Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Behind the Scenes Minis: Censorship Cats About this episode Tracy talks about how the show's recording schedule meant that this week's Monday episode got revised repeatedly to reflect current events. Holly talks about the way theater performances during portions of heavy censorship in France incorporated audience participation.
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript 6,001 words · 10 speakers
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 Cash Flow Crunch. OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. 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.
0:34 Speaker 02 This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Grainger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Grainger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click Grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.
1:04 Tracy 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. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio
1:45 Tracy V. Wilson? in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:21 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:24 Tracy V. Wilson? This week, we talked about the President's House site at Independence National Historical Park.
2:29 Holly Frey? Yeah.
2:30 Tracy V. Wilson? How all the signs were taken down and some of them are up, not all of them.
2:37 Tracy V. Wilson? It, you, so you were on, you were on vacation. Otherwise, we would have had like a slightly different episode because of the timing of when things happened. Because the whole thing really was completely and totally written when the order came that the site had to be restored.
2:56 Holly Frey? Oh, yeah, we would have recorded already if that had not.
2:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. And that would have been weirder than the many progressive rounds of edits that I did on the thing before we actually recorded it. The tone of it became slightly different every time because what was being described in terms of the removal of things, like it was, it was different depending on what was back up. And for a while, news reports from Philadelphia made it sound like everything had been put back.
3:29 Holly Frey? Right.
3:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Which I was kind, I was like, that's impressive because I knew, having seen what it looked like when the panels were taken down, that the metal ones, what was left was like the mounting display with adhesive all over it.
3:44 Holly Frey? Yep.
3:45 Tracy V. Wilson? And I was like, I don't know how they're going to put those back up. Like, how is that even going to happen? This looks like something that was supposed to be permanent that was like physically torn apart. And I think that is at least part of why they were not put back up.
4:02 Holly Frey? Yeah.
4:03 Tracy V. Wilson? I think there are real reasons that you cannot have adhesive cure properly in sub-freezing conditions during a blizzard. I think that's probably reasonable.
4:15 Holly Frey? Well, I also wonder, and, and you may have heard, but given the manner in which they were taken down. Were they damaged?
4:26 Tracy V. Wilson? I think some of them have been damaged in some amount is in terms of like, they have to be flattened back out, right? They were
4:34 Holly Frey? Right.
4:35 Tracy V. Wilson? They were pulled off, so they have to be flattened back out. They have to, like, the adhesive has to be taken off of the frames that were still hanging on the walls at the site. Like, that old adhesive has to be removed, new adhesive has to be put on there. The panels have to be flattened back out. If they were damaged in any other way, that has to be repaired, and all of that has to put, be put back up. So I think it is probably really true that that was not something that could physically be done by the deadline that was initially set. I also feel like that fact allows the government to keep down the panels that they most wanted to take down in the first place.
5:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Because that has, like, they have the most specific detail about slavery, specifically at the President's House, and then more generally, at the end of the 18th century, in the newly established United States. I went back through my pictures from when I made that trip to be like, do I have pictures from the President's House? I did not take any pictures of the President's House site. I did take a selfie of myself with the Liberty Bell, though, so. It was a trip I took to Philadelphia, where I walked all, all over creation.
5:49 Holly Frey? Yeah.
5:49 Tracy V. Wilson? So, Independence National Historical Park was specifically referenced in that executive order
5:57 Holly Frey? Hmm.
5:58 Tracy V. Wilson? as something that need, that's needing to be addressed. And one of the things in it says, uh, that at Independence National Historical Park, where our nation declared that all men are created equal, quote, "The prior administration sponsored training by an organization that advocates dismantling Western foundations and interrogating institutional racism, and pressured National Historical Park Rangers that their racial identity should dictate how they convey history to visiting Americans because America is purportedly racist."
6:36 Tracy V. Wilson? I went down a big rabbit hole trying to figure out what training that text is referencing.
6:44 Holly Frey? Right.
6:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Because that sounds to me like the most worst faith reading of a routinely normal
6:55 Holly Frey? Yeah.
6:55 Tracy V. Wilson? anti racism training.
6:56 Holly Frey? Yeah.
6:57 Tracy V. Wilson? But I did not, I was not able to find out like what specific training had prompted that text to be in the executive order. We've gotten a really lot, a lot of like really great supportive email from listeners lately. We've also gotten a couple of people who have written to basically say, stop being so political.
7:16 Holly Frey? Yeah.
7:17 Tracy V. Wilson? So I just want to like spell it out. The President of the United States,
7:23 Tracy V. Wilson? which is the country that we live in and work in and our citizens of, has specifically called the kind of history that we talk about on the show, improper ideology. Like there is not an apolitical response to that.
7:42 Holly Frey? No.
7:43 Tracy V. Wilson? If we vocally say, no, that's political. If we say nothing and adjust our content to align with this executive order, that is also political. That's not something we would do. I'm just saying that's a political move also.
8:02 Holly Frey? Right.
8:03 Tracy V. Wilson? If we said nothing and didn't really change anything, that too is political. There is no apolitical response to the President of the United States targeting the field that you work in. There's just not.
8:20 Holly Frey? No, there's really not.
8:23 Holly Frey? And here's my thing. And this may be a little heady. And I invoke this all the time.
8:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
8:30 Holly Frey? I don't understand the mentality of someone who wants to erase all of the uncomfortable and bad stuff from our history.
8:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
8:41 Holly Frey? And the thing that I always find myself going back to is the writing of William Blake. Like, the Blakean ideology that you cannot, in fact, be truly good unless you have been tempted by evil, unless you have been, you know, someone who has had that moment where you have done something that, that maybe is not truly good. And it's recognizing those two things existing and choosing the good thing as often as possible that actually makes a man or a, a person or an entity good. And to me, that makes it so much more valuable. Like, that's why we need, that's part of why we need to reckon with all of the uncomfortable parts of our history.
9:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
9:22 Holly Frey? It has no value to say, we have always been great and everybody's always been great and we've always done things right. Because all that tells me is like, great, you lived in a vacuum where you never were forced to like, make any choices or do any growths.
9:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
9:34 Holly Frey? Like, I, I don't, there's no value in that. That's a, that's a big fat, like, wad of frosting with no cake under it. Like, I don't, I don't understand it. So, a- as much as I love frosting, listen, I'll eat a can of frosting. But what I'm saying is just like, there's, it devalues the good things we have done to ignore the bad things that have happened as well.
9:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Right, right.
9:56 Holly Frey? And I don't know why anybody would want to do that, unless they just cannot deal with reality.
10:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, yeah. Well, the, the draft of the outline from before the order came to put the stuff back up, talked like, more about what the content was that had been taken down. And the fact that, h- having been there, having looked at these signs, having read the text on them, I found them to be accurate and thought provoking, and not something that would cause a person to like, need to rip them down with crowbars, unless maybe their feelings were so delicate and unregulated
10:41 Tracy V. Wilson? that any mention of slavery causes a tantrum about DEI or wokeness or political correctness, or whatever we are calling it nowadays.
10:51 Holly Frey? Mandatory therapy.
10:53 Holly Frey? Mandatory therapy for all. It's like that should not, that should not be that upsetting.
11:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
11:00 Holly Frey? It should be upsetting in the sense that it sucks that humans have treated each other badly, but it should not freak you out on that level.
11:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. So there is a whole book about the President's House site. I have not read it, but I wanted to say that it exists. It's called Upon the Ruins of Slavery. No, sorry. Upon the Ruins of Liberty: Slavery, the President's House at Independence National Historical Park and Public Memory. That sounds like it would be a very interesting read to me. It is just not something that I was able to read while working on this. There are also various books about Hercules, about Ona Judge, about other people who were enslaved at President's House site. Lots of other information available.
11:46 Speaker 00 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 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.
12:16 Speaker 05 In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.
12:39 Speaker 06 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
12:42 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.
13:03 Speaker 06 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.
13:10 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager, Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
13:17 Speaker 07 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
13:23 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
13:26 Speaker 07 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.
13:31 Speaker 06 What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
13:34 Tracy V. Wilson? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for sponsored jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent
14:19 Tracy V. Wilson? that fits their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed to help solve hiring challenges 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.
14:56 Tracy V. Wilson? A couple of other things that kind of jumped out to me while I was working on this, like in the context that I was working on it. One is a lot of the focus of this executive order about removing signage from the parks and all of that has seemed to be focused primarily on things that happened during the Biden administration. Like the specific order was look at things that happened since 2020. So since.
15:27 Tracy V. Wilson? The last full year of the first Trump presidency, like that's the focus of what we're looking at. While this site, the President's House site, was not dedicated until 2010, the vast majority of work on it was done during the presidency of George W. Bush. So it's like, there's just been this big focus with the executive order specifically about Joe Biden, but like also an undertone of things that might have been done when Democrats were in the White House. Right. But like vast majority of the work on the President's site, the President's House site was during the, the George Bush, George W. Bush presidency.
16:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Also Judge Cynthia Roof, a George W. Bush appointee. So her incredibly scathing order to put everything back begins with a quote from George Orwell's 1984, basically framing all of this as dystopian government overreach. Yeah. Also, the kinds of information that have been taken down, I had a whole paragraph about this and I felt like this episode was getting really long and I wanted to try to rein it in a little bit. So the information that has been taken down at sites, like as examples, information about climate change and retreating glaciers has been taken down at Glacier National Park,
16:54 Tracy V. Wilson? where receding glaciers are directly relevant to the park. Multiple signs have been taken down from Acadia National Park in Maine, including ones on climate change and one on the site's cultural significance to the Wabanaki people. Signs about sea level rise at Fort, at Fort Sumter on the coast of South Carolina, also directly relevant to Fort Sumter, sea level rise, signs have been taken down about that. Display referencing the lost cause mythology of the US Civil War, which we've talked about on the show before that was taken down from Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia. Those are just examples. I learned, like, you know, as I was having to go through and continually revise this as things were changing before it got recorded.
17:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts incorporates the Boot Cotton Mills Museum. It is a mill museum, like a factory museum. And the workers there were ordered to stop showing a film about what the conditions were like at the mills. Like, the, one of the points of having a historical park at a, at a mill. It's not clear whether it's related to this executive order or some of the other executive orders, of which there are many. But the words transgender and queer were completely scrubbed from the Stonewall National Historic Site website.
18:23 Holly Frey? Yeah.
18:24 Tracy V. Wilson? And they were also forced to take down the rainbow flag citing rules about what kinds of flags can fly at federal properties.
18:31 Holly Frey? Didn't they just put it back up, though? Did I see that somebody just went and put one back up?
18:36 Tracy V. Wilson? I'm not sure if they put it back up or if neighbors put it up adjacent.
18:41 Holly Frey? Yeah. The most bonkers, like, there's no way to reframe Stonewall.
18:47 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
18:48 Holly Frey? That isn't that.
18:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
18:51 Holly Frey? It's so bonkers.
18:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. So, yeah, just all, all of those things that have been taken down. Like, they all have the same, it's like, it's not targeting information that's wrong. It's not targeting information that is inaccurate. It's all clearly targeting things that are considered to be, like, progressive, left-wing ideas.
19:16 Holly Frey? Right.
19:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Rather than climate change, which is a scientific reality.
19:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Anyway, anyway, we talked on the show about when the National Park Service had signs put up with a QR code that people could submit their commentary. Yeah. Um, we talked about that in an installment of Unearthed. That's connected to all of this with the executive order. The Sierra Club did FOIA requests to see what kinds of things people have put in, in these, these QR code things. Some of them are legit, like legitimate needs that need to be addressed, like the bathroom stall door is broken, the, the, there's not enough parking. Like, these are things I remember. I can't get the link to open right now while also running the thing that is recording our podcast.
20:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Gotcha. But like, there's, there's stuff that people have submitted using these QR codes that are like actual legitimate things, that something is in disrepair that needs to be repaired or something similar. And then there's a lot of it, a lot of, a lot of comments where people have taken the opportunity to say, this directive is a whitewashing of history. Yeah. And then there is a segment of them that are just, I would classify as trolling.
20:36 Tracy V. Wilson? So I think if you like Google something like Sierra Club FOIA request, national parks, you can get to these and read them yourself. Nice. Since I can't, I can't get it to open right now. So anyway, there are still a number of ongoing community efforts to document signs at the parks. Save Our Signs Project is one of them. So, and again, a lot of this is an ongoing, ongoing developing story. Yeah.
21:12 Speaker 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 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.
21:41 Speaker 05 In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.
22:05 Tracy V. Wilson? For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for sponsored jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed to help solve hiring challenges and
22:49 Tracy V. Wilson? 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.
23:16 Tracy V. Wilson? So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can Add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home
24:00 Tracy V. Wilson? 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.
24:27 Holly Frey? We also talked about Thea Phil Steinland and his art and politics this week.
24:31 Tracy V. Wilson? We did do that.
24:33 Holly Frey? One thing we didn't talk about was anarchism.
24:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
24:37 Holly Frey? As a political concept.
24:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
24:39 Holly Frey? Which I think is important because, listen, if you're a kid like me, who grew up listening to the Sex Pistols, you have a different view of anarchy than a lot of other people. Like, we, I think, especially in America, in the US, we think of anarchy as always being very about violence and destruction.
24:57 Tracy V. Wilson? And like chaos.
24:59 Holly Frey? Chaos. Thanks, John Lydon. Irony there, because that's not what he is anymore. But really, when you look at the concepts of anarchy historically, politically, there certainly were parts, some parts of it that were interested in, in violence and overthrowing things by using violence. But a lot of it, and certainly the part of it that I think Thea Phil Steinland was most attracted to, was this idea that if you got rid of centralized government, and this is a little bit sweet and perhaps naive, that people could be taking care of each other without needing all of that fuss.
25:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, yeah.
25:35 Holly Frey? Which is a beautiful way to look at it. And it seems very much in line with the way he lived his life.
25:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
25:39 Holly Frey? And his pacifism, more so than that more kind of violent approach to it. But I just, I wanted to point that out in some context, as we talked about this this week, because, like I said, if you're like me and you grew up in the 80s, anarchy was very much pitched as like, destroy everything.
25:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
25:57 Holly Frey? And it's like, no, no.
25:58 Tracy V. Wilson? Smash all of it. Smash them.
26:00 Holly Frey? No, no, some, a lot of anarchy is about actually taking care of one another.
26:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of it also sort of like acknowledges. The harm that governments have done, right? So even though we have a lot of things that I think are good that come from governments, sometimes we like the harm that is done at the behest of governments can get less of a focus. I mean, not, not with gigantic things like starting wars. People acknowledge that, but there's a lot of stuff that happens day to day on a smaller scale that I think anarchy kind of confronts more than a lot of people really think about.
26:42 Holly Frey? Yeah, yeah. One of the other things I want to talk about is actually to me quite funny. It's in our show notes, but it, it's in a write up on EBSCO where they talked about all of those like French censorship laws that we kind of went through.
26:58 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, yeah.
26:58 Holly Frey? And one of them is this very funny thing that is described in that write up where theater censorship laws had played out in such a way that shows could not include certain portions of a script, but the plays that they were producing could still be printed in their original state. And what started to happen was that crowds would take their printouts and go to the shows and they would shout out the original versions.
27:32 Tracy V. Wilson? That's amazing.
27:33 Holly Frey? And it kind of became this anti censorship demonstration. But to me, I'm like, this is the first Rocky Horror Picture Show and it's very political. And I love this idea.
27:43 Tracy V. Wilson? I was like, this is a weird Rocky Horror.
27:44 Holly Frey? I love it. I love it. I love it so much. Just the concept of that and how that gets started and like that this organically developed of people wanting to yell at the stage, the parts that the actors were leaving out. I envision, I don't know, I never found a write up on specifically any of these instances, but I envision actors taking a dramatic pause while they're like, your turn. When the, the, the audience yells out the part of the play that they can't say, I think that's brilliant.
28:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
28:13 Holly Frey? We talked a little bit at the end of the episode about Chantilly's Everywhere.
28:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
28:18 Holly Frey? When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Like, if you do an internet search, you will find them in like, small towns around the world.
28:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
28:27 Holly Frey? Where they're just like a cute cafe that somebody opened up and they love, like, you know, this idea of, of the late 19th century Paris bohemian culture. Or some of them just seem to really love that, that poster and they want to base a whole color scheme around it. And others go all out and they try to replicate the
28:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
28:45 Holly Frey? the time and stuff. So I, I think that, I don't know, part of me thinks it'd be fun to try to just do a tour of them, but
28:51 Tracy V. Wilson? That would be fun, I think.
28:54 Holly Frey? I love it. There is a very funny, I almost put it in the episode, but I didn't. Funny to me, Antiques Roadshow that features a Teufel Steinl.
29:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
29:05 Holly Frey? And it is a lithograph. This woman initially thinks it's a painting, but it's a lithograph. And when the guy tells her it's a lithograph, she looks disappointed at first. And then he was like, no, it's still really valuable. But it's one of the original lithographs of, he did this, this dual cat portrait thing that is a summer cat and a winter cat.
29:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
29:25 Holly Frey? And the summer cat is kind of out, he looks like he's sitting out on a, like, the wooden, you know, what is the word I'm thinking of? You know?
29:34 Tracy V. Wilson? I don't know.
29:35 Holly Frey? Like the, the thing that goes around your deck.
29:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, railing?
29:38 Holly Frey? Yeah, there you go. Railing, railing evaded me. He looks like he's sitting on this wooden railing and he looks actually kind of grumpy. It's a great piece of work. And this woman has brought it to Antiques Roadshow. And the first thing she says is, I don't like cats.
29:53 Holly Frey? But she had been told it was valuable, so she kept it.
29:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
29:56 Holly Frey? But because she didn't like cats, she had kept it outside on her porch for like 15 years. But it obviously was a very well-covered porch because it hadn't degraded much. Although the person that's doing the evaluation has, says kind of like, hey, you know, unfortunately, because this was framed directly against glass in probably varying weather conditions
30:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
30:21 Holly Frey? that some of the, the lithographic material has stuck to the glass a little bit.
30:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, yeah.
30:27 Holly Frey? And kind of, but it was very funny. I think he evaluates it as being like worth $10,000 to $12,000. Then he's like, do you like cats now? And she's like, yeah, I think so. And it's just this very funny exchange, but like, anyway.
30:42 Holly Frey? One of the, the last thing I really want to talk about.
30:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
30:45 Holly Frey? Is that prison narrative again, because there is a lot of interesting writing in it. Some of it is very just funny. I mean, I will say when we think of a prison narrative today, we think of modern prisons. And this definitely seems to be a more relaxed scenario than we would associate with prison today, right? Like, these men were essentially living in a cell together, but it was like, they had like furniture and tables and chairs and
31:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
31:16 Holly Frey? you know, people could come visit them and people that visited them could bring them whatever food they wanted. And so they kind of had like, they were isolated and they were certainly, you know, not free, but they, they could have a lot of comforts of home there that we might not associate with it. So some of it is just like kooky anecdotes about their life in prison.
31:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
31:36 Holly Frey? But there was one passage that I read and I haven't found a full English translation of it. So I had translated pieces of it with my, you know, sometimes murky, but overall okay, French. And then I, you know, consulted some other friends that translate as well. And there was one passage that really, really struck me. And it's so pertinent to the way we all think about incarceration and how important it is to recognize the, the danger of incarceration creating a person that is not really gonna be able to participate in recidivism.
32:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
32:21 Holly Frey? Because they're changed so much by the experience.
32:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
32:24 Holly Frey? And that passage reads, "Man is an animal who, however unsociable he may seem, can only live in society. His confinement within four walls dulls his senses, his faculties, his organs. The brain, no longer stimulated by a succession of images, becomes numb. If the seclusion is prolonged and the prisoner does not find sustenance for his activity, there is a danger of intellectual death."
32:52 Holly Frey? And I really loved how poignant that was. So I just wanted to read it.
32:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
32:55 Holly Frey? That it will, it will ruin the person in ways that people probably were not considering.
33:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
33:00 Holly Frey? And that was sort of part of their whole.
33:04 Holly Frey? Often very funny take down of the whole justice system. It's like, nobody's thinking stuff through. Nobody's.
33:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
33:11 Holly Frey? They literally just want to tick boxes and say they did a thing to uphold the law, but they don't, they're not really considering the consequences of the way they carry that out, which is really interesting.
33:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, it's been a super long time, but we did an episode on the Attica prison uprising.
33:26 Holly Frey? Yes.
33:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Back some years ago. And one of the things that we talked about was how like, the system of prison was basically just leaving people worse off than they had been when they were sentenced to prison and not having a way to escape that cycle. And it reminds me of that.
33:47 Holly Frey? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Taffel Steinle, now we all know who he is. He can get proper attribution for his beautiful work.
33:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Not confuse him with to lose the trick.
33:59 Holly Frey? No, I understand it. There, you know.
34:01 Tracy V. Wilson? If you had asked me, that's what I would have said.
34:05 Holly Frey? A lot of people would.
34:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
34:06 Holly Frey? A lot of people would. And especially because they knew each other.
34:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
34:10 Holly Frey? They knew a lot of the same people. They were sometimes portraying similar subjects in their art. It makes sense.
34:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. They had some similar subject matter of like their commercial art especially.
34:21 Holly Frey? For sure, for sure. But that is Taffel Steinle. I hope that if this is your weekend coming up, you have time to look at beautiful art, whatever it is that touches your soul the most or inspires you, whatever fits your tastes. If you don't have time off, maybe sneak in some art looking online if you get a few minutes. It's always good for the soul. Or make art if that makes you happy. Nothing makes me feel more at peace than when I'm just making something. We hope that everybody is being kind to one another. These very, very stressful times we live in. Every human kindness helps, in my opinion. We'll be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode. Thanks for spending this time with us.
35:05 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.
35:19 Tracy 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.
35:51 Speaker 05 In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.
36:16 Speaker 09 Livright, 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 Sykes proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
36:44 Tracy 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. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Previous Théophile Steinlen Beyond 'Le Chat Noir' Next SYMHC Classics: Marie Laurencin Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated