Behind the Scenes Minis: Leviathan and Athenian

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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 B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about the Missouri Leviathan this week. Yeah, something I learned about myself. I cannot spell mascodon correctly the first time. I want one of the o's to be an a, and I thought, yeah, I thought maybe I would learn to spell it correctly by the end of the episode. But what really happened is that word learned what to automatically correct it to knowledge. You figured it out. Yeah, there was some other There was a second word in here that I was also spelling wrong every time, but it was not a word that happened as many times in this episode as massed on. This is Zuglidon, because I love that one. I don't even know how to say that one. I had a very difficult time making my mouth include the correct letters trying to say zuglanan. Yeah. Like I said at the end of the episode, I really don't know how much of this was him wanting to get people to come to his museum and you know, make a living off of these bones. How much of it was that, and how much of it was just not knowing not knowing what he was doing, being like, all of these bones are together, and here are these bones from this other place that look the same. Surely they are all one animal. Yeah, he was like a pro at archaeological fanfic. Yeah, he was just like, I'm this, of course this goes here. Look how it do. I don't have any actual science to back it up, but I think it matches. Yeah, Yeah, this is one of those stories. Right. We have talked a lot about intent on the show and how good intent without any kind of seeking of nuance or education is meaningless and problematic. Yeah, but I do think there's we've got to be able to carve out a little space for someone who doesn't even know that there may be ignorant, And he probably thought he was making these really interesting intuitive connections that could solve problems of like what we didn't understand, but it was very problematic. Well, and there there have been other hoaxes that were more clearly hoaxes, right, that caused a problem, like the piltdown Man that was a hoax and that influenced research into the origins of humanity. Sending a lot of people like down the wrong path right for a damaging amount of time, And I find that that kind of story like very frustrating. But this is one where the people who did know what they were doing were immediately like the you have too many vertebrae and too many pairs of ribs. This was not how this animal was like, this was not something that prompted a whole bunch of research based on something that was fake. If it had been, I would have found it way less funny than I did. But no, it seems like the people that had more knowledge pretty quickly were like, no, this is is not correct, not correct at all. And this gets into that space, right, There are instances where someone from outside of a field, because they are not bogged down with the accepted laws and rules that everyone has been taught, actually do make advances because they can see something that like, if you have been indoctrinated with those laws and rules, which are often very you know, well thought out and sensible, you wouldn't see right. But and I don't know if he thought he might be one of Yeah, there's a charitable part of me that wants to think he thought he was really making a jump that established scientists just couldn't see. Yeah, it is possible that there is some sort of introspection on these kinds of questions in the diary of his that was translated into English. I did not use that as a source for the episode beyond like fact checking some specific details, just because there was so much other stuff to do. But like he had another He had a number of things that he published in Germany, in German that have not been translated into English, and in some cases not only have they been translated into English, but like there's just not a scan of them, right that you know, maybe I could have worked with somebody to find out more about And it's you know, it's possible that within that material we have more of his inner thought process, Yeah, to know whether he really thought he was making a miraculous discovery or whether he was like, you know, if I make a skeleton big enough, surely people will come to my museum. It's like the the memes you see about master plans, where it's like one dig bones, two build together, three profits. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot like that. Yeah, blessings on you. I'm glad that I finally decided enough time had passed to talk about the sky, because while I'm not I'm not totally sure my end verdict on him. Many fun things to get to read about in terms of the things that he wrote and things other people wrote about him interesting to me today. There's basically another museum in the spot where his museum was, by the Gateway arch, which I think at one point was called the Museum of Westward Expansion. That's not what it is anymore. It has been renamed, and I forgot to refresh my memory on what it's called now before coming in here to record behind the scenes. We talked about Salin this week. Finally, I had a hard time saying many words in this episode, some of them words that were long and had lots of letters in them, and some of them were like about or two or I think it's because I mean, I too am sure that I created horrible crimes against Greek names. But when you're trying to work those all out, then I find, at least for me, saying other completely normal words becomes harder because you're fatigued. Yes, my brain had been like it was so hard with like nine syllables. What's this next sentence? I don't even know? Right, we didn't talk a lot in specifics about the laws that Salm passed like. We talked about what they related to and how he had sorted it out. And there are entire books written that we'll examine them, but I was going to talk about a couple of them because they're interesting to me. In particular, I was very fascinated by laws about family life and marriage and women. And in one of the Plutarch translations there are some good paragraphs. One reads quote. Solomin's laws in general about women are his strangest. For he permitted anyone to kill an adulterer that found him in the act, but if anyone forced a free woman, a hundred drachmas was the fine. I don't know why he would find this strange, except that women were not valued at this point. This continues if he enticed her twenty except those that sell themselves openly. That is harlots, which we know is you know, outdated, who go openly to those that hire them. He made it unlawful to sell a daughter or a sister unless being yet unmarried she was found wanton. This obviously reflects very outdated ideas, but I was a little bit startled that there were consequences in Solomon's laws for treating women badly unless you know they were immoral, which is a whole other issue, because that seemed kind of progressive for the time. The other thing that stood out to me was that he forbade dowries all right because and he also had some laws about that the wife going into a marriage had to have some things just to start her new life, almost like a hope chest, like three suits of clothes and some household things, and that was all. And his logic was that he didn't want marriages contracted for financial reasons, but for love, kind affection in the birth of children. Okay, also a little bit interesting, somewhat progressive, still problematic, but at a time again when you know, many many hundreds of years ago, seemed a little surprising to me in some good ways, obviously clouded, but those I just thought were very very interesting. I also like his thoughts on money. And I will read four lines that were written by Solon and then I'll be done with quoting things he wrote. Some wicked men are rich, some good are poor. We will not change our virtue for their store. Virtue is a thing that none can take away, but money changes owners all the day. And I kind of love that, yeah, because I'm like it goes very much back to the creases parable of like having money is not what makes you have a good life, or be a good person, or have value. I find it interesting that he was trying so hard to make a bunch of people happy that he knew he couldn't. Yeah. Yeah, And I do personally like the idea that he left Athens because he was so tired of listening to people complain about his new laws, and he like, yany ow, I'm getting out of here for a while. Yeah. I promised I would tell the story of the microwave experiments. Yeah, yeah, and I have maybe told on this show before. I know I've told Tracy. Yeah. When my husband and I got married, we found ourselves with three microwaves, which is more than any two people. Mean. I had one that came from my apartment, he had one that he had been using in his apartment, and he had a third one because he inherited some stuff from aunts and uncles that had passed. He had a lot of aunts on his father's side that were much older than his dad, so they a lot of them had passed by the time we then, and it had just been sitting around and once we were like, we have three of these things. We do not need three of these things. I gave one a way to a woman that I knew through work who was starting her own new life and apartment and you know, was young and needed stuff. So that was great. We got rid of one and one of them, the one that we were going to keep, you know, was in good working condition. And then the third one was like fine but not great, Like we would have felt weird giving it away to someone because it wasn't in great condition. And so, of course, us being twenty five and twenty seven at the time, our solution was let's blow stuff up in it. Yeah, as a sort of scientific thing. We were like curious because we, like everyone else, have been told don't put put metal things in the microwave, and we were like, but what if, you know, we put on like protective goggles and stuff, and we put those weird things in the microwave to see what would happen. Yeah, and like we put in a CD, which was pretty thrilling because that spun in the microwave and shot off sparks. We put whole uncracked eggs in there and they exploded and that was pretty fun. And we did put in little small metal things and they sparked a lot. When I was a kid, the rule was don't put metal in the microwave period, and in more recent years I've seen more like, well, you can put some metal in like a small amount, and it's should not touch the sides of the microwave. Like it just it feels like there are a lot of rules to keep in mind if you are wanting to use metal in the microwave. For some reason, I have a little a little tea cup that I make things like hot chocolate in when I want to feel fancy, and it has a very thin line of like gilding around. Yeah, And one time, instead of heating up the milk for the hot chocolate in a measuring cup, I put it into the cup and I was just going to heat it up in the cup, very dramatic sparking in the microwave, and I was like, not doing that again. Yeah, And now it probably looks like lead that line of wave it has chipped a little bit, But I think I think I rescued it fast enough that the like that did not come to real harm. Yeah, ask me how I know that it will look like less. Yeah, my brother and sister I gave us for Christmas a bowl that is made to cook things in in the microwave, and the lid has metal on it, but like the way it is shaped like it's it's it. I haven't actually used it in the microwave. We've used it for a lot of other purposes, but not for its intended purpose yet theoretically fine, So yeah, I'm sort of imagining folks that have listened to our episode from Wednesday and not today may have already written, well actually emails about all the nuances of metal in the microwave and man, it's just easier to not put the metal in there. That is exactly it. And I would assume that's why if you look up that Alton Brown do your Own Bagged Popcorn recipe on any site, they have amended it to exclude the staple part. Well, and I can imagine if the staple does happen to throw sparks off in the microwave, that a paper bag in it that could lead to some dramatic results. Listen, odds maybe that it wouldn't do that, but the one time it does. That is one time too many in my books, don't take needless risk for snack. I just don't need to do it. If you want to take that risk, it's on you. I'm just saying, yeah, I usually lately, I've been doing my popcorn in a saucepan. Yeah, and I have been trying the method we're we're visiting how we make popcorn again. But look, this is a big focus in my life right now. Lately, I have been doing the thing where you let the oil heat up with a couple of kernels in it. Yep. Yeah, when they pop, you take it off and you put the rest in, and you let them sit for some amount of time. That amount of time berries depending on who you're looking at. It also will vary depending on your stove and the saucepan you're using. So for me, it's like forty five seconds is about right. For other people, they'll say a minute. Others will say only thirty. Yeah. In any case, you'll get a more even pop and it works. Yeah. I have so, uh, I have not done it. What I have done is put the oil in, put one or two kernels in. When I hear them pop, it's ready for the other kernels to go in. I don't think I have. Then I don't like the next step has not been taking it off the heat immediately when I've done it that way. Yeah, So the idea is that they're still sitting in that hot oil for that period of time, and all the kernels come to a pretty even temperature, right, so that when you put it back on direct heat, they all start popping at about the same time, and you don't get stragglers that you're waiting on while other ones burn. I think I misunderstood what you were describing, because what I had heard you say was like, have a couple of kernels in there, they pop, put your other stuff, and then like that, it doesn't go back on the heat after that, uh not for forty five seconds to a minute, and then it goes back. Then it goes back on. Okay, I see, I see you were correct, But then it went back on after a period of Ye I was missing a step. Yeah, Uh, I probably didn't include it. Yeah, we're still we're still air popping at my house. We got an email from somebody who asked if we had mentioned air poppers when talking about popcorn, and I'm sure we did, because that is the way we do it at my house and it's just so easy, and so yeah we did, uh, yeah, we for sure did mention it. But like, it's just it's so easy, so non messy, easy to then season it with whatever I want to season it with. Unless you have a giant R two air unless you have an R two air popper projectiles around your house. Our air popper does tend to spit out a couple or three unpopped kernels as it's getting started, but they just go into the bowl and they might bounce around the bowl, but they're not fast enough from our air popper to like fly around the kitchen. Yeah. Oh those things have acceleration, they have Yeah, they're fast. Yes. And again, my husband, who doesn't like popcorn, is always like watching me do my magical dances and try to set up my flume made of foils so that they will go where I attend them, and he's always just like, why this is so hard, don't And I'm like, but it's Archid Dow. I'm like our behind the scenes conversation of Sol and his pack on popcorn. Again, listen, he probably didn't know the wonder of popcorner. He would have written about it and made a law. I think he definitively didn't. I am, I am fascinated by Solon, and I had debated at one point in time overdoing like a series of the Seven Sages. Oh sure, but I don't know why. That seemed less appealing to me after a while, and like they, Ley's came up a lot in our our eclipse discussion recently, so it was like, it would be weird to do one on him because we've covered most of that ground, right, a lot of it, so you know, we may get to other stages. We'll see, Yeah, but now I check that one off. There's also just a particular unless, I mean unless your field is, you know, the ancient Mediterranean. There's a particular challenge that's common in a lot of those episodes in terms of doing the research, and that can become fatiguing after a while. It is a bit arduous, yes, And also a lot of the things that are really interesting that have been written about it are old enough that you can't really get them in print now, and also kind of obscure enough that they're not necessarily digitized, even though they would be in public domain. And like some of the ones that are digitized you still have to buy access to because they're you know, part of some library. Sure, sure, so that can also be like a little thing. And we're working exclusively from translation of things that were written often many years after those people lived. So like we would have to do that big caveat we did at the beginning of this one on Everyone's show. Well, you know, we're talking about it, but like, none of this is really substantiated, right, which can be fun to discuss if you know those guardrails, But also if we did that all the time, it would get a little frustrating. Yeah, I hope that this weekend no one asks you to lead any kind of military effort to retake an island, and no one asks you to completely reorganize a city. That sounds so stressful to me. I hope you have a stress free weekend. If this is a time when you actually have to work and you don't have the sort of standardized days off that a lot of people do, I still hope you have a great time, that nobody overburdens you with responsibility, and that everyone is cool to you. Everybody'd be nice to each other. It's all good. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday with 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.