Behind the Scenes Minis: Long Articles and Bubbles

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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 V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about the Insular Cases this week. Yeah, nice up kind of thing. I'm not sure how I wound up with this on my short list. I don't think it was the case that was before the Supreme Court last year. I think it had actually gone on my list prior to that happening. And it just it's such a big topic. It kind of it just took a while, and then once I did get into it, it was bigger than I had thought. I've done enough. I've researched a number of episodes of the show about various Supreme Court cases, and something that happened to me with this that has I don't remember happening with those other ones is that I wound up reading various arts in different like law review journals that were between fifty and more than one hundred pages long. And so what I do when I'm doing research on the show is like I go and either download or bookmark a ton of different papers, and I kept seeing these ones that were about the Insular cases. And I was like, Hey, these look great, These look great, These look great, And then I would actually get into them to do the reviewing part, and I was like, Okay, now this is like one hundred more pages, and this is fifty more pages, and this is ninety seven more pages. I had there's no possible way I can read all this in prep for this thing. And so much about law is argument that you will find different people making like slightly different nuances about these so like, the way they are most often described is that like they set up this idea of incorporated and unincorporated territories, and only fundamental constitutional right now apply in the unincorporated territories and maybe not others. But I found a couple of people that were building these arguments that were like, it's not exactly that, it's the slightly different thing. And I was like, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't think I would not enjoy that job. Yeah, I was like, I can't encapsulate what it is that you're arguing about the slightly different interpretation of all of this. Yeah, it's hard for me to square. We talked about it a little bit during one of our breaks. Uh, this idea of like kind of bickering over semantics being the thing that determines the fate of people. Yeah, that's very hard for me to square with. Right. And the one of the things that was uh frustrating about this episode is like there's been various Supreme Court decisions that have come out over the last few years that are similarly like five four decisions, and people who are analyzing this decision are like, they there's not actually a constitutional basis for this thing that they've just said. They've kind of made it up. And I'm looking at the insular cases that I'm like, this is the same thing. Yeah, for decision where that just kind of made up a justification to exclude people from fully being part of the United States because they were considered to be like too racially different. I'm not saying any of those places wanted to be part of the United States in the first place, but like specifically being like, well, well still you'll still be our territory, but you don't actually get all the rights because we think you aren't you the savages. Yeah, hated that. I read one paper that argued that this idea of like preventing in corporation for bigoted reason it was making an argument that you can actually see sort of the precursors to this in the process of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints trying to establish a home in Utah and seeing like similarly prejudicial treatment of that. And I was like, this feels like a whole other thing. And this episode is already six thousand long. If we got into this whole Utah situation, that was going to be at least another ten minutes. So maybe that's another thing that at some point in the future might be its own episode. Maybe I'm going to make a statement that's ridiculous. Okay, I could not be a Supreme Court justice. No, I mean for the obvious reasons of you know, I don't have a law degree, have never been involved in such the idea like I always and this is possibly going to display a level of emotional immaturity on my part, But I'm always sort of marveling when you see like justices that sit on either side of the political spectrum and they're like hanging out and buddy buddy. Just not to say that people cannot come together if they so choose, but I can't imagine being part of a governing body where you're making really decisions with so much gravity and in some cases writing very very you know, passionate dissents and disagreements with one another and then being palsy because to me, like I have a problem that I am working on in therapy, where like if I don't like someone, playing nice with them feels like I'm lying. Okay, sure you know what I mean. Where I know that's emotionally immature on some level. We have to be adult enough to get along with other people. But like I tend to just ignore people I don't like after a while, which is not always great. But so like the idea of like, hey, we just decided that some people are gonna get really hurt. But I disagreed. I wrote my thing, do you want to get lunch? I would be like I could, I wouldn't lose my mind. A friend of mine decided to return to school and to get a law degree a few years ago, and one of the things that he talked about was that you the way you have to learn how to think about things kind of breaks your mind. Yeah, and you you there's stuff you really can't talk about with the people in your life because it sounds monstrous, right, And like that's really similar. Like I remember there was one day we were all gonna play D and D and that they can't they He and his spouse came walking down the steps and he was talking and she was clearly outraged, and they had been having a conversation in the car about something that was legally related, and it was that kind of thing where like the way to think about it from a law perspective, it just infuriates anybody who was not looking at it from that angle, right, And I was like, I don't think I can do that. I couldn't either. And the thing is like this, this is kind of goes back to that idea of like I couldn't square with that, is that it's not just the theoretical way that you look at it from that dispassionate perspective, because there are consequences. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's where I'm like, I can't. Yeah, I struggle with Yeah, I agree with that. So one point I wanted to make is that in a lot of sort of general overviews of insular cases, people make this point that with one exception, these are all the same justices who were involved in plusy versus Ferguson. So that's the one that decided that racial segregation was constitutional as long as those separate facilities were also equal. So we've done just a whole episode on that. It's come up extensively on the show before. Harlan, who wrote one of the descents that we read in one of the insular cases, was like the loan dissenter in Plusy versus Ferguson, and a lot of people point that out, They're like, it is not surprising that this was all really racist. These are the same people that decided in Plusy versus Ferguson. Something that none of them mention is that this is the exact same court that issued the decision in a case called United States versus won kim Arc and that case decided that children born in the United States to Chinese immigrants were citizens at birth. This is a time Chinese Exclusion Act and other immigration laws made it illegal for immigrants from China to become citizens, but if Chinese immigrants had children in the United States, those children were citizens at birth. The same court decided that Sometimes people imagine John M. Harlan as being like racially really progressive, because in addition, to Plusy versus Ferguson. He had several descents that were on the subject of race that were like, the thing you're doing is terrible, and that's going to become notorious in the future. In this case he had he dissented against the idea that like Chinese immigrants, children born in the US should be citizens. So you can totally look at all this court's many decisions and see patterns, but it's a little weird to me that people point to Plessy a whole lot and just sort of don't mention the probably not quite as well known United States versus wankam Art. Yeah, and now we need cozy things. Yeah. We intentionally recorded this episode first in our recording session today because of the two episodes we're recording, it is the more angering, the other one's pretty light, other one's pretty fun. So uh, in just a second, you'll get to hear about that. D Dune talked about bubbles. We did a lot of bubbles. So first thing I want to address, because you asked, and it was the thing that I while doing the research, was like, hold on a minute. You will often find in various places, both from manufacturers that describe all the different kinds of bubbling waters and more scientific sources that sparkling water is what comes from the earth, but we have flavored sparkling waters. And that was really a head scratcher for me. And I was like, I don't understand how this works. And I'm sure there is like some trade publication that explains it, which I couldnt find. But what I did find was the FDA rule around it. Ah. Okay, So the Food and Drug Administration says natural flavors in sparkling water can be created using natural ingredients from essential oils, extracts, distillates, or other products derived from fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, barks, roots, and other organic substances. All right, I e. You couldn't put a syrup in it, but you could put like an oil extracted from an orange shrine into it. And that's the that's the rule that it still stays. It gets tricky because they use that word natural a lot, which does not have a legal definition in terms of food. It's why a lot of packaging says natural flavorings. And it's like that is meaningless words. You may as well just go like blue Betty blobberty bloop, like it doesn't have any meaning. But that is why you can have because you know, nothing comes out of a spring tasting like watermelon. I wish. I don't know you. What is here? Are you? What's your sparkling water flavor of choice? Uh? So I we have a soda stream. This is not sponsored. We have a soda stream at home. So I make sparkling water with tap water that I've run through a water filter, and I will I'll put like one of many flavors of shrub in there. If you're not familiar with that term. A shrub is like a vinegary sweet syrup that's got some flavor, or sparkling water, a couple shots of bitters. That's a favorite thing to do. In terms of purchase stuff. Spin drift raspberry lime is my favorite. Oh I have been using If anyone listens to Criminalia, they know this. Lately, I have been using Apricot sparkling water and cocktails fun delicious with a little rose delicious. But I am training myself to like sparkling water because I do not naturally think yeah, yeah, I have an assortment of bitters, so really like whatever I'm in the mood for, I will make sparkling water with a little bitters in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was funny that you mentioned a soda stream, because I forget which source I used. I think there's a book called Fizz and it might have been in there, which is about the history of carbonated beverages, and it kind of compares Nowth's device to like the original soda stream for eighteenth century water drinkers. I think we got it as a We either got it as a wedding present, or we had gotten two of something from our wedding registry and we returned the second one and used it to buy a soda stream. Smart. I will say while we're talking about sparkling waters that it breaks my heart that it's pronounced Lacroix and not Lacroix according to the company, because it just sounds prettier my way. I know, you hate saying it that way. I hate it. Yeah, there's there were some interesting stories that were associated with this that would have been kind of a wild goose chase, and not necessarily germane. One of them is a really good bickering thing, and one of them is a cool thing, and another thing is a scandal. So the first thing is one of Priestley's apparatuses with the pig bladder was actually used by Captain Cook on his second voyage because they were trying to to test the value of CO two impregnated water as a preventative of scurvy. Guess what doesn't work. But it'll work if you put some sisters in it. But that wasn't happening. So that priestly apparatus with the bladder. We mentioned that Nuth in particular was like, hey, this tastes like urine, and so did a lot of other people. And Priestley got really mad about it. Oh yeah, and wrote a lot of very angry stuff about it, because he was angry on multiple levels, including the implication that he couldn't tell the difference between water that tasted like urine and water that didn't. I can see how that would be frustrating, right, And he was like, I have had so many of my colleagues taste this. None of us tasted this note of urine you're talking about. You are clearly biased. And then he made the accusation that one of Nuth's assistants must have peeded in the apparatus. Oh no, oh no, uh, it's pretty funny. He talks about his friends having very delicate sensibilities so they would have noticed, which is not really the most complimentary thing to say about someone, right, but it was. It is pretty funny that they had this whole argument, and I mean, to Priestley's credit, he did eventually be like, yeah, that's actually better than mine. I get it. I get it. It is cleaner, it creates a sealed, you know thing instead of mine, which still has animal matter involved. And you know, the taking out of the bottle that you then have to hold closed with your finger to shake it like obviously not as sterile as something you can seal connector to connector right. I just love the idea that he got so mad he was writing all of these op eds that were like my water doesn't taste like pea. Made me laugh and laugh. I don't think you ever watched the show Home Movies, which I'm sure I've invoked on the show before. It is, you know, long term precursor to Bob's Burgers with some other shows in the middle. But there was a very funny episode where to me one of the coach played by John Benjamin Coach mcgirkh who I love forever, took some of the kids camping, and one of the kids pete in his canteen as a practical joke, and then when he drank it and said it tastes like pee, they were like, how do you know what pee tastes like? That's what I thought of while reading all of this back and forth about it tasting like pea. Okay, so the somewhat scandalous bit and this is horrifying, but is also it worked out, So before I go into this, it is not going to any place scary or frightening in terms of inappropriate sexual behavior. Okay, Okay. When Collette was still a kid, the family had a friend who was her tutor. She was twelve at the time, and he fell in love with her, oh dear, and he said he would like to marry her when she was of age. Like he basically wanted to say, like, hey, when she turns eighteen, I would like to be her fiance. And they were like, that's weird, but we have some years to think about this. But then they ran away together. Oh no. According to all accounts, he was going to put her in a convent school and then return for her when she became legal. Age and that nothing inappropriate ever happened. But whether or not that was the case, Sppa was like you kidnapped my kid. Sure, and they got collect back like very quickly, like in a few days. And even though it seems like the family kind of made up with this dude, at least superficially, they still he still had to answer for it in a court of law, and he did have what to me seems like a pretty mild sentencing. I think, like he couldn't live in Geneva, and there was something else, but it was pretty minor. It wasn't like there was no imprisonment, there was no but he was not the person that Collet married, by the way he vanished from their lives, it seems. But it was one of those things where one of the histories I was reading, I think it's the one that was written in nineteen eighty three, like kind of goes down this side path of Collette's weird elopement and how this strange friend of the family was just in love with her, And it also made me think as they get to the point where it's like when she is fourteen, though she's essentially kind of doing the work of an adult, and I'm like, there are a lot of weird boundary issues here. Yeah, yeah, but it was kind of fascinating. It is very sweet that she and her father were very very close and you know, did want to work together and she did not. I was not able to find any primary sources that are like in her voice, but based on the fact that she and her husband chose to stay near her father and they still spend a lot of time together, it doesn't seem like she was ever resentful of any of that. But who knows. People hang onto things without talking about them. But anyway, I found this all very fascinating, the whole Yakumschweppe story and how he sometimes made what seems like not great agreements like that whole like you can tell me that I, uh, I can't I have to close the London office and that none of my receipts will be paid after that other than like getting back to Geneva. That seems like such a weird clause to have in a contract. Yeah, and it almost makes it seem like those two dudes always wanted to cut him out of the business. Depending on what Sorhi read, it does sort of sound like Nicholas Paul did want to take over the business. But we're getting it all filtered through various lenses, and there isn't a ton of documentation. There's like one Gassa kept a pretty detailed set of notes for a while and then no more, and so it's a piece in some of it together. But I love bubbles. So thanks guys, Yeah, yeah, thanks Priestley nuth Sheppa. I should mention we didn't talk about it in the episode, but he is remain to our show because we've talked about him before. Antoine Lavoisier was also working on this, and he's people for whom the letters were flying back and forth. But yeah, they were all figuring it out one at a time together, debating over whether it tasted like urine. If this is your weekend coming up, we hope that you raise a glass of whatever, whatever bubbly beverage you like, or a non carbonated beverage if that's your preference, and that you just get some time to hang and relax and that everything goes as smoothly as possible. If you don't have time off, I still hope you drink something delicious and that you still find a minute or two Just for you. 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. 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