Behind the Scenes Minis: Cats, Caves and Scandal

Tracy talks about the many requests the show has gotten for a Mammoth Cave episode and she and Holly discuss claustrophobia. They also consider all of the drama in Domenica Guillaume Walter's life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about the Kentucky cave
Hors this week, which had some of the best names

(00:21):
ever in any episode we've ever done. I think that
did have some good names. Yeah. Yeah, you had something
from the listener mail that you said you wanted to
ask about, and I wanted to go ahead and say
that before I forget. I meant to ask you about
this a million times because we've talked about how you
missed the hot dog culture in Iceland I did, which

(00:41):
maybe you know, if you're not a hot dog person,
you maybe wouldn't see it. But did you get into
any of the cat culture? No, I don't think so.
Tell me about the cat culture and Iceland, Like I
literally have a shirt that's like Cats of Downtown Reykievic,
like they you know about Bakou, Yeah, who is like
the unofficial mayor of Raykievic, who is a big cat

(01:04):
that wanders around and is adorable and has his own
Instagram and apparently disappeared for a few days and they
found him in a bank vault and nobody knows how
he got in there, followed Bacdus on Instagram. He's gorgeous.
He's like a big, kind of fluffy black and white kitty.
He's adorable. But yeah, apparently, like I didn't realize, and

(01:26):
we were there in May, so it would have been
a little warmer than when you were there a little bit.
Raykievic loves their cats, and like, apparently there are a
lot of cats in the downtown area that are kind
of like they're not feral, but they're sort of communally owned,
like everybody kind of shares in their care, and they
have merchandise that in depending on what shop you get

(01:49):
it from. I think some of the proceeds from the
sale of the merch goes to taking care of the
cats and stuff. And I was like, I'd never asked
Tracy if she noticed all the kiddies. I don't think
I did. Was of course the stuff I brought home
for our cat sitter. I was like, here's all your
Reykievic cat merchandise. Yeah. I thought you were going to

(02:09):
ask if we saw a lot of fabulous murals in Reykiovic,
and that answer was yes, Like there were some really
amazing murals that we saw in Reykievick while you were there,
I wanted to talk about kiddies. Okay, So Cave Wars.
We've gotten over the years many emails for episode requests

(02:30):
about either Mammoth Cave the Cave Wars. A couple of
people have written in and asked for an episode specifically
about Stephen Bishop and like his his work as a
cave guide, his influence on the cave, all of that stuff.
And so this sort of wound up rolling multiple frequent

(02:51):
topic requests into one episode. Yeah, Floyd Collins being trapped
in the cave. So in more recent history, we all
sort of probably remember the massive international news story of
the kids that were trapped in the cave. Was that
in Thailand? Yes, So the thing that it really made

(03:16):
me think more of was something that happened in nineteen
eighty seven, So when I was a child, which was
baby Jessica being trapped in the well. Do you remember this? Oh? Yeah,
it was similarly the biggest news story for what, in
my memory feels like an inordinately long time, like's it.

(03:41):
I feel like it went on for months. It did
not go on for months, but it did dominate the
news story for a very long time, and I remember
just an astonishing amount of detail about it, considering that
in nineteen eighty seven, I would have been like twelve, right,
but uh, I was kind of refreshing my memory and

(04:04):
I read an article about it, and I was like, well,
I remember that moment on the television. I remember that moment.
I remember when they said that in the news. Right.
How did I retain all of this about this child
who was stuck in a well? It made an impression, clearly, Yeah, don't.
I don't think it turned into like quite the spectacle

(04:27):
of massive, massive crowds of people and locals selling baked
goods or whatever. Maybe it did, I don't know, but yeah,
it seems like when Floyd Collins was trapped, it did
turn into just like a giant fair almost. That whole
thing is like Claustrophobia city for me. Yeah, well yeah, yeah, yeah.

(04:49):
He was trapped in a very confined area, like I
am claustrophobic. Hm. Like even lately I have been playing
I'm late on picking it up, so don't anybody dog me.
But Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, and there are parts
of it where you shimmy between two things sideways, and

(05:13):
it freaks me out, like it's literally a video game.
I'm not doing it. It's fine, And I'm still like, Brian,
tell me what I'm true, tell me what I'm true,
because I'm so claustrophobic. So reading about him trying to
like wiggle his toes to get free and stuff, I
was like, no, they no, thank you. I hope the

(05:36):
thing at the top of the show saying that it
was about somebody being trapped in a cave was like
enough of a warning for folks who feel similarly. I hope,
I hope bye. Just kind of a weird coincidence. I
read Starling House, which novel that inspired this episode. Yeah,

(05:58):
at about the same time as I started listening to
a podcast called Old Gods of Appalachia. Yeah, and there's
some overlap there. So I was in this you know,
space of eerie supernatural things, sometimes involving caves and underground
spaces that wound up feeding into this episode. I have

(06:22):
not made my way all the way through Old Gods
of Appalachia. I am on. I think the last season
that exists currently is what I'm currently listening to. So
I've been listening to that for a while. It is,
as its name suggests, set in Appalachia, specifically set in

(06:43):
like Appalachian mining and railroad companies, like the parts of
the Appalachian mountains and foothills that were really stripped by
mining companies and railroad companies, and with supernatural flair that
can feel a little Lovecraftian, But I don't think that's

(07:05):
really Yeah, you've accidentally stumbled on to the next thing
I was gonna mention, but keep going that well, they've
talked about the inspiration not so much being lovecraft, although
it does feel very Lovecraftian at times, but like driving
through these parts of this region of the world and

(07:27):
seeing adjacent to one another, like abandoned industrial sites that
are like full of metal and destruction, and places where
the green has taken back over and is like very
lush and overgrown, and thinking about like the duality of
all of that. One thing that I will note, because

(07:48):
I know that people try to be thoughtful about the
media they consume. The first season of this the characters
are are all white. It is set in a predominantly
at this point predominantly Why area, and the people making
it seem to have been really thoughtful about like how
to incorporate the perspectives of people that they aren't part of.

(08:08):
So in like the second season, they got voice actors
and consultants and and other people involved in the show
who were black to add that perspective more. And they've
also talked about really not wanting to try to represent
an indigenous point of view in the show because they

(08:30):
are not Indigenous, and not wanting to try to like
claim a story that is not theirs to try to claim, right, So,
I like, I know for sure I've sat down with
people to talk about something that I'm reading and they've said,
why is why does it seem like such a you know,
predominantly white production. It seems like something that they have
put care and thought into how to incorporate different perspectives

(08:53):
and different representation into it. I said, Lovecraft in your
face lit up. Yeah, Well, yes, we've talked about Lovecraft
on the show before. He problematic, but I do love
a lot of his work. And when we were talking

(09:15):
at the very beginning of the episode about the eyeless
species in the Cave, I immediately thought of At the
Mountains of Madness, which have you read it? No? No,
I've seen an adaptation of it though. Yeah, it's like
one of those things has been trying to be made
into a movie for a long time and gear Mother
Toro was going to and like that has been put

(09:35):
to the wayside. I really love that, and a lot
of it is exploring these caves that are it's a
very similar thing. But my favorite thing about it are
there these big what he describes as flesh colored, which
presumably means white people, flesh colored eye list penguins in

(09:58):
the caves and I have a tattoo of one of
them because it's my favorite thing because they look it's
for me. The tattoos meaning is like things that seem
very scary often are not. And in the book these
look like terrifying monsters, but they kind of realize they're
just bubbling around doing their understate business. They don't care

(10:19):
about anything else. But I immediately was like, oh, this this
cave is full of love Craft characters. It kind of is. Yeah,
I love it. The Mountains of Madness. Yeah, because I
do love Lovecraft, even though some of his work I
gotta yeah, I gotta edit in my head as I'm going, yeah,
that's true, But I do hope that one day, one day,

(10:41):
that movie will come back under Gamba del Toro's wing
because he did some like pre visualization stuff on it,
which is what my tattoo is based on. Because there
was a I think it was just a met cat.
I don't think it was bigger than that of the
penguins that was made and it was so cool and
I loved it, Yeah, I loved it. Yeah. Anyway, caves scary.

(11:05):
I don't go in them. I have gone into Louree
caverns just in Virginia, I think, which was another like
guided tour situation. Patrick uh for a time in his
life was living in a place where there were a
lot of caves and he went caving a lot, and

(11:26):
his his hard no line was underwater caving because underwater
caving can be really really dangerous. None of it because
for me, uh yeah, in addition to like what happens
if your light goes out when you're when you're caving underwater,
it's possible to do stuff like kick up silt and

(11:48):
get disoriented, yeah, and that kind of thing. And so
he's been like, Nope, definitely not for me. I'm no
plope on all the caves. Literally that tunnely area. Yeah,
you go through on big thunder Mountain is as much
cave as I can handle. Like I it's all tied
to the claustrophobia thing. I am so convinced that I

(12:08):
will be trapped. How did you feel about the Paris
Catacombs when we were down there? Going down that very
tight spiral staircase into them freaked me out, super bad. Okay,
but I did not realize. I don't remember we might
have been in like different parts of the group. No,

(12:29):
because we were together. We filmed together down there. We
filmed together once we were down there. Oh yeah, But
getting down there, I was like Brian was definitely like
experiencing the death grip of my hand, uh huh, because
I did not like that. And I once we're down
there though, like there are obviously like I have been
claustrophobic as long as I can remember, so I have
a lot of little kooky coping mechanisms. And in the

(12:51):
case of the Paris Catacombs, this isn't legitimate. I can
just it's a lie. I can tell myself, Okay, there's
always way out because there are so many little hallways
through it that I was it was also one of
those things that in my head I'm telling myself like
do you want to see this cool thing? Well, then
suck it up, Like, get your act together. You're gonna

(13:14):
be fine. It's an hour, you'll live. I'm still always
scared and when like there was one point where our
little herd that I was with, you know there are
places you see in the Paris Catacombs where there's like
an opening and you can't really go down it, right,
But we would have people in our group that was
like I wonder if I and I'd be like no, yeah,

(13:35):
I turned into like such a panicky monkey. That again,
Paris Catacombs very difficult, but very beautiful. That was where
my love of the macabre and of French things had
to overwhelm my panic over going down into the earth. Yea,

(13:57):
if we had done our episode on the Paris Catacombs
before we went, I never would have gone in really,
because we talked so much about cave in's in the road. Yeah,
that's the part that I'm scared of, is like stuff
caving in on me. So yeah, yeah, everybody's got there quirks.
Mine is that I'm claustrophobic. Had to just have this

(14:20):
discussion with the doctor about claustrophobia. Yes, over the possibility
of a seapap but she oh, we'll see, yeah, God
do sleep study. We'll see. Yeah, I'll looking forward to that.
But she was very like she's a sleep science and

(14:43):
neurology specialist, and she's like, oh, I have a lot
of clients that have claustrophobia, and we have ways we'll
try to address it. I can't promise you nothing will
be on your face, but like, there are different versions
and we'll try. We'll see if we get my one
that works, if you need it. So I'm sure I'm
going to be in that party trained soon. Not looking
forward to it. Claustrophobia don't like it anyway anyway, But

(15:09):
I like the idea of crazy critters that are under
there there. I like an eyelis bat in my head.
Yeah for sure, even if they've like come with a
weird syndrome, which reminds me. Also, have you read any
of Chuck Wendigg's books? Now, if you are afraid of things,

(15:30):
like you know outbreaks that can cause strange they bat
cave type problems, maybe don't. But that man can write
a scary book like no. Yeah, if you heard the
part about people having to disinfect their shoes and mobility
devices when leaving the cave, and you were thinking, well,

(15:50):
I don't you have to go into the cave. People
did until white nose syndrome was introduced into the caves,
which was probably by bats, not by people, probably by
you know, bats coming into contact with one another's and like,
once it was in the caves, no longer a need
to prevent it from getting into the caves. It was
in there already, so that's why it's only upon exit

(16:13):
to try to keep from spreading it to other caves.
Cave caves, yes, cayes. Would I go on a mammoth
cave tour? Probably? Would I go into the deeper levels
of Mammoth cave? Probably not. The whole thing with like
a torch would disappear before you could see it go out. Yeah,

(16:35):
that's like some tomb raider stuff. I'm not. I'm not
crow live down ladder, no fings. We talked about Dominica,

(16:56):
Gil Walteraire and a whole big French scandal. There's there
have historically been a lot of scandals in France, and
I don't want to get into the details of the
other scandals that were happening at the same time as this,
because there were a whole out of things and some
of them were very disturbing, but the reporting on them

(17:19):
in American newspapers was like, Man, a lot of scandals
happening in France. Right now, here are two gigantic, completely
different scandals. Yeah, it's funny because you know, at the
top of that episode, one of the things that came
up was this idea that for both her and her

(17:42):
first husband, for Guillome, they both wanted to live kind
of a bigger, more exciting life than they had grown
up in. And it's like, there's part of me that,
like an old clucking grandmother, goes, you can do that
without all the drama. But yeah, I guess just ough exhausting.

(18:06):
I made a lot of progress in my ability to
read French. There were some sources in French that I
both read in French and then translated to make sure
I understood them correctly. They were brief, they were not
whole entire books. Yeah, but like I do wish that

(18:27):
the two I only know of two books about this,
both of them in French published in France. Neither one
of them out of print, like one was published in
something like nineteen ninety six, like out of print now.
I think I saw like one copy of it in
off site storage at a library I could potentially access,
And it's like it was just not something that it

(18:49):
was going to work out to try to use as
a source for this. And I also would have needed
help from someone more proficient in French than me, because
what I'm definitely not going to pick up on is nuance, right,
Like turn a phrase is hard enough sometimes to catch

(19:12):
in your native tongue, right, It can be really hard
when you're reading not just another language, but another language
referring to much older events. Yeah. Yeah, And it is
kind of amusing to me how there was a spectrum
of how these things were written about. I read a
couple of articles that definitely made it seem like, yes, absolutely,

(19:35):
she did all of these things. She definitely plans to
murder him, and when that didn't work out, she definitely
plans to like have this sex worker claim that he
was living off of her sex work earnings. And then
she definitely number three negotiated a deal to sell the

(19:59):
paintings an extra for not going to prison, and then
others that were like, ah, all of these things were
alleged and no convictions ever happened. Right, And then like
if you look at the music in Larangerie's website, it
talks about this collection, no hint of any scandal that

(20:23):
could have been associated with it in any way, and
like the website description of the collection, I went to
this museum while I was while we were in Paris.
In addition to this collection, it has the really really
enormous Monet water lilies. I can't remember how many panels

(20:45):
it is, but I think it might be four, and
they are just it's a room that is just these enormous,
very long water lilies. And that was what took Patrick
and me to the museum, right, was the water lilies.
And then I had no knowledge of like what was

(21:05):
you know particular about the collection that was in the rest,
which is not the only thing in the museum, but like,
I didn't really know anything about that. I think though,
that that was the museum where I first saw Marie
Lawrence San's paintings, which has led me now on just
a whole journey and Marie Lawrence att multiple other episodes

(21:28):
stripped to Philadelphia that spawned this anyway, I had two things, Okay,
One is kind of jovial, which is that the whole
like mystery paperwork around Paolo's parentage and made me think
of Ratituey. Okay, I mean I always want to think

(21:52):
of Ratatouey because I love that movie and I think
it is a masterpiece. But it reminded me of the
whole Alfredo Linguini being in fact the son of the
greatest chef in France. But here is where I kept
being like, but why though, yeah, Dominica would have been dead,
so why does she care so much if Paolo got

(22:13):
her money or not. I had this mental question too,
and the only thing I could really arrive at was
that she hated him so much. Yeah, I mean that
is vindictive. She was already a crap parent, right, like
a D minus parent in terms of just like having
sleep under the table, right, and like someone with you know,

(22:36):
plenty of cash to let their child live at, even
if not a luxurious life for whatever reason, physically comfortable
and like safe life. Yeah, but she didn't choose to
do that, which is awful. And then I'm just like

(23:02):
why was it easier in her? And again this just
comes down to you. I can only presume you're an
evil human being, because why is it easier at that
point to try to kill him then to like, she's
clearly played fast and loose with like paperwork already in
her life. Why couldn't she just like repaper the situation
and claim like that she hadn't in fact adopted him,

(23:25):
or that, you know, or exposed some previous secret that
would have made his claim to her parentage and thus
to the fortune illegitimate. In another way, like I don't
understand why she's like, well, I guess we got to
kill my kid. Yeah. I also have questions around her
decision to acquire him right in the first place and

(23:51):
then legally adopt him, because that's another thing where I
saw like multiple possible explanations. What was that she would
not be able to bequeath her estate to anyone unless
she had unless like her late husband had an air

(24:13):
and I was like, this doesn't really align with her
later behavior. Another was that the possibility of like her
not really knowing for sure whether he had made those
changes to the will or not right and so whether
like this child was a fail safe in some way,

(24:36):
and like I have questions about all of this. Also
when I I'd like, it's obviously been several months that
I've had this on the list, and part of the
reason was like just wondering is there going to be
enough actual concrete information right to do this? And yeah,
there's enough actual concrete information for a whole episode, but

(24:57):
still alat of question marks around it. I man, I
really would love to know for definitively sure whether the
sale of the artwork to France was part of a deal,
just for my own curiosity, that would be something great
to know. And it's like the timeline definitely does line

(25:21):
up right. Just because one thing happened after another thing
doesn't mean the first thing caused a second thing anyway.
I would like to know why people were so willing
to be complacent in her villainous plans. Yeah, yeah, like
if I I mean, I would like to think that

(25:43):
if I were with someone and they had a child,
and I saw them mistreating that child as badly as
she did, not even getting to the murder part, I
would be like, yo, I gotta I gotta roll and
report you like I did write, Like the cruelty that
people were willing to excuse is really really hard to

(26:06):
wrap my head around. Yeah. Yeah, And that was one
of the things that people did not understand about Jean
Valtaire being in a relationship with her, Right, It does
seem like people thought that was really out of character
in a number of ways and in a like why

(26:30):
are you doing this? And also what do you see
in her kind of thing? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, a whole
lot of drama. That's an exhausting way to live. Yeah.
I don't have time for all that. No, if you
have your weekend coming up, whatever is happening, whether you

(26:53):
are taking time to do things for yourself, whether you're working,
I hope there's not a lot of drama unless it's
someone else's drama that you're enjoying watching that doesn't actually
affect you in any way. And if that's the case,
I hope it's going okay for those folks too, and
that it's fun drama and not harmful drama. We will

(27:16):
be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow and something brand
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