May 16, 2025 • 27 mins
Tracy and Holly share tetanus shot stories and discuss getting boosters. They then discuss the egos of European explorers in Africa.
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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 Fry. We talked about tetanus this week. Yeah, we
did so. Very often when we have had anything that's
(00:26):
related to science or medicine, anything in that field, when
I have been writing the episode, I have started out
with an explainer on the illness or the scientific discovery
and the sort of what's going on with that and
(00:47):
how it works. And this time I said to myself,
what if I did something a little different, and what
if I tried to incorporate the understanding of how tetanus
works as an illness with the historical timeline of its
of discoveries about it. And boy was that harder, so
(01:11):
much harder. I contemplated just scrapping the entire outline and
starting completely over, but I didn't. I stuck with it,
even though it was somehow, way way harder to write
it that way. Something we didn't mention is a piece
of artwork. I don't know what image will wind up
(01:32):
being used on our social media to go along with
this episode, but there is a painting by surgeon and
artist doctor Charles Bell, which was created in eighteen oh nine,
and it's called Tetanus following gunshot Wounds, And it's a
pretty visceral image showing this person who has tetanus in
(01:56):
like a whole body spasm with their whole body sort
of arcd like a bow, which is one of the
ways that the spasms of tetanus have been described historically.
I didn't really have a great place to mention that
in the body of the episode itself. Holly, you look
like you're looking up what it looks like. Oh, I
(02:19):
was trying to check and see if it's the painting
I thought it was, and it was.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
There was just part of my brain that was like,
are you sure that's the same painting and not yeah,
some other weird thing. And then while I was looking
for it, there's another painting that looks like a portrait
of Count or Lock from the Recent and Nose Farautuo,
and I got a little psychia. Okay, he did other artwork,
(02:45):
other portrayals, portrayals of other diseases and conditions, and I
got a little bit sidetracked thinking about that, and then said, Okay,
you gotta you gotta focus on this episode. That is
more difficult than expect did based on your own decisions
to write it differently from usual. I also thought I
(03:05):
might tell the story of the time I had to
get a tetnis shot, not as a routine immunisation. I
have a similar story, but it wasn't me but a sibling.
So my story is I was living in Asheville, North Carolina,
on a ground floor apartment with no air conditioning, and
so I was sleeping with the windows open, and this
(03:28):
had worked fine until it didn't. And the way that
it didn't is that a strange stray or someone's pet
I don't know cat jumped onto the outside ledge of
the window while my cat, Villainel, was sitting on the
inside sill of the window. And Villainell immediately started freaking out.
(03:54):
And so my immediate urgency was to like separate my
cat from the window and closed the window so that
she would not be like get into a fight with
this other cat that I know nothing about, right, And
when I grabbed her, she just reflexively bit me in
(04:14):
the web between my finger.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And my thumb.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Oh yeah, this, you know has been this is the
only time she ever bit anyone. Yeah, displaced aggression is
not uncommon in cats that are freaked out about an
outside cat.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah, she had never been in any way aggressive in
any way, and I think that that was just like
I surprised her by grabbing her while she was actively
having a confrontation with this strange cat. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
So, uh, this is, you know, in the middle of
the night.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And so I go, you know, I wash my hand
and dress my hand as best I can. I go
back to bed, and I wake up and it's already
swollen and I can see the beginning of like lines
leading out of the wound. So I called in sick
to work and I went to urgent care and they said,
(05:08):
when was your last tetanus shot?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I think that's a common answer. Yeah, I do know
now because I start the clock from the time I
got been back. So they gave me a tetanus shot.
I also got a big old shot of antibiotics in
my buttock, and then I also had to be on
(05:34):
oral antibiotics and I was fine, but that was the
time that I had to get the tetnis shot because
of my like I had gotten all of the recommended
vaccines from my childhood, and I know I had gotten
like I remember being of an age to have gotten
a booster, but I was like, I don't know when
that was exactly, and I did not have vaccine records
(05:59):
with me.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
In that moment.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
We were not to the age of having the kind
of electronic medical records that exist for a lot of
this stuff. Now. Yeah, here's how I learned what tetanus was. Okay,
I think I've told you before that when I was young,
we had a farm in the Pacific Northwest because my
parents thought farms were idyllic and they grew up on
(06:24):
farms and we should somehow have a farm. Yeah, I
don't know. It was weird. Upon that farm, in the
kind of wooded area of it, there was a giant
tree that we used for various playtime activities. My siblings
(06:46):
are all a good bit older than me, and they
not wanting to do kid things like climb trees, et cetera,
devise this thing where they basically like tied a rope
to one of the higher branches, and then they tie
at the end of that rope that dangled like a
piece of wood to make a handle, and they would
(07:07):
basically like grip the piece of wood and then they
would push each other and swing m M big time fun.
Except you know, sometimes teenagers aren't really thoughtful about what
piece of wood they tie to the end of the
rope for their little swing adventure. Sure, one of my siblings,
(07:30):
I don't know who, but I have suspicions picked up
a random piece of wood from our woodpile and tied
it on there. And my middle sister grabbed it and
got a rusty nail right through her hand. Oh no,
And that's how I learned about tennis. Yeah, because she
(07:51):
went into the house. I think I was inside playing
because I was not cool enough to hang with them.
I was their little jerky sister. But I remember her
coming into the house and like the sort of ripple
of panic from my KOOKI and anxiety prone mother because
my sister just thought like, oh, I have a cut
(08:12):
in my hand. I need to have this dressed. And
my mom went from that to I think my dad said, hey,
do we have her up to date on tennis shots?
And suddenly it was like operation in Ergensia. Everybody kind
of lost their mind. There was the rushing into the
car and the running away, and my sister came back
(08:32):
looking very bedraggled and like she had really been through it,
because she definitely got some heavy hitting shots and the
badonk and other places. And that's how I learned what tennis. Yeah,
and became so afraid. I was never touching that tree
or the That tree was a hazard, I will say,
because it also had I think it was like a
(08:55):
was it a cedar tree? It was something. It also
had like some very elastic y branches that were kind
of bouncy that we would also swing on. And at
one point, like I had gripped onto one of the
branches and my brother pushed me and I went flying
and we thought I had a broken arm for a minute.
I didn't, but it was just banged up real bad.
(09:17):
I don't you know, kids on farms that are not
really farm kids maybe don't do smart things. Yeah, or
maybe we were just a real careless lot.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
That tree was a menace.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Tetanus. I was talking to Patrick as I was working
on this, and I was like, did you know that
if you get tetanus your muscles can spasm so hard
that you can break your own bones And he was
like yes, And I asked him two or three other
weird questions about tetanus, and then I said, I, you
know so much about tetanus and he was like what,
(09:53):
Like this was the thing we were all terrified of
as children. Don't step on a rusty nail, you might
get tetanus. And I was like, but you had your shots,
like you if you get your shots, probably not going
to get tetanus, which is good because it sounds awful. Listen,
the nineteen seventies were a lawless time. We didn't all
(10:16):
stay on shot schedules. I think I was on for
sure that I was definitely on like the shot schedule,
because that was the like my mom was very focused
on things like that. And then I think I've said
before on the show that I was the recommendation for
how many measles vaccines to get changed after you and
(10:41):
I were the age that we would have been getting
them normally, and we were going to go visit my
grandmother when I was in my early teens and there
was an active measles outbreak happening there at that time,
and my mom took me to the pediatrician to get
another shot before that trip for that reason, so that
(11:06):
I think I was like thirteen or fourteen. Yeah, we
went ahead and got boosters this year.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
The reason I didn't go ahead and get a booster
is because I had that shot when I was fourteen
or thirteen, like somewhere in there. And it seemed like,
as this outbreak is spreading people who are interested in
getting a vaccine and are just like behind or not
sure their status or the age bracket that you and
(11:32):
I are where. They probably only got one shot as
a kid. I kind of wanted to allow all of
those folks that are a higher need than me to
go and get them. I know, you can also get
tighters checked to see if you still have immunity to stuff. Yeah,
we I had talked to our doctor about it and
(11:57):
or I don't know if it's our doctor or a pharmacist,
and they were like, you know what, at your age,
if you can't remember, we just skipped the tighter and
do the shot. Yeah, great, great. I did talk to
my doctor about it at my physical about whether I
should whether I should get another DOCE, or whether I
should get my tighter checked, and she was like, I think,
(12:18):
based on what you've just told me, I think you're fine,
and we would not need to order that. I did
also confirm that, even though I do not believe I
ever had chicken pox, I should get a shingles vaccine
in a couple of weeks here after I turned fifty,
and I should also get the new Macacle pneumonia vaccine
(12:40):
again in a couple of weeks here after I turned fifty. Yeah,
I'm gonna take a little trip for myself, and then
when I come home from a trip, on my list
of things to do, it's gonna be going to get
my vaccines. So fun. They prevent you from getting serious
and potentially deadly illnesses. They do not cause autism. That
(13:02):
is that is established at this point. Even if they
did cause autism, the idea that your child dying is
preferable to your child being autistic is very troubling and offensive,
and frankly, a lot of the things that RFK Junior
has been saying are also offensive. Oh my lord, it was.
(13:26):
I have been out of the country, yeah, for a while,
a little less than a couple of weeks, and I
was out of the country and busy enough that I
wasn't looking at news or social media much, and neither
were most of the people I was with, and we
were at like some I don't know, if we were
(13:46):
at dinner, at like a little you know, cocktail gathering
or whatever, and one of my friends opened up social
media and then went, oh no and shut it immediately,
was like, let's just stay in our weird vacation bubble
because nobody needs to hear what's going on and what's
coming out of that person's mouth, not for.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
The next few minutes.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, I was very fear Like, the most recent, in
my opinion, most offensive and disgusting thing was after this
article or this episode was like already completely written, like
it was just waiting for you to return for Japan.
And then I was like, now there's another thing to
(14:32):
be mad about about vaccines. There's always another thing.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
To be very clear, there is a broad spectrum of autism.
That is why it's called a spectrum. And there are
people on that spectrum who do need daily care all
the time, and that is true. They are still human beings,
they are still part of our society and part of
(14:58):
our world, and they are not some to be eliminated.
I don't know, I feel like we could live in
a world where we were focused on making sure everyone
has access to the world that we live in instead
of a world instead of trying to eliminate people to
make our lives simpler. Yeah, eliminate people, because that's what
we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Anyway, you can check out previous episodes that we've got
about the eugenics movement in the archive if you want
to do that. Otherwise you just want to depress the
heck out of yourself even more. Get real mad. We
(15:41):
talked about Cidi Mubarak Bombay this week. My sad brain
just wants to do calling doctor Bombay, calling doctor Bombay,
come in, come in right away. This is funny for
all of my Bewitched fans in the crowd.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
I so it's clear from having you know, everyone who
has listened to this episode. If you're somehow listening to
a Friday behind the scenes having not heard the episode,
I would feel like in a lot of cases, that's
not going to make any sense, but you know, just
in case somehow that's what's happening in your life right now.
(16:17):
A lot of that episode is drawn from the accounts
of these men who went on these expeditions and the
books they wrote about them later and there are so
many of them, and I kept getting confused about them,
and I wound up temporarily at the top of the
outline just having this list of names and links so
(16:39):
that I would not confuse who had written which book
about which of these things, because everyone that we talked
about wrote at least one book about it.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
And even with that, occasionally.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Like there was a time that Holly caught in as
we were recording this where I had just put the
wrong name of one of these guys.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Hopefully that was the only time.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
In fairness, it had referred to that guide just a
sentence earlier, so it's just yeah, yeah, a finger repeat
in typing, not a big Hopefully we didn't mess it
up any other times. I will reiterate all of these
books are online in multiple places. They're all in the
(17:24):
public domain. There's a lot of racism in there. I
did not read. I did not include any of the
most re racist things. There are parts of what we
did read that kind of kind of have some of
the threads of some of the stereotypes that people in
(17:48):
like the UK had about people from Africa, about there
being like simple and happy, and there is some of that,
But I do think that he as a person, like
he is widely described as being like a very happy
and upbeat and a very kind person that sort of
(18:11):
resonates through all of people's writing about him. But yeah,
I did not put in big long quotes filled with
the N word, which there are many of.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yees.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I have some theories, Okay, you kind of touched on
it in the ways that people wrote about him and
different perceptions of him, because I really do think some
of it, whether it is surely racially motivated, like there's
surely racists racist root to it, but I really think
(18:48):
like speak seemed like a pretty chill dude in many ways.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I can be wrong.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I don't certainly didn't know him personally, but you know,
all of his writing that you quoted in this is
very much about his appreciation for all of these people
that helped him, how kind he found them. And then
all of the subsequent ones have to me this edge
(19:16):
of what I would call snoops petuits, like they're just
they are clearly wealthy white dudes, yeah, who are now
in a place where they're having to take advice from
someone that they perceive as lesser, and it bruises their
egos to be told like, dude, you cannot walk today,
(19:38):
do you not know? And it's easier to say he's
wasting my time. Then I'm a little weaker than I thought.
Like that.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Also, every one.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Of these expeditions sounds miserable, but there was just so
much illness, and some of it serious illness, and even
if not serious, you know, the not serious illness parts,
there were, uh, just all kinds of injuries and all
kinds of delays and all kinds of They thought that
(20:10):
they were going to be able to make it to
this place, but now they have to camp out and
it's like swampy and hot and full of bugs. And
two different people supposedly leading the expedition both have eye
inflammation that means that they mostly can't see very well.
Like none of it sounds fun to me, it does.
(20:33):
And so sometimes when I'm reading these accounts and I'm
reading the times that they sound kind of judgy about
about what Bombay was doing or decisions he was making,
I'm just like, was this really a bad decision? Or
are you just mad and uncomfortable?
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Right?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And I mean we have all reached that point, like
whether it's when you're traveling or you're just in the
middle of like a really busy season or whatever, where
like the the stresses on your body make you less
magnanimous and more prone to be fussy and crabby. Yeah, sure,
so that's a natural part of it. But then like
(21:11):
when you get home and you're writing about it, theoretically
you are not feeling those same stresses, and maybe, yeah,
you don't have to be a jerk, Yeah, especially considering
this person actually knows what they're doing and you've never
been there before, so don't dare.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
There has been a lot more writing in more recent
years about how critical the work and knowledge of like
the locally hired African people was to like all of
these expeditions, and then also the people that had either
returned to Africa from India or had been in some
(22:06):
cases hired in India specifically to come on an expedition
to Africa, and how you would have like in most
of these expeditions, there would be a very small group
of white officers from somewhere in the UK that had
usually been in the military service, like some number between
(22:26):
maybe six and ten of them, and then the entire
rest of the company were either either people hired locally
from any of like the African tribes and kingdoms there
were hired in India. Those were the people that were
doing They were carrying all the stuff, they were making
all of the negotiations for the most part between the
(22:50):
the with the like the kingdoms and the and the
empires that they were passing through. If Stanley or Livingstone
or whoever had just gone down there by themselves without
any help, they would have died right away. They would
have gotten four miles and collapsed.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So there's been a lot more, not even just recently,
like not just within the last twenty years, but within
the last like fifty years, a lot more writing about
how much all of these you know, so called European
exploration expeditions was like they were all like really grounded
in the the labor and the knowledge of the African
(23:31):
people whose continent they were quote exploring. Yeah, it's more
like they were being guided round. Yes, yes, And probably
those poor people that were doing all that work were
like this big dumb, fussy baby is here again? Got
(23:53):
to take them to try to find the source of
the Nile. We could have told them, but they want
to learn the hard way. So here you brother get
in the boat. I will say, back when we recorded
that episode about hat Shepstuit and the Voyage Dupunte, that
(24:15):
was a Saturday classic, I stressed a lot more about
whether we were covering enough history from parts of the
world other than North America and Europe. I still try
to select a diverse range of topics to talk about.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
But no matter which things we're focusing on in terms
of diverse.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
There's always stuff that's just not ever in Like it's
that's there will there will never be enough of that
particular thing, right, So it's like still my goal to
include things from all over the world. But sometimes if
some months pass without something else from a different part
of the world, like that is no longer a thing
(25:08):
causing me to lose sleep.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
At night.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
In the way that it was earlier.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Sometimes anxiety drives the bus. Yeah, there's also just the
realities we've talked before about how if we are talking
about something that is related to North America or Europe,
this starting question is not do I have the cultural
context to talk about this adequately? And sometimes when we
(25:40):
are talking about things from Africa or Asia, South America,
like places that we aren't as steeped in sometimes I
look at something and I go, no, I don't have
the cultural competence to do this justice at all. And
recognizing my own limits there has been like part of
(26:02):
the learning curve of more than a decade on this podcast,
well over a decade at this point. So yeah, anyway,
I try to talk about lots of different things on
the show, but now I'm better at recognizing my own
limitations in doing that. Hey, I know we're all living
(26:27):
in times that are full of a lot of chaos
and uncertainty and for a lot of us with frustrations
and upset. So whatever's happening, whatever's progressing in your life,
I hope you're able to find a moment where you're
able to find a little piece, a little moment of joy.
(26:48):
All of those things are we need them to, you know,
continue to do the things that we're all trying to
do in our lives. We will be back with a
Saturday Classic tomorrow and something brand it's new on Funday.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
(27:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly Fry. We talked about tetanus this week. Yeah, we
did so. Very often when we have had anything that's
(00:26):
related to science or medicine, anything in that field, when
I have been writing the episode, I have started out
with an explainer on the illness or the scientific discovery
and the sort of what's going on with that and
(00:47):
how it works. And this time I said to myself,
what if I did something a little different, and what
if I tried to incorporate the understanding of how tetanus
works as an illness with the historical timeline of its
of discoveries about it. And boy was that harder, so
(01:11):
much harder. I contemplated just scrapping the entire outline and
starting completely over, but I didn't. I stuck with it,
even though it was somehow, way way harder to write
it that way. Something we didn't mention is a piece
of artwork. I don't know what image will wind up
(01:32):
being used on our social media to go along with
this episode, but there is a painting by surgeon and
artist doctor Charles Bell, which was created in eighteen oh nine,
and it's called Tetanus following gunshot Wounds, And it's a
pretty visceral image showing this person who has tetanus in
(01:56):
like a whole body spasm with their whole body sort
of arcd like a bow, which is one of the
ways that the spasms of tetanus have been described historically.
I didn't really have a great place to mention that
in the body of the episode itself. Holly, you look
like you're looking up what it looks like. Oh, I
(02:19):
was trying to check and see if it's the painting
I thought it was, and it was.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
There was just part of my brain that was like,
are you sure that's the same painting and not yeah,
some other weird thing. And then while I was looking
for it, there's another painting that looks like a portrait
of Count or Lock from the Recent and Nose Farautuo,
and I got a little psychia. Okay, he did other artwork,
(02:45):
other portrayals, portrayals of other diseases and conditions, and I
got a little bit sidetracked thinking about that, and then said, Okay,
you gotta you gotta focus on this episode. That is
more difficult than expect did based on your own decisions
to write it differently from usual. I also thought I
(03:05):
might tell the story of the time I had to
get a tetnis shot, not as a routine immunisation. I
have a similar story, but it wasn't me but a sibling.
So my story is I was living in Asheville, North Carolina,
on a ground floor apartment with no air conditioning, and
so I was sleeping with the windows open, and this
(03:28):
had worked fine until it didn't. And the way that
it didn't is that a strange stray or someone's pet
I don't know cat jumped onto the outside ledge of
the window while my cat, Villainel, was sitting on the
inside sill of the window. And Villainell immediately started freaking out.
(03:54):
And so my immediate urgency was to like separate my
cat from the window and closed the window so that
she would not be like get into a fight with
this other cat that I know nothing about, right, And
when I grabbed her, she just reflexively bit me in
(04:14):
the web between my finger.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And my thumb.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Oh yeah, this, you know has been this is the
only time she ever bit anyone. Yeah, displaced aggression is
not uncommon in cats that are freaked out about an
outside cat.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah, she had never been in any way aggressive in
any way, and I think that that was just like
I surprised her by grabbing her while she was actively
having a confrontation with this strange cat. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
So, uh, this is, you know, in the middle of
the night.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And so I go, you know, I wash my hand
and dress my hand as best I can. I go
back to bed, and I wake up and it's already
swollen and I can see the beginning of like lines
leading out of the wound. So I called in sick
to work and I went to urgent care and they said,
(05:08):
when was your last tetanus shot?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I think that's a common answer. Yeah, I do know
now because I start the clock from the time I
got been back. So they gave me a tetanus shot.
I also got a big old shot of antibiotics in
my buttock, and then I also had to be on
(05:34):
oral antibiotics and I was fine, but that was the
time that I had to get the tetnis shot because
of my like I had gotten all of the recommended
vaccines from my childhood, and I know I had gotten
like I remember being of an age to have gotten
a booster, but I was like, I don't know when
that was exactly, and I did not have vaccine records
(05:59):
with me.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
In that moment.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
We were not to the age of having the kind
of electronic medical records that exist for a lot of
this stuff. Now. Yeah, here's how I learned what tetanus was. Okay,
I think I've told you before that when I was young,
we had a farm in the Pacific Northwest because my
parents thought farms were idyllic and they grew up on
(06:24):
farms and we should somehow have a farm. Yeah, I
don't know. It was weird. Upon that farm, in the
kind of wooded area of it, there was a giant
tree that we used for various playtime activities. My siblings
(06:46):
are all a good bit older than me, and they
not wanting to do kid things like climb trees, et cetera,
devise this thing where they basically like tied a rope
to one of the higher branches, and then they tie
at the end of that rope that dangled like a
piece of wood to make a handle, and they would
(07:07):
basically like grip the piece of wood and then they
would push each other and swing m M big time fun.
Except you know, sometimes teenagers aren't really thoughtful about what
piece of wood they tie to the end of the
rope for their little swing adventure. Sure, one of my siblings,
(07:30):
I don't know who, but I have suspicions picked up
a random piece of wood from our woodpile and tied
it on there. And my middle sister grabbed it and
got a rusty nail right through her hand. Oh no,
And that's how I learned about tennis. Yeah, because she
(07:51):
went into the house. I think I was inside playing
because I was not cool enough to hang with them.
I was their little jerky sister. But I remember her
coming into the house and like the sort of ripple
of panic from my KOOKI and anxiety prone mother because
my sister just thought like, oh, I have a cut
(08:12):
in my hand. I need to have this dressed. And
my mom went from that to I think my dad said, hey,
do we have her up to date on tennis shots?
And suddenly it was like operation in Ergensia. Everybody kind
of lost their mind. There was the rushing into the
car and the running away, and my sister came back
(08:32):
looking very bedraggled and like she had really been through it,
because she definitely got some heavy hitting shots and the
badonk and other places. And that's how I learned what tennis. Yeah,
and became so afraid. I was never touching that tree
or the That tree was a hazard, I will say,
because it also had I think it was like a
(08:55):
was it a cedar tree? It was something. It also
had like some very elastic y branches that were kind
of bouncy that we would also swing on. And at
one point, like I had gripped onto one of the
branches and my brother pushed me and I went flying
and we thought I had a broken arm for a minute.
I didn't, but it was just banged up real bad.
(09:17):
I don't you know, kids on farms that are not
really farm kids maybe don't do smart things. Yeah, or
maybe we were just a real careless lot.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
That tree was a menace.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Tetanus. I was talking to Patrick as I was working
on this, and I was like, did you know that
if you get tetanus your muscles can spasm so hard
that you can break your own bones And he was
like yes, And I asked him two or three other
weird questions about tetanus, and then I said, I, you
know so much about tetanus and he was like what,
(09:53):
Like this was the thing we were all terrified of
as children. Don't step on a rusty nail, you might
get tetanus. And I was like, but you had your shots,
like you if you get your shots, probably not going
to get tetanus, which is good because it sounds awful. Listen,
the nineteen seventies were a lawless time. We didn't all
(10:16):
stay on shot schedules. I think I was on for
sure that I was definitely on like the shot schedule,
because that was the like my mom was very focused
on things like that. And then I think I've said
before on the show that I was the recommendation for
how many measles vaccines to get changed after you and
(10:41):
I were the age that we would have been getting
them normally, and we were going to go visit my
grandmother when I was in my early teens and there
was an active measles outbreak happening there at that time,
and my mom took me to the pediatrician to get
another shot before that trip for that reason, so that
(11:06):
I think I was like thirteen or fourteen. Yeah, we
went ahead and got boosters this year.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
The reason I didn't go ahead and get a booster
is because I had that shot when I was fourteen
or thirteen, like somewhere in there. And it seemed like,
as this outbreak is spreading people who are interested in
getting a vaccine and are just like behind or not
sure their status or the age bracket that you and
(11:32):
I are where. They probably only got one shot as
a kid. I kind of wanted to allow all of
those folks that are a higher need than me to
go and get them. I know, you can also get
tighters checked to see if you still have immunity to stuff. Yeah,
we I had talked to our doctor about it and
(11:57):
or I don't know if it's our doctor or a pharmacist,
and they were like, you know what, at your age,
if you can't remember, we just skipped the tighter and
do the shot. Yeah, great, great. I did talk to
my doctor about it at my physical about whether I
should whether I should get another DOCE, or whether I
should get my tighter checked, and she was like, I think,
(12:18):
based on what you've just told me, I think you're fine,
and we would not need to order that. I did
also confirm that, even though I do not believe I
ever had chicken pox, I should get a shingles vaccine
in a couple of weeks here after I turned fifty,
and I should also get the new Macacle pneumonia vaccine
(12:40):
again in a couple of weeks here after I turned fifty. Yeah,
I'm gonna take a little trip for myself, and then
when I come home from a trip, on my list
of things to do, it's gonna be going to get
my vaccines. So fun. They prevent you from getting serious
and potentially deadly illnesses. They do not cause autism. That
(13:02):
is that is established at this point. Even if they
did cause autism, the idea that your child dying is
preferable to your child being autistic is very troubling and offensive,
and frankly, a lot of the things that RFK Junior
has been saying are also offensive. Oh my lord, it was.
(13:26):
I have been out of the country, yeah, for a while,
a little less than a couple of weeks, and I
was out of the country and busy enough that I
wasn't looking at news or social media much, and neither
were most of the people I was with, and we
were at like some I don't know, if we were
(13:46):
at dinner, at like a little you know, cocktail gathering
or whatever, and one of my friends opened up social
media and then went, oh no and shut it immediately,
was like, let's just stay in our weird vacation bubble
because nobody needs to hear what's going on and what's
coming out of that person's mouth, not for.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
The next few minutes.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, I was very fear Like, the most recent, in
my opinion, most offensive and disgusting thing was after this
article or this episode was like already completely written, like
it was just waiting for you to return for Japan.
And then I was like, now there's another thing to
(14:32):
be mad about about vaccines. There's always another thing.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
To be very clear, there is a broad spectrum of autism.
That is why it's called a spectrum. And there are
people on that spectrum who do need daily care all
the time, and that is true. They are still human beings,
they are still part of our society and part of
(14:58):
our world, and they are not some to be eliminated.
I don't know, I feel like we could live in
a world where we were focused on making sure everyone
has access to the world that we live in instead
of a world instead of trying to eliminate people to
make our lives simpler. Yeah, eliminate people, because that's what
we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Anyway, you can check out previous episodes that we've got
about the eugenics movement in the archive if you want
to do that. Otherwise you just want to depress the
heck out of yourself even more. Get real mad. We
(15:41):
talked about Cidi Mubarak Bombay this week. My sad brain
just wants to do calling doctor Bombay, calling doctor Bombay,
come in, come in right away. This is funny for
all of my Bewitched fans in the crowd.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
I so it's clear from having you know, everyone who
has listened to this episode. If you're somehow listening to
a Friday behind the scenes having not heard the episode,
I would feel like in a lot of cases, that's
not going to make any sense, but you know, just
in case somehow that's what's happening in your life right now.
(16:17):
A lot of that episode is drawn from the accounts
of these men who went on these expeditions and the
books they wrote about them later and there are so
many of them, and I kept getting confused about them,
and I wound up temporarily at the top of the
outline just having this list of names and links so
(16:39):
that I would not confuse who had written which book
about which of these things, because everyone that we talked
about wrote at least one book about it.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
And even with that, occasionally.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Like there was a time that Holly caught in as
we were recording this where I had just put the
wrong name of one of these guys.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Hopefully that was the only time.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
In fairness, it had referred to that guide just a
sentence earlier, so it's just yeah, yeah, a finger repeat
in typing, not a big Hopefully we didn't mess it
up any other times. I will reiterate all of these
books are online in multiple places. They're all in the
(17:24):
public domain. There's a lot of racism in there. I
did not read. I did not include any of the
most re racist things. There are parts of what we
did read that kind of kind of have some of
the threads of some of the stereotypes that people in
(17:48):
like the UK had about people from Africa, about there
being like simple and happy, and there is some of that,
But I do think that he as a person, like
he is widely described as being like a very happy
and upbeat and a very kind person that sort of
(18:11):
resonates through all of people's writing about him. But yeah,
I did not put in big long quotes filled with
the N word, which there are many of.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yees.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I have some theories, Okay, you kind of touched on
it in the ways that people wrote about him and
different perceptions of him, because I really do think some
of it, whether it is surely racially motivated, like there's
surely racists racist root to it, but I really think
(18:48):
like speak seemed like a pretty chill dude in many ways.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I can be wrong.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I don't certainly didn't know him personally, but you know,
all of his writing that you quoted in this is
very much about his appreciation for all of these people
that helped him, how kind he found them. And then
all of the subsequent ones have to me this edge
(19:16):
of what I would call snoops petuits, like they're just
they are clearly wealthy white dudes, yeah, who are now
in a place where they're having to take advice from
someone that they perceive as lesser, and it bruises their
egos to be told like, dude, you cannot walk today,
(19:38):
do you not know? And it's easier to say he's
wasting my time. Then I'm a little weaker than I thought.
Like that.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Also, every one.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Of these expeditions sounds miserable, but there was just so
much illness, and some of it serious illness, and even
if not serious, you know, the not serious illness parts,
there were, uh, just all kinds of injuries and all
kinds of delays and all kinds of They thought that
(20:10):
they were going to be able to make it to
this place, but now they have to camp out and
it's like swampy and hot and full of bugs. And
two different people supposedly leading the expedition both have eye
inflammation that means that they mostly can't see very well.
Like none of it sounds fun to me, it does.
(20:33):
And so sometimes when I'm reading these accounts and I'm
reading the times that they sound kind of judgy about
about what Bombay was doing or decisions he was making,
I'm just like, was this really a bad decision? Or
are you just mad and uncomfortable?
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Right?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And I mean we have all reached that point, like
whether it's when you're traveling or you're just in the
middle of like a really busy season or whatever, where
like the the stresses on your body make you less
magnanimous and more prone to be fussy and crabby. Yeah, sure,
so that's a natural part of it. But then like
(21:11):
when you get home and you're writing about it, theoretically
you are not feeling those same stresses, and maybe, yeah,
you don't have to be a jerk, Yeah, especially considering
this person actually knows what they're doing and you've never
been there before, so don't dare.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
There has been a lot more writing in more recent
years about how critical the work and knowledge of like
the locally hired African people was to like all of
these expeditions, and then also the people that had either
returned to Africa from India or had been in some
(22:06):
cases hired in India specifically to come on an expedition
to Africa, and how you would have like in most
of these expeditions, there would be a very small group
of white officers from somewhere in the UK that had
usually been in the military service, like some number between
(22:26):
maybe six and ten of them, and then the entire
rest of the company were either either people hired locally
from any of like the African tribes and kingdoms there
were hired in India. Those were the people that were
doing They were carrying all the stuff, they were making
all of the negotiations for the most part between the
(22:50):
the with the like the kingdoms and the and the
empires that they were passing through. If Stanley or Livingstone
or whoever had just gone down there by themselves without
any help, they would have died right away. They would
have gotten four miles and collapsed.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So there's been a lot more, not even just recently,
like not just within the last twenty years, but within
the last like fifty years, a lot more writing about
how much all of these you know, so called European
exploration expeditions was like they were all like really grounded
in the the labor and the knowledge of the African
(23:31):
people whose continent they were quote exploring. Yeah, it's more
like they were being guided round. Yes, yes, And probably
those poor people that were doing all that work were
like this big dumb, fussy baby is here again? Got
(23:53):
to take them to try to find the source of
the Nile. We could have told them, but they want
to learn the hard way. So here you brother get
in the boat. I will say, back when we recorded
that episode about hat Shepstuit and the Voyage Dupunte, that
(24:15):
was a Saturday classic, I stressed a lot more about
whether we were covering enough history from parts of the
world other than North America and Europe. I still try
to select a diverse range of topics to talk about.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
But no matter which things we're focusing on in terms
of diverse.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
There's always stuff that's just not ever in Like it's
that's there will there will never be enough of that
particular thing, right, So it's like still my goal to
include things from all over the world. But sometimes if
some months pass without something else from a different part
of the world, like that is no longer a thing
(25:08):
causing me to lose sleep.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
At night.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
In the way that it was earlier.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Sometimes anxiety drives the bus. Yeah, there's also just the
realities we've talked before about how if we are talking
about something that is related to North America or Europe,
this starting question is not do I have the cultural
context to talk about this adequately? And sometimes when we
(25:40):
are talking about things from Africa or Asia, South America,
like places that we aren't as steeped in sometimes I
look at something and I go, no, I don't have
the cultural competence to do this justice at all. And
recognizing my own limits there has been like part of
(26:02):
the learning curve of more than a decade on this podcast,
well over a decade at this point. So yeah, anyway,
I try to talk about lots of different things on
the show, but now I'm better at recognizing my own
limitations in doing that. Hey, I know we're all living
(26:27):
in times that are full of a lot of chaos
and uncertainty and for a lot of us with frustrations
and upset. So whatever's happening, whatever's progressing in your life,
I hope you're able to find a moment where you're
able to find a little piece, a little moment of joy.
(26:48):
All of those things are we need them to, you know,
continue to do the things that we're all trying to
do in our lives. We will be back with a
Saturday Classic tomorrow and something brand it's new on Funday.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
(27:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio 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
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