March 20, 2020 • 13 mins
Holly and Tracy talk about aspects of Zanzibari culture that Holly had not considered prior to this week's episode, and Tracy's rewatch of "A League of Their Own."
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Cashual Friday, and
welcome to our behind the scenes minis. I'm Holly Fry.
I'm Tracy T. Wilson. Tracy. The first thing we talked
about this week was the Anglos Anzobar War. Here is
(00:25):
a true confession. I did not realize prior to working
on this, how much overlap there was between Arabic and
uh Zanzibari and in fact African culture further south than
I would have thought, like, I didn't realize that. I mean,
there are still think pieces being written today about how
(00:46):
Zanzibar's culture continues to be infused, you know, with the
cultural um kind of migration that happened with the Omani occupation.
And so it's just one of those things that in
my head, I think I had kind of partitioned off,
like the Arabian Peninsula and then Africa as two separate things,
(01:06):
and I really didn't think about how much they obviously
would have crossed over and commingled. And in fact, you know,
in many cases because of of these occupations, families formed
that we were inclusive people from both of those cultures,
and then you know, went on to shift the makeup
of the people's that lived there. Yeah. I was completely
(01:27):
ignorant to all that. So yeah, this is the more
you know moment in my life. What led you to
picking this particular episode? Um, I really really like looking
a little bit more deeply at things that are often
reported in those I talked about it in the episode,
like this appears on a list of like nutty moments
(01:48):
in his brain, and it's like that was people's lives.
And I bet they didn't think it was nutty or hysterical,
you know what I mean. There was a lot going
on there that we tend when we do things like that,
like make lists like that to gloss over, and it
gets easy to forget how important these moments are to
(02:09):
actual humans, you know, in the contemporary setting. Yeah. Yeah,
I look at those lists sometimes when I'm having when
I'm struggling to pick an idea, sometimes I'll go find
some like cookie incidents in history list, um and see
if there's something there that resonates, because like, sometimes those
(02:30):
lists to have interesting topics I might not have stumbled
across myself, but at the same time, they are very
glossed over. Yeah, I mean That's the thing, right, is
that that there are often very interesting events that get
included on those lists, but they're not really treated with
a lot of depth, which is kind of just the
nature of the beast. I'm not trying to dog any
(02:52):
site that does those or it's just you can't really
convey the nuance. And like in the case of of this,
you see that it would a couple of hundred years
of like lead up and this battle over slave trade
and cultures trying to manipulate one another in different ways
that lead to that moment that seems sort of silly
(03:15):
if you only look at it outside of context, when
you realize like there were you know, familial issues among
the Ommani rulers and the Sultan's lineage which was not
necessarily inherited the way we would think of in in
the case of like a European royal house. And so
that's why there were these contests for power at times
(03:37):
in that side, as well as you know, the British
trying to manipulate who was going into power. It's just
a much a much more um detailed and I don't
want to say nuanced again, but there are a lot
of moving parts there that don't really get accommodated in
aalistical Yeah. Well, and there's also the aspect that you
(04:00):
brought up that I had not really thought about the
British efforts to end the slave trade being rooted in
an attempt to destabilize everything. Like, on its surface, that
seems like a noble thing to be like, we're gonna
we want to end your involvement in the slave trade,
but having as an underlying motivator of that being like,
(04:21):
because your culture will fall apart financially, Yeah, we can
get a better foothold here if we force you to
do this. Yeah, it would have been way more noble
if they were like, hey, we really need to abolish
the slave trade. We understand your economy is largely based
around it. Here's how we could shift. They don't ever
introduce any of that. It's just no, no. And now
(04:44):
also you will have to pay taxes as a protectorate. Uh.
It starts to pretty quickly look like, oh, this may
have been noble for some of the people involved that
we're pushing for this abolition, but ultimately it was also
a power grab. Yeah. That it's like the opposite of
what we talked about with Paul Cuffey attempting to establish
(05:06):
like other industries in places that had just been destroyed
by the slave trade, to try to transfer people to
a different economic Yeah, there was none of that going on.
The other thing that's sort of heartbreaking when I look
at this, because you and I both, when we're looking
(05:27):
at at a conflict like that, are in a at
some sort of power struggle where multiple countries or states
are kind of all jockeying to have power over one
particular place. We try to look at all of the
people's involved perspectives. But the trick with this one is
(05:49):
that there are certainly a lot of of history on
this written from the British perspective, and we have those
treaties that that Britain and Germany and France participated in
as well as oman Um, and we the journals of
for example, like Basil Cave are often referenced to describe
(06:12):
what went on, and then there are Arabic scholars who
will talk about the history from that perspective. But what
really really really gets lost is the perspective of the
people's that were descendants of the Bantu people's that went
to Zanzibar. Settled it permanently. We don't really have a
whole lot of information on what they thought of essentially
(06:34):
being set aside as like a figureheady unimportant, you know,
fairly powerless. Oh yes, yes, you still have your kings
and queens, but they can't actually do anything. They were
still respected culturally, but they didn't really have much power. Uh,
and so we lose that whole part of this piece
(06:55):
of history because they kind of just got bulldozed. Sorry
to be a bummer. Well, uh, the other episode we
did this week, uh, less of a bummer, I think
because it was the All American Girls professional baseball team, UM,
which means we can talk about a league of their own. Yeah,
so we referenced Brittany Delacrta's UM article on the hidden
(07:19):
Queer history of a League of their Own, which is
very worthwhile reading a lot of research, a lot of
it with player obituaries, because a lot of the players
are no longer living. Um. A lot of the players
who are still living, a lot of them didn't want
to talk to her on record because like the a
lot of folks that are like grew up in the
(07:39):
forties and fifties are not really out today or are
not as visibly out as a lot of people are today.
So like, there were a lot of not a lot
of people that wanted to talk to her on record.
People did speak fondly about the movie, including like women
who are out as lesbians today, who like think of
a League of their own very only as a film.
(08:01):
And one of the points that was made was like
the league existed in the time that it existed, in
a league of their own existed, like that was made
is a filter as a feature film, um, Like, so
that existed in the time that it was and so
it makes sense, um that there's not like a lesbian
presence in the movie. And as I was reading the article,
I was like, wasn't there though, because I always interpreted
(08:25):
little Sister Kit as like the lesbian kids sister and
so I went and rewatched a League of their Own
while I was like working my way all through this,
and I realized I just mentally edited out, uh, the
entire before and after framework of the story, which is
like involves her being married to a man and having
(08:46):
a lot of children, um and grandchildren. And I think
the problem was that um, I saw even though it
came out before I saw a league of their own
after having seen Tank Girl. So I think my perception
my crush on Marie Patty. I mean she's darling, I
(09:06):
get it. Uh oh, I love her in that movie.
Um yeah, legither And is very popular at our house.
I haven't watched it in a while, but Brian does
quote it a lot. The one thing I also love
that's an offshoot of it is seeing people at pop
culture conventions like Dragon Connor comic cons in Rockford peaches uniforms,
(09:30):
which is the keyest stuff you could ever see on
the planet. It's adorable. Um. There's also a reboot of
that coming to one of the streaming services I don't
remember which. I also wanted to take a minute talk about. Um.
Like we've we mentioned in the show that today it
is still a stereotype about women in sports being lesbians,
(09:54):
and of course that is a stereotype, but also there
are lesbians Like in my lifetime. We have gone from
Billy Jeane King being outed against her will in one
and it being an enormous scandal and her losing contracts
and like she was later into her career at that point,
(10:15):
but still it was like damaging to her career. Hugely
in my lifetime. We have gone from that to Megan
Rappino doing a cameo on the L word generation cue.
That is such a colossal evolution of women in sports,
(10:36):
women athletes, uh, the perceptions of women in athletes, and
specifically the perception of like lesbians as athletes, which I
find really moving and profound. It is, I mean, I
I it's one of those things where it's like, we
still have so far to go in so many ways,
(10:57):
but when you point that out, it's it is. It's
very moving. It's like we're making progress. I know it's
not as much progress as we need, but it's good.
I feel compelled to also mention that I cried in
the weirdest point imaginable in this episode and had to stop.
This is embarrassing, but I don't think it would surprise
really anybody that knows me, which is that I had
(11:17):
a very hard time talking about a league of their
own because I had to mention Penny Marshall, who I love,
and so we weep to think about her not being
with us. I'm doing it now, and then I think
about Carrie Fisher because they were best friends, and then
I m having just rewatched that movie literally a week ago.
(11:38):
I my personal opinion is I feel like it really
holds up. I very much enjoyed watching it. At that
point it was on Showtime. But when I tried to
find it again on the Showtime app, my, you know,
Roku was asking me if I wanted to rent it,
and I was like, but but it was just on Showtime,
so they or may not be on Showtime right now anyway. Uh.
(12:01):
That is mostly behind the scenes about a league of
their own. Anyway, I had a good time researching that episode.
I'm glad that after just a lot of trying to
figure out what I was going to talk about on
the show next, that I eventually arrived at that one
because it was a lot of fun to research. Yeah,
it kind of gave us a weird one two punch
of the week a little bit. Yeah, there's a lot
(12:24):
of discussion of conflict over slavery. Here is actually some
pretty fun baseball talk with some sexism involved, sexism and
segregation and homophobia, but still fun sports story. Yeah. Uh
So anyway, we'll we'll see you again in a couple
of days. I mean, I guess tomorrow we'll be here
(12:44):
for a Saturday Classic and then Monday at another episode. Anyway,
if you'd like to send us an email for a
history podcast that I heart radio dot com and we like, you,
subscribe to our show Stuff You Missed in History Class
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
(13:05):
from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Cashual Friday, and
welcome to our behind the scenes minis. I'm Holly Fry.
I'm Tracy T. Wilson. Tracy. The first thing we talked
about this week was the Anglos Anzobar War. Here is
(00:25):
a true confession. I did not realize prior to working
on this, how much overlap there was between Arabic and
uh Zanzibari and in fact African culture further south than
I would have thought, like, I didn't realize that. I mean,
there are still think pieces being written today about how
(00:46):
Zanzibar's culture continues to be infused, you know, with the
cultural um kind of migration that happened with the Omani occupation.
And so it's just one of those things that in
my head, I think I had kind of partitioned off,
like the Arabian Peninsula and then Africa as two separate things,
(01:06):
and I really didn't think about how much they obviously
would have crossed over and commingled. And in fact, you know,
in many cases because of of these occupations, families formed
that we were inclusive people from both of those cultures,
and then you know, went on to shift the makeup
of the people's that lived there. Yeah. I was completely
(01:27):
ignorant to all that. So yeah, this is the more
you know moment in my life. What led you to
picking this particular episode? Um, I really really like looking
a little bit more deeply at things that are often
reported in those I talked about it in the episode,
like this appears on a list of like nutty moments
(01:48):
in his brain, and it's like that was people's lives.
And I bet they didn't think it was nutty or hysterical,
you know what I mean. There was a lot going
on there that we tend when we do things like that,
like make lists like that to gloss over, and it
gets easy to forget how important these moments are to
(02:09):
actual humans, you know, in the contemporary setting. Yeah. Yeah,
I look at those lists sometimes when I'm having when
I'm struggling to pick an idea, sometimes I'll go find
some like cookie incidents in history list, um and see
if there's something there that resonates, because like, sometimes those
(02:30):
lists to have interesting topics I might not have stumbled
across myself, but at the same time, they are very
glossed over. Yeah, I mean That's the thing, right, is
that that there are often very interesting events that get
included on those lists, but they're not really treated with
a lot of depth, which is kind of just the
nature of the beast. I'm not trying to dog any
(02:52):
site that does those or it's just you can't really
convey the nuance. And like in the case of of this,
you see that it would a couple of hundred years
of like lead up and this battle over slave trade
and cultures trying to manipulate one another in different ways
that lead to that moment that seems sort of silly
(03:15):
if you only look at it outside of context, when
you realize like there were you know, familial issues among
the Ommani rulers and the Sultan's lineage which was not
necessarily inherited the way we would think of in in
the case of like a European royal house. And so
that's why there were these contests for power at times
(03:37):
in that side, as well as you know, the British
trying to manipulate who was going into power. It's just
a much a much more um detailed and I don't
want to say nuanced again, but there are a lot
of moving parts there that don't really get accommodated in
aalistical Yeah. Well, and there's also the aspect that you
(04:00):
brought up that I had not really thought about the
British efforts to end the slave trade being rooted in
an attempt to destabilize everything. Like, on its surface, that
seems like a noble thing to be like, we're gonna
we want to end your involvement in the slave trade,
but having as an underlying motivator of that being like,
(04:21):
because your culture will fall apart financially, Yeah, we can
get a better foothold here if we force you to
do this. Yeah, it would have been way more noble
if they were like, hey, we really need to abolish
the slave trade. We understand your economy is largely based
around it. Here's how we could shift. They don't ever
introduce any of that. It's just no, no. And now
(04:44):
also you will have to pay taxes as a protectorate. Uh.
It starts to pretty quickly look like, oh, this may
have been noble for some of the people involved that
we're pushing for this abolition, but ultimately it was also
a power grab. Yeah. That it's like the opposite of
what we talked about with Paul Cuffey attempting to establish
(05:06):
like other industries in places that had just been destroyed
by the slave trade, to try to transfer people to
a different economic Yeah, there was none of that going on.
The other thing that's sort of heartbreaking when I look
at this, because you and I both, when we're looking
(05:27):
at at a conflict like that, are in a at
some sort of power struggle where multiple countries or states
are kind of all jockeying to have power over one
particular place. We try to look at all of the
people's involved perspectives. But the trick with this one is
(05:49):
that there are certainly a lot of of history on
this written from the British perspective, and we have those
treaties that that Britain and Germany and France participated in
as well as oman Um, and we the journals of
for example, like Basil Cave are often referenced to describe
(06:12):
what went on, and then there are Arabic scholars who
will talk about the history from that perspective. But what
really really really gets lost is the perspective of the
people's that were descendants of the Bantu people's that went
to Zanzibar. Settled it permanently. We don't really have a
whole lot of information on what they thought of essentially
(06:34):
being set aside as like a figureheady unimportant, you know,
fairly powerless. Oh yes, yes, you still have your kings
and queens, but they can't actually do anything. They were
still respected culturally, but they didn't really have much power. Uh,
and so we lose that whole part of this piece
(06:55):
of history because they kind of just got bulldozed. Sorry
to be a bummer. Well, uh, the other episode we
did this week, uh, less of a bummer, I think
because it was the All American Girls professional baseball team, UM,
which means we can talk about a league of their own. Yeah,
so we referenced Brittany Delacrta's UM article on the hidden
(07:19):
Queer history of a League of their Own, which is
very worthwhile reading a lot of research, a lot of
it with player obituaries, because a lot of the players
are no longer living. Um. A lot of the players
who are still living, a lot of them didn't want
to talk to her on record because like the a
lot of folks that are like grew up in the
(07:39):
forties and fifties are not really out today or are
not as visibly out as a lot of people are today.
So like, there were a lot of not a lot
of people that wanted to talk to her on record.
People did speak fondly about the movie, including like women
who are out as lesbians today, who like think of
a League of their own very only as a film.
(08:01):
And one of the points that was made was like
the league existed in the time that it existed, in
a league of their own existed, like that was made
is a filter as a feature film, um, Like, so
that existed in the time that it was and so
it makes sense, um that there's not like a lesbian
presence in the movie. And as I was reading the article,
I was like, wasn't there though, because I always interpreted
(08:25):
little Sister Kit as like the lesbian kids sister and
so I went and rewatched a League of their Own
while I was like working my way all through this,
and I realized I just mentally edited out, uh, the
entire before and after framework of the story, which is
like involves her being married to a man and having
(08:46):
a lot of children, um and grandchildren. And I think
the problem was that um, I saw even though it
came out before I saw a league of their own
after having seen Tank Girl. So I think my perception
my crush on Marie Patty. I mean she's darling, I
(09:06):
get it. Uh oh, I love her in that movie.
Um yeah, legither And is very popular at our house.
I haven't watched it in a while, but Brian does
quote it a lot. The one thing I also love
that's an offshoot of it is seeing people at pop
culture conventions like Dragon Connor comic cons in Rockford peaches uniforms,
(09:30):
which is the keyest stuff you could ever see on
the planet. It's adorable. Um. There's also a reboot of
that coming to one of the streaming services I don't
remember which. I also wanted to take a minute talk about. Um.
Like we've we mentioned in the show that today it
is still a stereotype about women in sports being lesbians,
(09:54):
and of course that is a stereotype, but also there
are lesbians Like in my lifetime. We have gone from
Billy Jeane King being outed against her will in one
and it being an enormous scandal and her losing contracts
and like she was later into her career at that point,
(10:15):
but still it was like damaging to her career. Hugely
in my lifetime. We have gone from that to Megan
Rappino doing a cameo on the L word generation cue.
That is such a colossal evolution of women in sports,
(10:36):
women athletes, uh, the perceptions of women in athletes, and
specifically the perception of like lesbians as athletes, which I
find really moving and profound. It is, I mean, I
I it's one of those things where it's like, we
still have so far to go in so many ways,
(10:57):
but when you point that out, it's it is. It's
very moving. It's like we're making progress. I know it's
not as much progress as we need, but it's good.
I feel compelled to also mention that I cried in
the weirdest point imaginable in this episode and had to stop.
This is embarrassing, but I don't think it would surprise
really anybody that knows me, which is that I had
(11:17):
a very hard time talking about a league of their
own because I had to mention Penny Marshall, who I love,
and so we weep to think about her not being
with us. I'm doing it now, and then I think
about Carrie Fisher because they were best friends, and then
I m having just rewatched that movie literally a week ago.
(11:38):
I my personal opinion is I feel like it really
holds up. I very much enjoyed watching it. At that
point it was on Showtime. But when I tried to
find it again on the Showtime app, my, you know,
Roku was asking me if I wanted to rent it,
and I was like, but but it was just on Showtime,
so they or may not be on Showtime right now anyway. Uh.
(12:01):
That is mostly behind the scenes about a league of
their own. Anyway, I had a good time researching that episode.
I'm glad that after just a lot of trying to
figure out what I was going to talk about on
the show next, that I eventually arrived at that one
because it was a lot of fun to research. Yeah,
it kind of gave us a weird one two punch
of the week a little bit. Yeah, there's a lot
(12:24):
of discussion of conflict over slavery. Here is actually some
pretty fun baseball talk with some sexism involved, sexism and
segregation and homophobia, but still fun sports story. Yeah. Uh
So anyway, we'll we'll see you again in a couple
of days. I mean, I guess tomorrow we'll be here
(12:44):
for a Saturday Classic and then Monday at another episode. Anyway,
if you'd like to send us an email for a
history podcast that I heart radio dot com and we like, you,
subscribe to our show Stuff You Missed in History Class
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
(13:05):
from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.