May 15, 2026 • 23 mins
Tracy shares why Bhagat Singh Thind rocketed to the top of her topics list. Holly shares a story of bad cat behavior.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class a production
of iHeartRadio Happy Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We returned to the world
of Supreme Court cases again. I try to space out
the Supreme Court cases. But as soon as the random
algorithm showed me this clip. It was an audio clip
with you know, a picture in the background of sodam
(00:35):
Oor and Sour having this conversation about Thinned, I was like, oh, yeah,
I want to talk about Thinn right now, because a
lot of people had seen that clip, and I was
not sure how many people had any idea what was
being discussed in terms of Thinn right.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Also, I know the last time we had a Supreme
Court episode, I said I was going to do one
on Elk versus Wilkins, and I.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Haven't done that yet.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
How dare how dare I still might at some time.
The first time I ever heard about this case was
back in twenty seventeen on a series from the podcast
Seen on Radio, and it was there Seeing White series,
which was on the sort of development of whiteness as
a concept and the impact that concept has on life
(01:26):
in the US today. And I had since that time
almost a decade now, would periodically return to the idea
of talking about this case in the show and then
never made it up until now. I re listened to
that one episode of Seeing White just because I was like,
I want to refresh my memory on what exactly they
(01:47):
said that made me think, Hi, maybe my show should
talk about this eventually. And Bagat Singh Thin's son was
interviewed on that and you apparently like this was not
something that his father ever really talked about. He knew
his father as a spiritual teacher. He really didn't know
(02:07):
anything about this at all. And when they got into
the the kind of ways that Thinned and other people
from India would talk about their own race and talk
about race in general while making the argument that they
were white so that they could become citizens. There was
just there was a lot of racism involved in those conversations, right,
(02:28):
And he was like, that is not that does not
sound like my father to me. He did not think
of his father as someone to make those kinds of arguments.
And there are a number of other podcasts besides ours
that have spent sort of more time looking at that
part of it. On the sort of the interconnection between
different groups of people trying to move to become citizens
(02:52):
of live in the United States and the intersections of
these different types of racism involved with that. Well. And
there are also things that happened that we talked about
in this episode, right where like, within the legal framework
that exists, you kind of have to go down a
path that has racist tones to it and basically be right,
(03:16):
I'm not black, you know what I mean, Like, there's
inherently a racist element to that, but it's the only
path available to somebody, right, which stinks. And it kind
of gets to that bigger picture that always comes up
when people are talking about issues of control and race
(03:39):
and marginalized or perceived lower class citizens, that like part
of the maintenance of power is turning people that don't
have power against one another. And this is the kind
of an elegant way that they managed to do it,
which is it's just troubling and heartaching. Yeah, there's no way,
(04:01):
there's no other path to walk, which stakes. Yeah, we
didn't use the word socially constructed in this episode anywhere,
but this case is sort of an example of how
the idea of race is socially constructed, not something that's
biologically immutable. And while the Court was not sort of
(04:25):
making an argument about the social construction of racial categories,
but that's basically what, you know, what the court was
saying when the verdict was, well, he's not white, and
a common person knows that. That was sort of the
what it boiled down to. Also the fact that this
was part of a pattern of whether the US government
(04:49):
has viewed different people as white, and how a lot
of time that has had to do with like whatever
was most expedient with what the government.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Wanted in that moment.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And also the fact that the Supreme Court put out
two different decisions in different like in a couple of
months of each other, that were so contradictory, one of
them being like no, no, no, no, only Caucasians can be citizens,
and then a couple months later, no, no, no, no, no,
not that I've got that kind of Caucasian.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Actually, I.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Read some one of the articles that I read for
all of this characterized it as judicial whack a mole.
It was like if there had been another case that
had come before the Court where someone had made a
different argument and that was not somebody the Court thought
should be a citizen. Then they would have come up
with some other reason to like knock out that one
part of the definition.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
One of the things that came up in research that
we didn't mention is that Charles Sumner, who we spent
three entire episodes when they were debating the new naturalization
law that extended the rights of naturalization to African and
people of African descent, Charles Sumner was trying to get
(06:04):
the law to just drop racial categories altogether, right, And people.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Were like, na, man, you don't you are You're not
in your right mind.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
They can we can just drop racial categories altogether. Those
are important, yeah, to somebody. There's also a biography of
Bogot Syncthned. It is called Doctor g The Life, Teachings
(06:35):
and Legacy of Doctor Boggat Synthn. I did read the
portion of it that is about his biography, because it's
more focused on the teachings, right.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
I did read that.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Doing research on the show, and ultimately only used it
to confirm things like dates and places, because it does
not read life like an impartial or probing account of
someone's life. It is a lot more like a hagiography.
It's very laudatory and how it talks about him. I
(07:13):
think it was commissioned by his son, so that's not
fully surprising. But if anyone went looking for more information
and found that book, just wanted to put that out there.
Yeah once again. In some ways humans move so far,
they evolve and change and learn and grow. In another
it's the same thing again. Oh yeah, yeah, an unpleasant noise.
(07:39):
I just made sorry, kind of a growl and a sigh.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Okay, I don't know. Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I know what episode is coming next after this one,
and it will not have quite the number of heavy
themes that this one.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Dead huzzah.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, we talked about the Carrington events this week. After
looking at the globe and where the places we are going,
I didn't actually look at the globe. I looked at
(08:21):
at Google Maps, and then I was like, I still
don't know what I'm looking at, and so I just
started individually googling the like latitude and longitude of the
places that we're going, and then I googled like Aurora
chances at the places that were going, and then I
felt a little silly. I was like, oh, these places
are not actually that much farther north than we are
(08:43):
but then I, you know, I reminded myself at the
time that you saw the aurora at Tracy, you were
at Helk, So yeah, I've only I've only really seen
it once I was in Iceland. It was not our
Iceland trip where we went aurora hunting. I was the
cree Is time in May, which is not normally the
time you would see them. Yeah, that was just a
(09:05):
freakish good bit of luck that they were like, oh,
the aurora's out. So when we went to Iceland for
our honeymoon, it was very end of April beginning of May,
and it was out while we were there, but we
were in a place that was overcast when it happened.
And the next night we were staying at a different
place and they had this list at the front desk
(09:28):
that was put your name on the list than if
the aurora comes.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Out, we will call you.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And I was like, oh, I'm going to put our
names on this list, even though I know it's not
very likely. And the person at the front desk was like, actually,
they were out last night and they were really bright.
And when people found out, they were angry that we
didn't have the list out and we didn't have the
list out because like it's not the season anymore, Like
we had reached the point of the year where it
(09:53):
is not fully dark in Iceland anymore. Yeah, the darkest
it is is twilight. Yeah, at that point we missed it.
But there was one time that it was pretty bright
in a lot of Massachusetts and I could see it
a little bit with the unaided eye. At my house,
I could see it through my phone camera exceptionally well.
(10:15):
And when we went back to Iceland on the trip
that we took for the show where we actually had
an aurora chasing scheduled, Patrick and I arrived a day
early to try to get a little acclimated, and we
were walking around Reykiavic at night trying to see if
we could see the aurora, and it really did not
(10:38):
look like we could, And it also did not look
like we could through the phone screen. And it wasn't
until I looked more closely at the pictures. I think
even after we were home that I was like, oh, wait,
this is Aura. There's a little something something well something
happening there that I could not see it all and
could not see on the phone screen. I would see
(11:00):
looking at the picture on the computer. So anyway, very
much would be excited if I if we saw the
aurora on the trip, but if we don't, it's fine. Yeah,
it's just a good fortune thing. There is some speculation
that Frederick Edwin Church's painting of the Aurora borealis, which
(11:24):
is the painting that we have used for the little
artwork for the show on our Netflix, that that was
inspired by this. He was in Newfoundland and Labrador that
summer when it happened, and then he painted this in
eighteen sixty five. And I didn't have a good place
in the episode itself to mention that. Just blurted out
like I did that. I went to Galileos too, just
blurt it out. I do blurt some things out that,
(11:47):
like an aurora was a surprise to me. So yeah,
if you're in Santa Croce, which is a basilica in Florence,
we went because we were on our art pilgrimage and
that is where Michelangelo is also buried. Yeah, and we
were there, but then we were walking along and I
was like, is that Galilea. It's literally right there in
(12:10):
the same right there, huge, huge, like you know, big
monument and whatnot, as well as Machiavelli. It's a it's
quite a gallery of people assembled there for their final
resting place. Yeah, that's sort of like the Pantheon Parthenon. Pantheon,
Pantheon Pan Parthenon. Which one is it. I'm gonna say
(12:33):
the two words over and over, the one where all
the French people are.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Entombed that Dale.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, so you could say it the French way and
it will sound. I know that those are two different
things and they are very dissimilar from one another, but.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
The time too.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Stupid, No, do not, do not, do not. I also
love that we had a show out to Goddard Space
Flight in this episode. Yeah, because I love them and
have been lucky enough to go visit them. Yeah, way
back when we were still house Stuff Works and we're
doing video content separate from this show, we did a
(13:15):
bunch of space stuff there at one and it was
amazing And I love that entire team, so I'm glad
they got a little shout out here. Is that the
trip where you stayed at a place that I would
call an affordable motel experience and someone who was with
you was unhappy, Yes, I don't know if they were
(13:42):
unhappy about that. Okay, they were unhappy about a variety
of things. Uh huh, that is all but the nice
thing and it wasn't it was. It's a hotel, but
it's definitely not like a fancy pants unicorn hotel. And
it's just the place that there is convenient to the yes,
and there's not a lot near there. But what we
kind of lucked out with is that that was also
(14:03):
the same place that all the people from god Aard
do their monthly social hour. Okay, it happened on the
night we were staying there, so we got to hang
out then. Listen, one of my proudest moments in my
life is that I taught a bunch of engineers and
scientists that if you salt your napkin before you put
(14:23):
your cocktail down, it won't stick to your drink. And
they were astounded by this. I love it, and I like,
you are so smart about all the things, but I
can't teach you drinking tricks.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
And that's all I had off.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, but what an incredible group, And I know it's
been a little stressful for them in recent years, so yeah,
I hope they are all keeping their morale up as
best they can. Yeah, if people are curious. The video
(15:02):
game I was playing that suddenly reference to the Carrington
event was The Long Dark, a game that I have
played a lot over the last more than a decade,
And in hindsight, that made total sense because one of
the things that was introduced as part of that game
was Aurora that cause electrical devices to work when they
(15:24):
do not work in other circumstances. So like radios that
are in houses, you can turn the radio on and
music will play when there's no power in any other circumstance.
In the new I knew it's a few years old
at this point, a DLC there is a radio that
is powered by the aura that you can talk to
a trader and trade things with.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And then the aura is beautiful, and.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Then it also has effects that are a little different
from reality. They make animals behave differently and be much
more likely to kill you. And then yeah, there had
been speculation for a long time that the Carrington event
was going to have some kind of relation to the
game Oh right, with its story mode, the last chapter
(16:11):
of which just dropped, which was a controversial finale.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
The story mode of the game.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
And as is the case with so many fandoms that
I have witnessed over my life. The response to it
was disproportionate. Yeah, yeah, anything.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
One.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
I'm slightly envious. I feel like I used to play
video games at a rabid rate, and I can't do
that anymore. I have to stare the time and be like,
these two hours, I'm going to play this game because
I just have a mom, a busy bee, you have
my hands and loves guys. However, the mention of animals
behaving badly brings us to the confession that I mentioned
(16:57):
I would make if you are interested in hearing about
my cat. Yeah, okay, So, as everyone knows, we adopted
three new cats last year. One of them, Jessie, is
like kind of like I always joked that she's me
as a cat, right. She's kooky, her noises are hilarious.
She always sounds mad even when she's happy. But I
(17:17):
love her desperately, And she's also a big, beautiful woman.
She's tipping close to seventeen pounds and she's also a
large cat. So one of my best friends, who I
also love, who is like a sibling to me, watches
our cats when we travel, and she has mentioned a
couple times you know, I sometimes I'm a little afraid
of Jessie, and I'm like, uh huh. She's all talk.
(17:38):
She's a big cuddler, Like even when she's unhappy, she
never lashes out at all. She's like super you know,
she's like, I don't like this, but she won't do
anything wrong. And then I got sent a video of
Jeszi while we were away, and I was mortified because
I was suddenly that parent. You know, we've all known
(18:00):
that parent whose kid is a little bit of a
terror and genuinely mean, and they're like, not my baby,
not my precious baby. Yeah, my precious angel baby. JESSI,
who I love desperately, was not just yelling at our
poor cat center. She was hissing, swatting, and lunging at
her with bared teeth, and I was like, oh, what
(18:22):
the heck is going on here? And we have done
some testing since then, Uh huh. She just does not
like that person, which, like you know how people are
like trust the instincts of animals, not this time. Yeah,
every this is a person that stray dogs will run
to for help, Like she is a cat whisperer. She
is one of the kindest souls i've ever met. We
(18:45):
had another friend of mine visiting right before I left
for Italy. We went to Italy together and she flew
here first, and so I was like, great, we can
do an actual like control group situation test. Here's another
person this cat is not even though our friend watched
the cats is at our house a lot, she knows
all of our animals. But I'm like, here's the person
(19:06):
this cat isn't familiar with. She's met her before, but
she's not here all the time, well cuddly as the
day is long with her. And then our other friend
walked in the room and the cat was like, oh, no,
fied at my terrible child. Yeah, that is my confession.
I have never I don't know what's going on with her.
(19:26):
I don't know jealousy, jam, I don't know what's up.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
This reminds me a bit of how I used to
have a cat named Anastasia many years ago. You're scaredy baby, Well, no,
Anastasia was. Anastasia was good. Cestina was scared of things. No,
villain L was the most scared of thing. Yes, I
was singing a villain L because I had watched your
cats a few times. Yeah, villain l hid from everyone
all the time, but Anastasia, so for a long time
(19:58):
I had taken them to a cat only VET. And
then I moved to Atlanta and asked some friends for
vet recommendations. I was given a vet recommendation. I went
to this vet one time. I think because I got
there and I was like, I don't feel like this office.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
This office does not.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Feel well maintained to me, and that makes me question
other things. But then they were gonna get exams at
shots and all of that, and the vet tech who
was helping put on like the big gauntlets to handle
my cat, and there had been no real indication for
me ever that like any of the cats needed gauntlets
(20:44):
to be examined, right, And I think the fact that
they were in a place that they could smell dogs,
which was not usual for them, and then was being
handled with these gauntlets by someone who clearly thought there
was a need for gauntlets. Anastasia lost it and I
was like, bab I have never seen her behave like
this in my life, very and like at that point,
(21:09):
she was a fully adult cat and had plenty of
VET experiences under her belt and had never behaved like that,
and I was like, this is not right. Not the
vet for me. We did have a cat that needed
the gloves. And you know who I'm talking about, I
absolutely do. Mister Burns, the scourge of veterinary science. Yeah,
the chillest cat I've ever met at home. But man, yeah,
(21:33):
he hated the vets office.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah. He was so bad.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
He was so bad. He drew so much blood.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Oh goodness, he told me put the many stores.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I'm sure I've shown you the picture of the space
helmet they had to put on him to keep him
from biting people. Yeah, which, if you've ever had a
cat that has to wear the space helmet at the VET,
it's quite entertaining but also bad. And he looks so mad.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, and my.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Beautiful, amazing vet is just looking at him with such
a loving expression while he's like, I will kill you
the worst, Oh much beloved. Oh cats in astronomy together,
A cat's an astronomy.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I think our previous episode this week, I talked about
how I do know lawyers, that I could have asked
technical questions about law I also could have asked an astrophysicist. Yeah,
but I did not ask any astrophysicists questions about the
Carrington event. So hopefully we did not upset any astrophysicists
(22:36):
with our lay persons explanation of things. In my experience,
they're a pretty chill group.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I agree. So whatever's happening on your weekend. If you
love cats, I hope there are cats. If you want
to see the Aurora, I hope it shows up. If
you just want to chill out and play some video
games or read a book or do some other quiet
side thing, I hope that happens.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And I hope.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Everyone is great to you. And if you're working, I
hope everyone is great to you at work. We will
have a brand new episode on Monday. We'll be back
tomorrow with a Saturday classic. Stuff you Missed in History
Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(23:24):
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 Happy Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We returned to the world
of Supreme Court cases again. I try to space out
the Supreme Court cases. But as soon as the random
algorithm showed me this clip. It was an audio clip
with you know, a picture in the background of sodam
(00:35):
Oor and Sour having this conversation about Thinned, I was like, oh, yeah,
I want to talk about Thinn right now, because a
lot of people had seen that clip, and I was
not sure how many people had any idea what was
being discussed in terms of Thinn right.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Also, I know the last time we had a Supreme
Court episode, I said I was going to do one
on Elk versus Wilkins, and I.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Haven't done that yet.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
How dare how dare I still might at some time.
The first time I ever heard about this case was
back in twenty seventeen on a series from the podcast
Seen on Radio, and it was there Seeing White series,
which was on the sort of development of whiteness as
a concept and the impact that concept has on life
(01:26):
in the US today. And I had since that time
almost a decade now, would periodically return to the idea
of talking about this case in the show and then
never made it up until now. I re listened to
that one episode of Seeing White just because I was like,
I want to refresh my memory on what exactly they
(01:47):
said that made me think, Hi, maybe my show should
talk about this eventually. And Bagat Singh Thin's son was
interviewed on that and you apparently like this was not
something that his father ever really talked about. He knew
his father as a spiritual teacher. He really didn't know
(02:07):
anything about this at all. And when they got into
the the kind of ways that Thinned and other people
from India would talk about their own race and talk
about race in general while making the argument that they
were white so that they could become citizens. There was
just there was a lot of racism involved in those conversations, right,
(02:28):
And he was like, that is not that does not
sound like my father to me. He did not think
of his father as someone to make those kinds of arguments.
And there are a number of other podcasts besides ours
that have spent sort of more time looking at that
part of it. On the sort of the interconnection between
different groups of people trying to move to become citizens
(02:52):
of live in the United States and the intersections of
these different types of racism involved with that. Well. And
there are also things that happened that we talked about
in this episode, right where like, within the legal framework
that exists, you kind of have to go down a
path that has racist tones to it and basically be right,
(03:16):
I'm not black, you know what I mean, Like, there's
inherently a racist element to that, but it's the only
path available to somebody, right, which stinks. And it kind
of gets to that bigger picture that always comes up
when people are talking about issues of control and race
(03:39):
and marginalized or perceived lower class citizens, that like part
of the maintenance of power is turning people that don't
have power against one another. And this is the kind
of an elegant way that they managed to do it,
which is it's just troubling and heartaching. Yeah, there's no way,
(04:01):
there's no other path to walk, which stakes. Yeah, we
didn't use the word socially constructed in this episode anywhere,
but this case is sort of an example of how
the idea of race is socially constructed, not something that's
biologically immutable. And while the Court was not sort of
(04:25):
making an argument about the social construction of racial categories,
but that's basically what, you know, what the court was
saying when the verdict was, well, he's not white, and
a common person knows that. That was sort of the
what it boiled down to. Also the fact that this
was part of a pattern of whether the US government
(04:49):
has viewed different people as white, and how a lot
of time that has had to do with like whatever
was most expedient with what the government.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Wanted in that moment.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And also the fact that the Supreme Court put out
two different decisions in different like in a couple of
months of each other, that were so contradictory, one of
them being like no, no, no, no, only Caucasians can be citizens,
and then a couple months later, no, no, no, no, no,
not that I've got that kind of Caucasian.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Actually, I.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Read some one of the articles that I read for
all of this characterized it as judicial whack a mole.
It was like if there had been another case that
had come before the Court where someone had made a
different argument and that was not somebody the Court thought
should be a citizen. Then they would have come up
with some other reason to like knock out that one
part of the definition.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
One of the things that came up in research that
we didn't mention is that Charles Sumner, who we spent
three entire episodes when they were debating the new naturalization
law that extended the rights of naturalization to African and
people of African descent, Charles Sumner was trying to get
(06:04):
the law to just drop racial categories altogether, right, And people.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Were like, na, man, you don't you are You're not
in your right mind.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
They can we can just drop racial categories altogether. Those
are important, yeah, to somebody. There's also a biography of
Bogot Syncthned. It is called Doctor g The Life, Teachings
(06:35):
and Legacy of Doctor Boggat Synthn. I did read the
portion of it that is about his biography, because it's
more focused on the teachings, right.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
I did read that.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Doing research on the show, and ultimately only used it
to confirm things like dates and places, because it does
not read life like an impartial or probing account of
someone's life. It is a lot more like a hagiography.
It's very laudatory and how it talks about him. I
(07:13):
think it was commissioned by his son, so that's not
fully surprising. But if anyone went looking for more information
and found that book, just wanted to put that out there.
Yeah once again. In some ways humans move so far,
they evolve and change and learn and grow. In another
it's the same thing again. Oh yeah, yeah, an unpleasant noise.
(07:39):
I just made sorry, kind of a growl and a sigh.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Okay, I don't know. Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I know what episode is coming next after this one,
and it will not have quite the number of heavy
themes that this one.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Dead huzzah.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, we talked about the Carrington events this week. After
looking at the globe and where the places we are going,
I didn't actually look at the globe. I looked at
(08:21):
at Google Maps, and then I was like, I still
don't know what I'm looking at, and so I just
started individually googling the like latitude and longitude of the
places that we're going, and then I googled like Aurora
chances at the places that were going, and then I
felt a little silly. I was like, oh, these places
are not actually that much farther north than we are
(08:43):
but then I, you know, I reminded myself at the
time that you saw the aurora at Tracy, you were
at Helk, So yeah, I've only I've only really seen
it once I was in Iceland. It was not our
Iceland trip where we went aurora hunting. I was the
cree Is time in May, which is not normally the
time you would see them. Yeah, that was just a
(09:05):
freakish good bit of luck that they were like, oh,
the aurora's out. So when we went to Iceland for
our honeymoon, it was very end of April beginning of May,
and it was out while we were there, but we
were in a place that was overcast when it happened.
And the next night we were staying at a different
place and they had this list at the front desk
(09:28):
that was put your name on the list than if
the aurora comes.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Out, we will call you.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And I was like, oh, I'm going to put our
names on this list, even though I know it's not
very likely. And the person at the front desk was like, actually,
they were out last night and they were really bright.
And when people found out, they were angry that we
didn't have the list out and we didn't have the
list out because like it's not the season anymore, Like
we had reached the point of the year where it
(09:53):
is not fully dark in Iceland anymore. Yeah, the darkest
it is is twilight. Yeah, at that point we missed it.
But there was one time that it was pretty bright
in a lot of Massachusetts and I could see it
a little bit with the unaided eye. At my house,
I could see it through my phone camera exceptionally well.
(10:15):
And when we went back to Iceland on the trip
that we took for the show where we actually had
an aurora chasing scheduled, Patrick and I arrived a day
early to try to get a little acclimated, and we
were walking around Reykiavic at night trying to see if
we could see the aurora, and it really did not
(10:38):
look like we could, And it also did not look
like we could through the phone screen. And it wasn't
until I looked more closely at the pictures. I think
even after we were home that I was like, oh, wait,
this is Aura. There's a little something something well something
happening there that I could not see it all and
could not see on the phone screen. I would see
(11:00):
looking at the picture on the computer. So anyway, very
much would be excited if I if we saw the
aurora on the trip, but if we don't, it's fine. Yeah,
it's just a good fortune thing. There is some speculation
that Frederick Edwin Church's painting of the Aurora borealis, which
(11:24):
is the painting that we have used for the little
artwork for the show on our Netflix, that that was
inspired by this. He was in Newfoundland and Labrador that
summer when it happened, and then he painted this in
eighteen sixty five. And I didn't have a good place
in the episode itself to mention that. Just blurted out
like I did that. I went to Galileos too, just
blurt it out. I do blurt some things out that,
(11:47):
like an aurora was a surprise to me. So yeah,
if you're in Santa Croce, which is a basilica in Florence,
we went because we were on our art pilgrimage and
that is where Michelangelo is also buried. Yeah, and we
were there, but then we were walking along and I
was like, is that Galilea. It's literally right there in
(12:10):
the same right there, huge, huge, like you know, big
monument and whatnot, as well as Machiavelli. It's a it's
quite a gallery of people assembled there for their final
resting place. Yeah, that's sort of like the Pantheon Parthenon. Pantheon,
Pantheon Pan Parthenon. Which one is it. I'm gonna say
(12:33):
the two words over and over, the one where all
the French people are.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Entombed that Dale.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, so you could say it the French way and
it will sound. I know that those are two different
things and they are very dissimilar from one another, but.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
The time too.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Stupid, No, do not, do not, do not. I also
love that we had a show out to Goddard Space
Flight in this episode. Yeah, because I love them and
have been lucky enough to go visit them. Yeah, way
back when we were still house Stuff Works and we're
doing video content separate from this show, we did a
(13:15):
bunch of space stuff there at one and it was
amazing And I love that entire team, so I'm glad
they got a little shout out here. Is that the
trip where you stayed at a place that I would
call an affordable motel experience and someone who was with
you was unhappy, Yes, I don't know if they were
(13:42):
unhappy about that. Okay, they were unhappy about a variety
of things. Uh huh, that is all but the nice
thing and it wasn't it was. It's a hotel, but
it's definitely not like a fancy pants unicorn hotel. And
it's just the place that there is convenient to the yes,
and there's not a lot near there. But what we
kind of lucked out with is that that was also
(14:03):
the same place that all the people from god Aard
do their monthly social hour. Okay, it happened on the
night we were staying there, so we got to hang
out then. Listen, one of my proudest moments in my
life is that I taught a bunch of engineers and
scientists that if you salt your napkin before you put
(14:23):
your cocktail down, it won't stick to your drink. And
they were astounded by this. I love it, and I like,
you are so smart about all the things, but I
can't teach you drinking tricks.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
And that's all I had off.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, but what an incredible group, And I know it's
been a little stressful for them in recent years, so yeah,
I hope they are all keeping their morale up as
best they can. Yeah, if people are curious. The video
(15:02):
game I was playing that suddenly reference to the Carrington
event was The Long Dark, a game that I have
played a lot over the last more than a decade,
And in hindsight, that made total sense because one of
the things that was introduced as part of that game
was Aurora that cause electrical devices to work when they
(15:24):
do not work in other circumstances. So like radios that
are in houses, you can turn the radio on and
music will play when there's no power in any other circumstance.
In the new I knew it's a few years old
at this point, a DLC there is a radio that
is powered by the aura that you can talk to
a trader and trade things with.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And then the aura is beautiful, and.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Then it also has effects that are a little different
from reality. They make animals behave differently and be much
more likely to kill you. And then yeah, there had
been speculation for a long time that the Carrington event
was going to have some kind of relation to the
game Oh right, with its story mode, the last chapter
(16:11):
of which just dropped, which was a controversial finale.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
The story mode of the game.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
And as is the case with so many fandoms that
I have witnessed over my life. The response to it
was disproportionate. Yeah, yeah, anything.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
One.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
I'm slightly envious. I feel like I used to play
video games at a rabid rate, and I can't do
that anymore. I have to stare the time and be like,
these two hours, I'm going to play this game because
I just have a mom, a busy bee, you have
my hands and loves guys. However, the mention of animals
behaving badly brings us to the confession that I mentioned
(16:57):
I would make if you are interested in hearing about
my cat. Yeah, okay, So, as everyone knows, we adopted
three new cats last year. One of them, Jessie, is
like kind of like I always joked that she's me
as a cat, right. She's kooky, her noises are hilarious.
She always sounds mad even when she's happy. But I
(17:17):
love her desperately, And she's also a big, beautiful woman.
She's tipping close to seventeen pounds and she's also a
large cat. So one of my best friends, who I
also love, who is like a sibling to me, watches
our cats when we travel, and she has mentioned a
couple times you know, I sometimes I'm a little afraid
of Jessie, and I'm like, uh huh. She's all talk.
(17:38):
She's a big cuddler, Like even when she's unhappy, she
never lashes out at all. She's like super you know,
she's like, I don't like this, but she won't do
anything wrong. And then I got sent a video of
Jeszi while we were away, and I was mortified because
I was suddenly that parent. You know, we've all known
(18:00):
that parent whose kid is a little bit of a
terror and genuinely mean, and they're like, not my baby,
not my precious baby. Yeah, my precious angel baby. JESSI,
who I love desperately, was not just yelling at our
poor cat center. She was hissing, swatting, and lunging at
her with bared teeth, and I was like, oh, what
(18:22):
the heck is going on here? And we have done
some testing since then, Uh huh. She just does not
like that person, which, like you know how people are
like trust the instincts of animals, not this time. Yeah,
every this is a person that stray dogs will run
to for help, Like she is a cat whisperer. She
is one of the kindest souls i've ever met. We
(18:45):
had another friend of mine visiting right before I left
for Italy. We went to Italy together and she flew
here first, and so I was like, great, we can
do an actual like control group situation test. Here's another
person this cat is not even though our friend watched
the cats is at our house a lot, she knows
all of our animals. But I'm like, here's the person
(19:06):
this cat isn't familiar with. She's met her before, but
she's not here all the time, well cuddly as the
day is long with her. And then our other friend
walked in the room and the cat was like, oh, no,
fied at my terrible child. Yeah, that is my confession.
I have never I don't know what's going on with her.
(19:26):
I don't know jealousy, jam, I don't know what's up.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
This reminds me a bit of how I used to
have a cat named Anastasia many years ago. You're scaredy baby, Well, no,
Anastasia was. Anastasia was good. Cestina was scared of things. No,
villain L was the most scared of thing. Yes, I
was singing a villain L because I had watched your
cats a few times. Yeah, villain l hid from everyone
all the time, but Anastasia, so for a long time
(19:58):
I had taken them to a cat only VET. And
then I moved to Atlanta and asked some friends for
vet recommendations. I was given a vet recommendation. I went
to this vet one time. I think because I got
there and I was like, I don't feel like this office.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
This office does not.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Feel well maintained to me, and that makes me question
other things. But then they were gonna get exams at
shots and all of that, and the vet tech who
was helping put on like the big gauntlets to handle
my cat, and there had been no real indication for
me ever that like any of the cats needed gauntlets
(20:44):
to be examined, right, And I think the fact that
they were in a place that they could smell dogs,
which was not usual for them, and then was being
handled with these gauntlets by someone who clearly thought there
was a need for gauntlets. Anastasia lost it and I
was like, bab I have never seen her behave like
this in my life, very and like at that point,
(21:09):
she was a fully adult cat and had plenty of
VET experiences under her belt and had never behaved like that,
and I was like, this is not right. Not the
vet for me. We did have a cat that needed
the gloves. And you know who I'm talking about, I
absolutely do. Mister Burns, the scourge of veterinary science. Yeah,
the chillest cat I've ever met at home. But man, yeah,
(21:33):
he hated the vets office.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah. He was so bad.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
He was so bad. He drew so much blood.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Oh goodness, he told me put the many stores.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I'm sure I've shown you the picture of the space
helmet they had to put on him to keep him
from biting people. Yeah, which, if you've ever had a
cat that has to wear the space helmet at the VET,
it's quite entertaining but also bad. And he looks so mad.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, and my.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Beautiful, amazing vet is just looking at him with such
a loving expression while he's like, I will kill you
the worst, Oh much beloved. Oh cats in astronomy together,
A cat's an astronomy.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I think our previous episode this week, I talked about
how I do know lawyers, that I could have asked
technical questions about law I also could have asked an astrophysicist. Yeah,
but I did not ask any astrophysicists questions about the
Carrington event. So hopefully we did not upset any astrophysicists
(22:36):
with our lay persons explanation of things. In my experience,
they're a pretty chill group.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I agree. So whatever's happening on your weekend. If you
love cats, I hope there are cats. If you want
to see the Aurora, I hope it shows up. If
you just want to chill out and play some video
games or read a book or do some other quiet
side thing, I hope that happens.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And I hope.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Everyone is great to you. And if you're working, I
hope everyone is great to you at work. We will
have a brand new episode on Monday. We'll be back
tomorrow with a Saturday classic. Stuff you Missed in History
Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(23:24):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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