Behind the Scenes Minis: Incorrect Lillian and Reading Kids

Tracy notes the wild array of incorrect information that circulates about Lillian Exum Clement. Then she and Holly talk about childhood reading habits. 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.

• 0:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at nsl.sport.

• 0:34Tracy 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 in partnership with ViiV Healthcare.

• 1:18Tracy 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 into 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.

• 2:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Spend less time searching and more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 2:15Holly Frey?

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

• 2:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. This week, we talked about Lilian Exum Clement Stafford, who I find so interesting and so cool in so many ways, except for the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the eugenics part.

• 2:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Not a fan of either of those. Yeah. So, to my knowledge, there has been no biography of her written, which means that a lot of the research, like the initial research for the episode, included a lot of things, which, as we said in the episode, had come from local newspaper and magazine articles, from Western North Carolina specifically, or from the state of North Carolina. Not things that have source lists or footnotes or anything like that. So some of the things that they would reference, I was like, where are you getting this? Where did this traffic light thing come from?

• 3:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, I could not find anything in either of the legislative session records, from like the session that she was in in January through March, and then the extra session that started in December. Like, I just couldn't find anything about traffic signals in any of that at all. Similarly, like, where are you getting this about her introducing eugenics legislation? Like, I did not read line by line all 800 or 900 total pages of these documents, right? I was keyword searching for all of the relevant words that could have been used in this kind of legislation and just finding nothing. So it's like, I don't know where that came from.

• 4:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  But also, there were just so many mistakes.

• 4:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  In so many of these articles, there was the birth year confusion, which is absolutely understandable. It told, like, when there are that many different years in the written records of a person and your job is to write a brief newspaper feature on somebody, you're probably, it's like, it's less likely that you're going to stumble onto the fact that there's none of these ages line up.

• 4:47Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 4:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  The, the things about the birth order totally makes sense. That, like, there would be questions and misinformation based on the weird birth years, but like, the idea, there are a lot of articles that say that an all male electorate voted for her in the general election. And that's just an easy one to see is not the case.

• 5:14Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 5:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  But it is in so many places. I, one of the articles that I read about her said that she had died of pneumonia during the Spanish flu. Spanish flu, we've done episodes about before. That happened from 1918 to 1919, sort of trailed off after that. Definitely not having something we call the Spanish flu in 1925.

• 5:36Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 5:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  And, I mean, she-

• 5:39Holly Frey?

  No, Tracy, it was a weird dormant strain.

• 5:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, like, she, she's reported as having died of pneumonia. That may have been flu related, but like, the Spanish flu was not what was happening.

• 5:51Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 5:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  At that point. So I just, I just, I don't, I got a little frustrated with that. And then when I realized that some of those things go all the way back to her obituaries, I was like, she, she died, like, she, she died five years after the 19th amendment was ratified. Like, that's not a big amount of time to have passed. So, anyway, I, I got frustrated about all of that. My little note of what to talk about in behind the scenes has just sort of a keyboard smash in my expression of my frustration about this. Something that I had put in here in the episode that I wound up taking out because

• 6:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  it just, it felt like an aside that was kind of interrupting the, the narrative is that on March 22nd, 1921, so after the main legislative session was over, fellow representative B.G. Crisp of Minis wrote her a letter. And I found this letter, I was like, this, this person I think would be a reply guy today. So B.G. Crisp had been very staunchly and vocally against the ratification of the 19th Amendment. And he wrote her this letter, there's a quote from it, quote, "I merely wish to express in writing the high admiration

• 7:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  that I, with all other fellow members of the General Assembly of 1921, have for you as a most intelligent and worthy representative who has made lasting impression upon all who observed you in that capacity. Your course was such as to challenge the highest admiration of all who observed it. And I happen to know some who, like myself, were bitterly opposed to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, were most interested observers." It's like, he wanted to basically make sure that, that she knew that it wasn't that he had been opposed to women having the right to vote, but that he thought that it should have been

• 8:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  left up to the states and not a constitutional amendment. This was just kind of a weird letter. I was like, I feel like you felt the need to write to her and justify yourself. Yeah. After the legislative session was over. Yeah. Also, in just a, a throwback to a recent episode, as I was just trying to confirm things about her life that I had not been able to really track down, I was looking at the newspaper reporting of her time in the legislature. One day, the giant front page headline was about investigation into Palagra. Just the whole, the whole title, the whole entire like, front page, whole headline space covering the entire width of it.

• 8:49Holly Frey?

  I have a question.

• 8:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Tell me what your question is.

• 8:52Holly Frey?

  Why were they calling her brother Clement?

• 8:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  I think they were just calling her brother because they called each other brother. And so she was now part of their governing body. And so they also called her brother.

• 9:03Holly Frey?

  I mean, I guess it's like on Star Trek when they call all the, the women captains, sir.

• 9:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 9:10Holly Frey?

  But I don't know. It just struck me as the oddest thing. And I don't know why I kept getting really, I kept thinking about it while we were talking and I'm like, why was that a good thing?

• 9:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's sort of my conclusion of what was happening. Sort of like the, the fact that they had never really thought about what would happen if somebody changed their last name.

• 9:32Holly Frey?

  Right. Cause they'd never had to think about it.

• 9:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. It had always only been men before that. And so they had never really had to think about what they would need to call a fellow legislator. Uh, or a fellow attorney. If that attorney or legislator was not a man.

• 9:48Holly Frey?

  Right. I mean, I actually feel like that too, is one of those things that persists a little bit, right? Like there are women that I know in careers where they're like, well, I got married and I took my husband's name. Socially, but professionally, I'm still this.

• 10:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:09Holly Frey?

  And I, I don't know if that's because it's a complicated thing. There's no one thing, right? But I don't know how much of that is weighted by, you know, the fact that it would just be harder to rebuild the recognition that they've achieved in their field. Or if some of it is like, I don't want to confuse anybody. And I mean, a lot of people now don't even do the name change, which is also perfectly fine. You did not change your name.

• 10:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  No.

• 10:36Holly Frey?

  I did. I had one of the most boring, common names on earth. I was ready to like, my name was, my maiden name was so common. That when I told people it, they said, you are a liar. And I would have to whip out my ID and be like, nope, that's really my name.

• 10:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  There were multiple Tracy Wilsons at my high school. And so when somebody was called to come to the office, they would have to put a middle initial in there. And the fact that Tracy Wilson is such a common name is why I have always used my middle initial professionally. And then I got married at the age of 40, at which point I had, you know, two decades of professional working experience under the last name Wilson. And so that just seemed like a lot of effort.

• 11:26Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 11:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  To try to change stuff around. Now I'm thankful, like it just, it's a lot of work to change your name. And now it's like, wow, now since people are introducing

• 11:39Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 11:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Legislation requiring names to match birth certificates. The fact that my name still does is like an extra convenience to me.

• 11:48Holly Frey?

  I'll just vanish into the night.

• 11:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Legislation requiring your ID to match your birth certificate in order to vote is bad. I will just put out my feeling on that.

• 12:02Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  It is bad for a lot of people.

• 12:04Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  I don't, if you're going to write me an email saying, but there'll be a form to fill out, I don't care. Overwhelmingly, men won't have to fill out that form.

• 12:14Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 12:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Anyway, I'm hoping to visit Asheville in the near future. I will almost certainly drive by that historical marker at some point. I am sure I have driven before it now. I have been to Asheville since when it was put up. So I don't think I ever noticed it prior to learning about this, uh, learning that she existed from a different podcast.

• 12:40Holly Frey?

  I, uh, one of her out, her suits is on display at one of the museums there.

• 12:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, nice.

• 12:47Holly Frey?

  Trying to remember which one. It's quite a smart suit. I quite like it.

• 12:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. She looks lovely in every picture of her that I have seen. She's very smartly dressed and, uh, very.

• 13:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Very like neatly styled hair. Um, so yeah, uh, I wish there were a full length biography of her that would answer some questions that I have. Some of the things that I'm like, I don't know, it's totally possible that there is documentation of it somewhere that's, you know, not digitized, not generally available to the public, or that it is. And I just didn't find that in all of my research. I, this morning before we came in here to record, um, I did a second pass just to like, try again to see, number one, is there anything I can find about her family in relation to the 1916 flood? Number two, is there anything I can find about her

• 13:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  or her family in relation to the Spanish flu? Because she was actually alive when that happened. Uh, and my, my second pass, first thing this morning, found nothing about either of them. So.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at N S L dot sport.

• 14:31Speaker 03

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

• 14:33Tracy 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.

• 14:54Speaker 03

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

• 15:01Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 15:08Speaker 04

  Through with Alan's whole crew. Design, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 15:14Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 15:17Speaker 04

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

• 15:25Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 16:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 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.

• 16:38Tracy 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 Jesay 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 friends

• 17:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  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.

• 17:43Holly Frey?

  We talked at the top of the episode about Gertrude Chandler Warner.

• 17:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh huh.

• 17:49Holly Frey?

  That you didn't read The Boxcar Children.

• 17:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  I really don't think I did.

• 17:53Holly Frey?

  So I had this experience where I picked them up when I was still living in the Pacific Northwest and just mainlined them. I was obsessed with them. And I had found them in my school library. And then when I was nine, we moved to the Gulf Coast. And I remember thinking like, okay, I will look for them in the library there. And they didn't know what I was talking about. None of those kids had ever heard of it. It sounded like some weird, far off thing that like I had made up. And then when you were like, I never read them, I'm like, was this not popular in the South?

• 18:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I don't know. It might've just been me. Cause I, like, I started reading pretty early and I read a lot. Like, I was one of those kids that would get in trouble reading.

• 18:40Holly Frey?

  Oh, same.

• 18:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  In class instead of doing, or reading ahead when we were reading aloud.

• 18:45Holly Frey?

  Oh, I got yelled at?

• 18:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I had a lot of problems with that.

• 18:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  But I think because I had started reading so early, I, a lot of times would read books that I felt like were more grown up.

• 19:03Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  I, I could be really resistant to books that I felt like were gonna be babyish. And I think I might have had that impression about The Boxcar Children.

• 19:15Holly Frey?

  Well, I started reading them when I was seven.

• 19:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, like, I'm not like, I've definitely heard of these books.

• 19:21Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  I, I know what they are, but I don't think I ever read any of them.

• 19:27Holly Frey?

  Yeah. I'm tickled because I definitely had a mix of, I did the fashion thing of mix your high and low to get personal style. Because as we've talked about before, I read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood when I was way too young to be reading.

• 19:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. I tried to read like a totally, like, not a, not an adaptation for younger readers, but the full-on book Jane Eyre when I was in like fifth grade. And then when I read Jane Eyre again in college, I was like, wow.

• 19:58Holly Frey?

  Sure missed a lot of this.

• 19:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sure didn't really realize what was going on in this book.

• 20:02Holly Frey?

  Yeah, my book like that was Neuromancer because I found it when I was 12. Yeah. And I read it and I really enjoyed it, but then when I went back and read it as an adult, I was like, what was I doing with this book in my hand? I missed so many things. It just tickles me. I will say this, I want to be very careful because I don't like to criticize other people's creative work.

• 20:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 20:25Holly Frey?

  I listen to audiobooks all the time. I love them. My husband doesn't love them because he doesn't like hearing other people read things because it's not usually the way he would read it if he were reading aloud and he finds that jarring. Totally fine. But because I knew I wasn't, I was trying to multitask a bunch of things and I was like, I'll listen to the audiobook version of the first book, by which I mean the 1942 version, to catch up because it's only a couple of hours long. I can do it while I'm running around the house doing prep work, taking care of my animals, et cetera. And the narrator who does the one that I read, does the voices of the children.

• 21:07Holly Frey?

  I did not enjoy that at all.

• 21:13Holly Frey?

  I kind of got used to it, but it was a little rough. It was a little rough, but I will say there are, in many cases, if you experience something like this, dear listener,

• 21:23Holly Frey?

  in some cases, particularly very popular books like this, or Dracula, which I have mentioned listening to a lot of lately, there are often multiple versions of audiobooks. So you can see if you have another option that doesn't, that doesn't quite great on you. I did not do that. I was like, I already have it in the thing. I'm just going to gun it.

• 21:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Most of my audiobook listening is like on road trips, on some kind of travel, where I'm going to be sitting in a place wanting a way to occupy my mind. Because, or you know, if there was something I was really into, I would listen while walking around or doing stuff around the house. But that's also when I listen to the podcasts that I listen to. So audiobooks are just not as big of a thing for me.

• 22:10Holly Frey?

  I listen to a lot of them.

• 22:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  More likely going to like read. A book?

• 22:14Holly Frey?

  No, I'll go right to sleep. I think because we read so much for this job.

• 22:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's true, too.

• 22:20Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that I'm like, reading for leisure doesn't feel quite the same as it used to to me. And my brain just goes, no, thank you. I don't, why not? Why don't we stare in the middle distance for a minute? There are some very cute stories of Gertrude Chandler Warner and her siblings growing up. And like I said, their, their youth seems almost idyllic. But one of the things that I thought was very cute and really quite ingenious is that they were trying to figure out distances from their house to other places in town. And they measured the circumference of the wagon wheels on their family's wagon.

• 23:02Holly Frey?

  And then they tied a rag to one of the spokes of it. And they would count how many rotations it made from their house to their destination. And then they would multiply that by the circumference of the wagon wheel and be like, that is 2.6 miles away from our house.

• 23:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's amazing.

• 23:21Holly Frey?

  One point, and I'm like, this is the most ingenious thing I've ever heard. For like three little kids to come up with this. I don't know how little they were at the time, but I just thought that was very, very charming.

• 23:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Speaker 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.

• 24:08Tracy 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 Jesay 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 friends proving that queer joy

• 24:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  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.

• 25:08Tracy 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

• 25:52Tracy 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.

• 26:18Tracy 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.

• 26:54Holly Frey?

  Here's the thing that was wild to me, the way she wrote her books. And when I read it, at first, I was like, are you saying this is how she did it when she was a kid? Nope, pretty much the whole time, until presumably her eyesight started to fail. She, she had a typewriter, but she didn't love it. And she usually did four passes on any of her books, like to do her own editing and get the manuscript to a point she liked. But her first pass, she would get a notebook and write in it with a pencil, and she would write only on the right-hand facing pages.

• 27:36Holly Frey?

  And when she got to the end of the notebook, she would flip it over and then continue on what was then the empty right-hand facing pages the other way.

• 27:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's wild.

• 27:47Holly Frey?

  That was exactly what I said. And also, it made my hand crampy, because that's a lot of handwriting. I know people used to handwrite that much.

• 27:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Holly Frey?

  But oof, hand crampy.

• 27:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  We've talked about how I find writing with a pen laborious and so.

• 28:03Holly Frey?

  I mean, I don't. That's actually how I prefer to keep a lot of my lists and stuff. There's just something about the tactile nature of it that I really love. But I can't imagine writing a paragraph, let alone, like, I'm talking bullet lists. I can't, like, a manuscript sounds really, really intense and unfun. But that idea of, like, half a notebook one way, half the other way. I'm like, that's the way that, like, suspicious people write manifestos. What are you doing, Gertrude? Gertrude, what is going on? But it worked for her, apparently. Okay. I just thought that was nutty. She also had this one piece of advice that I stumbled across for writers that I really liked.

• 28:47Holly Frey?

  Because she recognized that, you know, because she did her own editing a lot before she ever handed off a book, she too had the same thing that all of us have when we write, which is like, you look at something you wrote and you're like, dear, Credo, I'm terrible at this. But her thing was, don't ever throw anything away because you might want it later. Yeah. And I'm like, that's actually a really good policy. It's hard. You sometimes want to destroy the evidence of mediocrity. But she's like, don't do it. Don't do it. Um, one thing we didn't talk about, that will come up a little on our upcoming episode about children's morality code, was that, and I will tell you why we didn't talk about it,

• 29:29Holly Frey?

  was the sort of inherent Christian morality of a lot of her work. Because she isn't heavy handed about it. There are not mentions of any kind of religion, or, you know, God, or anything. But she did publish a book that I couldn't find much information about, other than just a mention in one of those pretty simple biographies I read, which is that she published a book in collaboration with a missionary named Leila Anderson. And this person apparently had a parakeet named Peter Piper that traveled the world with her on these missionary trips. Okay. And talked, and they wrote a book about the bird. Okay.

• 30:14Holly Frey?

  I really would like to find that book, like, a good copy of that book. Yeah. But I have a feeling it was a very small run, and they're probably in antique shops I haven't uncovered yet. But. Yeah. Peter Piper, the parakeet. Yeah. Writing manifestos.

• 30:33Holly Frey?

  Anyway, I will say this, this is a thing, I didn't do this on purpose, but I have recognized that I am in our troubled times revisiting a lot of the things that gave me joy as a kid.

• 30:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:47Holly Frey?

  And it's very comforting. So I do encourage people, if you had a book that you loved as a child, or a game that you loved, just anything that you associate with fun times in childhood and delight, it's very soothing to go back and re-encounter it for the most part. Obviously, you're gonna find things and go, yo, that's racist, or, um,

• 31:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure.

• 31:07Holly Frey?

  This is, this is a problem. But overall, pretty delightful.

• 31:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Holly Frey?

  Re- revisiting the Boxcar Children honestly made me so happy. I had quite forgotten about their dog, Watch, and his whole little sub-story.

• 31:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Holly Frey?

  Which is really cute. Just that they find this poor dog wandering in the woods with a big thorn in its paw, and Jess carefully takes the thorn out, and the dog becomes like, attached to her at the hip going forward, and takes care of the children, and warns them when there's trouble, and it's just very sweet. I forgot about Watch, the dog. Anyway, love the Boxcar Children. Um, I have not read any of the modern versions. Some of them have been rewritten. They're essentially the same story she wrote, but they're rewritten with modern scenarios, modern characters, etc. And I haven't revisited any of those. So I cannot speak to their value or quality.

• 32:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 32:02Holly Frey?

  But I love the originals. Even though, we don't know why grandpa hated that mom. We don't know.

• 32:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  I kept thinking about, um, this is kind of not entirely related, but like Grave of the Fireflies, which is a

• 32:19Holly Frey?

  Oh.

• 32:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hor- very incredibly sad film. But, um, most Americans seeing this film interpret it as an anti-war film because of the horrific things that the children go through in it.

• 32:34Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 32:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  While the filmmaker explicitly said that, no, it's about how children should behave themselves and respect their elders. Um, because the, they were in the care of an aunt, um, and they leave to try to make their way on their own. And that's what I kept thinking about with these children having a grandfather who was An adult there for them, but instead they went to live in a boxcar. Totally different setup.

• 33:04Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 33:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Not at all like the same tone in any way, but I kept thinking about that.

• 33:10Holly Frey?

  Yeah, it's a, yeah, and he's like the richest man in town. Everyone knows who he is, which is very funny. So like the kids do a lot of like hiding of their names.

• 33:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 33:20Holly Frey?

  There's an event where they're actually like with Henry's with a lot of townspeople and he lies, he only uses his first and middle name. It doesn't say his last name because he knows people are looking for him. But he doesn't recognize his grandfather because they never really knew him. So it's a, it's, it's again, why did he not like their mom? What was up with that? Listen, if you have time off coming up in the next couple of days, I hope you get to revisit something that brings you joy, whether it's from your childhood or not. Just find the stuff that makes you happy or offers you an escape because the real world is going to be there when you go back to it.

• 33:58Holly Frey?

  And it is good to take care of yourself with joy. There is no shame in that game. I also hope that everyone you encounter is kind to you. If you have to work, that goes doubly so. I hope nobody's a jerk to you while you are just trying to make a living. I hope everybody treats each other as kindly as they possibly can. Again, it's a high tension life we are living right now. But we will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and then on Monday we will bring you something brand new.

• 34:31Tracy 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.

• 34:46Holly 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.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at nsl.sport.

• 35:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. 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

• 36:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  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. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.