Behind the Scenes Minis: Pollution Olympics

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. This week we talked about Fumafujim and John E. Blynn no fun Yeah. So the process was exactly what I said at the beginning of the episode, like I was like, oh, John Evelyn did that, That's funny. Fuma Fujim is a funny name. And then you know, five hours later, Fury the latest of many things to be furious about, the driver from the headlines, Yeah, and saying, Okay, we're going to talk about air pollution more. There were a couple times last year when I had I wanted to have some kind of story that was about like conservation or the environment or whatever. But also I had sort of internally committed myself to talking as much just possible about things that the President would say was improper ideology. Yeah, so heterosexual white man John Evelyn was not at the top of my list, and he became at the top of the list this time because from a Fujium was there in front of me, and I was like, we're gonna talk about this. This gives me thoughts because my subversion I'm playing slightly more subtly, like I don't say because the President said this, but because there is like one of the reasons I picked George Stephenson is that we are in this age where people are talking about how higher education is Bolognian being educated, and I just wanted to show somebody that was like, do you know how much I missed out on because I didn't get educated, not my kid, like I he's a person who is the key like case study of like nope, yeah, yeah. Well, the thing that I kept thinking about that I did not say in the episode or the behind the scenes for that one was just about how hard and dangerous working in coal mines is, and how many people who worked in coal mines worked so hard so that their kids wouldn't have to yep, and this incredibly bizarre focus on like we need to bring back coal when coal is an obsolete technology at this point, and I was like, I don't need to say this is not actually relevant to this guy who yeah, yeah, but it is. I mean, it is. That's all part of like why I was like, let's talk about George Davidson this week. Yeah, it all feeds into it. But yeah, the air pollution is a problem. I don't air Yeah, air quality is life quality. I mean I don't. There's no yeah, more direct way to say it. Yeah, And there's so many layers of it that are so for us to me because we talked about, like I'm thinking about in our episode, about putting lead in gasoline and how that had a trickle down effect of the places that had the most vehicle traffic were the poorest neighborhoods where the people who were already at the most disadvantage were most likely to live. And then we're being exposed to a lot more car exhaust with a lot more lead in it. Yeah, just a compounding problem. And this is why environmental justice is also racial justice, and is also disability justice, and maybe all of that. Yeah, all of that is related to why the federal government is canceling green energy contracts left and right and not putting a monetary estimate on the health impact impacts of specific air pollution regulations. Yeah, I mean you see that outside of regulation, You see this play out in a very obvious way in terms of the adoption of evs, right.

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Speaker 2: Oh.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, if you go to any major city and you go to the wealthiest neighborhoods, you're gonna see a lot more evs than you will ever see in the poorer neighborhoods. One is because they are still much more expensive than a gasoline powered you know, injection engine. But like that is part of the problem that those people are now getting better air quality just because they can afford it, Yeah, which is leaving other people behind in terms of health and quality of life. This feels like something we have people smart enough to fix. Yeah, they got willing to do it. I don't remember what it was that I read recently where somebody was referencing being in a place that now has like really high adoption overall of EV's and realizing how different the air smelled without gas powered car exhaust. Oh man in the Misochio last year. Yeah, my mind. It made me think about growing up in North Carolina in the seventies and eighties when everyone smoked inside. Now everything smelled horrible all the time. Yeah, and you could go to the mall, you could buy yourself a brand new outfit. Get at home, it already smelled like smoke because you could smoke inside in the mall. I mean, I couldn't tell because my mom smoked four pecks a day, so I had no discernment. So yeah, we just sort of lived in that. Yeah. So anyway, I have thoughts and feelings about a lot of things, a lot of frustrations, And as I was wrapping this up, I was reminded of basically this time last year, feeling like there were multiple intersecting critical things at the same time that it would be nice to reference in some way on the show, and just not having enough episodes physically to do it all. So if you're listening to this and sat saying, why haven't they said anything about X, just because we have finite numbers of episodes and also need to do things that keep our own minds sane at is a big one for me lately, where I'm like, I can't tackle that right now. My executive function will just collapse in a pile of crunchy flames. In comedy though, Yeah, you mentioned several times we call out the fact that Evelyn was a royalist. Huh. I don't know that you needed to, because once we got to excerpts of his writing, it's really up. Oh yeah, Oh, the best one there's ever been. Oh, we are going best of us, like our wonderful benefactor, the King is going to do such great things. Yeah yeah, oh my.

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Speaker 2: Goodness, just the most blow and sunshine up that that Regents took us, man, Yeah yeah yeah, the best one.

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Speaker 1: Found it very funny the how much how many opportunities he took to flatter the King, yes, and things that were not necessarily about that. It's just in my head the cartoon that plays is like the person receiving that information and receiving that flattery right, Like, I don't like that kind of stuff. It makes me want to crawl into a tin can and roll away, But there are people that love it right, right right, And just imagining if there was ever a point where Charles the Second is like, we'll thick Champ, We'll thick. Yeah, you don't need to brown nose quite that much. Back of the Truck, John, The only thing I actually noted at the end of the outline to try to remember to say and the behind the scenes is that I watched a video of a lecture by Jillian Darley about this, and I don't remember which of his works she was talking about, but she described it as having drawings that he did that were quote very valiant and not utterly successful. And I had to pause it and laughed so hard at that characterization, and I was like, I should go look up those illustrations and see what they look like. And I forgot, Oh, well, there could be great delight awaiting you in the visuals of John Evelynn. Maybe so great. Maybe Yeah, he's somebody that for sure could have had a whole episode just on his biography. But I wanted to spend more time talking about this amusingly, in my opinion, named on air pollution. It's pretty good. I feel like we should just put that word on shirts, no explanation, no, or just have a picture of like pretty garden flowers underneath. Not even it's like, yeah, his whole plan of like ringing the city of London with fields full of flowers and fragrant plants. I'm like, that sounds lovely. I mean, that does sound lovely. One of my favorite things I know, I talk about it ad nauseum, and I'm sorry for anybody who's like, we know, one of my favorite things about having several hydroponic gardens in the house is how good things smell. Yeah, Like when I walk into my cantina and the flowers are blooming in there. It's like heaven. It's like heaven. Yeah. Yeah, even on a really creuddy day or if I'm stressed, I just walk in there and I'm like, oh ah. One of the of places that we went to in Morocco, that place where we had the meal outside with the winery. Oh you ate outside. They had some huge, if I'm remembering correctly, jasmine plants. They had a lot of good plants that made the whole area so fragrant. It was almost overwhelming walking through them, but like once you were seated, it was like a little whiff of lovely flower smell. Yeah. I was kind of worried about Patrick because he is allergic to some flowers. It was like, oh, we're gonna have an issue, but he was fine a lot of flowers. At one point I got up to go to the ladies room, and I don't know, you probably didn't notice because you were busy eating and talking. But I've madeished for a while because I just went on like my own little flower tour. I was taking pictures of flowers so I can use them in fambric prints. They had a rose there that smelled like cloves, which is something that happens with some roses. I have some, but they don't look nearly as they were, like a like a what sometimes called like a ruffled rose where they have like the double bloom. And it smelled just incredible and I was like, I'm intoxicated. I'm never leaving this plant. I love it. Until Brian was like, hello, where are you. Yeah. I am a big supporter in having accessible green space. It really makes a difference. Yeah, I like housing, also housing and green space. I didn't have both, hippie Yeah, I know, weird, weird that way, I too like both of these things. Yeah. I we got an amount of snow over the weekend and I took a long, about two and a half hours hike through the snow because it was also the right temperature for me to do this. It was just cold enough that the snow was not melting, but warm enough that I did not feel like I was miserable out hiking through the snow. Yeah, and it was great, and I kept basically stopping to be like, look at that look at that tree covered in snow. It really restored some of my emotional bandwidth. I love it. My stomping through the woods with my boots on in the snow. We talked about ladies in the Olympics, or almost in the Olympics. Sister got too, got too. I have a handful of things, Okay. One is just silly, which is that there was a rite up I read about Helen de Bordelais, which was written by I believe he is Swiss, a Swiss skull. But the only funny part was that he called like her group of aristocratic yachting friends yachties. I don't know if that's a real term or not. Yeah, but it made me think of Bob's Burgers, on which yachts come up a lot presently, and I just could not. I only hear it in voices from that show now, and I'm like, yachtees, it's very funny, Helen pries. Yeah, I'm not. I'm like that person. I did not ever go through a horse face as a kid. I didn't have it like many kids do. Yeah. So I know very little about horseback riding, right. I didn't know about side saddle jumping, which people still do. Okay, holy smokes, that looks terrifying. I knew about side saddle jumping. Probably. I think Gone with the Wind is Oh. It never registered to me in that a movie that has a formative and it is not the right word. A movie that has a critical moment involving a child riding side saddle and jumping. Not even a big jump, unless I'm confusing it with some other movie. There is some listen. That's another thing. I live in Atlanta, and I'm not a big on with the window. I feel it, I've seen it. I'm clearly outside of all when I was a child, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just I was never a horse kid. Said like, even if it came up in a movie, I would not have fixate Atlanta. Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I didn't know. Also, I think some of our neighbors are snow blowing, so hopefully none of that is being captured in our audio. If anyone is watching this or listening and saying, what is that strange noise that I can hear the love in the background, the answer is we have almost twenty inches of snow on the ground here. Yeah. Yeah. There is a great story about Helen Priest that I found so charming, But it didn't it was not dremane to her Olympic bid. Okay, which is it? When she was in New York competing, one day, she decided to take her horse for a ride through Central Park and she was fast. She was fast as lightning, like she was very comfortable riding at very fast speeds. But the police of New York were not accustomed to seeing anyone on a horse going that fast through Central Park, and they thought like the horse had gotten scared and she had lost control of it. Yeah, And they literally were like, giving her chase, and instead of stopping, she was like, let's lead him on a little chase. Keep in mind, she was a teenage girl at the sort. She's you know, I think sixteen. And when she finally stopped and the police caught up to her, she was like, Hey, I'm Helen Preece. I'm the person that just won all those horse yeah here in New York, and they were like, oh okay. It just made me laugh so hard. The idea of her leading people in a chase. Don't do that. It's not cool, but it did make me chuckle. I also had to laugh at Pierre de Kubepta calling her a neo Amazon, because you picture someone who is like a very you know, tall, super muscly, strong person. Helen Priest was like a petite thing. She was very and again a girl at that point, she was still a teenager, so it made me. I was like, how are you trying to spin this, my dude, Like that's the oh Pierre, that whole thing. Listen, he still has one of history's best mustaches. But yeah he does. And I do remember that. I blocked the sexism out of my brain, but I do remember the mustache. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because there are people who defend him as like, no, that's the product of his time, and he was very chivalrous, but like chivalry at its heart is demeaning to women in a lot of ways. There's a difference between wanting to be polite and kind and respectful like no, no, honey, like yeah, yeah, yeah. And I will say it came up in some of the things I read about, and I didn't really jump into it in this outline, but that there were a lot of men. It was not as though that was the only prevailing opinion among men at the time. There were men who were like, why not let these women compete, like they're athletes, We're all athletes. Yeah, this is you know, we have room, we can make this happen. And there were a lot of men advocating. There were also some men saying really stupid stuff, and alis Mila had this great response to I think it was a runner who just said some really, you know, unnecessarily stupid and gross things about women. And she was referring to him and Kubeltana. She said, quote, they could do themselves a favor by showing some interest in women's sport, they shut themselves away and everlasting male egoism, like fine, dudes, do you understand you're gonna leave yourself behind because the rest of us are trying to make things better and and like improve the games. She had this reputation that even people that were aligned with her, that were in her organization would kind of be like, you know, we might do better if Alice were not so assertive and abrasive. And she's too brusque, she's too blunt in everything that she says, and like it was very much like the oh, we'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar, which like, listen, I very know your audience, figure out which tactic is gonna work best. But this is also the same group of women who were like, oh, yes, we'll take just the five after you promised us ten s. It's fine, it's fine. They were like, no, Helen, don't be so means yeah, well, which she's like, you said ten yeah, yeah. Also like, there are a lot of circumstances in which women are framed as aggressive or shrill or whatever doing something that would not raise any eyebrows whatsoever if a man were doing it. And so when I kind of scrolled to the end of the outline and I took a peek at the things you had noted for yourself to talk about and behind the scenes, and I was like, I already have feelings about this one. I knew you would. I know that's a very sticky point for you. I find it very frustrating. There's a part of me I don't want to say this in a way that sounds like I'm discounting your thoughts on the matter or anyone's. I don't find it as frustrating as you, because my response is usually like, well, okay, and then I say exploit of you, and then I walk away from that person forever and I never talked to them again. But that's just me. Sure because I'm never going to convince that person right that I'm something other than what they perceive. So I don't care. I am more frustrated by the role that plays in society than on like me as an individual person. Oh yeah, but I think this is why I'm drawn to Alise Milia, because she was like, cool, we'll do our own thing. I'll make my own system. I'll just do it. Like That's why I'm like, Yes, this is exactly the route I would like to think I would take. And I love that she wrote to my letter that was like, great, why don't you specifically say women are never allowed in any of the games, because that's going to make my life easier. I can move on without you, and I don't have to deal with your garbage. I love her so much, Alise. She's a good one. And now I have a checklist for next time I'm in Paris to go see her statue. Yeah sounds fun. I feel like lately my my list of travel things is getting very long. Yeah, he's hoping we get allowed. Americans are still allowed to travel in the non dedicant future anyway. Those are those are my thoughts forever. Yeah, before we sign off, for Today's Behind the Scenes. Should we tell people that our podcast is on Netflix? Now? Sure, I mean peep up personally. I mean, if they're watching it, they figured it out right, But maybe this is not news to someone who is watching this right now. But yes, our podcast. Netflix has podcasts now and our podcast is one of them. Yeah. Yeah, you can go check it out at Netflix. Yeah, if you search for our show, it's gonna come up. It's right there. You can click the what's it called the remind me button is the one that will tell you when new episodes show up.

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Speaker 2: Yes.

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Speaker 1: Also, this is a great way to resolve a thing that a lot of people have told us about, which is that they have seen photos of us and they hear us talking and they have mixed up our faces with their voices, and then yeah, they meet us out in the world somewhere or come to a live show, not that we've done any of those in very long but then it's a disconcerting experience. So you can watch on Netflix and just to get all of that out of the way before having an in person experience ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so there we are, so you can check us out. There more ways to enjoy the show if you are already watching on Netflix, we thank you. If you haven't yet and you want to check it out there, it will be going forward. And if you are listening on some other medium, that's not going away. Correct. Netflix is in addition, not a replacement. Yeah. If you're like, oh, no, I listen while I walk, you still can't, no prob Yeah, no problem. Whatever platform you're using is going to work just fine. But then if you want to listen one day while you sit on the couch at home, you can do that too. Options. Yeah, if this is your weekend coming up and you have time off, I hope that you use that time to make the world a better place. But also do you use that time to rest and recuperate. We need you as strong and well rested as you can be in the days that we are living in. If you do not have time off this weekend and you have responsibilities or you are scheduled for work, I hope that everyone is cool to you that you still get time to yourself, to center and recuperate from all the things that are going on in the world. I think we all need to be very mindful of our nervous systems right now and what we can and cannot do in a given day, and try to do our very best. Like I said, please take care of one Another'll be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then we will have something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.