Behind the Scenes Minis: Balloons and the Mixed Bag

Tracy shares how the recent wave of spy balloon news inspired this week's episode, and the hosts talk about the technology of war balloons. They also talk about G.K. Chesterton, his anti-eugenics writing, and his anti-Semitism. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A
production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. One of our episodes this
week was about balloons, not in the fun sense, not exactly.

(00:25):
So I had some stuff going on when the whole
Chinese balloon news was happening. I was not paying attention
to the news at all, but it was very difficult
to not notice that there was just a ton of
conversation about balloons happening. I had this to like vague
awareness that there was some kind of balloon. I was

(00:47):
seeing headlines that said things like why people are freaking
out about spy balloons? And I was like, people are
freaking out about spy ball were like, what is going on?
And because there was just there was just so much
conversation about this balloon and so much conversation about the
Japanese balloon bombs of World War Two that in my

(01:10):
head it morphed into one thing. And the United States
military had shot down a spy balloon off the West coast,
not off the coast of South Carolina. And it wasn't
until I started working on this and actually reading any
of these articles that I was like, oh, I kind

(01:34):
of have a better sense of what happened. I was
not paying attention to any of this, right, I think
there's also that thing. I felt like there was a
wave of the initial reports splitting most people's reactions, at
least on social media, which, given is its own morass,

(01:56):
into two camps, one of like high level can spiracy
theory and the other being like balloons are super outdated,
It's just a balloon, yeah, and not recognizing that there
could in fact be a lot of technology involved in
a balloon. So it was an interesting thing to watch
develop through the lens of people's reactions. Yeah. Yes, Like

(02:22):
after the balloon had been shot down in like a
couple of days had passed and there was still all
of this conversation about balloons and unidentified objects that were
being shot down. That was when I was sort of
starting to look at the news again, and I started
people seeing people who were like, this is all a
distraction to distract everybody from the train derailment that happened,
And I was like, this too much is going on, right,

(02:45):
So there is a monument to the people who were
killed in Oregon by this balloon bomb and in twenty
twenty one it was threatened by a forest fire and
at the monument, like there is a monument with you know,
the names of the people who were killed on it,

(03:07):
like that's there, but then there's also a tree that
had shrapnel embedded in it from when it exploded, and
like that's the shrapnel tree. And so there were these
efforts to like save this one specific tree during this
forest fire, which I think they did successfully do, like
they wrapped the whole tree to try to protect it.

(03:29):
The I Think Park Service website says this site is
currently inaccessible, so I think post fire, it has not
returned to having public access yet, but there is a
monument there to that. I had a moment when we
were talking about the Japanese tissue paper balloons and their

(03:52):
testing procedure where I was like, if I were an
installation artist, boy, what I want to do some sort
of peace that featured that beautiful lit floor setup where
they would look for holes, because that would be an

(04:12):
amazing way to like one actually show people how kind
of fascinating this entire procedure was to build these things,
but too, like you can you know, listen if there
are any artist in the crowd they want to work
on an installation about the technology and ARTI wore this
is your idea, give it to you, go freely. Yeah. Yeah.

(04:36):
One of the reasons that they went with these paper balloons.
The paper itself is made from like a shrub that's
related to the mulberry tree, and a lot of people
just call it mulberry paper, even though like it's a
slightly different species of plants. But like it was all
stuff that was not critically needed for some other aspect

(04:58):
of the war effort. Like that was why they didn't
really want to go with like the rubberized balloons, was
they needed rubber for other reasons. So the only thing
of all of it that really did seem like more
of like a critical wartime need was the fact that
there were edible roots being used to make the paste itself.
And hunger was just such a huge problem and so

(05:20):
much of Japan with people literally starving to death, and
so the fact that people were stealing, I feel like stealing,
like what are you gonna do. You're gonna starve to death,
You're gonna eat the paste? Like, yeah, stealing has such
negative connotations, connotations I don't like there, but like that
that part of the story about about these schoolgirls basically

(05:43):
trying to subsist on the pace that they were using
to make this balloon paper struck me a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
uh yeah, it's super interesting. I had not thought about
how I had this moment while we were recording the Empisodow,
and particularly even though I had read it, it really
struck me when we were saying the words talking about

(06:07):
the Allied Forces use of balloons with the trailing chords.
After Winston Churchill was like, I think that'll work, and
I literally like the idea that it was like, oh no,
these will drag onto trees and cause forest fires, and
I just had one of those like heartbreak moments of like,
humans are awful. Yeah. The fact that they were slowly

(06:30):
dripping mineral oil was also a thing that I was
nah all of that. I was just like, this is,
on the one hand, so interesting because the way their
problem solving to like maintain altitude while simultaneously traveling across
distances are kind of neat. And then it was like,
but all of this, all of this, it's just because

(06:53):
we all want to kill each other. And I got
very sad for a moment. Yeah, yeah, that's war is bad.
That hippie moment of the day. Yeah, I have a
lot of hippie moments when we talk about anything related
to like wars and combat and fighting and um. It's

(07:15):
like the balloons that Japan was launching just were ingenious
in so many ways, and they were also made to
indiscriminately harm people, which was why why there was a
band that was implemented on using balloons as bombers. There

(07:36):
are other international laws and treaties and things that are
in place now that are like more specifically about things
like aircrafts, terrible aircraft things like airplanes, Like there are
other laws that are related to like bombs that are
not just about balloons obviously, But anyway, anyway, I'm still

(08:00):
sort of baffled that for a period of time, it
seems like, even though I was not totally aware of
everything that was going on in the world, it seemed
like every time I looked at anything, it was about balloons,
and I was like, what is happening? Yeah yeah, balloons? Yeah, No.

(08:21):
Not can have such an iconic image of joy has
so often been actually used in a very harmful way.

(08:42):
We talked about GK. Chesterton this week and specifically his
anti eugenics advocacy. Yeah, I really that part we want
to hug him for, but the other parts really frustrating.
Yeah yeah after the Yeah, Ellen Swaller Richards was just
like the latest example of talking about somebody who had

(09:04):
so many things about their lives that seemed so cool,
and then it was like, oh, and eugenics, and I
was like, I just I really want to talk about
somebody that that that opposed it. Like from the beginning,
I said that at the top of the show, I
did some digging around. There were a few people that
I was sort of thinking about doing an episode on,

(09:27):
and I finally wound up on G. K. Chesterton before
really realizing like the scope of the anti semitism discussion
and the fact that there are people that were probably
going to get emails from who will just vigorously defend

(09:51):
all allegations of anti Semitism against him, and that like
the argument really comes off to me as being like,
but he had Jewish friends and he condemned Hitler, and
it's like, sure that can be true. This writing over
here that he wrote and finds his name too, though,
like that also is true. Do you know what it

(10:14):
reminds me of in a different way is HP Lovecraft
because sure's writing super duper racist. But his wife, who
he divorced but they remain friends, and she always sort
of advocated for a much better image of him than
some people had, was always like, no, he really loves

(10:34):
black people individually. He just likes to write things to
rile people up. And I'm like, Okay, that's still racist. Yeah,
Like if it's not clear to people that it is
somehow like a tool to make people think, then you're

(10:55):
probably just feeding people that want to think that already anyway, right,
I do Like part of me was like, should we
do more than one installment? Like should should it be
a multi part GK. Chesterton episode? Because they're really dig
there's so much to talk about. And in the course
of research, I read like a five thousand word essay

(11:18):
that was just on the detective stories, and a different
five thousand word essay that was just on the literary biographies,
and a different five thousand word essay that was just
like there were all these different five thousand I'm like,
who's commissioning five thousand word essays on G K? Chesterton
because they were all about that long, and they were

(11:38):
all focused on, like a discreete part of his literary career,
which did have a lot of overlap, like a lot
of these things pulled in multiple different genres and different
like his fiction would be very influenced by his political
ideas and all this stuff. And I was like, we're
just we're not going to be able to do justice
to any of it in one episode. And then I
was like, we're not. We wouldn't be able to do

(12:00):
justice in two episodes either, or even three. And also
my thing that I was hoping to have to just
talk about, great somebody that opposed eugenics was like, oh,
and now we need to talk about anti semitism, and
also like the sexism part two that we referenced, the
humans are imperfect and complicated. But I did find it

(12:24):
a little annoying that the thing that I chose for myself,
specifically that I because I wanted some opposition to eugenics,
was also like, and we also have this other part gross. Yeah. Yeah.
His writing about Jewish people reminded me of a very

(12:46):
recent event of a well known comic strip artist posting
or rant about black people and how white people should
stay away from them, and I'm like, this is the same,
It's just been shifted around to modern language, like why
why why does anybody go like, yeah, this is a

(13:06):
reasonable thing to say. I don't understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,
and the things that people have written that have tried
to defend H. G. K. Chesterton, Like, it really reminds
me of when someone will say something really racist and
defenders will be like, but look at this picture of
this person with a black person. It's like, that does

(13:27):
not erase the thing that he just said, right, So
I got very I got very frustrated with some of that,
with the attempts to just like not just minimize it,
but sort of pretend that it that it didn't matter
that like this, like being one of the first people
to really vocally condemn Adolf Hitler somehow undid a lot

(13:52):
of writing that was just inherently anti Semitic, and how
it talked about like Jewish people as a group. Yeah,
I will reiterate the thing that I said in the
in the top of the episode about how we're not
going to armchair diagnose him. He reminded me though, the

(14:14):
parts of his story that we're about like learning to
speak and to read like later than a lot of
other children do, and also seeming to like have a
tendency to be disorganized and kind of a daydreamer. Like
all of these things reminded me of multiple people in
my life. Many of those multiple people have diagnoses of

(14:39):
some sort, and none of them are the same diagnosis.
And so that's one of the many reasons that I'm like,
I just don't I'm not comfortable with like an armchair
labeling of any of this because, among other things, I'm
not a psychiatris right well, And I mean, as we've

(15:02):
often said, like unless the person is here and you
can actually like do testing on them, you know, or
you know, run them through like various exercises, it would
help determine those things you're kind of stabbing in the dark.
And that also has the potential to be like damaging

(15:25):
to people who could take that information and self diagnosed
and like quiet to somebody else. So like just a
too too dangerous do you want to hear a silly thing? Yes,
every time we mentioned Hilaire Bellock, I think of Belloc
from Readers of the Lost Ark, which might just be

(15:48):
because I want to think of Paul Freeman because I
think he's very handsome, and Readers of the Lost Dark
is a little difficult for me. I love it, but
I'm like, but the bad guy is very appealing. He
is from that same you know, group of actors for
me as Vincent Casselle, where they could play like the
evilist men on Earth, and I'm like, yeah, but maybe
they're actually the one that you should starte with. Yeah, anyway,

(16:12):
that's my listen, I have Indie on the brain. We're
about to get a new indie movie this year. Yeah,
it's all very exciting. But Paul Freeman is blazingly handsome
in Readers to me. Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful, beautiful blue ice.
All right, so you know, a little bit like a lizard.
Maybe you can't trust him. Very appealing, I don't understand it. Yeah,

(16:38):
that seems like a reasonable place to wrap up our
blind scenes. Whatever's happening on your weekend, I hope it's good,
And if it's not good, I hope you have a
moment to just recover. I know a lot of folks
have a lot of things going on right now. You
can send us a note if you would like. We're

(16:59):
a history piecasts at iHeartRadio dot com, and we will
be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow in a brand
new episode on Monday. 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

(17:21):
to your favorite shows.