Behind the Scenes Minis: The Bubble and Mr. Moms

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly fry Uh. This week on the show, we talked about the south Sea Bubble after a two year procrastination slash resource delay on my part. That worked out in my favor because I really liked the resources I found on the second attempt more than on the first attempt. I feel like any time I put something off, the resulting episode always comes out better, whether it's because resources have arisen or of just like in the background, my brain has been kind of creeping around the topic and processing it and thinking about it in ways. So I'm glad you waited two years. Yeah, I am too. I don't uh. There are a couple of disciplines. There is writing meant for a more general audience that I can find very accessible and I can wrap my head around the language that they use in their framing. But I have occasionally found myself in something that is really written for within that discipline and I'm like, I don't know what you are talking about. One of them is economics. There were a couple of older not older, I mean older as of twenty nineteen or early when I was looking at this where I was kind of like, I don't, I don't know what you're saying. Weirdly, Another one, sociology. There have been a couple of times when I have found a sociology paper that was about the subject that I was trying to research, and I tried to read it and was like, there's just a whole vocabulary here that that you know, haven't taken sociology one oh one in college as part of my general education requirement. I'm like, I don't, I don't know, and I don't these are concepts their words for concepts. I don't have any of this framework. And then I thought, I second guessed myself. I'm like, am I just a mess? And so I asked my friend who's a history teacher, and was like, has this ever happened to you? And she said yes, I have seriously considered like taking a couple of classes because there's often overlap between history and sociology and I will get into deep sociology weeds and not know what's going on. So I'm glad I was able to find some things where I knew what was going on. Um. I also kept thinking about stuff like beanie babies, uh, and like whatever nifty new thing people have going on that I've gloamed onto you about trying to invest in going to make a bunch of money real fast, But it's really a lot more like a Ponzi scheme. Thought about doing a Ponzi episode, Maybe do that later, Yeah, I mean the trick right, here's the thing. There are people that make a lot of money really fast in those schemes, but they're usually people that had a lot of money to begin with, Like they're just augmenting the predict list wealth and the people that actually could really use a financial bump usually get the short end of the stick. Yeah. Well, and that was the case with the south Sea bubble to a lot of the people who were the loudest and the most outraged, we're either people whose losses were not real money that they ever had, that it was the money they didn't get because they didn't sell at the right time, So the price had gone from roughly where they bought it back to roughly where they bought it, and they just note did not get that tenfold increase. They saw it mad And you know, I've it's not like I have a giant investing portfolio, but I have been in positions where I had an employee stock purchase program or something. Uh, and I've sort of seen, well, this used to be worth this many dollars, but now it's worth way fewer dollars um. At one point earlier in my career, Uh, we got like I got shares is like part of my compensation um. And then they were worth less than they had been worth when they were given to me as part of my conversation, And I was like, this is it's weird. I don't really appreciate that at all. But then the other thing about the people who were the loudest about their losses in the Saucia company, a lot of them were people who were already rich and so, yes, they had lost a lot of money and that would suck, but they were still rich and they still had a lot of money, right their their livelihood was in no way in danger. Yeah, and that was not the case for everyone. Yeah. Uh, you know, the the ordinary middle class folks who lost their whole savings or who subscribed at the wrong time and then we're on the hook for something they couldn't afford anymore. Like that was like, I think, a more immediate problem in a lot of lives than the person who was really rich and lost a lot of rich people money and still had a lot of rich people money, But we're mad about the money they didn't have any more. Yes, I found myself thinking a lot about the housing bubble and the whole invest in a home. We will loan you, we will make a loan work for you. It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. And it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah, I know people that bought their homes really at the peak of that, like pre collapse housing bubble. I bought a home not at the peak but nearer to it, but as a short sale, and I thought I was getting an amazing deal. But then I owed way more money then the house was worth, and I that was not great. Um, it was not something that affected me until I tried to sell the house and was like, uh, I need more money to pay off the bank then I can get if I sell this, and that was a giant mess. Yeah, that's no fun at all. I definitely have a lot of friends who were in that same boat where it was like, oh, my house is worth half of what I owe on it. Yeah, it's not a funny place. Well, and especially when other stuff happened as a result, and in this at the at the same time as the housing bubble collapse, so like you know, people who then also lost their jobs and like couldn't pay couldn't pay their astronomical mortgage payments anymore, and then also couldn't get out from under their house because you know, they owed a lot more money on it than they could get if they sold it. It's bad, bad scene all around. Yeah, not good bubbles. Um. I did not realize that the word bubble to refer to such an event went back so far. That seemed like a very twentieth century jargon thing to me. But now, yeah, there there. I found several sources that said this was the first use of bubble, but you know, Oxford English Dictionary disagrees with the people who put that in their art. Um, it does seem like it became a lot more popular terminology. Um, we didn't mention it, but people also could still remember the tulipmania bubble. That was not long enough ago in the past that it had fallen out of public memory or anything. So some of the uh, some of the artwork, like the satirical artwork about the south Sea Bubble was just Tulipmania Bubble with the names changed, um, which I found pretty hilarious. I feel like we should mention the irate making the whole thing of like, no, no, you dumb, dumb people shouldn't be playing with money. What do you think you're doing? Yea, Yeah, there was a lot of really sexist commentary about women. It was women's fault. Women should not have been investing. Women don't know how to invest. Women made this problem. And then again, the whole thing was underpinned by a slave trading venture. Yeah. Um mm hmmm. That's all I've got is growling. Yeah. There were a couple of articles that I read along the way where I was like, you know, this was slavery, right, Like this was It was not like they were shipping I don't know, locally grown wool. There might have been some locally grown wool, but that was not the major part of what the Sucie Company was trading. M HM. Anyway, bubbles get rich quick schemes real frustrating. Yeah, we talked about Moms mably this week, Yes we did. I've enjoyed watching so much of her comedy as YouTube videos, listening to some audio clips from various albums, stuff like that, and and boy did I spend a lot of time just trying to find out for sure what happened to all of her children. I became way more invested in this then then I typically do on unanswered questions on the show. And there was a lot of like trying to search through vital records from Transylvania County, North Carolina, which is where Brevard is, and Bunkum County, North Carolina, which is where Asheville is, and then also just having questions about how carefully either of those communities were recording births of black children during these years. And it frustrated me uh not to be able to find some more definitive answers um because it's like it whatever is the answer, clearly traumatic situation to either have had uh two children who were placed for adoption seemingly not really with with her having a lot of agency over that and never seeing they begin, or whether she had four total children and two of them disappeared when the people whose care they had been left in disappeared and she didn't get to reunite with them. Until adults. Like all of the possible scenarios, I'm like, all of these have layers that are tragic and upsetting in less tragic parts of her story. How did she get on your radar? Do you remember the first time you saw Moms? Maybe? So the first thing that I really remember is that Marvelous Mrs masl episode. Oh, it's totally possible because some of the old variety shows that she was on used to be syndicated on Nick at Night, or little clips of them would run on things like Comedy Central. When I was a kid, we were not early adopters for cable at all. I'm not even sure when cable first became an option out in the country where we lived. So like, it's totally possible that I saw comedy clips and they just did not stick in my memory until I watched the Marvelous Mrs Masiel and was like, I'm pretty sure want disikes playing a real person here, and I need to go find out who that is because I am intrigued. How about you, Carol Burnett, I remember it distinctly. I remember seeing her on Carol Burnett when I was tiny. I'm still pretty sure it was a rerun but like that was before things like Nick and Knight existed, and then also seeing her on Flip Wilson, Oh yeah, okay, because I am one of those people. Again, I was a small child who thought it was a man in drag huh. And I remember my parents being like, I don't think that is, because I was like, well, the guy, and they were like, I don't think it is, but may I don't know, Like they were very like, I don't know what you're asking about. Kids well, and enough adults had the same question that. When I was really just pouring through old newspaper articles trying to find as much about her as I could, I found multiple you know, asked the columnist columns where people were like his mom's maybe a man or a woman. And then I didn't make this point in the in the episode, but maybe I should have. I think, even in addition to the fact that I think she would have been more famous among white people had she been white, that's obvious, I also think there would have been a biography of her written either while she was still living or shortly after her death, when a lot of these questions would have been easier to research because there would have been more people alive who would still knew the answers, and like there's no like there's not a Mom's maybe papers collection in existence that at least that I was able to track down, and other people of her influence, especially if they were white and especially if they were men, did have all of that. So Yeah, I'm glad she's getting like tiny bits of more recognition sort of trickling out through things like that the play from the eighties that we talked about. And although I think that might be the source of the thing about her mother being killed shortly after her father's death, Like I feel like some of the things that are multiple conflicting accounts have been picked up from there, um, but it's like it's hard to trace because a lot of people have printed things and they're reporting without saying where they where they learned it. Yeah, I'm literally just thinking about her and laughing. Yeah, you and I both through the thing where we like just tell our spouse the whole thing that we've been researching. And so we were eating dinner and I was talking about moms Mayblee and Patrick got out his phone and started looking at Mom's Mayblee videos during dinner. Uh, and she had one, and I'm not I think uh, the double entendre filled things that we actually said in the episode, I feel like probably would just fly over the heads of younger listeners. And if you have had to have awkward questions with your children this week, sorry um so, but I'm not going to repeat this particular one. She she gave this a joke that was just delivered with amazing timing and that like there was a pause, and Patrick went, that was a very dirty joke. Yeah, listen, I love a filthy joke. So yeah, I love how she used her platform for activism without skipping a beat. Yeah, yeah, that for sure. And also her like social satire stand up and her very pointed social commentary and critique like that genre of stand up. She was really your front runner in like one of the first people who was really doing that and making use of this very disarming character to be able to say things that other people probably couldn't get away with. Um One thing that I didn't get into in the episode because I just couldn't figure out how to how to work it in is that there's there's been a lot of conversation about her her sexuality and her like her presentation of her gender and that kind of stuff. And I read one paper that traced several jokes about gay men in some of her comedy albums, and the person who wrote the paper was making the argument that like, this was clearly her laughing with people and not at them. But in reading the jokes, I was like, I don't, I don't know if I have the same opinion on that read um, and it could go either away. I don't really know the answer, but um, it is clear that she had some jokes in her set that involved game in in the era before like before Stonewall, before there was this uh like as much cultural visibility. But still I was like, I don't, I don't know if I were listening to that joke and it were about me, how I would feel about that? Yeah, I mean I um that, I feel like that's always the caveat anytime we talked about any performer that is uh from an earlier time. I imagine in today's world she would be making different jokes, specifically, would feel differently about the issue and be making yeah, you know, I mean I that makes it very very interesting that um Wanda Sykes, who is and out lesbian woman, was comfortable playing her. That's not the same thing as being you know, the entire LGBTQ community is not a monolith, and that's not the same as how a gay man might feel about. Sure that material, but it does offer a little bit of an insight into how, even through the modern lens, she's perceived m um and people have have interpreted her life in a several different ways. There are people who have described her as lesbian and people who have described her as bisexual, and wherever you want to fall in that interpretation, it's clear that off stage she was just living her life as who she wanted to be as an adult. So, uh, you know, she's clearly is a life that with all of the line blurring with gender and sexuality, is like in the queer history umbrella, where within that umbrella people want to specifically go like, I feel like there's room for interpretation. Oh yeah, I mean I feel like that is really the paper I would love to read if there were better records. Is someone examining her, whether it was very consciously done or just seemed natural to her, was not a pointed thing. Her kind of rejection of the gender binary and just being like, no, I'm fluid. I'm I am who I am, I'm I'm Moms. I love the nickname Mr. Moms. It's so sweet. Yeah, and it's just kind of an interesting, an interesting piece that I wish we had more actual details of. Yeah, yeah, um. And even a lot of the folks that were not everyone. Some some of the folks that were interviewed in that in that documentary who gave those insights are no longer no longer with us. So Uh, Anyway, I have said this twelve times now. I think I love I loved having a reason to stop what I was doing and watch stand up on YouTube. Maybe we all laugh as much as possible can. I'll just also just like live our own lives how we want to do it. Uh. If you want to send us an email or a history podcast asked that I heart radio dot com. We'll be back tomorrow with Saturday Classic and Monday with a brand new episode. We hope whatever is going on for you this weekend that it goes well and we'll talk to you again soon. 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,