June 26, 2026 • 25 mins
Holly talks about the agreement known as the Pact of the Catacombs and recent developments related to it. There's then discussion of Daguerre's Legion of Honor medal.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. Am Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We talked about the Catacombs of Rome this week. Yeah,
this is one where I felt almost a little guilty
because there's so much scholarship about it. Giving a brief overview,
I feel like I'm leaving so much stuff out. But
there was one particular recent development that was pretty interesting
to me that isn't really germane to the catacombs as
an entity themselves. It's a thing that references the Catacombs.
(00:41):
So in nineteen sixty five, there was a meeting or
a mass, depending on which sore she she read, held
in the catacombs of Domatilla. There were forty bishops there.
They were in Rome for the Second Vatican Council, and
(01:03):
they had this meeting there to discuss the way that
the clergy and particularly the bishops were living and their
lifestyle and its lack of alignment with the people that
they were pledged to serve. Sure So this resulted in
a document which is called the Pact of the Catacombs,
(01:27):
where these bishops committed to live their lives as the
average man, basically like renouncing their life of privilege, holding
no land, like any land that any of them had,
they were supposed to sign over to the Church. They
you know, were not supposed to wear fancy vestiments even
(01:47):
like keep everybody, keep it keep it cool, let's stay
basic and make it about our religious promise and not
about all of the benefits that being connected to the
Vatvatican gives us. It's a really lovely sentiment. It got
a lot of sort of ground swell support, Like eventually
(02:10):
it started with those forty bishops and eventually I think
five hundred bishops signed it, but then it just kind of.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Faded in the background.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Oh but then in twenty twenty two, Pope Francis was like, hey,
you guys, remember this, which fits if you know anything
about you know, his papacy in the way he went
about it, and he actually had another mass there at
the Basilica to kind of recommit people to it. It's
(02:44):
really interesting because NPR did a piece about it. I
think it was NPR where they had interviewed people like
historians within the Vatican and stuff, and they were kind
of like, well, some of the reason that it fell
out of favor. Is not necessarily what you think, like,
it's not necessarily like it's hard to give up fancy stuff.
As in the time nineteen sixty five, they were a
(03:09):
little worried that if they suddenly renounced everything and we're
like we are going to live as simple common men,
that people would be like, are you communisty now? So, yeah,
it's popularity waned pretty quickly. But it's interesting and I
like that it has been reintroduced in recent years as
(03:29):
something to consider, you know, for anybody. I mean, listen,
nobody needs a billion dollars. Nobody needs a billion dollars.
I mean, it's very funny because the Vatican is one
of the wealthiest entities on the planet. I mean I
wonder all the time because you'll if you look up
valuations of the Vatican's holdings, like it's almost impossible, right,
(03:52):
nobody really knows everything, and some of it is just
like logistically it's impossible. It's not even necessarily that things
are being withheld. It's that there are things like catacombs
that technically they are in charge of, but they can't
get in there to know what's in there. Like there
are when you have an entity that is so many
(04:13):
centuries old. There's just stuff that's hidden. I'm suddenly reminded
of a completely unrelated thing from back when I was
working in cataloging in a university library, when there was
like a very specific and very rare book that I
think one of our professors wanted from a library in London,
(04:39):
and we were like, it's in your catalog, Like what
do we need to do to make this work? Like
where he can get access or you can even ship
it and you insured and we'll And they were like,
here's the problem. It's here, but we don't know where.
Because it predates the bombings during World War Two, a
(05:00):
lot of things in our catalog are not really accessible,
but we keep them in the catalog for the sake
of the record. And I was like, that's fascinating, and
so this is a similar thing in many cases, right,
there's stuff that's there, Yeah, buried probably.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It's very fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Something I really liked about this episode, Like in school,
we mostly learned about Rome in the context of ancient Rome,
ancient Rome paganism, right like early or like the story
of earlier origins of democracy. That's a that's the whole
(05:39):
separate thing. But like, yeah, that's sort of how it
was taught to me in K through twelfth school and
then visiting Rome the one time that I've been there.
The amount of Christianity is inescapable. Oh yeah, it's just
like just everywhere. And so I had never really thought
(06:03):
about this window of time, like the transitional period between
Roman paganism and Christianity becoming the official religion of the
Roman Empire. Like I knew about conceptually about persecutions and
all of that, but I had not really thought about
that process and also thought about the fact that there
(06:23):
were also Jewish people there like that. Just it just
was a thing that had not really solidified in my mind,
and then this story laid it all out.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, yeah, and it is.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
It's surprisingly quick when you think about it, right that
it goes from hey, you got to get out because
we don't like that you're proselytizing, to you know, two
hundred and change years later, going by the way, everybody's
cool with like that last gasp of we hate Christians too.
(07:00):
Everybody worship whatever you want. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Also,
whatever deity is the real one, be cool with us,
and then it's only it's less than seventy years after
that that they're like, by the way.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Christianity official religion. Yeah, that's fast. Yeah, yeah, it's very fast.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Fascinating, Like could you imagine, I mean, I think some
of this is because of you know, where it is
on the timeline of recorded history, but could you imagine.
I'm trying to think if there's an example of a
country today that changes its official religion in less than
a century, like from you know, hyper intensive persecution to no,
(07:40):
that's actually our religion.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
It's interesting in that regard. Yeah, and you don't.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I mean, it makes sense when you think about it,
trying to kind of apply our knowledge of how humans
live and work and tend to congregate in the metropolises
that are seats of power that there would be like
other diverse people moving in, but we don't. We don't
(08:08):
get it in school as And also there were Christians
and Jewish people living there and they all had to
figure out how to make this work, and they had
to and it didn't always work, and they had to
figure out, you know, how to handle day to day
things like burying the dead. It's it's just interesting to me,
and so different from France, where it's like, uh oh spaghettios,
(08:31):
we've got a lot of dead people.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
We got to do something that.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Was a whole different thing, so completely different that I
was ready for it to be less different than it.
I didn't realize they went all the way back to
the first century. Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, fascinating on my list.
Although I am slightly claustrophobic, I managed okay in the
(08:59):
catacombs Paris because once you're down that's s viral staircase.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Going down was not my friend. But once you're down there.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
It's so cool that like the the fear parts of
my brain took a hike. Yeah, I remember who you
were down there, Like your expression was just like utterly transfixed.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh we were down there, so into it.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And the thing is that catacombs in Rome are much bigger,
Like when you're in the catacombs in Paris, it's close,
you're there's not a lot of headroom. There's this literally
has like vaulted ceilings in some sections. In some cases,
you know, it's multi stories. So I think it would
probably feel less claustrophobic. So we'll find out when I
go to Rome next. I don't know when that is,
(09:41):
but we're gonna get happened one way or another. Yeah,
because I got to see this, I had to pull
myself out of museums long enough to go do another thing.
This episode was also fun in how illustrative it is
of the ways it's come up recently on the show before.
(10:03):
So it may just be top of mind for me
right now, but how illustrative it is of the ways
that people will make logic jumps about things they're observing
that don't really hold water. They seem reasonable, so people
pick them up and run with them. Yeah, that's just
fascinating to me. I'm like, oh, this is how misinformation
(10:26):
perpetuates itself throughout years and years and years as we
try to sort out what's going on historically. And this
is an instance where there is enough recognition of the
importance of both the Jewish and the Christian catacombs that
there is a lot of scholarly interest in them. So
who knows if we'll get more information as time goes on.
(10:49):
It's also everything kind of you know, modern that's written
about it too, always does that kind of like, hey,
bt dubs, there could be more we haven't figured out yet. Like,
there's the high possibility that there are even more that
we just haven't haven't identified or uncovered, because there's you know, yeah,
they kind of like ran you know, Rome had its
(11:13):
kind of spokes of roads out of the city, and
a lot of them ran kind of a lot parallel
to some of those roads, like because people needed to
be able to access them. And so there are places
where people are like, no one's found one here yet,
there very well could be one, but then you would
have to initiate a dig and get permission. And as
(11:34):
we know, you know, the Italian government is very careful
about what they do and do not give permits for,
I mean, even from their their art as well as
their history. So that's part of why it why it
will probably take a minute, but I bet we'll find
more in our lifetimes. They're going to come up on Earth.
I guarantee at some time. I like how I just
(11:56):
made a guarantee. I can't substantiate any kind of way
other than vibes, but it was fascinating to me. I
don't know why I love Catacomb so much.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I just do. They're cool.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
We talked about Louis La Prince this week, Yes, and
his fascinating, often sad, super interesting life did not learn
not to trust his brother in law's ideas.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Now, but that's okay.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I saw somebody quoting something Lizzie had written about her
brother about how he was just not governed by you know,
sensible sensibleness, but that that's how all great thinkers work,
and I was like, oh, Lizzie, you loved him. One
of the cool things that I wanted to mention is
(12:54):
that the exposition that Louis la Prince went to with
the Whitley Foundry he first started working for them in
the eighteen sixties was like one of those historical nexus
points where a bunch of cool stuff is going on
in one place, which happens with expositions anyway, Right, That's
where a lot of interesting things are happening. But that
(13:16):
was also the one where electricity was first showcased. Oh,
it is the expo that Jules Verne attended and was
so inspired by what he saw there that he went
home and wrote twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Like
there were just a lot of people there that we
now think of as like standard parts of history, and
there he was I just find that cool. I wish
(13:37):
that's another use for the time machine. We can go
to expos that we and just walk around. We mentioned
only briefly, but it has its own interesting history and
could potentially maybe be an episode at some point. The
Morris Jumail Mansion. Oh yeah, that I pronounced wrong, and
you had to correct me and I had to do
it over again. I had to look it up because
I wasn't sure so, but it's really interesting. It is
(13:59):
the oldest home in New York. It was built in
seventeen sixty five, at least the oldest standing. I'm not
sure if it's the oldest if it was the first one,
but it's historic and really interesting. George Washington used it
as one of his sort of meeting places during the
Revolutionary War. It has always been rumored to be haunted.
(14:23):
It's been, you know, and apparently people try to scare
Lizzie off of it with that, like don't buy that house,
it's scared.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
She's like, I don't care.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
We're going to fix it up and make it cool,
which is sad because her husband never got to see
all of her efforts in making this amazing home for him,
and like where they were going to essentially host people
and show them his cool inventions, like they really thought
they were on the precipice of changing the world.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
In some ways.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
I do love how close they were and their partnership,
Like their letters to one another are like the relationship
everyone wants, right. They seem like best friends. He doesn't
ever treat her like she is not his equal, like
he asked her opinion, He trusts her intelligence. They're just
it's very sweet. Yeah, I love it. Here is one
(15:09):
my favorite thing I learned while researching this zips Okay,
it's it's not about Louis le Prince. It's about Louis
de Guerre. Okay, so we know. I'm sure we've mentioned
it before on the show, that he was given the
French Legion of Honor. He apparently wore that medal everywhere.
(15:30):
That's funny, like for the the rest of his life
after he received it, you would just see him out
walking in the village.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
With his metal metals.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
And that is not a small medal, it's a big cross.
It's very it's very charming to me. But then I
got to thinking about it. At first, I was like,
you silly thing, and then I was like, you know what,
that might be a better way to handle it than
putting it in a drawer or in a display case
and only ever, you know, occasionally looking at it. He
it was his day a jewelry. I'm kind of reminded
(16:03):
of that time that we ran a race at Disney
and then walked around with our medals on. You had
more medals than me because you ran much more than me,
and they went. But yeah, we just walked around. Everybody
just walks around with their medals on. It's great, yeah,
but just for the day, just for the day. Yeah.
(16:23):
I again, some people will do it for the rest
of the weekend. But I can't imagine wearing them every
day for the rest. I just wearing them to the store. Now,
I'm like, maybe I should. I have a lot of
running metals, so I could break those out. You could
cycle through them as accessories. I'll be like Flave of Flave,
but with running metals. That'll be my thing. Everybody will know.
(16:45):
I am almost as fascinated with how badly people want
to believe Edison put out a hit on Louis Le
Prince as I am with Louis La Prince himself. Yeah,
I just there's plenty to criticize about, but I just
don't envision him as a murderer or.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
A hired hitman employer.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I think he was capable of being so ruthless, but
I think the logistics of something like that may have
been beyond anybody.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Really.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
He wasn't like a mob boss who had a whole
network of people that you know, could communicate things. And like,
if you buy into that, you have to somehow implicate
his brother, because how else would anybody know that he
missed the morning train and had to take the afternoon train.
Like they're so like, the logic to me just falls
(17:40):
apart really fast. Yeah, but I know people love that idea,
and a lot of if you read different Louis La
Prince's biographies or even books about the history of cinema
that you know, dedicate a section, whether it's like a
chapter or even just a few paragraphs him. They all
seem to have their own take on what happened to him,
and I mean a number of them do kind of
(18:03):
push forward this Edison idea, and it's very very interesting.
I mean, according to Lizzie's writing, there was a time
where Louis La Prince debated when they were living in
New York over like should I put together a pitch
and go to Edison and tell him what I've done?
But there's no evidence he ever did that, or that
he ever had any real contact with him, And so
(18:26):
I'm sure there's somebody out there who's done a deep dive,
but it's unclear to me at this point if Edison
even was fully aware of what La Prince was doing. Yeah. Yeah,
That's the other thing is you don't always know who
knew what about other people's work, like where they were
in their progress, because on the one hand, people did
talk about stuff. On the other that doesn't mean everybody
(18:50):
got broadcast and knew about everybody else's business. And Louis
the Prince didn't write stuff down.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
So yeah, yeah, Streets.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
When we were talking about his disappearance and like getting
in touch with his brother to try to find out
what happened, I was thinking about how I am often
kind of frustrated by the ability to be contacted at
any moment all the time, and the torrent of information
that we are sort of having a heart at us
(19:33):
at all times. But I am grateful to live at
a time where when there is an emergency, it's possible
to at least reach someone's voicemail immediately, not the same
situation as needing to reach a brother in France to
(19:55):
find out what happened at the time that we were
talking about. Yeah, there are several moments where I one
of my many takeaways was that Lizzie Leprince was an
incredibly resilient woman, right because when Louis decided, like I
have to go to France and fight, like they had
a baby of their own who was just a.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Few months old and she didn't know if he was
living or dead.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
There is a story that she got at least one,
maybe more weird letter from him, and the weird is
not the letter, it's like how it landed in her
possession where there was a balloon that had been smuggled
out of France that contained a like a.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Batch of letters.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
But that balloon went down over the ocean and some
of the letters were recovered from the water, right, and
she got one of those, but it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Only had like his name.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I think it was like the date and his name
and where he was and she could make out his signature,
but like none of the actual information it conveyed was
in there. I don't know if that's better or worse
to get that when you don't know what's going on
with your loved one. Yeah, and she didn't hear him
again until he was like, Okay, we're wrapped up, I'm
coming home. And then when he went back to Europe
(21:17):
for what they thought was probably going to be a
few months, and he stayed for three years while she
took care of the kids and he wasn't making money
to send back to her. Like, I don't know how
exactly she survived. I presume her parents probably helped her
because they were in a better financial position, but like,
that's a long time. She was a single mom, essentially
(21:39):
in a city where they had been living for a
while at that point, but like she was not native
to she just had to be really resilient.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
She seems amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Also, she was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I've seen one photograph of her and I was like,
it's one of those things where it's like them with
their kids who were like in early adulthood. Oh sure,
And I got real confused because Lizzie looks as young
as the kids, and I'm just like, she's a good
jeedshit really. She was very pretty, she's very youthful, she's
very smart.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Like to her, the most fulfilling thing was working at
a school for the deaf and introducing art to those
kind of curricula, which was not something that was prioritized
at the time in a lot of places.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
She just seems cool. More Lizzy please, damn more Lizzie please. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Cinema history the thing that I mentioned briefly in the episode,
and I didn't name the person's name because I don't
want to that. I was like, this might also be
an episode has nothing to do with film. You'll be
happy to know, Okay. I do love talking about early
film history, but that one is it's home deck and
it's completely different. Fingers crossed. I can find enough nice.
(22:52):
I'm really into weird inventions lately, so get ready, get Ready.
Not necessarily weird, but like stuff that's commonplace to us,
that like if we don't even think about where did
that come from?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Did it fly through the air and land here? I
almost said like a bar.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Of soap, which is the most deep cut tom Waite's
reference I could ever make. It's like a reference to
an interview he did like years ago, where he said
songs to him seemed like they just sometimes flew in
from outer space and landed like a bar of soap,
And I was like, that's a great way to describe
how a song comes to be. Anyway, I just made
(23:31):
a perplexed face because I did not get the reference
at all. No, I would not expect anybody too. I mean,
it's a weird deep cut. That's one of those things
that to me seems very normal. I say it all
the time to myself. Nobody else knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
It's fine in any case.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
If this is your weekend coming up and you go
to the movies, thank the people like Louis, the Prince
and everyone else who was trying to figure out how
to capture motion pictures.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
It's all very cool.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
If you don't go to the movies, I still hope
you do something so fun. I hope you eat something
incredibly delicious. Right now, I'm craving peanut butter toast for
no reason. But doesn't that sound like push away the
gourmand food. I want peanut butter toast. I don't know
what that's about. You crave what you crave. I hope
that you have RESTful times that you're able to find
(24:23):
moments of peace and joy. I hope if you have
things that you have to do, responsibilities, that you still
make the best of them and they aren't too taxing
and you don't feel burned out by them, and that
everybody is kind to one another because we need it desperately.
We will have something brand new on Monday to talk about,
(24:44):
and tomorrow we will have a classic. Stuff you missed
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. Am Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We talked about the Catacombs of Rome this week. Yeah,
this is one where I felt almost a little guilty
because there's so much scholarship about it. Giving a brief overview,
I feel like I'm leaving so much stuff out. But
there was one particular recent development that was pretty interesting
to me that isn't really germane to the catacombs as
an entity themselves. It's a thing that references the Catacombs.
(00:41):
So in nineteen sixty five, there was a meeting or
a mass, depending on which sore she she read, held
in the catacombs of Domatilla. There were forty bishops there.
They were in Rome for the Second Vatican Council, and
(01:03):
they had this meeting there to discuss the way that
the clergy and particularly the bishops were living and their
lifestyle and its lack of alignment with the people that
they were pledged to serve. Sure So this resulted in
a document which is called the Pact of the Catacombs,
(01:27):
where these bishops committed to live their lives as the
average man, basically like renouncing their life of privilege, holding
no land, like any land that any of them had,
they were supposed to sign over to the Church. They
you know, were not supposed to wear fancy vestiments even
(01:47):
like keep everybody, keep it keep it cool, let's stay
basic and make it about our religious promise and not
about all of the benefits that being connected to the
Vatvatican gives us. It's a really lovely sentiment. It got
a lot of sort of ground swell support, Like eventually
(02:10):
it started with those forty bishops and eventually I think
five hundred bishops signed it, but then it just kind of.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Faded in the background.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Oh but then in twenty twenty two, Pope Francis was like, hey,
you guys, remember this, which fits if you know anything
about you know, his papacy in the way he went
about it, and he actually had another mass there at
the Basilica to kind of recommit people to it. It's
(02:44):
really interesting because NPR did a piece about it. I
think it was NPR where they had interviewed people like
historians within the Vatican and stuff, and they were kind
of like, well, some of the reason that it fell
out of favor. Is not necessarily what you think, like,
it's not necessarily like it's hard to give up fancy stuff.
As in the time nineteen sixty five, they were a
(03:09):
little worried that if they suddenly renounced everything and we're
like we are going to live as simple common men,
that people would be like, are you communisty now? So, yeah,
it's popularity waned pretty quickly. But it's interesting and I
like that it has been reintroduced in recent years as
(03:29):
something to consider, you know, for anybody. I mean, listen,
nobody needs a billion dollars. Nobody needs a billion dollars.
I mean, it's very funny because the Vatican is one
of the wealthiest entities on the planet. I mean I
wonder all the time because you'll if you look up
valuations of the Vatican's holdings, like it's almost impossible, right,
(03:52):
nobody really knows everything, and some of it is just
like logistically it's impossible. It's not even necessarily that things
are being withheld. It's that there are things like catacombs
that technically they are in charge of, but they can't
get in there to know what's in there. Like there
are when you have an entity that is so many
(04:13):
centuries old. There's just stuff that's hidden. I'm suddenly reminded
of a completely unrelated thing from back when I was
working in cataloging in a university library, when there was
like a very specific and very rare book that I
think one of our professors wanted from a library in London,
(04:39):
and we were like, it's in your catalog, Like what
do we need to do to make this work? Like
where he can get access or you can even ship
it and you insured and we'll And they were like,
here's the problem. It's here, but we don't know where.
Because it predates the bombings during World War Two, a
(05:00):
lot of things in our catalog are not really accessible,
but we keep them in the catalog for the sake
of the record. And I was like, that's fascinating, and
so this is a similar thing in many cases, right,
there's stuff that's there, Yeah, buried probably.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It's very fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Something I really liked about this episode, Like in school,
we mostly learned about Rome in the context of ancient Rome,
ancient Rome paganism, right like early or like the story
of earlier origins of democracy. That's a that's the whole
(05:39):
separate thing. But like, yeah, that's sort of how it
was taught to me in K through twelfth school and
then visiting Rome the one time that I've been there.
The amount of Christianity is inescapable. Oh yeah, it's just
like just everywhere. And so I had never really thought
(06:03):
about this window of time, like the transitional period between
Roman paganism and Christianity becoming the official religion of the
Roman Empire. Like I knew about conceptually about persecutions and
all of that, but I had not really thought about
that process and also thought about the fact that there
(06:23):
were also Jewish people there like that. Just it just
was a thing that had not really solidified in my mind,
and then this story laid it all out.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, yeah, and it is.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
It's surprisingly quick when you think about it, right that
it goes from hey, you got to get out because
we don't like that you're proselytizing, to you know, two
hundred and change years later, going by the way, everybody's
cool with like that last gasp of we hate Christians too.
(07:00):
Everybody worship whatever you want. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Also,
whatever deity is the real one, be cool with us,
and then it's only it's less than seventy years after
that that they're like, by the way.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Christianity official religion. Yeah, that's fast. Yeah, yeah, it's very fast.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Fascinating, Like could you imagine, I mean, I think some
of this is because of you know, where it is
on the timeline of recorded history, but could you imagine.
I'm trying to think if there's an example of a
country today that changes its official religion in less than
a century, like from you know, hyper intensive persecution to no,
(07:40):
that's actually our religion.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
It's interesting in that regard. Yeah, and you don't.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I mean, it makes sense when you think about it,
trying to kind of apply our knowledge of how humans
live and work and tend to congregate in the metropolises
that are seats of power that there would be like
other diverse people moving in, but we don't. We don't
(08:08):
get it in school as And also there were Christians
and Jewish people living there and they all had to
figure out how to make this work, and they had
to and it didn't always work, and they had to
figure out, you know, how to handle day to day
things like burying the dead. It's it's just interesting to me,
and so different from France, where it's like, uh oh spaghettios,
(08:31):
we've got a lot of dead people.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
We got to do something that.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Was a whole different thing, so completely different that I
was ready for it to be less different than it.
I didn't realize they went all the way back to
the first century. Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, fascinating on my list.
Although I am slightly claustrophobic, I managed okay in the
(08:59):
catacombs Paris because once you're down that's s viral staircase.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Going down was not my friend. But once you're down there.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
It's so cool that like the the fear parts of
my brain took a hike. Yeah, I remember who you
were down there, Like your expression was just like utterly transfixed.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh we were down there, so into it.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And the thing is that catacombs in Rome are much bigger,
Like when you're in the catacombs in Paris, it's close,
you're there's not a lot of headroom. There's this literally
has like vaulted ceilings in some sections. In some cases,
you know, it's multi stories. So I think it would
probably feel less claustrophobic. So we'll find out when I
go to Rome next. I don't know when that is,
(09:41):
but we're gonna get happened one way or another. Yeah,
because I got to see this, I had to pull
myself out of museums long enough to go do another thing.
This episode was also fun in how illustrative it is
of the ways it's come up recently on the show before.
(10:03):
So it may just be top of mind for me
right now, but how illustrative it is of the ways
that people will make logic jumps about things they're observing
that don't really hold water. They seem reasonable, so people
pick them up and run with them. Yeah, that's just
fascinating to me. I'm like, oh, this is how misinformation
(10:26):
perpetuates itself throughout years and years and years as we
try to sort out what's going on historically. And this
is an instance where there is enough recognition of the
importance of both the Jewish and the Christian catacombs that
there is a lot of scholarly interest in them. So
who knows if we'll get more information as time goes on.
(10:49):
It's also everything kind of you know, modern that's written
about it too, always does that kind of like, hey,
bt dubs, there could be more we haven't figured out yet. Like,
there's the high possibility that there are even more that
we just haven't haven't identified or uncovered, because there's you know, yeah,
they kind of like ran you know, Rome had its
(11:13):
kind of spokes of roads out of the city, and
a lot of them ran kind of a lot parallel
to some of those roads, like because people needed to
be able to access them. And so there are places
where people are like, no one's found one here yet,
there very well could be one, but then you would
have to initiate a dig and get permission. And as
(11:34):
we know, you know, the Italian government is very careful
about what they do and do not give permits for,
I mean, even from their their art as well as
their history. So that's part of why it why it
will probably take a minute, but I bet we'll find
more in our lifetimes. They're going to come up on Earth.
I guarantee at some time. I like how I just
(11:56):
made a guarantee. I can't substantiate any kind of way
other than vibes, but it was fascinating to me. I
don't know why I love Catacomb so much.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I just do. They're cool.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
We talked about Louis La Prince this week, Yes, and
his fascinating, often sad, super interesting life did not learn
not to trust his brother in law's ideas.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Now, but that's okay.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I saw somebody quoting something Lizzie had written about her
brother about how he was just not governed by you know,
sensible sensibleness, but that that's how all great thinkers work,
and I was like, oh, Lizzie, you loved him. One
of the cool things that I wanted to mention is
(12:54):
that the exposition that Louis la Prince went to with
the Whitley Foundry he first started working for them in
the eighteen sixties was like one of those historical nexus
points where a bunch of cool stuff is going on
in one place, which happens with expositions anyway, Right, That's
where a lot of interesting things are happening. But that
(13:16):
was also the one where electricity was first showcased. Oh,
it is the expo that Jules Verne attended and was
so inspired by what he saw there that he went
home and wrote twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Like
there were just a lot of people there that we
now think of as like standard parts of history, and
there he was I just find that cool. I wish
(13:37):
that's another use for the time machine. We can go
to expos that we and just walk around. We mentioned
only briefly, but it has its own interesting history and
could potentially maybe be an episode at some point. The
Morris Jumail Mansion. Oh yeah, that I pronounced wrong, and
you had to correct me and I had to do
it over again. I had to look it up because
I wasn't sure so, but it's really interesting. It is
(13:59):
the oldest home in New York. It was built in
seventeen sixty five, at least the oldest standing. I'm not
sure if it's the oldest if it was the first one,
but it's historic and really interesting. George Washington used it
as one of his sort of meeting places during the
Revolutionary War. It has always been rumored to be haunted.
(14:23):
It's been, you know, and apparently people try to scare
Lizzie off of it with that, like don't buy that house,
it's scared.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
She's like, I don't care.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
We're going to fix it up and make it cool,
which is sad because her husband never got to see
all of her efforts in making this amazing home for him,
and like where they were going to essentially host people
and show them his cool inventions, like they really thought
they were on the precipice of changing the world.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
In some ways.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
I do love how close they were and their partnership,
Like their letters to one another are like the relationship
everyone wants, right. They seem like best friends. He doesn't
ever treat her like she is not his equal, like
he asked her opinion, He trusts her intelligence. They're just
it's very sweet. Yeah, I love it. Here is one
(15:09):
my favorite thing I learned while researching this zips Okay,
it's it's not about Louis le Prince. It's about Louis
de Guerre. Okay, so we know. I'm sure we've mentioned
it before on the show, that he was given the
French Legion of Honor. He apparently wore that medal everywhere.
(15:30):
That's funny, like for the the rest of his life
after he received it, you would just see him out
walking in the village.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
With his metal metals.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
And that is not a small medal, it's a big cross.
It's very it's very charming to me. But then I
got to thinking about it. At first, I was like,
you silly thing, and then I was like, you know what,
that might be a better way to handle it than
putting it in a drawer or in a display case
and only ever, you know, occasionally looking at it. He
it was his day a jewelry. I'm kind of reminded
(16:03):
of that time that we ran a race at Disney
and then walked around with our medals on. You had
more medals than me because you ran much more than me,
and they went. But yeah, we just walked around. Everybody
just walks around with their medals on. It's great, yeah,
but just for the day, just for the day. Yeah.
(16:23):
I again, some people will do it for the rest
of the weekend. But I can't imagine wearing them every
day for the rest. I just wearing them to the store. Now,
I'm like, maybe I should. I have a lot of
running metals, so I could break those out. You could
cycle through them as accessories. I'll be like Flave of Flave,
but with running metals. That'll be my thing. Everybody will know.
(16:45):
I am almost as fascinated with how badly people want
to believe Edison put out a hit on Louis Le
Prince as I am with Louis La Prince himself. Yeah,
I just there's plenty to criticize about, but I just
don't envision him as a murderer or.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
A hired hitman employer.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I think he was capable of being so ruthless, but
I think the logistics of something like that may have
been beyond anybody.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Really.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
He wasn't like a mob boss who had a whole
network of people that you know, could communicate things. And like,
if you buy into that, you have to somehow implicate
his brother, because how else would anybody know that he
missed the morning train and had to take the afternoon train.
Like they're so like, the logic to me just falls
(17:40):
apart really fast. Yeah, but I know people love that idea,
and a lot of if you read different Louis La
Prince's biographies or even books about the history of cinema
that you know, dedicate a section, whether it's like a
chapter or even just a few paragraphs him. They all
seem to have their own take on what happened to him,
and I mean a number of them do kind of
(18:03):
push forward this Edison idea, and it's very very interesting.
I mean, according to Lizzie's writing, there was a time
where Louis La Prince debated when they were living in
New York over like should I put together a pitch
and go to Edison and tell him what I've done?
But there's no evidence he ever did that, or that
he ever had any real contact with him, And so
(18:26):
I'm sure there's somebody out there who's done a deep dive,
but it's unclear to me at this point if Edison
even was fully aware of what La Prince was doing. Yeah. Yeah,
That's the other thing is you don't always know who
knew what about other people's work, like where they were
in their progress, because on the one hand, people did
talk about stuff. On the other that doesn't mean everybody
(18:50):
got broadcast and knew about everybody else's business. And Louis
the Prince didn't write stuff down.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
So yeah, yeah, Streets.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
When we were talking about his disappearance and like getting
in touch with his brother to try to find out
what happened, I was thinking about how I am often
kind of frustrated by the ability to be contacted at
any moment all the time, and the torrent of information
that we are sort of having a heart at us
(19:33):
at all times. But I am grateful to live at
a time where when there is an emergency, it's possible
to at least reach someone's voicemail immediately, not the same
situation as needing to reach a brother in France to
(19:55):
find out what happened at the time that we were
talking about. Yeah, there are several moments where I one
of my many takeaways was that Lizzie Leprince was an
incredibly resilient woman, right because when Louis decided, like I
have to go to France and fight, like they had
a baby of their own who was just a.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Few months old and she didn't know if he was
living or dead.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
There is a story that she got at least one,
maybe more weird letter from him, and the weird is
not the letter, it's like how it landed in her
possession where there was a balloon that had been smuggled
out of France that contained a like a.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Batch of letters.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
But that balloon went down over the ocean and some
of the letters were recovered from the water, right, and
she got one of those, but it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Only had like his name.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I think it was like the date and his name
and where he was and she could make out his signature,
but like none of the actual information it conveyed was
in there. I don't know if that's better or worse
to get that when you don't know what's going on
with your loved one. Yeah, and she didn't hear him
again until he was like, Okay, we're wrapped up, I'm
coming home. And then when he went back to Europe
(21:17):
for what they thought was probably going to be a
few months, and he stayed for three years while she
took care of the kids and he wasn't making money
to send back to her. Like, I don't know how
exactly she survived. I presume her parents probably helped her
because they were in a better financial position, but like,
that's a long time. She was a single mom, essentially
(21:39):
in a city where they had been living for a
while at that point, but like she was not native
to she just had to be really resilient.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
She seems amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Also, she was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I've seen one photograph of her and I was like,
it's one of those things where it's like them with
their kids who were like in early adulthood. Oh sure,
And I got real confused because Lizzie looks as young
as the kids, and I'm just like, she's a good
jeedshit really. She was very pretty, she's very youthful, she's
very smart.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Like to her, the most fulfilling thing was working at
a school for the deaf and introducing art to those
kind of curricula, which was not something that was prioritized
at the time in a lot of places.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
She just seems cool. More Lizzy please, damn more Lizzie please. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Cinema history the thing that I mentioned briefly in the episode,
and I didn't name the person's name because I don't
want to that. I was like, this might also be
an episode has nothing to do with film. You'll be
happy to know, Okay. I do love talking about early
film history, but that one is it's home deck and
it's completely different. Fingers crossed. I can find enough nice.
(22:52):
I'm really into weird inventions lately, so get ready, get Ready.
Not necessarily weird, but like stuff that's commonplace to us,
that like if we don't even think about where did
that come from?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Did it fly through the air and land here? I
almost said like a bar.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Of soap, which is the most deep cut tom Waite's
reference I could ever make. It's like a reference to
an interview he did like years ago, where he said
songs to him seemed like they just sometimes flew in
from outer space and landed like a bar of soap,
And I was like, that's a great way to describe
how a song comes to be. Anyway, I just made
(23:31):
a perplexed face because I did not get the reference
at all. No, I would not expect anybody too. I mean,
it's a weird deep cut. That's one of those things
that to me seems very normal. I say it all
the time to myself. Nobody else knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
It's fine in any case.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
If this is your weekend coming up and you go
to the movies, thank the people like Louis, the Prince
and everyone else who was trying to figure out how
to capture motion pictures.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
It's all very cool.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
If you don't go to the movies, I still hope
you do something so fun. I hope you eat something
incredibly delicious. Right now, I'm craving peanut butter toast for
no reason. But doesn't that sound like push away the
gourmand food. I want peanut butter toast. I don't know
what that's about. You crave what you crave. I hope
that you have RESTful times that you're able to find
(24:23):
moments of peace and joy. I hope if you have
things that you have to do, responsibilities, that you still
make the best of them and they aren't too taxing
and you don't feel burned out by them, and that
everybody is kind to one another because we need it desperately.
We will have something brand new on Monday to talk about,
(24:44):
and tomorrow we will have a classic. Stuff you missed
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