Behind the Scenes Minis: Pollution Olympics

Tracy talks about her selection of "Fumifugium" as a show topic. Holly shares a mischievous story about Helen Preece.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly Frye. This week we talked about Fumafujim and John E.
Blynn no fun Yeah. So the process was exactly what

(00:24):
I said at the beginning of the episode, like I
was like, oh, John Evelyn did that, That's funny. Fuma
Fujim is a funny name. And then you know, five
hours later, Fury the latest of many things to be
furious about, the driver from the headlines, Yeah, and saying, Okay,
we're going to talk about air pollution more. There were

(00:46):
a couple times last year when I had I wanted
to have some kind of story that was about like
conservation or the environment or whatever. But also I had
sort of internally committed myself to talking as much just
possible about things that the President would say was improper ideology. Yeah,

(01:08):
so heterosexual white man John Evelyn was not at the
top of my list, and he became at the top
of the list this time because from a Fujium was
there in front of me, and I was like, we're
gonna talk about this. This gives me thoughts because my
subversion I'm playing slightly more subtly, like I don't say

(01:31):
because the President said this, but because there is like
one of the reasons I picked George Stephenson is that
we are in this age where people are talking about
how higher education is Bolognian being educated, and I just
wanted to show somebody that was like, do you know
how much I missed out on because I didn't get educated,

(01:52):
not my kid, like I he's a person who is
the key like case study of like nope, yeah, yeah. Well,
the thing that I kept thinking about that I did
not say in the episode or the behind the scenes
for that one was just about how hard and dangerous
working in coal mines is, and how many people who

(02:16):
worked in coal mines worked so hard so that their
kids wouldn't have to yep, and this incredibly bizarre focus
on like we need to bring back coal when coal
is an obsolete technology at this point, and I was like,
I don't need to say this is not actually relevant
to this guy who yeah, yeah, but it is. I mean,

(02:39):
it is. That's all part of like why I was like,
let's talk about George Davidson this week. Yeah, it all
feeds into it. But yeah, the air pollution is a problem.
I don't air Yeah, air quality is life quality. I
mean I don't. There's no yeah, more direct way to
say it. Yeah, And there's so many layers of it

(02:59):
that are so for us to me because we talked about,
like I'm thinking about in our episode, about putting lead
in gasoline and how that had a trickle down effect
of the places that had the most vehicle traffic were
the poorest neighborhoods where the people who were already at
the most disadvantage were most likely to live. And then

(03:21):
we're being exposed to a lot more car exhaust with
a lot more lead in it. Yeah, just a compounding problem.
And this is why environmental justice is also racial justice,
and is also disability justice, and maybe all of that. Yeah,
all of that is related to why the federal government

(03:42):
is canceling green energy contracts left and right and not
putting a monetary estimate on the health impact impacts of
specific air pollution regulations. Yeah, I mean you see that
outside of regulation, You see this play out in a
very obvious way in terms of the adoption of evs, right.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, if you go to any major city and you
go to the wealthiest neighborhoods, you're gonna see a lot
more evs than you will ever see in the poorer neighborhoods.
One is because they are still much more expensive than
a gasoline powered you know, injection engine. But like that

(04:26):
is part of the problem that those people are now
getting better air quality just because they can afford it, Yeah,
which is leaving other people behind in terms of health
and quality of life. This feels like something we have
people smart enough to fix. Yeah, they got willing to
do it. I don't remember what it was that I

(04:48):
read recently where somebody was referencing being in a place
that now has like really high adoption overall of EV's
and realizing how different the air smelled without gas powered
car exhaust. Oh man in the Misochio last year. Yeah,
my mind. It made me think about growing up in
North Carolina in the seventies and eighties when everyone smoked inside.

(05:11):
Now everything smelled horrible all the time. Yeah, and you
could go to the mall, you could buy yourself a
brand new outfit. Get at home, it already smelled like
smoke because you could smoke inside in the mall. I mean,
I couldn't tell because my mom smoked four pecks a day,
so I had no discernment. So yeah, we just sort
of lived in that. Yeah. So anyway, I have thoughts

(05:35):
and feelings about a lot of things, a lot of frustrations,
And as I was wrapping this up, I was reminded
of basically this time last year, feeling like there were
multiple intersecting critical things at the same time that it
would be nice to reference in some way on the show,
and just not having enough episodes physically to do it all.

(05:58):
So if you're listening to this and sat saying, why
haven't they said anything about X, just because we have
finite numbers of episodes and also need to do things
that keep our own minds sane at is a big
one for me lately, where I'm like, I can't tackle
that right now. My executive function will just collapse in

(06:20):
a pile of crunchy flames. In comedy though, Yeah, you
mentioned several times we call out the fact that Evelyn
was a royalist. Huh. I don't know that you needed to,
because once we got to excerpts of his writing, it's
really up. Oh yeah, Oh, the best one there's ever been. Oh,

(06:41):
we are going best of us, like our wonderful benefactor,
the King is going to do such great things. Yeah yeah,
oh my.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Goodness, just the most blow and sunshine up that that
Regents took us, man, Yeah yeah yeah, the best one.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Found it very funny the how much how many opportunities
he took to flatter the King, yes, and things that
were not necessarily about that. It's just in my head
the cartoon that plays is like the person receiving that
information and receiving that flattery right, Like, I don't like

(07:26):
that kind of stuff. It makes me want to crawl
into a tin can and roll away, But there are
people that love it right, right right, And just imagining
if there was ever a point where Charles the Second
is like, we'll thick Champ, We'll thick. Yeah, you don't
need to brown nose quite that much. Back of the Truck, John,

(07:54):
The only thing I actually noted at the end of
the outline to try to remember to say and the
behind the scenes is that I watched a video of
a lecture by Jillian Darley about this, and I don't
remember which of his works she was talking about, but
she described it as having drawings that he did that

(08:18):
were quote very valiant and not utterly successful. And I
had to pause it and laughed so hard at that characterization,
and I was like, I should go look up those
illustrations and see what they look like. And I forgot, Oh, well,

(08:39):
there could be great delight awaiting you in the visuals
of John Evelynn. Maybe so great. Maybe Yeah, he's somebody
that for sure could have had a whole episode just
on his biography. But I wanted to spend more time
talking about this amusingly, in my opinion, named on air pollution.

(09:01):
It's pretty good. I feel like we should just put
that word on shirts, no explanation, no, or just have
a picture of like pretty garden flowers underneath. Not even
it's like, yeah, his whole plan of like ringing the

(09:22):
city of London with fields full of flowers and fragrant plants.
I'm like, that sounds lovely. I mean, that does sound lovely.
One of my favorite things I know, I talk about
it ad nauseum, and I'm sorry for anybody who's like,
we know, one of my favorite things about having several
hydroponic gardens in the house is how good things smell. Yeah,

(09:44):
Like when I walk into my cantina and the flowers
are blooming in there. It's like heaven. It's like heaven. Yeah. Yeah,
even on a really creuddy day or if I'm stressed,
I just walk in there and I'm like, oh ah.
One of the of places that we went to in Morocco,
that place where we had the meal outside with the winery.

(10:09):
Oh you ate outside. They had some huge, if I'm
remembering correctly, jasmine plants. They had a lot of good
plants that made the whole area so fragrant. It was
almost overwhelming walking through them, but like once you were seated,

(10:31):
it was like a little whiff of lovely flower smell. Yeah.
I was kind of worried about Patrick because he is
allergic to some flowers. It was like, oh, we're gonna
have an issue, but he was fine a lot of flowers.
At one point I got up to go to the
ladies room, and I don't know, you probably didn't notice
because you were busy eating and talking. But I've madeished
for a while because I just went on like my

(10:53):
own little flower tour. I was taking pictures of flowers
so I can use them in fambric prints. They had
a rose there that smelled like cloves, which is something
that happens with some roses. I have some, but they
don't look nearly as they were, like a like a
what sometimes called like a ruffled rose where they have
like the double bloom. And it smelled just incredible and

(11:16):
I was like, I'm intoxicated. I'm never leaving this plant.
I love it. Until Brian was like, hello, where are you. Yeah.
I am a big supporter in having accessible green space.
It really makes a difference. Yeah, I like housing, also
housing and green space. I didn't have both, hippie Yeah,

(11:37):
I know, weird, weird that way, I too like both
of these things. Yeah. I we got an amount of
snow over the weekend and I took a long, about
two and a half hours hike through the snow because
it was also the right temperature for me to do this.

(11:59):
It was just cold enough that the snow was not melting,
but warm enough that I did not feel like I
was miserable out hiking through the snow. Yeah, and it
was great, and I kept basically stopping to be like,
look at that look at that tree covered in snow.
It really restored some of my emotional bandwidth. I love it.

(12:21):
My stomping through the woods with my boots on in
the snow. We talked about ladies in the Olympics, or
almost in the Olympics. Sister got too, got too. I

(12:43):
have a handful of things, Okay. One is just silly,
which is that there was a rite up I read
about Helen de Bordelais, which was written by I believe
he is Swiss, a Swiss skull. But the only funny
part was that he called like her group of aristocratic

(13:06):
yachting friends yachties. I don't know if that's a real
term or not. Yeah, but it made me think of
Bob's Burgers, on which yachts come up a lot presently,
and I just could not. I only hear it in
voices from that show now, and I'm like, yachtees, it's
very funny, Helen pries. Yeah, I'm not. I'm like that person.

(13:28):
I did not ever go through a horse face as
a kid. I didn't have it like many kids do. Yeah.
So I know very little about horseback riding, right. I
didn't know about side saddle jumping, which people still do. Okay,
holy smokes, that looks terrifying. I knew about side saddle jumping. Probably.

(13:53):
I think Gone with the Wind is Oh. It never
registered to me in that a movie that has a
formative and it is not the right word. A movie
that has a critical moment involving a child riding side
saddle and jumping. Not even a big jump, unless I'm
confusing it with some other movie. There is some listen.
That's another thing. I live in Atlanta, and I'm not

(14:14):
a big on with the window. I feel it, I've
seen it. I'm clearly outside of all when I was
a child, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just I was never
a horse kid. Said like, even if it came up
in a movie, I would not have fixate Atlanta. Yeah, yeah,
I didn't. I didn't know. Also, I think some of
our neighbors are snow blowing, so hopefully none of that

(14:35):
is being captured in our audio. If anyone is watching
this or listening and saying, what is that strange noise
that I can hear the love in the background, the
answer is we have almost twenty inches of snow on
the ground here. Yeah. Yeah. There is a great story
about Helen Priest that I found so charming, But it

(14:55):
didn't it was not dremane to her Olympic bid. Okay,
which is it? When she was in New York competing,
one day, she decided to take her horse for a
ride through Central Park and she was fast. She was
fast as lightning, like she was very comfortable riding at
very fast speeds. But the police of New York were
not accustomed to seeing anyone on a horse going that

(15:18):
fast through Central Park, and they thought like the horse
had gotten scared and she had lost control of it. Yeah,
And they literally were like, giving her chase, and instead
of stopping, she was like, let's lead him on a
little chase. Keep in mind, she was a teenage girl
at the sort. She's you know, I think sixteen. And
when she finally stopped and the police caught up to her,

(15:40):
she was like, Hey, I'm Helen Preece. I'm the person
that just won all those horse yeah here in New York,
and they were like, oh okay. It just made me
laugh so hard. The idea of her leading people in
a chase. Don't do that. It's not cool, but it
did make me chuckle. I also had to laugh at
Pierre de Kubepta calling her a neo Amazon, because you
picture someone who is like a very you know, tall,

(16:04):
super muscly, strong person. Helen Priest was like a petite thing.
She was very and again a girl at that point,
she was still a teenager, so it made me. I
was like, how are you trying to spin this, my dude,
Like that's the oh Pierre, that whole thing. Listen, he

(16:27):
still has one of history's best mustaches. But yeah he does.
And I do remember that. I blocked the sexism out
of my brain, but I do remember the mustache. Yeah.
I mean, it's interesting because there are people who defend
him as like, no, that's the product of his time,
and he was very chivalrous, but like chivalry at its

(16:51):
heart is demeaning to women in a lot of ways.
There's a difference between wanting to be polite and kind
and respectful like no, no, honey, like yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I will say it came up in some of
the things I read about, and I didn't really jump
into it in this outline, but that there were a

(17:15):
lot of men. It was not as though that was
the only prevailing opinion among men at the time. There
were men who were like, why not let these women compete,
like they're athletes, We're all athletes. Yeah, this is you know,
we have room, we can make this happen. And there
were a lot of men advocating. There were also some
men saying really stupid stuff, and alis Mila had this

(17:38):
great response to I think it was a runner who
just said some really, you know, unnecessarily stupid and gross
things about women. And she was referring to him and Kubeltana.
She said, quote, they could do themselves a favor by
showing some interest in women's sport, they shut themselves away

(17:59):
and everlasting male egoism, like fine, dudes, do you understand
you're gonna leave yourself behind because the rest of us
are trying to make things better and and like improve
the games. She had this reputation that even people that

(18:29):
were aligned with her, that were in her organization would
kind of be like, you know, we might do better
if Alice were not so assertive and abrasive. And she's
too brusque, she's too blunt in everything that she says,
and like it was very much like the oh, we'll
catch more flies with honey than vinegar, which like, listen,

(18:52):
I very know your audience, figure out which tactic is
gonna work best. But this is also the same group
of women who were like, oh, yes, we'll take just
the five after you promised us ten s. It's fine,
it's fine. They were like, no, Helen, don't be so
means yeah, well, which she's like, you said ten yeah, yeah.

(19:13):
Also like, there are a lot of circumstances in which
women are framed as aggressive or shrill or whatever doing
something that would not raise any eyebrows whatsoever if a
man were doing it. And so when I kind of
scrolled to the end of the outline and I took
a peek at the things you had noted for yourself

(19:36):
to talk about and behind the scenes, and I was like,
I already have feelings about this one. I knew you would.
I know that's a very sticky point for you. I
find it very frustrating. There's a part of me I
don't want to say this in a way that sounds
like I'm discounting your thoughts on the matter or anyone's.
I don't find it as frustrating as you, because my
response is usually like, well, okay, and then I say

(19:59):
exploit of you, and then I walk away from that
person forever and I never talked to them again. But
that's just me. Sure because I'm never going to convince
that person right that I'm something other than what they perceive.
So I don't care. I am more frustrated by the
role that plays in society than on like me as

(20:20):
an individual person. Oh yeah, but I think this is
why I'm drawn to Alise Milia, because she was like, cool,
we'll do our own thing. I'll make my own system.
I'll just do it. Like That's why I'm like, Yes,
this is exactly the route I would like to think
I would take. And I love that she wrote to
my letter that was like, great, why don't you specifically
say women are never allowed in any of the games,

(20:41):
because that's going to make my life easier. I can
move on without you, and I don't have to deal
with your garbage. I love her so much, Alise. She's
a good one. And now I have a checklist for
next time I'm in Paris to go see her statue.
Yeah sounds fun. I feel like lately my my list

(21:04):
of travel things is getting very long. Yeah, he's hoping
we get allowed. Americans are still allowed to travel in
the non dedicant future anyway. Those are those are my
thoughts forever. Yeah, before we sign off, for Today's Behind
the Scenes. Should we tell people that our podcast is
on Netflix? Now? Sure, I mean peep up personally. I mean,

(21:27):
if they're watching it, they figured it out right, But
maybe this is not news to someone who is watching
this right now. But yes, our podcast. Netflix has podcasts
now and our podcast is one of them. Yeah. Yeah,
you can go check it out at Netflix. Yeah, if
you search for our show, it's gonna come up. It's
right there. You can click the what's it called the

(21:50):
remind me button is the one that will tell you
when new episodes show up.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Also, this is a great way to resolve a thing
that a lot of people have told us about, which
is that they have seen photos of us and they
hear us talking and they have mixed up our faces
with their voices, and then yeah, they meet us out
in the world somewhere or come to a live show,
not that we've done any of those in very long

(22:18):
but then it's a disconcerting experience. So you can watch
on Netflix and just to get all of that out
of the way before having an in person experience ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
so there we are, so you can check us out.
There more ways to enjoy the show if you are

(22:41):
already watching on Netflix, we thank you. If you haven't
yet and you want to check it out there, it
will be going forward. And if you are listening on
some other medium, that's not going away. Correct. Netflix is
in addition, not a replacement. Yeah. If you're like, oh, no,
I listen while I walk, you still can't, no prob Yeah,
no problem. Whatever platform you're using is going to work

(23:04):
just fine. But then if you want to listen one
day while you sit on the couch at home, you
can do that too. Options. Yeah, if this is your
weekend coming up and you have time off, I hope
that you use that time to make the world a
better place. But also do you use that time to

(23:24):
rest and recuperate. We need you as strong and well
rested as you can be in the days that we
are living in. If you do not have time off
this weekend and you have responsibilities or you are scheduled
for work, I hope that everyone is cool to you
that you still get time to yourself, to center and
recuperate from all the things that are going on in

(23:47):
the world. I think we all need to be very
mindful of our nervous systems right now and what we
can and cannot do in a given day, and try
to do our very best. Like I said, please take
care of one Another'll be right back here tomorrow with
a classic episode, and then we will have something brand
new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is

(24:11):
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