Behind the Scenes Minis: Evil Genius Perms

Holly talks about Quisling's intellect and why her neighborhood crows are angry with her. She and Tracy also discuss peer pressure, personal style, and hair salon stories.

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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 Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I'm going to start this one
with an apology. Yeah, because I forgot to mention in
our listener mail about Quizzling that Cameron's pets are super

(00:25):
cute other than just being excited about Cousco's name, Listen,
they're adorable, those kiddies. I love a rag doll kat.
They're the funnest to hug and cuddle. Yeah, and I
love a pupper. So Yeah, sorry that I did not
call out their cuteness and appreciate the fact that Kuzco
apparently likes us more than other people. The highest praise

(00:46):
I could ever ask for. Truly good con Quizzling. Yeah,
I will. I know. I mentioned at the top of
that episode that the way I learned about him was
from Elvis Costello, which is the way I've learned about
a lot of things. Thanks Elvis Costello. I will continue
to follow you around the world to go to concerts
whenever I can. But there is another eighties song that

(01:09):
was in my mind running the whole time I was
doing this, which is Pat Benatar's evil genius. I don't
know if you would know that one or not. I
don't think so. I also love Pat Benatar, but because
Quizzling is almost like the archetype of that super duper
smart person. I mean, he clearly was incredibly smart, Like

(01:31):
we talked about his test scores and his educational career
and him just you know, outshining all of his peers.
And it's that thing where that person then gets an
idea in their head that is messed up. But because
they are smart, they're able to one like, do a
lot of mental gymnastics to convince themselves of the veracity

(01:55):
of their idea, even if it is in fact based,
not in truth at all. And also, I think there's
an ego thing where you presume, like I am a
person of reason and I'm smarter than everyone else. So
if I've come to this conclusion, it's the right conclusion.
Those are in and of themselves things that happen all
the time in the day to day world. But then

(02:16):
you get these situations where someone with that kind of
you know, mental state, gets in a position of power
and it becomes literally deadly. I'm fascinated by this, I
wish it never happened, obviously, right, But I still am like,
how much does the human mind constantly recalculate and tell

(02:38):
you that you're doing the right thing at such a
degree that you can ignore the bad things that are
happening along the way, right, I don't know how that works. Yeah,
it's very wild to me. I mean I think that's like,
I'm not unique in this. We all have this thing
of like, how do how are atrocities committed? And people

(03:01):
don't stop and think and how do they go to
sleep at night? And I don't know. It's that thing
of like was he actually evil? Or had he actually
convinced himself that this was all very benevolent in its maneuvering? Yeah? Ooh,
those are fun things to talk about at all. I'm
sorry that our Norway episode was a sad one, but

(03:23):
also I think kind of important. I had. One of
the things that I read about him was I'm trying
to remember it because I didn't make a note of
it was a pretty recent like by which I mean
in the twenty teen's article, and they mentioned like a
lot of people seem to not know about this person anymore,
and that seems wrong. Yeah, And I was like, yeah,

(03:44):
I would not have known him had I not stumbled
across a thing in a song, which is weird to me.
I you know, I'm at a point where I don't
remember enormous amounts of detail about what we learned in
any particular right class, in a lot of cases. But

(04:04):
I do feel like, in terms of World War Two,
we probably got a couple of sentences about Norway, no
detail about how Germany came to occupy Norway, but you know,
just the fact that that had happened, it's probably the
extent of what we learned about. Yeah, Yeah, And I

(04:29):
don't know if that. I mean, I have a theory
about why that was probably the case for us, which
is that And I want to say this carefully so
that no one thinks I am in any way smack
talking Norway. But in terms of like the US public
education system, right, it tends to prioritize like the big players, right,

(04:52):
And Norway would not have been considered an especially big
player in the US and the seventies and eighties when
the textbooks we were being taught from were being written, right,
I think that's probably part of it. Yeah, which is
a you know, I mean, obviously you cannot cover everything,
and I don't want to in any way sound like
I'm like talking bad about teachers or people that write textbooks,

(05:16):
even though some of them have been problematic. But it
does seem like someone who who does something like what
Quisling did, where he had a coup that you know,
we didn't, that seems like a thing you would want
to teach kids about, especially it is notable take away
all of the horrible stuff. I mean, we can't, obviously,
and I'm not trying to ignore it, but like this

(05:37):
man staged a coup by radio, which is a unique
situation if nothing else, Like that's your hook for getting
kids interested in history? To me? Yeah, but yeah, we
never got it. I'm curious about, like what happened, Like
what the response was to people that heard this on

(06:00):
the radio. Oh, they were like, I mean, I will say, Norway,
my understanding, I obviously wasn't there, but having read a
bunch about it in prep for this, and having read
some about it before, this largely was resistant to the
whole thing, like Norway's. Norway was not a country where
like a few people were resisting. It seemed pretty much

(06:25):
the majority, which is why things were happening, like all
of the teachers walking out at once, and all of
the clergy walking out at once, and like these pretty
big I don't want to say gestures because that robs
them of their value, but these pretty big movements being
done to say like, no, we reject everything that you're
trying to do. But yes. In terms of like the

(06:48):
the immediate moment, I can only imagine when you hear
on the radio like, hey, the country is being reorged
today under me, Like if I heard that, I would
be like what, Yeah, I would probably be like, who
is this crackpot? And why is this a war of
the world situation? Is this a big fib? I don't know.

(07:08):
I don't know what those immediate responses were. No, it
is really it's heartbreaking. I did not include all of
the details of the testimony of doctor Leo Eichenger because
it's just it's grueling and it's heartbreaking. But his narrative
really is one of the very important ones in terms

(07:29):
of relaying to the world was what had actually been
going on. Because he was one of the few survivors
of Auschwitz, which you know, a lot of people the
vast majority of people did not make it out of
so he was one of the ones that was able
to explain the sorting system, the way they marched people
to the gas chambers, the horrible things that happened to

(07:51):
women and children. So his account is super important, even
outside of the context of the trial, because that's one
of the ways that we act actually learned about what
had happened and what was going on under the Third Reich. So,
but I didn't want to include all the details because frankly,
they're hard to stomach, and we get the gist of it,

(08:12):
and we have I think most of us at this
point have heard what most of that was like. But yeah,
I am. I am glad that we have an occasion,
or not an occasion, but an opportunity to talk about
these as much as they're not pleasant, because they are important.
That's all some sad stuff. Let's talk more about dogs

(08:33):
that don't bark at us. I love it is this right,
tell a story of how all the crows are mad
at me? Right now? Do it? I know the story,
but I want to hear it again. So we during
during the height of the the everyone stay home part
of the pandemic, my husband and I started leaving out
a bin of snacks for delivery drivers because we were

(08:54):
getting everything through delivery, like everybody else that just has
a little sign that says like, hey, thanks for what
you do. Please take snacks. You know, they're little things
like those little party bags or those lunch lunch pack
bags you would get at the grocery store that have
mini bags of like you know, Dorito's oreos et cetera, chips,
chips and cookies. And we've continued that since then, like

(09:17):
because it's just nice. Now, that's what you do. Creates
goodwill with our drivers. Listen, we get taken care of
exceptionally well by most of our delivery people as a consequence,
And recently I had noticed that there were some open bags,
like on the front steps and in the yard, and
I first thought it was raccoons because that's also valid

(09:40):
at our house. And then I was like, wait, are
neighbor kids like running up here and getting snacks and
then throwing them around the yard. And then we saw
and Brian happened to catch it, not on a great
video because he was caught unawares when it happened. A
crow fl flying into the bin which is in like

(10:02):
a little enclosed area, picking out his snacks, flying with
the bag of potato chips across the street to the
neighbor's roof and opening them and eating las potato chips
by himself. So now we know it's been the crows
all along, right, And they did it a few more

(10:23):
times where we were in the day, like probably thirty
six hours while we're like, okay, how do we want
to handle this because listen, I'm gonna admit my own
bias here. I love the crows. They can do no wrong,
even when they're doing obvious wrong. And so I was like, well,
I don't want to you know, we feed them very
well on the back deck. They get a lot of
snacks and really nice snacks. But we decided we would

(10:45):
put a lid on the bin and you know, hopefully
the delivery drivers would know you have to open the
lid and they have pick that up. But the last
two days the crows are I rate with me because
they want their potato chips. I went outside this morning
to water the plants. I'm growing watermelons. They're happening, it's exciting,
and I got yelled at by like seven crows. For

(11:08):
like ten minutes, and I was just like, go to
the back. There's peanuts and stuff back there. You love those.
I'm not giving you potato chips because you're rude and
you litter. We can't have either. So that's my animal
life today, right. Yeah, they're really loud. I was scared

(11:31):
we wouldn't be able to record because they will stand
on the roof and just scream and be like, Holly,
you shrew You fed us, and then you took away
our access to the food. Listen, they're just going to
figure out how to take the lid off. Yeah, give
it another week. I'll tell a different story. It'll be
like and then they left the lid on my car.

(11:53):
But I wanted to tell a fun story since this
week has been heaviness. Yeah yeah, yeah, Crows, careful what
you wish for. You gotta negotiate around him. We talked
about permanent waves this week. We did, We did. I'm

(12:17):
sure we both have a little bit of memory trauma
of so much of it, honestly. Oh yeah, I definitely
got called an ugly poodle by the cool metal girls
in school. I had so much poodle hair and my
hair is very, very fine. It does not hold a

(12:39):
curl well. It has never holded a curl. Hold it,
it has never held a curl well. But like this
perm hair with the big poofy front in the eighties
was like the thing to have and I had to
have it, and I it was just it was a

(13:04):
whole thing of getting the PERM. I don't know what
your hair experience was like in your childhood, but where
I was living, like the economic class we were in,
I was not going to like a salon with multiple stations.
I was going to somebody who had a little hair
set up in their basement or garage, and I'd like,

(13:27):
I wound up with with hair that was so damaged
from being permed over and over again. And it was
like getting ready in the morning was an inordinately long
affair of hair and makeup. And yeah, it's not a
time or a look like. You don't look back on

(13:48):
the eighties with the same level of love that I do.
There are things about the eighties that I have some
nostalgia for, but I sure don't in terms of like
all the style I love, Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I didn't.
I didn't grow up going to a salon at all.
We were definitely di I wires. My mom permed my

(14:09):
hair when I was like maybe seven or eighth, and
then in high school I got a perm at her hairstylist,
who similarly was like a one. But I was that
rebellious person that just started taking things into my own hands.
So I was definitely that kid that was like, Okay,

(14:30):
I can't find somebody to do what I want, I'm
just going to do it myself. Fine. Yeah, I mean
I also started making my clothes when I was around
that age, so my mom cut my hair until I
got to the age of like insisting on having it permed.
There was also a period where crimping was the thing
to do. Yeah, like crimp my entire head with a

(14:51):
crimping iron before school. Yeah. I mean we could on
a future episode talk about Marcel Waves and that invention
of that crimper, which is way way back, but or
a crimper. I have seen some kids on TikTok doing
stuff with crimping irons in the recent past, and I
was like, is this a thing that we're doing again?

(15:12):
It's coming back. Yeah, I'm kind of into it. Yeah,
I mean it's fascinating because it wasn't like I had
a particularly lovely high school experience or anything. I definitely was,
I've said many times before like an absolute weirdo. But
I still love all of that style. Yeah, I love it.
The weirder, the better, all the space stuff, Bring it on.

(15:35):
I think a lot of my baggage about it is
that I was doing all this that involved it just
a lot of time and effort and expense in a
desperate effort to try to fit in, and it didn't work.
And if I had a time machine to go back
to my younger self to say, hey, like do what

(15:56):
you actually want to do, right, you will still not
fit in. That situation is not going to change, but like, right,
you'll probably have a richer childhood in teen years if
that's what you do. Maybe, but you won't know that
when you're a kid, because you do want to fit in.

(16:16):
I don't know if we've ever talked about it before
either between the two of us are on the show.
I remember so distinctly the moment where I decided I
did not care anymore about what other people thought. Huh.
And it was I mean, I have the sense memory
like burned of like it's like the skies opened up
where I had on this particularly spacey weird outfit, and
I remember somebody being like, you look like a bleeping weirdo.

(16:40):
And I literally had this moment in my brain where
I thought I was going to cry at first, and
then I went, wait a minute, I don't really trust
her taste. Why do I care? Really, I said something
horrible and filthy in my head about her taste, but yeah,
it was essentially that was the vibe of it. And
after that, I was just like, right, the gloves are off,

(17:02):
I'm gonna do whatever I want. I don't think I
have ever entirely shed caring what other people think about me,
but I did for sure the summer before I started
my senior year of high school have a moment where
I was like, I'm done. I'm not playing this game

(17:23):
anymore with my hair and my clothes. I'm gonna do
what I want. And that did make senior year of
high school feel a lot more relaxed than grades K
through eleven. Yeah. I mean, I was from the time
I was tiny a clothes horse, like I have always

(17:43):
loved clothes and design, like I was making my barbies
like full you know, the collection for this summer will
be I was always into that, So I think that's
probably part of why it was easier for me to
be like, I actually know more about clothes than you do,
so you know, screw you. I don't care. You know,

(18:03):
I'm like reading French magazines trying to find like pictures
of Jean Paul Gautier pants so I can copy them.
So like, I was in like a different headspace I
think than most of my a lot of my peers,
especially because I grew up in like a beach community
where that kind of beach aesthetic was the thing, and
that was clearly never my thing. So it was a

(18:25):
little easier for me to just be like, well, all right,
I'm just gonna put this thing and drive floor it
like I don't care anymore. But I do want to
talk about the salon industry a little bit. Yeah, let's do.
I have not been in it for almost three decades
at this point, but I did. Out of college, I
worked in salons and got promoted up to management, and

(18:48):
worked in management as an assistant manager and manager in
a couple of different places. And I will say the
story about the pregnant woman who got a perm and
then was mad that her baby was not born with
curly hair. Believe it, Yeah, believe it because we had.

(19:09):
There were definitely some kooky people in any service industry,
but I think especially when you're in an industry where
it's about people's appearance, which were all very attached to
in one way or another, right, like the level of
kind of like wacky ideas gets wretchet up a little bit. Yeah.

(19:29):
I remember at one point one of our stylists doing
a service where they were doing foils on a client's hair,
and she got sick halfway through, like throwing up sick
like the client or the client and as she you know,
sorry to be gross wretched in the bathroom, it shifted

(19:52):
her foils around and then she wanted to not be
charged for the service. But it's like it's he did
all the work, like it's not our fault. And I
was very young to be managing at the level I was,
so I always had to like and I wasn't good
at it, by the way, but I was always trying
to like ride that, like how can I appease this

(20:14):
person while not ruining this this stylist book for the week,
because it's an expensive thing, so to lose that time
and money is significant and I think I ended up
cutting her like a discount deal just to like get
her chilled out and roll out. We may have even
eaten the remaining costs on the part of the salon.
I'm trying to remember how that worked out, just so

(20:35):
he would get paid his regular amount, but she would
not be mad about it. But it was just like
stuff like that happened all the time, where it would
be like, that's not actually our fault, or like a person.
There were definitely clients who would come in get a
service done, they didn't necessarily love it, and instead of
being like, hey, can I come back for a corrective

(20:57):
service which would have been complimentary, would try to fix
it themselves at home and end up in a real
bad pickle right right, because it would be like, well, now, yeah,
your hair is burned off at the ends, like you
have you have inch long scrub on your head because
you double permed in the course of two days. It's
a wild why uh, the permanent, The permanent doesn't mean forever.

(21:21):
Thing too has come up with I remember, oh, which
reminds me actually of one of my favorite styles of
perms in the seventies. Okay, do you remember the stack perm.
Do I remember this? I think so. I love it
to this day. I hope it comes back. It's very disco.
That might be a little before me. So the stack

(21:42):
perm is where and it probably has called something different
today because that happens too, is where like the the
hair and the rollers at the base of the neck
are rolled tightest and then you kind of match that
line going up so that as you get to the
top there is on purpose left a length of straight

(22:03):
hair with the perm rod at the end, so that
like it kind of stacks out very wide and big
on the side. You've seen, yeah, I've seen people with this.
I did not. It was super popular in the disco scene.
I love that look to this day. I just think
there's something so cool about it. I love hair manipulation

(22:25):
in general. Love I want to love Nestler, But man,
that book really made it hard. You're like me and
Jean Stratton Porter. Really until the Bad Book, every chapter

(22:49):
had more weirdness that I was like, oh no, what
are you talking about, dude. He also claimed that I'm
we mentioned in the episode that like he thought that
like a little adversity was good for your hair, and
his example is like that's why schoolmarms always have great hair.

(23:09):
And I'm like, what, well, it reminds me of phrenology
and I'm like, it's like super kookie. And his his
counter to that was that like, if you're too happy,
you'll get fat and lose your hair, like and he
would point out he specifically called out women in the

(23:30):
US and France as being like, well, you know, when
they get married and settled and they have their kids
and they're happy and relaxed. As they get older, they
get fat and their hair falls out. And I'm like,
well what, And first of all, not everybody. In second
some of that is just like the age of your
body causes changes. Happened. But he's like, nope, it's the happiness.

(23:55):
It's weird. It's super duper weird. Yeah. I just kept
flipping pages and being like, what are you talking about, sir? However,
I do want to talk about his time as a
barber surgeon, because he told this story. No way to

(24:15):
verify it, but it's funny ish that when he was
a fairly young barber surgeon, a man who worked in
like an industrial trade came to him with an injured finger.
He didn't see a way that the finger could be fixed,
so he amputated it, okay, and that the man's wife

(24:36):
was initially really angry about the whole thing, but then
because of the amputation, the employer of that man had
given him like a big payout, like as a I
don't know if it was a settlement or like what,
or hazard pay or whatever. But after that, he claimed
that a lot of people from the area were coming

(24:56):
to him asking him to amputate their finger so that
they too could get a similar payout, like basically asking
him to participate in a fraud scheme wow, to get
what wouldn't have been called workman's comp at the time,
but was essentially the same concept. And I'm like, I
wonder if that's true and if so wild But he
never said, to the best of my knowledge, whether or

(25:18):
not he whether he did it or not, did any
of those Okay, I hope not. I hope not. Okay,
But it also speaks to the level of desperation someone
would have where they're like, I could I could live
without a finger. Yeah, if it makes my life financially easier. Yeah, Oh,
hair things forever? Yeah, hair thing, yeah, I am imagining.

(25:46):
Also his wife, this is another thing that never comes up.
But I'm like, this had to have happened this way, right,
His wife was his test subject. Right, it didn't go
right in the beginning. She had burnt hair and a
burnt scalp sometimes. But also I'm like, how long did
he have to wait in between for the hair to

(26:06):
grow out? Maybe he was just doing a little bit
at a time. Maybe I don't know, you don't know.
But also she must have genuinely adored him, because she
was like, yep, let's see if it burns my head again,
let's just do it. It's worth it for you in
public with an audience watching. I'm glad we don't have

(26:28):
to do any of those. I'm now also flashing back
to the many perms and other hair treatments I have
given people over the years. When I was a kid,
in high school in college, I did a lot of hair. Actually,
I gave a lot of haircuts. I did a lot
of colors. I did a fair number of perms. Yeah,

(26:52):
I'm pretty sure my only perms were with someone who
did hair and their garage or basement, not MoMA, not
my mom. Mom did cut my hair, but not permit.
I did color my own hair at a number of points.
But I never tried to perm my own hair because

(27:14):
I was scared to. I never permed my own because
I didn't want to do the rollers by myself. Even now, right, like,
I had to train my husband to do bleach application
on the back of my head because I can't maintain
my purple without it right, and I'm too lazy to
go to a salon for that. It's just like it's

(27:36):
time intensive, and I don't like the idea of sitting
somewhere unable to walk about my house at whim right
with bleach on my head and then a color, because
it's a two process. So I still am doing a
DIY situation. Which I've said this before, I'm sure I
will say it again. If you are thinking about getting

(27:58):
a fantasy hair color, I hope you're outgoing, It's what
I will say, yeah, because people will stop you and
ask you about it everywhere you go. Yep, people ask
all kinds of questions yes, and ask to touch your
hair or just touch your hair without asking. I imagine, Yeah,

(28:18):
that doesn't bother me so much. I recognize it as problematic,
but it doesn't bother me too much. I also recognize
that there are a lot of people who get unwanted
touching of their hair. It's sure with bright hair colors,
for sure, and you should always ask someone or maybe
just don't. But like in a case with that, like normally,

(28:41):
what happens is like I will be in a discussion.
It is here is the most common version of that,
how did you get your hair that color? And we'll
start talking and they'll say because my kid wants it,
and I want to make sure it's safe. And then
if they're like, can I touch your hair because they're
wondering how damaging it will be, I'm like, sure, absolutely,

(29:02):
I mean I will give hair tips for days. My
poor beloved has often come around the corner in like
a grocery store or a big box store and found
me deep in a conversation with like a mom and
her teenage daughter writing down lists of what they all
the products. But yeah, it's it's all fine, it's great.

(29:25):
So yes, I be ready. If you are going to
do fun hair for upkeep and to talk to people
that are strangers, yeah, if you're good with those, you're golden. Anyway,
I could talk about hair forever because I do love it.
If you're getting your hair done this weekend, I hope
you love it and that it's a fabulous time and

(29:47):
you love how it turns out. If you have other
time off, I hope you get some relaxation in, watch
some good movies or TV if that's your thing, hang
out outside if that's your thing, Hug your pets. If
you don't have time off, I still hope you get
to do some of those things. And I hope that
everybody is cool to everybody. We will be right back
here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday

(30:09):
we will have a brand new one. Stuff you Missed
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