Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fryding. Uh. This week on the show,
we talked about our sin Away, the second and the
very convoluted Ptolemaic Dynasty. I'm so glad you did this one.
(00:25):
I did not mention it to you because she was
on my list for a long time, and I did
what you initially did, which is that you looked at
it and got very overwhelmed and went later. Except I
look at it give very overwhelmed to go. I can't.
I just can't. Well. So UM. As I started working
on this, it felt like it had some of the
same beats as the Zoe and Theodora episode that we
(00:47):
had just done. Um. And so in other circumstances, I
might have put this off a little bit more for later.
But very fortunately during the pandemic, I have generally been
able to get every resource sign needed, or I've had
enough enough other stuff going on that I've been like, okay,
I can just I can put this off until I
can get to that library again. UM. There's one thing
(01:11):
in particular that has been on my on my list
for a really long time. There is one specific book
that I really want. There is one library that is
near me that has it, and just I just can't
get to that library right now. But I have had
our sin Away on my list for a long time
and I would kind of poke at it. And then
I realized there was a book that was in my
library network, like my local library network that that shares
(01:33):
resources among themselves, um, and for a long time that
wasn't operating because of the pandemic. It has started again
and the library has started up just a very lovely
contactless pickup system for the books. Um. And so I
was like, great, it says it's going to take a
little bit longer for request to be fulfilled. I'll go
ahead and put this in and I'll just go ahead
(01:53):
and do this episode when it gets here. And then
it turned out to get here actually pretty quickly, and
I was like, well, I got to do this episode
now because it's a library book. It's going to need
to go back in two weeks. Um. That was thing
number one. Thing number two was you and I record
typically on Tuesday mornings, since I already had this library
book and I already had all this other stuff that
I had pulled some research. This episode you and I
(02:15):
recorded on Tuesday morning, and then on Tuesday afternoon I
started to try to read about the Ptolemy's and everyone
was named Ptolemy, and my brain just rebelled. It was like, noe,
We're done, done for the day. You want to try
to concentrate, it's not going to happen. You should just
call it a day and go take a ride on
your exercise bike because whatever you're attempting to work on,
(02:37):
it's not gonna work. Uh. After I had a nice
you know sleep, got up on Wednesday morning, I had
a lot more success with it. Still, their family tree
is like one of those ficuses with a braided trunk.
It is it's hard to pull it apart. So I'm
thankful to you for having done that all the Ptolemy's.
(02:59):
It's rare. I mean, I frequently when I'm writing episodes
will try to just like when we come back from
sponsor break, kind of just like nudge whatever is the
thing back to the top of people's brains. Because I
know you're a lot of people listen to podcasts while
they're doing other stuff. Maybe you're a little distracted taking
a walk or doing dishes, or you know, people whose
(03:21):
jobs allow for podcasts to be listened to while they
were Like, people are distracted a lot of times, and
so like a lot of times, repeat somebody's full name,
or repeat some little detail, like just a little thing
to kind of resurface what was happening before the break.
This is the first time I feel like I have
had to have a whole paragraph of sort of a
(03:42):
like Buttercup is marrying Humperdink in little less than half
an hour recap, which is what this felt like to
me after the second ad break. Uh, all the spindles. Um,
It's one of those things, right, this comes up all
the time. And I know I probably always sound like
a hippie, but I'm always like, why would anyone want
(04:05):
to seek out power in this structure? Run Away? I
mean it just sounds, um so like a lot of
a lot of our sin Away of Egypt and Masodon.
That's the book that I got from the library by
Elizabeth donald Ley Carney. Um, like a lot of the
book is not directly about her, because we know so
(04:25):
little about her, and so much of it is about
like here is all of the total chaos and stress
that was going on in her life, as you know,
when she was a child and the other wives were
all trying to guarantee some kind of future for their
sons and the dynasty like all of that just sounds
exhausting and terrifying to have to try to live through,
(04:49):
especially when she was like a daughter in this whole
system and had very little agency for anything with her life. Um.
And it makes me think about other women we have
talked about in other context, like prior host to the
show did a lot of stuff about the medic chiese
UM and the stuff that that Katherine de Medici did
(05:10):
that was regarded as just entirely underhanded, and a lot
of it was like trying to guarantee some kind of
future for her children. Right. I do wonder if if
the disappearance of her son Ptolemy, isn't him noping out
of that structure a little bit, being like I don't
really need the power here. I can go maybe just
(05:32):
have one wife and have a family. I don't know,
maybe seems easier. We're gonna start just a little little
olive farm. Maybe it sounds heavenly if you were raised
in that doesn't that sound like just the ultimate peaceful
escape from all of it? But we don't really know.
He may have had a whole other agenda what I
(05:53):
would do in that situation. Well, and there are so
many people named Ptolemy that it's it's hard to know
for sure what exactly became a film. So anyway, that's
our sin away. Um. I feel like the most tangliest
dynasty that we've talked about on the show. This week
we talked about Cecaretta Jones. I really really came to
(06:18):
adore her while researching her. Um. I have to say,
she was a very striking woman, Like she knew how
to wear a dress. Like I could look at pictures
of her all day because she was very, very beautiful,
but also just like had great style and like she's
just phenomenal. Um. There were a couple of things that
I wanted to mention that they didn't really quite make
(06:41):
it into the episode because it was running along and
you gotta cut something. One thing that I wanted to
talk about was the name of the Tennessee Jubilee Singers, UM,
because they were actually kind of coasting on the success
of another group, which was the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which
was a music group that had been touring to raise
(07:03):
money for construction and other projects at Fisk University and
was also an all black troup, and so they were
Everybody started putting Jubilee in their name, hoping that like
you would do it, and it actually became one of
those things that leads to some confusion in articles about her,
where people will say she was a member of the
Fisk Jubilee Singers and it's like, that's not true. Um.
(07:25):
But to further complicated, I don't even want to dog
any of those people that have written that, because there
were instances where she was performing in some of those
multi act bookings where the Fisk Singers also were, so
I understand how people would overlap them. Um. It just
(07:46):
was one of those things. I kept trying to untangle
it and I'm like this, wait, this says she is
a Fisk No, this is no. This definitely says she
was not. Um. It's a little bit tricky in that regard.
We talked in the episode about how often reviewers talked
about her looks. It's so unsettling and I shouldn't be
(08:06):
surprised because we've run into this before, but they almost
start to describe her. Some are very flourishy and a
little bit florid, and they talk about how beautiful she
is and whatnot, but others will only talk about that
after they have kind of analyzed her, almost as though
she were livestock, and it's so dehumanizing, like where they'll
(08:27):
even talk about like what her teeth looked like, and
like just really strange obsessive discussion of her, sometimes trying
to make it seem like they are not looking at
it in a racist way. But I'm like, I don't
know any other opera singer where you talked about her
teeth for a paragraph, like, I don't this is weird. Um.
(08:50):
One thing that's interesting, though, is that we talked about
the name Black Patty and how just unpleasant it is um,
particularly to modern ear. But it's interesting because when she
toured Europe, European critics were like, I don't like this name,
which was not something that she ran into as much
in the United States, although there were occasionally some, but
(09:13):
I mean they would call it out and be like,
I don't understand why she's billing herself this way. This
devalues her. Why is she doing this? Uh, which is
just an interesting insight into the different mindsets of different
places at that time with regard to to race. But
also there was that issue that she talked about where
to her, it wasn't necessarily that she took offense because
(09:36):
it made it about her being black. She just didn't
want to be compared to another singer as the way
she was booked, um, because that's devaluing in a whole
other way. We also mentioned how she talked about and
sidestepped issues of really discussing color and race in a
(09:57):
lot of interviews. She would definitely a rest things. I mean,
we referenced points where she was like, black people shouldn't
be treated like this as an audience member, um. But
she really did seem to think that if she could
just go out and be a black woman who was
singing to mixed audiences, that that was going to help
push the needle a little bit um without necessarily. She
(10:22):
kind of took that attitude of if you're too assertive
about it, you're going to do more harm than good.
But if they just see me, then then this will
smooth the way a little bit. There are certainly discussions
to be had around the merit of that approach versus UM.
But it is interesting that she really just saw like
music as an ambassadorial effort to fix some of the
(10:43):
problems in society. UM. Her troubadours really were in ways
that were often not called out or particularly well documented.
Breaking a lot of those those grounds where they would
be the first black troope to appear in various theaters,
(11:06):
But it wasn't ever like something that they drew attention
to because she she didn't want that. It seems she
didn't want it. I don't want to presume that I
know what she wanted, but it seems that they did
not bring that up in the press and say we
are the first company of black performers that. Um, there
was one story that I saw that was kind of funny,
and I thought it would be a good place to
(11:26):
to land. At least my part of this discussion, which
is that there was one particular theater where they were
the first I think not only were they the first
black troope to perform there, but the theater had made
the concession that they would not segregate the audience. But
the poor ushers didn't know what to do because they
(11:47):
had no training on how to handle it and so
there was some panic and it was like they just
got through the night. But the ushers were like, we
don't We've only done segregated. We don't know how to
do this without people yelling at us. And I'm not
sure how this is gonna work. But it worked out
again singing, singing, smooth that went out. But it's an
interesting story that, um, you know, we often talk about
(12:10):
when people uh sort of want to want to strip
away the old ways of doing things that are inherently racist,
and how there is a logistics question that often comes
up in there right about. I feel for those poor
rushers who didn't know what to do with themselves or
their guests, um, and probably being yelled at by people
(12:32):
who did like where they were sitting, yeah, with no
like advanced training of like Okay, next week, we're going
to have this thing and we're going to change our
policy and that's going to be hard. It was kind
of like tonight it's integrated. Wait what, Um, it would
be a little hard. Yeah. I kept being struck by
(12:52):
how many parallels there were in her story and things
that happened to her and the way the press talked
about her, and you know, things that you still hear
from performers of color today and how they're touring, lives
are and about how they're talked about in the press.
And it was one of those things where it just,
(13:14):
you know, reminded me that a lot of these same
underlying issues are still operating in in much the same
way as they were. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
easy for people living today. I have certainly done it
at times to think like, oh, people weren't enlightened and
they weren't thinking about things in this way a hundred
(13:37):
years ago, a hundred and fifty years ago. But then
you read accounts and they absolutely were. They were absolutely
people shouting about how foolish looking at people's race and
valuing them based on it. Were There were certainly people going, no,
we should be integrated. This is stupid. Um. Yes, So
it's a little heartbreaking because then you're like, well, then,
(13:59):
why haven't we got any farther than we have? Um?
I don't have a good answer for that one. I
mean I have some answers, they're unkind, but I still
don't know why we haven't gotten farther. I didn't And
on quite such a happy note, sorry, I'm dragged away.
You're happy. Note right is telling the funny story. I
(14:19):
will tell everyone, please go look at pictures of Cincaretta
if you can, with all of her medals, because they're beautiful.
It's like a beautiful, gorgeous Victorian gown with all of
these medals pinned to it, and it just looks cool.
And I'm just going to plant this for someone out there.
This would be a beautiful historical Halloween costume. Sure. Yeah,
(14:41):
so we um, we are resurrecting our our social media
that have Laine Fellow for too long been a bit languishy.
Yeah and uh And I had been getting pictures to
a company episodes this whole time, even though we somehow
never managed to put them anywhere. Um, and this morning
I got one of Cineretta and then I had already
(15:04):
read through that line, but I read through it a
second time. And when I read through it a second
time that the part about her about the metals becoming
this iconic look for her, and I was like, I
gotta could get a different picture. So I intentionally went
and got a different picture that has her in her
dressed with the metals pinned to the bodice. Beautiful. Uh yeah, yeah,
(15:24):
I hope people dresses her for Halloween. I hope people
dresses her for Tuesday. I love Victorian gown. And again
she had amazing style. Oh man, she had great style. Um,
so hopefully that's the scoop. So yeah, since it's Friday, everybody,
hope you have a good weekend. Whatever's on your plate. Uh,
(15:46):
we'll be back with a brand new episode. Well first,
we'll have a classic episode tomorrow and then we'll be
back with a brand new episode on Monday. Stuff you
missed An History Class is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(16:08):
your favorite shows. H