November 15, 2024 • 15 mins
Holly talks about realizing how Hans Sloane’s early life likely normalized the idea of colonization for him, and also Museum Mike the cat. Tracy talks about the structure of Nate DiMeo's book as it compares to his podcast.
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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, and we talked about Hans Sloan
in the British Museum this week. Uh huh. There are
so many things. One of the things that jumped out
(00:23):
to me that I had not realized reading a lot
of biographies about him until I got into more of
the heavy hitter biographies, was like, at that point, I
was already you know, understanding and well acquainted with the
extent to which you know, this colonization and enslavement of
(00:47):
Jamaica had enabled his work, right, But it wasn't until
I got into a deeper biography where I understood the
circumstances of his youth and how that was already a
sin of colonization and forced occupation that maybe just made
him so accustomed to that concept that he didn't even
(01:10):
process it to some degree. Yeah, that's just a guess
on my part, Like, we don't actually know his opinion
about slavery per se, even though it clearly benefited him,
and he believed that anyone who was not a white
European person must be lying if they said they didn't
(01:31):
feel good because they were lazy and trying to get
out of work. That is literally how he describes many
of these situations. Yes, even when he's listing symptoms that
you're like, something was gravely wrong with that person, which
is upsetting. But it just was the first time I
had that revelatory moment of oh, his whole life parallels
(01:52):
that experience of his youth, where this was probably very normalized.
Just interesting. While I was at the British Museum, Yeah,
and I went in the reading room and I was
with one of my very, very dear friends who I
just loved pieces, and we were standing in the reading
room and all I could think of was Mike the Cat,
(02:15):
who you may remember from our episode about historical cats.
Mike the Cat was kind of a scrappy cat that
would often hang out in the reading room and guarded
air quotes the British Museum, and people would try to
pet him and he would claw, And I'm just just like,
if ever I did want a ghost, it was Mike
the Cat in that moment. But no Mike the Cat sightings. Yeah,
(02:37):
I didn't think about him. Yeah, Sloan's name was on
chocolate until twenty twenty two. Really, yeah, okay, and then
the company that was I forget the exact name of
the company, but it was something like Sloane Chocolate Company.
He didn't own it, it was named in reference to him. Sure,
it rebranded to Cocoa Canopy, I think in twenty twenty two.
(02:57):
But I'm like, wow, that is a locked a long time.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I Also I think about this sometimes just because I
will go down a rabbit hole of like TikTok discourse.
People use the word discover to mean a brand new,
never before discovered thing, but people also use the word
(03:24):
discover to just mean I found out, yes, not claiming
that you are the sole discoverer of the thing, right.
And so I kind of wonder like whether he did
think that he had invented this entirely unknown thing, right
or this is probably being more generous toward him than
(03:48):
he might deserve in this matter, but like whether he
was like I discovered that this is really good, and
it just more meant I realized this, not I invented it. Yeah,
And it's very unclear. I mean, here's the thing. There
are very solid sources that will say without hesitation that
he invented either hot chocolate, chocolate milk milk chocolate, like
(04:12):
as though it is fact and there are places you
would normally trust, huh, but there's absolutely no yeah, yeah,
when you told me this was who you were working on,
and I had not like the name did not ring
a bell at all for me, and so I googled
and the first result was like blah blah blah naturalist
supposed adventure of chocolate milk, and I was like, WHOA,
(04:36):
that doesn't seem right, right, No, No, one of the
other things that was interesting that I hadn't really thought
about a ton because you know, he had collections from,
as we said towards the end of the episode, more
than you know, seventy different places around the globe, but
he himself was not widely traveled really m right, Like
(04:57):
he went to Jamaica on this sign, and he had
gone to France for his medical degree. But he didn't
do the thing that we talk about on the show
all the time that like young men as they're you know,
hitting adulthood from aristocratic families would do like their tour
of the continent and travel. He couldn't afford to do that.
(05:19):
He was from the you know, servant class, right, so
it's really interesting that he again, obviously so many problematic
issues with his legacy, but he is an interesting case
of someone who really went from having nothing to literally,
(05:40):
as I joked in the podcast, being the grand puba
of all scientific thought in London certainly, and I would
say that extended throughout Europe in a big way. Just
kind of a fascinating life trajectory.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Mmm.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I just thought that was interesting. And then when he
purchased the manor house at else that included that garden,
his apothecary garden, and he leased it to the Worshipful
Society of Apothecaries for five pounds a year. And according
to a Garden's Illustrated article that I read that was
(06:16):
about the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth,
maybe his descendants still get paid that. Oh wow, that
property is still part of his family legacy and they
are still getting paid rent on that garden, which is fascinating.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, this is like that thing we've talked about recently
where we always mention when you're translating money over time,
it's very tricky. Yeah, But how I had found a
few months back, and we talked about it then, like, oh,
this is actually quite important to people who live in
(06:59):
like Europe, for example, where they actually are on property
that their family has owned for three hundred and fifty
years and suddenly they have to have a system that
everyone agrees they'll at least acknowledge and abide bye. And
so I just it was one of those things where
I'm like, I the idea of a family owning a
piece of property for hundreds and hundreds of years is
(07:20):
so alien to most of us that live in the
United States that I'm just like, and you're you've been
receiving rent since what year, seventeen twenty two? For real?
It's very interesting. Yeah, British Museum, they got a lot
of cool stuff. I feel like they're trying having been
(07:43):
there on site because we've talked about it before and
like issues of repatriation. But I will say the vibe
I god being on site was we're trying so hard,
we're just really bind And I don't know if that's
just like a piece an easy piece of copy to
put out, but it felt a little different for me
being there than when we have talked about it, because
(08:06):
it does seem so simple in most regards, but I
do think there's some untangling that we probably are not
privy to you in a lot of those things, right right, Yeah, Yeah,
but it's a cool space. It's hard as heck to navigate,
in my opinion, Thank goodness. I had a local who
was like, oh, no, that's on floor four, and I'm like,
how do you get there? Because I would never have
(08:29):
found stuff. Yeah, I've never been there because I've never
been to London. Oh, I love it so much. This
last trip to Lenon my favorite. I just felt I
stayed in a different part of the city than I
had before, and I just had a great time. And
I don't know, it felt like second home in a
(08:50):
way that had not before. So I'm ready to go
back again at the drop of a hat. Nice, let's
all go. By the time this comes out, we will
have been to Iceland. Yeah, so we might have new
stories to come out of that. We'll see.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
We also I also talked to Nate DeMeo this week
about his upcoming book, yeah, called The Memory Palace. So
we have had Nate DeMeo on the show previously. That time,
Holly and I both talked to Nate, And this is
an example of how our human memories are fallible, because
(09:40):
here's how I remember that earlier episode happening. We were
going to interview Nate Demeyo. We were going to include
a couple of episodes of his show in our episode,
similar to what we did this time. We're gonna also
like have a focus of the interview around those episodes
(10:02):
we were discussing, but there were rights issues with music
that had been used in the episode in Nate's episodes
of the Memory of the Murray Palace, so we had
to take them all out before doing this interview with him.
I went and re listened to that previous episode because
I did not want to have it be the same
(10:24):
questions exactly over again, and there was an episode of
his show in there, and I was like, I thought,
we had to take all of these out. So I
guess what really happened was we had to change which
episodes are going to be included to ones that did
not have the potential issues involving licensing for the music right,
(10:47):
And that was just not how I had remembered it
at all. We do like that episode still is in
the archive if folks want to listen to that to
hear more from Nate. I want to stress number one,
Nate is always a pleasure to talk to you. Indeed,
it's great. I'm bummed that my schedule thwarted me from
being part of this one. Yeah, you had your own
(11:09):
book coming out at the same time as we were
planning to do this interview with Nate. I did. I
had your own book, and so you were off doing
things involving your own book. I want to tell people
one more time what that book is. Yes, it is
Killer Cocktails, which is based on the work that we
(11:30):
do on the other podcasts that I'm on Criminalia, which
is historical true crime. And every story of historical true
crime has a cocktail and mocktail that go with it.
So you get half that you may have heard already
on the podcast if you listen, and half are brand
new just for the book. So perfect Christmas gift if
you have someone that likes mixing drinks, history or true
(11:56):
crime in a way that's removed and feels less voyeuristic.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So this is very similar to Nate's book, because Nate's
book is also some of it, some chapters are the
same story as he has told on an episode of
The Memory Palace. Others are news stories that were written
for the book. Specifically, I already gushed about the book
a bit in the episode where I talked to Nate,
(12:24):
but something that he and I talked about after we
had stopped rolling, there's two things. One is that, yes,
there is going to be an audiobook. The audiobook sounds
really cool to me. I don't want to get into
the details of how it sounds cool to me, but
if you are an audiobook person, if you like to
get your books that way, definitely see if this would
(12:45):
be one that would interest you, because I find a
lot of things about it really awesome. The other thing
that he and I talked about was how there were
concerns about how this book would sell, because what market
is there for a book book of poetic, thoughtful short
history stories. And I said, basically, please don't take offense
(13:08):
at this, Nate, But like, do you remember bathroom books?
Do they still have bathroom readers? Do they publish those?
Because now we're all on our phones on the toilet,
But those used to be books that you can find
near the checkout section of the bookstore and in the
humor section and the book of the Memory Palace reminds
me of a thing that you might read for a
(13:29):
couple of minutes, like you would a bathroom reader. And
I also had a time that I would turn to
this book that is not nearly as you know private
is having your time that you're sitting in the bathroom,
which is that during the height of the pandemic, like
(13:51):
when we were all in lockdown mode, a lot of
us not working in offices, not attending school in person,
not seeing a lot of other people, and then also
when I was dealing with all of my feelings around
of critical illness and somebody very dear to me, I
spent a lot of time walking in the woods, and
(14:12):
one of the things I took with me in the
walking in the woods was my phone which had a
collection of poems by Mary Oliver on it. And I
would find a place to sit and I would sit
under a tree, or I would sit by the pond,
or I would sit somewhere and I would like read
a poem by Mary Oliver and it would just bring
a little bit of peace and focus to my soul.
(14:34):
And I think this book would have a very similar
role for me. Yeah, on my phone to have you
know a walk somewhere and sit somewhere quiet and read
a story that moves me in some way about history.
So yeah, that book is coming out on November nineteenth.
(14:55):
It was again called The Memory Palace by Nate Demeyo.
And whatever's coming up on your weekend. If you have
a new book you've just gotten, I hope you get
some time to read it. If you have a book
you are looking forward to with a lot of eagerness,
which I know happens to me when there are things
that are coming soon by authors or other creators that
I like, I hope that anticipation is fun and that
(15:18):
you're excited about it. We will be back with a
Saturday Classic tomorrow and something brand new on Monday. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(15:38):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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, and we talked about Hans Sloan
in the British Museum this week. Uh huh. There are
so many things. One of the things that jumped out
(00:23):
to me that I had not realized reading a lot
of biographies about him until I got into more of
the heavy hitter biographies, was like, at that point, I
was already you know, understanding and well acquainted with the
extent to which you know, this colonization and enslavement of
(00:47):
Jamaica had enabled his work, right, But it wasn't until
I got into a deeper biography where I understood the
circumstances of his youth and how that was already a
sin of colonization and forced occupation that maybe just made
him so accustomed to that concept that he didn't even
(01:10):
process it to some degree. Yeah, that's just a guess
on my part, Like, we don't actually know his opinion
about slavery per se, even though it clearly benefited him,
and he believed that anyone who was not a white
European person must be lying if they said they didn't
(01:31):
feel good because they were lazy and trying to get
out of work. That is literally how he describes many
of these situations. Yes, even when he's listing symptoms that
you're like, something was gravely wrong with that person, which
is upsetting. But it just was the first time I
had that revelatory moment of oh, his whole life parallels
(01:52):
that experience of his youth, where this was probably very normalized.
Just interesting. While I was at the British Museum, Yeah,
and I went in the reading room and I was
with one of my very, very dear friends who I
just loved pieces, and we were standing in the reading
room and all I could think of was Mike the Cat,
(02:15):
who you may remember from our episode about historical cats.
Mike the Cat was kind of a scrappy cat that
would often hang out in the reading room and guarded
air quotes the British Museum, and people would try to
pet him and he would claw, And I'm just just like,
if ever I did want a ghost, it was Mike
the Cat in that moment. But no Mike the Cat sightings. Yeah,
(02:37):
I didn't think about him. Yeah, Sloan's name was on
chocolate until twenty twenty two. Really, yeah, okay, and then
the company that was I forget the exact name of
the company, but it was something like Sloane Chocolate Company.
He didn't own it, it was named in reference to him. Sure,
it rebranded to Cocoa Canopy, I think in twenty twenty two.
(02:57):
But I'm like, wow, that is a locked a long time.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I Also I think about this sometimes just because I
will go down a rabbit hole of like TikTok discourse.
People use the word discover to mean a brand new,
never before discovered thing, but people also use the word
(03:24):
discover to just mean I found out, yes, not claiming
that you are the sole discoverer of the thing, right.
And so I kind of wonder like whether he did
think that he had invented this entirely unknown thing, right
or this is probably being more generous toward him than
(03:48):
he might deserve in this matter, but like whether he
was like I discovered that this is really good, and
it just more meant I realized this, not I invented it. Yeah,
And it's very unclear. I mean, here's the thing. There
are very solid sources that will say without hesitation that
he invented either hot chocolate, chocolate milk milk chocolate, like
(04:12):
as though it is fact and there are places you
would normally trust, huh, but there's absolutely no yeah, yeah,
when you told me this was who you were working on,
and I had not like the name did not ring
a bell at all for me, and so I googled
and the first result was like blah blah blah naturalist
supposed adventure of chocolate milk, and I was like, WHOA,
(04:36):
that doesn't seem right, right, No, No, one of the
other things that was interesting that I hadn't really thought
about a ton because you know, he had collections from,
as we said towards the end of the episode, more
than you know, seventy different places around the globe, but
he himself was not widely traveled really m right, Like
(04:57):
he went to Jamaica on this sign, and he had
gone to France for his medical degree. But he didn't
do the thing that we talk about on the show
all the time that like young men as they're you know,
hitting adulthood from aristocratic families would do like their tour
of the continent and travel. He couldn't afford to do that.
(05:19):
He was from the you know, servant class, right, so
it's really interesting that he again, obviously so many problematic
issues with his legacy, but he is an interesting case
of someone who really went from having nothing to literally,
(05:40):
as I joked in the podcast, being the grand puba
of all scientific thought in London certainly, and I would
say that extended throughout Europe in a big way. Just
kind of a fascinating life trajectory.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Mmm.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I just thought that was interesting. And then when he
purchased the manor house at else that included that garden,
his apothecary garden, and he leased it to the Worshipful
Society of Apothecaries for five pounds a year. And according
to a Garden's Illustrated article that I read that was
(06:16):
about the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth,
maybe his descendants still get paid that. Oh wow, that
property is still part of his family legacy and they
are still getting paid rent on that garden, which is fascinating.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, this is like that thing we've talked about recently
where we always mention when you're translating money over time,
it's very tricky. Yeah, But how I had found a
few months back, and we talked about it then, like, oh,
this is actually quite important to people who live in
(06:59):
like Europe, for example, where they actually are on property
that their family has owned for three hundred and fifty
years and suddenly they have to have a system that
everyone agrees they'll at least acknowledge and abide bye. And
so I just it was one of those things where
I'm like, I the idea of a family owning a
piece of property for hundreds and hundreds of years is
(07:20):
so alien to most of us that live in the
United States that I'm just like, and you're you've been
receiving rent since what year, seventeen twenty two? For real?
It's very interesting. Yeah, British Museum, they got a lot
of cool stuff. I feel like they're trying having been
(07:43):
there on site because we've talked about it before and
like issues of repatriation. But I will say the vibe
I god being on site was we're trying so hard,
we're just really bind And I don't know if that's
just like a piece an easy piece of copy to
put out, but it felt a little different for me
being there than when we have talked about it, because
(08:06):
it does seem so simple in most regards, but I
do think there's some untangling that we probably are not
privy to you in a lot of those things, right right, Yeah, Yeah,
but it's a cool space. It's hard as heck to navigate,
in my opinion, Thank goodness. I had a local who
was like, oh, no, that's on floor four, and I'm like,
how do you get there? Because I would never have
(08:29):
found stuff. Yeah, I've never been there because I've never
been to London. Oh, I love it so much. This
last trip to Lenon my favorite. I just felt I
stayed in a different part of the city than I
had before, and I just had a great time. And
I don't know, it felt like second home in a
(08:50):
way that had not before. So I'm ready to go
back again at the drop of a hat. Nice, let's
all go. By the time this comes out, we will
have been to Iceland. Yeah, so we might have new
stories to come out of that. We'll see.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
We also I also talked to Nate DeMeo this week
about his upcoming book, yeah, called The Memory Palace. So
we have had Nate DeMeo on the show previously. That time,
Holly and I both talked to Nate, And this is
an example of how our human memories are fallible, because
(09:40):
here's how I remember that earlier episode happening. We were
going to interview Nate Demeyo. We were going to include
a couple of episodes of his show in our episode,
similar to what we did this time. We're gonna also
like have a focus of the interview around those episodes
(10:02):
we were discussing, but there were rights issues with music
that had been used in the episode in Nate's episodes
of the Memory of the Murray Palace, so we had
to take them all out before doing this interview with him.
I went and re listened to that previous episode because
I did not want to have it be the same
(10:24):
questions exactly over again, and there was an episode of
his show in there, and I was like, I thought,
we had to take all of these out. So I
guess what really happened was we had to change which
episodes are going to be included to ones that did
not have the potential issues involving licensing for the music right,
(10:47):
And that was just not how I had remembered it
at all. We do like that episode still is in
the archive if folks want to listen to that to
hear more from Nate. I want to stress number one,
Nate is always a pleasure to talk to you. Indeed,
it's great. I'm bummed that my schedule thwarted me from
being part of this one. Yeah, you had your own
(11:09):
book coming out at the same time as we were
planning to do this interview with Nate. I did. I
had your own book, and so you were off doing
things involving your own book. I want to tell people
one more time what that book is. Yes, it is
Killer Cocktails, which is based on the work that we
(11:30):
do on the other podcasts that I'm on Criminalia, which
is historical true crime. And every story of historical true
crime has a cocktail and mocktail that go with it.
So you get half that you may have heard already
on the podcast if you listen, and half are brand
new just for the book. So perfect Christmas gift if
you have someone that likes mixing drinks, history or true
(11:56):
crime in a way that's removed and feels less voyeuristic.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So this is very similar to Nate's book, because Nate's
book is also some of it, some chapters are the
same story as he has told on an episode of
The Memory Palace. Others are news stories that were written
for the book. Specifically, I already gushed about the book
a bit in the episode where I talked to Nate,
(12:24):
but something that he and I talked about after we
had stopped rolling, there's two things. One is that, yes,
there is going to be an audiobook. The audiobook sounds
really cool to me. I don't want to get into
the details of how it sounds cool to me, but
if you are an audiobook person, if you like to
get your books that way, definitely see if this would
(12:45):
be one that would interest you, because I find a
lot of things about it really awesome. The other thing
that he and I talked about was how there were
concerns about how this book would sell, because what market
is there for a book book of poetic, thoughtful short
history stories. And I said, basically, please don't take offense
(13:08):
at this, Nate, But like, do you remember bathroom books?
Do they still have bathroom readers? Do they publish those?
Because now we're all on our phones on the toilet,
But those used to be books that you can find
near the checkout section of the bookstore and in the
humor section and the book of the Memory Palace reminds
me of a thing that you might read for a
(13:29):
couple of minutes, like you would a bathroom reader. And
I also had a time that I would turn to
this book that is not nearly as you know private
is having your time that you're sitting in the bathroom,
which is that during the height of the pandemic, like
(13:51):
when we were all in lockdown mode, a lot of
us not working in offices, not attending school in person,
not seeing a lot of other people, and then also
when I was dealing with all of my feelings around
of critical illness and somebody very dear to me, I
spent a lot of time walking in the woods, and
(14:12):
one of the things I took with me in the
walking in the woods was my phone which had a
collection of poems by Mary Oliver on it. And I
would find a place to sit and I would sit
under a tree, or I would sit by the pond,
or I would sit somewhere and I would like read
a poem by Mary Oliver and it would just bring
a little bit of peace and focus to my soul.
(14:34):
And I think this book would have a very similar
role for me. Yeah, on my phone to have you
know a walk somewhere and sit somewhere quiet and read
a story that moves me in some way about history.
So yeah, that book is coming out on November nineteenth.
(14:55):
It was again called The Memory Palace by Nate Demeyo.
And whatever's coming up on your weekend. If you have
a new book you've just gotten, I hope you get
some time to read it. If you have a book
you are looking forward to with a lot of eagerness,
which I know happens to me when there are things
that are coming soon by authors or other creators that
I like, I hope that anticipation is fun and that
(15:18):
you're excited about it. We will be back with a
Saturday Classic tomorrow and something brand new on Monday. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(15:38):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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