Behind the Scenes Minis: Petra Peccadillo

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy P. Wilson. I'm Holly Frye. This week was Unearthed Week in a behind the scenes since most of these two installments of Unearthed were written back before the holidays, because I wanted to take some time off at the end of the year. I had gotten all of the Unearthed ready to go, and then the plan was that I would return to the office on the sixth of January. I would go through the news and see what had come out between in you know, the the mid December mid late December timeline in January, and I would add in anything that needed to be added in. That actually worked really well. But what also happened was I just entirely forgot anything that I had written prior, so I was coming at it, reading it as though someone else had written it, and in some cases finding truly hilarious typos that I had made back before the holiday, like when I typed Walrus Ivory as Walrus Ivy, which I found very funny. There were some things that came up in the news that I wanted to include, but I became so confused about what the researchers were actually trying to say that I was like, I can't put this in there, Like there was one there was some research about the domestication of Mayze, and I just couldn't figure out what the results were even going to the original paper. The results are just incomprehensible to me anyway, Petra, Yeah, we determined mostly during ad break time, when Holly and I were just discussing things and stuff that was cut out on the episode, that I found this deeply annoying. But but Holly, you do not totally understand my annoyance at it. I understand your logic for being annoyed one percent. Get that, Okay, yeah, but I think, like, to me, it's not annoying because I understand the way that they're just trying to like shorthand recognition of the site for readers that are not maybe steeped in historical knowledge. Yeah. Yeah, so I think, uh, like, I absolutely understand that the role of a headline writer is to write a headline that will get people to read the thing, Like that's the purpose. And I think it's probably possible to write a headline that alludes to Indiana Jones without making it sound like that Indiana Jones is the only important thing about Petra, because some of the headlines that were about this red like Indiana Jones filming, like tomb found at Indiana Jones filming location, and that was like the sum of the the some of the headline, right, which makes it sound like that could have happened on the back lot somewhere. Yeah, I see that. I will say this though I don't know, and maybe I'm just lacking creativity in this moment. I'm not even saying that's a good headline, but I am saying that I don't know how you would shorthand what Petra is, Yeah, in a headline that would make people understand what it is. Yeah, because it is super cool and super weird and beautiful. Yeah. I don't think we have an episode on Petra, and I don't think prior hosts did a Petra episode either. Uh, it's definitely not one I remember seeing in the many times that I've been looking at old episodes for some reason. But Petra has been used as a filming location in a lot of films. Yeah, and uh, often it's supposed to be this like mysterious almost incomprehensible place, and so it's, uh, it's that's sort of become connected to like the popular conception of it. I think probably of all of the many movies that have been filmed, there, probably Indiana Jones like most cultural sticking power, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, if you said Mortal Kombat Annihilation filming site, I don't know that most people are gonna be like, I know exactly the place you're talking about. Yeah. I think maybe The Mummy returns a little more memorable than that, just in part because of how the The Mummy became its own kind of cultural Yeah. Yeah, not to the like just the juggernaut of Indiana Jones. Anyway, the U I saw headlines that were almost exclusively referencing Indiana Jones numerous times before I actually saw an article that I was like, oh, this find is actually interesting without even the connection to Indiana Jones. And then I was like, Okay, I'll put it in on Earth, but I'm gonna comment that I'm annoyed by the reporting. Uh, there's it seems maybe not all the time, but there's been a lot of times. There's been like one particular news story that gets is being reported over and over and over again in the same way, and that way starts to annoy me, or in this case from jump annoyed me. Right, Yeah, I get it. Yeah, we all have our peccadillos. We do, we do. Maybe there will be a future Petra episode. I don't know. I don't know a lot of the things that we talked about this time, and part of it is just my own selection bias. Because I was working on this in the late December time, a time that is very busy, trying to get ready to have some time off, also a number kind of stressful things happening in the world going on. I tended towards the things that just struck me as delightful more than the ones that are horrifying, right, And I mean, some of the things that we talked about are things that are either horrifying or related to horrifying things in history. But I was also just like man, I love talking about the cat needing on a piece of pottery as it was trying. I love all the things that were about bread. I love all of the things that were about you know, these letters, even though I don't love the sexism that Ada Lovelace was having to deal with, right, the tone of the letters being like, Hey, just curious. My husband wants to know. I'm just a foolish lady. I don't know anything. By the way, here's a complex math eq, here's something incredibly complicated that I'm asking you about. I kind of want there to be like this. As soon as I saw that in your outline, my brain was like, there needs to be like a TV series called Miscellaneous nineteen and it's like all of the secret things Ada Lovelace was doing to try to like do all of her projects without ruffling any feathers of people that confused by her being a woman who was, you know, incredibly smart. Yeah. Anyway, that's just the show that now runs in my head for free. Yeah, I would watch that. That's serious, sounds very fun. I want more William Blake distracted doodling. Yes, I love William Blake. Yeah. I also liked that we got some Bram Stoker. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You read that short story? No I did not. It's super creepy. Oh really, it's about It starts out sort of like it seems sort of sweet. It's like there's a man talking to children about murder and death. And what all of that means. And then the children, it kind of takes a turn, and the kids are are not the good guys, I'll tell you. But it's quite lovely. I'm in a very bram Stoker place right now, Okay, because the new nose Faratu came out right, so I of course went on Christmas Day as she did. Yeah, which I quite enjoyed. Yeah, some people are not loving it. It's a little too sexy. They weren't ready, Okay, some people in our theater were not ready. There was a group of like twenty something dudes that were not prepared for the sex, and they kind of giggled nervously through the whole thing, Okay, and I was like, oh, oh, babies. Vampires inherently have a lot of sexual connotation. But this is reminding me of the time that I saw The Watchmen in an Imax theater and there were some folks behind me who were unprepared for the full frontal male nudity. Yeah in Imax, in Imax. Yeah, But anyway, that having seen that again has now like sent me down all of the the rabbit holes of Dracula and nos Faa, and I revisited powers of Darkness, which is the English translation of the Icelandic translation of Dracula that is quite different in some ways, which really may actually be the Icelandic translation of the Swedish translation of Dracula, which may have been changed by bram Stoker himself. Anyway, okay, in the midst of a whole bram Stoker moment. So I was pleased that Gibbet Hill came up, although I was not sure how to pronounce Gibbet Hill well, and I'm just I think that's right. I don't know so often I don't We've talked about pronunciations on the show. In my opinion, they are one of the hardest things, oh yeah, about the show, because we are typically like we're trying to get a native speaker of something saying it correctly, and sometimes there are native speakers of something that are not, i'd saying it correctly. We don't really have a way of knowing that. Sometimes there's like a bunch of differences regionally in how someone says a thing. Uh. Sometimes we just do our best and we get it wrong. And that was one that I didn't even think to look up, whether like how people pronounced the G right, which is a thing. I have my own personal on earth. Oh tell me if you want it please, So as you may recall, as we were talking about sewing back when we recorded before you left, in one of our behind the scenes I mentioned a sewing magazine and a pattern. It's really multiple patterns of like that's so cute Koala siblings that I have been looking for. And I even said, like if anybody knows or this is and you have been out, so I have been doing QA on everything in the last couple of weeks while you were gone. And when we got to that, I was like, I'm going to go search it again and I did, still didn't find anything. And then I just started putting weird nonsense words semi nonsense words together, right like Koala's Christmas Vintage, which turned up a lot of one particular pattern that is not this not as like a pattern you would buy like in a pattern envelope, not from a magazine. Yeah, And then I was doing some version of that. I don't remember what the exact key string I did, and it did not turn up the pattern, but it turned up an image of a magazine that did not have the koalas on it, and it was an Etsy listing, but blessed this Etsy seller who had clearly keyworded it and also had scanned in pictures of of the primary items within the magazine. And I'm paging through, and I'm paging through, and I'm paging through, and then there were Kirby and Katie. So I have it's not in my clutches yet, it's gonna come, like it's on the way tomorrow while I'm out of town on a business trip, but it's coming, and then I'm going to make and I I It was also the first time in I don't know, thirty plus years that I saw it because like when my mom passed, she was a little bit of a sewing hoarder. I come by it, honestly, and I specifically looked for this magazine and I could not find it. And so I had this image in my head of what it was, and there it was, and it was the same. Yeah, it was in the McCall's Creative Craft's Christmas Bizaar magazine of nineteen eighty three. I was two years off. On my guests okay talked about it. But it's as cute as I remember. Oh good, It's both of the koalas plus their Koala baby sister, plus their Koala baby sisters little bitty Koala plash, plus a blanket that you applicate that goes with them, plus their Duffel bags I talked about, plus a train made of felt like. I'm obsessed. I'm making these things. It's gonna be like if anybody wants to follow along, I'm sure my Instagram will be full of Koala plush things for the for the foreseeable future, because you know, I'm gonna make them seasonal outfits. They're gonna have Halloween costumes. I don't know how I'm going to integrate them with all of my Star Wars stuff, but I will. They're dah I I my inner child has become so healed over finding this one thing. Yeah, even more than I would have anticipated. This is really reminding me of something that I read while I was out on the break, which was a story about somebody trying to find a story they had read when they were a child, and for years doing a very similar thing of like searching, Like once search became a thing that you could do, trying to find this story, trying to find the story, trying to find the story failing to find the story and doing this sort of every year. And this person chronicled the whole the whole thing in a piece on substack called Twelfth Night till Candleness, the story of a forty year book quest and of its remarkable ending. And it was very similar of like trying to find this story remembered from childhood and just not being able to do it. And the person who did finally finally find the story and said, hey, by chance, is this the story was a librarian, because the man this is what librarian. This person also had two different experiences where I think it was two different experiences where somebody was like, is this it? And the thing that was like, is this it was an AI generated thing that was not it? Uh, but librarian's amazing librarian found it using sort of a similar process to what you just said of like kind of tweaking the search terms and winding up in the right place. So good, Kirby and Katie come and everybody's way so exciting, so so stupidly excited. My husband was just like, you are crying, and I was like, I know, like, bless him me, he has had to have me. I'm gazing at this picture on my phone until it comes that they and I just keep showing it to him and he's like, uh, huh, I've seen this podcast. That's great, babe. I don't I don't even understand why I'm so excited about it. I just am. I really love this. If folks are wanting an update about whether I have seen the six Triple Eight movie, I have not yet. And then I was wondering, yeah, I did not get to watch it while I was at my parents' house. And then I got home. I had a number, like, we had a number of adult household things that we wanted to do around my around the house. I was home, we got a fraction of those things done, and I got sucked back into a video game that I used to play a long time ago. And I spend a long time playing the video game. And I can't play video games right before bedtime because it interferes with my sleep. I have to do something else. And so I would turn off video game and I would see if there was maybe a little something that I wanted to, like watch a short episode of television or something. And whenever I would open Netflix the thing, it would show me and be like, you might enjoy this movie, the six Triple Eight, and I'd be like, I can't start a movie now, I'm going to bed, Like I might enjoy that movie, but now you so that's at some point I will watch it, but I still have not. So Yeah. Anyway, all of the updates on the things we discussed three weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, So whatever's coming up on the next couple of days for you, whether it's your weekend, whether you've got to go to work, whatever, I hope everything is going great. We're just a couple of weeks into the new year. I hope the new year is treating everyone well. We'll be back tomorrow with a Saturday Classic. 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.