March 15, 2024 • 25 mins
Holly talks about the various theories about events in Charles Francis Hall's life. Tracy discusses some of the troubling sources she came across while researching Götz von Berlichingen.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday, Am Holly Frying and
that Tracy F.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We talked about Charles Francis Hall. Yes, his accomplishments actually
get overshadowed by all of the weirdness because he did,
you know, make.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
A record in there.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, and he did some interesting things, but also he
seems like maybe really paranoid to me, right, and I'd like,
I do feel like a lot of his accomplishments were
really the work of indigenous guides. Oh yeah, not really
things he can take soul credit for. You and I
(00:49):
had a conversation while you were working on this where
you were like to have we talked about this before.
I know, I was like halfway done with writing it,
and I was like, did I really waste a lot
of time here?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Did I? I checked before?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But I just like had that moment of deep self
doubt where I was like, uh, oh, Spaghettio's did I
just completely tank my week?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
What have I done?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Well? And I went and searched through my folder and
the like, the only reference I found him in all
of my stuff is in a footnote of an article
about John Cleves Simms, who was the person who thought
that the earth was hollow, who he did an episode about.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh yeah, a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
So I was like, it was a thing where like
there was just a his name came up in the
text somewhere, and his name was in the footnotes, you know,
and a source about whatever that one sentence was.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
And it didn't get into a lot of detail.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
But I was like, was was he also into this
idea that the earth was made of hollow concentric rings?
Not to the best of my knowledge, but yeah, I
ever knows.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
We talked about the Patrick Coleman incident where he shot
a man because he became pair and what really kind
of upholds that is that there were some of the
whalers that were involved in that that moment who later
many years later, like decades later, gave statements where they
were like, all those guys were really young, and he
(02:16):
could have easily like they were they totally needed somebody
to lead them. He could have probably controlled them pretty easily.
This doesn't make sense that he thinks that they were
secretly conspiring against him, right, There is another theory about
it that's kind of interesting, and it also evidences his
own obsession with being like this hero and finding the
(02:39):
Franklin expedition. Uh huh, because there's another story and I
didn't include it here because it gets really off off
the path and becomes its own thing. Where while he
was away at one point like doing one of his
sledge things. And remember this is his second expedition, not
his his ultimate one where he passed where he was killed,
(03:04):
that while he was away, some of the local indigenous
people mentioned that there was a tomb nearby and kind
of like the pieces were coming together, that this may
have been actually a tomb made for Franklin when he died,
that the survivors actually tried to encase him in something
(03:25):
like stone and give him, like, you know, the send
off that his level.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
In their group would have merited.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And that these younger men got really excited about it
because they had been taken up by Hall's excitement and
they had tried to get those people to tell another
group of locals what they knew so that that could
be relayed to Hall when he got back, and that
he may have gotten angry that they thought that they
were going to be directing how this thing went, like
(03:56):
his perception was that that stepped on his toes, uh huh,
and that that may have gotten him angry because he
was apparently kind of territorial about this whole thing. So like,
I really wish I could time travel and talk to
Inspector Smith and be like, are you legit and above
board or are you one of those dudes who sees
yourself in another dude and protects him. I have so
(04:20):
many questions about all of these people. But it is
interesting that he was like, exhumed the body, there's something up,
and then when the body was exhumed there had clearly
been something up, definitely arsenic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty
interesting to me. You know, having worked on Criminalia for
(04:41):
a while now, our whole first season was about poisoning,
and arsenic was like we joked that it was the
star of the show because it came up so often,
and we had even talked to Debora Blum at the
end of that season about arsenic and all of I
did not include all the gory details of what happens
to a person when they have arsenic poisoning it and
cute and all of that was happening to Hall, so
(05:05):
like anybody who kind of knew, right. But the problem
with arsenic historically was that it went unnoticed for a
lot of cases because it also mimicsed things like other
like a lot of other diseases where it's perfectly like, yes,
of course he had a stroke, look at what's happening,
and it's like, yeah, no, because it was used medicinally
(05:28):
for so many things. I can also imagine a scenario
where somebody was trying to treat their own problem, yeah,
and not knowing what they were doing. Yeah, you know.
I mean this was also a time when patent medicines
might have been in those medical kits as like, as
though they were perfectly fine things to be administering, and
(05:51):
those were not regulated and could have had any amount
of anything in it, So it could have been completely
accidental or it could have been not. The other thing
that I find myself ruminating over in all of this
is Mary Anne Hall mm hmmm, because we don't hear
much about her. You know, her husband was gone all
(06:12):
the time, right. I do know that she got a
payout from the government at the conclusion of the Navy
Board hearing, like basically his salary that he was supposed
to collect for that mission she got. But that's kind
of it. We don't know much else about her life.
If it's notated somewhere, it may be, but I did
not come across it in my research, And of course
(06:34):
that may have just been because my research was focused
on the expedition.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
But it's one of those.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Things where I'm like, man, there's a whole other story
here that I would love to hear. And that's like,
Mary Anne, what are your thoughts on your husband going
like I'm gonna be I'm gonna run an engraving business. Nope,
I'm gonna be a publisher. Nope, I'm gonna go to
the Arctic like seeya. I just I'm like, is this
borderline abandonment? Because he didn't stay home long ever. When
(07:00):
he would come back, the longest was like that two
year stretch and then it was like I'm out, yeah, yeah,
I don't. It's it's hard to know in some ways
because like I mean, there are still people who like
are in the military and are deployed. We know a
couple of people that are in lengthy times apart because
(07:22):
of jobs, you know, in today's world, and like the
nineteenth century had more things like that in a lot
of ways. Yeah, yeah, it's wild to consider. I also
that you will laugh at me. Are you ready, yeah,
geography laughing. Okay, well, I mean I had some embarrassed,
(07:44):
embarrassing geography laughing that I told you earlier, say go ahead. Well,
as I was trying to like look at maps and
like really get my handle on, okay, where exactly was
he on the northwest side of the Greenland Shore, et cetera,
I literally was like, wow, is is right there? And
I know this sounds silly, but in my head, Iceland
is just always a little farther, far farther east than
(08:09):
I think it is. Oh yeah, that's all, which is
a nice way to say, Hey, we're going to Iceland.
We are going to Iceland. Still very excited about this. Yeah,
we're gonna go to Iceland. It's November. If you are interested,
it's November second to the eighth. You can learn more
at Defined Destinations dot com. If you want to go
with us. It's going to be great. I love Iceland.
(08:31):
We've said it many times. Tracy and I have each
been on separate trips, and I think we're both very
excited to go back there's a lot of fun stuff
planned and then I'm hoping it's it's an interesting trip
because we don't have as much downtime in the schedule
as we have on some other trips.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
But you better believe.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, I'm gonna go find my favorite hot dogs because
Iceland has some great hot dogs, right and I have
you know some. I'm gonna drink some Brenovan. In some
places there's a Lebowski bar. Yes, that is amazing, and
I'm going there again. I'm just gonna make it happen.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
You and I had a conversation when we first looked
at the itinerary about how there was a bit less
downtime than we've had on other trips. But it's partly
because unlike other trips where we have always been in
a city, part of this trip is farther away from
(09:31):
and so they're like, it's it's not like when you're
in Barcelona and you could just say, oh, there's this
historic house right here that I'm going to go to
for the whole morning. A lot more of the things
where we will be outside of Reykievic like you would
need conveyance to get there.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, Yeah, which will.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Be our bus Reykievic is very walkable, but once we're
outside of that that area, it gets a little bit trickier. Yeah,
which I'm still very excited to go there for reasons. Yes,
I have a lot of excitement for a lot of reason.
Its very excited. And uh, you know, none of us
are gonna hopefully have any horrible incidents we get poisoned
(10:12):
by artsnake, yes, and you know, hopefully if there's any
volcano happening, it will be a volcano that is not
threatening anyone or disrupting things at that time.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah. Yeah, I you.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Know, have have acquaintances at this point in Iceland, and
I have reached out to them whenever there's been news
and it's all kind of like, no, no, everything's safe.
All the animals got evacuated. We're good, We're good, We're
used to this. We have plans in place now. I
really felt like when we were in Iceland back in
twenty sixteen, it did feel like people were very pragmatic
(10:47):
about the idea of volcanic activity. Yes, one hundred percent,
I would thinker anyway, that's Charles Francis Hall. One of
our episodes this week was on goods vun relition Engen,
(11:10):
which I have not pronounced exactly like German speakers say.
It also called Goods of the Iron Hand. And here's
the story of the journey of research into this. So
a lot of the time when I am sort of
doing a gut check of is there enough information on
(11:32):
somebody to do a podcast on them, do a basic
Google search. A lot of times when it's somebody lesser known,
A lot of the results will be websites that I
would not necessarily use as like a source for the episode,
but I've at least heard of, So for someone like
Goods vun relition gen, that might be something like the
(11:53):
website Badass of the Week, Right, I at least know
what this podcast is.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And so I had bookmarked a bunch of articles.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I was going back to them for sort of round
two of actually reading them, and there was one that
was one of the longer articles that I had bookmarked,
and I was like, this, this article just at a glance,
looks legit. What is this website? Though I've never heard
of this website? And something about I forgot the name
of the little icon that shows up in the browser bar.
(12:24):
I was like, something about this icon is wrong to me.
So I go up to like, you know, I just
delete the part of the URL that is the article
to get like to the main site, and I was like,
this looks suspicious.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
It was just the entry page.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I clicked into the entry page, and I was like, oh,
this is Holocaust denial, not like not not Holocaust denial,
as in the Holocaust didn't happen, which it absolutely did.
The Holocaust happened. It was more like the real victims
were the Germans who were ethnically cleansed. And I was
(13:05):
just like, oh, this is not No, I'm not using
this as a source. And the vibe that I got
from this is that this was somebody's personal project that
that person had then sold to someone else. The person
who bought it is described in various news reporting as
(13:26):
a far right extremist who was convicted of child sexual
exploitation in twenty twenty two. And I was like, every no,
absolutely not. Not only that, I'm going through my browser
history and deleting all of that because I do not
want programmatic ads targeting me based on all of this.
(13:47):
So I went back to doing research, and fairly late
in the process, I was like, it is weird to
me that I can't find an English language version of this.
It seems like something somebody would have translated into English.
I found a number of different like German language editions.
I don't read German though, and I went to WorldCat
(14:11):
put in you know, goods Von Relationship autobiography and set
the language to English. And this book came up that
was just published within the last few years, that wasn't
in almost any libraries. And I was like, something is
weird to me. Something's weird here, right, So I googled
(14:33):
the name of the publisher and it is a publisher
that publishes just straight up white nationalism, works by Hitler,
works by other Nazis. And that's when I said, Holly,
I have a weird thing to talk through in this episode,
because I there have been people we've talked about before
(14:54):
who are people that were kind of appropriated by white nationalists.
So people like Emily Hobhouse, her work in South Africa
got kind of co opted by white nationalists, white South
African nationalists to sort of like build a story of
like white people being the real victims in South Africa.
If we were going to never talk about things that
(15:16):
were appropriated by white nationalists. We could just never talk
about the entire Viking era or medieval Britain because that's
also been like co opted by white nationalists to kind
of tell a completely false story about like a totally
white society, neither of which those were. So you and
(15:37):
I talked about it a little bit, and I was like, Okay,
I think what I'm gonna do is we're going to
do the episode and we're going to talk about all this.
But if I find anything in the research that raises
any other suspicions for me, I'm out on this because
it my sense of this, having tried to look into it,
(15:59):
is that he is somebody that was sort of co
opted by white nationalists because of this sort of like
German freedom fighter fictionalized version of him and the fact
that there was an s s Panzer Grenadier unit named
after him in World War Two, also like the idea
of the iron hand that sure does lend itself to
(16:22):
some Nazi imagery, but reasons that I wanted to continue
to talk about him one where like we haven't talked
that much about the transition from medieval to Renaissance Europe.
He had a lot of interesting things that happened in
his life. That were things we had never really talked
about on Like we never talked about the Swabian League.
We don't have that much about the Holy Roman Empire,
(16:45):
and we don't have a lot that's about disability that
far back in history. Most of our disability history is
a lot more recent, and a lot of that has
to do with like what the expectations that his societies
have put on to say people, and a lot of
times disabled people just being written out of history. Yeah,
(17:05):
they are historically not considered worthy of being part of
the historical record, right, which right, And you know, a
lot of times in the time they were living sort
of forced into the background by societies that were like
we don't even want to see disabled people. So being
able to talk about somebody who had a disability and
was living in the sixteenth century, I felt like was important.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And so all of that landed on meeting.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Like here, we're going to do this episode and also
acknowledged all of that. One other thing I did want
to say is a lot of the development of prosthetics,
(17:50):
especially like limb prosthetics in the US and Europe, has
followed war and battlefield injuries that soldiers have sustained right,
so a lot of prosthetics development basically follows warfare. Vast
majority of prosthetics users in the US and Europe are
not military veterans. Like there's a whole sort of stereot
(18:13):
not stereotype isn't exactly right. There are proportionately, you know,
significant numbers of disabled veterans who have had some kind
of an amputation. But in terms of like the whole
of people who have had a limb amputated and may
or may not now want a prosthesis like way out
numbered by people who like this amputation did not happen
(18:35):
in any kind of combat. So I just want to
say that, yeah, I have I have a peppy thing
that we can I'm so happy, which will be unsurprising
when I say what I'm going to say because it's
very hotlycentric. There are a lot of really really interesting
things going on in the ven diagram overlap of people
(18:59):
often themselves wear prosthetic pieces, and the art world, okay,
and there are a lot of very cool things being made.
And one of my favorites I totally want to give
a shout out it is this guy Trace who he
is on both TikTok and Instagram. His TikTok handle is
eat Prey Nub and he designs in three D prints
(19:23):
these incredibly cool pros theses, many of which are for cosplay,
but a lot of which are just for fun. And
they're very, very beautifully designed, and he's amazing, Like he
did one that turned his arm into a candy cane.
He does a lot of pieces that work for cosplay,
(19:45):
things like Iron Man arms and stuff like that. But
what I really love the most is that he printed
himself a pros thesis that has a Lego hand on
the end of it, and then printed lego accessories that
he can put in it. Fun the smartest and most
charming engineering going on.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And he's very funny. So if you want to see
some really cool art that is also kind of tongue
in cheek in many ways, Like there's a lightsaber one
that's really cool, check out his stuff. He's really incredible. There's,
oh my gosh, the triton arm, like the the Aquaman style,
you know, not quite a trident, but he has that
(20:27):
hooky thing from like some of the Aquaman stuff is gorgeous,
Like he just makes beautiful things, and I love, Yeah,
people are making beautiful art and sharing it, so Trace,
I kind of love love your work a lot, and
he's very, like I said, very very funny. So I
just love that there is this whole We talked specifically
about a lot of people and engineers who mean very
(20:50):
well creating prosthetic pieces that aren't the people that would
be wearing them, and there's not input necessarily from those people.
So I really like that this is like homegrown a
person who actually understands how these implements work and need
to fit and need to be comfortable for him just
(21:10):
making his own on his three D printer. I think
it's the coolest thing on earth. Somebody that I follow
on TikTok who I haven't seen as much content from lately,
and I don't know if it's because of the algorithm
or just she hasn't been as active lately. Her name
is Alexis and her account is called stump Kitchen. Yes,
and she yeah, she was born with a limb difference,
and so she's done some videos that are sort of
(21:34):
how she does various things like various household or grooming
things or whatever, using either one of a couple of
different processes that she has or her stump, and she
also does this stump cosplay where she makes up her stump.
She looks like different. I haven't seen those. I've seen
(21:56):
some of her kitchen stuff, but I have not seen those. Yeah,
So like just looking at what's on her profile right now,
she's got one that is the Grinch. There's one that
is Arthur. I feel like I saw like maybe a
Pikachu one one time. She will just she'll make up
her whole, her whole limb. She calls it her stump.
(22:18):
I don't know if that word is comfortable for everyone.
She has a limb difference, but like that's what she
calls it. And she tells stories about like when she
was a child and her sister, who did not have
a limb difference, like sort of made a personality for
(22:38):
her arm.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
It's I don't I.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Really I love her content, and you're what you just
described reminded me of it a little bit. I also
just realized that I left out one of the wilder
moments in my research thing that was not about white
nationalism at all, which is that I had found a
reference to a book that was described in the catalog
as in English. That was goods fun relish Jin's autobiography,
(23:06):
and they had it in the university library where my
spouse works, and so I said, can you please get
this book for me? He said yes and was like something.
He was like, something's weird about this catalog entry. I
was like, I know, I don't know what to tell you.
It's I just it's my only option forgetting this. So
he goes to the shelf described in the catalog as
(23:29):
being in English, but it turned out only the intro
to the book was in English. This book is from
back in the nineteen fifties. And it turned out the
reason that the catalog entry seemed a little bit off
is that there was no barcode to check it out.
It wasn't in the system at all. So when he
took it up to the circulation dusk check it out,
(23:51):
they were like, oh, wow, this is a whole we
have a process for this. Yeah, I need to get
someone who knows what knows how to do it. And
so now I have this book still, which he brought
home in a plastic bag because it is so fragile,
along with a piece of paper with the numbers for
(24:12):
the barcode written out in longhand so that when it
is returned to the library, the barcode can be affixed
to it. Right. I bet they're also going to do
an update on the record, so somebody will pop out
their AACR two manual for my library.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
People.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
You just perked up, I know, and then have to
do a new version of the mark record. I'm sure yeah,
And there might be a little repair worked into it
if that's feasible, because there are. It's a very delicate book. Anyway,
That is the whole saga of the story for this
(24:49):
week's podcast research from me Happy Happy Friday. I was like,
what day? That was a whole journey, and then I
forgot would day? It is Happy Friday. We'll be back
with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will have a brand
new episode on Monday. And whatever's coming up this next
(25:10):
couple of days for you, I hope it's all great
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.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday, Am Holly Frying and
that Tracy F.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We talked about Charles Francis Hall. Yes, his accomplishments actually
get overshadowed by all of the weirdness because he did,
you know, make.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
A record in there.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, and he did some interesting things, but also he
seems like maybe really paranoid to me, right, and I'd like,
I do feel like a lot of his accomplishments were
really the work of indigenous guides. Oh yeah, not really
things he can take soul credit for. You and I
(00:49):
had a conversation while you were working on this where
you were like to have we talked about this before.
I know, I was like halfway done with writing it,
and I was like, did I really waste a lot
of time here?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Did I? I checked before?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But I just like had that moment of deep self
doubt where I was like, uh, oh, Spaghettio's did I
just completely tank my week?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
What have I done?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Well? And I went and searched through my folder and
the like, the only reference I found him in all
of my stuff is in a footnote of an article
about John Cleves Simms, who was the person who thought
that the earth was hollow, who he did an episode about.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh yeah, a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
So I was like, it was a thing where like
there was just a his name came up in the
text somewhere, and his name was in the footnotes, you know,
and a source about whatever that one sentence was.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
And it didn't get into a lot of detail.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
But I was like, was was he also into this
idea that the earth was made of hollow concentric rings?
Not to the best of my knowledge, but yeah, I
ever knows.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
We talked about the Patrick Coleman incident where he shot
a man because he became pair and what really kind
of upholds that is that there were some of the
whalers that were involved in that that moment who later
many years later, like decades later, gave statements where they
were like, all those guys were really young, and he
(02:16):
could have easily like they were they totally needed somebody
to lead them. He could have probably controlled them pretty easily.
This doesn't make sense that he thinks that they were
secretly conspiring against him, right, There is another theory about
it that's kind of interesting, and it also evidences his
own obsession with being like this hero and finding the
(02:39):
Franklin expedition. Uh huh, because there's another story and I
didn't include it here because it gets really off off
the path and becomes its own thing. Where while he
was away at one point like doing one of his
sledge things. And remember this is his second expedition, not
his his ultimate one where he passed where he was killed,
(03:04):
that while he was away, some of the local indigenous
people mentioned that there was a tomb nearby and kind
of like the pieces were coming together, that this may
have been actually a tomb made for Franklin when he died,
that the survivors actually tried to encase him in something
(03:25):
like stone and give him, like, you know, the send
off that his level.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
In their group would have merited.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And that these younger men got really excited about it
because they had been taken up by Hall's excitement and
they had tried to get those people to tell another
group of locals what they knew so that that could
be relayed to Hall when he got back, and that
he may have gotten angry that they thought that they
were going to be directing how this thing went, like
(03:56):
his perception was that that stepped on his toes, uh huh,
and that that may have gotten him angry because he
was apparently kind of territorial about this whole thing. So like,
I really wish I could time travel and talk to
Inspector Smith and be like, are you legit and above
board or are you one of those dudes who sees
yourself in another dude and protects him. I have so
(04:20):
many questions about all of these people. But it is
interesting that he was like, exhumed the body, there's something up,
and then when the body was exhumed there had clearly
been something up, definitely arsenic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty
interesting to me. You know, having worked on Criminalia for
(04:41):
a while now, our whole first season was about poisoning,
and arsenic was like we joked that it was the
star of the show because it came up so often,
and we had even talked to Debora Blum at the
end of that season about arsenic and all of I
did not include all the gory details of what happens
to a person when they have arsenic poisoning it and
cute and all of that was happening to Hall, so
(05:05):
like anybody who kind of knew, right. But the problem
with arsenic historically was that it went unnoticed for a
lot of cases because it also mimicsed things like other
like a lot of other diseases where it's perfectly like, yes,
of course he had a stroke, look at what's happening,
and it's like, yeah, no, because it was used medicinally
(05:28):
for so many things. I can also imagine a scenario
where somebody was trying to treat their own problem, yeah,
and not knowing what they were doing. Yeah, you know.
I mean this was also a time when patent medicines
might have been in those medical kits as like, as
though they were perfectly fine things to be administering, and
(05:51):
those were not regulated and could have had any amount
of anything in it, So it could have been completely
accidental or it could have been not. The other thing
that I find myself ruminating over in all of this
is Mary Anne Hall mm hmmm, because we don't hear
much about her. You know, her husband was gone all
(06:12):
the time, right. I do know that she got a
payout from the government at the conclusion of the Navy
Board hearing, like basically his salary that he was supposed
to collect for that mission she got. But that's kind
of it. We don't know much else about her life.
If it's notated somewhere, it may be, but I did
not come across it in my research, And of course
(06:34):
that may have just been because my research was focused
on the expedition.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
But it's one of those.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Things where I'm like, man, there's a whole other story
here that I would love to hear. And that's like,
Mary Anne, what are your thoughts on your husband going
like I'm gonna be I'm gonna run an engraving business. Nope,
I'm gonna be a publisher. Nope, I'm gonna go to
the Arctic like seeya. I just I'm like, is this
borderline abandonment? Because he didn't stay home long ever. When
(07:00):
he would come back, the longest was like that two
year stretch and then it was like I'm out, yeah, yeah,
I don't. It's it's hard to know in some ways
because like I mean, there are still people who like
are in the military and are deployed. We know a
couple of people that are in lengthy times apart because
(07:22):
of jobs, you know, in today's world, and like the
nineteenth century had more things like that in a lot
of ways. Yeah, yeah, it's wild to consider. I also
that you will laugh at me. Are you ready, yeah,
geography laughing. Okay, well, I mean I had some embarrassed,
(07:44):
embarrassing geography laughing that I told you earlier, say go ahead. Well,
as I was trying to like look at maps and
like really get my handle on, okay, where exactly was
he on the northwest side of the Greenland Shore, et cetera,
I literally was like, wow, is is right there? And
I know this sounds silly, but in my head, Iceland
is just always a little farther, far farther east than
(08:09):
I think it is. Oh yeah, that's all, which is
a nice way to say, Hey, we're going to Iceland.
We are going to Iceland. Still very excited about this. Yeah,
we're gonna go to Iceland. It's November. If you are interested,
it's November second to the eighth. You can learn more
at Defined Destinations dot com. If you want to go
with us. It's going to be great. I love Iceland.
(08:31):
We've said it many times. Tracy and I have each
been on separate trips, and I think we're both very
excited to go back there's a lot of fun stuff
planned and then I'm hoping it's it's an interesting trip
because we don't have as much downtime in the schedule
as we have on some other trips.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
But you better believe.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, I'm gonna go find my favorite hot dogs because
Iceland has some great hot dogs, right and I have
you know some. I'm gonna drink some Brenovan. In some
places there's a Lebowski bar. Yes, that is amazing, and
I'm going there again. I'm just gonna make it happen.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
You and I had a conversation when we first looked
at the itinerary about how there was a bit less
downtime than we've had on other trips. But it's partly
because unlike other trips where we have always been in
a city, part of this trip is farther away from
(09:31):
and so they're like, it's it's not like when you're
in Barcelona and you could just say, oh, there's this
historic house right here that I'm going to go to
for the whole morning. A lot more of the things
where we will be outside of Reykievic like you would
need conveyance to get there.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, Yeah, which will.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Be our bus Reykievic is very walkable, but once we're
outside of that that area, it gets a little bit trickier. Yeah,
which I'm still very excited to go there for reasons. Yes,
I have a lot of excitement for a lot of reason.
Its very excited. And uh, you know, none of us
are gonna hopefully have any horrible incidents we get poisoned
(10:12):
by artsnake, yes, and you know, hopefully if there's any
volcano happening, it will be a volcano that is not
threatening anyone or disrupting things at that time.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah. Yeah, I you.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Know, have have acquaintances at this point in Iceland, and
I have reached out to them whenever there's been news
and it's all kind of like, no, no, everything's safe.
All the animals got evacuated. We're good, We're good, We're
used to this. We have plans in place now. I
really felt like when we were in Iceland back in
twenty sixteen, it did feel like people were very pragmatic
(10:47):
about the idea of volcanic activity. Yes, one hundred percent,
I would thinker anyway, that's Charles Francis Hall. One of
our episodes this week was on goods vun relition Engen,
(11:10):
which I have not pronounced exactly like German speakers say.
It also called Goods of the Iron Hand. And here's
the story of the journey of research into this. So
a lot of the time when I am sort of
doing a gut check of is there enough information on
(11:32):
somebody to do a podcast on them, do a basic
Google search. A lot of times when it's somebody lesser known,
A lot of the results will be websites that I
would not necessarily use as like a source for the episode,
but I've at least heard of, So for someone like
Goods vun relition gen, that might be something like the
(11:53):
website Badass of the Week, Right, I at least know
what this podcast is.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And so I had bookmarked a bunch of articles.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I was going back to them for sort of round
two of actually reading them, and there was one that
was one of the longer articles that I had bookmarked,
and I was like, this, this article just at a glance,
looks legit. What is this website? Though I've never heard
of this website? And something about I forgot the name
of the little icon that shows up in the browser bar.
(12:24):
I was like, something about this icon is wrong to me.
So I go up to like, you know, I just
delete the part of the URL that is the article
to get like to the main site, and I was like,
this looks suspicious.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
It was just the entry page.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I clicked into the entry page, and I was like, oh,
this is Holocaust denial, not like not not Holocaust denial,
as in the Holocaust didn't happen, which it absolutely did.
The Holocaust happened. It was more like the real victims
were the Germans who were ethnically cleansed. And I was
(13:05):
just like, oh, this is not No, I'm not using
this as a source. And the vibe that I got
from this is that this was somebody's personal project that
that person had then sold to someone else. The person
who bought it is described in various news reporting as
(13:26):
a far right extremist who was convicted of child sexual
exploitation in twenty twenty two. And I was like, every no,
absolutely not. Not only that, I'm going through my browser
history and deleting all of that because I do not
want programmatic ads targeting me based on all of this.
(13:47):
So I went back to doing research, and fairly late
in the process, I was like, it is weird to
me that I can't find an English language version of this.
It seems like something somebody would have translated into English.
I found a number of different like German language editions.
I don't read German though, and I went to WorldCat
(14:11):
put in you know, goods Von Relationship autobiography and set
the language to English. And this book came up that
was just published within the last few years, that wasn't
in almost any libraries. And I was like, something is
weird to me. Something's weird here, right, So I googled
(14:33):
the name of the publisher and it is a publisher
that publishes just straight up white nationalism, works by Hitler,
works by other Nazis. And that's when I said, Holly,
I have a weird thing to talk through in this episode,
because I there have been people we've talked about before
(14:54):
who are people that were kind of appropriated by white nationalists.
So people like Emily Hobhouse, her work in South Africa
got kind of co opted by white nationalists, white South
African nationalists to sort of like build a story of
like white people being the real victims in South Africa.
If we were going to never talk about things that
(15:16):
were appropriated by white nationalists. We could just never talk
about the entire Viking era or medieval Britain because that's
also been like co opted by white nationalists to kind
of tell a completely false story about like a totally
white society, neither of which those were. So you and
(15:37):
I talked about it a little bit, and I was like, Okay,
I think what I'm gonna do is we're going to
do the episode and we're going to talk about all this.
But if I find anything in the research that raises
any other suspicions for me, I'm out on this because
it my sense of this, having tried to look into it,
(15:59):
is that he is somebody that was sort of co
opted by white nationalists because of this sort of like
German freedom fighter fictionalized version of him and the fact
that there was an s s Panzer Grenadier unit named
after him in World War Two, also like the idea
of the iron hand that sure does lend itself to
(16:22):
some Nazi imagery, but reasons that I wanted to continue
to talk about him one where like we haven't talked
that much about the transition from medieval to Renaissance Europe.
He had a lot of interesting things that happened in
his life. That were things we had never really talked
about on Like we never talked about the Swabian League.
We don't have that much about the Holy Roman Empire,
(16:45):
and we don't have a lot that's about disability that
far back in history. Most of our disability history is
a lot more recent, and a lot of that has
to do with like what the expectations that his societies
have put on to say people, and a lot of
times disabled people just being written out of history. Yeah,
(17:05):
they are historically not considered worthy of being part of
the historical record, right, which right, And you know, a
lot of times in the time they were living sort
of forced into the background by societies that were like
we don't even want to see disabled people. So being
able to talk about somebody who had a disability and
was living in the sixteenth century, I felt like was important.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And so all of that landed on meeting.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Like here, we're going to do this episode and also
acknowledged all of that. One other thing I did want
to say is a lot of the development of prosthetics,
(17:50):
especially like limb prosthetics in the US and Europe, has
followed war and battlefield injuries that soldiers have sustained right,
so a lot of prosthetics development basically follows warfare. Vast
majority of prosthetics users in the US and Europe are
not military veterans. Like there's a whole sort of stereot
(18:13):
not stereotype isn't exactly right. There are proportionately, you know,
significant numbers of disabled veterans who have had some kind
of an amputation. But in terms of like the whole
of people who have had a limb amputated and may
or may not now want a prosthesis like way out
numbered by people who like this amputation did not happen
(18:35):
in any kind of combat. So I just want to
say that, yeah, I have I have a peppy thing
that we can I'm so happy, which will be unsurprising
when I say what I'm going to say because it's
very hotlycentric. There are a lot of really really interesting
things going on in the ven diagram overlap of people
(18:59):
often themselves wear prosthetic pieces, and the art world, okay,
and there are a lot of very cool things being made.
And one of my favorites I totally want to give
a shout out it is this guy Trace who he
is on both TikTok and Instagram. His TikTok handle is
eat Prey Nub and he designs in three D prints
(19:23):
these incredibly cool pros theses, many of which are for cosplay,
but a lot of which are just for fun. And
they're very, very beautifully designed, and he's amazing, Like he
did one that turned his arm into a candy cane.
He does a lot of pieces that work for cosplay,
(19:45):
things like Iron Man arms and stuff like that. But
what I really love the most is that he printed
himself a pros thesis that has a Lego hand on
the end of it, and then printed lego accessories that
he can put in it. Fun the smartest and most
charming engineering going on.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And he's very funny. So if you want to see
some really cool art that is also kind of tongue
in cheek in many ways, Like there's a lightsaber one
that's really cool, check out his stuff. He's really incredible. There's,
oh my gosh, the triton arm, like the the Aquaman style,
you know, not quite a trident, but he has that
(20:27):
hooky thing from like some of the Aquaman stuff is gorgeous,
Like he just makes beautiful things, and I love, Yeah,
people are making beautiful art and sharing it, so Trace,
I kind of love love your work a lot, and
he's very, like I said, very very funny. So I
just love that there is this whole We talked specifically
about a lot of people and engineers who mean very
(20:50):
well creating prosthetic pieces that aren't the people that would
be wearing them, and there's not input necessarily from those people.
So I really like that this is like homegrown a
person who actually understands how these implements work and need
to fit and need to be comfortable for him just
(21:10):
making his own on his three D printer. I think
it's the coolest thing on earth. Somebody that I follow
on TikTok who I haven't seen as much content from lately,
and I don't know if it's because of the algorithm
or just she hasn't been as active lately. Her name
is Alexis and her account is called stump Kitchen. Yes,
and she yeah, she was born with a limb difference,
and so she's done some videos that are sort of
(21:34):
how she does various things like various household or grooming
things or whatever, using either one of a couple of
different processes that she has or her stump, and she
also does this stump cosplay where she makes up her stump.
She looks like different. I haven't seen those. I've seen
(21:56):
some of her kitchen stuff, but I have not seen those. Yeah,
So like just looking at what's on her profile right now,
she's got one that is the Grinch. There's one that
is Arthur. I feel like I saw like maybe a
Pikachu one one time. She will just she'll make up
her whole, her whole limb. She calls it her stump.
(22:18):
I don't know if that word is comfortable for everyone.
She has a limb difference, but like that's what she
calls it. And she tells stories about like when she
was a child and her sister, who did not have
a limb difference, like sort of made a personality for
(22:38):
her arm.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
It's I don't I.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Really I love her content, and you're what you just
described reminded me of it a little bit. I also
just realized that I left out one of the wilder
moments in my research thing that was not about white
nationalism at all, which is that I had found a
reference to a book that was described in the catalog
as in English. That was goods fun relish Jin's autobiography,
(23:06):
and they had it in the university library where my
spouse works, and so I said, can you please get
this book for me? He said yes and was like something.
He was like, something's weird about this catalog entry. I
was like, I know, I don't know what to tell you.
It's I just it's my only option forgetting this. So
he goes to the shelf described in the catalog as
(23:29):
being in English, but it turned out only the intro
to the book was in English. This book is from
back in the nineteen fifties. And it turned out the
reason that the catalog entry seemed a little bit off
is that there was no barcode to check it out.
It wasn't in the system at all. So when he
took it up to the circulation dusk check it out,
(23:51):
they were like, oh, wow, this is a whole we
have a process for this. Yeah, I need to get
someone who knows what knows how to do it. And
so now I have this book still, which he brought
home in a plastic bag because it is so fragile,
along with a piece of paper with the numbers for
(24:12):
the barcode written out in longhand so that when it
is returned to the library, the barcode can be affixed
to it. Right. I bet they're also going to do
an update on the record, so somebody will pop out
their AACR two manual for my library.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
People.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
You just perked up, I know, and then have to
do a new version of the mark record. I'm sure yeah,
And there might be a little repair worked into it
if that's feasible, because there are. It's a very delicate book. Anyway,
That is the whole saga of the story for this
(24:49):
week's podcast research from me Happy Happy Friday. I was like,
what day? That was a whole journey, and then I
forgot would day? It is Happy Friday. We'll be back
with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will have a brand
new episode on Monday. And whatever's coming up this next
(25:10):
couple of days for you, I hope it's all great
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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