Behind the Scenes Minis: Morocco and Bavaria

Tracy and Holly talk about their time visiting Chefchaouen during their Morocco trip. Holly shares her belief that secret societies don't work very well. 

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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 sayd Alhua this week.
We sure did. Yeah, So this was kind of a

(00:22):
long delayed Morocco episode. I think most of the trips
we've gone on for the podcast, I've come home with
a lot of ideas for things to talk about. And
the thing that I ran into when we went to
Morocco was I came home and had ideas for things
that it turned out we had already covered on the show,

(00:43):
not even in the long past, like episodes that you
and I had done together, Holly, there would be we
would hear the tour guide mention a historical figure who
sounded really cool, and I would think, Okay, that rings
the bell a little bit, though, because I we both
jettison things from our memory. Because second, I closed my

(01:03):
computer at the end of the day. Sometimes there's not
enough room for all of the things that were learning
for the show all the time. No, and so I
had noted several people and came home and was like, Tracy,
you researched and wrote a whole episode about that person,
like five years ago. Listen, you can only defrag so
many times, be where your brain just stops, it runs out,

(01:23):
it runs out. And I think when I had done
the episode that was about the Lisbon earthquake, that was
sort of the closest thing to a post Morocco episode,
and it wasn't really about Morocco. Somebody had emailed and
said maybe you could do one on site Alhura, and
at that moment I thought, I don't think there's enough information.

(01:45):
And it was only some months later that I looked
and realized there was newly published work within the last
couple of years that was not around back in twenty sixteen,
and also just some more background things that we have
not talked about that much on the show. I, however,
am really kicking myself for having not done this before

(02:08):
we went to Morocco, because I would have gone to
the Kasbo Museum in Chef showIn. Yeah, we did have
some time to walk around in Chef Schowen. Yeah, we
had some walking around time. So first, Chef Schowen is beautiful,
oh breathtaking. Everywhere we stayed in Morocco was beautiful. Chef
Chowen was particularly beautiful. Yeah, we had an amazing hotel

(02:32):
that was outside of the wall of the Medina, but
like way up at the top of the hill that
overlooked everything, so you could just see the view of
the city and all the beautiful blue coloring everywhere. You
could hear the call to prayer from multiple mosques at
the same time, which was very striking as somebody who

(02:54):
has never lived in a predominantly Muslim area. There are
also so many stairs. We were unprepared for the number
of stairs. So we had gone on a walking tour
of the Medina, and on that walking tour, Patrick saw
a piece of art that captivated him, and when we

(03:20):
were done with the walking tour, his primary purpose was
to find that piece of art again so he could
buy it. Yeah. First though, a man told Patrick that
he had the best rugs in Morocco and he could
show us where the rugs were made, and Patrick wanted

(03:43):
to do that. I was not comfortable with this plan
because I had a feeling that we were about to
try to be sold some rugs and we did not
have a need for a rug and so that is
what happened. We did have a nice conversation with that
person and then left without buying any rugs, and then
walked all around trying to find this gallery where Patrick

(04:07):
had seen this art just walking past, and we did
find it. Patrick did purchase it, but by that point
we were very ready to return to the hotel and
just chill out, yeah, for a little bit, because we
had been walking and climbing up and downstairs a whole lot,
and so I never made it to the museum there

(04:29):
at the Kasbah. But it was beautiful. The whole trip
was beautiful. Yeah, had a really great time. Mentioned in
the episode that Seuta has been in international news. Basically
the news broke the moment that I finished this outline.
I feel like that's how it always works. In case

(04:51):
you have not heard about this, what happened is that
tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into the
number of people died trying to make this crossing, and
it is unclear what precisely caused that number of people

(05:12):
to try to do this all at the same time
as of this moment when we were recording. Yeah, there
have been a lot of claims about what it is, Yeah,
what the impetus was, but we don't have certainty, yeah,
claims and speculation. Yeah. And then also video that I
feel like has been circulated in the United States to

(05:32):
try to stoke fears of a migrant invasion. Uh huh,
because that's the time that we're living in. And so
it was a little startling to have the name of
a place that I found difficult to keep into my
mind because the syllables are not in the order that
my English speaking mouth wants them to go in. So

(05:56):
almost every time it appeared in the outline, I had
a little phonetic pretty nunciation there, so I would remember.
And then all of a sudden afterward it was on
the news and I was seeing all these clips in
which people were saying it all of the time. Yeah.
So all of that will be two weeks and some
in the past by the time this episode comes out,
and who knows what the situation will be or what

(06:17):
other conclusions might have been drawn about it by then. Yeah. Mysteries. Yeah, ice,
what did I say? Oh, weddings that are not normal? Oh? Yeah,
So I had an unconventional wedding, big sprice. I got
married in an art house movie theater in a red dress,

(06:38):
and my dad dressed to Santa to give me away.
It was very silly. I'm a big fan of absurdity,
but we had. At the time, I was working in
a university library and one of our assistants was an
exchange student from France, and he very earnestly came up
to me at the reception and said, I cannot wait

(06:59):
to tell my parents what weddings are like in the US.
And I was like, funny, let me stop you there. Yeah, yeah,
my darling, I'm a weirdo. It was very, very funny.
Bless him. I was like, no, they're usually not quite
like this, but that made me laugh and laugh. The
other thing, did I ever tell you the pronunciation of
chef showIn breaks my brain? Yeah? Because I want to

(07:23):
French it up. Oh sure, I wanted to be Chef Schwen.
It's not that's all I just but man, what a
beautiful city. I also did have a funny chef showIn,
as you said, is a city of stairs. I am
a short person. Those stairs are not you know, standard rise.

(07:47):
No there getting from where we got. As we went
on our walking tour, we kept going lower and lower
into the Medina, and I was like, uh oh, yeah,
oh spaghetti. Ohs, this is going to be bad. And
going back up was so I felt like I was
climbing a mountain. It was hilarious at one point because

(08:07):
it is there are some conservative clutches within that community, right.
And my beloved was with me, and he was on
the stair above me and had reached a hand up
and was helping me get up, and a woman, a
very elderly, very sweet I'm presuming woman, came running out

(08:28):
of her house to say we should not be touching
each other. And I just wanted to be like my darling.
The other option is that I live with you now,
like there was such a language barrier we cannot and
she would not have found that funny. Yeah, but it
was hilarious. I'm a tall person and I also found
the stairs very challenging. And I think I told the
story of we were walking. This was after we had
gone back down to the bottom of the Medina to

(08:50):
have dinner. Yeah, and we were returning to the hotel afterward,
which some people did in taxis. I did it in
a tax The taxi has to go around the edge
of the Medina, cannot drive through those streets. Was the
farthest drive. I did not anticipate the length of that drive. Yeah.
So Patrick and I and a couple of other people
were walking back up and I was I was finding

(09:12):
it challenging. And I arrived at a little landing and
there was a person who was feeding a group of cats.
There are a lot of cats, free roaming cats in
chef Shalling, and so this person, who I could not
see they were. They were inside the open door to

(09:33):
what was presumably their home, was feeding these cats. And
I stopped, and the and Patrick and the folks ahead
of me were like, are you okay. I said, yes,
I just have to take a picture of these cats,
which I was using both to take a picture of
cats and to have a minute to catch my breath.
And this person, who I could not see from within
the house said to the cats, you have to smile,

(09:57):
which I really loved. Yeah. Yeah, when we say some
of those stairs are steep, listen, I'm five to three
on my very best day with perfect posture, I'm really
five to two, but I like to, you know, steal an inch.
There were steps where I had to bend my leg
and my to get to the next step. My knee

(10:17):
was above my waistline. Yeah. It was arduous, worth it,
worth every bit of it, Yeah, because it is such
a spectacular and unique place. But it was very funny.
I was just like, whoof Yeah, no wonder everybody here
is incredibly fit because they are literally doing the mountain
goat dance every day. Yeah. I the my house, the

(10:42):
floor that the bedroom and my office are on is
upstairs from where the kitchen is and the front door,
and so I do a lot of up and down
the steps. Yeah. And then we also have an attic
that's that the a prior owner finished, and the stairs
into the attic are very steep. I do that sometimes.
That did not prepare me the all day long up

(11:04):
and downstairs at home did not prepare me at all
for the Steps of Chef Chowan, which is again so beautiful,
glove love so yeah. Kicking myself for not having started
it would have been amazing to have started this episode
before leaving for Morocco and then finished it afterward, because
I would have gone on a little fact finding mission

(11:25):
while we were in chef show. Yeah. Yeah, I've had
a few that have been on my list since Morocco,
and one of the things that I have run into
because I was taking notes as we went, Like when
I would talk to tour guides, I would take a
lot of notes as we went. But sometimes they the
history information they gave me doesn't always match up with

(11:46):
sources that I have found sure, and it's hard to
know because that's a local you know what I mean,
Like they know things that other people might not. So
it's hard to figure out which is the more I
don't want to say valid, because that's not right, but
which which source is the more accurate and which way

(12:06):
to lean in? And I just every time I try it,
I end up getting wanted up and I'm like, I'm
not gonna touch anymore. So we'll see, we'll see, we'll see,
we'll see. We talked about Adam Wisoup and the Illuminati

(12:28):
this week, which make me laugh, probably more than Adam
Wisoup would ever want to be laughed at. But yeah,
maybe you're a mess, is what I would like to say.
How do you get it together? Write a list? It's
gonna be okay, Yeah, I it's it's not what I
expected when you told me what you were working on.

(12:51):
What did you expect? I don't know what I's I
didn't expect it to basically be an academically oriented at
least in theory at the beginning, we're going to encourage learning, like,
that's not You're expecting mysticism and ritual which I think
a lot of people would. I expected some Alistair Crowley stuff. Yeah,

(13:16):
and it was not that in any way. No. I mean,
in fact, like the more sort of Alistair Crowley esque
things that he read about in the Freemason Rituals, he
was like, ugh, I aah, which cracked me up a
little bit. I feel like the most Alister Crowley part
of the episode is that, you know, photocopied, mimeographed, however

(13:41):
they did it, thing that was written in the sixties.
That's the most Alister Crowley of everything. Yeah, I mean
I do love the idea. I don't love the idea
because I think a lot of people have glommed onto
things that are fundamentally limiting them and learning actual stuff.
But I do love the idea that the real heart
of this whole conspiracy is a couple of like, you know,

(14:04):
fringe counterculture jokesters from the sixties, like a couple of hippies.
Let's shake up the word. Yeah, we'll introduce such cockamami
things that no one will believe them. Yeah, but they
will start to question things because this was published material. Yeah.
I used to find conspiracy theories a lot more fun
than I do now. Yeah. I mean I understand the

(14:26):
appeal of them for sure, And there there is a
way in which I do totally get when the world
is on fire, when things are unjust and unfair, it
is soothing in a way to be like, you know
why m hm. Because forces are working against us, and

(14:48):
there are forces working against us. I do believe there
are things we don't know about operations of government and military,
but I don't think it's as organized as peopleeople want
to believe. No, And it's there are so many things
that are fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories that have taken

(15:09):
over mainstream discourse about things in a way that is
really harmful and counterproductive. And that is that's really why
I like, I never found the ones that seriously affected
people's lives to be fun. No, but it's sort of
made all of them seem less fun. Yeah. I think

(15:32):
that's one of the reasons I kind of wanted to
do this one. Like, as I think about how many
instances I have encountered throughout my life, but there's been
a higher concentration in recent years people who kind of
want almost want to buy into these sorts of ideas.
I just want to be like, Yo, humans can't do that.

(15:52):
They just can't. They can They cannot tell me. I
mean every secret grew there has ever been has been
exposed because people go, I don't like you anymore. I'm
leaving and I'm telling your secrets. It just is the
way of you know, the human animal that that yeah,

(16:15):
it leaks. There's that great right if you for my
and or watchers in the crowd, which I hope means everyone.
You know Neme's manifesto about like the littleness of power
and how ideas like this, yeah can't galvanize, it get leaky.
It's it's inherent in the structure of anything that's trying
to like get one up on somebody else. There will

(16:36):
always be a gap. This is not about our podcast,
but does the full text of that manifesto exist or
just the portions of it that appear in the show.
I have only seen, and I've seen a lot of
people write out the text of what appears in the show.

(16:56):
Some of it pieced together, right, because we get different
pieces of it at different times. But I haven't ever
seen anybody put together like a full manifesto. I was
just curious. Yeah, to the best of my knowledge, there
isn't one for folks who have not watched and or
there's a manifesto that I find parts of it that
are read on the show very moving. I'm obsessed with

(17:18):
that show as everyone. It's very nice, it's very good.
It's transcendent for me. It's just like it feels like
a gift, like the universe went. Like Tony Gilroy was like,
you know, you know who needs a gift, Holly just
gonna make her one, but really no, Yeah, but what
a gem. Oh my goodness, what a spectacular, spectacular very
If you want escape but also to be able to

(17:41):
process things that we are living through, it's great. But
if you are not ready for your entertainment and escape
to include processing things that we are living through, right,
it's a lot. And that is why I didn't watch
the second season for a while, because I was like,
I don't think this is I don't think I'm in
the headspace for this at this moment. And then I

(18:02):
did watch it eventually and it was great. I was
correct and not watching it earlier than that. It's very
very heavy. Have I ever told you this. It is
not meant to sound braggy. It is honestly to me hilarious. So,
because I also have a Star Wars podcast, I will
get promo materials for stuff, and sometimes I will get

(18:23):
to watch shows in advance, because, especially in the instance
of and Or season two heading into Celebration, which is
the big Star Wars convention in Japan last year, there
was going to be a lot of and Or promotion
and they gave you know, podcasters and journalists the entire

(18:43):
season before we got there. The show had not started yet.
And one of the hardest and proudest achievements of my
life is that while people were like talking about their
wild theories about where the show was going to go,
I just sat on my hands. Yeah, not blabbing. Yeah,
where I wanted to be like, that is not what's
going to happen to that character, But okay, cool, I

(19:05):
love this theory. I never once said that. I was
just like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah. That was
very difficult to sit on, especially because some of the
emotional beats are so hard, and you can't talk to
very many other people about them. Be like I'm I'm
I'm on the struggle bus emotionally we need to no
so good, yes so good? Anyway, I don't I don't

(19:27):
think secret societies worked very well. No. Now, I will
tell you the funny coda, which is said, I was
talking to my beloved about this, as I often do,
and he said, that's exactly what the illuminati would watch it.
And he was joking, but he's right, like that out
That's why the concepts like this of conspiracy theories work
so well. You cannot disprove them because you can't really

(19:50):
prove a negative, can't prove the non existence of a
thing because there can always be a seed of doubt,
which is they're powerful. Anyway, I hope that everybody is
engaging in critical thought at all times. I know that's exhausting.
I want to do it all the time. Mm hmm.
Wears me out, but katta gotta. I know, our noisy

(20:13):
world is a lot to process all the time. I
had a similar discussion about this with one of my
siblings recently, who was like, I just I don't want
to pay attention to any of that, and I was like,
you have to mm hmm, like that is the burden
is on you, like you have to. But that's just
you know, everybody approaches the world differently. I'm very bossy

(20:36):
with my siblings. In any case, if you have days
off coming up, I hope that you get to watch
whatever show feels great to you. I am not anti escapism.
We all need an hour or two here and there
to play a game, goof off. Listen, I watch Garbage,
I watch Bravo TV. Sometimes a lot of times do
whatever makes you feel good and makes you ready to

(20:57):
be able to, you know, think critics about the world
around you and the thing's happening in your world, and
gives you that little valve of release so that you
can go on with your day to day without feeling
the weight of it all to a point of collapse.
I also hope that you find time to just embrace joy.
That's the secret society. Go out there and find joy

(21:18):
even when everything is a mess. You can make some
even in small increments. You know. For me, right now,
I'm thinking about a delicious mac and cheese that I'm
going to have when we're done that's going to be
some joy for me today. Whatever you can do to
take care of yourself and hopefully take care of others,
I'm going to encourage that if you have responsibilities where
you have to take care of others maybe, or you

(21:40):
gotta take care of work responsibilities, or you got to
do you know, something that you don't want to. I
hope that goes smoothly, it gets done more quickly than
you anticipate, and that you have a little time to
yourself or with people that you love so that you
can all embrace joy together. Heavens we need it. We
will be right back here on Monday with a brand
new episode. We will also of course be here tomorrow

(22:02):
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