Tracy and Holly talk about the charm of bees, and the strangely intriguing nature of Grover Cleveland's tumor surgery.
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. Welcome to our casual Friday. Behind the scenes, I am Tracy D. Wilson and I'm Holly fry Um So Holly. We recorded this week's episodes on a we're what six three weeks into this whole uh safer at home situation, um seven somewhere in I think this is our seventh time recording with all of us from home. Yeah, so um. I am one of the folks who, at the beginning of the pandemic had their anxiety improve, which is a phenomenon that's happened to some people, because it was sort of like my mind went, oh, the badness I've been preparing for is here. Now I can relax. Um. But but this episod So it was recorded during what has been a low point for me in all of this, and it was inspired by a brain scoop video from Emily Grassley, who does these wonderful videos for the Field Museum, and she did this video where she was in her backyard basically being like, Okay, I'm in my backyard because the museum's closed, and so I'm gonna do this backyard video, and in the middle of a video of the video, a hawk flies by a couple of times, and the second time she goes I love birds, and she just looks at the hawk for a minute, and I was like, I need a minute where I have the stuff you missed in history class version of looking at a hawk, like I need. I need something that's that's like gonna be good for the show, but also good for me, because I need a minute. And that thing was bees. And I had just a delightful time um researching bees and beekeeping because, as I said in the show, they are uh an insect that I am really fond of. UM. I got to read lengthy book titles that went on and on, and I got to read historical writings about bees that were really charming. And it was just an episode that I hope everyone enjoys as much as I enjoyed working on it. I mean a guess you did not watch the Futurama episode The Sting as part of your research. I did not. I did not. Can you tell me about it? Uh? They go to a planet with human size bees to get some stuff produced in their hives. But the best part to me is that bender has been programmed to do the dance and buzz of bees to communicate, and they subtitle all of his dances and buzzes and some of them are marvelously unkind. So when we started talking about it, in my head running the whole time was and I know what that means. But there's a whole secondary story about the relationships among the characters. But it's also just sort of beautiful because that show is run by so many and written by so many pH ds that every joke is really smart. Um is there a score by Scott Joplin, Because that's what I think about any time I hear someone say the sting not on that episode, No, no, okay, way in the long ago past, when our I don't think you even worked with us yet. But um, as long time listeners know, this podcast used to be part of a website called how Stuff Works. And I started working at How Stuff Works versus a staff writer many many years ago, and one of the articles that I wrote during my time there as a as a writer was how bees work. And I got to spend a whole bunch of time looking at the mouth parts and reading about waggle dances and writing all that stuff in an article, and this episode kind of replicated that experience, something like happily sitting at my desk being like love bees. I'm gonna so many things about bees. Well, they're precious, they are they are. Um, I'm very fond of them. I have I have thought about putting There are various things you can do to encourage native bees to um nest in your yard, and I have been intending to put those little tubular like bumblebee habitats out there, and I have not done it. Uh, And now it's like when will that happen? Who knows? Yeah, I ordered some bee balm in the hopes of like fostering additional bee activity in my garden. They're already pretty fond of my roses. But my bee bomb did not survive, So I gotta try again and figure out what I did wrong. We have some flowering plants that do attract a lot of bees, um that have not started to flower yet because this is Massachusetts. Uh, And there are some things in bloom, but not the things that tend to really dry out the best. So yeah, we'll see soon soon there will be more bees in the yard. So our second subject this week was Grover Cleveland and his secret cancer surgery. Uh, which I don't mean to sound jovial about cancer, but it's such an amazing story. Yeah, and he did successfully not only survived the surgery, but lived for like another fifteen year eighteen years. My math is a little rough, but he lived for quite a while after. There are aspects of his story that we didn't get into because he didn't really fit in that episode. One being many many comments that have happened throughout the years on his marriage to Francis because she was so much younger than him and was like a little girl that he knew growing up and was kind of like a surrogate father to her in many ways when her dad died. So there are some people that are like, oh, that's a little bit weird and nikky. Um. What's interesting is that when he was in his first rom in office and Francis and her mother would come and visit him, the rumors were swirling that he was dating the mother, and he was like, no, um, But he tried to keep their courtship very very secret because he knew it would just be like a total mess of reporters and intrusion if they were ever seen in public together. So, but they got married there at the Executive Mansion. Uh, and I will say they seemed completely devoted to one another, Like it seemed like she had a great deal of agency in that relationship in terms of like running things as a first lady. She didn't really suffer any sort of like wallflower syndrome or like I'm young and I can't handle this. She was very comfortable in that role. The other thing that's interesting that came up in an interview with that author that I mentioned when he was on NPR was that he had talked to several oral surgeons about what they did on the ononda that day, and modern oral surgeons are like, we don't know how they did surgery this quickly, because that's like normally takes several hours in an actual dedicated operating room with all the bells and whistles of modern medicine. And yet he miraculously came through it just fine, which is a pretty fascinating thing. There are, again, for people that want more details and want to seek out that book or any of the other accounts, things get real graphic about the stuff they were removing. Um, so those parts we kept it pretty clean and light for the show. But there it does get. There was one point where I was like, Okay, I can watch the surgery channel, and even this is a little like whoa, let me just let me let me fan myself because this is a lot right, yeah, but it is very interesting. Grover Cleveland is a fascinating figure in ways that are both winsome and also a little um cringe worthy. But this, this one little piece of his life is so fascinating. But well, when you when you mentioned it to me, um as a topic, I was thinking, I I know several stories about like various times that either the president was having some kind of medical procedure and people knew about it, and there was this whole thing where that's like the vice president is temporarily in charge, um to other ones where it was kept kind of secret. But as soon as you got into the yacht thing, I was like, I don't know this story at all. Well, and keep in mind, he didn't want his vice president to know because this was a time when you didn't select your running mate. They were like the person that came in second, and so he didn't fully trust. He was like, no, no, nobody knows about this everybody has to think. I am fine, Um, I mean, I can't help but think about the what if of Like if everything had gone horribly wrong and he had died on the boat, Like how on earth would that have impacted those doctors lives, which I'm sure they all considered before they agreed to it. But yeah, that one's a big Apparently Dr Bryant was hoping to eventually write the true story of what had happened, particularly after nine eight when Grover Cleveland died, but he didn't get around to it, which was one of the things that UM kind of spurred Dr keen On to go ahead and do it. And again he did consult Frances first and made sure she was comfortable with it. I think she had said, like, please just let me read the manuscript before you go to Prince Um, so she was. She had a full approval on it. Uh. It's very very lucky that that dentists did not name everybody, because even though the president had survived, it would have probably killed all their careers. And then I think about how difficult it would be to pull this off today when politicians are on television all the time. Yeah, I was thinking about that, um as as we were talking about having to call reporters on the phone. It's like in today's world where there's constant televised everything, Um, would have been way harder to keep that secret. Yeah, And they didn't have a press secretary at that point, so it was like literally the president and his wife calling papers. Who going stop that? Good? Um? If you would like to write to us about this or anything else, you could do that at History podcast at i heeart radio dot com. You can follow us on social media as Missed in History pretty much everywhere, and you can subscribe to the show on the I heart Radio app, at Apple podcasts, or wherever it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. 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