Behind the Scenes Minis: Learned Women and Sharkey

Tracy shares a funny confusion about Unitarians and the University of Utrecht she kept having during research. Holly talks about how often escape stories to claim the escaper was never heard from again, even if that's not true. 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.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Every small business owner has that one moment that could have broken them, but remarkably, it didn't. Hi, I'm Kathleen Griffith, co-host of The Unshakeables, along with Stevie Barron, CEO of Chase for Business. We have more incredible stories of overcoming the impossible still to come in season three. Listen to The Unshakeables wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at chase.com/podcast. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase and Company.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:48Holly Frey?

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

• 1:59Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 2:01Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  This week, we talked about Anna Maria von Sherman,

• 2:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  probably the most educated woman in Europe of her time. A weird thing that kept throwing me for a loop, not really a weird thing, a random thing that kept throwing me for a loop, is the Utrecht University website.

• 2:23Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 2:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  Is at uu.nl, so uu, the extension for the Netherlands. And I kept seeing this in my research and my bookmarks and all of that. Having a dear friend who is a, she is a reverend with the Unitarian Universalist Church. I kept having a moment where I was like, oh, how are the Unitarians involved with this story? Because anytime, like, well, like, let's just say we're, like, planning to go to a protest together. I'll say, hey, where are, where are you going to be? I will be out with the UU's. Okay. And so it's in my head, the UU's are the Unitarians.

• 3:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  And so I kept having a moment where I would kind of double take every time the university came up in the research.

• 3:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  We talked at the beginning of the episode about how I've had a whole lot of episodes clustered in the 19th and 20th century, which means I was kind of out of practice with subjects like the 80 Years' War and the 30 Years' War and how they overlapped and were connected, but they're not quite the same thing. I am pretty sure one of my sources had a moment of deep confusion where they called something the Seven Years' War. That was a totally different.

• 3:42Holly Frey?

  It's funny. It's funny. It's almost like learning a language. Like, it's funny how quickly that stuff can leave you when you go to work on studying something else for a while. And I come back and I'm like, I don't remember how any of this stuff worked. I don't remember who was the monarch of what, when, and what they did. Like, I have to do CliffsNotes for everything to get up to speed.

• 4:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I think this, the, like, the year so far has been sort of the longest stretch for me in so recent a time period on the show, which was not really on purpose exactly, but it did make this episode kind of challenging. One of the things that we talked about was these catalogs of learned women. Obviously, they did not only exist just in this one part of history. We did an episode on Christine de Pizan and the Book of the City of Ladies that had some similarities to this, like that chronicled learned women through history and mythology. There were other chronicles, lists, catalogs of learned women.

• 4:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  And we talked about how this was sort of, it sort of served as an example, like, hey, here are all of these women that were all really learned. Women have the ability to learn. Another thing that some of the people who compiled these seemed to think that they would be good for, that also applied specifically to Anna Maria von Sherman, there was this kind of idea of like, hey, what if we made learning really trendy for women?

• 5:12Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 5:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Then more women would go out and learn. And there just wasn't sometimes a connection to the fact that like, one of the reasons that there were not a lot of educated women is that women were barred from access to education. So yeah, you could make it seem really fun and cool to be an educated woman, but that wasn't going to do anything about the fact that most women had no access to school of any sort.

• 5:43Holly Frey?

  Right. It's so cool to be this thing you can never be.

• 5:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 5:49Holly Frey?

  What a cruel setup.

• 5:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  And if, you know, if your family was in what we might think of as like the middle class, you probably did not have a lot of time to be teaching yourself to read at the start of things.

• 6:06Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 6:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  So like, that was just, I kept kind of going, yeah, I mean, sure, it would be great if more women in the 16th, 17th, 18th century area, era had been educated, but like, It wasn't just a pull yourself up by your bootstraps situation. Hey, everybody, it never is. It never is.

• 6:28Holly Frey?

  No.

• 6:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  So.

• 6:30Holly Frey?

  It also feels to me, every instance of that and like all the times that you included in this outline, when dudes were like, you should publish your work. It's so important. No, I don't want it. Well, I'm gonna do it. It seemed so much like sort of the performative lip service-y thing of like, I support women's education. Look at me publishing this thing against the woman involves wishes, but still I'm really, I support women, you guys. Totally. I'm totally one of the good ones. It's like, uh.

• 7:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, there are structural barriers at work here. It applies to so many things in our world today. Structural barriers going on, keeping people from being able to access whatever the thing is. Um, also, it is tough to understand like the sexual mores of 400 years ago. But her dad's fixation on her virginity.

• 7:37Holly Frey?

  Freaky deaky.

• 7:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Feels feels weird to a modern.

• 7:40Holly Frey?

  Freaky deaky.

• 7:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  I that that gave me the ick a little bit.

• 7:45Holly Frey?

  Super ick because, I mean, for many reasons. There are.

• 7:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Take away any of the like, why are you so fixated on this part? My thing is that if at that point he recognizes that she should be educated, that she's clearly very smart and deserves to learn things. To cut off a whole part of the human condition from her information is kind of kneecapping the way in which she can understand a lot of the other things she's studying.

• 8:21Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 8:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I, I don't like it.

• 8:25Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 8:28Holly Frey?

  I mean, I feel like there's a weird issue where what people see as immoral in many cases is really just human. And I understand the desire not to expose people to things before they are ready. But like, at some point, humans have to understand the breadth of human experience if they're truly going to be an intellectual, is my opinion.

• 8:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right, right.

• 8:56Holly Frey?

  I am so inherently rebellious and was as a kid that if somebody told me, you cannot have access to this, I'd be like, fine, expurgate away, I will find another copy.

• 9:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. One of the things that I found interesting about her is like, we talked about the description of her as like, the Sappho of Utrecht, or like, the Dutch Sappho.

• 9:22Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  And how, at the time, that was really, that was about her poetry. And the connotation of Sappho and lesbianism, like, wasn't quite as established as it is now. And that's something that we talked about in that recent Saturday classic. And I did not, everything that I read about her suggests that she was celibate for her whole life, she never married, that this was deeply religiously and spiritually important to her. Simultaneously, it was not typical for a Protestant woman to lead a celibate life in this way.

• 10:04Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 10:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, the social expectation was for women to get married and have children.

• 10:10Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 10:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  It was more established among Catholic women to have, you know, convents and nunnery and all of that. And like, that just, it wasn't quite as, like, that, that role didn't exist in quite the same way for Protestant women at this point, even though, like, the, the entire idea of non-Catholic Christian religions was...

• 10:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  Very early, like this is, this is during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. So if you look at like queer history as a big umbrella in which we can think of queerness as like anyone whose sexual or gender identity isn't aligning with or is like expanding beyond what is expected of them in their society, like she does still kind of fit in that, in with that because of this chastity that she stuck with her whole life. So even though the term sappho as, as a connection to like lesbianism doesn't quite line up with what we know of her, the fact that she was so focused on her own chastity kind of still

• 11:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  sets her apart from the, the expectations of women at the time.

• 11:26Holly Frey?

  And also, super weird imposition by her father.

• 11:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  I don't know, so I don't know if we have a sense of like her feelings about a lot of stuff.

• 11:43Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 11:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like she wrote these, she wrote treatises, she wrote letters, she wrote works that still survived, she wrote things that other people published on her behalf that are still around. But like, that doesn't really give us a sense of like her inner self.

• 11:58Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  So yeah, yeah. I did find her father asking her to promise that on his deathbed to be a, yikes, super weird. I also had the very, you know, personally giggly aspect of when she got rid of all of her poetry towards the end of her life and, and the many theories about what that meant. There was part of me that was like, what if this was just an issue of practicality where one day she was like, there's so many junky notebooks around here.

• 12:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I definitely destroyed some stuff when I was moving the last time that I moved.

• 12:37Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  That was about, I really, really wanted to, we were in an apartment that had too much stuff. And it was bothering my consciousness. And I really wanted us to get into a house and not feel like we were drowning in stuff.

• 12:56Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  And so I went through a bunch of file folders and notebooks and file cabinet and stuff like that. And I purged a bunch of stuff. And some of it was, I don't want to be buried on, under all of these papers anymore. And some of it was also, these, these things I wrote when I was 20 are embarrassing.

• 13:16Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 13:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  And no one ever needs to see them ever again, including me.

• 13:21Holly Frey?

  Have ditched a lot of things in that mindset.

• 13:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. There is almost nothing that I regret having disposed of, of, in that kind of mindset.

• 13:32Holly Frey?

  Yeah, no.

• 13:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I like, there was one thing, and I don't even remember what it was now. There was one thing that I briefly was like, ah, I wish I had not gotten rid of that thing so long ago. But now I don't even remember what that was. So, yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 04

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

• 13:52Tracy 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.

• 14:12Speaker 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.

• 14:20Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 14:27Speaker 05

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

• 14:32Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 14:36Speaker 05

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  With the fan's experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 14:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 14:50Holly 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?

• 15:34Holly Frey?

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

• 15:45Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 16:13Speaker 07

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• 16:56Holly Frey?

  We talked about William Sharkey this week.

• 16:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  We did, we did.

• 17:01Holly Frey?

  Murder, although it's not a, no murder is good, obviously, but this isn't a particularly grisly one.

• 17:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 17:08Holly Frey?

  It becomes very mired in legalese.

• 17:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yes.

• 17:11Holly Frey?

  One of the things that is very interesting about any of these types of stories where it's like, this person escaped, is that there very quickly becomes a lot of writing about how they were never seen again. And I'm like, no, there were literally newspaper reports all the time of like, yeah, he's still in Cuba, we know. Similarly, Maggie's story is often written about as though she just vanishes into the ether. And I'm like, nope, I found the report of her husband's death and how she, like, that specifically mentions his widow, Maggie Jordan, who helped William Sharkey escape from prison. Like, it's not a secret where she.

• 17:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right, right.

• 17:51Holly Frey?

  I, I know it's more fun to have more mystery, but that also isn't the truth all the time.

• 17:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 17:59Holly Frey?

  I love what a ding dong Monty Python move this was.

• 18:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. I really did, when I read through this earlier this morning, I got to the part about them finding remnants of his mustache and I, there was a chortle, like an out loud chortle at my desk, not expecting that to be.

• 18:20Holly Frey?

  It's pretty good. It reminded me of William Maxwell, the fifth Earl of Nithdale, who similarly, but in 1715, was disguised as a woman to escape prison by his wife. He was in the Tower of London, though. And I wanted, I want to travel back in time and go, Maggie, did you read history books? Is that what gave you this idea? Because it's a real similar escape.

• 18:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 18:45Holly Frey?

  William Sharkey sounds like not a cool dude.

• 18:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  No.

• 18:49Holly Frey?

  To hang out with.

• 18:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  No.

• 18:50Holly Frey?

  He clearly had a horrible temper, maybe a chip on his shoulder, not a, not a good dude.

• 18:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  And, you know, using a gun to gesticulate with.

• 19:00Holly Frey?

  Yeah. And then mistreated the person who helped him escape from prison. Not a good dude. Incidentally, though, we mentioned in the episode that Maggie's story, again, gets written in a very trope-y way of like, she was a good girl from a good family, but then she just turned to a life of crime. But she. There's a little more nuance there to that because she was not the only person in her family who had criminal dealings. I found a newspaper account of her brother getting arrested for theft. You know, it's not, it's not as sort of black and white and, and storybook as you would

• 19:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 19:40Holly Frey?

  normally hear in discussions of her. But I love a good story of a person in drag.

• 19:51Holly Frey?

  That whole, I got so mired in all of the coverage of the court case because

• 19:58Holly Frey?

  the whole situation with the judge basically going, no, no, it was fine. No. And then a higher court going, ooh, wait a minute, you actually do have some points in this filing. He did do some stuff wrong. I mean, we know no human is, is, you know, beyond fallibility. But it also points out that the way then, and I would say is probably going on in instances now, that like one official in the justice system can completely shift the

• 20:35Holly Frey?

  outcome of a trial or of a legal situation.

• 20:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sure.

• 20:39Holly Frey?

  Like, as I said, Sharky, not a good dude. But it does actually kind of sound, based on all the witnesses, like he didn't actually mean to shoot Dunn.

• 20:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 20:51Holly Frey?

  But yet he was convicted of first degree murder, which

• 20:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:54Holly Frey?

  includes intent, largely because the judge really, really whiffed it on his jury instructions.

• 21:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. Really deeply irresponsible to just be kind of pounding on something while holding a gun.

• 21:11Holly Frey?

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 21:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  Definitely not.

• 21:12Holly Frey?

  For so many reasons, don't do that. Yeah, I just, you know, any combination of bad temper, alcohol, firearm.

• 21:22Holly Frey?

  Recipe for disaster.

• 21:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:24Holly Frey?

  It was then, it is now. I hope nobody in our audience gesticulates with a gun when they are angry.

• 21:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:33Holly Frey?

  Or ever, because that's not a way to have a discussion.

• 21:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:39Holly Frey?

  That's kind of all I have on William J. Sharkey. Just don't, don't live his life.

• 21:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  No.

• 21:45Holly Frey?

  Don't like him.

• 21:47Holly Frey?

  Don't do that. Don't do that.

• 21:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:52Holly Frey?

  If you have some time off this weekend, which I hope you do, I hope you eat the most delicious thing you've ever tasted in your life. We need more fun and delicious things. I hope you have like a, the best sleep you've ever had in your life. I just hope everybody has a best of moment this weekend because we need it, frankly. If you don't have time off and you actually have to do responsible things, I'm sorry, I feel you. But I hope you still find maybe the most delicious thing you've ever had in your life, or maybe just a return to an old favorite that gives you comfort. There are so many wonderful things in this world, and I hope everybody reaches out and enjoys them all as much as they are capable of. We will be right back here tomorrow

• 22:34Holly Frey?

  with a classic episode, and then on Monday, we'll have something brand new.

• 22:43Tracy 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.

• 22:58Holly 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.

• 23:29Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 24:04Speaker 08

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 24:33Speaker 09

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• 25:11Speaker 08

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.