Behind the Scenes Minis: Balloons and Cat Trees

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about balloon riots this week. Sure did an episode that was you know, one riot was the request. I initially thought that it was going to be about two riots, because the one that was initially requested was one, and then the eighteen sixty four one was the other one that immediately kind of showed up in my preliminary research, and then I was like, oh, there's a lot of them actually, and they all have some striking similarities. And also it seems like everyone who was opening a gardens somewhere that was either part of the British Empire or had once been British territory, they just all named them after gardens in London. Yeah, yeah, same name, over and over. Yeah. It's that's one of those interesting factors to me about early US history is that there was so much we are our own new thing. Yeah, but everything got named after something in Europe. Yeah yeah, not everything, but a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. It's like people like to make fun of how weird. I mean, not just in Massachusetts, but I feel like Massachusetts gets a lot of it. How weird the pronunciation of town names are compared to how they are spelled, and they're all just pronounced roughly the same way as the same spelled town in England. Is like, that's the reason, not all of them, but a lot of the times that's pretty much the case. I was, of course, reminded of various sports related related riots that still happen. Yeah, when a team wins something important or loses something important, although a lot of times that is more like generic property destruction, not chasing after the team that won or lost. To set the ball on fire. Yeah, This whole like I'm mad at the balloons, so we need to set it on fire mentality is one that I just can't grasp. Yeah. Yeah, one of the earliest things that we talked about about, you know, the balloon launched, happening successfully, but then the balloon which did not have a crew on it, kind of coming down in a more rural area outside of Paris, and then the local people attacking it. Like when I saw that, I was like, this to me, does not sound like necessarily a real thing that happened. It sounds like It might more be a commentary about how whoever was writing it thinks that rural people are dummies. But the account saying that it was attacked with pitchport like, that's pretty consistent. It shows up in several different places, and I was like, maybe they really did attack the thing that fell out of the sky. I don't know. Humans are now in my head after this particular episode. I know this intellectually. We have certainly studied the course of human history enough to know, but you know that's saying and I don't know if it's true that horses are always a second away from madness. Sure, humans are always a second away from violence. I feel like even the most stayed human in the right circumstance will just turn into a berserker and start stabbing things and setting them on fire. I don't love that no everybody go to therapy. I also think, like so often it really seems like what like the initial run up to the rioting was something involving a combination of boredom and disappointment. And I'm sort of like imagining, like if if a rain delay during a NASCAR race or a baseball game or something suddenly caused the crowd to rush the field and like break all the baseball bats or take baseball bats to all the race cars. I don't know, right, It's it's very weird. It it doesn't quite align with I know, like I said, I know, there are still things involving sport and spectacle that lead to some kind of rioting or vandalism or whatever today. But it just like the happening over and over and over in that relatively short amount of time. It's just a little odd. It is weird. I mean it's interesting too because ballooning is in so many instances written about in this very romantic kind of way. Right, the freedom of it, the you know, sort of surreal experience of taking to the sky, and then the flip of that culture is just people being like, aw, let's kill it. I I don't know, I don't know. There's an element of like how dare you try to do something new and then not succeed in it? Yeah, which I don't I'm not a fan of obviously, Right. Well, and like we said in the episode, it wasn't like they could go. It wasn't like it could be secret. Like even if you had, say a farmer had said yeah you can do this in my field and the farmer lives somewhere with nobody around, maybe you could get the balloon inflated without an audience being there. But like then it's in the sky. People are going to see it, right, It's going to be obvious, right, and if you don't tell them it's going to happen, they're going to think that we're being invaded by UFOs. Possibly true. Yes, which is what inspired the Balloons of World War two episode a couple of years back. Was various weather balloons and spy balloons that were spotted and raised alarm. Yeah. I mean there are lots of instances of those kinds of things happening. Yeah, so you kind of have to be public about it, yeah, because you will terrify people. Yeah, raise reports of UFA there was entertainment in the sky. That would be kind of amazing. It would be I also can't help but think of eggar all Impoe's balloon hoax. Oh yeah, that came up in some of the research that I that was part of this, and then I was like, that's a little bit more of an aside than I want to include. Yeah. Yeah, which, just in case anybody doesn't know he published a story in the Sun in New York about claiming that someone had crossed the Atlantic in a balloon in three days, right, and people went wild. This was like, literally, it would be the equivalent of somebody publishing an article tomorrow saying I built a jet in my backyard and I flew it to Mars. Yeah, and people would be like what and that is what happened. And then he had to retract it two days later and admit that it was a hoax, and then nobody in them so funny. I am still also just really stuck on, like thinking of trying to have something that seems like a comparable phenomenon. You know, there was like the whole Beatlemania phenomenon we talked about Liz Domania on the show before, of people just going absolutely out of their minds over Fran's list. But like if it were today, if it were twenty twenty five and people were going to like a Taylor Swift concert and like the power went out, there was no possible way to continue the show as normal. And then what if the crowd just like rushed the cy stage and destroyed all of the instruments and lighting. Yeah, that would be wild and not really what I would expect to happen currently in the world. I would totally expect, though, people to knock over light poles and toilet paper houses and stuff after sports winter loss. Anyway, it happens humans, it does happen. Humans made for trouble apparently. Yeah, I think we have exhausted all of the allotment of the word balloon that could be said in an episode on this one episode. That is a word that the more you say it, it feels crazier and crazier, like your brain goes this not a real word. There was one sentence that I think you were you were saying it, and I was like, why did I put the word balloon so many times close together? Because that's what it's about, Bebby. There's so much to talk about this week, because we talked about pet inventions, and since you know, we both have pets and many people in our listening audience do, and we have experienced with lots of these products, plenty to discuss. Also, a wild theory I have that has absolutely no substance to it other than it occurred to me. OK, But we'll talk about the other stuff first. One of the things that came up a lot when I was researching this in regard to Alan Simon. The last person that we talked about who invented the we weie pad was that in twenty nineteen, he put his very lavish New York home on the market for forty million dollars. Wow. And I looked at pictures and I understand and why it was forty million dollars, even outside of it being a prime location in New York that overlooks Central Park, that was a lavishly decorated home. I understand that they had to drop the price on it by about thirteen million. That was the last thing I saw on it. So presumably somebody bought it at like twenty seven million, but I don't know for sure. But that's a lot of money. But that was a very beautiful space, which I just find interesting. He it also speaks to like how popular pet products were. Yeah, and he was a very fascinating man. Looking at videos with him, he's so interesting because he talks like a guy from New York. He's very tan, he is very straightforward. The obituary that I read of him kind of hinted at how what a sweet man he could be and how he was very dedicated to his customers and you know, people with pets, but that he also really loved business. And I'm like, was he kind of like hardcore as a as a deal maker but also was personally very sweet because that can certainly happen. I just think he seems absolutely delightful. Yeah. Can we talk about how ugly most cat trees are? Yo? We sure can? That whole like can go with any decor. It's elegant and beautiful, and I know there is a big movement for like fansy cat trees. Yeah, but it's also cat trees, by their nature are just hard to be real cute you I don't know if you still have but you don't know. Yeah, so you have one that used to belong to me. That was a Christmas present that was your standard poles wrapped in rope, covered in carpet platforms. Cat tree, huge, real big. It's like seven feet tall. It's a big one. It's a really nice cat tree. So thank you because I still have it and it's Marva's favorite place at night. Oh I love it. Yeah, I'm like, how did I even get that to my house? Like, I feel like it was a Christmas gift for my parents, but then when I moved to Massachusetts, there was going to be nowhere to put it. Yeah, and like moving it to Massachusetts was adding a whole additional thing to the expense of an interstate move. And so now it's in my bedroom. Now it belongs to Holly. I feel like I should also tell you. I don't know if I ever told you this. Uh huh. Our cat, Osle, who passed earlier this year, up until he was eighteen, one of his favorite things was to go to the very top of that cat tree and then jump from it the roughly five feet to our bed, okay, and just roll around like a giggling cat, and wanted to be petty, and he would do this over and over. It was his savor exercise on her. Yeah. I also had been given that when I had three cats, and when I was moving to Massachusetts, I only had one cat who was in her elder years and did not really use it. So anyway, when we were ready to get more cats into our life after we lost Cestina, I was looking for number one. We had very specific space requirements, like where will a cat tree fit? And then I didn't want something that was just entirely covered in carpet for like allergen reasons, and it took a lot to find something that would work. And it is more attractive than a lot of cat trees I feel are, But I also sort of felt like, at least at that time, which this would have been in twenty nineteen, it was the only one that existed in the whole world. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing too, is that there are, like I said, some very stylish looking cat trees. In my experience having shopped for a lot of them, they tend to be on the smaller side. So if, like us, you have four cats, yeah, that's not going to be enough. Yeah. The other thing is that we similarly for a while, had all older cats, so other than Ozl's dive bomb party, we didn't have none of the other cats were really into the cat tree situation. They were like, I'm gonna sit on the couch or the bed because that seems easy to get to and super cozy. But this year, as I have mentioned before, we adopted three new cats who are all about to turn seven because they're all from the same litter and they need more yeah vertical party space. Yeah, And so we ended up getting this huge monstrosity of a cat tree that is in our kitchen, okay, because they our kitchen is kind of I don't know how well you remember it, but it's kind of a deepish space, and there's a big tree that overlooks or a big tree a big window that overlooks our deck at the back of the kitchen. And so we were like, you know what cats would love is a cat tree here, and it may not be the cutest thing on earth, but they will love it. Yeah, and they do. Like that was a good call because it really helped with transitioning them into our household and our other cats not feeling like all their stuff got taken over because there was a new thing. Right, But it's not cute. Buy a cute or smaller, gothic y looking one that lives in our living room, which is all Halloween all year round. But they really prefer the kitchen, the ugly kitchen one, yeah, because it's got a million places to go and it's tall and they Jesse's big, but Donk doesn't fall out of it, yeah, which is a very real, a very real problem to solve in many spaces in our house. Right Anyway, cat trees, and also big cat tries get expensive in our they do. Yeah, yeah, I have sort of I've I've I occasionally look around to see if there is something specifically taller that would work somewhere in our house for our cats. And it's one of those things where I kind of idly poke around at it and then go, no, I don't really see anything that would work. But yeah, they can be really real pricey. Yeah. Okay, are you ready for my possibly cokammy theory. Yeah, the discussion the only reason if it stood out as any to anybody as like that's a weird thing to include. Uh, But the discussion of ed Low's fallout with his kids huh, and the way they described his behavior. Yeah, and the fact that he was kind of a crazy cat man, by which I mean with love, like the way I would call myself a crazy cat lady made me go, did he have toxoplasmosis? Oh? I mean probably right, because for those of you that don't know, if you have a cat, you know, uh, toxoplasmosis is caused by a parasite called toxoplasma gandhi, very common in cats, very very common in cat feces. It's why if you're pregnant, you are suggested to not clean the litter box in your house because pregnant women are especially prone to contracting it, as are people with you know, weakened immune systems. And for a lot of people, if you're of robust health and you know your immune system is fine, you won't even show symptoms. You kind of it runs its course and you're fine. But there have been some interesting studies over the years about the way that people might behave differently. There was was It and Wired. There was a huge article some years back, like probably a decade ago that suggested that some of the things that we consider crazy cat lady behavior, the crazy part being what they were focused on is actually like a manifestation of toxoplasmosis, that it can make you more impulsive, mess with your judgment in a way that would benefit the cats, because there are a lot of parasites that work that way in the natural world, where the parasite will help the host animal earth or will help itself by making the host animal do a certain behavior. Yeah, and I was like, well, and my understanding of toxoplasmosis is that the source of it in the cats is really rodents. When cats are able to catch rodents, and that the toxoplasmosis facilitates that by making the mice less fearful, and that makes it easier for the cats to catch them and then get the taxoplasmosis from them and then spread it in their feces. I think they can also. It can also come from meat and shellfish. Okay, lots of potential sources there, right, So literally, like a cat food could potentially carry it if it were not cooked fully, if it were not you know, if it were exposed to air in some way, right, there are those are Those are very common ways. But for a human to get it from a cat, generally speaking, uh, you have to have contact with cat poop m h, which comes with having an animal. Anyway, I was like, did ed Loo have toxic plasmosis? Is that why? His family was like you're and he's like, I listen. The issue of alcohol misuse is a whole other thing, and I don't want to in any way play down the seriousness of it, but it does make me wonder because he was so adamant like no. Now, granted, some people that are dealing with addiction will say no, So I don't know. I don't know the personal thing, but it did occur to me. Anyway, here's the other thing I would like to end on. I'm going back to Alan Simon. Praise you Alan Simon for the invention of potty pads for pets. Oh yeah, because I stumbled upon a part of the Internet I was not ready for the other day. There's like a reddit anti dog subreddit, like people that just don't like dogs and think having dogs in your house is disgusting and gross and like one of those and like whatever, I don't understand it, but whatever, having a human in your house is disgusting and gross, Like we all come with stuff. And there was a whole big thing about how disgusting potty pads are for dogs and the presumption that people are just putting them down and letting their animals go all over the house. And I'm like, I know you don't like dogs, but you know that's potty training a dog, Like there will be some whoopsie daisies, or if a dog becomes elderly and they can't always control their stuff, or if your animal dog or cat or any other has surgery and maybe uses their level of locomotion for I mean, there are so many valid reasons for it, but these people were so mad that they even existed because they felt like it promoted laziness on the part of pet people. And I'm right. Yeah. My one time that I've ever used them was when Cestina was in her last months of life and she was still pretty much making it to the litter box all the time, but she was she would get into the litter box. She couldn't really squat anymore. Yeah, arthritis will do that. Yeah, the urine was not going into the box anymore, and so we just put a puppy pat underneath it, yeah, sort of out the front to catch anything. Yeah. Yeah, they're super handy. I mean they have they have even for non pet things. Right, if you're doing a weird craft project that has a lot of fluid, put a puppy pad under it, because that's a heck of a lot easier than trying to mop up a mess with a towel afterwards, Like yep, and all these things and more. Anyway, I know there were hospital pads first, but now they're so easily gettable at your local supermarket in the pet food I like, thank you, Ellen Simon, that was great. Yeah, I hope if you are training a puppy, that that training is going well. I know there could be moments of exasperation, but worth it. In the end. It's puppy who doesn't like that. If you have this weekend coming up, free to do whatever you wish, I hope that you fill it with things that delight you, or that you don't fill it at all and you just have like super rest weekend, which sounds amazing to me. Right now, as Tracy and I record this, we are getting ready to leave the country. By the time you hear this, we will be back, but right now we're both very tired from preparation, so it sounds great to have two days of rest. I'm hoping to rest on my flight. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday we will have something brand new. 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.