Behind the Scenes Minis: Licoricia and Glitter Sunscreen

Tracy discusses her love of medieval history, and how much Licoricia's story surprised her. She and Holly then both discuss the importance of proper sunscreen application. 

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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 B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about Lcaricia of Winchester
this week. We did do whose name I kept morphing

(00:24):
into Lucretia as I was typing my outline, which uh,
I'm gonna I'm willing to bet does have the same origin.
Lcaricia basically means sweet. Yes, I will confess to you
that I have always pronounced it with a harder emphasis
on the oh, so it's like licorica, like that sweet fine.

(00:48):
I mean, we've I don't know how specifically she would
have pronounced it. It is spelled innumerable ways right in
the record. Also don't totally know like how her kids'
names would have been pronounced. We went with a share
for her son, whose name is in most accounts either

(01:08):
spelled Asher or as s Er, because I think that
is how most people who were using that name as
a Hebrew name pronounce it, and it's also the more
French way to pronounce it, and so since most as
we understand it, most Jewish people in medieval England were
kind of using Norman French versions of their names. That

(01:32):
seemed like the best way to go. But there are
so many different spellings, so many nicknames that don't immediately
make sense but are based on like how things were
pronounced a thousand years. Yeah. Yeah, so many people asked

(01:54):
us to do this, and honestly, I was embarrassed when
I did another check of it it recently, because I
was like, there was there was a ton of stuff
that was there before a year ago or you know,
February of last year when people were asking for it,
and it just like that just was buried by many

(02:16):
many news articles about the statue that all had the
same three or four points. It's such a heart wrenching
story because you know, now that we know a bit more,
it's not something I knew a lot about, but like
the idea of just like all of these people belonged
to the king, yeah, really is like upsetting to me

(02:39):
on a visceral level. Yeah. So it's been I think
a while since we've really talked about medieval history on
the show, but medieval history and specifically medieval women, like
it's always just been a favorite topic of mine and
something that I have returned to on the show periodically,
but overwhelmingly, the medieval women that I have learned about

(03:01):
and have been taught about and have had college courses about, like,
they have all been Christian, many of them specifically Christian
mystics and anchorises, and like people who were signed in
some like world of religious devotion, specifically Christian religious devotion.
And so I did not have a sense of the

(03:25):
whole like that arc of Jewish history in medieval England
and how much of it she lived through, And so
when I started working on this episode, I did not
have a sense of how much like horrible violence and
anti Semitism and blood libel like. I did not have

(03:45):
a sense of how much all of that was going
to be part of the episode when I started working
on it. I also one of the reasons that we
didn't do this episode back in twenty two, in addition
to the fact that I was like, I don't know
if there's enough information about that, is I just I
had reservations about talking about somebody who was in a

(04:07):
profession that does have all of these prejudicial stereotypes associated
with it, And it took me a super long time
to figure out like best ways to talk about that
and how to make it super super clear that you're like, yeah,
there's this. There are these stereotypes of the quote money lender,
and those are not stereotypes that we also apply to

(04:29):
somebody that we might would describe as a banker, right,
or a pawnbroker or any of these other comparable jobs
that people were also doing. Yeah. I mean it's one
of those those moments where I marvel at the horrific

(04:51):
consistency of history, right that, like, these are things that
we are talking about that happened hundreds of years ago.
M hmmm, and those stereotypes are still causing problems. Yeah, yeah,
like we have as much as we all like to
pet ourselves on the back for how far mankind has come, right,

(05:12):
not really. Yeah, And one of the things that was
really frustrating to me about this episode is how, for
a lot of reasons, especially in England, that stereotype exists
because the king was literally like I want to have
these these like Jewish financiers come to lend me money,

(05:33):
and so it's like the king decided that this is
how it should be. Yeah, and then later the king
took all of that away, and so I don't know,
it's England is obviously not the only place that where
Jewish people were working in lending, but they're like it
was particularly concentrated specifically because of like the King's actions

(05:56):
and the King's policies and what the king wanted for
is that a rail? Right, it's such a unique I mean, listen, horrific.
So please don't think I'm complimenting him in what I'm
about to say, but it is such a unique and
well strategized way to get someone who has what you

(06:18):
don't have to give it to you without giving them
any power. Right, Yeah, for sure, Like, oh, yes, you
will lend me money, but you have no power over
me because of it I'm the king, Yeah, which is astonishing. Right,
most of the time, in most of our day to

(06:40):
day normal lives, if someone lent us a large sum
of money, we would feel that they had a measure
of power over us, right because if we didn't, if
we didn't repay it properly or any other thing, like,
they could potentially, you know, yeah, preak havoc in our lives.
But he figured out this loophole that he could set up. Yeah.

(07:04):
I also originally had some stuff in that line about
how like attitudes toward charging interest started shifting more in
like the thirteenth and fourteenth century. There are still various
religious communities and denominations that that find all interest to
be sinful. So like that is that still exists. There's

(07:27):
still like folks that have to work out other ways
to exist in a society with money without violating their
religious principles over it. But like there became a wider
a wider sense of the fact that loaning somebody money
is a risk and interest helps defer that risk, right,

(07:53):
because if one person defaults on their alone, maybe other
people's interest means you don't wind up as the lender
going bankrupt, if that makes sense, So theyre just uh,
there became a more permissive attitude, but there's still obviously
today is discussion about like what rates of interest are exploitive,
When is it okay to charge interest and when is

(08:14):
it not. Very recently there was legislation introduced in Congress,
and I don't remember the status of it, but like
it was to set a cap on interest rates for consumers,
with the idea being that interest rates that are too
high are are exploitive. I took all of that out

(08:40):
because I was like, it felt like uh an aside. Yeah,
so I'm saying it now instead. I find that statue
to be really beautiful. Yeah, I got choked up trying
to talk about it. So, you know, ditto. I've seen
a couple of criticisms about whether aspects of it are
historically really act it like that, how would we know? Well,

(09:05):
some of that Okay, So we don't have historically accurate,
verifiable depictions of what Jewish people living in England war, right, right, Like,
the only visual depictions that we have of Jewish people
living in England are like there are some that are like, uh,

(09:27):
anti Semitic cartoons, that kind of thing. So like there's
a lot of that we don't know, but we sort
of think similar dress to what Christians in England were wearing. Uh,
it does seem like adult Jewish women, especially married women

(09:47):
and widows, were expected to have all of their hair covered.
And her hair is not fully covered, so there were
people are like should her hair have been fully covered?
And then also a share in the statue is carrying
a draidal and apparently that the dradl was a little
bit later development in more Germany. So it's like would

(10:08):
there have been right, and so to me, I cannot
speak at all for like how a Jewish person would
feel about this, Like for me, as a person that
talks about history all the time, I feel almost like
that is something that makes it recognizable to a total
lay person who doesn't know the story of this, like

(10:28):
what they're looking at. Yeah, and that might have been
the reason for including that. I just had the weirdest
thought unrelated to the statue. Okay, this is the germination
of an idea. So if I sound like a dingdong, apologies.

(10:52):
One of the things that I would say, definitely the
case in my family, and I think the case in
a lot of families, is that the idea of talking
about money at all is anathema. Oh sure, yeah, yeah yeah.
And I mean still to this day, as a fully
grown adult with like a house and stuff like, I

(11:13):
will literally pick up the entire tab at a big
group meal because the thought of talking about how it
gets split up is so upsetting to me. I can't
even deal with it. I'm buying my mental health by
just paying for everybody. But I also wonder if some
of that isn't ingrained in this idea of like those

(11:35):
people who are the money people are yucky and dirty.
We don't even talk about it. Oh maybe, And if
that's like a thing that has just through generation after
generation without us realizing it been an ingrained part of
this bigger problem. Yeah, I can tell you with certainty
that when it comes to how much people are paid

(11:58):
at work, the taboo of talking about how much you
pay at work is like one hundred percent about trying
to make sure that people don't oh yeah, don't come together.
Oh yeah, it's a bargain for better pay. Oh yeah.
But I mean like within families and stuff, Yeah, more
social stuff. That's a good question, And it could just

(12:18):
be that you know there, I mean, I'm sure that
would not be the only thing. There are other issues
that come into play there of like humility and shame
and just like yeah, yeah, not trying to impose that
kind of thinking on a kid early on, but then
later on they're like what is money? How does it do? Yeah?

(12:39):
But I just, like I said, the germination of a
thought where I was like, oh is this multi generational?
That like it's a way to separate people. I feel
like there's a big contradiction there because there's the idea
of like, we don't talk about money because it's kind
of shameful to do that. But also there is a
very wrong perception that people with money are better and

(13:03):
right people are not right. That's this is right, That's
that's why I kind of mentioned that shame is probably
part of that, that non conversation that I'm sure somebody
has written entire books about this thing that you and
I are just like off the cuff talking about, so
I take them mind. Yeah, please do not take this
as like Tracy and Hart Holly's authoritative comprehensive look at

(13:27):
the psychology of money. We're not saying that at all.
I entrees stated clearly that I probably sounded like a
DG dog. Yeah, but it does make me think about
all of those, yeah, social and cultural morays about how
cultures deal with money, think about money. Yeah, there was

(13:49):
a I am literally reaching into the back of my
broken brain, all right, uh about I think it was
an NPR story that I was listening to that was
comparing the way different cultures prepare for their future, like
for retirement and stuff, and how they were linking it

(14:13):
to language as like the way people think and how
in some languages like that. Don't, for example, have like
a past or future tense. People are better at preparing
for the future because they are it's all the one thing.
Your life is one big thing, and not Oh I'll
think about my retirement later, but right now I'm having fun.

(14:36):
I think I might have heard that was this recent. No,
it was like at least four years ago. Okay, I
heard something very recently on the radio as I was
out and about that was very similar. I mean, that
could be the same people doing research that's ongoing. Yeah,
but I didn't totally pay attention to it because in

(14:58):
my head, I was like, is this nut Udge? And
I started thinking about the podcast If Books Could Kill
that just talked about like the Nudge book, and I
got mentally very distracted, and I don't remember the rest
of what it was. So anyway, anyway, I'm glad we
finally did this episode. Glad it turned out that there

(15:20):
was enough information. Man, I feel very ignorant about how
much how this whole aspect of medieval history I was
absolutely unaware of. And I think we're probably gonna take
a little sponsor break right here and then talk about
a different episode Sun Scream, Please wear sunscream. I hate it,

(15:52):
and I do it anyway. Yeah, I don't love it,
but I do it. Yeah. So let's say I'm gonna
go hiking and I'm gonna be outside for multiple hours.
That's fine, and I will stop on my hike and
I will reapply it on my hike. But the thing

(16:12):
that I just irrationally hate is I'm gonna walk to
the store and I'm gonna be in the sun for
a total of an hour. And like the fact that
I gotta stop and put the sun to the sunscreen on,
you know, is if the weather is cool enough, I
have plenty of other options for protecting my skin, Like

(16:35):
I have lots of sunscreen, clothing and all of this
other stuff. But like, if it's a hundred, if it's
one hundred, I'm probably staying in the air. If it's
eighty five degrees, then I'm gonna walk to the grocery
store and I'm gonna be gone like an hour. The
stop step putting on the sunscreen on my arms and legs,
I just irrationally hate it. No, I understand it's a

(16:59):
pain in then it's one of many things I irash.
I also find it a pain to put on shoes
and not me give me all the shoes. I mentioned
at the top of the episode that I had gotten
into a conversation with my neighbor because I was out
mowing and he was kind of chuckling at me because
I look like a lunatic when I mow, and I

(17:20):
know it, and I don't care. Because I have on
a wide brim hat. I usually have on full length leggings,
no ankle shows at all. Very Victorian EU, I'm not,
and you know I'll have a T shirt on. I
often wear like a little I have dozens of wacky

(17:42):
print little like chiffon robes that I wear all the time.
And then I put oncras sleeves on my arms and
none of this stuff matches. So I do look like
an absolute nutter as I'm I love it pushing it around.
But here's the thing, right. One, skin cancer in my
family a very real deal. Two, I have a lot
of tattoos. I gotta protect that business. Yeah, Like, why

(18:05):
would I sit through the pain of a tattoo and
then not do everything in my power to preserve it
as long as possible. I also have very fair skin
in a family history of various skin cancers, and so
when the weather is a little cooler, I have a
bunch I have been building a collection of like is

(18:27):
it UPF the protection rating for fabrics. Yeah, just an
assortment of clothing for that purpose. And I always have
on a hat and especially if it's skin if I'm
going to be outside and Britson for a long time,
a very wide brim hat which I recently also got

(18:48):
a mosquito net to go over because the bugs have
been so bad. Nice. So yeah, yeah, I'm also a
big fan of a parasol. Yeah, I have a couple
of parasol. I haven't made use of them as recently
just because I haven't. Uh, that's it's it's one of

(19:08):
my favorite things to bring with me if I'm going
to like the Renaissance Festival, some kind of outdoor event
that I'm gonna be out walking around. I have a
picture of the two of us at a rooftop event
where it became apparent that I had many parasols at
work because you were visiting the office and we both
have my parasols. That's like, I know I did not

(19:30):
bring those specifically for that day. I think I just
had parasols at my desk in case of sun Yeah,
was this maybe on the roof of like pont City Marketing, Yeah,
back when we were there. Yeah. Yeah. My other favorite
thing that has the invention, which I didn't mention here
because I don't know when it started, is makeup foundation

(19:51):
with SPF. Yeah. I have an assortment of like facial sunscreens,
facial most like tinted moisturizers with SPF yes, other facial
products with sp that I have a lot of that.
This is also very tricky because if you are a

(20:13):
very fair person and you need sunscreen on your face,
that often also and I have no scientific stuff at
hand to back this up, but in my experiential knowledge,
those tend to also be the same people who are
very sensitive to a variety of products on their sure,

(20:33):
So it's like finding the right one can be a
little bit tricky, and then once you do, you're married
to it. There are also various like more cosmetically oriented
products that have an SPF rating on them, but the
amount that a person typically puts on their face is

(20:54):
not enough to actually be protected, and that like that's
an issue with other sunscreen also, like I have heard
a guideline I don't. I'm not gonna repeat the exact
guideline because I'm afraid I'm gonna say it wrong and
I will have given people wrong advice about something important.
But like I've heard a bunch of coverage about the
amount of sunscreen that people put on their bodies is

(21:17):
often like not actually enough, like yeah on there than
you think you do. Yeah, that is why that one
thing that we mentioned during the episode that like a
lot of people are like they're only getting half the
benefit of it any given f SPF because nobody wants
to put on a layer thick enough to actually do
the work. This has reminded me of when we were

(21:39):
in Italy and I think we were in like Chinquitara,
and we were standing in the street just sort of recongregating,
and I was resunblocking myself and for whatever reason, everyone
kind of turned around as I had this like thick,
not rubbed in layer of whites unscreen on my face.

(22:02):
I was just like, give me a sun working on it.
I'm working on it. I'm doing it. I will tell
you my favorite sunscreen. Okay, they don't, they don't sponsor
the show. I have no ties to them other than
it makes me smile. It's the name is gross. It's
called Unicorn Snot and it's a sunscreen that comes in

(22:24):
thirty SPF and it has a biodegradable glitter in it.
Fun So if I'm going to Disney World, you better
believe I'm slatheringing that stuff. It's very sunscreen to have on,
very favorite. Yeah. The other thing that I wanted to mention,
and I found it in one paper, which is a
paper that's often cited by a lot of other people,

(22:46):
and it's very well researched, at least appears to be mentioned.
An apocryphal story is kind of an aside in the
segment where they were talking about red vet pet and
the top secret price during World War II, which is
that the author of that paper, Frederick Erbach, mentioned that

(23:07):
he had a relative who had been in World War
One who claimed, that's not secret. We were using it
in World War One. I think the government just got
the idea that they would do a project. But that
is all apocryphal. We don't really know the scoop there.
The other thing we promised we would talk about was
that whole thing about SPF and time versus exposure, because

(23:31):
initially right and I think most places you will see
it repeated this way. Is that SPF means like, if
you have SPF fifteen, that means you could be in
the sun fifteen times longer than you could without it
before you become burned. And that has given people these
crazy ideas of like, well, great, I'll stand the sun

(23:55):
for fifteen hours. And I think that is why I
now like the Skin Cancer Foundation and other medical organizations
are like, let's not talk about it that way. Yeah,
let's remind people that you need to be applying more
often than every fifteen hours or whatever. And that is

(24:16):
that thing where it gives people a false sense of
security of like, oh, I put on like SPF thirty,
it's like a sweater came out. I'm fine. I don't
have to reapply during the day. Yes you do. Yeah.
When I was a kid, I remember my grandparents took
my brother and me swimming at a lake in a
park and my mom had put sunscreen on my brother

(24:39):
and me before we went. My grandparents didn't know and
did not reapply any any sunscreen on my brother and me.
And I remember my back specifically, like the part of
my back that was not covered by my little child
swimsuit got sun and my mom was livid. It just

(25:04):
like they just did not they did not know about
needing to put it on again. Yeah, I mean I
had had some doozy sunburns in my time. One that
was just terrible. When I went, I had to get
like burn lotion. No, like the doctor gave me like

(25:26):
the same kind of cream that they would give to
burn victims. It was quite bad. But I can I've
never had a sunburn that bad. I got a sunburn
one time I was I was in a drum and
bugle corps when I was in high school, and there
was often just a push to be rehearsing, and like
they cut our water breake short. Yeah, and I hadn't

(25:49):
been able to get somebody else to like sunblock the
part of my back that I couldn't reach, Yeah, because
we all we practiced in shorts and sports. Of course
it's probably hot and so like I'm going back to
my spot on the field putting the sun block where
I could reach, and I wound up, you know, with
that zone that I couldn't actually reach, sunburned enough to

(26:10):
be really uncomfortable. There was also a lot of medications
can affect your susceptibility to the sun. Oh yeah. So
at one point in my life when I was on prozac,
I got sunburned walking from my car to like watch

(26:31):
a commencement address. And I like walked to my car
and I sat under a tree and I put sunscreen
on while I was sitting under the tree, and like
the walk from the car to the tree, which was astoundish,
astoundingly short, I got like sunburned in that little window. Yes,
uh yeah, I mean it's it's astonishing how quickly it

(26:51):
can happen, even if you're not on medications there, you know,
like especially because it's getting hotter all the time. I know,
we said, like heat isn't the thing, but there is
more and more exposure. You're getting more and more UV
than we used to. And I forget. I had a
similar thing recently where I had, like I'm trying to

(27:14):
remember if it was when I was in London, which
I was in April of this year, and I literally
we were staying near the Excel Center where Star Wars
celebration was happening. We were in a hotel much closer
than most people, and so it was like dragging your
feet like a five minute walk down to shade and

(27:36):
I was wearing like a little v neck dress. And
when I was eating a few hours later, someone was like,
when did you get sunburned? And it was like on
my chest from like I hadn't applied sunscreen for that
quick walk, thinking I'm just running down to the convention center.
I don't want to be glorped up all day. Yeah,
burn mild, very mild, but it still happened. I've gotten

(27:57):
in the habit of checking the UVN, although there have
definitely been some times when I have looked at the
weather report and what it has told me the UV
index was I've walked outside and I'm like, that cannot
be correct. It is much brighter out here than this
apps and seems to think. But after a similar situation
where it was something like eight or nine in the

(28:19):
morning and I got not bad, I got a little
pink which I did not want on the walk from
my apartment to the train station. And after that, I
got in the habit of like, even if I'm going
out for a couple minutes really fast, and similarly like,
don't don't then want to have stuff on me all
day long, Like I'm always looking at the uv indecks

(28:40):
before I go outside. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm just
My plan of action is basically to continue to be
crazy Victorian witch covered to do. Yeah, I have a
whole thing that contains an assortment of sunscreens and insect repellents,

(29:02):
and it like that comes anytime there's like a group
outdoor activity, like that whole thing comes with me. So
it's for me and everyone. Yes, I also am a
big fan of the spray on sunscreens, but they often
don't smell great to me. It's very tricky, but it's
worth that. You got to find the one that works

(29:23):
for you because we want all of you to be safe.
So if you are going out in the sun this weekend,
please please please please please please please please please wear
your sunscreen. If you are not going out in the
sun but you have time off, we still hope you
have a great time. If you don't have time off,
I'm sorry, I hope you get time off suntime and

(29:43):
that you still have a great time. And if you're
working outside you know already, but wear your sunscreen. I
sound like a mom. We will be right back here
tomorrow with a Saturday Classic and then on Monday with
a new episode, and we'll both be wearing sunscreen the
whole time. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a

(30:06):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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