker 1: I'm just getting that out of the way to acknowledge that.
Speaker 1: I know my favor is very complicated. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with Victor Lustig was the con man who, among other things,
Speaker 1: sold the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, he did my own. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's just fun. He's a gad you know, it seems
Speaker 1: it seems like an interesting person to roll with. UM.
Speaker 1: My answer is, um, kind of strange. This is not
Speaker 1: something that I feel like somebody that I feel like
Speaker 1: we described as a villain. Um. We described him more
Speaker 1: as an entrepreneur. But like Frederick Tudor sold people on
Speaker 1: the idea that they people should pay him money for
Speaker 1: ice cut out of ponds in Massachusetts, Like he made
Speaker 1: that into a product. And then where he becomes villainous
Speaker 1: is that like he sold most of his product to
Speaker 1: slave societies and English colonial ventures, and so it was
Speaker 1: like he made a whole lot of money off of this,
Speaker 1: um and like now he's often described as like, Oh,
Speaker 1: what a great what a great creative mind to come
Speaker 1: up with this whole ice trade. Uh, And really it's
Speaker 1: like there's a whole seedy underbelly to all that. Jordans
Speaker 1: asked what historical period would you like to explore in
Speaker 1: a video game? What events would you like to see,
Speaker 1: and what historic figures would you like to meet? Um.
Speaker 1: I've been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed Odyssey and
Speaker 1: that has been really fun. And they have announced the
Speaker 1: next Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which also sounds interesting and may
Speaker 1: preclude my actual answer, which is that I would like
Speaker 1: an Assassin's Creed game that is about the Saga era
Speaker 1: of Iceland. Um. But I bet if I were making
Speaker 1: decisions of the Assassin's Creed creative team, that would seem
Speaker 1: too similar to one about Vikings. I'm trying to think,
Speaker 1: because really, if I'm playing a video game that is
Speaker 1: historically based, what I want is really good visuals of
Speaker 1: a whole lot of opulence. Um. So you could probably
Speaker 1: drop me in like any palace any period, just as
Speaker 1: long as there's a lot of guilt things, um, and
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of good wrestling dresses, that'd be great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I would be open for almost anything. At that point,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be really beautiful. I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: Caroline's question because it's about Holly, and Caroline says, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things is Holly's laughter. It always brightens
Speaker 1: my day and makes me laugh too. Anyway, could you
Speaker 1: do a segment or a whole show with some segments
Speaker 1: of Holly's best laugh clips. This cracks me up, and
Speaker 1: I love this idea. Oh, Caroline, nobody actually wants that.
Speaker 1: I promise we would just we would email it to
Speaker 1: Caroline personally. Right, there are people that hey, my laugh
Speaker 1: as well. Um. One of the things that this reminded
Speaker 1: me of like that there have been times that I
Speaker 1: have wished that we created an archive of funny things
Speaker 1: that happened in the studio as they happened, which is
Speaker 1: just not a thing that we have ever done. Um,
Speaker 1: but it means that we've just lost some cookie studio
Speaker 1: moments to like the the realm of deleted audio files. Um,
Speaker 1: Like the time that I'm not trying to be funny.
Speaker 1: It just came out of my mouth wrong. I said,
Speaker 1: Napoleon bona farte, And then we laughed for a very
Speaker 1: long time. And then I laughed for a whole lot longer.
Speaker 1: I can't remember how long it took me to just
Speaker 1: get it together. I kept trying to do the next
Speaker 1: piece of the podcast and then falling totally part apart again. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't think we we don't actually have a file
Speaker 1: of funny laughing moments that sometimes, Yeah, sometimes I wish
Speaker 1: we did have, like, uh, an archive of hilarious outtakes. Maybe.
Speaker 1: I mean I laugh at everything, whether it's hilarious or not. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just is what it is. But yes, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that would be the bane of someone's existence, and they
Speaker 1: would It would be like their man cherry and candidate trigger.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to see the maddest Uh. This next one
Speaker 1: kind of cracks me up. It's from Emily, who asked
Speaker 1: what are your favorite ways to eat pickles? Fried sper slices, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I left this question for last because I love this
Speaker 1: question and I would eat pickles anyway any potential way
Speaker 1: that pickles exist, I would eat them as long as
Speaker 1: it's not pickled ginger, because while I love pickles and
Speaker 1: I love ginger, for some reason, I don't enjoy pickled
Speaker 1: ginger at all. We are diametrically opposed on this issue.
Speaker 1: This is also why Patrick and I are good couple,
Speaker 1: because whenever we are out to dinner somewhere and pickle
Speaker 1: ginger is part of the thing, I can just put
Speaker 1: all of mine directly on his plate and he will
Speaker 1: be happy as a clam. I do not care for pickles,
Speaker 1: but I love pickled ginger. There is one way I
Speaker 1: will eat a pickle, and it is on that crazy
Speaker 1: sandwich that was popular on Twitter for a minute, which
Speaker 1: is peanut butter bacon, which, by the way, that was
Speaker 1: my go to sandwich as a kid for years and years,
Speaker 1: so it was always a my lunchbox peanut butter and bacon.
Speaker 1: But this is peanut butter and bacon and mayonnaise and pickles,
Speaker 1: and it sounds vile, and it goes on sour dough bread.
Speaker 1: It's freakishly delicious. And I have pickles in that context,
Speaker 1: but normally they all go on to Brian's plate because
Speaker 1: I wanted. I love them, love them. Um, Okay, this
Speaker 1: episode went on for a lot longer than I thought
Speaker 1: in my head it was going to when I pulled
Speaker 1: all these questions together, so we don't have listener mail today. UM.
Speaker 1: I did want to note that Mike, Beth, Neil, and
Speaker 1: Matilda all asked some variety of question about how we
Speaker 1: would change the way history is taught in schools or
Speaker 1: what topics we would want to see in the curriculum,
Speaker 1: and like we've kind of talked about that in the past,
Speaker 1: but I honestly just don't want to tell teachers how
Speaker 1: to do their jobs here because we're not teachers. We
Speaker 1: don't have backgrounds in teaching or in pedagogy. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I also wanted to thank dear Dret, Neil, Angela, Lisa
Speaker 1: and Rachel, Devon, Urie and Linda who all asked questions
Speaker 1: that we were not able to get to either because
Speaker 1: like we just I didn't feel like we had a
Speaker 1: great answer to them or um for time. Obviously time
Speaker 1: has gone on for a bit. UM. So here's our
Speaker 1: longer than usual Q and A episode UM for folks.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone who wrote in
Speaker 1: with questions. I hope I did not miss anybody, and
Speaker 1: going through them to compile them for the episode. And
Speaker 1: of course we are still going to have listener mail
Speaker 1: segments uh in our episodes going forward. So if you
Speaker 1: want to send us a question about anything or a
Speaker 1: history podcast at I heart radio dot com and we're
Speaker 1: all over social media as miss in History that's really
Speaker 1: find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to our show in the I heart radio app
Speaker 1: or Apple podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.