Behind the Scenes Minis: Pumpkin Spice Christmas

Tracy and Holly discuss the seasonal nature of pumpkin spice, and medicinal uses of nutmeg. They then talk about artificial versus real Christmas trees. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast.

• 0:10Holly Frey?

  In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 0:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no know-it-all hosts, just real people being real.

• 0:26Holly Frey?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores, out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can

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• 2:45Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:58Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  We talked about Nutmeg this week.

• 3:02Holly Frey?

  We tuned in.

• 3:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Listeners also don't get to know that we had to take an entire pause after recording almost 10 minutes of the episode because of incredibly loud leaf blowers.

• 3:12Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 3:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Just directly outside. And then when we started back over, there were some more leaf blowers that returned, which was not expected. I think I said this in version one, but not in version two, when we, when we started over. In my personal opinion, pumpkin spice flavored things are for October.

• 3:37Holly Frey?

  Lies.

• 3:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  And later. And I was, as soon as I thought that, I thought, yeah, I thought Holly is probably like pumpkin spice, the moment it's available is I'm, what I'm thinking is probably your.

• 3:50Holly Frey?

  What do you mean the moment it's available? It's never not available. 24/7, 365, I have pumpkin spice.

• 3:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. Do you mean the blend?

• 4:01Holly Frey?

  Yes.

• 4:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  And do you also mean commercially produced products that come out in a seasonal pumpkin spice?

• 4:10Holly Frey?

  Here's the good news.

• 4:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Holly Frey?

  Some of those things come out year round and they just get pushed a lot then. So if you're like me and you love pumpkin and pumpkin spice, everything, because I love both, said it before and I'll say it again, I'm the weirdo that will eat pumpkin puree out of a can. I know that's a lot of squash, too. It's not all pumpkin. I don't care. I'll take all of it. Um, but like I have like subscriptions set up with certain vendors so that I'm always getting my pumpkin pie, which includes pumpkin spice, coffee syrup on a quarterly shipment subscription. So I'm never out of it.

• 4:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 4:53Holly Frey?

  I will make my own pumpkin spice, everything all the time. Listen, I don't wait for the PSL because I can't drink it anyway anymore.

• 5:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 5:02Holly Frey?

  Which is about to segue me to another thing that makes me irate, but we'll get there. Um, I have so many feelings just because it's a little too sweet for me. I can't handle that much sugar. So I make a like a sugar free version at home usually.

• 5:18Holly Frey?

  But also, do you remember this is into more pumpkin than nutmeg? But several years ago, I don't know how many, when someone did some chemical analysis and was like, there's no pumpkin in a pumpkin spice latte.

• 5:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  There's not supposed to be.

• 5:36Holly Frey?

  Hello, thank you. It's not a pumpkin latte. It is a pumpkin spice latte. It is the spices, including the glorious nutmeg.

• 5:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 5:46Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that makes me irate every time.

• 5:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 5:50Holly Frey?

  Um, here's my one other thing.

• 5:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 5:53Holly Frey?

  Tracy V. Wilson.

• 5:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yes.

• 5:55Holly Frey?

  You left out the most important use of nutmeg and why it is a year round spice.

• 6:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Please tell me.

• 6:02Holly Frey?

  Cocktail garnish.

• 6:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure.

• 6:05Holly Frey?

  Yeah. If you're making flips, if you're making painkillers, if you're making a variety of cocktails.

• 6:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Holly Frey?

  Have that nutmeg on your back.

• 6:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Have some nutmeg on there. Yeah. That sounds great.

• 6:17Holly Frey?

  I like to drink a lot of flips, so in it goes all day, every day.

• 6:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  We use some of the blends that often have nutmeg in there all the time in our kitchen. Like, rizalhnut is a frequent thing, which that is a blend that can really vary. I think it means something like top of the shelf. It's meant to sort of showcase the spice vendors' best of their product is like my understanding of how that blend works. So you can make it yourself with lots of different spices. You can buy one from a specific spice shop that might be very different. But one of the things that is often in it is nutmeg, and that is frequently in use at our house.

• 7:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Because I love eggnog so, so much, and because those sugar cookies in our family have nutmeg in the flavoring, nutmeg, just straight nutmeg without other flavors also in it, has always just felt like a very Christmasy specifically flavor to me.

• 7:32Holly Frey?

  Gotcha.

• 7:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  And as I was researching this and I realized how many other things also have nutmeg in it, like sauce, a lot of sausages are seasoned with nutmeg. I was like, oh, I'm just, I'm having a lot more year-round nutmeg than I ever realized because the things in the autumn and winter are the ones that are maybe the most nutmeg forward of all of them. I do love all of those things. They are really delicious. Something that I stumbled onto after having written the episode that I didn't, I'd already sent you the outline. Don't even know why I found this after the fact. I had moved on to another topic. But it is one of my old favorite, one of my old favorite topics that we've covered on

• 8:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  the show, which is Hildegard of Bingen. Who I just have a big fondness for. She apparently believed that nutmeg had, quote, "a great warmth and a good temperament in its strength. If a person eats nutmeg, it opens the heart and purifies the senses and brings a good disposition." Uh, what a lovely thing to associate with nutmeg. This is from her Physica, uh, in which she talks about medicinal uses of all of these different, uh, spices and herbs and things like that, among other topics. And she talks about pulverizing equal weights of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, and making little cakes with that mixture along with fine whole wheat and water.

• 9:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  And then said that eating these would open the heart and relieve impaired senses and make the mind more cheerful. So various people have turned that very basic instruction into a recipe that they call Cookies of Joy. And all of that sounds super delicious to me. And, uh, there's a recommendation to eat it every day. I sure would eat that every day.

• 9:24Holly Frey?

  I have a question.

• 9:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 9:25Holly Frey?

  About things you eat.

• 9:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh huh.

• 9:27Holly Frey?

  Cause you mentioned sugar cookies are a Christmas tradition for you.

• 9:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh huh.

• 9:32Holly Frey?

  Are they a special thing for you for Christmas? Or do your family make them year round? Or is there a Christmas only version?

• 9:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  I have made them myself at other times of the year. Uh, as a family recipe, they are a Christmas thing. They are made at Christmas. They are decorated for Christmas with, uh, usually colored sanding sugar.

• 9:54Holly Frey?

  Uh huh.

• 9:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Um, and sometimes other little things, this sort of decorative elements that are always very Christmasy in their, uh, doing. So my, um, grandmother is, uh, the, the first, I guess, great grandmother, first generation of the family who's like, who's, uh, sugar cookies I heard about from the family, uh, because she had died before I was born. But people would talk about how thin she was able to get them in a way that, uh, other people in the family just could not replicate. By the time I was born, my grandmother was making- Them. My mom was making them. Uh, my mom is not able to do that anymore because of her disabilities.

• 10:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  My dad does them now and uh, they are super good. Um, I look forward to them every year. When I have made them for some other purpose, uh, I have, uh, usually cut them out into different shapes. Cause they're, they're rolled and cut with cutters. And so I have cut them with using different shaped cookie cutters and decorated them differently for different purposes. Um, and eating them, it still felt a little Christmasy to me because that association is so strong with them there.

• 11:08Holly Frey?

  I'm fascinated.

• 11:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  There are other sugar cookies that are like, I would just either buy from a store or eat, uh, that do not have that Christmas connotation for me.

• 11:21Holly Frey?

  Oh, now I have more questions.

• 11:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, okay. Just, uh.

• 11:26Holly Frey?

  These may or may not be good for a behind the scenes. I'm just like, okay, how do, how do they taste different from regular sugar cookies?

• 11:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Um, well, I've had sugar cookies that have, uh, just instead of having nutmeg, have maybe had some other spice flavoring them. Or maybe there's been just vanilla and no nutmeg or, uh, like I, I think just because there's also, um, eggnog having a lot of nutmeg in it. Just, it feels like a Christmasy flavor to me in a lot of ways. I think one of the reasons that it's used in so many fall and winter traditional foods here in the U S is that it can feel, feel very warming.

• 12:07Holly Frey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's a very warming flavor. Um, and so it's comforting to have it.

• 12:13Holly Frey?

  It goes into the blend called warming spices.

• 12:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. That makes total sense to me.

• 12:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  I seem to remember at one point in my life, another seasonal thing for usually Thanksgiving in my family is called persimmon pudding. And if you've never had persimmon pudding, the texture of it is almost like pumpkin pie filling, but there's an almost figginess to it because of the texture of the persimmons. And I seem to remember there being a very heated argument about whether there was supposed to be nutmeg in there.

• 13:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Because somebody else had made it other than the aunt who usually did that.

• 13:07Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 13:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  And there was just a big controversy about whether nutmeg was correct to have in there.

• 13:15Holly Frey?

  See, as we've mentioned in the episode, people have very strong feelings.

• 13:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 13:20Holly Frey?

  About.

• 13:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 13:22Holly Frey?

  These things. But here's my take.

• 13:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 13:25Holly Frey?

  There may be a way person X makes it, right? Like, the way I make a cookie may not be the way someone else makes the same cookie or the cookie with the same name. But like, my reaction is never to be that it's wrong, but like, I want to try your kind, too.

• 13:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 13:44Holly Frey?

  I don't know if that's just my gluttony driving the bus of like, sure, let me try all of it.

• 13:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 13:52Holly Frey?

  I never understand getting mad about people not doing things the way you do them.

• 13:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I have seen this phenomenon. And when, you know, when it comes to me saying that I want to have pumpkin spice flavored things in the autumn, that's just me. If you want to whenever, have it whenever. I'll also get mad at the weather if it becomes fall and I feel like it's too warm outside to be having some kind of gigantic pumpkin spice coffee beverage. Because iced, it's not as good to me as some other things are good as an iced coffee. So, yeah.

• 14:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  I, as we said in the episode, I know this is not just about holiday foods, but it's December. So that's what I'm thinking about the most right now.

• 14:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is coming out the week of Christmas, in which probably there will be a lot of eggnog at my house.

• 14:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Possibly also sugar cookies. It's my, my dad, if my dad continues to make them, because he is also getting older in years and things take more and more effort to do them as we age.

• 15:10Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I'll probably make a lot of flips.

• 15:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 15:15Holly Frey?

  Although lately I've been doing different things with flips, like making them spicy and putting red pepper on them instead of, instead of nutmeg.

• 15:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  That sounds really interesting.

• 15:26Holly Frey?

  It is. It's, uh, it's really just like you're, listen, I'll give out a cocktail recipe. It's like two ounces of your brandy or your cognac, whichever you prefer, an ounce of chili liqueur, your whole egg, you can add like a half ounce of demerara syrup if you want. Give it a good dry shake so the egg gets nice and frothy and then you can shake it with ice and pour it out, strain it out, and then you just top it with a little red pepper flake.

• 15:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yum.

• 15:52Holly Frey?

  It's like a spicy, not quite old school, Christmasy, winter bevy. That's a little different. I just love it.

• 16:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Holly Frey?

  Workshopping it over here. We're always playing. We're always playing.

• 16:08Holly Frey?

  But there are a lot of good drinks that have nutmeg on them.

• 16:14Holly Frey?

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• 16:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the new podcast, Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness and entertainment, to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 16:39Holly Frey?

  Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into To a pitch or a musician before a show, the conversation starts with the official bio ends.

• 16:48Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 17:00Holly Frey?

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• 17:03Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 17:15Speaker 03

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• 17:18Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 17:38Speaker 03

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• 17:46Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 17:53Speaker 04

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• 17:58Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 18:02Speaker 04

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• 18:06Speaker 03

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• 18:10Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 18:12Speaker 05

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• 18:16Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 18:52Holly Frey?

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• 19:52Holly Frey?

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• 20:34Holly Frey?

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• 21:01Holly Frey?

  Talked about Christmas decor this year.

• 21:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Holly Frey?

  I have so many thoughts on this matter. There are so many things to talk about because people have strong feelings about Christmas decor. One, I don't care when you want to put it up.

• 21:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 21:16Holly Frey?

  As we've mentioned, I think we've talked about it here before. Because I grew up going to craft stores, holidays are year round to me anyway. Like, I don't have these weird, like, only after Thanksgiving, only after Labor Day, like, whenever. My house is Halloween 24/7/365, so like, I have it all the time. But, um, Christmas, I know people that put up their Christmas trees extra early this year because they just felt like they needed some joy. None of this, like, up on the 24th, then down in a couple of weeks thing.

• 21:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sure.

• 21:49Holly Frey?

  Uh, and ours has no rules. We get to it when we get to it, and it comes down when it comes down. It's fine. I definitely have a memory of my mom one year saying that we were not going to take the Christmas tree down until we had received some gifts that another family member had promised they were sending. Listen, don't do that, because it was like, May 30th before we took that tree down.

• 22:17Holly Frey?

  Which is fine if you're into it, but I think she was just adamant that, like, we had to have the tree until the, I don't know why.

• 22:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Holly Frey?

  Don't do that. Okay. The big, very argument-spawning question. Real or artificial?

• 22:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Artificial because.

• 22:37Holly Frey?

  I have an artificial because too, so.

• 22:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. So when I was little, for the first few years of my childhood, we did have a live tree every year.

• 22:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  And then eventually moved to artificial. And I think part of the reason with that was just that the cleanup from the real tree was a lot. My mom had felt like artificial trees were really ugly, and so getting to the point of one in the late 70s, early 80s, that she thought was attractive enough, I think was part of it. Um, for my part, I have always had cats. And I feel like an artificial tree uh can be managed a little better for the cats. I know people probably have the opposite conclusion for other reasons.

• 23:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Um, another big reason, though, is that my spouse has a range of allergies to the natural world. And bringing a live tree into our house would probably aggravate some of them. Um, so what we have is not just an artificial tree. It is a prelit, artificial pencil style tree. Because we live in a house in New England that we could afford to buy, which means it is small. There is not a lot of available floor space for a whole, the whole footprint of the base of a typically shaped tree. So it is very narrow, um, which also seems to have, knock on wood, kept the cats from trying

• 24:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  to climb up into it. Like, the branches are not really big enough to support a whole cat. Um, and they, for the most part, have not messed with it every year since we have had the tree and cats.

• 24:25Holly Frey?

  Okay, my artificial because is a little more troubling a story for some people.

• 24:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay. Oh, okay, I'm just gonna, I've written a story in my head and you, I'm gonna tell you whether it was right.

• 24:38Holly Frey?

  We'll see. Okay, so one year when I was a kid, my dad was stationed overseas. My mom insisted that we get a real tree that year. We didn't always, sometimes we would have artificial, sometimes we would have a real one, there was no rhyme or reason.

• 24:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:54Holly Frey?

  And we got a real one that year. We got it home and we put it in its little stand with the water. We put all the decorations on it and we even put some gifts under it because we already had some. And the next morning, we woke up to what I'm gonna guess was millions of spiders.

• 25:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Holly Frey?

  Everywhere, all over, everything.

• 25:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. My guess was gonna be bug infestation in the tree.

• 25:20Holly Frey?

  Yes, and I like spiders fine, but that was overwhelming. I don't really want to invite them over for Christmas. They can, if they show up at my house, I will treat them with hospitality and find them a place outside. But they're not like on the guest list.

• 25:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's a lot of spiders.

• 25:38Holly Frey?

  I just remember being like, I will never have a real tree, and I haven't.

• 25:42Holly Frey?

  Now, the cat thing, I'm, I'm stalling a little bit to talk about my terrible buying habits. But the cat thing, we had a funny turn of events, which is that, um, some years back, I don't know, 10, possibly more, not much more. We had been in our house a few years and I was like, hey, when we were in our, our apartment, we only had like a little, the kind you would put on like a table, like one of those little dinky two to three footer things.

• 26:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Holly Frey?

  And we had been like, maybe we get a tree. And we got a tree that year. And we decided that we would like test it by just putting it out without ornaments and seeing what happened.

• 26:27Holly Frey?

  And at the time, we had, we have five or six at that point. We had some cats. And we went to work one day and we came home. And not only was the tree obviously trashed, but two of the branches were in our bed.

• 26:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 26:44Holly Frey?

  There was just like, I was like, did someone break in? Like it was so bad.

• 26:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:50Holly Frey?

  It was so bad. And it was like, I don't understand what's taking place here. And I, of course, fingered the usual suspect. And I was like, you are the bad cat. This is clearly your doing. But we didn't take the tree down. Probably because we were just like too lazy.

• 27:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:08Holly Frey?

  And we went to work the next day. We came home and there was more mayhem. And on the third day, we came home and the culprit was asleep in the trashed out tree. And it was not the one I thought. It was one of the sweetest cats we've ever had.

• 27:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  How funny.

• 27:26Holly Frey?

  And when I awakened him from his slumber, which he had had to thread himself through some branches because so many were missing at that point. Like he had had to do acrobatic work to find a place that would support his weight. Because he also was not a tiny cat and it was not Mr. Burns. Don't anybody think it. Um, it was one of our lovely Siamese. And when I awakened him, it was one of the only times he was ever insolent. And he looked at me like, what are you doing? Call the manager. Like, like irritated at me for being mad that he had destroyed the tree and made it into his clubhouse. We eventually started putting up a tree when, when those cats, our Siamese were quite young then. They were only like two. And when they hit about seven

• 28:10Holly Frey?

  or eight, they had chilled out a little bit. And so we started putting up a tree again and it's been fine.

• 28:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Holly Frey?

  And now we just have the two boys left. And I, this is where I confess to like a problem in my life.

• 28:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 28:23Holly Frey?

  Okay. First of all, I love our Christmas tree. It's purple and it's fun. And we put toys on it and it's great. But I like other colors and apparently in a fugue state, which sometimes happens to me, I get up in the morning and while I'm waiting for my coffee to be ready, I get on my phone. And I do things that I I'm not even aware of and don't remember.

• 28:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 28:46Holly Frey?

  Long story short, I now also have a pink tree and a black tree and I don't know where they're gonna go.

• 28:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's great.

• 28:54Holly Frey?

  We have no idea where there's, those are gonna go, but we'll find a space somewhere. But it's, um, we're gonna have fun.

• 29:05Holly Frey?

  Deanna Flores, flag football star, trailblazer, broadcaster and entrepreneur, knows what pressure feels like. She knows what it takes to step up in the moment and she knows that even the biggest achievement is never the end of the story.

• 29:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the new podcast Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness and entertainment, to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 29:29Holly Frey?

  Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into a pitch, or a musician before a show, the conversation starts with the official bio ends.

• 29:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, Deanna shares her own experiences, questions and even doubts. Her guests learn from her, she learns from them, and you might pick up something along the way. No lectures, no know-it-all host, just real people being real.

• 29:51Holly Frey?

  Come curious and leave with something you can use.

• 29:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico.

• 30:08Speaker 06

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• 30:36Holly Frey?

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• 31:19Holly Frey?

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• 31:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 32:25Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 32:39Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 33:23Holly Frey?

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• 33:56Holly Frey?

  Now, this brings us to the important grown up part of the discussion. I did not realize until I was working on this episode, how much vehement arguing has gone on since the 60s and continues to go on about whether it is better for the environment to have an artificial tree or a natural tree. Both sides of the argument continue to be so completely confident that I don't know. Because, right, like the various parts, there's more to it. I'm certainly not going to be able to parse out the whole thing quickly and casually. But like, obviously, like, the idea of cutting down trees is part of what people are like, we are destroying a natural resource. Why would you do that?

• 34:41Holly Frey?

  The earth needs trees.

• 34:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  They're being grown for that purpose, though.

• 34:46Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 34:48Holly Frey?

  And also, like, then you have to throw it away and it becomes a trash thing. And yeah, there, which, again, that there are other things that can be done with that. A lot of places like chip it and use it for mulch or whatever.

• 35:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, my community has a tree pickup day that it then gets mulched.

• 35:06Holly Frey?

  Whereas, you know, artificial trees, people are like, well, yes, but that is part of big industry. It's creating, you know, industrial waste and manufacture. And now most of the trees you would get in the US are made overseas. And not only is that like, does that mean we don't necessarily know about all the regulations around how they're made? But also you have a pretty significant footprint in terms of transporting those items to homes in the US. And that is bad. Now, there are still companies in the US that make artificial trees. And there are people that are like, no, but that has created a lot of jobs. Listen, there are arguments on both sides. I just wanted to acknowledge.

• 35:52Holly Frey?

  That people argue about it.

• 35:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I, uh, the tree that we are using, we bought the year we bought this house. And we are going to continue using it until it's no longer functional. Like,

• 36:06Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, that's how that's gonna work. And occasionally I will see arguments about whether something is really sustainable in quotation marks. That goes into something like the amount of energy it takes to make a reusable coffee mug versus the amount of energy it takes to make a, a, you know, wax lined or whatever, paper coffee cup.

• 36:29Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 36:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  And it's like, but okay, but did you factor in the fact that people are gonna use that, that mug, that mug until they die?

• 36:39Holly Frey?

  Right. That's the thing. There, there isn't a lot of good information on usage cases that extrapolate along like the potential lifetime of such a thing.

• 36:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:54Holly Frey?

  We had the artificial tree that we had for a long time was the one that I grew up with.

• 37:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:01Holly Frey?

  Um, and we inherited it. And frankly, we finally got rid of it because, and when I say I grew up with it, I mean, that thing was probably made in maybe 1975.

• 37:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Holly Frey?

  It's had taken on a weird odor.

• 37:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:16Holly Frey?

  Like not musty, but a unique, the way plastics breaking down start to smell.

• 37:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Holly Frey?

  And it had started to melt in places when it was around lights that weren't even necessarily that hot.

• 37:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Holly Frey?

  And I was like, safety gone.

• 37:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, right.

• 37:31Holly Frey?

  Yeah. We have gotten, you know, 35 years out of this tree. I think it's okay to say goodbye.

• 37:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Holly Frey?

  So, yeah, I, um,

• 37:45Holly Frey?

  I like the fantasy colors is my problem.

• 37:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I think that sounds very fun.

• 37:50Holly Frey?

  I love a pink tree. I love our purple tree very much. Um, can we talk briefly about the German pickle situation?

• 37:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 37:57Holly Frey?

  You know about the pickle, right?

• 37:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hiding the pickle in the tree ornaments?

• 38:02Holly Frey?

  Right. Which I had always heard, you know, if you go to Epcot in the Germany pavilion, they'll sell you all the pickle ornaments. But I was reading a blog written by a German person who claims that is baloney. And that if you ask anybody who is actually from Germany, they'll be like, we don't know where this pickle thing started.

• 38:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  So that leads me to the question of then, is it a German American thing?

• 38:25Holly Frey?

  I don't know, which is really why I'm putting this at the end of our discussion because I'm putting a call out.

• 38:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. If you know the history of the pickle ornaments.

• 38:33Holly Frey?

  You have delivered on smart orange cats. You have delivered on fabulous personal ghost stories. Do you know a German person that knows about the pickle ornament? If you don't know what we're talking about, for context, just as many glass ornaments, you will sometimes see one that looks like a pickle and you're probably like, what is the pickle allowed to do with Christmas? Although now you can find a glass ornament of anything.

• 38:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Of anything, yeah.

• 39:00Holly Frey?

  Here's a cheeseburger. It's a pickle. Same thing. But allegedly, in the tradition that people claim comes from Germany, or possibly German Americans, like the kid that could find the pickle ornament kind of hidden in the branches of the tree would like get a special gift or something. And then sometimes there's the addendum of like, the first adult to spot it will have extra good fortune in the new year to come. Like, there are other things, but that's the German pickle. And just in case anybody listening had not heard of it before. And I, I found this person writing a German blog and claiming they really

• 39:41Holly Frey?

  did not love the German pickle story because it seemed to them like a bunch of stuff people in the US made up.

• 39:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:48Holly Frey?

  It's not even appropriation. It's what?

• 39:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Holly Frey?

  So if you know the real, real, if you are from a German household, I want to know if you know about the pickle.

• 39:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Holly Frey?

  If you're from a German American household, I want to know if you know about the pickle.

• 40:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Holly Frey?

  I just want to, I just want experiential evidence of actual human beings.

• 40:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right. And not catalogs.

• 40:12Holly Frey?

  Correct.

• 40:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I will say, I will sometimes see discourse on whatever app

• 40:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  about whether this or that thing actually comes from a place. And a lot of times it's like, yeah, that doesn't come from that place. That is something that has developed within the communities of immigrants from that place.

• 40:40Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 40:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Living in the United States, and that has its own worth and value.

• 40:44Holly Frey?

  100%, 100%. And it does, I mean, I start to think of it in terms of like, how could this have played out?

• 40:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:54Holly Frey?

  And like, at a time when, you know, Christmas ornaments also not cheap.

• 41:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 41:00Holly Frey?

  For a long time. And even now, like, you can buy cheapy ones, but like, nice ones can be really pricey. And I could see a family being like, this would be a fun way to add something special to our tree that costs next to nothing.

• 41:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh huh.

• 41:14Holly Frey?

  It will be a fun thing for an hour on Christmas morning or Christmas Eve, or whenever they do their tradition.

• 41:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 41:21Holly Frey?

  That's the other thing. One of the, the things that people say is the detractor is that the way that story is told often in the US, it is when the kids wake up on Christmas morning, blah, blah, blah. But in Germany, you don't usually do your gift thing on Christmas morning. That's a Christmas Eve situation. And so they're like, that's your first clue that this is wrong.

• 41:40Holly Frey?

  So, again, you've delivered on the orange cats that are smart, I believe now.

• 41:48Holly Frey?

  Now for the German pickle. We are now past Christmas, so. I hope that if you celebrate Christmas, that you had a very beautiful Christmas that was filled with love and joy and delicious sugar cookies. If you're in Tracy's and many other families. Or other delicious things, because the best part of Christmas is feasting in my book. And that you feels that you've gotten some rest and relaxation out of the deal. If you are headed into your weekend right now, I hope you get a little more of that. And if you're not headed into your weekend, I still hope that you find some time to recharge and that you have had great holidays and that the new year, which is coming up quickly, will also be good.

• 42:31Holly Frey?

  We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and then on Monday with something brand new.

• 42:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  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.

• 42:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast.

• 43:01Holly Frey?

  In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 43:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no know-it-all host, just real people being real.

• 43:18Holly Frey?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores, out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 44:35Speaker 06

  Live Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of the Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.

• 45:03Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 45:33Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.