Behind the Scenes Minis: Good News, Bad News

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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, we talked about, we didn't talk about. We just had our unearthed episodes, our most recent installment of them. Yeah, this week for the whole week, starting off with so many updates. An update that I didn't put in there but would technically be an update is that last time on on Earth we talked about Remeisa Osturk, who is the graduate student at Tufts who had been snatched off the street by playing clothes officers. Yeah. She was released on May ninth. She had been in custody for about six weeks. A judge found that she was neither a flight risk nor a threat, and also that the government had provided zero evidence for its baseless claim that she supported Hamas. Again, the only thing that was actually cited in her being taken into custody was an op ed that she co authored in the school newspaper that was criticizing the Toughs administration's response to a resolution that was passed by the student Senate that was about Israel and Palestine. Right there, was never anything to suggest that she was a threat in any way. There are various immigration proceedings that are still going on. Some of them there's three different states. There's stuff happening in Boston right now. So in terms of like the emigration hearing that's still ongoing, what the government basically did was they canceled her student visa and didn't tell her about it, and then arrested her. So that is to sort of an update on that. I found. I was watching somebody like basically live blog the hearing that was happening on May ninth. I was on vacation. I was eating my lunch at Laughing Seed, which is was a vegetarian restaurant in Asheville that very sadly announced that it was closing right after I got back, and I had kind of gushed at the server about how excited I was to be there because it is like it was, you know, one of my very favorite restaurants when I lived in Ashville and when I was in college. And when the server came to give me the check, I had just seen the part about her being released on her own recognaissance and I was crying and I wanted to say to the server. I'm not crying about the restaurant. The announcement had not happened that the restaurant was closing. Otherwise I might have also been crying about the restaurant. But I got that news while I was on vacation. I was very emotional about it. Something else that I think people might be wondering why we didn't talk about at the beginning of part one we were talking about things that are still happening that are affecting the show is the Supreme Court's decision lifting a lower courts injunction allowing the big cuts at the Department of Education. The thing is that is not directly related to our show, but I think a lot of people think that it is related to our show because they think the Department of Education has something to do with history curricula and other curricula around the country. Right, it does not dismantling the Department of Education is not going to quote return curricula to the states. Curricula is always it's already handled by the states. Yeah. If anything, one state, that being Texas, has an influence on all the other states because Texas buys so many textbooks that textbook publishers cater to them align their stuff with Texas curricula, which means Texas is who is setting a lot of the thing, not the federal government dismantling the Department of Education is also not going to repeal No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind was repealed in twenty fifteen, too late, up late. None of this has anything to do with history curricula. It doesn't have to do with other curricula. What the Department of Education is actually responsible for is stuff like providing funding to school systems that don't have a lot of money, providing support for disabled students so that they can have the free, appropriate public education that they are legally entitled to. A lot of stuff related to protecting students civil rights, like investigating claims that students have been discriminated against because of their age, or their race, or their sex or a disability. That is the Department of Education. The departm of Education also administers the federal Student Loan program. None of that has to do with educational curricula that was already being handled by the states. So that is why I did not talk about it. And part one. The other thing is the news about the Supreme Court decision related to that happened as I was finishing. I heard that at like five pm as I was doing the final read through of the episode outline, and I was like, I cannot have another thing right now. Also, just to continue on that for a minute, the signs at the national parks, like the American Historical Association statement said, there were already plenty of ways to give feedback on the parks. This is basically inviting people to make the worst faith interpretations of what they see at historical sites and then have those complaints review by people who are very eager to interpret something like slavery's legacy can still be felt today as you are a bad person who should feel bad something that we have seen again and our and our listener mail from folks who sort of hear something very different from what we said on the podcast. We very recently got an email from someone who said they were not going to listen to the show anymore because they said we said that the government was shutting down all libraries and universities and that, and that the government was telling everyone who wasn't a white male to leave the country. Like we didn't say anything even vaguely like either no, not even no, like some of those words existed. Although I will say this, I'm not going to say that. Just know in my heart I have just had a very non magnanimous and unkind read. Yeah. Yeah, like it is just a very established pattern of behavior that they there are people who go to museums and historical sites and see things that are accurately depicted about atrocities that happened at a site in the past, or slavery or sexism or whatever, and then take that in a weird personally defensive direction, yes, and turn it into something that is not what that said at all, and then file complaints about it and try to get people fired and dos people and et cetera. So I don't I don't like the science No. One two. And I will say, one of the reasons this really hits my heart, aside from its just existence being built on like the invitation of these bad reads, is that we have been, you know, fortunate enough to do shows at museums and national parks and talk to people who work in those kinds of spaces, and they are all I mean, I don't think we have run into anybody who was not working so hard to make sure people understand the nuanced nature of history and how you can't really appreciate any of the good parts if you're not also acknowledging the bad parts, and how that push and play has worked historically. And so it just feels like all at once slapping all of those wonderful people in the face, and it makes me very irate. Yeah, I was trying to make a mental list. We've done live shows at Adam's National Historical Park. Huh Gettysburg? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Should.

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Speaker 1: I can't remember if that's a site or a monument or like exactly what it says. The designation is Women's Rights National Historic Site. Yeah, I'm saying all these do memory that, So I might be getting it wrong in terms of like whether it's a historical park or a national park or a historical site or whatever. Were there any others that were like National park related? Oh girl, my memory should not be I should not be questioned in this way. Those are the ones that I'm remembering in this moment. And like Holly just said, every single person that we worked with in all of these places cares about their job, cares about being accurate, cares about having a thorough and respectful look back at what happened in this place. None of them are like, I don't know, like like there was nobody that we have interacted with in any of these shows that has been either just like phoning it in or trying to make weird commentary in order to make white people feel bad like that. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a thing, but also not a national park. But I remember when we were at Royal House and slave Quarters, oh yeah, and interviewing the people there in one of the docents, talking about a child asking her a question about one of the enslavers whose portrait is on the wall who looked like her and having that moment of revelation, and this person trying so hard to very carefully craft a response that was clear and truthful and fair without breaking this child down. And I'm like, they're working so hard already to do this in a way that is meaningful. Er. Yeah, like we said in our previous installment of Unearthed, this is not even a tenth of everything that's going on, just the parts that are like directly related to our show and our words. Yeah, unrelated to any of these things. I vote that we bring back inconsistent spelling. I mean, we kind of have. We just haven't accepted it yet, right, Yeah. Yeah, I am saying this as a person who, for my job was a copy editor. For my job was the person who like created the style manual and maintained it for the website that we worked for. And a person who I would say in my younger years as a less mature person corrected other random people as though it were my job. But none of that was useful. The spelling of pamphlet that we read off in the pamphlet about cheese was one of the most delightful things. Uh, And you know, a person who is able to read, which, to be fair, there are a lot of people who struggle with literacy, but like I think, a person who is able to read is gonna know that pamfl Yt spells pamphlet. And it delighted me so much to see that spelling, and I would just like that have more of that in my life.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I also had this hilarious personal thought about the cheese pamphlet. Okay, because I know I've told you before and I'm pretty confident we have talked about it on the show before that when I was a kid, I used to write pamphlets and leave them around. No, I think you did leave them around my house in an effort to educate my family. Yeah, I was a delightful child, shaking my head. No, well, I just said that I was correcting other people's grammar like it was my job. So I was real concerned that those backwards people I lived with were really not connecting enough with the history of the moon. And I would write these pamphlets all the time about any given subject, like I would go I would be like this week foxes, and I would look up everything I knew about foxes and write pamphlets. And so part of me was like, I almost wish we could find out that this cheese pamphlet was not the scholarly work that it has been interpreted as, but was It's just some like nerdy dork of a child. It was like, I love cheese, so funny. I did not read this whole book. I think it was one hundred and twelve pages long, if I remember correctly, And as much as I would have loved to have read one hundred and twelve pages about cheese, I had work to do and I was already running behind. But one of the things that I read that was sort of announcing that this work had been digitized, said, the parts of it are really gross, and I kind of want to, in a day when I am not quite so on deadline, go back and find out what the gross parts were of the Cheese book. It sounds great. I can imagine some things that they could have been, and some of them might be things that might not phase me at all. So I'm curious. Yeah, like you know, Rennet, Rennet, the various micro organisms that you got to have in the in the works, you know, the mold. Yeah, that's part of the deal. There are things about cheese that people find squeamish making that I'm like, No, that's where cheese comes from. Cheese is milk that has been spoiled in a controlled way, right, and it's delicious. I love it too. I love cheese. I really liked our adult discussion of the Bayou tapestry, h mostly because it once again brings to mind the tapestry made by the spiders of Tarantulon six over Futurama. There's an episode of Futurama where's Zat Brannigan and the Earth Military Art have invaded tarantul On six and as they are invading this planet that has made no aggressive moves towards humans. The spiders that live there are actually spinning this tapestry as everything is playing out, and it ends up in a museum. But it makes me it's it's joke about the Byo tapestry, and I think about it every time the bio tapestry comes up in our work, except there are no penises on that one. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know if it still exists, but there used to be, you know, a thing that you could go to online and it was like a bio tapestry generator, and you could pick little elements from the tapestry, which is really embroidery, and you could like put in words in the sort of font that it uses, and you can make your own little images things. And very early in our time on the podcast, you and I were struggling because we were getting a lot of negative feedback to put it generously, and someone made us one of these that I can't quote because it had had a squear word in it, but it was basically saying Tracy and Holly say QUI complaining using various Bydy tapestry pieces and and the font and it was very charming, and I loved it, and I would periodically go over there and make myself little pictures to amuse myself. And then at some point it wasn't working anymore. And I have not thought of that, and for years until just now me either, But now you remind me of how because that was a non delightful time in our careers. I had written in my big honkin date book, which I have talked about many times because I always love to keep multiple calendars, like I had gone forward like six months and picked a date six months from the day that I was writing it that said, if it still sucks, it's okay to quit now, okay, And like I had given it six months of like this is what I think I can handle, And by that time I was like, oh h, everything's fine, it's fine, fine, we'll just keep going before Yeah, okay, out here. It is more than ten years later, So many more than ten years later, Tracy, Like, we're on what third twelve years twelve? I think it was twenty thirteen when you and I joined. Oh yeah, I did my first episode in twenty twelve. Yeah, yeah, you were prepping because I was going to be on a vacation and I was joining after I got back from the vacation. Yes, and I was filling in for DUBLINO while she was out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, long time, we've been doing this shit more than six months. It's fine. Yeah, we made it through that first period. I had another period that I was struggling, not because of this podcast. Before my job became only this podcast, there was a period of years where I was basically doing multiple jobs and that part got really hard before I realized I needed to say that I needed to only have one job. Yeah, And I had a calendar on my wall, and I had some of those little circle stickers and different colors that you can get an office supply stores, and I was basically marking the calendar, like the really bad days. I was marking on the calendar so I could actually see, like how often is the day really bad? Because sometimes when you have a couple or three really bad days in a row, it feels like you have been in a bad time forever. And it just helped me see, okay, like is it that my job is awful every day? Or is that I'm having one hard day every week and it feels like it's perpetual, and that helps me just keep things in perspective and also helps me realize, yes, it is time for me to talk to my managers about only having one job now, which helped a lot of things. Yeah, I seem to never quite get to only one job. Yeah. Every time I think I have something else pops up and it's like something up. Yeah, that's a new thing's happened. You also host an entire additional show in addition to the one do and then occasional other shows. Yeah, and just you know, other stuff as it comes. My additional thing now is being a shop steward in the iHeart Podcast Union, which just to be clear, you are not part of because you are classified as in management because of these other things that you also do. Right, That is not it is not a whole additional job, and it is something that I am happy to do.

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Speaker 2: So anyway, I don't.

00:19:37
Speaker 1: Know if I have anything else to say about Unearthed, except as I expressed to you, I had a hard time getting through this one not because of the unearthedness. Whenever I say that, I think people get a little worried that there might not be unearthed anymore. Because it's a lot of people's very favorite episodes. This is the first thing that I worked on after taking a couple of weeks off off to do some family related stuff, and the combination of needing to get back into this type of work rather than the work I was doing at my parents' home that was a process. And then also the times that we were living in continued to be what they are while I was working on it, and it just meant that by the time that I was getting to the end of it, I was like, we have got to get this thing done because we are recording it in the morning. Yeah, you did the Holly Frii method, although you did not email it to me at two am, which I often do to you. No, so only a handful of people might know what this is about. Last night was the night that an episode of Game Changer was coming out that folks had been strongly suggested to watch as close as possible after its airing. So I had a seven pm Eastern time deadline, and I stopped working at like six point thirty and eight dumplings that my husband have made that are made by a local company. My husband had cooked them, and then we watched Game Changer. So yeah, I am I'm gonna say a controversial thing. Okay, I don't even know how to word this. I feel like, in some ways I'm not really saying what I'm about to say, okay, because it sounds like I'm like some sort of labor monster. But in some ways, I feel like vacations should be illegal. Not really, I want to take time off, but there needs to be like an on ramp period when you come back, because oh, yeah, I can't switch again. Like when people tell me like, oh, I'm back from vacation, I'm refreshed, I'm ready for work. I'm like, what is that?

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Speaker 2: Like?

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Speaker 1: I have never Like when I was in school, I kept trying to like make the case that we shouldn't have spring break, we should just end the school year a week earlier, because that last month or whatever you come back from spring break felt torturous to me, Like I could not get my brain to play nice. It was so hard to focus. And I have that when I come back from vacation, because I'm like, this is joy, this is how we all should be living all the time. Yeah, and then which is I mean, I'm very lucky to have the job I have. Please, you know, don't don't anyone think that I'm I'm saying otherwise, But I just like I wish there were a magical way where we could not have a struggle bus to get back into work when we come back from vacation. Yeah. Well I have for sure had vacations where I did come back like refreshed and re energize. How does that work? Never in my life? Never in my life. Yeah, in a couple of times. This is like it's been that when I when the vacation happened, like I really needed a break, and I also needed some time to sort of think about, Okay, what is valuable to me? What is valuable to me at work? How do I make sure that my time at work feels like something that is valuable to me, which I understand is something that a lot of people like don't necessarily have at their jobs. And so there have been times that I have taken a vacation and when I left for vacation, I was feeling tired and stuck. And when I came back, I was like, Okay, I have renewed my love and enjoyment of what I do. This recent time off was not that at all, because I was I went from doing the work that we do of this at this job to doing caregiving work and domestic work at my parents' house. So it was like I went from one kind of work to a different kind of work, and then I came back to the type of work that I more often do and kind of floundered. I was like, wait, how does my life? And I also got a brand new computer that I arrived like immediately before I took two peaks off, and that threw a whole other wrench into the works. Yeah, I don't. I never come back feeling like refreshed and renewed. I come back and I'm like, you lost your rhythm. I have to figure this out all over again. Yeah I do. I think that's it. I don't. There's no soul for it. I'm fine, like I've obviously pieced together you know enough other brain waves that my missing ones are. Okay, that's another very subtle Futurama reference, by the way, But yeah, it's always a struggle for me. Yeah, I can't. I and to the point where it has gotten easier for me to continue to work on vacation than to completely separate the two, which I know is not great either, but like it's like you got to keep your hand in or I will literally sit down when I get back and go how do books work? Like I don't even know how to do anything anymore. It's very weird. Anyway, I don't really think vacation should be illegal. I think vacation should be more all the time. I think we should live Jetson's style, where everyone works three hours a day, two days a week. That'd be great. Yeah, it's not realistic right now, but I wish we lived in a society that valued rest more.

00:24:58
Speaker 2: Than it does.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I feel. Yeah. Anyway, if you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcasts where history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. We'll be back tomorrow with a Saturday classic. We will have something brand new on Funday. 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.