Behind the Scenes Minis: Opera and Joyous Research

Holly talks about an opera based on the life of Eadweard Muybridge. Tracy and Holly talk about how they learned about periods as kids. 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.

• 0:00Holly Frey?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. 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 Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:35Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:19Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:46Speaker 02

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• 2:16Holly Frey?

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

• 2:27Holly Frey?

  Hello and happy Friday. I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:32Holly Frey?

  We talked about Edward Moybridge this week.

• 2:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yep.

• 2:36Holly Frey?

  Oh, Edward Moybridge.

• 2:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  So I will confess, this is not a name that I recognized.

• 2:41Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  But as soon as you started talking about the photography he did, I immediately could bring to mind...

• 2:49Holly Frey?

  That horse running.

• 2:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  The horse running especially.

• 2:52Holly Frey?

  100%. Yeah, he's a fascinating one. I'm glad I got into this. This one was one that almost became a two-parter, but since we just did the sewing two-parter, I was like, Holly, slow your roll. They can't all be two-parters.

• 3:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  And then unearthed two-parter immediately after sewing.

• 3:05Holly Frey?

  Right. And I was like, mm, no. But I could have gotten, you know, there's part of me that wants to read every trial document.

• 3:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:13Holly Frey?

  That was such a wild thing. And I want to talk about that in a minute. But one of the things that just came up in my research that I hadn't thought about, and I was like, oh, duh, was that his work was contextualized in one of the books I read, that book River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit, in terms of how a number of people were writing about how to be cultured and how to bring culture into your home, including like Louisa May Alcott. And one of the things that they suggested was, you know, to have landscape imagery in your home because that suggested you were refined. And they would, I think there's a Louisa May Alcott article where she mentions, she name checks both Moybridge's photography

• 3:58Holly Frey?

  and Beirstot's paintings in the same group. And I was like, oh, I didn't even think about the fact that I've been on a landscapy, the landscapy kick. That was just a magical accident.

• 4:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  I'm scrolling through Google image results of just his name. And so many of these other motion studies I have for sure seen before.

• 4:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Just a ton of them.

• 4:20Holly Frey?

  They're really, really interesting and famous and they get used a lot in like a stock footage in things where people are talking about motion and film history and whatnot. We read that kind description of Leland Stanford. We did not read just this one line. I feel bad because I didn't notate what article I saw it in, but someone described Edward Moybridge as looking like a mix of Walt Whitman and Zeus. And it tickled me so much and it's so accurate.

• 4:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  I agree.

• 4:57Holly Frey?

  I also mentioned at the top of the show that I would talk about having this revelation that, oh, I know this story and where I know it from.

• 5:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Tell me.

• 5:07Holly Frey?

  And it is from one of what is perhaps, depending on your point of view, my most pretentious interests, which is the work of Philip Glass.

• 5:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 5:18Holly Frey?

  Give me those half step arpeggios for 10 minutes at a time, all day, every day. I love Philip Glass. Einstein on the beach blew my mind when I first heard it when I was in high school and I have been a devotee ever since.

• 5:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 5:32Holly Frey?

  So of course Philip Glass wrote an opera about Edward Moybridge called The Photographer that I had forgotten I had seen clips of. It was initially started that project by a man named Rob Malasch of the Netherlands. I don't know if I'm saying his name correctly, but he wrote the, I don't know that he wrote the libretto, but he wrote the story of it. And then Philip Glass made an opera around it that is, the one staging I have seen footage of is a very plain, very minimalist staging and it, it almost tickles me knowing how some of these things were playing out.

• 6:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Holly Frey?

  But listen, I will never, never apologize for loving Philip Glass because I love him.

• 6:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  So I could not in any way describe myself as like a Philip Glass devotee just because there's a lot of stuff to experience in the world and finite time. But Philip Glass wrote the score to the movie Kundun.

• 6:31Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 6:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Which is, if you are not familiar with this movie, it is a biopic of Tenzin Gass the 14th Dalai Lama by Martin Scorsese.

• 6:43Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 6:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Which.

• 6:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  My understanding is that that movie was almost kind of buried when it came out

• 6:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  because of all of the social and political issues involving the United States and China and Tibet and the diplomatic relationships among all of them. But it, I like, I don't, I can't really comment on like the, the, the cultural appropriateness of all of these particular people making this film together. But if you are talking about somebody needing to write a movie score for a religious figure in a religious context that involves a lot of chanting and repetitive, repetitive actions

• 7:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  and thoughts and like ritual, things with a lot of ritual significance, it makes a lot of sense for Philip Glass to be the person writing the score for it.

• 7:44Holly Frey?

  Oh, he's so great. Again, like, it's not for everybody. I've had people in the car with me who are like, can we flip to anything else? Please, I beg. But for me, it's very, it's cool and it's zen and I love it and it's beautiful. And often the vocal punctuation of it is really sharp and staccato, which I love. I mean, I'm not an expert on opera by any means. I feel like a, a big dum-dum whenever I'm actually talking to people who know a lot about it, but I just emotionally connect to his work so deeply and so instantly. And I love all of it. And it's so good. Anyway, that's my brief foray into my Philip Glass fan.

• 8:27Holly Frey?

  The thing that I find interesting all about all of this, and it's been written about a lot by a lot of people, is that there are a lot of folks who basically some, they, I won't say they sum this up, but they examine Edward Waybridge's life as an example of a head injury that changed history.

• 8:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 8:50Holly Frey?

  Because he was, I mean, we talked about it in the episode, that he was characterized as having changed significantly in personality after that happened.

• 9:05Holly Frey?

  And how, you know, he became very driven in a way that was different than his behavior before, when he was pretty happy to have a lovely little bookshop. And suddenly he was like, I must take all of the risks. I must go out and do crazy things. I must wander. I must never settle. And it has been really interesting. There are a lot of papers. I did not get into it because I feel like you get into a whole other part in terms of psychology and medicine and psychiatry and also the diagnosing of a person who is deceased.

• 9:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 9:39Holly Frey?

  But there are a lot of, you know, very well established and respected experts in, you know, things like head injuries that are like, yes, his behavior shifts are very much concurrent with someone who has had head trauma.

• 9:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:54Holly Frey?

  And it's just a fascinating thing to me because we don't know if he ever would have gotten those photographs and invented the zoopraxiscope if he had not had that incident happen.

• 10:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right, right.

• 10:06Holly Frey?

  He may have just been a nice guy who had a bookshop in San Francisco and we never learned his name as like an important historical figure.

• 10:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Well, and especially because it sounds like from his description of his, like, what he experienced after that injury, it like, it sounds like he was having kind of a double vision phenomenon.

• 10:23Holly Frey?

  For a while, it got better. Yeah. But it may have changed how he perceived things that he views. Yeah.

• 10:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right. That may have been part of what gave him the idea on how to do some of this. Yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 10:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 11:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager, Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and Held up on game day.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 11:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing. What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 11:33Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 12:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 12:45Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 13:30Holly Frey?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 13:41Speaker 05

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• 14:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  This also reminds me a little bit of Phineas Gage, who he is often invoked in a lot of the papers about Eadweard Muybridge's injury. So if you are not familiar with Phineas Gage, I'm saying this from memory. Phineas Gage was working like a railroad worker and his job involved setting an explosive and something went wrong and the tamping iron blew out of the hole and threw part of his face and head. Yeah. We did an episode on this. It was a Saturday classic on May 23 of 2020. And a lot of it is about like, number one, the fact that he survived that injury. Wild.

• 14:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  In an era where there were not like modern antibiotics. And also the fact that his personality seemed to have some changes afterward. Although it's, if I'm remembering correctly from that episode, some of the writing about it makes it sound more extreme than it probably actually was. But that becoming part of, you know, the more knowledge about like how the brain works and how the brain works after an injury and that kind of thing. Yeah. It's super fascinating. Most.

• 15:35Holly Frey?

  Researchers who have kind of examined his case think that he had an injury to the orbitofrontal cortex, which, you know, controls things like the regulation of emotion and

• 15:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Holly Frey?

  you know, you can get this injury without it being easily visible because it's right near the the bony ridges that are

• 16:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:00Holly Frey?

  you know, that make up your eye socket.

• 16:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Holly Frey?

  It's right behind those those ridges that form the eye socket. And so you can actually cut into your orbitofrontal cortex without knowing it and have these changes in your behavior, even though you are recovering seemingly outwardly that aren't necessarily as as easily discernible

• 16:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:25Holly Frey?

  to even medical professionals. They're like, great, his vision's getting better, like, he can function on his own, he can travel, he can make decisions.

• 16:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Holly Frey?

  But really, he is a different person than he was

• 16:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 16:37Holly Frey?

  before all of this, as kind of evidenced by the fact that he was like, well, I gotta go kill that guy. But then I'm like, I don't know, is that brain injury? Because everybody else was like, yeah, you had to go kill that guy.

• 16:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I mean, it just, it seems like the, that's, that's where it gets kind of wild to me. And like, I know in earlier eras, and especially in this context, like, earlier eras in places that were in the western part of North America.

• 17:06Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  There was like more of a culture of that kind of violence being used to solve problems and that being seen as just sort of how it worked.

• 17:17Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I don't know if that's related to that at all. That's absolutely speculation on my part. But the fact that the jury also ultimately came to agree that, yes, he was justified in killing someone who had had an affair with his wife.

• 17:34Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 17:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  After being instructed the opposite by the judge.

• 17:39Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that's the part that really gets me is that the judge is like, do not, do not think about that part because that's not part of it. We know that happened, but still, somebody's dead. Like, that's not, Yeah. This is not an eye for an eye kind of situation, you guys. And they're like, yeah, it is. It also feels like not exactly the same thing as jury nullification, because usually when we're talking about jury nullification, the idea is that the law in question is unjust. And at least from what you have said, that doesn't seem like where they were coming from. It wasn't that, oh, a law making it illegal to murder people is not unjust. Yeah, no, they literally like, I would do the same thing, so I can't condemn him.

• 18:24Holly Frey?

  Right. Whoa. Okay. Yeah, it would make me very scared to go to Northern California in the 1870s. Yeah. Well, there are also cultures in the world still today where like, honor killings are kind of, Yes, 100%. A thing. 100%. I don't know. It's, it's took me totally by surprise. Yeah, it's because it's wild. It's interesting because Flora and Harry are talked about in a number of different ways. Like, I read a death announcement for Flora that's kind of like, she kind of had a checkered past, you guys. Like, it's, it's a little defamatory in a very gentle sort of way.

• 19:07Holly Frey?

  The way they write about it, they're like, well, she was married at 17 and she was actually living away from her husband for a while before she divorced him. And like, there's a definitely some characterization of her as having taken advantage of Edward in some way, in getting him to, to help her out of her first marriage and then marrying her. I mean, listen, he was at the time already a famous photographer, so he probably would have had a number of women who would be interested in him. As a potential high-earning mate, but I don't know. Listen, his friends during the trial were like, no, he was really super in love with her.

• 19:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 19:50Holly Frey?

  So I don't, which is possible. He could have been super in love with her and she could have been taking advantage of him. That is possible, but also this was at a time when women got characterized as sneaky weasels with very little provocation. So I don't know. And Harry Larkin's life story is bananas, like bananas, bananas. When you read about his life before he got to San Francisco, it's like he had all these wild adventures and feats and people are like, I don't actually think most of this is true. A lot of historians are like, I think he made some of this up. Like, so we don't, we don't really know what actual hijinks he got into, but it didn't end well for him, obviously. And then there's the midwife, Susan Smith. What a story.

• 20:33Holly Frey?

  Anyway, the statue of Edward Moybridge at the Presidio is beautiful.

• 20:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Holly Frey?

  If you go see it, that's the guy who murdered somebody in cold blood.

• 20:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  And was acquitted.

• 20:44Holly Frey?

  And was acquitted for it and went on to have a very, very successful rest of his life, which is a little mind-blowing, but also, I mean.

• 20:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  I just, I feel like I'm going to get hate mail for saying this, but usually when that happens today, it is a cop that kills someone and then is acquitted.

• 21:03Holly Frey?

  You're, you're not wrong. Yeah. But in this case, Edward Moybridge, a famous photographer.

• 21:10Holly Frey?

  I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if his fame factored in to the jury's decision.

• 21:18Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis.

• 21:47Holly Frey?

  SMA and other rare autoimmune conditions. Each episode explores hope, progress and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 23:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  We talked about Beatrice Kenner and Mildred Smith and their various inventions this week, which meant we talked a lot about menstrual protection. Yeah. And, and Holly, you and I came of age to start menstruating during the transition from sanitary belts to adhesive pads. Yes. That there also were other options happening at the same time. But the thing that caused us to have to kind of stop in the minute, in a minute, in the middle of recording to clarify something was like the, the belt to adhesive transition. Yeah. Because I think you got health class. Discussion at school with a video that still had belts in it.

• 24:11Holly Frey?

  Well, and we also got a little sample pack that had one.

• 24:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, really?

• 24:16Holly Frey?

  Now, granted, this could reflect on my school system. For all I know, those had been sitting there in a closet for like 10 years. I don't know. But I remember them giving us a little sample pack and being like, no, not this. Because we did know that there were better options available.

• 24:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 24:35Holly Frey?

  And there, some of those better options were in that sample pack. Like, it was a wide range.

• 24:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 24:41Holly Frey?

  So I don't know if it was like, uh, it was kind of like, hey, here are options available to you. And this way, you don't have to buy a box of everything to find out what you're most comfortable with.

• 24:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. So I remember, like, being at the drugstore. And at that time, this would have been, like, in the early to mid 80s. The, the, like, pads would specifically be labeled as beltless.

• 25:10Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I think where I was really introduced to the idea of, like, a sanitary belt was reading Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, when I was a kid. And so that was first published in 1970.

• 25:26Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  At which point adhesive pads did exist, but like, they were not widespread yet, really, in 1970. I would have read it around maybe 1982 or 83, probably. Maybe a little bit later than that. That book has been updated today to reference, like, adhesive pads. But when I read it, like, there, there was still this discussion of belts. And I remember an adult having to explain to me that, like, number one, that was how they worked before. Number two, that the adult in question, who probably was my mom, found the belted ones to be terrible.

• 26:13Holly Frey?

  I have, I have so many thoughts.

• 26:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 26:16Holly Frey?

  Yeah, like, do I disclose what a terrible child I was? Because I was. So when we had our little aside during a recording where we were like, I was like, no, the belt still existed. And you were like, did you read about it in Are You There? Got It To Be Margaret? As a kid, I had a very strong and not kind opinion of that book.

• 26:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, really? Okay.

• 26:40Holly Frey?

  Yes. And I don't, listen, this was Kid Holly, who was a tiny shrew, a very judgmental. But I thought that book was for babies who wouldn't look stuff up in the encyclopedia.

• 26:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 26:54Holly Frey?

  I was like, I don't need somebody to tell me a story about this. It's just science.

• 26:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Holly Frey?

  It's just science and I'll learn my own way. Like, I didn't want anybody to tell me about it. I didn't want any sugar coated version of any of it. I didn't, I literally was just like, just give me a scientific pamphlet.

• 27:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's funny.

• 27:16Holly Frey?

  Like I, cause I had two older sisters also.

• 27:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 27:20Holly Frey?

  And I remember looking at the insert packaging in their products that they had in their bathroom. And being like, oh, I understand this. And then I was like, why do people need a baby book to explain? Like, I was so catty and horrible about it.

• 27:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  So funny.

• 27:37Holly Frey?

  What an awful mean child. Tiny mean girl.

• 27:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  I feel like we all do things when we were children.

• 27:44Holly Frey?

  Right. But also like, those books aren't great for a lot of people at like, introducing concepts of very adult things that need to be handled in life.

• 27:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 27:56Holly Frey?

  To kids in a way that is accessible and kind and like, but I was just not an accessible, kind kid. I was a mean little shrew.

• 28:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I'm pretty sure that when I was old enough for this book to be relevant to me, there were probably still adults who were using belted pads because that was what they had always used.

• 28:15Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 28:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  And that was what they, you know, they were still around in stores. That was definitely never something I personally used. And so it felt a little odd to have this book. It made the book feel really old fashioned.

• 28:29Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 28:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Even though it wasn't written that long before I was born.

• 28:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  And as we said, like nowadays, the ones that people buy currently or read as eBooks or whatever, like that's been updated to reflect how pads work today.

• 28:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  On, on another note, this episode was simultaneously a joy and deeply frustrating to research.

• 28:58Holly Frey?

  Well, there's so much mystery information that's been relayed incorrectly.

• 29:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yes. So I think it's totally within the realm of possibility that Beatrice and Mildred both worked at the general accounting office. Most of what I actually read that was like interviews with Beatrice, she said something like, "I got a government job." And so part of me is like, was the government job at the general accounting office? Or did somebody at some point conflate Mildred and Beatrice? Which has definitely happened with other details. And like, just, and I did not try to go hunt down federal employment records from the 40s

• 29:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  and 50s. Like, that's beyond what we are normally trying to do on our show. So that, like, some of those things are possibly things that are clarified somewhere, but like, just not in the information that I had. I listened to an episode of the Smithsonian Side Door Podcast that was about, about them, that made reference to an article that had been published in 1993. And I went down just the longest rabbit hole of trying to track down this article. And I did all kinds of different Googling and also looking in all kinds of different

• 30:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  databases and newspaper repositories and all kinds of stuff, including searching quotes that they read word for word in this episode. And finally, I was like, okay, this probably is just something that the website that it was on is defunct now, and I'm not going to be able to find it. And then I opened a PhD dissertation that I had already downloaded, and that was what it was.

• 30:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  A kind piece of fate. Yeah, yeah. But also, like, what a, what a waste of time that I spent, like, trying to find this thing that was, turned out to be something that I already had. So this PhD dissertation was about Black women inventors specifically. I think it might be the source of the misspelling of the San Nam Pack Company. Yeah. San, what, I don't remember. The, the, the sod instead of san, I think might have come there, from there. And also might have been from a transcript of an oral interview. Like, that seems like a, a possible thing that have might, it might have happened, is that, like, the transcript of, of an, of an oral interview led to this misspelling that then got repeated

• 31:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  other places. But it also included a very significant error, which is, it said that Beatrice had gotten married to heavyweight boxing champion Jack Jabbo Johnson. Jack Johnson, a famous Black heavyweight boxer, Mm-hmm. was dead when Beatrice Kenner married James Jabbo Kenner, a completely different person. And that's such an error. I'm like, Beatrice cannot have said this. Right.

• 32:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  That, that cannot be, like, what she said in this interview. I'm really curious, like, what exactly happened there? Like, how, how did that wind up being in the text? But then that made me second guess details Right. that were in here, that were, like, in that same PhD dissertation. And there was just a lot of stuff that I would stumble over and go, okay, is this, was this actually right? And then I would go try to track down, you know, other sources to confirm whether that was right. Ideally, finding, like, a primary source that was either something written on them during their lifetimes, or something they actually said.

• 33:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  To a different interviewer. And so it was a whole long process of just continually stumbling over things where I was like, family traditions. I love the idea of this board game.

• 33:13Holly Frey?

  I feel like if you repackage that today with all of the people who love doing genealogy. It would be a huge hit.

• 33:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. I also know somebody who developed a board game while recovering from a serious injury in very similar circumstances. And so I just had sort of, you know, fond feelings about people in my life while researching this. And yeah, that was a whole process, a whole process of alternately being like, man, what a great thing. And then like, is this correct? Can I confirm it's correct? Is it even possible to confirm it's correct with the resources that I have available, available, available to me at this time? Can I say the word available on the podcast? Beatrice's first patent for the sanitary belt also included a term that I don't know if I've ever encountered before.

• 34:08Holly Frey?

  Yes.

• 34:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Catamenial.

• 34:10Holly Frey?

  Okay.

• 34:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  A term for relating to menstruation that is apparently not as common anymore.

• 34:17Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I had, I had never heard it before this moment.

• 34:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  And that is how it was referenced throughout the, the patent. And that made me wonder, is this sort of an evolution in the language that is more commonly used? Or was it just because there's so much stigma around periods that a less potentially obvious term was chosen for it? I don't know. I don't know. Either way, though, I love both of these sisters and their stories.

• 34:48Holly Frey?

  They're very charming.

• 34:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Holly Frey?

  I love how they just solve problems with their brains.

• 34:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yep, yep.

• 34:55Holly Frey?

  Let's, after my own heart.

• 34:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Let's try to make it so you're not having to hunt for the end of the toilet paper.

• 35:03Holly Frey?

  I don't know why that one tickled me, but it did.

• 35:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  It made me think about how often I'm just like, it's the middle of the night and I'm spinning the toilet paper roll around trying to get the end of it to show up for me. And what I really want to do is go back to bed.

• 35:19Holly Frey?

  I think I just slap it and wait for something to fly out.

• 35:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Holly Frey?

  I do a slap spin.

• 35:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Not how everybody does it. I kind of flip it with my hands.

• 35:30Holly Frey?

  Slap it.

• 35:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sometimes the end of the toilet paper sticks to the rest of the roll and it takes a little bit. I bet this depends on the brand and texture of toilet paper that a person has in their home.

• 35:42Holly Frey?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

• 35:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Anyway, I can't remember where exactly I stumbled onto. I think what I stumbled onto was Beatrice and overtime. The episode evolved to be about both of them. And I don't remember where I stumbled across something about Beatrice, but I'm glad I did. Hey, whatever's coming up on your weekend, if there is a minor annoyance in your life that you're able to just find a solution for, I hope you do. I hope it's one of those things where a minimal amount of money or time or expense can just resolve something and you don't have to deal with it anymore. We will be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow and we will have something brand new on Monday.

• 36:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 36:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  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. 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

• 37:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  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.

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• 38:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.