Behind the Scenes Minis: Wrapping 2022’s Unearthed!

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This week we did our Unearthed to close out the year end of One question I think people might have in their minds is, Tracy, why did you not talk about the person who cracked the code on cave paintings figuring out there really some sort of calendar number one? That announcement came number two. I don't know if that's gonna hold up, because it's one of those things that has made a lot of headlines about an amateur person making what sounds like a groundbreaking discovery, and maybe it will hold up. Often though those don't. So I honestly was a little relieved when suddenly that was all over my feed on something like January fourth or something, because I was like, we're going to have a good three months for people to like look at this and try to figure out whether it really holds up or not before I have to get into it in detail on Unearthed. Yeah see in the spring. Yeah, yeah, it's already bookmarked. Things about it already bookmarked for the springtime Unearthed, which will probably come around early April to mid April ish, probably based on how our stuff lines up. I as what I said, I don't care for watermelon. I don't care for any melon at all. This um is so fascinating to me. But now I kind of want to try. You know, maybe sometime when there's other people eating watermelon and there's seeds, maybe you want to try roasted watermelons, roastins watermelon seeds. People also sprout them. I think I do really love roasted pumpkin seeds, but I also do like pumpkin right. Gourds are fine, melons are bad. This is so fascinating to me. Um. I love melon in all of its incarnations. One of my favorite drinks that I make for people here at the house is uh involves a watermelon if used tequila. UM. My husband, I may have mentioned before, cannot eat any melons, and so we have to be a little careful and judicious about having it in the fridge containers, can't have any drips kind of stuff. But he's one of those people that would love to eat melon. He loved it when he was a kid and to develop his allergy until later. Um. Yeah, when we used to both live in Atlanta, and there would be uh, Like, let's say we had lunch catered one day or something. If there was a fruit salad, I would always be like the grapes and rab berrias are for me, Holly can have all of this melon. I forgot. I knew you didn't like honeydew. A lot of people don't like honeydew, specifically in that iteration, because it can usually if you get a fruit salad, the honeydew not in great shape often and sometimes the same for candleoup. But I didn't know you didn't like watermelon. No, all all melon that I have ever tried, I have not. I have not liked, which makes me think that maybe it is more of a mouth feel thing than a flavor thing. But like my brain interprets it as a flavor that I don't like. Um. I would you ever do a test with like flavored syrups to see if you like the flavor but not the the weird crunch and fiber. Uh sure? Um, I know for sure that I do not like like fake watermelon flavor. That's bad. Um. But like an actual melon syrup, I try it. Whne I have such a project now, oh great, I'm very excited. I'm very excited. Like I wonder if I could do like a set of small from the fruit simple syrups that I could mail you and you could test them in drinks or whatever and see if you would be great. We could even do that on like a color whatever. You can see my reaction. Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, I do want to try with roasted watermelon seeds. I'm less enthused for some reason at the idea of sprouted watermelon seeds. Yeah. I do have a question for you on roasted pumpkin seeds. Do you like to eat them shell intact? I think because some people do, and I've never that has never worked for me. So when we have, like it's been so long since we've done this, like when I've had a pumpkin or some other thing in that family that I have scooped the seeds out of and cleaned the seeds and roasted them, I have normally just eaten them as is. Um, But like purchased from the store is normally like just the interior kernel part right, Yeah, so it depends, is the answer. Yes, um, yeah, I like them. I only like the kernel version usually. Yeah, Yeah, there's something too like splintery and woodsy about there that I don't enjoy. It makes sense, boy, Utsi's the gift that keeps on given. Yeah, we had gone for a bit without any Utsy updates, and I was like, it's been a while since we heard about Utsi, and then um, the headlines about this particular Utsy research that we talked about. We're really written in a like new paper calls into question entire timeline of Utsy and literally everything about him, because there were other things that we did not get into that have been sort of the conventional let's see wisdom that this paper was like. And also this is wrong. I don't think that's the actual tone of the papers, but uh, because that was. There are many instances where, especially if the paper is either open access or in the journal that I have access to, I'm often looking at the original paper, and that was not one where I was looking at the original paper. I don't remember why. There were a few things though, that we're bookmarked on the list um that did not wind up being in the episode, because when I read the press release about it, I was like, I am confused about what you are trying to tell me. And so then I said, maybe the original paper is a little clue, new original paper not clearer. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. We're just not going to be able to talk about this one because it makes no sense to me. Were you as surprised as I was when you did the research as when I read your outline that no one had made a comprehensive list of people that had been uh confined to the camps in order US sixty six I was sixty six. Sorry, I'm confusing it was Star Wars. Yet I was simultaneously surprised and not surprised, Like I was like nobody, and then I was like, oh, of course they didn't, because I mean I could see them not doing it then. But I am surprised that no researcher up to now has tried to compile this. Yeah, and as far as I know, they had not. Everything about this made it sound like this was definitively the first attempt at a like a really comprehensive list, and I don't. I got really emotional at the idea of um people being able to review this this list and stamp names of either maybe people they were related to, people they knew people there almost knew other people, and also sort of verifying and fact checking the information that's in there too, confirm names and spellings and that kind of stuff. Um. The book itself, there are pictures of it, and like it's it's simple but also really beautiful and striking. How enormous it is, Um, like it's a thousand pages long. There was there were things that described how much it weighed, and I don't remember many pounds of book. Um, And I don't think we said this in the episode. Um, it is free to do the book, but I'm pretty sure you have to have like a timed entry ticket as part of the museum to do it, is how I'm remembering that. So if you're gonna go, uh try to see the book, do you look at the museum's website first get the right info about what you need to do to go there. Uh. Because I live on the other side of the country, I was surprised when it came up in the outline how sort of moved and instantly transported. I was talking about the Space Shuttle Challenger. Yeah, because people in our age group, we were all in like middle and high school when that happened. Yeah, and because there had been a teacher on board. I bet a lot of schools had teachers that have been part of that application program. I know that was the case at my school mine too. UM And it really, UM, you know, it's not something I think about all the time, but then when it comes up in a way like this, I just kind of had a little lump in my throat for a moment. Yeah, Like I I don't need an explanation of what the Space Shuttle Challenger was, UM, as I remember it. Um, we were not in school that day. There was some kind of teacher work day, so I was at the house of um family friends who often looked after my brother and me when there was like a teacher work day. There was kind of a their mom and our mom shared traded off with childcare to help each other out, like that kind of a situation. UM. And I don't think we actually saw it live when it was happening, but we heard about it immediately. Somebody called or somebody came over or whatever, and then it was like it was on repeat on the television for the rest of the day. And as I was writing that little part of it, I didn't initially have an explanation of what the Challenger disaster was. And then I was like remembered, a lot of people are younger than us now, um, and may may know about the Challenger disaster, but like didn't have that visceral experience of having lived through it and seen it live on television in school. In a lot of cases, yeah, um, my third grade teacher, because this happened. I guess this happened when I was in third grade, because I'm just a few years younger than you. Fourth grade. Wait, elementary, what year was it? I would have been fifteen, So I don't think you would have been in third grade, right, or would you? I think now we're going to have to do school, man. Oh so okay, this makes sense. My third grade teacher was in the application process here we go while I was in third grade. Disaster happened after that, um, but we all had to write letters on her behalf to NASA about what a great candidate you would be. I will say my classmates and I were not fond of our third grade teacher. We found her to be very strict, um, and so we were kind of like dragged into this letter writing effort and then the whole thing took such a tragic turn. Um, and like having that happened as a child, this uh weird, emotionally weird. Of course, it was not about us. We were just children who weren't directly connected to any of it, but it still gave it a weird layer. Well, but I will say to righte like, I don't know what it was like at your school, but for me and I totally like was into all of this. It was definitely like this is the future where everyone is doing this so that your future will be different. And this is part of you know, Mankind's march to make every generation have better opportunity, knowledge, etcetera. Like it is kind of drilled in that it's for you in some ways when you're a kid. So I can see why you don't need to have a direct connection to it in terms of someone that you love or immediately know being part of it to feel that gravity of it as a kid. Yeah, it was one of those moments that for people in our age group, it's like the thing that people remember where they were when it happened for sure. So anyway, everybody who's our age not, Yes, just one of those many, many things that happened in life that you remember forever. Yep. How much do I love that Levi Strauss has appeared again? Yeah, because I loved working on the episode we did on him. It's interesting that the tag that you know specified that it was all white labor came up. Um. We mentioned it on our episode about him. But I just one of the stories that has stuck with me. You know, we do so many shows, we don't always remember details of all of them. But one of the things that has always stuck with me was um during that time when people were having such really racist anti Chinese sentiment and they discovered that Levi Strauss had a cutter who was Chinese, and they really criticized him over it and claimed that he was, you know, an American or whatever. And he had basically put out a statement that was like, if I could find a US citizen who can do what this man does, I would hire them. But I never have, So this is what you got if you want me to keep making jeans. It was just like one of those um interesting stories that has stayed with me in the years since we have done it. He was like, um, no skilled labor is skilled labor, and I need this skill and I can't make it anywhere else. So so I knew that there were people who went into old minds and stuff looking basically for old genes. I did not know that. I don't know how that's escaped my attention all these years. That's that's something that I heard someone who cares about men's fashion talk about, and so it like I knew that was a thing that people would do, sort of like looking for old jeans in old minds and stuff. I really did not know that then they would sell it auction for six figure numbers of dollars Holy Moses, right, or high five figures numbers of dollars in one case, um and uh. One of the two pairs of jeans that we talked about the way it was written up made it sound like almost like they were trying to flip these genes to another buyer. And I was just like, this baffles me. Like I I am unlike Holly in that fashion is not a thing I think about a lot, and often I'm just like, do I have clothing on my body? I do? Create Um, and so the idea that like of anybody caring enough about jeans to number one go in old minds to look for them, and then number two to buy them for eight seven thousand about ers or whatever and then flip them. I was like, the whole foreign thing to me, I do not understand it. Yeah, I didn't realize that was something that was apparently like an entire secondary collector market. I mean, people will collect anything. I find myself so torn about it for a number of reasons. Right on the one hand, like it's cool that these things will be preserved theoretically, of course, but then I'm also like, a hundred thousand dollars, but I mean, it's not like a work of art that's singular. Although that first pair might be the second pair might at this point be getting pretty close um in terms of their not being any others like them, But I still I then have to wrap my head around it because I'm like, that's a lot of money, and the Indiana Jones and Me is like put them in a museum, having in a product collection. So I know I I would never be able to participate in that, even if I suddenly found myself with a lottery win or something, because I would be like, I don't know that this is the right thing to do with money, but maybe it is I don't know. Um so I got a little confused as I was looking at the genes, um just because I had multiple bookmarks that were about old genes that had been found that were Levi's or maybe Levi's, and I got I was like, are these the same genes? Are either of them really the oldest genes? And uh, Levi's had a sort of contest a while back to try to find like the really oldest genes that people still had, and I don't know. I just found that was really interesting, and um, none of them were the genes that were discussed today. And of course there are some questions about whether one of the pairs of pants that we talked about really are connected to leave my staff definitely now. Um So anyway, we can just leave off, I think on the jeans talk Happy Friday again. Whatever is coming up on your weekend. I hope it goes great. Were back with the Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will have a brand new episode on Monday, and drop us a note if you like. We're at History podcast at i heart radio dot com. 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.