Solon is one of the seven sages of Athens, and he's credited with laying the groundwork for Athenian democracy. But most of what we know about him comes biographies written centuries after he lived.
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So back in twenty twenty, we had an episode about Crisus of Lydia, and Sollen came up in it, and I mentioned that Solin was on my list, and then he came up again recently, and when we did our most recent Eclipse episode, another of the seven Stages of Greece, sta Ley's of my leaders came up, and I was like, whoops, I forgot about Solin. And then I just randomly saw someone using Solin as part of their username on social media. That person was kind of being a jerk to people, frankly, but I thought, okay, Universe, I get it. Go back to Solin. So we're going to do that today. But talking about Solin comes with a pretty significant caveat because the main biographies about him that we have were written by Aristotle and hundreds of years after his death. There's a lot of very valid examination and criticism regarding how much of any of the their four main biographies that we have, how much of any of those feature accurate content. We don't have anything really in the way of primary sources in terms of Salin's writing. It's like a few lines here and there that have survived. As historian Ivan Mortimer lynfthrote in nineteen nineteen, quote, are we to suppose that Aristotle owed nothing to earlier writers? Meaning that there's almost certainly been a bending of truths or a shifting of truths as one person's perspective is used as a source and then viewed through the lens of another writer who has their own perspective. And even those accounts that we do have have all been translated by different people with some differences that affect the way that we might perceive Salin's life. And we're going to talk about one such difference right out of the gate. So keep all of that in mind as we discuss this this merchant slash civic leader slash military leader. Today, as we said, Salin is considered to be one of the seven Sages or wise men of Greece, and his actions are credited with sowing the seeds of what would become Athenian democracy. He's kind of considered a founding father of Athens. In what is sometimes perceived as its idealized state, but as will become a parent, there's really no such thing, and a lot of people get mad anytime people try to make changes. So here we go. Sollin was born around six forty to six thirty BCE. A lot of sources cite the year six thirty eight BCE as the specific year. That's tough to really substantiate, though, given how far back that is. His father was excess steed and their family was considered high ranking in the social hierarchy of the time, they didn't seem to have the wealth that often came with that standing. Though his father was believed to be descended from Kodras, one of the so called semi mythical kings of Athens, who is said to have reigned after ten sixty eight BCE. On Solom's mother's side, he is said to have had an intense friendship with the son of his mother's cousin, that's a man named Paisistratus. In Plutarch's biography of Solin, he writes that Soalen was said to be passionately in love with Paisistratus. That is according to one translation, but another translation, which was translated in eighteen ninety five by John Dryden, is less direct about the possibility of a romantic attachment between the men, stating quote, and they say Solin loved him, And that is the reason I suppose that when afterward they differed about the government, their enmity never pretty any hot and violent passion. They remembered their old kindnesses and retained still in its embers, living the strong fire of their love and dear affection. So I point that out just to note that like obviously, different authors would not have been as comfortable suggesting whenever they did their translation that these two men were romantically affinitied towards one another, but others are very comfortable with it. That is just one example of the ways that different perspectives have shifted Salin's life story through the years. We mentioned the already that Salin's family was not wealthy, and part of this was because his father quote had impaired his estate in sundry benevolent charities. So Salin's father had donated family money to various causes. In any case, Salin had to work in his earliest career, and he had a few was working as a merchant or a trader. According to the Plutarch biography, he had plenty of friends who would have helped him out find Angeley, but quote, since he was descended from a family who were accustomed to do kindnesses rather than receive them, therefore applied himself to merchandise in his youth. Though others assure us that he traveled rather to get learning and experience than to make money. Yeah, so he did travel a lot, and we'll talk about it. Working as a merchant was not stigmatized or considered shameful in Salin's time. Plutarch noted many great men who have worked in the same field. The reason Plutarch points it out is because when he was writing many years later, that would have had a little more stigma. Solin is credited with writing that he was fine with having wealth, but not if it was gained in some wrong way. So there's a moral element to his relationship with money. There is also a bit of what seems a contradiction, at least to Plutarch, in the way that Salin moved in the world, because Solin considered himself to be a relatively poor man, but he also had plenty of experiences and a lot of things that we would associate with wealth, which Plutarch reconciles as being quote due to his mercantile life, which along with travel, came with a certain number of luxuries, and also the necessity of like courting people when it came to interactions of a business nature. But merchant work was not what Salon became famous for. An ongoing conflict over occupation of the island of Salamis was what eventually put Salon in a position of notoriety. Athens and its neighboring city, Magara had been at war over Salamis for a long time. This island sat and sits between them. Both of them were depleted by this ongoing conflict. At this point, Magara held the islands, but even in Athens, most people wanted a little bit of time to just rest and recuperate. According to that Dryden translation, there were even laws on the books in Athens that quote, no one in the future, on pain of death, should move in writing or orally that the city take up its contention for Salamis. Uh Salon apparently did not agree with the idea of just taking a breather from this war, and he found it to be so disgraceful that the leadership of Athens was like, let's just drop this. Uh. He found it so disgraceful that, according to Plutarch, he created a ruse to enable himself to speak out on the matter, even though that was illegal. Yeah, So that ruse was that Salen pretended to be mad, or, as Dryden translates it, out of his head, and his family is said to have actually shared the information that Salon was not in his right mind with authorities, kind of laying this groundwork that he clearly, you know, should not be held accountable for things that he said, so that if and when he said something that was perceived as illegal or inappropriate, everyone would know he's not really responsible, and thus he would have the death penalty. This was all part of a bigger plan because it set the stage for an oration that Salen had been preparing. He had written it out and memorized it, and when he felt ready, he walked out into the marketplace and it was already crowded, but a crowd continued to gather and he addressed those present, and this was a poem that he called Salamis, and it opened with the lines quote, behold in me a herald come from lovely Salamis with a song and ordered verse instead of a harangue. This poem, which was one hundred verses long, was apparently quite moving and inspired not only praise but also a renewed desire to once again take Salamis back from Magara and to change that law. And when the decision was made to return to warring over the island, Athenians put Solin in charge of the military effort. So this does kind of open the question of why a merchant would be put in such a position and also why he was willing to risk the death penalty to speak out about the issue in the first place. While Plutarch characterizes this as a matter of Athenian pride, there are other factors that should be considered. For one, Salin's family was from Salamis, Salin was born there, so he did feel an attachment to that island and he wanted it to be part of Athenian territory. But there was also a matter of money. In an article titled Solon and the Meagarian Question, which was published in the Journal of Hellenistic Studies in nineteen fifty seven, writer A French notes quote the war for Salamis was most probably fought to make possible the free use to Athenian ships of the ports of southern Attica, as well as to open the route to the Isthmus of Corinth. Perhaps even with Salamis in enemy hands, Athenian ships or ships trading with Athenians had managed to run into the ports of southern Attica, and no doubt the attempted molesting of such ships had helped to keep the struggle alive. But it is hard to believe that any great volume of trade would have regularly passed this dangerous way, and that there was a volume of trade is fairly substantiated not only by the Athenian success against Magara, implying the existence of substantial naval strength, but also by the career of Solon himself, by Solomon's measures affecting international trade, and by the distribution of early Attic pottery. So to sum that up a bit, Solin's oration was likely informed and motivated by his work. If Solomis was not controlled by Athens, Athenian merchants like himself were likely losing some of their potential business. Even in the Plutarch account, two different versions of how the Athenian effort to retake Salamis played out, and one the Athenians led a trap. That's another ruse that was attributed to Solon, and this trap, they sent a fake informant to the Megarians to tell them where the quote chief Athenian women were making their usual sacrifices to series. This was suggesting that the Megarians could easily capture the women there. But when the troops of Magara acted on this information and arrived at the Cape of Colias, the Athenians were waiting there. They were not women, they were clean shaven men who had disguised themselves as women. According to Plutarch's version, none of the Megarians got away. The Athenians were able to sail to Salamis very easily and seize it. As an aside, the Cape of Colias was an area to the west of that region of Attica, that's the historical region of Attica that contained the city of Athens. So in the second possible way that things went down, Salin got a message from the oracle at Delphi that he had to make offerings to the heroes of Salamis, which he did, and then he gathered five hundred men of Athens and mounted a small fleet and anchored off the coast of Salamis, and when a Megarian show went out to scout the area, Saloon's men took it, and then they sailed that ship back to Salamis for a sneak attack. At the same time, Salon mounted a ground assault, and while he and the men with him engaged the army of Megara, the men who were on that ship were able to attack from the other side. But this actually doesn't sound like a win. Both sides continued to fight, and eventually Spartans were called in to arbitrate the situation. The Spartans who examined the information and made their determinations over who the victor was were, according to Plutarch, Critulaitis, Amampharidas, Hipsychitis, Annexilis, and Cleomenes. And they heard both sides of things, which included some wheeling and dealing about various people being given citizenship in Athens as a potential way to work things out, and also how the dead were to be buried, And then they ultimately determined that Salin's Athenian forces had won the battle and the island up. We'll talk about the responsibility Solon was given after his military triumph first, though we will pause for a sponsor break. As a result of his massive success at Salamis, Solen was made the arkhon of Athens, So that word arkhan lends itself to a little bit of fuzziness, depending on what definition you're looking at. Beginning in six point eighty two BCE, Athens had moved to a governance structure in which arkhan served for one year terms of leadership. This was a change from the previous setup where arkans had lifetime appointments, and of course that's a change from a whole previous thing. But for the context of arkon, to become an arkon, you had to be elected, but you were elected by previous arkhans. Commoners, so to speak, did not have a voice. This evolved over the course of a couple of decades to be almost a committee or council style of power structure called the areopagus, where nine arkons led Athens. Plutarch's description of Solon in this role, which he likely stepped into in the five nineties BCE, mentions it as singular, though sometimes he's called the chief Arkon, so he is either the only one or the one that is leading this group, depending on which translation you look at. Plutarch quotes the oracle of Delphi calling Solon the pilot of Athens, and that's because he was considered chief Arkon. The rest that would have been there acted as a council kind of under him, and that too, was a setup that had evolved. There were different names for different positions within that group of the rest of the Arkans, but having a chief Arkon had led to infighting among the aristocratic families, who all wanted their guide to be the chief Arkhan. Of course, some Arkons in various points had refused to give up their power when their year was up, and that led to additional infighting. H this was a time when Athens really needed a good life. There was a very unbalanced situation playing out economically. Most of the wealth was in the hands of just a handful of Athenians. In terms of landholdings, almost all the agricultural land that supported people with food was owned by that small ruling group, and they had acquired it on the cheap when struggling farmers had needed to sell it. The rest of the people were in situations similar to indentured servitude or sharecropping, and that progressed into enslavement. The common people who worked the land had to pay one sixth of the value of their crops to the owners of that land, and if their payments fell short for any reason, their debts were paid with their own bodies or those of their families. They basically became enslaved to the landowners. In some cases, people became enslaved when they took loans from the wealthy they offered their families as collateral. They're really just wasn't any way to gain enough income working the lands to pay off a debt, So this was a losing arrangement for anybody except people who were already wealthy. And then once a person became enslaved, they could be forced to continue working as farmers or they could be sold off. Yeah, in some cases they were sold off to people in other countries or other city states. So it was just a completely unstable structure. This entire economic problem was further complicated by the politics at the time. The leadership positions of Athens could only be held by members of the aristocracy, and they were certainly not going to amend any laws to lose their power over everyone else, since most people were in some degree of predicament or danger in terms of owing landowners' money or being enslaved to them, or being on the precipice of that situation. The vast majority of Athens was calling for reform, and Sullen, who was outside of this particular structure as a merchant, but who was also from a noble family and who was perceived as the hero who had retaken Salamis, was looked to as the person who could figure this whole problem out. According to Plutarch, quote, then the wisest of the Athenians, perceiving Solon was, of all men, the only one not implicated in the troubles, that he had not joined in the exactions of the rich and was not involved in the necessities of the poor, pressed him to succor the commonwealth and compose the differences. He was specifically asked to mediate the resolution and to find a way that Athenians and Athens could move forward before the city state tore itself apart from the inside. Plutarch and Aristotle described Soloon as being really reluctant to take this role because he knew no matter what he did, he was likely going to anger people. He had apparently become known for saying, according to Plutarch quote, when things are even, there can never be war. But it seems that everyone, regardless of their wealth, perceived this to mean that they would get the best end of the deal in terms of what evenness meant. So the wealthy thought that this meant everyone would get their fair amount based on their value and standing in society, which would mean they still got a whole bunch of money or a whole bunch of land, while the poor interpreted it as being a promise to divide wealth and prosperity of Athens evenly among all of its citizens. When he started this new role in five ninety four BCE, Salin made some bold moves. His first move is frequently described as a racing all debt, but that might be an overstatement. It appears that the real way he altered the debt system was to create laws that forbade anyone from using themselves or their family as financial collateral, and he enabled people to claim the land that they worked as farmers, so that gave them the financial footing to pay off their debts. He also emancipated people who had been enslaved because of debt. Incidentally, he was embroiled, according to Plutarch, in a mild scandal over the idea of forgiving debts. Apparently, as he was working through his ideas and what he was going to do, he spoke with some of his friends about his plan to enact debt forgiveness. And then those friends with the inside tip went and borrowed a bunch of money and purchased land with it in anticipation of the debt soon being erased. But again, debts weren't canceled outright. A lot of them were restructured and their interest agreements amended to more reasonable terms. And Solin himself had people who owed him money and he fully forgave those debts, and that kind of helped silence his critics on the matter. But his friends who did not reverse their dealings they had made were pretty much perceived as weasels after that. Naturally, this whole debt forgiveness thing was not popular with the aristocracy because they felt like their wealth had been diminished. The whoorr also were not really happy because they thought the wealth of Athens could be redistributed in a way that would give them more of it. Solin noted in his writing that any other man would have made himself rich with the power of the Arkon. Eventually, the initial fury over the changes died down those changes were accepted. His debt relief efforts later came to be known as seisachthea, which translates to shaking off of burdens. But Solin went further than that in changing Athens completely in his time as Arkan. He also laid out a completely new class system, and this was designed to appease the wealthy by still giving them positions of leadership within the government, and to appease those of the lower classes by still giving them a voice in how Athens was run. He wrote a verse about his new system that went like this quote, such power I gave the people as might do, abridged not what they had now lavish knew those that were great and wealth, health and high in place. My council likewise kept from all disgrace before them. Both I held my shield of might, and let not either touch the others. Right, The new system was based on what any given person had, and used that as a way to sort them into four categories. These accountings of holdings. They're translating slightly differently depending on what translation you're reading. For example, in that John Dryden translation, the first group, called the pentacosoid medem noi, had to have an estate that was worth quote, five hundred measures of fruit, dry and liquid. Other translations assign a value to that measure that's more recognizable to modern readers, so the requirement is described as being that their land needed to yield at least five hundred bushels of produce. The second group was the hypaeus. These were people whose production level was three hundred to five hundred bushels per year or quote, that could keep a horse. Next was the zugatai, with two hundred to three hundred bushels, and the last group was the thetes, whose produce was estimated at less than two hundred bushels. People who worked the land as laborers but did not own it were automatically put into that last group as well. It kind of became a catch all. And the reason for all this accounting and sorting was that in Solon's new system, different levels of the social strata would have different degrees of agency in government. So members of the first two classes could hold public office. Members of the third class could hold lesser roles in government. Members of the fourth thetes group could not hold public office, but they could quote come to assembly and act as jurors. Clutarch describes this as an enormous privilege, noting that this meant they had a say in all the many disputes that were argued legally. But to some historians it seems more likely that overall the lives of people in the Thetes class didn't change all that much, although they did have legal equality in a way they hadn't had before. Some of this, according to Plutarch, was because he was cagey about the way he wrote his laws. Quote. Besides, it is said that he was obscure and ambiguous in the wording of his laws on purpose to increase the honor of his courts. For since their differences could not be adjusted by the letter, they would have to bring all their causes to the judges, who thus were, in a manner masters of the laws, so knowing that any dispute would have a lot of gray area no matter the social class levels of each of the parties involved, they would have to go before a court to make their cases, so everyone's positions would be heard. So that sounds like maybe a pretty clever trick on Solin's part, But it has gotten a lot of criticism over the centuries, and we're going to talk about some of that criticism after we hear from the sponsors who keep the show going. The vague nature of Solin's law writing has been criticized by many overtime, most notably by Aristotle. Aristotle did not believe the story that Salen had carefully crafted nebulous laws to ensure a sort of equality. Writing quote. This, however, is not probable, and the reason, no doubt, was that it is impossible to attain ideal perfection when framing a law in general terms, for we must judge of his intentions not from the actual results in the present day, but from the general tenor of the rest of his legislation. Aristotle did, though, acknowledge that this nebulous law writing resulted in greater representation in the courts for the lower classes. Another change that Salin made was to wipe the Draconian laws almost entirely off the books. Draco had been a leader of Athens a couple of decades before Solon and had laid down a lot of very strict laws, where the word draconian comes from. Most crimes, even minor ones like stealing a piece of fruit, were punishable by death. Plutarch relays the story of Draco being asked why his laws insisted that even the mildest crimes carried death sentences, and his reply was, quote, small ones deserve that, and I have no higher for the greater crimes. This ideology was very unpopular, so Solin repealed all except for the laws that related to homicide. Yeah, especially when you consider that in the greater context of the economic problems we're talking about, where people didn't have enough to eat, they didn't have any money because they had to give it all towards these mounting debts, there were probably a lot of people stealing food, and like the idea that they were going to die so that their family could have bread was just seen as really, really over the top. The new laws under Solin were much more reasonable. There are some varying interpretations of how they came to be. Salon is sometimes credited with creating a council of four hundred, that's one hundred men from each of the four tribes of Athens, which, according to Aristotle he quote, assigned to the Council of the Areopagus the duty of superintending the laws, acting as before as the guardian of the constitution. In general, it kept watch over the affairs of state in most of the more important matters, and corrected offenders with full powers to inflict either fines or personal punishment. But it should be noted that Salon did not invent the idea of the Council of four hundred. Draco had done the same thing, although his obviously worked in a different way. Aristotle also describes the way that Salon set his new laws in clear public view once they were made quote. The laws were inscribed on the wooden stands and set up in the king's porch, and all swore to obey them, and the nine archons made oath upon the stone, declaring they would dedicate a golden statue if they should transgress any of them. This is the origin of the oath to that effect, which they take to the present day. Salon ratified his laws for one hundred years. One hundred years sounds like a long time, And once he thought he had settled all of the major problems, and set up a system that he believed would work for all of the people of Athens. Salon stepped down from the position of Arkhan, and he left. He had created legislation for inheritance, for crimes, for how export and import would work, for how political mechanisms worked, laws about marriage and dowries, and even a law that made it illegal to speak ill of the dead. It was truly a comprehensive package of guidelines. And he did not want to be tempted to change those rules. And he did not want to hang around and let people complain to him about those laws and try to get him to repeal them. And so, according to his legend, and he started traveling, leaving Athens for ten years. Some accounts indicate that the people of Athens promised to abide by the laws that Salin had set forth, and that that ten year period was also so that they could become completely established without people trying to change them. Not all versions of Salin's life story include this. Plutarch's, for example, leaves it out, but it does also suggest that Salin made this decision after he had been harangued by people for a little bit where he was just like, I'm leaving. Salin's first stop was Egypt, where he's said to have studied with the most learned priests and learned about the lost City of Atlantis, a tale he put into verse to bring home and share with his fellow Greeks. He then went to Cyprus and helped with the building of a city by Demophon, who was the son of Theseus. So we mentioned at the top of the show that Solon appears in the story of Criesus of Lydia, and we mentioned that in our crisis episode, but we'll go over it again in a brief version. The way that one goes is that Salen decided to visit the king he may have been summoned to the king, and that Cresus spent their entire visit showing off all that he had acquired, and even had the staff of his household point out all of the lux items that the king had to show this visiting Athenian that he was rich, rich, rich, And then Crisus asked Salen who the most fortunate man he had ever seen was, expecting, of course, the answer to be Crisus, but Salin said it was an Athenian named Tellus, who had lived a good life and had good children who all survived to adulthood and had children of their own, and that he had died an honorable death. And then Crisus kept asking who the next most fortunate man was that Salen had met, hoping that the answer would eventually be him, but it was always other people, often with much more mundane lives. And finally Crisus kind of pressed Solin about why he wasn't on his list, and the Athenian stated that he couldn't count any man happy until his death, when he could see his life. In totality, it's a pretty good story, but it's really a parable about what's actually valuable in life, And even though Plutarch includes it in his account of Solin's life, he himself kind of suggests that it's probably fiction and notes that it doesn't fit the actual timeline of history, writing quote that Solon should discourse with Creases. Some think not agreeable with chronology, but I cannot reject so famous and well attested a narrative, and what is more so, agreeable to Solon's temper and so worthy his wisdom and greatness of mind. The reason there were arguments about whether it could be real is because Creases's rain would have only begun kind of right as Solin's ten years away from Athens would have ended. And that's even if all of the dates that we think we know are correct, which of course is its own problem. A lot of them are estimates. Back home in Athens, things were not going great. Initially, all of Salin's new laws and reforms seems to work out okay, but after a few years there was in fighting in discord. People started to jockey for power, so when he got back it was kind of a mess. People were glad to see him, but he was too old to really take on the job of totally reorganizing everything again. He did meet with leaders of the various factions in this conflict to try to help find a resolution, but a man named Pessistratus ultimately seized power. Solin was deeply opposed to his rule and protested it, even though he was quite old at this point, and his friends encouraged him to leave the city. He made speeches to try to stop the rising tyranny of Pisistratus. When Salin was asked why he felt so emboldened to challenge Pisistratus, he answered that it was his old age. Yeah, he was kind of like, I'm running on empty, I might as well gun it, like I'm I'm gonna fight the power. But there is an interesting turn about that happened where Pisistratus did not kill Solin, although a lot of people expected him to instead. According to Plutarch, he quotes so extremely courted Solon, so honored him, obliged him, and sent to see him that Salin gave him his advice and approved many of his actions. For he retained most of Soalin's laws, observed them himself, and compelled his friends to obey. So there's an interesting thing here right where Pisistratus is considered a tyrant most of the time if you look him up today, because he gained his power by force, But he is also credited with making Athens very prosperous and kind of bringing about an age of not just prosperity but stability. The length of time that Salen lived after the rule of Pisistratus is really different among the varying accounts. Some say just a couple of years, others a very long time. He worked on his verse story about Atlantis toward the end of his life, but was not able to finish it. It said that when he died, his ashes were scattered around Salamis, in accordance with his wishes. But Plutarch writes quote, the story that his ashes were scattered about the island Salamis is too strange to be easily believed or be thought anything but a mere fable, And yet it is given, amongst other good authors, by Aristotle the philosopher. This cracks me up because he's like, well, so many people said he met Criesus. That must have happened, But this whole scattering of ashes seems bananas. That couldn't have. Of the two, one is very easy to be believed. In my opinion, it just makes me giggle. So we have noted in this episode that Solin wrote a lot of verse, so I thought it seemed fitting to end with one brief line that he wrote late in his life, which is a pretty good piece of advice, and I feel like is very much in the spirit of stuff you missed in history class, and that is each day grow older and learn something new. Sounds great to me sure, So finally I have knocked Solin off of my list. All Ray and the universe can stop sending me pro solid propaganda. Hopefully no more people called Solin being jerks on the internet especially. I mean, listen, people will always invoke any philosopher and then kind of put together a profile of like just being cruel and mean because people just want to be mean on social media. That's fine. It wasn't mean to me. I just noticed he was being a jerk anyway. Don't be a jerk to people online or in your life. I have a fun piece of email about both popcorn and the way someone's family connects to history we've talked about. This is from our listener Ray, who writes, Dear Holly and Tracy. In the behind the Scenes about your History of Popcorn episode, you talked about different cooking methods and I needed to add to the list. I'm pretty sure this was also something I got from Alton Brown, so of course it works brilliantly. Just tossed about a quarter cup of popcorn kernels in a brown paper lunch bag, add oil and seasonings if you like, and then add afterward like air popped, fold the end, and staple it closed. I'm going to have an aside here. I do remember there being a very early version of this where I think too it was Alton Brown that said, like you can use a staple, it will not cause problems in your microwave. However, if you look up his recipe today on Food Network or any of the other websites that carry it, the staple is no longer recommended. It's a double fold that's like hard creased so that you don't run a foul of anything in your microwave. But then, I'm so my aside is ended. Don't put metal in your microwave, and microwave three continues the same way you would store bought microwave popcorn. Now that I've gotten the important popcorn info in the real reason I wanted to write to you for years is just a fun fact that probably has little interest to anyone outside my family and friends. An interview about the Lower east Side Tenement Museum sometime before I started listening. I was excited to see it when I looked at the back catalog, because my family's apartment is preserved as an exhibit in that museum. They weren't mentioned in the episodes, but I remember going to the opening when I was a little kid, and it was so fascinating They do an incredible job with engaging young people and making connections to history, even for those who aren't literally looking at their great great aunts and uncles. I'm also including pictures of my senior pitbull Karma, not so much as pet tax as an excuse to shove pictures of my dog in someone else's face. This week. Baby turned fifteen in January, and she's definitely the best dog ever. No bias, Okay, one yes, popcorn at home, easy PC. You don't have to buy microwave. I buy microwaves sometimes because I'm lazy and it's pre portioned and I don't have to think, and sometimes that's how I want to snack. But I have often used the paperbag trick and it works just fine. I love the idea of knowing that your family's apartment is part of the ten museum. That is cool, and that is a very cool museum. Karma is so cute. I want to kiss her face. Her eyes just stare right into my heart and they're so She's so cute. I love a pity. You know, they get a lot of bed press, But I have known some of the sweetest dogs I have ever known in my life are pip bulls who are just big hunks of muscly adoration. They just want to be a lappuppy and hugging kiss all the time. I love them. Yeah, I think there are probably people currently typing angry emails about metal in the microwave. I'm just gonna say there's some nuance to that. It's not a podcast to give advice on it. Yeah, listen, I just am My thing is I was like, always steer clear of any risk when it comes to your snacks. There's just no reason to take a risk for a snack. So in the behind the scenes I will talk about a very silly experiment my husband and I did many mini Oh yeah, I know exactly the experiment you're talking about. Yes, it was so fun. I highly recommend it in a controlled situation. Ray. Anyway, Ray, thank you so much for sharing pictures of karma, once again invoking my favorite snack, and sharing your family's connection to the Tenement Museum. If you would like to write us, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on social media as missed in History, and if you would like to subscribe to the show and you haven't yet. That is easy to do on the iHeartRadio app or wherever it is you listen to your favorite shows. 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