April 29, 2022 • 22 mins
Holly and Tracy talk about their love of savory pies, the wish for a shepherd's pie with a crust, and efforts to tie pumpkin pie to abolition. Then they discuss the Gallaudet 11 and their experiences with motion sickness.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday and Holly
Fry And I'm Tracy B. Wilson. So this week we
dallied with pie a little bit. We did. You want
(00:23):
to know why I ended up doing this episode. I do.
I have a very close friend who I love more
than most humans on earth, who is adamant that if
it is savory, it should not be called pie. Okay,
had this debate for many years, and I'm like, no,
my love savory pies were here first, like everything was pie,
(00:44):
and so I just, uh, I love savory pie. Hello,
savory pie. I love all the pies. Our Christmas dinner
this year, in the throes of all macron covid spike
when we saw no one, uh was um a chicken
pie that I got as a pickup order from a
(01:05):
local bakery. Um, along with some sides that we had
to go with it, And it was so good. I
love a I love a savory pie. I love a
chicken pot pie. I am less enthused than people would
think about shepherd's pie. I love a shepherd's pie. I
like it, but I want it in a crust. Yeah,
(01:28):
like I love the mashed potatoes on top, but like
a crust would is really what I'm after in a pie.
It is kind of uh, and it doesn't follow some
of the rules of what you would call a pie.
It's more of a cast role. Yeah, just fine. That's
another thing from like the the first long stretch of
(01:49):
the pandemic, when we, you know, we were not eating
in restaurants or really for a while ordering food from
restaurants at our house. I had this stretch where I
was like, you know what, I what I just really
want to do so bad is just go to a
bar and have a Shepherd's Pie and a beer. And
(02:09):
it doesn't even need to be good. Shepherd's Pie can
be adequate, mediocre, adequate, medio. It was just like that
whole experience I missed so much. Um And none of
the restaurants since we did start ordering more take out,
none of the restaurants near us had Shepherd's Pie on
the menu. UM. One did for St. Patrick's Day the
(02:31):
other day, and I did get some St. Patrick's Day
Shepherd's pie. Nice. Do you have a favorite pie? Oh? Man?
So that would be really hard to narrow down in
terms of a sweet pie. I really do like cherry pie. Um.
I also like pumpkin pie a lot, except I will
(02:51):
often treat the pumpkin pie as a vehicle to get
the whipped cream into my mouth. Oh no, pumpkin pie
for days. Um. I like a lot of different uh,
a lot of different savory pies. Chicken pot pie is
really good. Chicken and dumplings is not really a pie,
but sometimes in the wintertime, my spouse makes chicken and
(03:14):
dumplings and it's so good and so comforting. I um, yeah,
pumpkin pie forever, I love it. My husband's favorites are
pecan pie and key lime pie. Key lime pie is delicious.
It is very good. I've never managed to get one
exactly right, but I His beloved Aunt Beth, who is
(03:36):
now no longer with us, used to make him a
pecam pie anytime he visited, and he would talk about
Aunt bess amazing pecam pie. And I finally was like
Aunt Beeth, who I loved that woman? Um, she was
like walking history. She knew everything about everything. Um. But
I had asked her about it, she was like, I
just got it off the bag and it was whoops up.
So so I, UM, I have since made many pecompies
(03:59):
for him, um, which I also love. Yeah. Um. On
the very first Jonathan Colton Cruise, one of the first nights, uh,
they had key lime pie on the menu for as
one as the one of the dessert options, and almost
(04:20):
our whole table ordered that. And then we saw the
table behind us send their key lime pie back in
Unison and we were like what we We were like,
what what was up with your pie? Um? And it
it blessed whoever was working in the kitchen. They had
not made a good key lime pie and and somebody
(04:44):
said it tasted like sadness, and sadness pie then became
like a cruise and joke. But after that it was
like for a while, anytime I saw Keilim pie on
the menu, I ordered it to try to erase the
memory of a one that just it just had no flavor.
I wonder if they actually used key lime in it
(05:07):
or not, because that will like a regular lime juice subout,
is not acceptable. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. Um.
I'm sure there's some chemistry related reason of like the
acidity of each different one or something, but it doesn't
taste right. Um. Qui li pie I could eat. So
when I was a child, Um, when we needed to
(05:27):
take it assert somewhere and my mom just did not
have time, she would make this pie called hershey Bar pie,
which you took uh, five of the six Hershey Bars
in a six pack of Hershey Bars. You melted them
and folded them into a container of cool whip. Now
put that into the fridge, bouh in a in a
(05:51):
crust like in a Graham cracker crust, I think is
what it would go in. Extremely that's way more delicious
than it has any right to listen. Sometimes it's magical.
We mentioned that we were going to talk about this
abolitionist thing in pumpkin Pie. Yeah, And what people often
reference is that, Um, several abolitionists that also wrote about
(06:17):
cookery wrote about pumpkin pie, which is true. Sarah Hale
is often brought up as she wrote about a lot
of food. Yeah yeah Um. She also did have an
anti slavery novel which was called Northwood, and it had
pumpkin pie in it, and his referenced as being the
best dish on the table or the most distinguished dish
(06:40):
on the table. And so I think people have made
those connections that it might be a clue because Lydia
Mariah Child also talked about pumpkin pie of course in
her um New England Thanksgiving poetry. Um. But again, those
are all kind of like you're connecting dots, but it's
not necessarily like clear to me. Yeah. I remember also
(07:03):
seeing some discussion of there were a lot more people
growing pumpkins in their little home farm plots, and it
was more of a like small garden kind of crop
rather than the sort of like much larger crop that
would be that would have an enslaved workforce, and like
(07:26):
people making a connection there, and it it just it
all felt like to me when I was reading all
of that that it was sort of pulling together some
things to build a story. And I was like, I'm
not I would like this a lot more if somebody
had unearthed an essay that someone had written about how
we should all eat uh pumpkin pies the symbol of
(07:51):
our abolitionist feelings. Yeah, I mean, like you, it's like
it seems like they're interesting things going on that then
have a lot of additional meaning ascribed to them, when
it is just as likely that because pumpkins grow all
over North America pretty readily and and are pretty easy.
(08:15):
I mean, a pumpkin pie is actually quite easy to make.
Um that you know, to me, it seems natural that
a lot of people would have adopted pumpkin pie and
really loved it, because I certainly do. Um. So, yeah,
it's a little it's a little bit of a stretch.
It feels to me perhaps some piece of information will
be unearth that will change all of our minds and
be like, Nope, it really was a secret code, but
(08:41):
not so far, especially because it's still involved sugar. Yeah,
which most there were abolitionists that were like, no, I'm
not baking sweet things because I don't want to be
part of that. Um, but pumpkin pie. I didn't. Ever,
I didn't stumble across any that were like, don't you sugar,
which would have supported that idea a little bit more. Yeah,
(09:01):
but no, but I sure want to bake pie. I
know it's springtime. I'm ready for a pumpkin pie. May
have to happen. I will tell you one of the
saddest things that ever happened to me. This is like pathetic.
You know how when like you go to someone else's
house for a holiday and you have those things you
(09:22):
love about the holiday, and then they're not the same
at that. I will not say who, but I had
gone to someone's house for the first time for a
holiday and I had said something about will there be
pumpkin pie beforehand, and they were like, oh, yeah, we
can do that. And what I didn't know was that
in their head they said, we'll go buy a frozen
(09:43):
pumpkin pie and throw it in and like not to
dog on anybody that does that, but like, pumpkin pie
is so easy to make. Oh man, gave me the sads. Yeah,
I'm very pro pumpkin pie. That whole like pie is
(10:05):
addictive and is a monster, was shocker to me. Yeah,
that was very strident and its arguments against pie. And
there were a lot of people in that camp that
were like, no pie is there were there was like
a significant number of physicians that were like, we gotta
get Americans to stop eating pie, which again, like nutritionally, yes,
(10:27):
you should not be eating pie all the time for
every meal, but that's like true of any balanced diet, right,
But um, it was I'm fascinated by the tug of
war over pie. And of course now everyone is like
as American as apple pie, and I'm like, that's English,
but right, all right, let's go bake pies. Let's be
(11:01):
on the show. We talked about the gallat at eleven.
We sure did contributions to the Space program. I when
I saw that conversation on Twitter that we talked about
at the end of the episode, I was like, that
sounds really cool and interesting, and it seems clear that
a lot of folks have been trying to make that
story more widely known. Sounds awesome. And I wasn't totally
(11:24):
aware when I got into it how much motion sickness
I was gonna be reading about motion sickness a thing
I am susceptible to and feel like over the course
of the pandemic, when I was not doing as much
travel by any means other than my own feat, I
feel like I've become more susceptible to it. It's like
(11:47):
I lost I lost my adaptation to being in a
car or on a train or a subway or whatever.
I think that's actually though common, right, most people get
more own emotion sickness as they get older. Is that
just an old wives tale? It would not surprise me.
It seems likely. I mean, there's a lot of stuff
that happens in your ears as you ate. Right, I
(12:09):
will say this, I can't handle roller coasters that I
used to be able to handle, no problem. The same
way that Brian and I have both discussed, like when
we go to amusement parks, there's like a well we've
reached let's sit on the bench and wait for the
kids age like yeah, so our younger friends will go right,
and we're like, no, thank you. I have no problem.
(12:30):
I don't think, or had not until maybe recently, with
any inner ear stuff. I can read in a car
that I'm not driving, no problem. I can do. Tummy
is a different deal though, Like if you get a
sugar shuka shook a going on with my stomach contents,
there might be some nausea. Yeah you were. You were
(12:52):
with me for one of the most dramatic and sudden
experiences of motion sickness in my whole life. I feel
some degree of guilt because I feel like I caused it. No,
you didn't cause it. I was super excited about this
experience until moment one of its starting, which was on
Star Tours. I was very excited about Star Tours, and
(13:18):
we say in the episode that that motions sickness is
still not entirely known. It is, there's still unanswered questions
about motion sickness, but like the most widely accepted explanation
for what causes it is like a mismatch between what
your eyes are seeing and what's happening in your vestibular system.
And that's definitely what was happening in this case, because
immediately the slight difference between what I was seeing and
(13:42):
the gimbal rig in Star Tours, just instantly it was like, Oh,
I'm going to spend my entire remainder of this ride
focusing the entirety of my being on keeping my contents
inside my body. It's very funny too. I wonder, and
(14:03):
I would hate. I don't want to put you through
it to test it, but I do wonder what some
of the newer rides, and of course something you specifically
of Star Wars he rides would do to you, like
I think probably um Smugglers Run, which is the Millennium
(14:25):
Falcon ride. I think that might be problematic. Maybe. Yeah.
I don't know about Rise of the Resistance though, because
there's less of the VR stuff you're more like in
in it. In it Um, so that would be curious,
but I would not want to be like Tracy get
on this. Let's see if you borrow. No, well, that's
(14:48):
I just pretty much don't. Uh. The only the only
VR thing I think I've tried that I did not
have an issue with was when we were on our
honeymoon and Iceland and there is a whale museum in
Iceland that had like a VR headset look at the
ocean and see whales, and it was like a soothing
(15:12):
enough experience without a ton of detail, and like like
you would just sort of be panning through the ocean
to look for whales and nothing was very sudden or jerky,
and like also like I was in control of the
whole thing, which I think helped. Um. So anyway, that's like,
that's the one. Otherwise I see the VR headset and
(15:32):
I'm like, no, thanks, I'd love it. Um. This made
me think so much about balance and nausea. Um. Like
I thought about spotting in ballet. I don't know if
you've ever taken a dance class where you had a
warm spotting, which for anybody that hasn't, it's basically how
you teach dancers to be able to do many turns
without getting dizzy, where you keep your head kind of
(15:53):
focused on one thing and you turn it at the
last possible minute in relation to your body so that
you whip right around to look back at that thing again. Um.
I never had an issue with dizziness doing turns, but
I definitely knew people it did. But then, what I
really thought about, as you talked about everybody getting sick
on various apparatus, was going deep sea fishing with my dad,
(16:17):
where you kind of get the lecture at least on
the boat. We used to always charter of if you
get sick, that's fine, but get sick and keep fishing,
which is many people did. I never got sick. I
had a couple of moments in particularly lurchy water, where
again it was the stomach thing where I was like,
if I could just stare at a point, I'm fine
(16:39):
and I don't think about my tummy too much. But yeah,
I watched my dad throw up in fish many times. Yeah,
my I didn't. I didn't know this until. Um, the
first the first cruise I went ever went on, I
was totally fine the whole time. The second one that
I went on, we went through this place called the
windward passage way or the In addition to the motion
(17:02):
of the ship, the ship was being buffeted by winds
that were making it have this like side to side motion.
I had to leave during dinner and like try a
variety of places to be like, do I feel better here? No?
In fact I do not. Oh that is the worst feeling,
just trying to find some soulless yeah in in in
(17:23):
other circumstances, if I had gone out onto the deck,
I probably would have felt better. But it was extremely
hot and muggy on the deck, and so it was
like walking out and just feeling hot, wet washcloth air
hit my face and I was like, nope, that's worse.
So I told I told my dad the story, and
he was like, your grandfather was the same way and
(17:45):
also loved deep sea fishing, and so what he would
do is he would go and he would set his
line and just lie down on the deck wait for
something to happen. Uh. I think the only time of
emotion sick was in a very small plane, like truly
(18:05):
motion sick, and I didn't throw up, but I was
close enough that Brian grabbed one of the motion sickness
bags and was like, you are green. You are literally
the color green. Yeah, it's like okay, yeah. As far
(18:30):
as the actual subject of this episode, I hope that
there will be a book about them at some point.
I know there are a couple of people that have
have you know, done interviews with the folks who are
still living, which since this research took place in the
fifties and sixties, a lot of people have passed away.
(18:51):
At this point. There are a lot of documents that
people have donated to NASA. The fact that the one
way that people could communicate with their families back home
was through letters means that there are a lot of letters, uh.
And because this was how people were used to communicating
with each other, these letters, a lot of them are
(19:12):
really descriptive, UM and so you know, there's a potential
resource for that also. So hopefully at some point there
will be a book about all of this, all of
these folks and their contributions. A lot of people have
made uh comparisons to the women computers who were um,
(19:36):
you know, became known as the hidden figures of the
Space program UH and who have become way more better
known UM in the last several years. We didn't get
into at all how these were all men and all
the research was being done on men, and at the time,
men were the only people who were allowed to go
to space, but that kind of felt like a whole
(19:56):
additional topic. Layer. Yeah, Yeah, I'm glad you did this
one because it is fascinating. It's also just fascinating to me,
like to think about human physiology and how seemingly minute
differences between people can cause huge differences in how they
react to various stimuli. That's just a fascinating thing. Yeah.
(20:20):
I hope by the time this episode comes out, I
have figured out a better way to share a transcript
of it with people. And in fact, I wish we
had transcripts of every single episode of our show. That
has been something I've been advocating for for so long,
and like so much of what we do because we
are not independently employed, right, We've always done this as
(20:42):
part of our jobs, and our jobs are part of
our company, like something we've advocated with with companies. UM.
I really liked how much effort Radio Lab seems to
have gone to you with making this episode of their
show accessible, and honestly, I would love it if the
whole podcast industry took that kind of accessibility steps at
(21:06):
all times. I mean, we should be for sure. It's
so like you said, it's it's a little bit tricky
when you're not running independently and can't make all the
decisions quickly, and it just comes with the package. Um hopefully,
I mean, that's my hope. As long as people keep
raising those questions and poking at it, that helps you
(21:29):
know we're doing it on our end. So if everybody
does it in their end, eventually, hopefully we will get there.
I hope. So like how many conversations have I had
about many many So hopefully we'll see we'll see Fingers crossed.
Uh If you would like to write to us History
(21:50):
Podcast at I heart radio dot com. We're also all
over social media. I missed in History. That's where we'll
find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. It's Friday. Hope
whatever is happening over your weekend is good as good
as possible. If you're working this weekend, I hope things
go smoothly. If you're not working, I hope you have
(22:11):
some RESTful time and are nice to everybody who is
around you, and does that work We'll be back with
a Saturday Classic tomorrow and Monday with a brand new episode.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(22:34):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday and Holly
Fry And I'm Tracy B. Wilson. So this week we
dallied with pie a little bit. We did. You want
(00:23):
to know why I ended up doing this episode. I do.
I have a very close friend who I love more
than most humans on earth, who is adamant that if
it is savory, it should not be called pie. Okay,
had this debate for many years, and I'm like, no,
my love savory pies were here first, like everything was pie,
(00:44):
and so I just, uh, I love savory pie. Hello,
savory pie. I love all the pies. Our Christmas dinner
this year, in the throes of all macron covid spike
when we saw no one, uh was um a chicken
pie that I got as a pickup order from a
(01:05):
local bakery. Um, along with some sides that we had
to go with it, And it was so good. I
love a I love a savory pie. I love a
chicken pot pie. I am less enthused than people would
think about shepherd's pie. I love a shepherd's pie. I
like it, but I want it in a crust. Yeah,
(01:28):
like I love the mashed potatoes on top, but like
a crust would is really what I'm after in a pie.
It is kind of uh, and it doesn't follow some
of the rules of what you would call a pie.
It's more of a cast role. Yeah, just fine. That's
another thing from like the the first long stretch of
(01:49):
the pandemic, when we, you know, we were not eating
in restaurants or really for a while ordering food from
restaurants at our house. I had this stretch where I
was like, you know what, I what I just really
want to do so bad is just go to a
bar and have a Shepherd's Pie and a beer. And
(02:09):
it doesn't even need to be good. Shepherd's Pie can
be adequate, mediocre, adequate, medio. It was just like that
whole experience I missed so much. Um And none of
the restaurants since we did start ordering more take out,
none of the restaurants near us had Shepherd's Pie on
the menu. UM. One did for St. Patrick's Day the
(02:31):
other day, and I did get some St. Patrick's Day
Shepherd's pie. Nice. Do you have a favorite pie? Oh? Man?
So that would be really hard to narrow down in
terms of a sweet pie. I really do like cherry pie. Um.
I also like pumpkin pie a lot, except I will
(02:51):
often treat the pumpkin pie as a vehicle to get
the whipped cream into my mouth. Oh no, pumpkin pie
for days. Um. I like a lot of different uh,
a lot of different savory pies. Chicken pot pie is
really good. Chicken and dumplings is not really a pie,
but sometimes in the wintertime, my spouse makes chicken and
(03:14):
dumplings and it's so good and so comforting. I um, yeah,
pumpkin pie forever, I love it. My husband's favorites are
pecan pie and key lime pie. Key lime pie is delicious.
It is very good. I've never managed to get one
exactly right, but I His beloved Aunt Beth, who is
(03:36):
now no longer with us, used to make him a
pecam pie anytime he visited, and he would talk about
Aunt bess amazing pecam pie. And I finally was like
Aunt Beeth, who I loved that woman? Um, she was
like walking history. She knew everything about everything. Um. But
I had asked her about it, she was like, I
just got it off the bag and it was whoops up.
So so I, UM, I have since made many pecompies
(03:59):
for him, um, which I also love. Yeah. Um. On
the very first Jonathan Colton Cruise, one of the first nights, uh,
they had key lime pie on the menu for as
one as the one of the dessert options, and almost
(04:20):
our whole table ordered that. And then we saw the
table behind us send their key lime pie back in
Unison and we were like what we We were like,
what what was up with your pie? Um? And it
it blessed whoever was working in the kitchen. They had
not made a good key lime pie and and somebody
(04:44):
said it tasted like sadness, and sadness pie then became
like a cruise and joke. But after that it was
like for a while, anytime I saw Keilim pie on
the menu, I ordered it to try to erase the
memory of a one that just it just had no flavor.
I wonder if they actually used key lime in it
(05:07):
or not, because that will like a regular lime juice subout,
is not acceptable. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. Um.
I'm sure there's some chemistry related reason of like the
acidity of each different one or something, but it doesn't
taste right. Um. Qui li pie I could eat. So
when I was a child, Um, when we needed to
(05:27):
take it assert somewhere and my mom just did not
have time, she would make this pie called hershey Bar pie,
which you took uh, five of the six Hershey Bars
in a six pack of Hershey Bars. You melted them
and folded them into a container of cool whip. Now
put that into the fridge, bouh in a in a
(05:51):
crust like in a Graham cracker crust, I think is
what it would go in. Extremely that's way more delicious
than it has any right to listen. Sometimes it's magical.
We mentioned that we were going to talk about this
abolitionist thing in pumpkin Pie. Yeah, And what people often
reference is that, Um, several abolitionists that also wrote about
(06:17):
cookery wrote about pumpkin pie, which is true. Sarah Hale
is often brought up as she wrote about a lot
of food. Yeah yeah Um. She also did have an
anti slavery novel which was called Northwood, and it had
pumpkin pie in it, and his referenced as being the
best dish on the table or the most distinguished dish
(06:40):
on the table. And so I think people have made
those connections that it might be a clue because Lydia
Mariah Child also talked about pumpkin pie of course in
her um New England Thanksgiving poetry. Um. But again, those
are all kind of like you're connecting dots, but it's
not necessarily like clear to me. Yeah. I remember also
(07:03):
seeing some discussion of there were a lot more people
growing pumpkins in their little home farm plots, and it
was more of a like small garden kind of crop
rather than the sort of like much larger crop that
would be that would have an enslaved workforce, and like
(07:26):
people making a connection there, and it it just it
all felt like to me when I was reading all
of that that it was sort of pulling together some
things to build a story. And I was like, I'm
not I would like this a lot more if somebody
had unearthed an essay that someone had written about how
we should all eat uh pumpkin pies the symbol of
(07:51):
our abolitionist feelings. Yeah, I mean, like you, it's like
it seems like they're interesting things going on that then
have a lot of additional meaning ascribed to them, when
it is just as likely that because pumpkins grow all
over North America pretty readily and and are pretty easy.
(08:15):
I mean, a pumpkin pie is actually quite easy to make.
Um that you know, to me, it seems natural that
a lot of people would have adopted pumpkin pie and
really loved it, because I certainly do. Um. So, yeah,
it's a little it's a little bit of a stretch.
It feels to me perhaps some piece of information will
be unearth that will change all of our minds and
be like, Nope, it really was a secret code, but
(08:41):
not so far, especially because it's still involved sugar. Yeah,
which most there were abolitionists that were like, no, I'm
not baking sweet things because I don't want to be
part of that. Um, but pumpkin pie. I didn't. Ever,
I didn't stumble across any that were like, don't you sugar,
which would have supported that idea a little bit more. Yeah,
(09:01):
but no, but I sure want to bake pie. I
know it's springtime. I'm ready for a pumpkin pie. May
have to happen. I will tell you one of the
saddest things that ever happened to me. This is like pathetic.
You know how when like you go to someone else's
house for a holiday and you have those things you
(09:22):
love about the holiday, and then they're not the same
at that. I will not say who, but I had
gone to someone's house for the first time for a
holiday and I had said something about will there be
pumpkin pie beforehand, and they were like, oh, yeah, we
can do that. And what I didn't know was that
in their head they said, we'll go buy a frozen
(09:43):
pumpkin pie and throw it in and like not to
dog on anybody that does that, but like, pumpkin pie
is so easy to make. Oh man, gave me the sads. Yeah,
I'm very pro pumpkin pie. That whole like pie is
(10:05):
addictive and is a monster, was shocker to me. Yeah,
that was very strident and its arguments against pie. And
there were a lot of people in that camp that
were like, no pie is there were there was like
a significant number of physicians that were like, we gotta
get Americans to stop eating pie, which again, like nutritionally, yes,
(10:27):
you should not be eating pie all the time for
every meal, but that's like true of any balanced diet, right,
But um, it was I'm fascinated by the tug of
war over pie. And of course now everyone is like
as American as apple pie, and I'm like, that's English,
but right, all right, let's go bake pies. Let's be
(11:01):
on the show. We talked about the gallat at eleven.
We sure did contributions to the Space program. I when
I saw that conversation on Twitter that we talked about
at the end of the episode, I was like, that
sounds really cool and interesting, and it seems clear that
a lot of folks have been trying to make that
story more widely known. Sounds awesome. And I wasn't totally
(11:24):
aware when I got into it how much motion sickness
I was gonna be reading about motion sickness a thing
I am susceptible to and feel like over the course
of the pandemic, when I was not doing as much
travel by any means other than my own feat, I
feel like I've become more susceptible to it. It's like
(11:47):
I lost I lost my adaptation to being in a
car or on a train or a subway or whatever.
I think that's actually though common, right, most people get
more own emotion sickness as they get older. Is that
just an old wives tale? It would not surprise me.
It seems likely. I mean, there's a lot of stuff
that happens in your ears as you ate. Right, I
(12:09):
will say this, I can't handle roller coasters that I
used to be able to handle, no problem. The same
way that Brian and I have both discussed, like when
we go to amusement parks, there's like a well we've
reached let's sit on the bench and wait for the
kids age like yeah, so our younger friends will go right,
and we're like, no, thank you. I have no problem.
(12:30):
I don't think, or had not until maybe recently, with
any inner ear stuff. I can read in a car
that I'm not driving, no problem. I can do. Tummy
is a different deal though, Like if you get a
sugar shuka shook a going on with my stomach contents,
there might be some nausea. Yeah you were. You were
(12:52):
with me for one of the most dramatic and sudden
experiences of motion sickness in my whole life. I feel
some degree of guilt because I feel like I caused it. No,
you didn't cause it. I was super excited about this
experience until moment one of its starting, which was on
Star Tours. I was very excited about Star Tours, and
(13:18):
we say in the episode that that motions sickness is
still not entirely known. It is, there's still unanswered questions
about motion sickness, but like the most widely accepted explanation
for what causes it is like a mismatch between what
your eyes are seeing and what's happening in your vestibular system.
And that's definitely what was happening in this case, because
immediately the slight difference between what I was seeing and
(13:42):
the gimbal rig in Star Tours, just instantly it was like, Oh,
I'm going to spend my entire remainder of this ride
focusing the entirety of my being on keeping my contents
inside my body. It's very funny too. I wonder, and
(14:03):
I would hate. I don't want to put you through
it to test it, but I do wonder what some
of the newer rides, and of course something you specifically
of Star Wars he rides would do to you, like
I think probably um Smugglers Run, which is the Millennium
(14:25):
Falcon ride. I think that might be problematic. Maybe. Yeah.
I don't know about Rise of the Resistance though, because
there's less of the VR stuff you're more like in
in it. In it Um, so that would be curious,
but I would not want to be like Tracy get
on this. Let's see if you borrow. No, well, that's
(14:48):
I just pretty much don't. Uh. The only the only
VR thing I think I've tried that I did not
have an issue with was when we were on our
honeymoon and Iceland and there is a whale museum in
Iceland that had like a VR headset look at the
ocean and see whales, and it was like a soothing
(15:12):
enough experience without a ton of detail, and like like
you would just sort of be panning through the ocean
to look for whales and nothing was very sudden or jerky,
and like also like I was in control of the
whole thing, which I think helped. Um. So anyway, that's like,
that's the one. Otherwise I see the VR headset and
(15:32):
I'm like, no, thanks, I'd love it. Um. This made
me think so much about balance and nausea. Um. Like
I thought about spotting in ballet. I don't know if
you've ever taken a dance class where you had a
warm spotting, which for anybody that hasn't, it's basically how
you teach dancers to be able to do many turns
without getting dizzy, where you keep your head kind of
(15:53):
focused on one thing and you turn it at the
last possible minute in relation to your body so that
you whip right around to look back at that thing again. Um.
I never had an issue with dizziness doing turns, but
I definitely knew people it did. But then, what I
really thought about, as you talked about everybody getting sick
on various apparatus, was going deep sea fishing with my dad,
(16:17):
where you kind of get the lecture at least on
the boat. We used to always charter of if you
get sick, that's fine, but get sick and keep fishing,
which is many people did. I never got sick. I
had a couple of moments in particularly lurchy water, where
again it was the stomach thing where I was like,
if I could just stare at a point, I'm fine
(16:39):
and I don't think about my tummy too much. But yeah,
I watched my dad throw up in fish many times. Yeah,
my I didn't. I didn't know this until. Um, the
first the first cruise I went ever went on, I
was totally fine the whole time. The second one that
I went on, we went through this place called the
windward passage way or the In addition to the motion
(17:02):
of the ship, the ship was being buffeted by winds
that were making it have this like side to side motion.
I had to leave during dinner and like try a
variety of places to be like, do I feel better here? No?
In fact I do not. Oh that is the worst feeling,
just trying to find some soulless yeah in in in
(17:23):
other circumstances, if I had gone out onto the deck,
I probably would have felt better. But it was extremely
hot and muggy on the deck, and so it was
like walking out and just feeling hot, wet washcloth air
hit my face and I was like, nope, that's worse.
So I told I told my dad the story, and
he was like, your grandfather was the same way and
(17:45):
also loved deep sea fishing, and so what he would
do is he would go and he would set his
line and just lie down on the deck wait for
something to happen. Uh. I think the only time of
emotion sick was in a very small plane, like truly
(18:05):
motion sick, and I didn't throw up, but I was
close enough that Brian grabbed one of the motion sickness
bags and was like, you are green. You are literally
the color green. Yeah, it's like okay, yeah. As far
(18:30):
as the actual subject of this episode, I hope that
there will be a book about them at some point.
I know there are a couple of people that have
have you know, done interviews with the folks who are
still living, which since this research took place in the
fifties and sixties, a lot of people have passed away.
(18:51):
At this point. There are a lot of documents that
people have donated to NASA. The fact that the one
way that people could communicate with their families back home
was through letters means that there are a lot of letters, uh.
And because this was how people were used to communicating
with each other, these letters, a lot of them are
(19:12):
really descriptive, UM and so you know, there's a potential
resource for that also. So hopefully at some point there
will be a book about all of this, all of
these folks and their contributions. A lot of people have
made uh comparisons to the women computers who were um,
(19:36):
you know, became known as the hidden figures of the
Space program UH and who have become way more better
known UM in the last several years. We didn't get
into at all how these were all men and all
the research was being done on men, and at the time,
men were the only people who were allowed to go
to space, but that kind of felt like a whole
(19:56):
additional topic. Layer. Yeah, Yeah, I'm glad you did this
one because it is fascinating. It's also just fascinating to me,
like to think about human physiology and how seemingly minute
differences between people can cause huge differences in how they
react to various stimuli. That's just a fascinating thing. Yeah.
(20:20):
I hope by the time this episode comes out, I
have figured out a better way to share a transcript
of it with people. And in fact, I wish we
had transcripts of every single episode of our show. That
has been something I've been advocating for for so long,
and like so much of what we do because we
are not independently employed, right, We've always done this as
(20:42):
part of our jobs, and our jobs are part of
our company, like something we've advocated with with companies. UM.
I really liked how much effort Radio Lab seems to
have gone to you with making this episode of their
show accessible, and honestly, I would love it if the
whole podcast industry took that kind of accessibility steps at
(21:06):
all times. I mean, we should be for sure. It's
so like you said, it's it's a little bit tricky
when you're not running independently and can't make all the
decisions quickly, and it just comes with the package. Um hopefully,
I mean, that's my hope. As long as people keep
raising those questions and poking at it, that helps you
(21:29):
know we're doing it on our end. So if everybody
does it in their end, eventually, hopefully we will get there.
I hope. So like how many conversations have I had
about many many So hopefully we'll see we'll see Fingers crossed.
Uh If you would like to write to us History
(21:50):
Podcast at I heart radio dot com. We're also all
over social media. I missed in History. That's where we'll
find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. It's Friday. Hope
whatever is happening over your weekend is good as good
as possible. If you're working this weekend, I hope things
go smoothly. If you're not working, I hope you have
(22:11):
some RESTful time and are nice to everybody who is
around you, and does that work We'll be back with
a Saturday Classic tomorrow and Monday with a brand new episode.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(22:34):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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