August 7, 2026 • 25 mins
Tracy and Holly talk about experiences in intensely hot weather. Holly shares how moved she was by Samuel Plimsoll’s obituaries.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about some historical heat
waves or historic heat waves, both words work. I think
(00:22):
in this case, yes, literal years I've been like heat waves,
something heat wave talk about on the show. Another thing
I have wanted to talk about the show, which is
tangentially related, is the development of lifeguards life guarding life
saving services because of all the drownings that happen, oh yeah,
(00:46):
in the summer, and that came up briefly in the episode,
and we talked about how many people have drowned in
the heat waves that have taken place in Europe. That
happens other places too. Obviously. One of the things that
has made me think that I want to do an
episode at some point about life guarding those kinds of
life saving rescue operations is a few years ago we
(01:08):
had a particularly bad season of drownings in Massachusetts where
just a very tragic number of people who again we're
all just trying to get cool and play in the water, drowned.
And I have not found great resources to be able
to pull that together. Maybe it will happen someday, maybe
(01:29):
not for our upbeat drowning episode. Well it would be
upbeat because we would be talking about how we save
people from rom drowning. This episode of heat waves the
big bummer episode because the world's just getting hotter. Yeah,
and while France is legally bound to achieve carbon neutrality,
(01:54):
we are living under an administration that's canceling green energy
projects and yeah, I hate it. Yeah, it's not a
good feeling. I will say. Just to talk about the weather, Okay,
as you know, as people know, I love hot weather.
I like heat, and I know this one is freaky humidity. Yeah,
(02:19):
this is the first year that I can think of.
And some of this might just be that I'm getting older,
but where I've been like uh oh yeah too hot.
I have actually had two like kind of dehydration oh
heat strokey events this year when I was in Florida
both times, and like both times it was a matter
(02:40):
of like, get some electrolytes in me, plenty of water
and I bounce right back. But and I talked about
it with my doctor and she's like, ye, anythink that's
just heat strokey dehydration that has never happened to me before.
I mean it did when I was a kid, when
I was a little more delicate, but not in a
long time. And that's like for me, my own personal
like experiential data. I'm like going, yeah, hotter than it's
(03:00):
ever been. I can tell even when I mowed the lawn,
which I have to do now in like twenty five
to thirty minute increments, because it's so freaker. Yeah yeah,
Like our yard is bigish, it takes a couple hours
to mow the whole thing, and so like, over the
course of four days, I slowly get the lawn mode
because it's just even I am like, wow, it's stupid
(03:22):
if I stay out here any longer. Yeah. Yeah, our
yard is not big. Our yard is very small. It
can be done in very much less than one battery
of our battery operated rechargeable mower. Oh no, we have
three batteries, and I will buzz through all of them
and keep going. Yeah, come back the next day. I
(03:45):
one of I thought of a lot of things while
working on this one. We said at the top, how
it seems like heat is taken less seriously than some
of the other Yeah forms of weather. And one of
the things I talked about are thought about was back
when I was a teenager, I was in a Drummond
Bugle corps and we rehearsed outside in the hot and
(04:08):
the sun for hours, and I remember a couple of
situations where we would be like pushing toward a competition,
they would call for a water break. An instructor would say,
color guard, come over here, I want to go over
those last you know, sixteen measures again, and then we
(04:31):
wouldn't get any water. Oh no, and right. And there
was at least one time that somebody who was in
the color guard with me wound up having to get
like medical attention like her. I don't know what specifically.
There are multiple heat related things that can happen, and
I don't know which specifically it was, but she just
(04:52):
sort of shut down and got on the ground and
wrapped her flag around her and went to the hospital.
And I am hopeful that drum cores are better about
that now. Surely it's one of the sources of mixed
feelings that I have about my time in drum corps.
Oh yeah, I mean again, this often comes up, and
(05:13):
I don't mean to like be you know, kind of
like just throwing out the path thing. But like, yah,
our childhoods were dangerous, Yeah, they were, Like there just
wasn't as much and I don't mean to be like
marken Ard, but there was not as much information about
things like this, and I think one also, there was
(05:35):
less danger. I mean, I feel like we hit that
moment in the early two thousands where things started happening
where like very fit athletes were having issues like high school,
like I remember vaguely, and I feel bad because I'm
not going to remember the details of like a foot
like a high school football player that died because he
(05:57):
got dehydrated during practice or something. Yeah, and forgive me
if I'm not conjuring the right thing. But there was
an event like that, and I think that was a
moment where a lot of people were like, oh, kind
of a wake up call. We should really start thinking
more seriously about how, you know, these activities are managed
in terms of like just pure outdoor in the sun
(06:19):
heat safety, which is great and should always be the case. Yeah. Also,
some of us, me are really bad about drinking enough water.
And I'm getting better about it because I got scared
straight after those two little dehydration events. But it is
hard sometimes. I don't love water. I've said it many times,
but I like passing out even less so. But I
(06:41):
do think, you know, we all need to. I mean,
this is my PSA to everybody. Please make sure you
are getting enough fluids, enough electrolytes enough, you know, not
in the sun time. I worry all the time now
when I see this summer, as I said, it's been
particularly rough. When I see like the people that like
it's their job to work on lawns and stuff. Yeah,
(07:02):
I feel like I've become like a one woman watchdog
group where I just carry water in my car in
case I see anybody that looks like they haven't a problem. Yeah. Yeah,
even if they don't need it, if they just want
to pocket it, great. Yeah. I just want everybody to
be okay, there's no reason to pass out because you're
mowing a lawn. Yeah. Also, I can't speak for other countries.
(07:23):
I can only speak for the United States. Advocate for
laws to protect the people who work outside. Yes, like
agricultural workers who literally feed us. They are providing the
food for us to eat, and a lot of places
have virtually no protections related to the dangers of being
out in the heat all day. Yeah. I made reference
(07:44):
in this episode to the discourse. There has been a
lot of air conditioning discourse which I found very frustrating.
I found some of it funny. But yeah, I will
tell you what I found funny recently. It might be
the same thing you're getting to do you want to
go first, I don't know. Do we want it on Delight?
Listen on funny one? So yes, I'll say my thing first,
because I was more frustrated. I felt like a lot
(08:07):
of people were kind of talking past each other, and
a lot of people in the United States were making
things sound easy that aren't. Yeah, So like I saw
a lot of people saying, oh, they're complaining that they
can't just like their windows aren't the right shape to
put in a window air conditioner. You can put in
duck list air conditioning systems and old buildings. We do
(08:28):
it over here all the time. And it's like true, true,
we do put in duckless air conditioning systems. I put
a duckless air conditioning system into the house that we
bought in twenty nineteen, and let me tell you that
cost thirty thousand dollars yeah. Yeah, so like, yeah, we
can do this, but a lot of people cannot afford
(08:51):
thirty thousand dollars and and a lot of parts of
Europe it is more than that because of shortages of
the actual look equipment and stricter standards about things like
the energy efficiency of the systems, the historic protections on
the buildings, all of that kind of stuff. So yeah,
(09:12):
I found the discourse frustrating rather than funny. But I
want to hear what was funny to you, because that
does sound like a good way to end the episode.
I have two funny things, okay. One is just a
funny conversation between a friend and I, and two is
specifically about air conditioning. One is that I had been,
as I've been talking about on the show, I'm trying
(09:33):
to figure out when I can playin a trip to
London to see the bayou Ch Tapestry. Oh yeah, and I
was talking to one of my friends about it and
he's like, you might not want to come now it's
really hot, and like, again, I'm not playing one upsmanship.
But it was just funny because he was not taking
into account like what people are accustomed to, and he's
like he's getting in like the eighties, and I was like, oh,
my darling, to me, it is the real feel is
(09:55):
one hundred and twelve at my house right now. And
he's like, oh, you'll be fine. Yeah, I'm just more
I'm used to it. The eighties will feel great to me,
which is why I want to travel. Here's the funny
thing the World Cup. Okay, watching a lot of international
visitors come to the US, one of the things that
has delighted me is seeing how one a lot of
(10:16):
their preconceived notions about what the US is like got
kind of broken down, you know, like seeing them really
realize that the US actually does love football slash soccer,
you know that it's not like I know, there was
concern about being hosted in the US and discovering like, no,
there's plenty of passion for it here. But also seeing
(10:36):
them discover foods here, like the ranch dressing thing has
been great. But I saw so many people on social
media being like, how am I going to go home
to a place with that air conditioning after living Yeah,
after being in hotels that are like blasting sixty degree
air and it feeling like such a respitouseide right, it
doesn't solve the problems that you were discussing. But it
(10:59):
has been just that's funny, Like I feel like people
did not realize how much of a difference air conditioning
can make. Right you are having a very very hot day,
if you've been out in the stands or celebrating or
doing whatever you're doing, to then go back to a
room that's like arctic blast. Yeah, I did not even
(11:20):
think about air conditioning when we were booking the trip
to England that Patrick and I took earlier this spring,
because I didn't even think about it. It is close
to ubiquitous where we live. But also at this point,
I've made some trips to Europe and I know that
a lot of parts of it air conditioning is not ubiquitous.
(11:40):
But also generally in earlier years the temperature was more
likely to be milder, and so we were going to
England at a time when like the average temperature is
more like in the high seventies, and so if we
hadn't had air conditioning, it wouldn't have been that big
of a deal. And instead we got there during the
hottest May in a century, where when I realized, you know,
(12:04):
a couple of days out that that was what was
going to happen. I was like, oh no, and looked
and discovered that, Okay, the hotel that we are staying
in during the worst of this says all the rooms
our air conditioning air conditioned, and they were and the
air conditioning was very good, so we did not have
heat exhaustion in our hotel rooms. Hooray, hooray. It was
(12:31):
kind of odd to go into a museum and have
that museum be uncomfortably hot because museum me nervous. Yeah,
me too. Well, British Museum, well, we could think about
the British Museum for another reason, to have questions about
the British Museum. It got hot in a lot of it.
So yeah, it was very strange when Patrick was like, oh,
(12:54):
we'll just go to museums today, and I was like, honey,
some of these museums have no air conditioning, just so
you're aware before we go over there. We still had
a very lovely trip though, even though it was so
incredibly hot. We talked about Samuel Plimsel this week. We did,
(13:18):
we did. It was a good, delightful man. One of
the things that charmed me to pieces while I was
reading his book. Aha was the preface which I'm going
to read a small excerpt from because it just encapsulates
who he was. I think he right excited quote. I
(13:39):
have no idea of writing a book. I don't know
how to do it, and fear I could not succeed
if I tried. The idea, therefore, is very formidable to me.
I will suppose myself to be writing to an individual
and to be saying all I could think of to
induce him to lend his utmost aid in remedying the
great evil which we all deplore, and I will write
(14:00):
so far as I can, just as I would speak
to him if he were now sitting by my side.
But so sweet, I understand why people who were like,
what are you doing here in the United States were
then like, we love you, Samuel Plipsel. That's some good advice.
It is. It reminds me a little bit of many
many years ago. I was on the first Jonathan Colton
(14:22):
cruise that was ever done, and a lot of the
performers were people that I had been fans of for
many years, who I was going to have the opportunity
to actually have conversations with beyond just like having a
signature done at a book signing or a fan table
or something like that. And so I dealt with this
(14:44):
by just pretending that I was also famous, and that
really helped me to get over my jitters and just
have regular conversations with people. And I think that's a
little similar. I think I do the reverse of that.
Oh yeah, I just am like, this is a human
who needs to do human things. Uh, they have to
(15:06):
eat and use the ladies or men's room or whatever
room they wish. Huh. They have to do all the
same stuff as me. It's very you know, they put
their pants on when leg it ish. Yeah. I feel
like that's two sides of the same coin, because it's
two different ways of saying we're the same and I
can talk to you. Does that make sense? Yes, mine
is a little I don't know. I feel like mine
(15:28):
might be a little more or less. I don't know.
I just strip them of their fame and I'm like,
you're you're just a dude who happens to know about
a thing I need to talk to you about. This
was also like fifteen years ago or something, and who
knows what I would how I would approach things in
a similar situation today. You know what also, really, I
(15:51):
mean I already felt this way, but there was an
instance that really cemented that, which was leading up to
the twenty twenty election. I hosted a podcast that we
did it I heart called Why I'm Voting Oh Yeah,
and I got to interview a lot of very famous
people about like what brings them to the polls. And
(16:14):
this was of course going on during the pandemic. Yeah,
so it was all online and I would literally see
people just like join in from like sometimes their bathrooms,
like they were like this is this the room with
the best sound like sin I'm sitting or also in
their closet like me, and it's just like, you know,
at the end of the day, we all equalize. Sure,
(16:36):
we all equalize. Yeah, it's a very fun show to do.
There were a lot of great conversations and people that
were very surprising in how frank and kind and lovely
they were. I had a great a lot of great
conversations on that show. Super super fun. But yeah, I
think the idea of like if you're writing and you're
scared to write, but you need to just write like
(16:58):
you're writing, like you're talking to some Yeah, that will
be your truest voice as a writer anyway in most
cases perfect. I feel like that's that sort of similar
advice in public speaking. Like I remember when I was
in school, people were like, imagine the audience in their underwear,
and I was like, that's not going to help me
at all. But focusing on a person and thinking of
(17:22):
it as I'm talking to this person, not I'm talking
to a whole auditorium full of people, could really help. Yeah. Again,
I do it a little. I think of it differently.
There's a thing moons ago, I did a TEDx that
was largely about like being truthful about your life so
that future historians will have an easier time understanding what
(17:44):
was going on, okay in our current day. Yeah, and
you know, I talked a lot about like social media
and whatnot and likened it actually to Louise the sixteenth
and Marie Intoinette, which I will always try to bring
up in every conversation. But one of the things that
I started really thinking about, and it's something that's guided
a lot of this show for both of us, is
(18:06):
like you've heard me do my soapbox about history is
not just things that happen in seats of government or
on thrones. It's about every single, everyday person. And so
for me kind of the way around, it is not
so much picturing that I'm talking to one person in
a public speaking situation. It's remembering that we are all
(18:27):
sharing one unique moment that will never be replicated, and
that kind of makes it just like, yeah, it's like
we are making our own moment of history together right
here today. You're a part of it as much as me,
and we can all, you know, have our little jamboree moment. Yeah.
So I just love it's important. And I feel like
(18:47):
when I I recently at a convention, was talking to
a little girl because she was talking about how she
didn't like history. We were talking about Star Wars things
and it came to history and I was like, oh
my darling, there is so much amazing history for you.
You just need to find there. Literally, someone exactly like
you has been in history from day one, and like you,
(19:10):
if you find their stories, history comes alive. And her
mom looked at me, like what, how really, And I
was like, yeah, yeah, like this is I never thought
about it that way, and I'm like you should, Lovely,
That's that's what makes people connect to history because they
remember that they're part of it. Anyway, Samuel plimsel I
(19:39):
got genuinely choked up reading obituaries of him, like I
had to stop because it was like everyone was so
abulliant about what like a pure soul he was and
how incredibly kind he was to everyone he met. And
you know, while he would be very aggressive and frank
about people doing bad things, he himself wouldn't even like,
(20:02):
really be that unless you're a toll booth person, right,
causes him trouble. One of the things that he said
about that man that cracked me up. This is, to him,
the worst insult he could come up with. She was
not a gentleman. Yeah, I just found that hilarious. I
(20:23):
love that whole story. What a little rabble rouser, Yeah,
in a very sweet package. I still have the same
problem I talked about on a previous behind the Scenes
where A Million Miles Away plays in my head over
and over. Oh yeah, listen, if anybody's looking for a
good you know eighties eighties bop about disassociation, that's the
song for you. It's great. I love it, and I
(20:49):
quite enjoyed learning about Samuel pimsel I will say there
was a thing that happened. You know, we talked about
the two different colliery disasters that he raised money for
the survivors and the remaining families afterwards. I initially was
having so much trouble with that because some biographies will
only mention one or the other of them, and as
(21:12):
a consequence, I think things that have drawn from those
and been written later will sometimes conflate the two. Wow,
and so it would be like this disaster that happened
in this place and this year, and I would be like,
there's no such on record that I can find what
is going on. And it took me a minute to
be like, there are two separate events that each happened
(21:35):
in somewhat similar ways and that he provided support for,
but like it seems like those in some cases people
only remember, like he raised money for survivors of a
mining disaster, and it becomes one that was a little
tricky to suss out, but we did it. Yeah, you know,
may we all be such kind creatures as him and
(21:58):
so willing to I mean, the things that he kind
of put himself in the line of fire legally into
with that whole shipping situation, because he was like, you
guys are corrupt. You are making money off of this.
How dare you try to vote down or quash bills
that will reform this industry. Listen, we have not solved
(22:19):
that problem at all of like people in government being corrupt.
So I appreciate his incredible resilience. And you know, his wife,
Eliza was very much in that fight with him and
would also like do her own efforts in those bigger
fundraising efforts. She was out there talking to people about
the need for reform in labor and particularly in maritime labor.
(22:45):
Just what a yeah, what a good egg. Yeah, thanks
Samuel Plimsel. Thanks for trying to get people to look
at history in a more nuanced way as well. When
I first read that, I was like, it is this dicey?
Is it doesn't seem to have been Yeah, because he
really was like, look, we know you had every right
to leave and want to have your own country. We
(23:06):
get that. Let's be cool now though. Yeah. Well, and
I think not so much about the relationship between the
US and the UK, but there's plenty of other stuff
going on in the world that has some kind of
you know, historical precedent that's or historical contexts. That's super
(23:26):
super relevant that people will want to boil down to
this is good, this is bad. These people were good,
these people were evil, and be outraged if anybody tries
to be one hair more nuanced than that, And it's like, no, really,
we're still talking about actual human beings operating from a
(23:48):
variety of motives. Yeah, yeah, I mean I feel like
that's a lesson we still learn all the time on
the show, right, I mean I still have moments of
revelation in that regard. We talked about it on a
reason behind the scenes where we were talking about the
you know, the golden age of piracy and really realizing
(24:09):
how tied that was to political machinations and the ways
that you know, the decisions of people in seats of
government kind of funneled into that problem of piracy at
the time. It all connects. Everything has its own you know,
context and nuance, and if you're not looking at all
of that, you're missing so much of the story. I mean,
(24:30):
this is the whole premise of our ship. But in
any case, in any case, if this is your weekend
coming up, I hope you do good works unless you're exhausted,
in which case sometimes the good works is hanging out
on your couch with a cup of coffee and a cat.
It's correact. That is also important because it makes you
able to go out into the world a better and
more resilient person. If you don't have time off, I
(24:54):
hope you still get some time sitting on your badonk
If that's your thing, it's certainly mine doing something it
brings you joy or peace or some combo of the two.
And I hope that everyone is kind and that everyone
carries the spirit of Samuel Plimsel out into the world.
Ay ay, we just want to take care of each other.
I think he's a great inspiration and an icon of
(25:17):
kindness that we can all get behind. We will be
right back here on Monday with a brand new episode,
and tomorrow we will have classic for you to enjoy.
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(25:39):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about some historical heat
waves or historic heat waves, both words work. I think
(00:22):
in this case, yes, literal years I've been like heat waves,
something heat wave talk about on the show. Another thing
I have wanted to talk about the show, which is
tangentially related, is the development of lifeguards life guarding life
saving services because of all the drownings that happen, oh yeah,
(00:46):
in the summer, and that came up briefly in the episode,
and we talked about how many people have drowned in
the heat waves that have taken place in Europe. That
happens other places too. Obviously. One of the things that
has made me think that I want to do an
episode at some point about life guarding those kinds of
life saving rescue operations is a few years ago we
(01:08):
had a particularly bad season of drownings in Massachusetts where
just a very tragic number of people who again we're
all just trying to get cool and play in the water, drowned.
And I have not found great resources to be able
to pull that together. Maybe it will happen someday, maybe
(01:29):
not for our upbeat drowning episode. Well it would be
upbeat because we would be talking about how we save
people from rom drowning. This episode of heat waves the
big bummer episode because the world's just getting hotter. Yeah,
and while France is legally bound to achieve carbon neutrality,
(01:54):
we are living under an administration that's canceling green energy
projects and yeah, I hate it. Yeah, it's not a
good feeling. I will say. Just to talk about the weather, Okay,
as you know, as people know, I love hot weather.
I like heat, and I know this one is freaky humidity. Yeah,
(02:19):
this is the first year that I can think of.
And some of this might just be that I'm getting older,
but where I've been like uh oh yeah too hot.
I have actually had two like kind of dehydration oh
heat strokey events this year when I was in Florida
both times, and like both times it was a matter
(02:40):
of like, get some electrolytes in me, plenty of water
and I bounce right back. But and I talked about
it with my doctor and she's like, ye, anythink that's
just heat strokey dehydration that has never happened to me before.
I mean it did when I was a kid, when
I was a little more delicate, but not in a
long time. And that's like for me, my own personal
like experiential data. I'm like going, yeah, hotter than it's
(03:00):
ever been. I can tell even when I mowed the lawn,
which I have to do now in like twenty five
to thirty minute increments, because it's so freaker. Yeah yeah,
Like our yard is bigish, it takes a couple hours
to mow the whole thing, and so like, over the
course of four days, I slowly get the lawn mode
because it's just even I am like, wow, it's stupid
(03:22):
if I stay out here any longer. Yeah. Yeah, our
yard is not big. Our yard is very small. It
can be done in very much less than one battery
of our battery operated rechargeable mower. Oh no, we have
three batteries, and I will buzz through all of them
and keep going. Yeah, come back the next day. I
(03:45):
one of I thought of a lot of things while
working on this one. We said at the top, how
it seems like heat is taken less seriously than some
of the other Yeah forms of weather. And one of
the things I talked about are thought about was back
when I was a teenager, I was in a Drummond
Bugle corps and we rehearsed outside in the hot and
(04:08):
the sun for hours, and I remember a couple of
situations where we would be like pushing toward a competition,
they would call for a water break. An instructor would say,
color guard, come over here, I want to go over
those last you know, sixteen measures again, and then we
(04:31):
wouldn't get any water. Oh no, and right. And there
was at least one time that somebody who was in
the color guard with me wound up having to get
like medical attention like her. I don't know what specifically.
There are multiple heat related things that can happen, and
I don't know which specifically it was, but she just
(04:52):
sort of shut down and got on the ground and
wrapped her flag around her and went to the hospital.
And I am hopeful that drum cores are better about
that now. Surely it's one of the sources of mixed
feelings that I have about my time in drum corps.
Oh yeah, I mean again, this often comes up, and
(05:13):
I don't mean to like be you know, kind of
like just throwing out the path thing. But like, yah,
our childhoods were dangerous, Yeah, they were, Like there just
wasn't as much and I don't mean to be like
marken Ard, but there was not as much information about
things like this, and I think one also, there was
(05:35):
less danger. I mean, I feel like we hit that
moment in the early two thousands where things started happening
where like very fit athletes were having issues like high school,
like I remember vaguely, and I feel bad because I'm
not going to remember the details of like a foot
like a high school football player that died because he
(05:57):
got dehydrated during practice or something. Yeah, and forgive me
if I'm not conjuring the right thing. But there was
an event like that, and I think that was a
moment where a lot of people were like, oh, kind
of a wake up call. We should really start thinking
more seriously about how, you know, these activities are managed
in terms of like just pure outdoor in the sun
(06:19):
heat safety, which is great and should always be the case. Yeah. Also,
some of us, me are really bad about drinking enough water.
And I'm getting better about it because I got scared
straight after those two little dehydration events. But it is
hard sometimes. I don't love water. I've said it many times,
but I like passing out even less so. But I
(06:41):
do think, you know, we all need to. I mean,
this is my PSA to everybody. Please make sure you
are getting enough fluids, enough electrolytes enough, you know, not
in the sun time. I worry all the time now
when I see this summer, as I said, it's been
particularly rough. When I see like the people that like
it's their job to work on lawns and stuff. Yeah,
(07:02):
I feel like I've become like a one woman watchdog
group where I just carry water in my car in
case I see anybody that looks like they haven't a problem. Yeah. Yeah,
even if they don't need it, if they just want
to pocket it, great. Yeah. I just want everybody to
be okay, there's no reason to pass out because you're
mowing a lawn. Yeah. Also, I can't speak for other countries.
(07:23):
I can only speak for the United States. Advocate for
laws to protect the people who work outside. Yes, like
agricultural workers who literally feed us. They are providing the
food for us to eat, and a lot of places
have virtually no protections related to the dangers of being
out in the heat all day. Yeah. I made reference
(07:44):
in this episode to the discourse. There has been a
lot of air conditioning discourse which I found very frustrating.
I found some of it funny. But yeah, I will
tell you what I found funny recently. It might be
the same thing you're getting to do you want to
go first, I don't know. Do we want it on Delight?
Listen on funny one? So yes, I'll say my thing first,
because I was more frustrated. I felt like a lot
(08:07):
of people were kind of talking past each other, and
a lot of people in the United States were making
things sound easy that aren't. Yeah, So like I saw
a lot of people saying, oh, they're complaining that they
can't just like their windows aren't the right shape to
put in a window air conditioner. You can put in
duck list air conditioning systems and old buildings. We do
(08:28):
it over here all the time. And it's like true, true,
we do put in duckless air conditioning systems. I put
a duckless air conditioning system into the house that we
bought in twenty nineteen, and let me tell you that
cost thirty thousand dollars yeah. Yeah, so like, yeah, we
can do this, but a lot of people cannot afford
(08:51):
thirty thousand dollars and and a lot of parts of
Europe it is more than that because of shortages of
the actual look equipment and stricter standards about things like
the energy efficiency of the systems, the historic protections on
the buildings, all of that kind of stuff. So yeah,
(09:12):
I found the discourse frustrating rather than funny. But I
want to hear what was funny to you, because that
does sound like a good way to end the episode.
I have two funny things, okay. One is just a
funny conversation between a friend and I, and two is
specifically about air conditioning. One is that I had been,
as I've been talking about on the show, I'm trying
(09:33):
to figure out when I can playin a trip to
London to see the bayou Ch Tapestry. Oh yeah, and I
was talking to one of my friends about it and
he's like, you might not want to come now it's
really hot, and like, again, I'm not playing one upsmanship.
But it was just funny because he was not taking
into account like what people are accustomed to, and he's
like he's getting in like the eighties, and I was like, oh,
my darling, to me, it is the real feel is
(09:55):
one hundred and twelve at my house right now. And
he's like, oh, you'll be fine. Yeah, I'm just more
I'm used to it. The eighties will feel great to me,
which is why I want to travel. Here's the funny
thing the World Cup. Okay, watching a lot of international
visitors come to the US, one of the things that
has delighted me is seeing how one a lot of
(10:16):
their preconceived notions about what the US is like got
kind of broken down, you know, like seeing them really
realize that the US actually does love football slash soccer,
you know that it's not like I know, there was
concern about being hosted in the US and discovering like, no,
there's plenty of passion for it here. But also seeing
(10:36):
them discover foods here, like the ranch dressing thing has
been great. But I saw so many people on social
media being like, how am I going to go home
to a place with that air conditioning after living Yeah,
after being in hotels that are like blasting sixty degree
air and it feeling like such a respitouseide right, it
doesn't solve the problems that you were discussing. But it
(10:59):
has been just that's funny, Like I feel like people
did not realize how much of a difference air conditioning
can make. Right you are having a very very hot day,
if you've been out in the stands or celebrating or
doing whatever you're doing, to then go back to a
room that's like arctic blast. Yeah, I did not even
(11:20):
think about air conditioning when we were booking the trip
to England that Patrick and I took earlier this spring,
because I didn't even think about it. It is close
to ubiquitous where we live. But also at this point,
I've made some trips to Europe and I know that
a lot of parts of it air conditioning is not ubiquitous.
(11:40):
But also generally in earlier years the temperature was more
likely to be milder, and so we were going to
England at a time when like the average temperature is
more like in the high seventies, and so if we
hadn't had air conditioning, it wouldn't have been that big
of a deal. And instead we got there during the
hottest May in a century, where when I realized, you know,
(12:04):
a couple of days out that that was what was
going to happen. I was like, oh no, and looked
and discovered that, Okay, the hotel that we are staying
in during the worst of this says all the rooms
our air conditioning air conditioned, and they were and the
air conditioning was very good, so we did not have
heat exhaustion in our hotel rooms. Hooray, hooray. It was
(12:31):
kind of odd to go into a museum and have
that museum be uncomfortably hot because museum me nervous. Yeah,
me too. Well, British Museum, well, we could think about
the British Museum for another reason, to have questions about
the British Museum. It got hot in a lot of it.
So yeah, it was very strange when Patrick was like, oh,
(12:54):
we'll just go to museums today, and I was like, honey,
some of these museums have no air conditioning, just so
you're aware before we go over there. We still had
a very lovely trip though, even though it was so
incredibly hot. We talked about Samuel Plimsel this week. We did,
(13:18):
we did. It was a good, delightful man. One of
the things that charmed me to pieces while I was
reading his book. Aha was the preface which I'm going
to read a small excerpt from because it just encapsulates
who he was. I think he right excited quote. I
(13:39):
have no idea of writing a book. I don't know
how to do it, and fear I could not succeed
if I tried. The idea, therefore, is very formidable to me.
I will suppose myself to be writing to an individual
and to be saying all I could think of to
induce him to lend his utmost aid in remedying the
great evil which we all deplore, and I will write
(14:00):
so far as I can, just as I would speak
to him if he were now sitting by my side.
But so sweet, I understand why people who were like,
what are you doing here in the United States were
then like, we love you, Samuel Plipsel. That's some good advice.
It is. It reminds me a little bit of many
many years ago. I was on the first Jonathan Colton
(14:22):
cruise that was ever done, and a lot of the
performers were people that I had been fans of for
many years, who I was going to have the opportunity
to actually have conversations with beyond just like having a
signature done at a book signing or a fan table
or something like that. And so I dealt with this
(14:44):
by just pretending that I was also famous, and that
really helped me to get over my jitters and just
have regular conversations with people. And I think that's a
little similar. I think I do the reverse of that.
Oh yeah, I just am like, this is a human
who needs to do human things. Uh, they have to
(15:06):
eat and use the ladies or men's room or whatever
room they wish. Huh. They have to do all the
same stuff as me. It's very you know, they put
their pants on when leg it ish. Yeah. I feel
like that's two sides of the same coin, because it's
two different ways of saying we're the same and I
can talk to you. Does that make sense? Yes, mine
is a little I don't know. I feel like mine
(15:28):
might be a little more or less. I don't know.
I just strip them of their fame and I'm like,
you're you're just a dude who happens to know about
a thing I need to talk to you about. This
was also like fifteen years ago or something, and who
knows what I would how I would approach things in
a similar situation today. You know what also, really, I
(15:51):
mean I already felt this way, but there was an
instance that really cemented that, which was leading up to
the twenty twenty election. I hosted a podcast that we
did it I heart called Why I'm Voting Oh Yeah,
and I got to interview a lot of very famous
people about like what brings them to the polls. And
(16:14):
this was of course going on during the pandemic. Yeah,
so it was all online and I would literally see
people just like join in from like sometimes their bathrooms,
like they were like this is this the room with
the best sound like sin I'm sitting or also in
their closet like me, and it's just like, you know,
at the end of the day, we all equalize. Sure,
(16:36):
we all equalize. Yeah, it's a very fun show to do.
There were a lot of great conversations and people that
were very surprising in how frank and kind and lovely
they were. I had a great a lot of great
conversations on that show. Super super fun. But yeah, I
think the idea of like if you're writing and you're
scared to write, but you need to just write like
(16:58):
you're writing, like you're talking to some Yeah, that will
be your truest voice as a writer anyway in most
cases perfect. I feel like that's that sort of similar
advice in public speaking. Like I remember when I was
in school, people were like, imagine the audience in their underwear,
and I was like, that's not going to help me
at all. But focusing on a person and thinking of
(17:22):
it as I'm talking to this person, not I'm talking
to a whole auditorium full of people, could really help. Yeah. Again,
I do it a little. I think of it differently.
There's a thing moons ago, I did a TEDx that
was largely about like being truthful about your life so
that future historians will have an easier time understanding what
(17:44):
was going on, okay in our current day. Yeah, and
you know, I talked a lot about like social media
and whatnot and likened it actually to Louise the sixteenth
and Marie Intoinette, which I will always try to bring
up in every conversation. But one of the things that
I started really thinking about, and it's something that's guided
a lot of this show for both of us, is
(18:06):
like you've heard me do my soapbox about history is
not just things that happen in seats of government or
on thrones. It's about every single, everyday person. And so
for me kind of the way around, it is not
so much picturing that I'm talking to one person in
a public speaking situation. It's remembering that we are all
(18:27):
sharing one unique moment that will never be replicated, and
that kind of makes it just like, yeah, it's like
we are making our own moment of history together right
here today. You're a part of it as much as me,
and we can all, you know, have our little jamboree moment. Yeah.
So I just love it's important. And I feel like
(18:47):
when I I recently at a convention, was talking to
a little girl because she was talking about how she
didn't like history. We were talking about Star Wars things
and it came to history and I was like, oh
my darling, there is so much amazing history for you.
You just need to find there. Literally, someone exactly like
you has been in history from day one, and like you,
(19:10):
if you find their stories, history comes alive. And her
mom looked at me, like what, how really, And I
was like, yeah, yeah, like this is I never thought
about it that way, and I'm like you should, Lovely,
That's that's what makes people connect to history because they
remember that they're part of it. Anyway, Samuel plimsel I
(19:39):
got genuinely choked up reading obituaries of him, like I
had to stop because it was like everyone was so
abulliant about what like a pure soul he was and
how incredibly kind he was to everyone he met. And
you know, while he would be very aggressive and frank
about people doing bad things, he himself wouldn't even like,
(20:02):
really be that unless you're a toll booth person, right,
causes him trouble. One of the things that he said
about that man that cracked me up. This is, to him,
the worst insult he could come up with. She was
not a gentleman. Yeah, I just found that hilarious. I
(20:23):
love that whole story. What a little rabble rouser, Yeah,
in a very sweet package. I still have the same
problem I talked about on a previous behind the Scenes
where A Million Miles Away plays in my head over
and over. Oh yeah, listen, if anybody's looking for a
good you know eighties eighties bop about disassociation, that's the
song for you. It's great. I love it, and I
(20:49):
quite enjoyed learning about Samuel pimsel I will say there
was a thing that happened. You know, we talked about
the two different colliery disasters that he raised money for
the survivors and the remaining families afterwards. I initially was
having so much trouble with that because some biographies will
only mention one or the other of them, and as
(21:12):
a consequence, I think things that have drawn from those
and been written later will sometimes conflate the two. Wow,
and so it would be like this disaster that happened
in this place and this year, and I would be like,
there's no such on record that I can find what
is going on. And it took me a minute to
be like, there are two separate events that each happened
(21:35):
in somewhat similar ways and that he provided support for,
but like it seems like those in some cases people
only remember, like he raised money for survivors of a
mining disaster, and it becomes one that was a little
tricky to suss out, but we did it. Yeah, you know,
may we all be such kind creatures as him and
(21:58):
so willing to I mean, the things that he kind
of put himself in the line of fire legally into
with that whole shipping situation, because he was like, you
guys are corrupt. You are making money off of this.
How dare you try to vote down or quash bills
that will reform this industry. Listen, we have not solved
(22:19):
that problem at all of like people in government being corrupt.
So I appreciate his incredible resilience. And you know, his wife,
Eliza was very much in that fight with him and
would also like do her own efforts in those bigger
fundraising efforts. She was out there talking to people about
the need for reform in labor and particularly in maritime labor.
(22:45):
Just what a yeah, what a good egg. Yeah, thanks
Samuel Plimsel. Thanks for trying to get people to look
at history in a more nuanced way as well. When
I first read that, I was like, it is this dicey?
Is it doesn't seem to have been Yeah, because he
really was like, look, we know you had every right
to leave and want to have your own country. We
(23:06):
get that. Let's be cool now though. Yeah. Well, and
I think not so much about the relationship between the
US and the UK, but there's plenty of other stuff
going on in the world that has some kind of
you know, historical precedent that's or historical contexts. That's super
(23:26):
super relevant that people will want to boil down to
this is good, this is bad. These people were good,
these people were evil, and be outraged if anybody tries
to be one hair more nuanced than that, And it's like, no, really,
we're still talking about actual human beings operating from a
(23:48):
variety of motives. Yeah, yeah, I mean I feel like
that's a lesson we still learn all the time on
the show, right, I mean I still have moments of
revelation in that regard. We talked about it on a
reason behind the scenes where we were talking about the
you know, the golden age of piracy and really realizing
(24:09):
how tied that was to political machinations and the ways
that you know, the decisions of people in seats of
government kind of funneled into that problem of piracy at
the time. It all connects. Everything has its own you know,
context and nuance, and if you're not looking at all
of that, you're missing so much of the story. I mean,
(24:30):
this is the whole premise of our ship. But in
any case, in any case, if this is your weekend
coming up, I hope you do good works unless you're exhausted,
in which case sometimes the good works is hanging out
on your couch with a cup of coffee and a cat.
It's correact. That is also important because it makes you
able to go out into the world a better and
more resilient person. If you don't have time off, I
(24:54):
hope you still get some time sitting on your badonk
If that's your thing, it's certainly mine doing something it
brings you joy or peace or some combo of the two.
And I hope that everyone is kind and that everyone
carries the spirit of Samuel Plimsel out into the world.
Ay ay, we just want to take care of each other.
I think he's a great inspiration and an icon of
(25:17):
kindness that we can all get behind. We will be
right back here on Monday with a brand new episode,
and tomorrow we will have classic for you to enjoy.
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(25:39):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com