Behind the Scenes Minis: Math and Falsehoods

Holly shares a story about Augustin Fresnel's early career. Tracy discusses an article criticizing the Smithsonian and points out its incorrect contents. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Holly Frey?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:35Tracy 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.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new chicken nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces, and they created a brand new one. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.

• 1:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio 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.

• 2:07Holly Frey?

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

• 2:18Holly Frey?

  Hello and happy Friday. I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:23Holly Frey?

  We talked about Augustin Jean Fresnel this week.

• 2:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  We did. I'm glad you put this on your list because someone asked us at some point in the past for an episode on the Fresnel lens. And then I was at, I feel like I was at the, one of the museums in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and saw one of the lenses and was like, that's so cool. Someone asked us for an episode on this. Maybe I will put that on the list. And when I started looking into maybe doing an episode, I was so focused on the lenses that I was like, I don't think I can make this work.

• 3:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  But you made it work.

• 3:06Holly Frey?

  Barely, because like I, I'm on the struggle bus with the science of this one. So hopefully whoever wanted this episode, I don't recall that email, is not like, you, you messed it all up. You made a mess.

• 3:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Fingers crossed.

• 3:24Holly Frey?

  So one of the things that is very cute and interesting about Fresnel is that when he started his career as a civil engineer, and I think this story, it's from a biography I read on him, and it was when he was not fully completed, he was like in his student, but working the job phase, that he got posted to one of these towns where he was working. And like, the expectation would be, as someone is starting their professional career, for them to like, seek out, you know, the town's leadership, society people, et cetera,

• 4:08Holly Frey?

  as like, just a matter of course in how you would establish yourself in French society at the time. But he apparently didn't do any of this.

• 4:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 4:17Holly Frey?

  He instead got to be friends with one of the teachers in town and just wanted him to like, teach him about more science stuff.

• 4:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 4:29Holly Frey?

  I just wanna be a goofball and learn more.

• 4:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Holly Frey?

  Nor anything. I, I found that so charming. Like, he did not care about social climbing.

• 4:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 4:38Holly Frey?

  Even if it was gonna help his career. What he cared about was, I really love science and I wanna learn more. Who knows what I don't know? That's very, very charming.

• 4:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Let me go find that person.

• 4:49Holly Frey?

  I love it so much. I love that so much.

• 4:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Holly Frey?

  There was also, and I didn't get into all of it because, one, it would have taken us down a side street that I didn't think was really that interesting. And two, I honestly had a hard time parsing it all out. That council of scientists that were reviewing his work, like Arago, that Arago was on, there was so much infighting among those men. Like, that it was, it was like the real scientists of France. It was, they just wanted to argue about everything. And like, they would be best friends for a little while, then they would have a falling out, and then they would, you know, work on a project together and then

• 5:35Holly Frey?

  get in an argument over who did more work. And just like, the, the panel, uh, like Arago and Beaux had fallen out, and then Poisson had become Arago's enemy because they had both been up for the same academic appointment. And Poisson got it and Arago didn't, even though he was the more deserving on paper. And like, they just, drama. So like, it's again, one of those things where I, listen, I watch Real Housewives, and I will judge no one for watching garbage television. But the, the proclivity many people have to characterize women as being, you know, kind of dramatic and argumentative with their friends.

• 6:19Holly Frey?

  And for there to be like frenemy issues is usually characterized as something that women engage in, whereas, you know, you'll see all the time on social media, everywhere, where it's like, men are just like, yeah, whatever. And they just keep going. And it's like, mm-mm. There's so many historical and contemporary, frankly, examples of, of that not being the case at all. And this was one because, woof.

• 6:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:42Holly Frey?

  Woof. The catfights in this group.

• 6:48Holly Frey?

  Here is my other personal takeaway from this, which I love. Okay. And I want to preface this by saying, this is not me in any way voicing my displeasure at my own work. But I have always felt very strongly, and I know people will disagree, that like your work should almost be the least interesting thing about you. Mm hmm. You know what I mean? Like, that whole thing of like, follow your passion and it will never be work. For a lot of people, that is baloney, because the second your passion becomes like your responsibility and your, you know, way that you make money, it's Now it's a job.

• 7:29Holly Frey?

  The fun falls off. But I love that Fresnel had a whole career that he was doing in civil engineering, but he got famous for his passion. Yeah. And that makes me very happy. Yeah. Because you can always, you're never locked into the one thing that you do to make a living. Right. You can be, and if you love your job, that's awesome. That's amazing and cool. But like, I know a lot of people who spend a lot of time saying things like, I wish I were doing something that is not my job. And I'm always that friend that's, it's not too late. You go back to school, get your anthropology degree, do the thing, or the thing.

• 8:09Holly Frey?

  And I know that there is also the fact that I do not understand, because I am not a parent. Like, if you have a family, they're just extra. Yeah, yeah. Extra, I don't want to say in a way that sounds like, you know, I'm denigrating kids or families. But there are extra responsibilities that are a drag on your time and energy. Right. That would make it harder to do extra stuff, extra projects. Yeah. But I just, you, you can do things that are not. It's kind of like what I always tell people that want to get into podcasting, that only want to pitch shows to networks. Mm hmm. And I'm like, Why? Because you have all the technology in your pocket. If you just want to start a podcast today, you could do it.

• 8:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:52Holly Frey?

  And I, I think people think they will magically get like a big paycheck if they sign a deal with a network and that's not really always the case.

• 8:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:00Holly Frey?

  If you just want an easier job, there are probably others that are actually easier.

• 9:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 9:06Holly Frey?

  And involve less scrabbling on the front end, right? Especially I, you know, anyway, there's, I could have a whole discussion about podcasting. But my point being, you can, you don't have to ask permission to do the projects that you want to do. I know some things require more overhead and resources than maybe the average person has. But I also just feel like if you can figure out a way to engage with the thing that you love, you might be more fulfilled. And for me, I mean, I, I care about the things we talk about and I enjoy getting to learn things all the time and share things all the time.

• 9:46Holly Frey?

  But I also, I, I always caution people about your job is not your identity. Because unless you work for yourself, it can always change on a dime. And then it's very harrowing. So.

• 10:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Holly Frey?

  Anyway, anyway, that's Holly's life lessons that you may or may not want to discard. But anyway, Auguste Frenel, smarter than I can really comprehend. Like the whole idea of measuring waves of light and making mathematical equations around them. Not only is inscrutable to me, but it terrifies me. Like I'm literally stricken with like, oh, I think my tummy hurts. Like I know.

• 10:33Holly Frey?

  I, I, I don't mean to sound like a math is hard person, but for me, mathematics is a challenge.

• 10:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 10:41Holly Frey?

  At that level, when you're trying to make sense of things that are hard to easily see visually. Like you can make a chart of what it is. You can make a drawing of how a light wave works. But I still am like.

• 10:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. For me, arithmetic is the bigger challenge.

• 10:58Holly Frey?

  See, the arithmetic part, I'm actually usually okay with. The actual like doing of the sums and calculations, but coming up with the equations is the part that for me, I'm like.

• 11:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, no, thank you.

• 11:12Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  But then I remind myself, if ever you're having one of these moments in your life where you're like, I don't feel like a very bright person because I don't understand this. My thing that I always tell myself is, well, I bet August Nefrenel couldn't make a dress and I can.

• 11:27Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Everybody has their skill sets.

• 11:30Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 11:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  And you can learn most things if you really like focus your energies on it.

• 11:36Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 11:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  But I know that I will never want to expend the level of energy and focus to learn these kinds of mathematics that it would take.

• 11:45Holly Frey?

  So.

• 11:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right. I'm just gonna sit in awe of the people for whom they come naturally or for whom they have learned how to do them and then I'll go make a dress.

• 11:53Holly Frey?

  Yeah. Do that.

• 12:00Speaker 03

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

• 12:03Tracy 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.

• 12:24Speaker 03

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

• 12:31Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 12:38Speaker 04

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

• 12:44Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 12:47Speaker 04

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

• 12:51Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 12:55Tracy 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. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors.

• 13:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLY 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.

• 14:08Holly Frey?

  We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 14:50Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:10Speaker 05

  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option, too. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.

• 15:53Speaker 05

  This new chicken nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and Sauces today.

• 16:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  This week, we talked about Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, who I find very interesting. But most of what I have to talk about in the behind the scenes, though, is not about her. It is about the thing that inspired the whole episode, which was a thing from the White House website that alleges that President Trump is right about the Smithsonian by using a bunch of out of context and distorted and sometimes just frankly, false stuff. The first thing on there, we said in the episode, is this, it was like an image from a portal that was called Talking About Race that was at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

• 16:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  And so I want to start by saying, I do understand why there were people that found this objectionable, and there were people that found it objectionable coming from multiple directions. Because this was a graphic that was about like, things that are part of what we think of as like the dominant white culture in the United States. Right. And it had things on it like, like what was a good example? It had things on it like there were, there were things about it that were related to like work ethic. And so the incredibly reductive

• 17:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Least generous possible read on that kind of stuff is what wound up going viral.

• 17:43Holly Frey?

  Of course.

• 17:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  And so people interpreted interpreted it as saying like, the Smithsonian is saying that black people don't have a work ethic. Well, that's not what it was saying at all.

• 17:54Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 17:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  And also, like, I can see how the knee jerk response to that from multiple different angles could be like, that is upsetting. But also, I think about the fact that like, we live in a society where so much about a person's value is connected to their work and how much they work. And like, it's kind of a crappy way to live, honestly.

• 18:20Holly Frey?

  This ties into our recent discussion where I went on a soapbox about how your job should not be your identity.

• 18:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. As I was thinking about this, I was thinking about how at the beginning of my career, I had a series of jobs in North Carolina, not a great state for worker protection. In fact, I think it has been ranked last for worker protection. But I had a series of jobs where in your first year of work, you accrued five days of vacation. But you were not allowed to take any of that vacation until you had worked there for a year.

• 18:54Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that's rough.

• 18:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Which is stingy. And because these jobs were terrible, I changed jobs after about a year, like, three different times. It's kind of meant that, like, I, I went three years with no kind of time off.

• 19:11Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 19:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  And, you know, we were living in a society where people were like, yeah, that's normal. I think that's bad, honestly. So, thing number one that was on this, like, White House article, number one, I, I could, I understand some of the criticism. It was also, at the time, framed in like, a very reductive and out of context kind of way. And again, taken down five years ago, and is still the thing that people trot out to say, this is why I think the Smithsonian is bad. Also, some of the stuff that is in this list, I'm just gonna read a quote. "The National Museum of the American Latino features programming highlighting," and then a scare quote starts, "animated Latinos

• 19:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  and Latinas with disabilities." It's actually a quote from the museum website. "With content from a disabled plus-size actress and an ambulatory wheelchair user who educates on their identity being Latinx or Latinx, people pronounce that two different ways, LGBTQ+ and disabled." This is referencing a literally two-minute-long video with an audio description of some of the visual elements so that it is accessible to blind people. And I'm like, what is your problem with this? You're mad that there's program, there's a, there's a two-minute video Yep. at the website that has a disabled plus-size actress? Like, this is absurd.

• 20:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Because how dare, how dare those people exist and talk about their existence? "Ambulatory wheelchair users also exist and face a layer of like hostility in public that is infuriating."

• 20:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody, if you see a person who is using a wheelchair and they get out of the wheelchair for some reason, this is a normal thing that can happen. Mind your business. It doesn't mean they don't need the wheelchair. Correct. The next thing I wrote down on this list, "The Museum of American Art uses American sculpture, quote, 'to invite dialogue and reflection on notions of power and identity.'" Who cares? What do you think art is for? Whoever or whatever wrote this article. Right. Right. This is, I mean. My spouse thinks that a large language model wrote this, that that would explain the garbled sentence that inspired the episode. That seems fair.

• 21:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  I also, though, could see people who don't like art writing that, who don't understand what art is. If you think the purpose of art is to stand and look at something on a wall and go, "Pretty," then maybe it is objectionable to you. Or to validate what you already think you know.

• 22:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Invite dialogue, fine. Reflection on notions of power and identity, fine. It also says, "The American History Museum's exhibit about Benjamin Franklin focuses almost solely on slavery, directing visitors to learn more about his electrical experiments and the enslaved people of his household, noting his scientific accomplishments were enabled by the social and economic system he worked within." The statement that this exhibit about Benjamin Franklin at the American History Museum focuses almost solely on slavery is patently untrue. Also, it's important that we recognize how many people's discoveries and accomplishments

• 22:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  were facilitated by the enslaved people who were enslaved to their households, family members, including, a lot of times, wives, daughters, sisters, who were doing a lot of the behind the scenes work. If you have a problem with this, this is your problem, not the Smithsonian's.

• 22:57Holly Frey?

  Well, and the thing is too, I think even if it's not a direct part of someone's work that they got credit for, when you think about how much of so many people that we have as a country long revered as important and great thinkers, lawmakers, et cetera, how much of their day to day life was just easier and enabled them to think about those things, invent things, et cetera, because other people were handling just the basics of their lives, right? Like, making sure they were fed, that they had a clean place to sleep, and that they, like, that is also part of that contribution that enabled those achievements, that, you

• 23:40Holly Frey?

  know, is not necessarily a direct collaboration on any of it, but is still a very important part of it happening, that just nobody gets acknowledged.

• 23:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right. Correct, all of it.

• 24:03Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 24:45Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:06Speaker 05

  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.

• 25:48Speaker 05

  This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.

• 26:01Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 26:45Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 27:11Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 27:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  So again, we're not, we're not going to talk about every single thing on this list. There are so much stuff that's in it that is just like really distorted or out of context or cherry picked or framed in a weird way. Or the link goes back to the American Enterprise Institute and not the Smithsonian, so you cannot see for yourself what is exactly it's referencing. But here is the thing that infuriated me the most in the moment that I was looking at it. Here's what the White House website says. "An American History Museum exhibit features a depiction of the Statue of Liberty, quote, 'holding a tomato in her right hand instead of a torch and a basket of tomatoes in her left hand instead of a tablet.'"

• 28:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  That is all that the sentence says.

• 28:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  I feel like this sentence was selected to make uninformed people think that this is a depiction of the Statue of Liberty, who is about to throw a tomato at America.

• 28:50Holly Frey?

  Maybe they're scared of lycopene.

• 28:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, my God.

• 28:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Maybe tomatoes are too acidic for their tummies in their post-50 age.

• 28:59Holly Frey?

  Maybe.

• 29:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  This, this depiction of the Statue of Liberty is also the lead image from this Federalist article that was a source of a lot of these White House complaints about the Smithsonian.

• 29:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  And this is the Immaculate Statue of Liberty. It was made by the Coalition of Immaculate Workers. The Coalition of Immaculate Workers started out as a coalition of tomato workers in Immaculate, Florida. Tomato workers are in fields in grueling conditions, picking the tomatoes and growing the tomatoes and caring for the plants. Like, they're literally feeding us. They were going on a march for more than 200 miles to try to get better working conditions and a penny more per bucket of tomatoes. A penny. The bosses were refusing them a penny per bucket of tomatoes raised. Penny.

• 29:57Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  They made a representation of the Statue of Liberty, with brown skin, as many of them have, holding tomatoes, and took it on a march for 200 miles to advocate for themselves. And the White House website has pulled this out of context to make it look like a different thing, instead of what is fundamentally an American story. Workers in the fields trying to get a better life for themselves with a penny more for, per bucket of tomatoes. If you have a problem with this, I am angry at you personally.

• 30:32Holly Frey?

  Right, and I think it's important to note, this isn't a thing that was made as a piece of statement artwork. It is papier-mache.

• 30:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 30:40Holly Frey?

  It's a piece that, as you said, was part of a march that the Smithsonian then acquired as being culturally important in capturing this moment in our history.

• 30:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. Yeah. It is the kind of thing that should be in the American History Museum.

• 30:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  This whole article, we talked about scare quotes at the introduction of the episode. This whole article, I'm putting article in scare quotes. This is a bulleted list.

• 31:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  That I am uncertain about the prominence of it. I hated it. I hate everything that's, that's going on with the federal government targeting the Smithsonian and making like distorted, twisted, untrue arguments about what the museum is doing. And the fact that they were like, let's take this thing that was related to workers trying to get a penny more per bucket of potato, of tomatoes. I said potatoes, tomatoes is what it was, obviously. And try to make this up, like distort it to make a political point of rooted in things that are untrue infuriated me. The whole list was infuriating. Anyway.

• 31:50Holly Frey?

  I, I, to, to make things laughy.

• 31:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 31:54Holly Frey?

  Not that we need to, but this isn't the laughy part, but when the point in Maria's story where her husband dies and she goes back to decide that she's going to try to run the ranch.

• 32:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 32:04Holly Frey?

  It also made me think of another woman we've talked about in California history, who kind of like ended up becoming a captain of industry, which was Harriet Williams Russell Strong.

• 32:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah. Which also has connections to the water rights stuff.

• 32:17Holly Frey?

  Correct.

• 32:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  That we mentioned, yeah.

• 32:19Holly Frey?

  Correct. And it was just kind of like the spider web of history stories that all kind of come together to make the fabric of our, our.

• 32:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 32:29Holly Frey?

  Story as humans. I was like, oh, I see the tendrils reaching each other.

• 32:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Holly Frey?

  And then when you mentioned that she knew Mary Todd Lincoln, I started laughing, which I, I don't think was edited into the thing, but only because I have been thinking about the play, Oh, Mary.

• 32:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 32:44Holly Frey?

  Uh, which I, I was hoping to see when Jinx Monsoon was in it and not working out. And hopefully I will get up there for one of the other, other Marys, but.

• 32:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Holly Frey?

  Just.

• 32:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Holly Frey?

  Just thank goodness for artists is what I have to say.

• 33:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. I'm also, I'm also very curious about her friendship with Verena Davis, Jefferson Davis's wife.

• 33:08Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. As I understand it, from my limited knowledge, um, Verena was less.

• 33:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy. The Confederacy existed because of slavery to further the institution of slavery. That is why it was there. And as I understand it, Verena was less strident in these opinions than than her husband was. But I did not, you know, I don't know tons of detail about that, but I like, I just, I'm very curious about Maria's friendship with her.

• 33:49Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  I think we do have some correspondence between the two of them still surviving today. There is a, there's a collection of Maria's correspondence. Much of it is like the commentary on the correspondence is in English, but a lot of the correspondence is in Spanish and my reading of Spanish is like preschool level. So it's not something that I can personally read.

• 34:11Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 34:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  But that is something that if I had had like infinite time to work on the episode, I would have explored more of her relationships with both of them, both Mary Todd Lincoln and Verena Davis.

• 34:23Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that's the play, right? Her relationship with Verena Davis, like.

• 34:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Holly Frey?

  I mean, I will say this from my own lens, which is not always the most magnanimous, which is that I have a hard time, like, I don't want to break bread with people that disagree with me fundamentally on human rights.

• 34:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Right.

• 34:42Holly Frey?

  So I'm like, well, how does this work exactly?

• 34:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I, and I don't know. And it's, I also, I don't fully know like how many other women were around when they were in Virginia.

• 34:58Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 34:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  You know, where, where Confederate prisoners, prisoners of war were being held. Like, what other opportunity does she have for socializing? I did not look much farther into that. It's one of those things where like she for sure pointed out hypocrisies related to abolitionists and the, the fight to abolish slavery with white abolitionists also often being very racist. But, you know, she was operating within her own prejudices as well. So.

• 35:27Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. I found her, I find her very interesting. And I had not heard of her until this thing from the White House website made me so angry that I had to go on a tear for the podcast.

• 35:40Holly Frey?

  Hooray.

• 35:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whatever is happening for you this weekend, I hope it is great. If it can't be great, I hope it's as good as possible and as easy as possible. And if you're able to take some time to, I just looked at how long we've been recording and I'm like, man, this is a long behind the scenes. So I hope you're able to take some time to recover from my lengthy diatribes in today's behind the scenes. We'll be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow and something brand new on Monday. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

• 36:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 36:38Holly 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.

• 37:09Tracy 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

• 37:52Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 38:15Speaker 06

  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 Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.

• 38:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.