Behind the Scenes Minis: Odd Baby Train

Tracy talks about amusing old illustrations of babies in utero. Holly shares anecdotes about George Stephenson's life that rarely make it into discussions of his life. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:32Speaker 02

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• 0:48Speaker 03

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.

• 1:33Speaker 03

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• 1:55Speaker 02

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• 2:32Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:15Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 3:18Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 3:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  We talked about rickets this week.

• 3:22Holly Frey?

  We sure did.

• 3:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  I have had rickets on my list for a while. I didn't want to do it immediately after the one about scurvy or the one about pellagra, because people might get tired of hearing about my fixation with vitamin deficiency diseases.

• 3:38Holly Frey?

  I mean, we all have our things. It's fine.

• 3:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  We do. We do. I also knew that I had enough of the, like, the underpinning knowledge that it would be a relatively easy episode.

• 3:52Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  So it would be helping with the on-ramp from having taken some time off over the holidays, returning to normal working time. A couple of things that came up. One, we talked about Serranos of Ephesus. Was his name Serranos or Solanus? I don't remember. Either way, writing.

• 4:17Holly Frey?

  That guy, you know who I'm talking about.

• 4:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  That guy, the guy we mentioned, the guy during the Roman era who wrote a book on gynecology that included a section on baby care, caring for newborns, Serranus of Ephesus. I of course looked this up because I wanted to see exactly what he had to say.

• 4:40Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 4:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  And this text includes some hilarious pictures of anatomy. And I don't know, I didn't look into it to find out, are these things that he drew and included, are these things some other commenter drew and included with a later addition? Not sure. But they are pictures supposedly of fetal gestation, right? In, in the uterus.

• 5:11Holly Frey?

  Okay.

• 5:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  I showed them to, to the friends in the group chat because they were so ridiculous. And one of them said, why am I looking at a full, a fully grown man in the devil's water bottle? And I was like, that's a great question because that's a perfect characterization for what this looks like.

• 5:33Holly Frey?

  Looking at them. Oh, these are great.

• 5:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  They are amazing and so funny.

• 5:39Holly Frey?

  Okay, here's, here's what I will tell you.

• 5:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 5:42Holly Frey?

  We all know I'm a little bit of a baby phobe.

• 5:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh huh.

• 5:46Holly Frey?

  For people that love babies, I'm so glad you do. I'd, they, they freak me out.

• 5:51Holly Frey?

  If people looked like tiny adults when they were born, I might be less weirded out by it. And I'm not sure what that means.

• 5:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's funny.

• 5:59Holly Frey?

  But I love the idea of someone just like arriving on this planet in miniature form, but with adult proportions.

• 6:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there, there is.

• 6:09Holly Frey?

  Cause they're like little dolls.

• 6:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. Yeah. There are periods of art history where the babies look like tiny adults.

• 6:18Holly Frey?

  Yes, for sure.

• 6:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  The fact that they are in what is supposed to be a uterus, but does look like the kind of old timey rubber water bottle that you would put hot water in for your cramps makes it more funny.

• 6:32Holly Frey?

  I like how one looks like they're dipping their toe into the outside world, like testing it.

• 6:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Checking it out. So that was one of the funniest things. We didn't talk about it at all because I really wanted the focus to be on rickets. But for a while, it seemed like there was not exactly a fad, maybe more of a trend in the world of medicine to routinely test people for their vitamin D levels and then recommend potentially supplementation based on that.

• 7:03Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 7:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  And there were a couple of physicals where I had a vitamin D test and then had a recommendation.

• 7:09Holly Frey?

  Oh.

• 7:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  One of these times I was working a job where I was in literally an underground space and I worked from, like, I worked the whole afternoon and evening. So if I was gonna get any sun exposure, like, I had to leave the house and do things before work that would be out in the sun. And I read an article, like, I'm not a doctor, I can't really make medical, I, medical recommendations, that would not be okay. And I did not read the entire spectrum of writing about this, but it does seem like there was eventually a, okay, we tried this for a while, it doesn't seem like there is

• 7:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  a net benefit to across the board testing people's vitamin D levels and giving

• 7:58Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  most people supplementation. So that's, this episode was about rickets, the actual medical condition, not like the sort of low-grade vitamin D deficiency that for a while, there was a lot of general practitioner testing of going on.

• 8:15Holly Frey?

  Right. I have so many thoughts. One, and you almost segued into this when you were talking about the full adult humans in a water bottle. I wondered because you referenced a number of artworks where there have been questions about, like, is this depicting rickets?

• 8:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:33Holly Frey?

  And I immediately wondered, like,

• 8:38Holly Frey?

  Have there been a lot of paintings from like the era when Mannerism was really popular?

• 8:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh huh.

• 8:44Holly Frey?

  That could have been misinterpreted this way?

• 8:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Holly Frey?

  Because you know, just as a quick refresher for anybody that doesn't remember, Mannerism is this era of art where people look a little bit surreal. It's, it was very popular in like the 16th century. I think I'm getting that right. You know, where bodies would be slightly elongated and limbs would be curved in ways that they don't really do. Like instead of an elbow, you would see a curved arm kind of thing. And I'm like, I wonder if any of these people look bow legged because of Mannerism and not because of deficiencies.

• 9:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. And that was a, a general conversation in several of the things that I read, which is like, we don't really know, did this person have rickets? Or is this like artistic license?

• 9:29Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 9:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like was the model for the baby Jesus in the painting that we talked about? Like, did that model have rickets? Or was this just like how the artist was depicting a baby? For, we don't know.

• 9:46Holly Frey?

  Yeah. I also wonder if there isn't like sort of a reflexive problem of it where, you know, you had mentioned that, that there have been, I'm trying to remember the name of the researcher who determined that rickets was like primarily a rich people problem.

• 10:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Uh huh.

• 10:05Holly Frey?

  And if depictions of people with rickets may have been a way to signify that they were important or from the higher, even if they didn't necessarily have it or exhibit any symptoms.

• 10:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Holly Frey?

  I'm sure someone has done a study of this.

• 10:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 10:23Holly Frey?

  But now I sure am wondering.

• 10:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Well, and something that I had in here that I eventually took out because it just, it felt a little out of place, no matter where I put it in the outline, was about how a bunch of the Medici's all had rickets and there were a couple of Medici's children.

• 10:39Holly Frey?

  That way?

• 10:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  No, we're talking about their bones, like their actual, like there were so, there were at least one. Baby in the Medici family, who of course were some of the wealthiest and most powerful people of their era, were described as having rickets. And then there was a study that I did not keep the details of where there was, you know, a research into the bones of a Medici family tomb and how it, all of the kids had signs of rickets. That does also mean these were all people who died as children. It's harder to tell if like, had they survived until adulthood, like what would their skeletons have looked like then?

• 11:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  That had led to some speculation that the Medici's were all keeping their babies inside and out of the sun, which meant that since they were almost certainly being breastfed, then they would not have been getting enough.

• 11:38Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Vitamin D.

• 11:39Holly Frey?

  They're like the original indoor children.

• 11:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I'm not in any way suggesting that breastfeeding is bad.

• 11:45Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 11:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whatever way gets the baby enough food and nutrients is the way the baby should be fed. It does seem like there's a lot of recommendation around the world for vitamin D supplements for exclusively breastfed babies. Because also not having babies with sunburns, that's important.

• 12:03Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 12:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Not just for the comfort of the baby.

• 12:05Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 12:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  For the baby's future skin health.

• 12:08Holly Frey?

  Did you run into anything in your research, and this may be a little too modern, about the impact of the early phase of the COVID epidemic?

• 12:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  No, I did not look at anything.

• 12:20Holly Frey?

  On rickets numbers? Because I'd be curious.

• 12:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I know.

• 12:23Holly Frey?

  So many folks were staying indoors all the time.

• 12:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. There were a lot of people staying indoors pretty much all the time. And then as it became clearer that being outside was less risky, there were people that did the opposite and were spending more time outside.

• 12:39Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  So that would, that would be interesting to look at. Something that we mentioned is that the, like, some of these studies that were done on babies and small children would not be thought of as ethical today because like, there were kids in a control group who were not getting.

• 12:55Holly Frey?

  Yeah, it's troubling.

• 12:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Something that we knew was helpful. And this still has relevancy today because one of the like anti-vax talking points is that there are vaccines on the market today that did not have like a placebo group comparison.

• 13:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the study.

• 13:19Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 13:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  The reason that we didn't have a placebo group comparison in the study is that we already know that the measles vaccine prevents measles.

• 13:30Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  So if you are instead giving children a placebo, you are exposing them to measles, a dangerous disease.

• 13:40Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  So when new versions of vaccines comes, come out, usually the test is to compare the new vaccine to the previous one, not to intentionally expose children to the disease that the vaccine prevents.

• 13:55Holly Frey?

  Welcome to ethics in medical research, people.

• 13:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Holly Frey?

  Yeah, it's weird.

• 14:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I wish I had more information on Harriet Chick.

• 14:03Holly Frey?

  Right?

• 14:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Having a, not a typical career for a woman in science, given when she lived.

• 14:11Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I jotted her name on the list for maybe a future episode in the immediate looking, did not seem like there was probably enough information, but who knows? That could change.

• 14:23Holly Frey?

  Now I'm just thinking about cod liver oil and how it appears in all children's literature that I grew up with and all of the.

• 14:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:30Holly Frey?

  Cartoons that I grew up with and all of the, and it just makes me giggle because now I realize, I didn't realize, of course, when you're a kid and you see it, we're kind of, you're a couple of years younger than me, but we're, even I'm still kind of outside of that window when like, everybody was administering cod liver oil to their kids at all times.

• 14:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 14:50Holly Frey?

  Because of its benefits. And I remember being like, why, why are they doing this to these people in, in books and cartoons? And I didn't really learn until much later. Oh, because it's considered, you know, full of essential and exciting and helpful things.

• 15:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right. When Patrick and I were on our honeymoon in Iceland, one of the hotels that we stayed at had just a bottle of cod liver oil on the breakfast buffet with little, little basically shot glasses where you can just get yourself a shot of the cod liver oil with your breakfast. And at the time, I was like, I was thinking mostly of, you know, cultural things.

• 15:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  It did not really connect in my brain until doing this, that Iceland is a place that is at a northern latitude. We were there in the early spring when the sun was not setting until like 10:00 PM.

• 15:48Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  But the sun was also not nearly as direct as it would be in like the American South.

• 15:55Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  And it, it like, didn't really connect that like, that could be a reason that someone in Iceland might want some cod liver oil. A friend of ours was like, so did you try it?

• 16:04Holly Frey?

  No. Oh, you, have you never had it?

• 16:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Not, not as just like a shot of it in a cup. We were gonna get in the car and drive from, we were having a multi, multi-hour drive back to Reykjavik before flying back home. And I was like, I did not want to just chug some cod liver oil, having never experienced it, and then get in a car for a long drive, not knowing when we might find a restroom.

• 16:31Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that's fair. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm unwise and will try anything. So I have tried it. It's fine.

• 16:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 16:39Holly Frey?

  Exactly what you think. But I also sometimes just take fish oil supplements.

• 16:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure.

• 16:44Holly Frey?

  In the pill form.

• 16:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 16:46Holly Frey?

  I always crack up that now most of the bottles will tout, no fish burps.

• 16:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I think I mentioned in a recent episode that I had had a, had a medical appointment at which an OB-GYN recommended that I try to get more omega-3s in my diet, which has involved eating more sardines and salmon. And so I was, as I was working on this, I was like, maybe my vitamin Z is doing good.

• 17:18Holly Frey?

  Probably.

• 17:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  My added, added salmon and sardines in my diet.

• 17:22Holly Frey?

  Do you have fish burps is the bigger?

• 17:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Not usually. I did have like a very, a very, uh, sardini. I don't even remember what I made, but later I did have a little fish burp and I was like, mm, no thanks.

• 17:38Holly Frey?

  It's okay. It's all part of living.

• 17:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 01

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• 18:13Speaker 02

  Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic

• 19:14Speaker 03

  reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 19:44Speaker 07

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

• 19:46Tracy 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.

• 20:07Speaker 07

  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.

• 20:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day. Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world. And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night. To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 20:35Speaker 07

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

• 20:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 20:41Holly Frey?

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 20:45Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 21:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  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.

• 21:55Holly Frey?

  We talked about George Stevenson this week.

• 21:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  We did.

• 21:58Holly Frey?

  I really like him.

• 21:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Holly Frey?

  It's very interesting because there are a couple of full-length biographies written of him. But then everywhere else you see, like, he comes up in a lot of places because he was so important to engineering. But they cut out so much of the really interesting parts of his life, right? They don't talk about his pet blackbird that slept with him. They don't talk about all of his mad sewing skills we're gonna talk about in a minute.

• 22:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Growing a straight cucumber.

• 22:27Holly Frey?

  I had to include that. I was like, should I put this in behind the scenes?

• 22:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yes. No.

• 22:30Holly Frey?

  No, it was his invention. He was proud of it. I don't know why it was so important to him to grow a straight cucumber. They're delicious, even if they're curved. But it made me chuckle a little bit. There were so many cute stories, though, about him. And that Smiles biography that was written in the mid-19th century, Smiles, as you may recall, wrote a book called Self-Help after he had met with Stevenson, got hired by him, and then later on, wrote a biography about him. It's a really interesting biography because it is very thorough. And also, he notates every person he talked to and got information from. And he'll be like, "I talked to this person in this village, and they told me this story."

• 23:13Holly Frey?

  It's like a much more notated biography from that time than we're accustomed to seeing.

• 23:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 23:18Holly Frey?

  In that he shows his work, which is pretty great. One of the many stories that I loved slash hated. Right? I don't love the idea of children working in a coal mine, obviously. But there was this cute thing, because George was clearly very smart from a young age, and he had kind of gotten moved up into jobs even early for his age, even given that it was standard practice to employ kids, that at one point, he had been promoted and he was working with his dad. But whenever the owner of the mine came out, he had to go hide. Because he was like, "I was also very tiny, and I looked really young." So like, scared I was gonna get in trouble if this guy saw me,

• 24:01Holly Frey?

  and it looked like a 12-year-old was running a really expensive piece of equipment. That just was very funny to me. He also had one and one only fistfight in his entire life. And it was because there was a pitman at the Black Callerton Mine, who was kind of a notorious bully. And George stood up to him and this guy threatened him and said, like, you know, essentially, do you want to take it outside? George is, George, half this guy's size, this little scrawny dude. And he goes, yeah. And they had this fight, but it was a Fight Club scenario where you got to watch out for the wiry ones. Because apparently, George whipped this guy's tail.

• 24:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Wow.

• 24:45Holly Frey?

  Again, violence is never the answer, but I do like it when bullies get comeuppance.

• 24:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Holly Frey?

  One of the other things that was very interesting about his intuition as an engineer and as a mechanic was when he had to fix that Nukeman engine that essentially set him on a path to like a much higher level of professional career. Which is that he essentially overclocked that thing. Like, he

• 25:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Holly Frey?

  was putting the settings at like double what they were labeled as being able to handle.

• 25:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Well, I'm glad that worked out.

• 25:20Holly Frey?

  He really felt like, I know this machine and I know it can handle it and it's not doing its job. So I want to try this and we'll see if it works. And it did.

• 25:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Huh.

• 25:29Holly Frey?

  So, yeah, his intuition was apparently very good, but that would also terrify me.

• 25:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I mean, that sounds like a recipe for another explosion.

• 25:37Holly Frey?

  Yes, it does, but it never happened. I do want to talk about his sewing.

• 25:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, let's do.

• 25:44Holly Frey?

  Because I, we mentioned in the episode that like I had read in one place that he was cutting out sewing projects for women. And like, basically, he was taking piecework where he would cut their stuff out and return it to them. And then they could just stitch it up, which I know to a lot of stitchers that are listening are like, where can I get one of those? But it didn't come up everywhere. But then later, in the Smiles biography in particular, he mentions that when he first sent Robert to school, you know, they were still, I mean, he was doing better than he ever had. But compared to the other kids at Robert's school, he was very poor. And he was wearing a homemade suit that George had made for him.

• 26:28Holly Frey?

  That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. But there is also another cute story, which is that when he was out surveying, and granted, this is a different time and a different place, but like, he would walk those survey lines and he would just kind of stop at people's houses and be like, hey, can I have lunch?

• 26:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:50Holly Frey?

  And talk to them. And he really loved talking to kids. And at one point, I don't remember if it was there, if it was when he was, like, when he was doing that, or if it was when he was in a meeting, he was talking to these two little girls who were learning embroidery. And he was like, do you want me to teach you some stitches? And they looked at him completely confused, because men normally did not embroider, nor did they offer very sweetly to teach them stitches. And he says to them, quote, "When I was a brakesman at Killingworth, I learnt the art of embroidery while working the pitman's buttonholes by the engine fire at night." And I just love that he was like, I, I don't care about blue collar work. I'll do anything. I'm a hustler.

• 27:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Holly Frey?

  I know how to do lots of stuff because I'm interested in lots of stuff. And I think that's great.

• 27:43Speaker 04

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• 28:13Speaker 02

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• 29:14Speaker 03

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• 31:51Holly Frey?

  My last note on him is this.

• 31:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 31:54Holly Frey?

  He, apparently, I'm not going to read the whole quote, but there's a really beautiful quote in that Smiles biography where George's one big regret is that because he didn't learn to read until later in life, there were a lot of things he was working on trying to invent that he was like, if I had been able to read books and know that other people had tried things, it would have saved me a lot of time and embarrassment because I made foolish mistakes. Or sometimes I thought I had invented something only to discover that it had existed already for a long time. But that having to like figure things out on his own without the benefit of having learned

• 32:37Holly Frey?

  from the work of other people also made him more inventive and probably more ingenious in terms of his mechanical ability. And I kind of love that.

• 32:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Holly Frey?

  He seems like a delightful human. Who was just very kind. He was very generous. He took care of a lot of people like if this was not standard practice at the time, this was not a time when things like workman's comp and like payouts for accidents happened.

• 33:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure.

• 33:04Holly Frey?

  Working in mining and once he got to a certain level where he was a manager, if somebody got killed in the mine, he would often just like make it his business to take care of that family for the rest of their lives, the rest of his life, anyway, which was not normal for, you know, anybody in that position to do. And he also would just, you know, there was another story about when he was out just stopping by people's houses and being like, hey, can I have lunch with you? One couple that seemed a little reluctant initially, but then let him in. And he was super charming and they really loved him. And then later in life, when he got much more successful, he made a point to go see them again and like tell them how much he appreciated their

• 33:47Holly Frey?

  generosity and their hospitality and like just stand up guy that George Stephenson, I'm going to be very sad if I find out he was secretly a monster, but it doesn't seem like he was.

• 33:58Holly Frey?

  We can put him right up there with Levi Strauss as probably has some flaws we don't know about, but overall a rare good guy.

• 34:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Holly Frey?

  Oh, did you have any thoughts?

• 34:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  I'm just pro trains. You did, you know, you did mention like the, the robber barons and the railroad tycoons and there's, there's a layer of obvious damaging stuff there, but there's also the fact that trains can be a more efficient way to travel than like an airplane. And we don't have enough of them in the United States and the ones that we do have aren't as great as they could be.

• 34:43Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  There's a layer of that too, involving, you know, where train tracks go and the fact that a lot of times that train development displaces the most vulnerable people.

• 34:53Holly Frey?

  Yes.

• 34:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, that's a thing to take into consideration, but we should, we should have more trains than we have, and they should be better than they are. That's my opinion.

• 35:02Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes light rail and within cities that are a lot more, way more efficient than cars.

• 35:09Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  In a lot of places, they would be if there were more of them and they worked better.

• 35:14Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I feel like, right, the obvious example of like pushing trains to be a more viable option than other modes of transportation is Japan. Because they have figured out the speed angle like that, I think for a lot of people is the thing, right? To get from here to San Francisco, it takes me a flight of, you know, five hours.

• 35:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 35:38Holly Frey?

  With my train, see in a few days.

• 35:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yes.

• 35:41Holly Frey?

  So that's, that's another big.

• 35:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Holly Frey?

  Thing, holding that industry back in terms of garnering more, more patrons.

• 35:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah, even in the context of a city. It often takes significantly longer for me to get somewhere on like the commuter rail and T system in Boston than it would take in a car. And often I'm like, I'd rather be on the train.

• 36:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  So I'll take this hour long trip on the train that would have been half an hour in the car because I like the train better.

• 36:13Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  But a lot of people aren't going to do that, especially if what they're talking about doing is their morning commute that would be much longer on a train than in a car.

• 36:23Holly Frey?

  Yeah. I mean, when we moved offices at one point, when we first started working together, when I joined House of Works, I took the train all the time.

• 36:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:34Holly Frey?

  We had a train station right next to our office.

• 36:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Holly Frey?

  It was still a little bit of a pain in the tuchus because I had to be driven to the train station and that was a little slow. But whatever. And then when we moved to the next location, it became not tenable to take the train anymore.

• 36:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  You had to take a shuttle from the train station to the office and that just was a whole other layer of stuff.

• 36:57Holly Frey?

  Yeah, and the train ride itself was much longer because I had to switch train, like there wasn't a, a direct.

• 37:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Holly Frey?

  It just was a, a pain and it became less tenable. I am also, I'm embarrassed to admit, I am a person that loves being in my car. I love.

• 37:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Holly Frey?

  The solitude of being in the car.

• 37:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Holly Frey?

  I don't mind traffic. It's very zen for me to just sit in the car. I can't be on my phone. I can't be on my phone now. I can't be checking email.

• 37:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 37:26Holly Frey?

  I'm just in the car.

• 37:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I, when the HowStuffWorks office was next to that train station, when I was living in an apartment, I lived like right down the street and I just drove. It was, I was right down the street, meaning not walking distance, but a fast and easy drive. And then I moved to a place where it's like, I'm gonna take MARTA. And I would drive to the MARTA station and then take MARTA the rest of the way. And there was a series of service cuts that got to a point where it was gonna be an hour and 20 to an hour and 30 minutes if I kept doing that. And it was 25 minutes in the car going the back way that one of our coworkers showed me.

• 38:08Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  And that was, I was like, no, I can't, I, I gotta, I gotta have some more of my time back.

• 38:14Holly Frey?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's the big trick for a lot of people. You know, in cities like New York where traffic is so, so bad, the train often is the better option.

• 38:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. Or Paris. Where the trains were every two minutes near the, in the station where we were. Yeah.

• 38:33Holly Frey?

  London is easier.

• 38:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's my being nostalgic and wistful about trains.

• 38:38Holly Frey?

  Trains. Perhaps one day, one day we'll get more robust train options.

• 38:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Holly Frey?

  But in any case, if you have to take the train this weekend, or you want to take the train this weekend, I hope it's a delightful ride. I hope everybody's cool. I hope there are no malfunctions. I hope everybody is kind to one another and that you get some time to relax and recharge. And if you have to work these days coming up, I hope everyone that you encounter is absolutely kind to you and that there are no needless headaches at your job. I just want everybody to be kind and happy to one another. We're living in such a scary time that any, any eke out we can make of kindness feels like a little bit of a win. So do that while you are also figuring out other ways to help. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and then on Monday, we will have something brand new.

• 39:32Holly Frey?

  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.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't chew needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 41:17Holly 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.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.