Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Behind the Scenes Minis: Shoes, Shoes, Shoes! About this episode Holly and Tracy discuss how frustrating Charles Goodyear could be. Then Holly talks a lot about shoes and how much she loves them.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Speaker 01 Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new Chicken Nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces and they created a brand new one. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.
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1:16 Tracy V. Wilson? 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. Workplace chaos, we've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for sponsored jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs.
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2:14 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:25 Holly Frey? Hello and happy Friday. I'm Holly Frey.
2:27 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:29 Holly Frey? Oh lordy, we talked about Charles Goodyear this, this week.
2:32 Tracy V. Wilson? We did.
2:34 Holly Frey? Dude.
2:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, so if he had made all the decisions he made and it were just him.
2:41 Holly Frey? Yeah.
2:42 Tracy V. Wilson? If it was just him.
2:43 Holly Frey? Yeah, fine.
2:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Maybe going to debtor's prison, maybe being in a like rented room, eating beans with no money and in debt, I, I would not have found him very frustrating.
2:57 Holly Frey? Great. You are a man who loves your work.
2:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, the fact that he had a, a wife and a bajillion children.
3:05 Holly Frey? And parents that he was trying to also take care of.
3:08 Tracy V. Wilson? And we can make a whole argument about how like it was not okay that society made it so that he was the one responsible and that the other people in his life did not have the same power to earn money or whatever. That was a society he was living in. It was his job. He was not doing the job.
3:29 Holly Frey? Yeah.
3:30 Tracy V. Wilson? To pursue, to pursue his dreams of, of, of rubber.
3:35 Holly Frey? Well, and it's weird, right? There's something psychological that's very puzzling to me. Like I found the more research I did about him, the more like angry and frustrated I became.
3:49 Tracy V. Wilson? No, no.
3:49 Holly Frey? By the, at one point, my husband had walked into my office and I was just like, I'm so tired.
3:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
3:58 Holly Frey? Just because it's really frustrating to like, it's like if you have a friend that keeps making bad choices and it's painful to watch them make bad choices over and over. I was like, you, you willfully kept making bad choices when like someone would be like, here's your escape hatch. And you'd be like, no, dude, I'm gonna keep struggling.
4:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
4:21 Holly Frey? And again, it was all trial and error. So it wasn't like he was like, well, my formulas have gotten me. I really think I've worked it out. I just need to make it happen. He was just like, I'm gonna try something else.
4:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
4:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. Um, I also understand the friends that helped him out with money, feeling deeply frustrated by him.
4:42 Holly Frey? Yes.
4:43 Tracy V. Wilson? But I, I also advocate if, if someone in your life needs help and you help them.
4:52 Tracy V. Wilson? You have helped. Let's put this out of your mind.
4:56 Holly Frey? Right.
4:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Right?
4:57 Holly Frey? Right.
4:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Like, you can focus on the fact that that person owes you money forever, or you consider that this was a gift that you gave that person to help them.
5:07 Holly Frey? Yeah. Yeah, and I think, I think some of his friends were like that. They were like, I gave you a gift. But the, we mentioned that he got that like, seven bucks from a friend that came with a letter that was pretty chastisey.
5:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
5:21 Holly Frey? But it sounded like, I did not read that letter. I only have it literally from Goodyear's writings and another biographer. And even they make it sound like the guy was like, I'm only doing this because I care about your wife and your kids.
5:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
5:35 Holly Frey? You gotta like, get your act together, dude.
5:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. Yeah.
5:41 Holly Frey? And it wasn't like that one, you know, in that case is a loan. That one is literally like a...
5:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Here's $7.
5:47 Holly Frey? I'm trying to help you.
5:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
5:49 Holly Frey? But also, you also have to help you. Which I would love to read that letter, because if, you know, I wrote that letter today, it would be very strongly worded. But I think in a lot of the cases, when people were, like, when he was having his debts called in, most of those are people he had made business deals with.
6:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
6:06 Holly Frey? That they were like, I want to invest in you. You're right, rubber is the future. Great. Oh crap, you don't know what you're doing. Like...
6:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Right. And that's a very different situation, and probably, or possibly, one that involved written out terms of how this financial arrangement was gonna work, and when payment was due, and all of that.
6:28 Holly Frey? Yeah.
6:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Probably.
6:30 Holly Frey? I, uh, yeah, he was such a Billy Dreamer. And I, in many ways, I love people like that. I love people that have these ideas that they just become, like, obsessed with. Like, I love that concept, but again, not when you're actively hurting people because you are ignoring the needs of those you're supposed to care for.
6:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
6:52 Holly Frey? Like, I feel like the coda of his life kind of has a similar moment, right? He had a five-day-old child when he left
7:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
7:03 Holly Frey? to go to Connecticut. Now, that's not to say that he shouldn't have gone to his dying daughter.
7:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Right, right.
7:10 Holly Frey? But also, he's leaving his wife behind.
7:14 Holly Frey? Who is postpartum.
7:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
7:17 Holly Frey? To do that. And she ended up having to travel not long after.
7:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
7:21 Holly Frey? While she was still physically probably recovering from having a kid.
7:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
7:26 Holly Frey? I, I don't know where the baby was in this, if the baby stayed behind in DC or if she took the baby with her. But like, I, I don't know if they had a discussion where he's like, I hate to do this, but I gotta go. But given the things he did throughout his life, I suspect he just said the I gotta go part.
7:46 Tracy V. Wilson? And then went, yeah.
7:48 Holly Frey? I didn't mean to do a smear campaign against Charles Goodyear, but it's a little bit tricky not to sometimes. Um, you know, we, there's this tendency in a lot of writing about inventors.
8:02 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
8:02 Holly Frey? To assume that if they invented something important, they were great men.
8:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
8:09 Holly Frey? And often that leads to like some whitewashing of their real truth, including, I mean, it goes right to like, oh, and then his father's hardware store, um, had to close. No, it was his hardware store.
8:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
8:23 Holly Frey? He went out on his own and screwed up on his own, by his own self.
8:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
8:28 Holly Frey? Like I just, there's a lot of stuff that often softens.
8:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
8:32 Holly Frey? Kind of the, the poor decision-making that he was prone to.
8:37 Tracy V. Wilson? It also reminds me in some ways of the way that a lot of people talk about writers and artists and other people who are working in some kind of creative field. And really romanticizing that and making the act of creativity seem like an otherworldly situation.
9:00 Holly Frey? Yeah.
9:01 Tracy V. Wilson? When a lot of this is really like, that's someone's job.
9:05 Holly Frey? And of course he's temperamental. He's a creator.
9:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Right. Um, and like.
9:10 Holly Frey? He's a jerk.
9:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, there's many, many layers that I find incredibly frustrating in that kind of discussion that I think is connected to the fact that he, he tried all of these different things and came up with a really important invention that kind of makes it seem like a romantic ideal rather than
9:36 Holly Frey? Yeah.
9:37 Tracy V. Wilson? a disaster financially for his family that went on for years.
9:42 Holly Frey? Yeah. And often when he had options that could have saved them and kept himself afloat, he turned them down. That's the thing that I always get. I do want to end this on a more fun note, though.
9:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
9:56 Holly Frey? Because there was, no, the sneakers are probably still coming because you know, I love me some shoes. Um, there is a fun part, in my opinion, of his obsessive inventiveness, which is,
10:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
10:11 Holly Frey? you know, it all started for him, his, his pursuit of perfecting rubber because he had bought a life preserver.
10:21 Holly Frey? And it needed some tweaking to really work as well as it could. I found myself in that moment, wondering, why is this man buying a life preserver? Like, he didn't,
10:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Did he have a boat?
10:33 Holly Frey? He's literally like, already struggling financially. I never saw anything about a boat, but he really wanted a life preserver. And then there's a portion of his book where he talks about how important life preservers are. Like, I don't know if he had a formative experience that made him afraid of the water or afraid of drowning, but he had this vision of really like, creating just literal boatloads of safety equipment for ships.
11:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Wow.
11:03 Holly Frey? He thought not only should they all have like, the latest and greatest life preservers at all times, he thought that even like furniture should have like recessed pockets where inflatable things would pop out of and you could inflate them and people could like, use a table as a life Preserver essentially.
11:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
11:24 Holly Frey? If, you know, they had these rubber balloons that would come out and that they could inflate. Like every piece of furniture should also have this dual function of being potentially like a, not just a like, oh, I can float on this piece of wood, but like a custom made form of life preserver functionality.
11:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
11:42 Holly Frey? Which is actually pretty fascinating to me.
11:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
11:46 Holly Frey? But nobody really got as excited about.
11:48 Tracy V. Wilson? No.
11:51 Holly Frey? As was the case many times with them, but I can't imagine if you're around somebody who keeps going, I have a great idea and they keep kind of messing up or like they don't, they have the idea, they've developed it and then they don't like get it to the finish line because they're busy with another idea. We don't like to diagnose, but I do recognize, game recognizes game. There may have been some ADHD in that mix.
12:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
12:15 Holly Frey? But like how people would be like, mm hmm, cool, Charles. Yeah, everything's a life preserver. Yep, yep, yep. Like I could see why he didn't get a lot of buy in from the people around him. But from a creativity standpoint, I think those are kind of fascinating ideas.
12:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
12:34 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
12:37 Tracy 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.
12:58 Speaker 04 It was could rival anything that was already built and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
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13:21 Speaker 05 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.
13:26 Speaker 04 What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
13:29 Tracy V. Wilson? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.
13:32 Speaker 06 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
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14:42 Tracy 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 Jess A. 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,
15:23 Tracy V. Wilson? and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:41 Speaker 07 Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
16:23 Speaker 07 This new chicken nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
16:42 Holly Frey? I gotta talk about one of my favorite things this week. It was shoes. Shoes.
16:48 Holly Frey? Listen, I love the shoes. We all, we all know, it's not a secret. I did wanna mention, for people that are interested in the more modern stuff that I said we were not getting into, like, we kinda took any of the modern companies up to basically the point where they kind of became really established and then we, we left off. But there is a great series of books called All Gone that started in 2006 by Michael Depoy, and it basically, you know, catalogs like limited edition sneakers and stuff, and you can watch like the way different designs get, you know, these short burst runs or like collaborations, etc. And I just love it.
17:33 Holly Frey? To me, that's a really interesting way to look at like the way fashion is evolving in relation to shoes. Love it, love it, love it. I just wanted to mention that. There are a lot out there as well of other books about modern shoe culture and sneakerheads. Here is why I don't consider myself a sneakerhead. I love sneakers. I don't have Holy Grail shoes. Okay. Generally, I'm more like, oh my God, this came out and I'm in love with it, I'll buy it, but I don't collect in any kind of ordered manner. And I wear mine, which I know a lot of people don't. There was a thing, gosh, I'm really like, the, the memory banks just kind of spat this
18:13 Holly Frey? one out just now. I remember seeing, uh, you know, one of those viral videos of a guy proposing to his, his beloved courtside at a basketball game. And when he got down on one knee, there were a lot of people in the comments going, oh my gosh, he's gonna crease those, those Jordans. And I was like, yeah, cause their sneakers you're supposed to wear. But I know for a lot of people, that is the end of their value.
18:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
18:39 Holly Frey? And I'm not like that, which is why I don't think of myself as being part of that culture.
18:42 Tracy V. Wilson? It's like the never removed from box dolls.
18:46 Holly Frey? I have some of those, but my thing is not about their value. It's that usually the way they are put in the box for merchandising purposes, looks prettier than anything that's gonna happen once I get it out.
18:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, sure.
19:00 Holly Frey? Cause a lot of times box design is also its own art. So I, I do have a lot of toys that are still in their boxes, but it's usually for that reason. Um, or I'm like scared a cat will bite it if it has very appealing looking fur or something. Um, but yeah, I'm, that's why I can't, I can't ever be in it. I just want fun shoes and I like, yeah, I'd love having shoes custom printed when I can. There are a lot of services that do that now. It's a problem. Just saying, I love shoes. I'm gonna reference several things that you're not gonna remember, but please come with me on this journey.
19:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay, I'll try.
19:37 Holly Frey? One, and it's gonna keep happening because as you said, there's a, a guarantee that we'll have Samuel Plimsole talk coming up soon. But the whole time I was working on this, I could not get the song A Million Miles Away out of my head. Do you remember this song?
19:54 Tracy V. Wilson? I would probably recognize it if I heard it, but I'm not calling it to mind.
19:59 Holly Frey? The early 1980s. It's from a band called The Plimsouls.
20:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
20:04 Holly Frey? P L I M S O U L. Uh, although they pulled that name from The Shoe and they, um, were very popular in the early 1980s LA scene, but they were in the movie Valley Girl that came out in 1983 starring Nicolas Cage. They actually performed like in a club in that movie. And I, that song is emblazoned on my memory forever. So every time Samuel Plimsole's name comes up, it just starts.
20:29 Tracy V. Wilson? That's what you're thinking. Funny.
20:32 Holly Frey? Just starts it again. And it's a good song, so I'm happy for it. There's no problem. There's no problem. The other, and if anybody else knows about this one, I feel like I keep referencing things I saw in magazines growing up that I am like, where did this go? There was a time, and I first saw it in a magazine where Vans was doing this program, where if you sent them a yard of fabric and like money, they would make you a custom pair of shoes with it.
20:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Whoa.
21:00 Holly Frey? And I was obsessed with this concept. And I saved up money, and I saved up money, and I saved up money. And when I had enough money, the program had ended. And I was like, the saddest sad of sad town.
21:11 Tracy V. Wilson? That is very sad.
21:13 Holly Frey? Which is probably why I am so obsessed with designing shoe prints today and getting them printed, because I love that biz. I love a custom shoe. Oh, I love a custom shoe. I will customize them myself if I have to. Just shoes, shoes, shoes. Anyway, the Vans mail in. The dream. I want to know if anybody did that, how it came out, if they still have those shoes. I hope they do. Like, I just think that's a fraught concept. And I first saw it in a magazine, like, you know, one of those like fashion and lifestyle magazines for like teens and young women.
21:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Sure.
21:50 Holly Frey? I don't remember which one, but I sure do remember seeing it and going, ugh.
21:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
21:57 Holly Frey? Because I wanted all part of it.
22:00 Holly Frey? I can't type the word tennis without typing tennis. It, I tried to catch them all, I did not in this episode, as you no doubt noticed. I just could not do it.
22:11 Tracy V. Wilson? I only noticed because it's, it tripped you up.
22:15 Holly Frey? It did trip me up.
22:17 Tracy V. Wilson? I was like, oh, there's.
22:17 Holly Frey? To go, what, what tripped, what tripped up? Oh, it's, it's tennis. Tennis.
22:24 Holly Frey? One of the other things that came up a lot in research. Particularly when I was trying to identify as much information as I could about sand shoes. And I was looking at old newspapers, story after story. At first I thought they were all talking about the same story. No, it kept happening. Theft of sand shoes.
22:44 Tracy V. Wilson? No, no.
22:45 Holly Frey? Apparently this was a real problem in the 1880s and 90s. Where people would go to the beach and they wouldn't like, they weren't like aqua shoes where you might wear them right into the water. It seemed like people would leave their shoes on the beach and then go into the water. And little hoodlums would come and steal those shoes. And there was just notice after notice of like so and so's sand shoes were stolen from this beach. At this time investigators are on it. And I'm just like, oh my Lord.
23:16 Holly Frey? Can you imagine being the detective who gets another theft of sand shoes case?
23:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Complaints.
23:22 Holly Frey? They're just like tie them to your wrist or something, guys. This is, I have other stuff. The Dassler Brothers. That whole story is a lot. There are a lot of books written about it.
23:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
23:35 Holly Frey? Yeah. There are a lot of news pieces written about it because it really changed their town where they grew up. Because they, they kind of divided the town. There was one article I was reading and I don't remember which one it was, but it is in our sources. That was about how like for a lot of people, it was like, are you an Adidas person or are you a Puma's person? Where do your parents work? Which factory do they work at? What are you like, that's all you would be wearing. There was no crossover. It was very wild. The whole wild thing with the war is really fascinating because apparently, and don't anybody quote me on this because I did a very fast read because I wasn't getting deep into all of this.
24:21 Holly Frey? Apparently Rudy, who had been called up in 1943 deserted in 1945.
24:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh.
24:28 Holly Frey? And he was captured and was imprisoned for this. And he always blamed his brother, saying that his brother had turned him in.
24:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh.
24:40 Holly Frey? But again, a lot of this is kind of like pieced together and we don't know the accuracy of it either. Apparently also their two wives really did not get along and they had continued to live in the family house with their parents and their new wives and families. So it was just like a bunch of people getting angrier and angrier at each other for a while. And this, once they split in 1848, it was a complete severing of their relationship to the point that when those two men died many years later, they were buried on opposite sides of the cemetery. So they wouldn't even be close to each other and the families would not see each other if
25:21 Holly Frey? they happened to visit at the same time. That's a feud. That's a... Yeah, it's a feud.
25:33 Tracy 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 Jess A. 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
26:16 Tracy V. Wilson? friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
26:32 Speaker 07 Okay, Chicken Nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new Chicken Nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
27:14 Speaker 07 This new Chicken Nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
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28:12 Tracy V. Wilson? and find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.
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28:54 Holly Frey? 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.
29:14 Holly Frey? I mentioned at the top of the episode that, you know, there are ethics issues to consider when buying things. And it's something I think about a lot because I am a, listen, I'm a consumer in my soul. I love stuff. It's not even, it's not even like a thing where I, I need the stuff. I just want, one, I, I want to support the creation of beautiful things. And two, like I just, they're magical little things. I love them. But it is harder, you know, when you realize how dicey these, some, some practices are, you have to start looking really, really closely at them and it, it becomes a little bit weird.
29:58 Holly Frey? So I just encourage everyone to do as, as much digging as you can on how companies run. Like I said, there are still opaque parts of the supply chain though. It's hard as a consumer to get the whole picture, but more and more watchdog groups are always trying. More and more companies do seem to be trying, but there's always that level of suspicion of like, are you really disclosing everything? But anyway, trying to be an ethical consumer is its own job in many ways. I do also want to reference something else that I loved and is gone, but lives on in a weird way. It's going back to that custom shoe thing. There was a company briefly named Customatics and Customatics was magical. Because they, it was started, I forget what companies they worked for.
30:42 Holly Frey? It was started by a couple, two or three guys that had worked for some of the big sneaker manufacturers and had kind of all felt like they hit the ceiling and they wanted to do something new for themselves. And they basically put together this site where you could kind of design your own shoes. And like, they would have a model, but they had a very wide range of. Like finishes you could pick. They had a wide range of shoes. Like I have some very cute silver boots that I got from them still. I got a lot of sneakers from them. They did like skate shoes. They did all the stuff. And then they, you could do additional things like have various embroidered motifs on it. Like I just, it was a terrific, terrific site.
31:24 Holly Frey? And they also were very much in the, hey, the shoe industry needs to change. They were very forthcoming about, here is the factory that we're using. Here's what we did to set it up. Here's how we're trying to compete with other factories in the area and make sure that like our employees are getting better treatment. Again, I want to say, it's not like I'm boots on the ground. I'm going by what they said. So there's always possibility. But what's interesting is that they eventually had to shutter. However, Converse, which is now owned by Nike, bought their customization software. So if you go to like the Converse site now and you build yourself a pair of Chucks, you're essentially using the software and the whole backend that they built.
32:09 Holly Frey? And this was years ago. This was in the late 90s, I think, that they were making those, maybe early 2000s. But it's the, the function is still very similar to how it was on those old customatics. Anyway. Sneaker people rise up.
32:28 Holly Frey? I live, I live for it. I live for it. I'm sorry to bore you with shoe talk.
32:36 Holly Frey? I just love it. I love, I love seeing, I love seeing design. I also have that problem. I think we've talked about this on the show before. I don't like having the same stuff as other people. Yeah. I just don't. It's fine if you do, but I never have since I was very small, which is why I started making my own clothes. Which is why there's a workshop I want to go to where you make your own sneakers. Yeah. I just need to like rally a couple of people to go with me so we can all have like a sneaker getaway. But then they're going to be like, wow, you're weird about this. So.
33:11 Holly Frey? We'll see what the success level is. There are also kits you can do and I might, I might invest in one or two of those because the problem is that I'm going to want to make two bazillion pair and I have, as you mentioned, a lot of shoes. How many? I don't know. We don't do that kind of reckoning in our house. Once it passes a certain threshold, I'm, I'm like, um, like the rougarou. I can't count past a certain number and I refuse to do it. I won't do it. The number is more than 13, but um,
33:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
33:39 Holly Frey? I don't know the number.
33:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
33:44 Holly Frey? Now I'm thinking about what shoes I'm going to pack for an upcoming trip. Anyway, do you have any other thoughts on shoes?
33:50 Tracy V. Wilson? No.
33:51 Holly Frey? You're like, no, you, I tapped out it.
33:54 Tracy V. Wilson? I know. Well,
33:54 Holly Frey? At the end of the episode.
33:57 Tracy V. Wilson? I do not have the same love for shoes and I also have wide toes in a narrow heel.
34:05 Holly Frey? Yeah.
34:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, and I have a hard time finding shoes that fit me well because at the stage of my life, I am unwilling to cram my toes into shoes that do not have enough room for them.
34:19 Holly Frey? Yeah, me either.
34:20 Tracy V. Wilson? So I tend to find a shoe that I like, that fits me well, that holds up to the long distances that I like to walk around and then I will buy, that is just the shoe that I will buy.
34:34 Holly Frey? Ever until they change the last.
34:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, until they change the last and then I will, I will walk in them until either the internal support breaks down or until the soles are worn out and then I will put them in the shoe recycling thing and get a new one.
34:50 Holly Frey? Usually if mine start to get to the point where they're breaking down with a few exceptions, they kind of get semi-retired. Where they're on the shelf and I love them and they might come out for like a brunch once in a while.
35:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
35:05 Holly Frey? They don't stay in regular use after that point in time. Um, but you never know.
35:10 Tracy V. Wilson? You never know.
35:11 Holly Frey? And I do, I have a lot of, um, the pandemic, um, caused this little problem. With both shoes and clothes, which is leading up to when the pandemic started. I was traveling a lot for work. We were doing some more live shows. Uh, I was bolstering up my wardrobe of like nice shoes, heels and like cute suits and stuff that I would wear for things like that. And now I still have them all, but I don't have many occasions to wear them.
35:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
35:42 Holly Frey? But I don't, I don't know where I would ever want to put them.
35:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
35:47 Holly Frey? I mean, I know, I know where they're going when I'm gone, which is that I have a person who will receive them all.
35:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh.
35:55 Holly Frey? Who wears my same size and who I love very dearly. And who knows that this is, this is her legacy. So she was gonna get all the shoes.
36:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
36:06 Holly Frey? But yeah, I do have a lot that I just love. And some of them are at this point, I kind of go in and visit and say, I love you. I'm sorry. I haven't worn you in a minute.
36:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
36:13 Holly Frey? You'll have your day again at some point, I promise.
36:19 Holly Frey? In summation, shoes. Love, love, love. Sorry if anyone finds that superficial, but to me they are marvels of design and architecture and engineering.
36:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. I often see you when I see you in person and you will have great shoes on. And I admire the great shoes that you have on. I just do not put that kind of effort into my own shoes.
36:46 Holly Frey? There's nothing better than a good shoe. The other thing about a shoe is that it's an investment as part of your wardrobe. For the most part, you can retain their use longer than like a pair of clothes, right?
37:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Sure.
37:01 Holly Frey? You gain 15 pounds, your pants might not fit, but your shoes are probably still gonna fit.
37:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
37:06 Holly Frey? And so like they just don't suffer the same sort of danger of investment as other wardrobe pieces might. So great, cute. And then there are Hello Kitty shoes. Then you gotta have your Star Wars shoes. This company called Pozu, I was in love with for a while that was making Star Wars shoes.
37:25 Holly Frey? I'll tell this story and then I swear we're out. Um, they had made this very cute boot that when The Force Awakens was being made. Their wardrobe group, whether, I don't know if it was their costume designer or someone else, found this boot and used it. And it's the boots that Ray wears in that movie and subsequent films. And so then they entered into a deal with Lucasfilm to produce those as like Ray boots. And then they started making these amazing like high tops and like low tops. And their whole thing, the reason I really fell in love with them, other than they were Star Wars shoes, which I love, is that they were really based like entirely in sustainable shoe making. And it was the first brand that I knew that was really doing that.
38:07 Holly Frey? Like where they would literally have tons of information on their site about how they made their bouncy soles, like their insoles from coconut fiber and how like the way that they ran the rubber plantations and how they made sure that, you know, no one was exploited and everything was sustainable. And I loved them for that reason. And then they had some financial problems. They got bought out by some of the employees and I think they may have shut down because they never quite got the same lineup going. But they were amazing. And if you find any Pozus on the secondary market, highly recommend because they're
38:50 Holly Frey? great and you know they were made with care. Okay, now I'm done. Fourth moment, so we talked about Samuel Plimsoll, but we won't talk about shoes that day, I promise. If this is your weekend coming up, listen, I hope you wear the cutest shoes to brunch. If you do that, I hope wherever you go, you wear whatever shoes make you feel the happiest. If they're not cute, but they're so comfortable, they just make you feel at ease, those are the right shoes. Whatever it takes to make you have the best weekend possible. If you are working, I hope your shoes are so comfortable, they feel like walking on clouds that hug your feet with just the right amount of bounce and support. If you are not working, I still hope your feet are comfortable and that you are kind
39:33 Holly Frey? to them and you take care of your feet because they're holding you up and we need you. We are going to be back here on Monday with a brand new episode. We will also be back here tomorrow with a classic.
39:50 Tracy 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.
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40:42 Tracy V. Wilson? 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.
41:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Long hours, work deadlines, family commitments, you give so much to everyone else. Isn't it time to invest in yourself? The University of Arizona Global Campus is built for working adults with flexible online degree programs designed to fit your life. Your previous education, training, and eligible experience may even help you earn college credit. At UAGC, you can take one accelerated course at a time, helping you move toward your goals in five- and six-week class formats. Visit uagc.edu today.
41:40 Holly Frey? 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.
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