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