June 19, 2026 • 26 mins
Tracy talks about how she first became interested in Casimir Pulaski's story, and how her focus changed during research. She also talks about selecting episode topics and later learning the subject is problematic.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about Kasimir Pulaski this week,
whose name in Polish. Even with practicing, I feel like
(00:22):
I said very badly the one time that I tried
to say it.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I wow.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So, as I said at the top of the episode,
he wound up on my shortlist back in twenty nineteen
when that Smithsonian Channel episode was happening, I did not
watch the episode at that time, so mostly what I
had to go on was like the stuff that came
out from Smithsonian Channel writing about it, news reporting about
(00:52):
the thing, and I was really intrigued by the idea
that this person who had fought, you know, been an
officer in the Revolutionary War may have been intersex. But
then doing the actual research into this episode, looking into
it a lot farther, I feel like people are gonna
(01:12):
come at me. I just don't think those are his
bones from the monuments.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I don't either. So while I.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Appreciated the opportunity to talk again about how there have
always been always all through history, all over the world,
always people whose lives and whose bodies just don't line
up with the place and time that they're living in
terms of the sex and gender expectations.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I just I don't think those are his bones.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I said in the episode that I watched this Smithsonian
Channel thing on the very last day of research, and
the reason that it was on the very last day
of research was that, like, in doing all of the reading,
I was like, I don't think those are his bones.
What did they actually say on this TV show about
the DNA research? And it was mitochondrial DNA research, which
(02:06):
has passed through the maternal line, and I couldn't find
clarity on exactly what was said. There was just a
lot of vagueness and the various writing about this TV
show and the research that led into it, and so
I was like, well, I guess I'm going to have
to get Paramount plus to watch this thing, because that was.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
The place where it was available.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And I watched it, and I had a lot of
frustrations because a lot of the episode is not really about,
like the DNA research is kind of the big capstone
at the end, and the announcement of yes, there's a match,
the big that's just the big reveal at the end
of the episode, but a lot of the episode is
more about building a case that this person could have
(02:57):
been intersex, gotcha? And so they kept doing things like
comparing portraits of Casimir Pulaski to a medical illustration illustrating
someone who had congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and I was like, Okay,
that doesn't really have anything to do with whose bones
(03:20):
these are, or whether that was Casimir Pulaski, or whether
like you're you're seeing a similarity between like an eighteenth
century or maybe nineteenth century from later on portrait and
a medical text illustration like this, that's not really proving anything, right,
(03:41):
But you understand that's the narrative structure, is it there? Ye,
building the audience to want them to be that right, right,
want that outcome for the bones.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
There was a portion of the episode where they had
an intersex person dress in the uniform of what he
would have worn, and I was like, this is also
not about the DNA research. You only wanted a half
hour show of DNA results. Yeah, I wanted.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I really though.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
That was the only thing that I was really there
for was to find out, like, what did they actually
say about this DNA research. And then when they got
to that moment in the show and the answer was
there's a match between this talis bone and this other bone,
I was like, I think I said what out loud
because that is not what I thought was going to happen.
I was expecting that it was going to be something
else that was inconclusive, and that it was just going
(04:34):
to sort of be like based on all of this
other stuff that we have talked about over the course
of this episode than this, right, but that when they
were like, no, this is this there's a match, I
was very surprised. Oh see, this makes total sense to me,
and how you would write an episode like that for
television It does to me too, But it was still irritating.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Does that make sense? Like I feel like, you know,
they know.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
What answer is coming, and they need to make it
such that by the time you land the plane there
the audience can accept that information. Yeah, because otherwise there
are just one bazillion questions that will irritate other people
of like, wait, so what did he look like in
his uniform? Are you sure nobody knew?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
How did this? You know what I mean? Like, Yeah,
that's really why they're writing it that way.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
It was one of those things where I was like,
I understand how these shows work, and I like, I
understand how a one hour documentary TV show, Like I
understand conceptually what's happening, but I still found a lot
of it very frustrating. I also, the tests that were
done on these they were not in any way non invasive.
(05:45):
It was like drill a sample out of the bone, right,
and that's there. Has you know, have been less invasive
methods for things that were done that have been developed
in the more recent years, but this was that's not
what was done in this anyway. I just I by
the time I finished watching it, I was like, I
I needed to watch this so that I could understand
(06:08):
what was actually set, like what was said and what
was the substantiation for what was said. But then I
was like, I wish I hadn't had to spend an
hour of my life on that. I'm going to ask
you a question that's going to sound obnoxious. Okay, why
didn't you just jump to the end?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Then? Why didn't I just.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
At the end, Because I mean, it might just be
like the result of my kind of ADHD brain.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I'm like, I'm not If I'm not in it, I'm
not in it.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I'm going to step ahead and see what I can
find that actually like hits the dopamine receptors and get out. Yeah,
I think I I I didn't know that there was
not going to be useful material in the rest of
the episode until I had seen it. What I really
would have appreciated it would be if there had been
a publicly available transcript of it that I could have
(06:59):
just read through you, because that would have gotten a
lot faster and it would not have had the things
about it that it would not have had some of
the things in it that would have frustrated me. So anyway,
and now I have Paramount Plus things that I can watch, Well,
it's a good Star Trek time coming to you. It
is a lot of Star Trek time. And it was
(07:20):
a weird irony because Patrick and I had just gone
through our streaming services and we had weeded things out
because we were subscribing to a lot, a lot of them,
and I was the only one at that moment who
was watching anything on Paramount Plus. And both of the
things that I was watching had gone on, like the
mid season hiatus and I was like, we can just
get rid of this and I will probably come back
(07:41):
to it at some point later, and then not very
long at all after that was, oh, I need to
watch this thing from Smithsonian Channel, and.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
That's where I could watch it.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So I was really interested in the way that Kasimir
Pulaski has been talked about, like as a figure from
the American Revolution, as a figure related to like Polish
immigration and Polish national pride, Polish American pride, all of that.
Multiple articles that I read that talked about that talked
(08:16):
about how today is Koshuko whose name I'm pronouncing that's,
to the best of my ability, was a more influential
and important figure in terms of Polish people in the
Revolutionary War. And there were like at least three or
(08:36):
four different articles that were like, he probably didn't get
as much attention because his name is a lot harder
for English speakers to say, And I was like, that, honestly,
probably true, and it's sort of made it made a
layer of it, like sense making how this person who
(08:58):
was had such a reputation for being kind of arrogant
and quarrelsome and writing long letters to the Continental Congress
that are like you are treating me very very badly.
Wound up being kind of the illustrative example of Polish
involvement in the Revolutionary War, Right, you're doing it wrong.
(09:21):
The Kasimir Pulaski story, Laski story. Yeah, yeah, just yeah. Also,
I am aware of Sufyan Stevens's album Illinois's Illinois that
then became stage production. There is a song on it
about Kasimir Pulaski Day. I know that exists. I probably
own that album. I just i'd imagine getting lots of
(09:45):
emails from listeners saying, are you aware that there's a
Kasimir Pulaski Day song on this album? Yes, I know,
I'm aware. Anyway, I don't think I have anything further
to say.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
How about all of this.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I'm just tickled by what a pill he apparently was
to everybody. Yeah, well, and that he was not the
only officer from Europe who had that reputation, right. There's
definitely a cultural, yea clashing element problem to all of that. Yeah,
And this is something that may or may not come
(10:23):
up again on a reasonably near future episode that I
don't know if it will happen or not. But a
sort of about the difference between the professional standing armies
of Europe and the Continental Army, which especially in the
early years, was like just volunteers who had maybe been
out drilling with their militia two or three times a
(10:44):
year if they were very young, they might have done
that one time or no times, and were up against
armies that had been you know, drilling and practicing and
subjected to continual discipline for for years of their lives.
And then a bunch of guys just doing their best. Yeah,
(11:06):
a bunch of guys doing their best. So you had
officers coming over from a tradition of you know, ongoing
service and discipline in a standing army to you know,
volunteer militia members doing their best. So anyway, maybe that
episode will happen, maybe not. I have not figured it
(11:28):
out yet. Talked about Rebecca Smith Pollard this week on
the show. I said this kind of off Mike in
and aside. I did not know about the anti Toime
(11:49):
novel when I picked this, and it reminded me of
when we chose and Royal as a live show topic,
and we had all already like we had advertised the
we had advertised the live show, we had had t
shirts made for the live show, and then I was like, Oops,
(12:12):
there is racism I did not know about in this
That is troubling to me. And I would not have
chosen for a live show topic had I known ahead
of time that that was going to happen, because I mean,
we are we don't shy away from discussing that on
the show. No, but live show episodes are supposed to
(12:32):
be fun in theory. Yeah, that one was not. Really
we haven't really done a live show in a while.
But this sort of similarly, even though I was looking
for things that were not like Raw Raw USA USA
to potentially tie into America's two fifty, I would not
necessarily have picked one that or we would need to
(12:54):
discuss Anti Tom novels at length. Holly, do you remember
learning how to read a little?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I'm wondering if I had a similar situation to you.
I about to find out a little frustrated at the
pace of instruction. Oh okay, I took matters into my
own hand. Okay, So my mom read to me a lot,
and really the only television that I was allowed to
(13:27):
watch as a small child was Sesame Street and Mister Rogers,
and that was it, And through the combination of Sesame Street,
Mister Rogers, and my mother reading to me, I walked
into the kitchen one day when I was four and said,
I can read, and my mom said, I don't think so,
and I sat down and read her There's a Monster
(13:49):
at the end of this book, which is the book
that she read to me every night because it was
my favorite. And my mom was like, I think you
have that book memorized. So I went into another part
of the house and like pulled a book off the
shelf that I had never been exposed to before that I.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Think was like.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
A school textbook that had been handed down from somewhere.
Like it wasn't it wasn't a novel, it wasn't anything
that I had ever read. But I took that into
the kitchen and just opened it to a page and
started reading from it, and my mom kind of went, Okay,
I guess you can't actually read. Then I stand corrected,
(14:32):
which is evidence of both my existence as an early
reader and also the fact that I had to be right.
Mine is early evidence of what a little shrew I was,
which is come up many times. But I remember I
have older siblings significantly older than me, and I remember
at one point in time one of my siblings thought
they were gonna have didactic time with Holly, and they
(14:54):
had like sat down and done this thing where they
were like gonna teach me the word cat and how
to read it, and I apparently just looked at them
and said, do you think I'm stupid? I was similarly
around four or five, yeah, real early, yeah, with like
(15:14):
the police done with this. I also remember distinctly there
was a I don't know if it was like a
yard sale or a second hand shot, but I remember
being quite tiny and looking through books at a secondhand situation, huh,
and picking out a bunch and my mom kind of
just buying them for me without really like perusing what
(15:35):
they were sure, and a lot of them were like
spelling and reading instruction books, and I just kind of, yeah,
had my own little private classroom in my room that
I don't think anybody realized.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Was going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I grew into one of those kids that got in
trouble for reading in class, oh when I was not
supposed to be doing that, or reading ahead of what
we were supposed to be reading out loud. Because I
read a lot faster in my head that out loud.
And even though I already knew how to read when
I started in kindergarten, Like, I very viscerally remember the
(16:12):
process of sounding things out and being taught to sound
things out when when I came into a word that
I did not know, And so when I learned that
there's kind of a generation of kids that didn't really
learn that at all, yeah, I was like, what do
you mean? And I do want to say that, like,
I don't think there's one way of teaching that works
(16:33):
for everybody, Like there are a lot of kids that
have disabilities or learning differences or whatever that like make
one particular thing just not work for them, and some
other form of instruction is necessary. So I think that's
part of it too. But the idea that there was
just no phonics, I was like, what do you mean? Yeah,
what do you mean people didn't learn how to sound
(16:53):
things out?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I feel like I got more of the at least
in like the class work that I was exposed to
was more of the word whole word stuff. But a
lot of my like interest in reading was just driven
by wanting to know things.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Oh sure, yeah, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Like that was and it wasn't necessarily stuff I was
going to get taught in school. Yeah, so I would
just be proactive about it, and I don't write bossy and.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
What do you think I'm stupid?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, yeah, what a brat. Pollard's methods and the level
of granularity in all of the different phonemes does sound
to me kind of tedious. The fact that there was
so much that she just called busy work. I don't
know if other people were calling things busy work in
(17:47):
the nineteenth century that was just like part of the lingo,
But the fact that it was called busy work, I
was like, yeah, this does sound like busy work to me.
Marking all of the phonemes and your reader. Oh but
those kids, like their level of mastery was probably like
so far ahead of anybody else in.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Their age group. Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Sometimes that stuff that feels like busy work is really
like drilling things in a way that you will never
ever in your life.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Forget it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Side note.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I went to Stratford upon Avon on my trip to England,
and I went to the schoolroom where Shakespeare would have
gone to school. I'm not actually sure if there's evidence
that he did go to school there, but it would
have been the school he would have gone to. And
it is a school that's still in operation, and they
don't start tours until eleven because there is a morning
(18:37):
class that meets in the classroom, the historic classroom that's
still there. And the tour group did just sort of
a little simulation of how students would have learned by
wrote through memorizing things. Yeah, which is not at all
how it worked when we memorized things when I was
a child. You faced the person across for you, and
(19:01):
you set it into each other's faces over and over.
I was face to face with someone who I think
may have also been there by herself, and had a
tote bag that said, though, but she is little, she
is fierce. I'm saying that wrong, but anyway Shakespeare quote, Yeah,
I think it is those though she'd be but little,
(19:21):
she is fierce.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It sounds right. I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I suddenly needed to call it up into memory and
it wasn't there anyway. Though she'd be but little, yeah,
those she'd be, but little, Yeah, she is fierce. I
will work it out. We'll get there. A couple of
(19:44):
things to talk about. What the poem, the trist poem
that she and another poet each wrote to one another
and had published in the journal.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
I feel a modern reader reading this today would go,
that is the most sapphic thing I have ever seen. Yeah,
you know, in the era when it was published, if
anybody had thought that, it wouldn't have been in the newspaper.
But it also had this note from the editor which
did not really fit in that moment in the episode.
(20:20):
But I found I don't know, it's said quotes our
gallantry is shocked at the thought of the spirits of
two charming young menstrual girls wandering about at midnight by
themselves in this bad world without a protector. And I
was like, they were they were not actually outside. I
(20:41):
know that, and you know that. But I think this
was him going, of course, we don't want young ladies
to do this, because he was anticipating the people that
were going to write in and be like, why would
you suggest this, And instead of going they're not really
doing that. This is a theoretic galbal he could just go,
(21:01):
of course, we would of course not ever never.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
The other thing that I had noted here was just that,
Like we have talked before, it has come up on
the show, like in almost side mentions of people people
who were enslavers but also fiercely against secession from the
Union during the Civil War, and like that has just
sort of come up in passing sometimes. And this I
(21:29):
think is the first time that I have really been
reading the thoughts of somebody who apparently was anti abolition
but also a staunch, staunch unionist. It's a weird, a
weird tangle to wrap your head around. I have series
here they are, and you had thoughts about this that
(21:49):
you were going to share. I really really do. I
think this is purely my conjecture. I didn't even do
the research for this episode, but based on all of
the information we have about her, I feel like she
might have been a case of one of those people
who is a very clever person, probably got told as
(22:13):
much a lot growing up, and when she hears new information,
she digests it and thinks it through and then has
ideas about it. And because she's a very clever person,
people encourage her to voice those ideas without necessarily really
talking through what it all means. And I bet that
that's part of why she went on her little weird
(22:37):
tyret because then later on in her life she seems
to have taken a different stance.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, that's my only thinking.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I suspect she was young and processing information she had
a hand somewhat influential in her life had said like,
these people are ruining the union with their oh, sure
upstart ways, and she was like, you know what, they
sure are. I didn't really like get through all of
(23:11):
the bigger picture stuff about what was going on.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
That's my guess.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, I can definitely say I held some opinions in
my teams in early twenties that were bad.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
We all did, like, very bad.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And when I was Yeah, when I was exposed to
other information, I was like, oh, that is a bad opinion.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I will say.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
There will probably be something between now and the end
of my life that I think right now that I
will be like, oh, that was a bad opinion that
I had. Yeah, now I've learned from that. And that
was one of the reasons that I kind of went
to try to see, like what were her thoughts on
this later.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
I'm also not.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Fully clear, but the parts of this novel that I read,
there are conversations that happen that are it's clear which
side is the side that she is setting up as
the correct side, right, But then there are conversations that
it like one of the characters will be basically saying, hey,
(24:15):
these are people like we are we are all human beings, right?
And I'm like, are are you on the we're all
human beings side? Because it kind of sounds like you
might be from this passage. Are you more concerned with
this idea of preserving the union and that's what drive
(24:35):
That's what's driving it rather than being like explicitly pro
slavery for racist reasons that you know that there were
also people that had those opinions. And I really didn't
get to the bottom of that. And I might have
if I had been willing to read the entire book,
but that was too much. It was too much. She
had just enough information to be dangerous. I'm telling you, Yeah,
(24:59):
I believe it advice. So yeah, she's a complicated person
who the fact that she from what I can understand,
she put together this instructional method that was very motivated
by what she thought actually helped children learn and also
making sure teachers had what they needed to be able
(25:22):
to teach. Yeah, that part I thought was really good, terrific. Yeah,
you know, even though I sort of think the amount
of diacritical marking of textbooks might have been a little
much maybe maybe.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Maybe, But also I'm telling you, those kids knew their stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, So anyway, those Rebecca Smith Pollard, Uh, whatever's coming
up for you on the weekend. We you know, I
hope it's great. There was just a strange noise outside
my house, and I hope that's not a harbinger of anything. Oh,
is there any strange thing is happening in your world?
I hope none of them are harbingers of worse things
(26:03):
to come, and that everything that's coming your way is
going to be better than what was before. We will
be back on Monday with a brand new episode, and
tomorrow we'll be back with a Saturday classic. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(26:24):
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, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about Kasimir Pulaski this week,
whose name in Polish. Even with practicing, I feel like
(00:22):
I said very badly the one time that I tried
to say it.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I wow.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So, as I said at the top of the episode,
he wound up on my shortlist back in twenty nineteen
when that Smithsonian Channel episode was happening, I did not
watch the episode at that time, so mostly what I
had to go on was like the stuff that came
out from Smithsonian Channel writing about it, news reporting about
(00:52):
the thing, and I was really intrigued by the idea
that this person who had fought, you know, been an
officer in the Revolutionary War may have been intersex. But
then doing the actual research into this episode, looking into
it a lot farther, I feel like people are gonna
(01:12):
come at me. I just don't think those are his
bones from the monuments.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I don't either. So while I.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Appreciated the opportunity to talk again about how there have
always been always all through history, all over the world,
always people whose lives and whose bodies just don't line
up with the place and time that they're living in
terms of the sex and gender expectations.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I just I don't think those are his bones.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I said in the episode that I watched this Smithsonian
Channel thing on the very last day of research, and
the reason that it was on the very last day
of research was that, like, in doing all of the reading,
I was like, I don't think those are his bones.
What did they actually say on this TV show about
the DNA research? And it was mitochondrial DNA research, which
(02:06):
has passed through the maternal line, and I couldn't find
clarity on exactly what was said. There was just a
lot of vagueness and the various writing about this TV
show and the research that led into it, and so
I was like, well, I guess I'm going to have
to get Paramount plus to watch this thing, because that was.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
The place where it was available.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And I watched it, and I had a lot of
frustrations because a lot of the episode is not really about,
like the DNA research is kind of the big capstone
at the end, and the announcement of yes, there's a match,
the big that's just the big reveal at the end
of the episode, but a lot of the episode is
more about building a case that this person could have
(02:57):
been intersex, gotcha? And so they kept doing things like
comparing portraits of Casimir Pulaski to a medical illustration illustrating
someone who had congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and I was like, Okay,
that doesn't really have anything to do with whose bones
(03:20):
these are, or whether that was Casimir Pulaski, or whether
like you're you're seeing a similarity between like an eighteenth
century or maybe nineteenth century from later on portrait and
a medical text illustration like this, that's not really proving anything, right,
(03:41):
But you understand that's the narrative structure, is it there? Ye,
building the audience to want them to be that right, right,
want that outcome for the bones.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
There was a portion of the episode where they had
an intersex person dress in the uniform of what he
would have worn, and I was like, this is also
not about the DNA research. You only wanted a half
hour show of DNA results. Yeah, I wanted.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I really though.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
That was the only thing that I was really there
for was to find out, like, what did they actually
say about this DNA research. And then when they got
to that moment in the show and the answer was
there's a match between this talis bone and this other bone,
I was like, I think I said what out loud
because that is not what I thought was going to happen.
I was expecting that it was going to be something
else that was inconclusive, and that it was just going
(04:34):
to sort of be like based on all of this
other stuff that we have talked about over the course
of this episode than this, right, but that when they
were like, no, this is this there's a match, I
was very surprised. Oh see, this makes total sense to me,
and how you would write an episode like that for
television It does to me too, But it was still irritating.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Does that make sense? Like I feel like, you know,
they know.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
What answer is coming, and they need to make it
such that by the time you land the plane there
the audience can accept that information. Yeah, because otherwise there
are just one bazillion questions that will irritate other people
of like, wait, so what did he look like in
his uniform? Are you sure nobody knew?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
How did this? You know what I mean? Like, Yeah,
that's really why they're writing it that way.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
It was one of those things where I was like,
I understand how these shows work, and I like, I
understand how a one hour documentary TV show, Like I
understand conceptually what's happening, but I still found a lot
of it very frustrating. I also, the tests that were
done on these they were not in any way non invasive.
(05:45):
It was like drill a sample out of the bone, right,
and that's there. Has you know, have been less invasive
methods for things that were done that have been developed
in the more recent years, but this was that's not
what was done in this anyway. I just I by
the time I finished watching it, I was like, I
I needed to watch this so that I could understand
(06:08):
what was actually set, like what was said and what
was the substantiation for what was said. But then I
was like, I wish I hadn't had to spend an
hour of my life on that. I'm going to ask
you a question that's going to sound obnoxious. Okay, why
didn't you just jump to the end?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Then? Why didn't I just.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
At the end, Because I mean, it might just be
like the result of my kind of ADHD brain.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I'm like, I'm not If I'm not in it, I'm
not in it.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I'm going to step ahead and see what I can
find that actually like hits the dopamine receptors and get out. Yeah,
I think I I I didn't know that there was
not going to be useful material in the rest of
the episode until I had seen it. What I really
would have appreciated it would be if there had been
a publicly available transcript of it that I could have
(06:59):
just read through you, because that would have gotten a
lot faster and it would not have had the things
about it that it would not have had some of
the things in it that would have frustrated me. So anyway,
and now I have Paramount Plus things that I can watch, Well,
it's a good Star Trek time coming to you. It
is a lot of Star Trek time. And it was
(07:20):
a weird irony because Patrick and I had just gone
through our streaming services and we had weeded things out
because we were subscribing to a lot, a lot of them,
and I was the only one at that moment who
was watching anything on Paramount Plus. And both of the
things that I was watching had gone on, like the
mid season hiatus and I was like, we can just
get rid of this and I will probably come back
(07:41):
to it at some point later, and then not very
long at all after that was, oh, I need to
watch this thing from Smithsonian Channel, and.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
That's where I could watch it.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So I was really interested in the way that Kasimir
Pulaski has been talked about, like as a figure from
the American Revolution, as a figure related to like Polish
immigration and Polish national pride, Polish American pride, all of that.
Multiple articles that I read that talked about that talked
(08:16):
about how today is Koshuko whose name I'm pronouncing that's,
to the best of my ability, was a more influential
and important figure in terms of Polish people in the
Revolutionary War. And there were like at least three or
(08:36):
four different articles that were like, he probably didn't get
as much attention because his name is a lot harder
for English speakers to say, And I was like, that, honestly,
probably true, and it's sort of made it made a
layer of it, like sense making how this person who
(08:58):
was had such a reputation for being kind of arrogant
and quarrelsome and writing long letters to the Continental Congress
that are like you are treating me very very badly.
Wound up being kind of the illustrative example of Polish
involvement in the Revolutionary War, Right, you're doing it wrong.
(09:21):
The Kasimir Pulaski story, Laski story. Yeah, yeah, just yeah. Also,
I am aware of Sufyan Stevens's album Illinois's Illinois that
then became stage production. There is a song on it
about Kasimir Pulaski Day. I know that exists. I probably
own that album. I just i'd imagine getting lots of
(09:45):
emails from listeners saying, are you aware that there's a
Kasimir Pulaski Day song on this album? Yes, I know,
I'm aware. Anyway, I don't think I have anything further
to say.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
How about all of this.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I'm just tickled by what a pill he apparently was
to everybody. Yeah, well, and that he was not the
only officer from Europe who had that reputation, right. There's
definitely a cultural, yea clashing element problem to all of that. Yeah,
And this is something that may or may not come
(10:23):
up again on a reasonably near future episode that I
don't know if it will happen or not. But a
sort of about the difference between the professional standing armies
of Europe and the Continental Army, which especially in the
early years, was like just volunteers who had maybe been
out drilling with their militia two or three times a
(10:44):
year if they were very young, they might have done
that one time or no times, and were up against
armies that had been you know, drilling and practicing and
subjected to continual discipline for for years of their lives.
And then a bunch of guys just doing their best. Yeah,
(11:06):
a bunch of guys doing their best. So you had
officers coming over from a tradition of you know, ongoing
service and discipline in a standing army to you know,
volunteer militia members doing their best. So anyway, maybe that
episode will happen, maybe not. I have not figured it
(11:28):
out yet. Talked about Rebecca Smith Pollard this week on
the show. I said this kind of off Mike in
and aside. I did not know about the anti Toime
(11:49):
novel when I picked this, and it reminded me of
when we chose and Royal as a live show topic,
and we had all already like we had advertised the
we had advertised the live show, we had had t
shirts made for the live show, and then I was like, Oops,
(12:12):
there is racism I did not know about in this
That is troubling to me. And I would not have
chosen for a live show topic had I known ahead
of time that that was going to happen, because I mean,
we are we don't shy away from discussing that on
the show. No, but live show episodes are supposed to
(12:32):
be fun in theory. Yeah, that one was not. Really
we haven't really done a live show in a while.
But this sort of similarly, even though I was looking
for things that were not like Raw Raw USA USA
to potentially tie into America's two fifty, I would not
necessarily have picked one that or we would need to
(12:54):
discuss Anti Tom novels at length. Holly, do you remember
learning how to read a little?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I'm wondering if I had a similar situation to you.
I about to find out a little frustrated at the
pace of instruction. Oh okay, I took matters into my
own hand. Okay, So my mom read to me a lot,
and really the only television that I was allowed to
(13:27):
watch as a small child was Sesame Street and Mister Rogers,
and that was it, And through the combination of Sesame Street,
Mister Rogers, and my mother reading to me, I walked
into the kitchen one day when I was four and said,
I can read, and my mom said, I don't think so,
and I sat down and read her There's a Monster
(13:49):
at the end of this book, which is the book
that she read to me every night because it was
my favorite. And my mom was like, I think you
have that book memorized. So I went into another part
of the house and like pulled a book off the
shelf that I had never been exposed to before that I.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Think was like.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
A school textbook that had been handed down from somewhere.
Like it wasn't it wasn't a novel, it wasn't anything
that I had ever read. But I took that into
the kitchen and just opened it to a page and
started reading from it, and my mom kind of went, Okay,
I guess you can't actually read. Then I stand corrected,
(14:32):
which is evidence of both my existence as an early
reader and also the fact that I had to be right.
Mine is early evidence of what a little shrew I was,
which is come up many times. But I remember I
have older siblings significantly older than me, and I remember
at one point in time one of my siblings thought
they were gonna have didactic time with Holly, and they
(14:54):
had like sat down and done this thing where they
were like gonna teach me the word cat and how
to read it, and I apparently just looked at them
and said, do you think I'm stupid? I was similarly
around four or five, yeah, real early, yeah, with like
(15:14):
the police done with this. I also remember distinctly there
was a I don't know if it was like a
yard sale or a second hand shot, but I remember
being quite tiny and looking through books at a secondhand situation, huh,
and picking out a bunch and my mom kind of
just buying them for me without really like perusing what
(15:35):
they were sure, and a lot of them were like
spelling and reading instruction books, and I just kind of, yeah,
had my own little private classroom in my room that
I don't think anybody realized.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Was going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I grew into one of those kids that got in
trouble for reading in class, oh when I was not
supposed to be doing that, or reading ahead of what
we were supposed to be reading out loud. Because I
read a lot faster in my head that out loud.
And even though I already knew how to read when
I started in kindergarten, Like, I very viscerally remember the
(16:12):
process of sounding things out and being taught to sound
things out when when I came into a word that
I did not know, And so when I learned that
there's kind of a generation of kids that didn't really
learn that at all, yeah, I was like, what do
you mean? And I do want to say that, like,
I don't think there's one way of teaching that works
(16:33):
for everybody, Like there are a lot of kids that
have disabilities or learning differences or whatever that like make
one particular thing just not work for them, and some
other form of instruction is necessary. So I think that's
part of it too. But the idea that there was
just no phonics, I was like, what do you mean? Yeah,
what do you mean people didn't learn how to sound
(16:53):
things out?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I feel like I got more of the at least
in like the class work that I was exposed to
was more of the word whole word stuff. But a
lot of my like interest in reading was just driven
by wanting to know things.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Oh sure, yeah, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Like that was and it wasn't necessarily stuff I was
going to get taught in school. Yeah, so I would
just be proactive about it, and I don't write bossy and.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
What do you think I'm stupid?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, yeah, what a brat. Pollard's methods and the level
of granularity in all of the different phonemes does sound
to me kind of tedious. The fact that there was
so much that she just called busy work. I don't
know if other people were calling things busy work in
(17:47):
the nineteenth century that was just like part of the lingo,
But the fact that it was called busy work, I
was like, yeah, this does sound like busy work to me.
Marking all of the phonemes and your reader. Oh but
those kids, like their level of mastery was probably like
so far ahead of anybody else in.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Their age group. Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Sometimes that stuff that feels like busy work is really
like drilling things in a way that you will never
ever in your life.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Forget it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Side note.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I went to Stratford upon Avon on my trip to England,
and I went to the schoolroom where Shakespeare would have
gone to school. I'm not actually sure if there's evidence
that he did go to school there, but it would
have been the school he would have gone to. And
it is a school that's still in operation, and they
don't start tours until eleven because there is a morning
(18:37):
class that meets in the classroom, the historic classroom that's
still there. And the tour group did just sort of
a little simulation of how students would have learned by
wrote through memorizing things. Yeah, which is not at all
how it worked when we memorized things when I was
a child. You faced the person across for you, and
(19:01):
you set it into each other's faces over and over.
I was face to face with someone who I think
may have also been there by herself, and had a
tote bag that said, though, but she is little, she
is fierce. I'm saying that wrong, but anyway Shakespeare quote, Yeah,
I think it is those though she'd be but little,
(19:21):
she is fierce.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It sounds right. I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I suddenly needed to call it up into memory and
it wasn't there anyway. Though she'd be but little, yeah,
those she'd be, but little, Yeah, she is fierce. I
will work it out. We'll get there. A couple of
(19:44):
things to talk about. What the poem, the trist poem
that she and another poet each wrote to one another
and had published in the journal.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
I feel a modern reader reading this today would go,
that is the most sapphic thing I have ever seen. Yeah,
you know, in the era when it was published, if
anybody had thought that, it wouldn't have been in the newspaper.
But it also had this note from the editor which
did not really fit in that moment in the episode.
(20:20):
But I found I don't know, it's said quotes our
gallantry is shocked at the thought of the spirits of
two charming young menstrual girls wandering about at midnight by
themselves in this bad world without a protector. And I
was like, they were they were not actually outside. I
(20:41):
know that, and you know that. But I think this
was him going, of course, we don't want young ladies
to do this, because he was anticipating the people that
were going to write in and be like, why would
you suggest this, And instead of going they're not really
doing that. This is a theoretic galbal he could just go,
(21:01):
of course, we would of course not ever never.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
The other thing that I had noted here was just that,
Like we have talked before, it has come up on
the show, like in almost side mentions of people people
who were enslavers but also fiercely against secession from the
Union during the Civil War, and like that has just
sort of come up in passing sometimes. And this I
(21:29):
think is the first time that I have really been
reading the thoughts of somebody who apparently was anti abolition
but also a staunch, staunch unionist. It's a weird, a
weird tangle to wrap your head around. I have series
here they are, and you had thoughts about this that
(21:49):
you were going to share. I really really do. I
think this is purely my conjecture. I didn't even do
the research for this episode, but based on all of
the information we have about her, I feel like she
might have been a case of one of those people
who is a very clever person, probably got told as
(22:13):
much a lot growing up, and when she hears new information,
she digests it and thinks it through and then has
ideas about it. And because she's a very clever person,
people encourage her to voice those ideas without necessarily really
talking through what it all means. And I bet that
that's part of why she went on her little weird
(22:37):
tyret because then later on in her life she seems
to have taken a different stance.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, that's my only thinking.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I suspect she was young and processing information she had
a hand somewhat influential in her life had said like,
these people are ruining the union with their oh, sure
upstart ways, and she was like, you know what, they
sure are. I didn't really like get through all of
(23:11):
the bigger picture stuff about what was going on.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
That's my guess.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, I can definitely say I held some opinions in
my teams in early twenties that were bad.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
We all did, like, very bad.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And when I was Yeah, when I was exposed to
other information, I was like, oh, that is a bad opinion.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I will say.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
There will probably be something between now and the end
of my life that I think right now that I
will be like, oh, that was a bad opinion that
I had. Yeah, now I've learned from that. And that
was one of the reasons that I kind of went
to try to see, like what were her thoughts on
this later.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
I'm also not.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Fully clear, but the parts of this novel that I read,
there are conversations that happen that are it's clear which
side is the side that she is setting up as
the correct side, right, But then there are conversations that
it like one of the characters will be basically saying, hey,
(24:15):
these are people like we are we are all human beings, right?
And I'm like, are are you on the we're all
human beings side? Because it kind of sounds like you
might be from this passage. Are you more concerned with
this idea of preserving the union and that's what drive
(24:35):
That's what's driving it rather than being like explicitly pro
slavery for racist reasons that you know that there were
also people that had those opinions. And I really didn't
get to the bottom of that. And I might have
if I had been willing to read the entire book,
but that was too much. It was too much. She
had just enough information to be dangerous. I'm telling you, Yeah,
(24:59):
I believe it advice. So yeah, she's a complicated person
who the fact that she from what I can understand,
she put together this instructional method that was very motivated
by what she thought actually helped children learn and also
making sure teachers had what they needed to be able
(25:22):
to teach. Yeah, that part I thought was really good, terrific. Yeah,
you know, even though I sort of think the amount
of diacritical marking of textbooks might have been a little
much maybe maybe.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Maybe, But also I'm telling you, those kids knew their stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, So anyway, those Rebecca Smith Pollard, Uh, whatever's coming
up for you on the weekend. We you know, I
hope it's great. There was just a strange noise outside
my house, and I hope that's not a harbinger of anything. Oh,
is there any strange thing is happening in your world?
I hope none of them are harbingers of worse things
(26:03):
to come, and that everything that's coming your way is
going to be better than what was before. We will
be back on Monday with a brand new episode, and
tomorrow we'll be back with a Saturday classic. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(26:24):
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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