Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Behind the Scenes Minis: Balloons and Cat Trees About this episode Tracy and Holly talk about the proclivity for destruction that was part of the balloon craze. They also discuss cat trees and how hard it is to find one that's cute.
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Transcript 5,643 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:33 Holly 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.
2:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:19 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:20 Tracy V. Wilson? We talked about balloon riots this week.
2:23 Holly Frey? Sure did.
2:24 Tracy V. Wilson? An episode that was, you know, one, one riot was the request. I initially thought that it was going to be about two riots. Because the, the one that was initially requested was one. And then the 1864 one was the other one that immediately kind of showed up in my preliminary research. And then I was like, oh, there's a lot of them, actually. And they all have some striking similarities. And also, it seems like everyone who was opening a gardens somewhere that was either part of the British Empire or had once been British territory, they just all named them after gardens in London.
3:06 Holly Frey? Yeah, yeah.
3:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Same name over and over.
3:09 Holly Frey? Yeah, it's, that's one of those interesting factors to me about early US history is that there was so much, we are our own new thing.
3:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
3:22 Holly Frey? Everything got named after something in Europe.
3:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, yeah.
3:27 Holly Frey? Not everything, but a lot of things.
3:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, yeah. It's like people like to make fun of how weird. I mean, not just in Massachusetts, but I feel like Massachusetts gets a lot of it. How weird the pronunciation of town names are compared to how they are spelled. And they're all just pronounced roughly the same way as the same spelled town in England is. Like, that's the reason. Not all of them, but a lot of the times, that's pretty much the case. I was, of course, reminded of various sports related, related riots that still happen.
4:01 Holly Frey? Yeah.
4:01 Tracy V. Wilson? When a team wins something important or loses something important. Although a lot of times that is more like generic property destruction, not chasing after the team that won or lost to set the ball on fire.
4:18 Holly Frey? Yeah, this whole like, I'm mad at the balloon, so we need to set it on fire mentality is one that I just can't grasp.
4:28 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, yeah.
4:30 Tracy V. Wilson? The one of the earliest things that we talked about about, you know, the balloon launch happening successfully, but then the balloon, which did not have a crew on it, kind of coming down in a more rural area outside of Paris. And then the local people attacking it went like, when I saw that I was like, this to me does not sound like necessarily a real thing that happened. It sounds like it might more be a commentary about how whoever was writing it thinks that rural people are dummies. But the, the account saying that it was attacked with pitchfork, like, that's pretty consistent. It shows up in several different places. And I was like, maybe they really did attack the thing that fell out of the sky. I don't know.
5:09 Holly Frey? Humans are now in my head after this particular episode. I know this intellectually, we have certainly studied the course of human history enough to know. But you know that saying, and I don't know if it's true, that horses are always a second away from madness.
5:24 Tracy V. Wilson? Sure.
5:25 Holly Frey? Humans are always a second away from violence, I feel like. Even the most staid human in the right circumstance will just turn into a berserker and start stabbing things and setting them on fire.
5:39 Holly Frey? I don't love that.
5:41 Tracy V. Wilson? No.
5:41 Holly Frey? Everybody go to therapy.
5:44 Tracy V. Wilson? I also think like, so often it really seems like what, like the, the initial run up to the rioting was something involving a combination of boredom and disappointment.
5:59 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm sort of like imagining like if, if a rain delay during a NASCAR race or a baseball game or something suddenly caused the crowd to rush the field and like, break all the baseball bats or take baseball bats to all the race cars. I don't know.
6:22 Holly Frey? Right? It's, it's very weird.
6:25 Tracy V. Wilson? It doesn't quite align with, I know, like I said, I know there are still things involving sport and spectacle that lead to some kind of rioting or vandalism or whatever today. But it just like the happening over and over and over in that relatively short amount of time is just a little.
6:43 Holly Frey? It is weird. I mean, it's interesting too, because ballooning is in so many instances written about in this very romantic kind of way, right? The freedom of it, the, you know, sort of surreal experience of taking to the sky. And then the flip of that culture is just people being like, ah, let's kill it. I, I, I don't know. I don't know. There's a, an element of like, how dare you try to do something new and then not succeed in it?
7:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
7:17 Holly Frey? Which I don't, I'm not a fan of, obviously.
7:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Right. Well, and like we said in the episode, it, it wasn't like they could go, it wasn't like it could be secret. Like even if you had, say, say a farmer had said, yeah, you can do this in my field and the farmer lives some, somewhere with nobody around. Maybe you could get the balloon inflated without an audience being there, but like then it's in the sky. People are gonna see it.
7:43 Holly Frey? Right.
7:44 Tracy V. Wilson? It's gonna be obvious.
7:45 Holly Frey? Right. And if you don't tell them it's gonna happen, they're gonna think that we're being invaded by UFOs.
7:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Possibly true. Yes. Which is what inspired the Balloons of World War II episode a couple of years back was various weather balloons and spy balloons that were spotted and raised alarm.
8:04 Holly Frey? Yeah. I mean, there are lots of instances of those kinds of things happening.
8:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
8:11 Holly Frey? So you kind of have to be public about it.
8:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
8:14 Holly Frey? Because you will terrify people.
8:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. Raise reports of UFOs.
8:20 Holly Frey? There was entertainment in the sky.
8:26 Tracy V. Wilson? That would be kind of amazing.
8:28 Holly Frey? It would be. I also can't help but think of Edgar Allan Poe's balloon hoax.
8:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh yeah, that came up in some of the research that, that I, that was part of this. And then I was like, that's a little bit more of an aside than I want to include.
8:41 Holly Frey? Yeah. Yeah. Which just in case anybody doesn't know. He published a story in The Sun in New York about claiming that someone had crossed the Atlantic in a balloon in three days.
8:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
8:55 Holly Frey? And people went wild. This was like, literally, it would be the equivalent of somebody publishing an article tomorrow saying, I built a jet in my backyard and I flew it to Mars.
9:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
9:07 Holly Frey? And people would be like, what? And that is what happened. And then he had to retract it two days later and admit that it was a hoax and that nobody had done that.
9:18 Tracy V. Wilson? So funny. I'm still also just really stuck on like, thinking of trying to have something that like, seems like a comparable phenomenon. You know, there was like, the whole Beatlemania phenomenon. We talked about Listomania on the show before of people just going absolutely out of their minds over Franz Liszt. But like, if it were today, if it were 2025, and people were going to like, a Taylor Swift concert, and like, the power went out. There was no possible way to continue the show as normal. And then what if the crowd just like rushed the stage and destroyed all of the instruments and lighting?
10:02 Holly Frey? Yeah.
10:02 Tracy V. Wilson? That would be wild. And not really what I would expect to happen currently in the world. I would totally expect, though, people to knock over light poles and toilet paper houses and stuff after sports win or lose.
10:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Anyway.
10:22 Holly Frey? It happens. Humans.
10:23 Tracy V. Wilson? It does happen.
10:24 Holly Frey? Humans. Made for trouble, apparently.
10:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Yep. I think we have exhausted all of the allotment of the word balloon that could be said in an episode on this one episode.
10:34 Holly Frey? That is a word that the more you say it, it feels crazier and crazier. Like, your your brain goes, that's not a real word.
10:42 Tracy V. Wilson? There was one sentence that I think you were, you were saying it. And I was like, why did I put the word balloon so many times that close together?
10:52 Holly Frey? Because that's what it's about, baby.
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11:29 Speaker 06 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
11:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T Fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
11:53 Speaker 06 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.
12:00 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
12:07 Speaker 07 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
12:13 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
12:16 Speaker 07 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.
12:21 Speaker 06 With the fan's experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
12:24 Tracy 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
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13:37 Holly 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 iHeart Media'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.
14:19 Holly 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
14:45 Holly Frey? There's so much to talk about
14:50 Holly Frey? this week because we talked about pet inventions. And since, you know, we both have pets and many people in our listening audience do. And we have experience with lots of these products. Plenty to discuss. Also, a wild theory I have that has absolutely no substance to it, other than it occurred to me. Okay. But we'll talk about the other stuff first. One of the things that came up a lot when I was researching this in regard to Alan Simon, the last person that we talked about who invented the Wee Wee Pad. Mm hmm.
15:29 Holly Frey? Was that in 2019, he put his very lavish New York home on the market. Mm hmm. For $40 million. Wow. And I looked at pictures and I understand why it was $40 million, even outside of it being a prime location in New York that overlooks Central Park. Mm hmm. That was a lavishly decorated home. Mm hmm. I understand that he had to, they had to drop the price on it by about 13 million. That was the last thing I saw on it. So presumably, somebody bought it, uh, at like 27 million,
16:13 Holly Frey? but I don't know for sure, but that's a lot of money. But that was a very beautiful space.
16:19 Holly Frey? Which I just find interesting. He, it also speaks to like how popular pet products were. Yeah.
16:28 Holly Frey? Uh, and he was a very fascinating man. Looking at videos of him, he's so interesting because he talks like a guy from New York. Um, he's very tan. He is very straightforward. Uh, the obituary that I read of him kind of hinted at how, what a sweet man he could be and how he was very dedicated to his customers and, you know, people with pets, but that he also really loved business. And I'm like, was he kind of like hardcore as a, as a deal maker, but also was personally very sweet? Because that can certainly happen. I just think he seems, uh, absolutely delightful. Yeah.
17:13 Holly Frey? Can we talk about how ugly most cat trees are? Yeah, we sure can. That whole like can go with any decor. It's elegant and beautiful. And I know there is a big movement for like fancy cat trees. Yeah. But it's also. Cat trees by their nature are just hard to be real cute.
17:33 Tracy V. Wilson? You, I don't know if you still have, but you did have one that.
17:36 Holly Frey? Yeah, so you have one that used to belong to me that was a Christmas present that was your standard.
17:43 Tracy V. Wilson? Poles wrapped in rope, covered in carpet platforms, cat tree.
17:50 Holly Frey? Huge.
17:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Real big.
17:52 Holly Frey? It's like seven feet tall. It's a big one. It's a really nice cat tree. So thank you, because I still have it and it's Marva's favorite place at night.
17:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, I love it.
18:00 Holly Frey? Yeah.
18:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Um, I, I'm like, how did I even get that to my house?
18:08 Tracy V. Wilson? I feel like it was a Christmas gift for my parents, but then when I moved to Massachusetts, there was going to be nowhere to put it.
18:14 Holly Frey? Yeah.
18:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Um, and like moving it to Massachusetts was adding a whole additional thing to the expense of an interstate move. And so, uh.
18:26 Holly Frey? Now it's in my bedroom.
18:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Now it belongs to Holly.
18:31 Holly Frey? I feel like I should also tell you, I don't know if I ever told you this.
18:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
18:35 Holly Frey? Our cat, Ozil, who passed earlier this year, up until he was 18. One of his favorite things was to go to the very top of that cat tree and then jump from it the roughly five feet to our bed.
18:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
18:53 Holly Frey? And just roll around like a giggling cat and wanted to be petted. And he would do this over and over. It was his favorite exercise on earth.
19:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. I also had been given that when I had three cats and when I was moving to Massachusetts, I only had one cat who was in her elder years and did not really use it. So anyway, uh, when we were ready to get more cats into our life after we lost Sestina. Um, I was looking for, number one, we had very specific space requirements, like where will a cat tree fit? And then I, I didn't want something that was just entirely covered in carpet for like
19:36 Holly Frey? Yeah.
19:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Allergen reasons. Um.
19:39 Tracy V. Wilson? And it took a lot to find something that would work. And it is more attractive than a lot of cat trees, I feel are. But I also sort of felt like, at least at that time, which this would have been in 2019, it was the only one that existed in the whole world.
19:58 Holly Frey? Yeah, yeah. The other thing too is that um, there are, like I said, some very stylish looking cat trees.
20:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
20:07 Holly Frey? In my experience, having shopped for a lot of them, they tend to be on the smaller side.
20:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
20:12 Holly Frey? So if, like us, you have four cats.
20:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
20:18 Holly Frey? That's not gonna be enough.
20:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
20:21 Holly Frey? Um. The other thing is that we similarly,
20:28 Holly Frey? for a while, had all older cats. So other than Ozil's dive bomb party, we didn't have, none of the other cats were really into the cat tree situation. They were like, I'm gonna sit on the couch or the bed, because that seems easy to get to and super cozy. Um, but this year, as I have mentioned before, we adopted three new cats, who are all about to turn seven, um, because they're all from the same litter. And they need more.
20:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
21:00 Holly Frey? Vertical party space.
21:02 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
21:03 Holly Frey? And so we ended up getting this huge monstrosity of a cat tree that is in our kitchen.
21:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
21:10 Holly Frey? Because they, our kitchen is kind of, I don't know how well you remember it, but it's kind of a deepish space. And there's a big tree that overlooks, or a big tree, a big window that overlooks our deck at the back of the kitchen. And so we were like, you know what cats would love is a cat tree here. And it may not be the cutest thing on earth, but they will love it.
21:28 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
21:29 Holly Frey? And they do. Like, that was a good call because it really helped with transitioning them into our household. And our other cats not feeling like all their stuff got taken over because there was a new thing.
21:40 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
21:40 Holly Frey? Um, but it's not cute.
21:44 Holly Frey? We did buy a cuter, smaller, gothic-y looking one that lives in our living room, which is all Halloween all year round.
21:53 Holly Frey? But they really prefer the kitchen, the ugly kitchen one.
21:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
21:58 Holly Frey? Cause it's got a millions places to go and it's tall and they, Jezzy's big bedonk doesn't fall out of it.
22:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
22:05 Holly Frey? Which is a very real, a very real problem to solve in many spaces in our house.
22:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
22:11 Holly Frey? Um, anyway, Catrice. And also, big Catrice get expensive in a hurry.
22:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
22:17 Holly Frey? Holy Moses.
22:19 Tracy V. Wilson? I have sort of, uh, I've, I've, I occasionally look around to see if there is something specifically taller that would work somewhere in our house for our cats. And it's one of those things where I kind of idly poke around at it and then go, no, I don't really see anything that would work.
22:38 Tracy V. Wilson? But yeah, they, they can be really, real pricey.
22:40 Holly Frey? Yeah.
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23:13 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumbled 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.
23:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Trying these trends, 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
24:16 Tracy 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 Vive Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. 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,
24:57 Tracy V. Wilson? and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy 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.
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26:26 Holly Frey? Okay, are you ready for my possibly cockamamie theory? Yeah. The discussion, the only reason if it stood out as any to anybody as like, that's a weird thing to include, but the discussion of Ed Lowe's fallout with his kids. Uh huh. And the way they described his behavior. Yeah. And the fact that he was kind of a crazy cat man, by which I, I mean with love, like the way I would call myself a crazy cat lady, made me go, did he have toxoplasmosis? Oh.
26:58 Holly Frey? I mean, possibly. Right, because for those of you that don't know, if you have a cat, you know, toxoplasmosis is caused by a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. Very common in cats, very, very common in cat feces. It's why if you're pregnant, you are suggested to not clean the litter box in your house. Because pregnant women are especially prone to contracting it, as are people with, you know, weakened immune systems.
27:38 Holly Frey? And for a lot of people, if you're of robust health and you know, your immune system is fine, you won't even show symptoms, you kind of, it runs its course and you're fine. But there have been some interesting studies over the years about the way that people might behave differently. There was, was it in Wired, there was a huge article some years back, like probably a decade ago, that suggested that some of the things that we consider crazy cat lady behavior, the crazy part being what they were focused on, is actually like a manifestation of toxoplasmosis, that it can make you more impulsive, mess with your judgment in a way
28:23 Holly Frey? that would benefit the cats. Because there are a lot of parasites that work that way in the natural world, where the parasite will help.
28:35 Holly Frey? The host animal.
28:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
28:38 Holly Frey? Or will help itself by making the host animal do a certain behavior.
28:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
28:43 Holly Frey? Um, and I was like, ooh.
28:45 Tracy V. Wilson? And my understanding of toxoplasmosis is that this, the source of it in the cats is really rodents. When cats are able to catch rodents. Um, and that the toxoplasmosis facilitates that by making the mice less fearful. Um, and that makes it easier for the cats to catch them and then get the toxoplasmosis from them and then spread it in their feces.
29:15 Holly Frey? Um, I think they can als- it can also come from meat and shellfish.
29:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
29:24 Holly Frey? Um.
29:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Lots of potential sources there.
29:27 Holly Frey? Right. So, um, literally like a cat food could potentially carry it if it were not cooked fully, if it were not, you know, if it were exposed to air in some way.
29:40 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
29:41 Holly Frey? Um, there are, those are, those are very common ways, but for a human to get it from a cat, generally speaking, uh, you have to have contact with cat poop.
29:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
29:55 Holly Frey? Which comes with having an animal. Um, anyway, I was like, did Ed Lowe have toxoplasmosis? Is that why?
30:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Possible.
30:04 Holly Frey? Was like, you're, and he's like, I, I, listen, the issue of alcohol misuse is a whole other thing. And I don't want to in any way play down the seriousness of it, but it does make me wonder because he was so adamant, like, no. Um, now granted, some people that are dealing with addiction will say no. Uh, so I don't know. I don't know the personal thing, but I, it did occur to me. Anyway, here's the other thing I would like to end on. I'm going back to Alan Simon.
30:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
30:33 Holly Frey? Praise you, Alan Simon, for the invention of potty pads for pets.
30:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, yeah.
30:38 Holly Frey? Because I stumbled upon a part of the internet I was not ready for the other day. There's like a Reddit anti-dog subreddit, like people that just don't like dogs.
30:50 Tracy V. Wilson? Sure.
30:50 Holly Frey? And think having dogs in your house is disgusting and gross.
30:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
30:54 Holly Frey? And like, one of those. And like, whatever. I don't understand it, but whatever. Having a human in your house is disgusting and gross. Like, we all come with stuff. And there was a whole big thing about how disgusting potty pads are for dogs. And the presumption that people are just putting them down and letting their animals go all over the house. And I'm like,
31:18 Holly Frey? I know you don't like dogs, but you know, that's potty training a dog. Like,
31:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
31:23 Holly Frey? There will be some whoopsie daisies.
31:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
31:26 Holly Frey? Or if a dog becomes elderly and they can't always control their stuff.
31:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
31:32 Holly Frey? Or if your animal, dog or cat, or any other, has surgery and maybe loses their level of locomotion for a little. I mean, there are so many valid reasons for it, but these people are so mad that they even existed.
31:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
31:46 Holly Frey? Because they felt like it promoted laziness on the part of pet people. And I'm like,
31:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, my one time that I've ever used them was when Sestina was in her last months of life. And she was still pretty much making it to the litter box all the time, but she was, she would get into the litter box. She couldn't really squat anymore.
32:11 Holly Frey? Yeah, arthritis will do that.
32:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, the urine was not going into the box anymore. And so we just put a puppy pad underneath it.
32:19 Holly Frey? Yeah.
32:19 Tracy V. Wilson? And sort of out the front to catch anything.
32:22 Holly Frey? Yeah.
32:24 Holly Frey? Yeah, they're super handy. I mean, they have, they have, even for non-pet things, right? If you're doing a weird craft project that has a lot of fluid, put a puppy pad under it because that's a heck of a lot easier than trying to mop up a mess with a towel afterwards, like,
32:40 Tracy V. Wilson? Yep.
32:41 Holly Frey? And all these things and more. Anyway, I know there were hospital pads first, but now they're so easily gettable at your local supermarket in the pet food aisle. Like, thank you, Alan Simon. That was great.
32:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
32:55 Holly Frey? I hope if you are training a puppy, that that training is going well. I know that there can be moments of exasperation, but worth it in the end. It's a puppy. Who doesn't like that? If you have this weekend coming up free to do whatever you wish, I hope that you fill it with things that delight you, or that you don't fill it at all and you just have like, super rest weekend, which sounds amazing to me right now. As Tracy and I record this, we are getting ready to leave the country. By the time you hear this, we will be back. But right now, we're both very tired from preparations.
33:36 Holly Frey? So it sounds great to have two days of rest. I'm hoping to rest on my flight.
33:42 Holly Frey? We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday, we will have something brand new.
33:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Previous Inventions for Pets Next SYMHC Classics: Thomas Cook Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated