Behind the Scenes Minis: Strikes and Dear Kurt

Tracy talks about the difficulty of finding English-language writing about another strike she'd like to cover. Holly talks about why Kurt Vonnegut appeals so deeply to teenagers. 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

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• 0:07Speaker 01

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• 0:34Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:18Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 2:15Holly Frey?

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

• 2:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:28Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh, this week we talked about the 1946 Oakland General Strike.

• 2:34Holly Frey?

  We sure did.

• 2:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  I do want to say again, I would love at some point to do an episode on the Women Stay Off in Iceland in 1975. The very basics are around, easily accessible in English. I feel like that episode would be best if we had a lot more detail about like how it was organized and how it was planned, because it was not a situation where somebody said, ladies, we're not working this day.

• 3:01Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 3:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  And then, and then like someone flipped, flipped a switch, the women didn't work that day. Like, there's a whole organizing and planning effort. And the details of that, I think, do exist in Icelandic. Not so much in English, though, at least at this moment when we're recording. So while, uh, this episode was something that I chose in part because we cannot do this one, I was also really interested in this on its own merits, to be very clear.

• 3:30Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 3:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  I was really interested in, uh, how much of the focus was on workers in retail trying to organize, because we still, you know, have a lot of workers in retail and a lot of workers in food service trying to organize, uh, today in the world that we're living in. And then also, it being the last really major general strike before Taft-Hartley.

• 3:54Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 3:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh, I wanted to tell that story also. Um, something I found frustrating in the research process of this, um, was I found a lot of quotes from people who were active or were leaders in the other unions that went on strike to support the retail workers during the general strike. I really did not find people talking to those retail workers and their union leaders.

• 4:22Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 4:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  I think I found at most one or two quotes that came up in the context of a documentary. And then when I went back to try to find them to be like, can I find out more about this person? I had lost track of where specifically I had found those couple of quotes. And everything else was primarily quotes from people in other unions who, like, that's part of the story too. But I do wish we had, I had, I had been able to find more things from the retail workers.

• 5:02Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 5:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whose strike really started this whole thing.

• 5:06Holly Frey?

  I have a theory. They had a lot more women in that one, right? Didn't the retail workers have more women? So it was probably like, we want to talk to men folk, not the ladies.

• 5:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Well, so, yeah, a lot of the, when I did find like statements from the union, a lot of times they were statements from the attorney, who was a man, or they were statements from management from the store who were men, or they were statements that were sort of a statement from the union that did not name a specific person as a spokesperson.

• 5:39Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 5:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  So, yeah, I like, gender was specifically a part of it. And the fact that this was a union effort that was largely led by women was also something that made this, you know, really interesting story to me because a lot of the stories that we have told about labor rights and unionizing and strikes, a lot of those have been unions that were either primarily or exclusively men at the time. So we've done a lot of strikes about railroad workers and auto workers. And we've talked about how all of those strikes were only possible because of the efforts of women,

• 6:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  sometimes intentionally organized women's auxiliaries to do things like support the striking workers, keep everybody fed, keep everybody sheltered and clothed and all of that while the strike was going on. But we have not had as many episodes that are like about. The women themselves at their workplace organizing.

• 6:42Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 6:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh, the one thing I can think of off the top of my head is the London Matchgirls strike, um, which we have covered on the show before.

• 6:49Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Holly Frey?

  This is another one of those where I'm, uh, it makes me go, huh.

• 6:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Holly Frey?

  We haven't made any progress.

• 7:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. Um.

• 7:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 7:04Holly Frey?

  I'm not laughing that we haven't made any progress. I'm laughing at the absurdity of the human condition. Uh, you know, we'll keep trying.

• 7:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 7:12Holly Frey?

  We'll keep trying.

• 7:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  I.

• 7:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Having been through the whole process of, um, of organizing a workplace and bargaining our first union contract, sometimes when I read about, you know, historical union efforts, sometimes I'm like, yep, that feels so familiar. I will say that in the, this wave of strikes that happened in the 1940s overall, did not have as much violence as some of the earlier strike waves that we have talked about, because we've talked a lot about ones in which the National Guard or some other force was like called out to deal with this strike and that it led to injuries and even deaths.

• 7:58Holly Frey?

  Right. This one did not seem to have an escalation of violence, even though there were some unfortunate parts of it.

• 8:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I read, I, or I got access to a paper that talked a little bit about why that is and in, after reading it, I was like, I don't feel like, I feel like this was kind of speculative in some of its reasoning, um, about, uh, why this particular wave of strikes did not have the level of violence that some earlier ones did. So I did not try to get into that in the, in the episode itself, cause I did not feel like I had a good.

• 8:36Holly Frey?

  That becomes like a whole other sociology examination of like group behavior and, and, um, leveraging of power that's not necessarily about the labor movement anymore.

• 8:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right, right. There's some greater societal, uh, patterns involved. So yeah, uh, I am glad that, uh, that I got this one up to the top of my list.

• 9:04Holly Frey?

  Me too.

• 9:10Speaker 01

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• 9:38Speaker 04

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

• 9:41Tracy 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 fans' experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 10:01Speaker 04

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• 10:09Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 10:16Speaker 05

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

• 10:21Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 10:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 10:35Speaker 06

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• 10:39Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 11:22Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 11:45Holly 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?

• 12:30Holly Frey?

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

• 12:47Holly Frey?

  We had our live show from Indiana Comic Con about Kurt Vonnegut this week.

• 12:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yes, yes.

• 12:53Holly Frey?

  Oh, Kurt Vonnegut.

• 12:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 12:56Holly Frey?

  You blessing upon us all.

• 13:00Holly Frey?

  Yeah, it was really, really nice to revisit his work in preparation for this. I finally got to see Robert Whitey's documentary about him that he had been working on for decades on and off as they became close friends, which was very moving. Yeah, it was lovely. I'm now re-listening to all of, all of his stuff in order on audiobook, so. It's just, I'm in my Kurt era, apparently, again. One of the things we mentioned going into that show was how a lot of people find Kurt Vonnegut as teenagers.

• 13:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 13:37Holly Frey?

  And how they really connect to him. And I, I mentioned it in the show when we record this, I haven't heard the final edit, so I don't know if it's still in there or not, but I will invoke a completely other author in why I think that's the case.

• 13:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 13:53Holly Frey?

  Um, there was a great interview with Shel Silverstein that I think ran on NPR a while back where he said, someone asked him, why do kids love your books so much? And he said, because I don't BS them.

• 14:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sure.

• 14:07Holly Frey?

  Like, I'm straightforward with kids. I don't lie to them ever.

• 14:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 14:11Holly Frey?

  I think he said BS, but in the actual, you know, set out version, which would include swearing. Uh, and I think Kurt Vonnegut is the same, like for teenagers that come to him, it feels like an adult in the literary world who is very direct and does not mess around.

• 14:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Holly Frey?

  And tells the truth, even through very fantastical stories.

• 14:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Holly Frey?

  Which is very, um, it's very nice to have to not unpick like, oh, the allegory of blah, blah, blah, which is not to say any of that is bad in literature, but when you're a teenager to be like, oh, this is a very decorated literary person and he's just directly telling me what, what is going on.

• 14:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 14:52Holly Frey?

  And, and sharing some very real truths. Uh, it's very refreshing.

• 14:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I loved it.

• 14:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  I did not happen to discover Kurt Vonnegut as a teen and I could not a hundred percent confidently tell you whether it was college or immediately post-college, like in very early twenties, very first living on my own land.

• 15:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  But I, I don't think I was a teen. I don't remember reading any Vonnegut in high school. But I do remember by the early twenties years, like I vividly remember reading Slaughterhouse Five for the first time and just being enraptured by what I was reading.

• 15:38Holly Frey?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, I carried around a copy of Cat's Cradle, I think, for two years straight in high school.

• 15:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Wow, yeah.

• 15:46Holly Frey?

  Like, it was always in my purse to the point that it was like a joke.

• 15:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 15:50Holly Frey?

  Because it was one of those small size mass market paperbacks, like the famous cover that everybody sees that's just the, the, um, the orange with the, the art on it. And then I also had the similar series Breakfast of Champions also jangled around in my, my purse or backpack most of the time. And then Slaughterhouse Five for quite a while. One of the things I love about his work is how he, how interconnected a lot of it is. It's, uh, it's not, none of the words that we would associate with someone who is creating, uh, a whole fictional world, like a George R R Martin, or, you know, even a, a George Lucas, or even a, um, you know,

• 16:32Holly Frey?

  I'm forgetting the name of the woman who wrote the Twilight books, because those were not my jam. But anyway, like that idea of like world building and like, we're putting together this entire world and everything can, his did that, but nobody was ever really talking about it.

• 16:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 16:46Holly Frey?

  And part of it was, I think also that he self-inserted quite literally, right? In some ways, Billy Pilgrim is his self-insert in Slaughterhouse Five.

• 16:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 16:57Holly Frey?

  As he works through the trauma of having gone through the war. But then there are a lot of times where it's like, hi, it's Kurt. I bet you're wondering why I wrote this this way. Let me tell you. And he'll just explain it. And I think that is wildly charming.

• 17:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Holly Frey?

  I had, um, a discussion with someone during the convention, like over dinner, one of my friends, where we were debating over whether some of the things that Kurt Vonnegut said in his lifetime come off as sexist or not.

• 17:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 17:30Holly Frey?

  And. I see how many could be interpreted that way. He would talk a lot about whether women were pretty or not, blah, blah, blah. And like, you know, how he was secretly in love with almost every woman he worked with. And but it never felt disrespectful in the way that I associate sexism with. And it was never super crass. You know what I mean? It was never like, so I, I feel like, no. But, but, but I see where people could get that way. And I'm not gonna, you know?

• 18:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:03Holly Frey?

  Ever, you know, tell somebody they're wrong for their interpretation. We did not talk about in the episode that we recorded in the, in a Comic Con, because you have limited time, you know, even more so like when we record our show, if we run long, fine.

• 18:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 18:18Holly Frey?

  Cannot run long when you have more panelists coming into the room.

• 18:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  You gotta clear the room.

• 18:22Holly Frey?

  Yeah, get the heck out of there. Um, so we didn't get time to talk about Ida Young, uh, which is a pity. And I feel like she just would have merited more time than a quick, this is a person. But she was a person that Kurt Vonnegut invoked many times in interviews as being the person who raised him and gave him his sense of morality and his ideology about always caring about others. And that was a black woman who was the housekeeper in his family home.

• 18:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 18:58Holly Frey?

  And the cook, and her name was Ida Young. And she even, um, in the, the Vonnegut Museum and Library, which is in Indianapolis and is a really lovely space. There's a whole area that's just about Ida's influence on him and how important that was. And I really love that she gets included in that story.

• 19:19Holly Frey?

  And like I said, there's, there's not enough time in a short thing to like, go down the rabbit hole of who she was and whatnot. So I want to do more research on her and see what I can find. Because, you know, surely she had a life outside of the Vonnegut home.

• 19:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rallies so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing, and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.

• 20:09Holly 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?

• 20:53Holly Frey?

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

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• 21:39Holly Frey?

  I always marvel at how in interviews he would say all of the horrible things that happened to him were fine. They didn't really bother him. And I'm like,

• 21:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Have you read your own books?

• 21:49Holly Frey?

  Maybe. Yes, they did. They're on the page.

• 21:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:54Holly Frey?

  There's a really good interview in that, that Whitey documentary, which is pretty easy to get a hold of. I think I found it on Amazon Prime, but there are other places you can find it as well, where he's talking about some of those experiences and he's saying the words of like, it's fine. It was all fine. It didn't really bother me at the time. But his eyes like, tell a whole other story.

• 22:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 22:20Holly Frey?

  He kind of gets the thousand yard stare and he looks very morose for a moment before he picks up and makes a joke. And I'm, I marvel that he never cared to let on that his whole life was kind of like, his whole career really was him dealing with trauma.

• 22:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  With trauma, yeah.

• 22:37Holly Frey?

  And the only way he knew, which was to write about it as like a, another person's event, which is its own sociological fascination.

• 22:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Holly Frey?

  Kervon again, I love you.

• 22:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  I, unlike what happens sometimes when one of us has done an interview and the other one was not there for the interview, this is a case where I actually have listened to the episode before coming in here to record the behind the scenes. I really enjoyed listening to this. I enjoyed how clearly you and Brian are both talking about someone whose work you love so dearly.

• 23:13Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 23:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  And were also interested in like, telling the truth of his story as a person.

• 23:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  I liked it a lot.

• 23:19Holly Frey?

  Yeah. I mean, he's a, a fun one to talk about because he was such a character. And I certainly would not say he, you know, he was a human. Like I said, there were discussions about whether or not the things, some of the things he said were sexist at the con. But he, he was so focused on.

• 23:40Holly Frey?

  Wanting to find ways to teach people the ideas of like, loving your fellow man should be your highest calling ever. That he's a nice one to talk about in that regard.

• 23:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Holly Frey?

  There's no surprise. Oh, and he actually, you know, was a racist and kicked people. Like, there's none of those. So he's a nice, you know, it's always nice when someone that you admire turns out to not be a monstrous jerk. I have some issues with what happened with him and Jane.

• 24:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sure.

• 24:10Holly Frey?

  But that's not my marriage to have issues with.

• 24:14Holly Frey?

  So I don't, I don't know. I wasn't there.

• 24:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Holly Frey?

  It's, uh, it's fascinating to watch interviews with his kids.

• 24:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 24:23Holly Frey?

  And have them talk about him and how, you know, they, I, we mentioned it in the show that like his, his daughters were like, I had no idea what he went through in the war until he published Slaughterhouse Five. We just didn't know. He just came home and there, there's a, a mention of him. I think I mentioned it in the episode as an aside. In one of the biographies that I read where it was like, he tried to tell someone immediately after he got back from the war about a man that had been shot for allegedly, I think he took something that he shouldn't have or whatever. And he just couldn't. And he never talked about it with anybody ever again, other than through his typewriter, which is pretty.

• 25:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 25:03Holly Frey?

  Fascinating. Um, I spent an unconscionable amount of money in the Vonnegut Library and Museum gift shop.

• 25:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  I don't know if that made it into the final cut of the, uh, of the episode or not, because that I have not heard. I've only heard the raw audio of the panel, but I was very, I was like, what all did Holly buy?

• 25:23Holly Frey?

  I bought many T-shirts. I bought a pint glass that has the quote about, um, I have a problem with alcohol in the telephone at night.

• 25:35Holly Frey?

  I bought a really beautiful book that his daughter Edith has put together. That's the love letters between him and Jane from the 1940s when they were, when he was at war and they were very young. Uh, which is really beautiful. I haven't gotten very far into it yet. I got a pen. I got a pack of cards. I got, um, I feel like I bought other things that I'm not remembering. I was just very grabby handsy because we also, I was trying to be conscious of time because we did have to get over there in the morning, look around.

• 26:07Holly Frey?

  Get back to the convention center and, you know, we had multiple panels that day that we had to do. So I was trying not to drag my feats, but what a delight. I want to go back and spend more time there. Because it's lovely. And they have a cute cafe in there. They have like a little lounge where they do book events sometimes. It's a very cool space. So highly recommend to anybody that's in the area and is interested in Vonnegut, or even if you're not, you're just curious. They do a lot of fun, interactive things there, like prompts that are based on the writing of Vonnegut to like get kids involved in expressing themselves. And it's just a cool space. I love it. So kudos to the people that run it. I think that's it. I've probably waxed rhapsodic enough. Okay.

• 26:52Holly Frey?

  Dear Kurt Vonnegut, I love you. I hope you know, I hope if there's an afterlife, I hope if you're on Trafalgar right now, you feel the people love you. Since you experience time, apparently in different ways than the rest of us. I like to think of him out there somewhere, just not here. If you are headed into your weekend, I hope that you can take time to read something that you love, or visit a museum that might delight you and spark ideas in your mind and just make you feel a little more at peace with the world. If you do not have time off, I really hope everyone abides by Vonnegut's ideology of treating people kindly. We all need it. Everybody be cool to one another. It's the only way

• 27:35Holly Frey?

  we're gonna get through. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and on Monday with something brand new.

• 27:46Tracy 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.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rallies so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing, and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.

• 28:32Holly 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.

• 29:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking out 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.

• 29:39Speaker 01

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• 29:46Speaker 04

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• 29:55Speaker 01

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• 29:58Speaker 04

  Safe Balance Banking: One less thing to figure out. Learn more at BofA.com/simplbanking. Terms and conditions apply. Bank of America and a member FDIC.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.