Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy d Wilson and I'm Holly fry. Uh. We talked about the Flint sit down strike this week, which I've had on my list for so long. I feel like it's been name dropped in some other stuff that's been either about other strikes or the social movements that kind of uh sat in in a way that was similar to sitting in at the factory. Um. So Uh, the anniversary of it was a good reason to move it up to the top. And then also the fact that, wow, doesn't a lot of that sound like it could have been written about today, Like people saying I work in a fulfillment center and I am expected to work so fast I cannot go to the bathroom. Yeah, I know that during research this made you angry as all get out? Did um and I in the midst of recording at one point it will have been edited out, but I just couldn't talk anymore. What this is all because of stupid money? Yeah. Like, don't get me wrong, I understand that we live in a world that is made to go around by money. I get it, But like the dehumanized treatment of people who are actually making a company money. Yeah, infuriates me, yes, and like the bright spun of it, unlike so many other strikes we've talked about, like no one got killed, there were injuries, no one got killed. So many times on the show, and we have talked about somebody calling out the National Guard, especially farther back in the past so many times, like the National Guard was harming the people who were already most at real and that was not really what happened in this case. And so that was not exactly a moment of levity, but like something that was like a little less uh frustrating than feeling like so many of the workers or so many of the issues that that so many of the workers were talking about are so similar, two things that are still happening today. And uh there are various protections that exist now that did not exist in nineteen thirty six and thirty seven, but still so many reports about not having time to go to the bathroom. Yeah. Um, yes, it's infuriating again because of money. It's it's one of those things where I continue to marvel at how on those rare occasions where you will see, for example, like on social media or whatever, either some news of some company or some head of a company talking about like, no, actually, we try to treat our workers really well, and that's actually been great for all of us. I swear. It's like that shouldn't be the refreshing thing it is to be like oh cool. Yeah. Well. And another thing that this was an example of is like how just straight up pay rate is not always the issue. Um. Like, sometimes you'll hear something like, well, will we pay people really well? That doesn't that count for something. It's like, sure that a lot of the workers and in the factory we're making more money than they would have made working somewhere else in the area, but they were making more money while being while feeling like they were just being pushed beyond the breaking point at the speed they were expected to work, and like just not generally be being treated as human beings. So it's like, our minimum wage does not absolve anyone of needing to treat the people who work for them as actual people. Yeah. I UM. I have a close friend who I had not seen it a bit, and I got to see her recently and she has changed jobs since the last time I saw her, and she was she's been there for a bit, and she was talking about how she has never been treated so well in a job and how it almost freaks her out because it's just so unusual. She's like, I kind of actually get the feeling they might actually care about their employees. And it's one of those things where it is so unusual that it feels unnatural or even suspicious at times to people. And I'm like, that is not great, no, no, And it reminds me a little bit of the Aska Manager Advice Column, which I have been a devotee of reading for many years. And one of the things that that she has talked about is now, when you're in a bad working environment, it's like you kind of get accustomed to things that are totally unreasonable and unworkable, to the point that you think that that's just how it works. I'm like, yeah, you know, I've totally had that experience. Yes, I think we all have. Yeah, yeah, And it is one of the really unfortunate things. Right. We've talked about this so many times in any of these labor movement discussions, that the people who have the least are the ones that end up going along with those things because they're either so afraid that they will lose what little income they have or like I know, when I was younger, I didn't really understand labor law. And I look back at some of the things that like boss has asked me to do, and I was like, yeah, I can do that, because I was a peppy little ding dong who would agree to anything. And it wasn't even like it was nefarious, but like just things like hey, will you um go ahead and clock out, but then work another three hours and I swear we'll make that up next week, Like that happened to me in a job, and I was sure, no problem, Like I wanted to be like super agreeable and had no idea that that is in fact wage theft. Well, and I look, I I used to manage people for many years, and I will look at things that I did or said as a manager where I'm like, WHOA, that was not correct. Like I remember a thing I had heard my whole career was that your pay is confidential and you're not allowed to talk about it to anybody. Um And like I know, I told people that worked for me that your pay was confidential and you weren't allowed to discuss it, and that is totally false. In the United States, if you work for companies that are covered under things like the Fair Labor Standards Act, you have the right to talk about your pay and your working conditions with your coworkers. Nobody gets to tell you know, you can't discuss that. Yeah, yeah, it's I think that's another one that that companies get away with saying like we have a policy that we own. Because there's also the secondary thing of regardless of what the law says, most people are generally just uncomfortable talking about money and like it just it just comes with a lot of weird baggage and taboo depending on how you were raised, Like we certainly didn't discuss money in my family, like you may as well discuss, like, you know, lascivious acts at the dinner table. Like it was just that level of like, no, we don't talk about money. That's I still have trouble talking about it, even though I am a grown adult human who owns a house and has financial things in my world, I still clam up when people talk to me about money. Yeah, it's very very strange. So that that plays in that like helps those the claims that we don't discuss salary to work because most of us are conditioned that money is a sensitive and unpleasant topic that we should never acknowledge exists, even though it's part of everything we do. Yeah, yeah, it's a yeah, that's a whole other showIn Yeah, it definitely is. Um. So anyway, I'm glad the anniversary finally bomp this up to the top of the list. Tracy. This week we talked about the Snowflake Man. Wilson Bentley did um I did not share during that episode was what prompted me to look into his story because it's a little silly. Uh it's a dress address. There is a company. I will mention this is not an ad for them, but I do shop with them called Swaha. I don't know if that's how they pronounce it. They specialize in uh, steam themed clothing, so a lot of science, technology and whatnot. And they put out a dress recently called the Bentley Dress and it has snowflakes alo. It's a black dress with just white snowflakes in a really beautiful pattern. And I was like, Oh, I want that dress. And then I noticed in the description they talked about the snowflake Man and I was like him, excuse, and then I um, I bought the dress and then looked up Bentley and then bought some of his work. That seems great to me. Yeah, it was like one of those wonderful little kismets where I love the dress. I really like their clothes anyway, and it led me down this wonderful path of discovery because somehow I had never heard of him. I do feel like we should mention because someone will right in that there are instances of a like snowflakes. Sure they're not terribly common, but it does happen from time to time. Yeah, that's so. I almost wore the dress for our recording today, but I just didn't. I recorded my closet. People probably don't know my overflow shoe closet, which is an embarrassing phrase to say, but there it is, and I kind of have to like wiggle in and sit kind of splay leg it. It's just not good for a dress. And frankly, when am I gonna, you know, sport a cute dress around the house while I corral cats and write episodes didn't seem appropriate. I'm saving it for a fun time. That seems Yeah, it seems fine. I was gonna say, you know, why not, why not wear a fun dress around the house, But it would be more fun to wear it for a fun time than working. I am a big fan of a fun dress around the house, for sure, but in a situation like this where I'm trying to like wiggling it out of a space and sit on a stool, and I just envisioned me accidentally like dragging things off a shelf and like creating some sort of havoc that no in their life and you don't need to watch or the internet and be like it's holly okay, Yeah, it's not that voluminous address, but I would figure out a way. I was very struck throughout all of this at um what I have always called a personality type. And I'm not the only one of the billy dreamer, and I think that is Bentley in a nutshell like and I it's interesting that little tidbit that we talked about about his preference to hang out with kids rather than other adults, and how weird that seemed to people. Even then, there's part of me that thinks he didn't trust other adults because they didn't have an appreciation for anything in that sort of wonderful way, Like, I think that may have been part of it, but I don't know. That's just my theory. Yeah, I don't know what kids thought about his snowflake pictures, but he had tried to share them with the grown ups and the grown ups didn't care then, right, whereas kids were like, wow, tell me more. Um, you know, it was fascinating to them because they were you know, kids are sponges and they're eager for new things that stimulate their minds most of the time, and I think that probably was a much more natural fit. The smile thing is weird as hell, there's no getting around well. And it also I wonder if if gender influence that at all, because a woman who enjoys being around kids get to be a school teacher. Great, right, Um, the photographs of smile things might still raise some eyebrows though. Yeah, so weird. But again, if someone, I mean, if someone came up to me on the street and was like, I think you have a charming smile, man, I photograph it. I don't know what flavor of expletives would come out of my mouth, but it would probably be significant. I probably resolutely ignore them and keep walking, that's right, and be like get away from me. That's the kind way I would put it, Um. But I again, I do there's part of me that thinks that there was probably some degree of like if you think about the way that he talked about science, like with you know, wide, I'd wonder I also suspect he may be one of those people that didn't really have the best sense of social cues either. That's a guess on my part. Um he didn't ever marry. He did have a couple of women that he was very close with UM over the years, although there are some question marks about what close really means, Like there was at least one instance of a woman that he UM he wrote back and forth with, but it was kind of a lot about science and meteorology, and people would be like, oh, they were very close, and I'm like, were they? But yeah, but you know, like they could certainly share um a passion for their subject. It never seemed to me to be a particularly emotional or romantic communication between them and the little bits that I was able to find, But again that is my maybe same inability to read cues and maybe they were secretly loaded with tons of romance that I was not catching, um, but I do love this idea of someone just like I just want to take pictures. I don't care what happens to them. I want to take pictures of snowflakes, of all things they are. And his photographs are very beautiful. I mean, it's like startling when you consider, you know, this is fairly early on in photography and he was doing this amazing stuff that they still look striking today and really, like we read some of that list that he mentioned of all the ways in which his photographs had been used to then populate other design things. But like, I really started to notice as I was doing this search, and we happen to be heading into wintertime when snow flaky things are around where I'm like, oh wait, that design on that you know, Christmas decoration sure looks like one of the ones from his book. And I'm holding it up and I'm like, yeah, somebody traced that, like and I think that's probably they've proliferated in a lot of places where and never really been credited back to him, because it's just like your standard snowflake, you know, they're all different, yet they all seem to look exactly like once he cataloged and photographed, but kind of fascinating. Um. I did not get super deep into the meteorology of this because there are lots of discussions that still go on scientifically about what he was and was not right about, and it becomes very difficult to sift those apart. Right. UM, but I will now look at snow in a totally different way. Should we get any this year, I will try not to breathe on it. We've already had some here in Massachusetts, not a lot. It didn't stick anywhere, but that it was this Possibly there'll be more by the time this episode comes out, but the odds are decent. Thank you for hanging out with us this week. I hope that as you head into the weekend that you have some time to yourself to relax and uh restore and do whatever it is you need to take care of you, and that if you don't have that kind of time, that you at least sail through it as unscathed as possible. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic and then on Monday with an all new episode. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy d Wilson and I'm Holly fry. Uh. We talked about the Flint sit down strike this week, which I've had on my list for so long. I feel like it's been name dropped in some other stuff that's been either about other strikes or the social movements that kind of uh sat in in a way that was similar to sitting in at the factory. Um. So Uh, the anniversary of it was a good reason to move it up to the top. And then also the fact that, wow, doesn't a lot of that sound like it could have been written about today, Like people saying I work in a fulfillment center and I am expected to work so fast I cannot go to the bathroom. Yeah, I know that during research this made you angry as all get out? Did um and I in the midst of recording at one point it will have been edited out, but I just couldn't talk anymore. What this is all because of stupid money? Yeah. Like, don't get me wrong, I understand that we live in a world that is made to go around by money. I get it, But like the dehumanized treatment of people who are actually making a company money. Yeah, infuriates me, yes, and like the bright spun of it, unlike so many other strikes we've talked about, like no one got killed, there were injuries, no one got killed. So many times on the show, and we have talked about somebody calling out the National Guard, especially farther back in the past so many times, like the National Guard was harming the people who were already most at real and that was not really what happened in this case. And so that was not exactly a moment of levity, but like something that was like a little less uh frustrating than feeling like so many of the workers or so many of the issues that that so many of the workers were talking about are so similar, two things that are still happening today. And uh there are various protections that exist now that did not exist in nineteen thirty six and thirty seven, but still so many reports about not having time to go to the bathroom. Yeah. Um, yes, it's infuriating again because of money. It's it's one of those things where I continue to marvel at how on those rare occasions where you will see, for example, like on social media or whatever, either some news of some company or some head of a company talking about like, no, actually, we try to treat our workers really well, and that's actually been great for all of us. I swear. It's like that shouldn't be the refreshing thing it is to be like oh cool. Yeah. Well. And another thing that this was an example of is like how just straight up pay rate is not always the issue. Um. Like, sometimes you'll hear something like, well, will we pay people really well? That doesn't that count for something. It's like, sure that a lot of the workers and in the factory we're making more money than they would have made working somewhere else in the area, but they were making more money while being while feeling like they were just being pushed beyond the breaking point at the speed they were expected to work, and like just not generally be being treated as human beings. So it's like, our minimum wage does not absolve anyone of needing to treat the people who work for them as actual people. Yeah. I UM. I have a close friend who I had not seen it a bit, and I got to see her recently and she has changed jobs since the last time I saw her, and she was she's been there for a bit, and she was talking about how she has never been treated so well in a job and how it almost freaks her out because it's just so unusual. She's like, I kind of actually get the feeling they might actually care about their employees. And it's one of those things where it is so unusual that it feels unnatural or even suspicious at times to people. And I'm like, that is not great, no, no, And it reminds me a little bit of the Aska Manager Advice Column, which I have been a devotee of reading for many years. And one of the things that that she has talked about is now, when you're in a bad working environment, it's like you kind of get accustomed to things that are totally unreasonable and unworkable, to the point that you think that that's just how it works. I'm like, yeah, you know, I've totally had that experience. Yes, I think we all have. Yeah, yeah, And it is one of the really unfortunate things. Right. We've talked about this so many times in any of these labor movement discussions, that the people who have the least are the ones that end up going along with those things because they're either so afraid that they will lose what little income they have or like I know, when I was younger, I didn't really understand labor law. And I look back at some of the things that like boss has asked me to do, and I was like, yeah, I can do that, because I was a peppy little ding dong who would agree to anything. And it wasn't even like it was nefarious, but like just things like hey, will you um go ahead and clock out, but then work another three hours and I swear we'll make that up next week, Like that happened to me in a job, and I was sure, no problem, Like I wanted to be like super agreeable and had no idea that that is in fact wage theft. Well, and I look, I I used to manage people for many years, and I will look at things that I did or said as a manager where I'm like, WHOA, that was not correct. Like I remember a thing I had heard my whole career was that your pay is confidential and you're not allowed to talk about it to anybody. Um And like I know, I told people that worked for me that your pay was confidential and you weren't allowed to discuss it, and that is totally false. In the United States, if you work for companies that are covered under things like the Fair Labor Standards Act, you have the right to talk about your pay and your working conditions with your coworkers. Nobody gets to tell you know, you can't discuss that. Yeah, yeah, it's I think that's another one that that companies get away with saying like we have a policy that we own. Because there's also the secondary thing of regardless of what the law says, most people are generally just uncomfortable talking about money and like it just it just comes with a lot of weird baggage and taboo depending on how you were raised, Like we certainly didn't discuss money in my family, like you may as well discuss, like, you know, lascivious acts at the dinner table. Like it was just that level of like, no, we don't talk about money. That's I still have trouble talking about it, even though I am a grown adult human who owns a house and has financial things in my world, I still clam up when people talk to me about money. Yeah, it's very very strange. So that that plays in that like helps those the claims that we don't discuss salary to work because most of us are conditioned that money is a sensitive and unpleasant topic that we should never acknowledge exists, even though it's part of everything we do. Yeah, yeah, it's a yeah, that's a whole other showIn Yeah, it definitely is. Um. So anyway, I'm glad the anniversary finally bomp this up to the top of the list. Tracy. This week we talked about the Snowflake Man. Wilson Bentley did um I did not share during that episode was what prompted me to look into his story because it's a little silly. Uh it's a dress address. There is a company. I will mention this is not an ad for them, but I do shop with them called Swaha. I don't know if that's how they pronounce it. They specialize in uh, steam themed clothing, so a lot of science, technology and whatnot. And they put out a dress recently called the Bentley Dress and it has snowflakes alo. It's a black dress with just white snowflakes in a really beautiful pattern. And I was like, Oh, I want that dress. And then I noticed in the description they talked about the snowflake Man and I was like him, excuse, and then I um, I bought the dress and then looked up Bentley and then bought some of his work. That seems great to me. Yeah, it was like one of those wonderful little kismets where I love the dress. I really like their clothes anyway, and it led me down this wonderful path of discovery because somehow I had never heard of him. I do feel like we should mention because someone will right in that there are instances of a like snowflakes. Sure they're not terribly common, but it does happen from time to time. Yeah, that's so. I almost wore the dress for our recording today, but I just didn't. I recorded my closet. People probably don't know my overflow shoe closet, which is an embarrassing phrase to say, but there it is, and I kind of have to like wiggle in and sit kind of splay leg it. It's just not good for a dress. And frankly, when am I gonna, you know, sport a cute dress around the house while I corral cats and write episodes didn't seem appropriate. I'm saving it for a fun time. That seems Yeah, it seems fine. I was gonna say, you know, why not, why not wear a fun dress around the house, But it would be more fun to wear it for a fun time than working. I am a big fan of a fun dress around the house, for sure, but in a situation like this where I'm trying to like wiggling it out of a space and sit on a stool, and I just envisioned me accidentally like dragging things off a shelf and like creating some sort of havoc that no in their life and you don't need to watch or the internet and be like it's holly okay, Yeah, it's not that voluminous address, but I would figure out a way. I was very struck throughout all of this at um what I have always called a personality type. And I'm not the only one of the billy dreamer, and I think that is Bentley in a nutshell like and I it's interesting that little tidbit that we talked about about his preference to hang out with kids rather than other adults, and how weird that seemed to people. Even then, there's part of me that thinks he didn't trust other adults because they didn't have an appreciation for anything in that sort of wonderful way, Like, I think that may have been part of it, but I don't know. That's just my theory. Yeah, I don't know what kids thought about his snowflake pictures, but he had tried to share them with the grown ups and the grown ups didn't care then, right, whereas kids were like, wow, tell me more. Um, you know, it was fascinating to them because they were you know, kids are sponges and they're eager for new things that stimulate their minds most of the time, and I think that probably was a much more natural fit. The smile thing is weird as hell, there's no getting around well. And it also I wonder if if gender influence that at all, because a woman who enjoys being around kids get to be a school teacher. Great, right, Um, the photographs of smile things might still raise some eyebrows though. Yeah, so weird. But again, if someone, I mean, if someone came up to me on the street and was like, I think you have a charming smile, man, I photograph it. I don't know what flavor of expletives would come out of my mouth, but it would probably be significant. I probably resolutely ignore them and keep walking, that's right, and be like get away from me. That's the kind way I would put it, Um. But I again, I do there's part of me that thinks that there was probably some degree of like if you think about the way that he talked about science, like with you know, wide, I'd wonder I also suspect he may be one of those people that didn't really have the best sense of social cues either. That's a guess on my part. Um he didn't ever marry. He did have a couple of women that he was very close with UM over the years, although there are some question marks about what close really means, Like there was at least one instance of a woman that he UM he wrote back and forth with, but it was kind of a lot about science and meteorology, and people would be like, oh, they were very close, and I'm like, were they? But yeah, but you know, like they could certainly share um a passion for their subject. It never seemed to me to be a particularly emotional or romantic communication between them and the little bits that I was able to find, But again that is my maybe same inability to read cues and maybe they were secretly loaded with tons of romance that I was not catching, um, but I do love this idea of someone just like I just want to take pictures. I don't care what happens to them. I want to take pictures of snowflakes, of all things they are. And his photographs are very beautiful. I mean, it's like startling when you consider, you know, this is fairly early on in photography and he was doing this amazing stuff that they still look striking today and really, like we read some of that list that he mentioned of all the ways in which his photographs had been used to then populate other design things. But like, I really started to notice as I was doing this search, and we happen to be heading into wintertime when snow flaky things are around where I'm like, oh wait, that design on that you know, Christmas decoration sure looks like one of the ones from his book. And I'm holding it up and I'm like, yeah, somebody traced that, like and I think that's probably they've proliferated in a lot of places where and never really been credited back to him, because it's just like your standard snowflake, you know, they're all different, yet they all seem to look exactly like once he cataloged and photographed, but kind of fascinating. Um. I did not get super deep into the meteorology of this because there are lots of discussions that still go on scientifically about what he was and was not right about, and it becomes very difficult to sift those apart. Right. UM, but I will now look at snow in a totally different way. Should we get any this year, I will try not to breathe on it. We've already had some here in Massachusetts, not a lot. It didn't stick anywhere, but that it was this Possibly there'll be more by the time this episode comes out, but the odds are decent. Thank you for hanging out with us this week. I hope that as you head into the weekend that you have some time to yourself to relax and uh restore and do whatever it is you need to take care of you, and that if you don't have that kind of time, that you at least sail through it as unscathed as possible. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic and then on Monday with an all new episode. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.