May 25, 2019 • 33 mins
Today, we're revisiting an episode from 2015! People feel very strongly about time capsules, even though the contents are often a little underwhelming. What actually qualifies as a time capsule, and what are some of the most notable ones?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday everyone. Our colleague Alex Williams has a brand
new podcast coming out called Ephemeral, and like its name suggests,
Ephemeral is all about things that are disappearing or have disappeared,
and forgotten people in places, and things that were barely
saved or not saved at all. So we've chosen today
Saturday Classic to go along with that theme. It is
(00:24):
our brief history of time Capsules from May. One thing
to note is that the mistakes that we make on
this podcast are not ephemeral at all. They last forever.
And in this episode, we made it sound like two
different time capsules came out of the old State House
in Boston, Massachusetts. We made it sound that way because
(00:44):
I thought that was how it happened. It did not.
The time capsule that was in a Lion's Head statue
was from the old State House, and then the one
associated with Paul Revere came from the current State House
on Beacon Hill. And stay tuned at the end of
the show for a little peak at Ephemeral. Welcome to
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
(01:05):
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
And Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Back
in October, a time capsule was removed from a lion
statue that normally is on top of the Old State
House in Boston, Massachusetts. The statue had been taken off
(01:29):
of the roof for restoration, and while they were at it,
restorers decided to check on rumors that there was a
time capsule in its head. This is something that had
been completely unknown until a couple of years before, and
they wanted to see if it was really there. It was.
They used to fiber optic camera to make sure that
it was really there, and then they very carefully removed
it and during a private opening, archivists lifted the lid
(01:53):
and immediately realized that what was in there was just
packed way too tightly to be taken out safely in
the studio where the statue was being restored, So they
took the time capsule to the Bostonian Society's Archives Center
where they could really take their time removing the contents
in a more controlled environment. Holly, do you remember this, Yes,
(02:14):
they do, right, because when we put this story on
our Facebook, people got so mad. They really did. There
were some very um you know, immediate response sort of
anger notes. Yeah, so this time capsule had been inside
the statue for a hundred and thirteen years, but people
felt like that was not nearly long enough for it
(02:35):
to be opened. And then other people interpreted this decision
to take the box somewhere more controlled to do the
actual unpacking that they thought this was a sign that
incompetent amateurs had been trusted with this delicate task, which
was absolutely not true. It was somebody with a master
of library science and archives of management like that. People
(02:55):
also argued that they should have just had the whole
statue removed somewhere safer, or that there was a lot
of questions about why the time capsule needed to be
removed in the first place. A lot of people wanted
it and its contents to go back where it was.
So then another time capsule was removed from the old
State House a couple of months later, and this one
(03:17):
dated back to and it had been put behind the
corner stone by Paul Revere, then Governor of Massachusetts, Sam Adams,
and Colonel William Scully. And so, based on what had
happened with that first time capsule, we were really careful
about what details we included when we put it up
on our Facebook. We noted that it had been taken
out as part of a repair to a water leak
(03:40):
behind the cornerstone, and we specified that professional professional conservators
had removed it, and that it was going to be
x ray and open under controlled conditions, and that it
was going to be put back after its contents had
been displayed for the public for a while. Holly, do
you also remember this, yes, because people were still so mad.
(04:00):
They were there's a fascinating reaction I think that people
have with time capsules and it it's I couldn't break
down the psychology of it because it varies a lot,
but there were definitely some angry responses. Yeah, people were
still really mad this time. They were mad that the
times capsule was going to be put back, which was
what people had wanted to happen with the other time capsules.
(04:21):
So at this point I kind of never wanted to
mention time capsules in the context of the show again,
which is one of the reasons why neither time capsule
was in the unearthed in episodes. But then this April
I got the chance to actually see the contents of
that cornerstone time capsule while they were on display at
the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and there was literally
(04:44):
a line all the way around the room to see it.
It stretched way out into adjoining galleries. Was just to
like in this little display case that was full of
coins and newspapers. Uh. Part of this is because the
time capsule was really small, so there was a little
display case people were waiting to see into. But part
of it is because people care apparently care a whole
(05:04):
lot about time capsules. Yeah, and I feel compelled to
mention that this sort of interesting um discussion that sometimes
got a little heated on our Facebook page, that is
not the only place that these were happening. If you
looked at news sites that were posting about it, their
comments sections were having very similar things play out. Yeah,
there was just angriness everywhere. So we're gonna talk about
(05:26):
time capsules today, maybe explore some of the reasons people
get so excited about them. Yes, and the tradition of
burying stuff really goes back almost to the beginning of
human history. The most obvious example is that most of
the world's cultures have at some point buried artifacts, letters, trinkets,
and other objects as parts of funeral rituals. People have
(05:48):
also been deliberately placing objects into building foundations and cornerstones
for thousands of years. For example, in Mesopotamia, a common
practice was to bury objects and building foundations for the
purpose of sanctifying the space and protecting it, or maybe
to commemorate something that was related to the building or
its builders or where it was being built. This practice
(06:11):
has continued throughout the ages and all over the world,
and it has also included embedding items of religious significance
in church corner stones, and the idea that these deposits
might one day be discovered again has also cropped up
at various times throughout history. For example, around the seventh
century b c, Assyrian king as her Hadn't had relics
(06:32):
and clay tablets put in the foundations of monuments, saying
that he quote deposited them in the foundations and left
them for future times. But all of these burials of
stuff are a little different from the idea of a
time capsule, although people of the past did sometimes think
or write about how future generations might someday stumble upon
(06:53):
their funerary deposits and their foundational deposits, which are what
those things are called. Uh, that was really secondary to
their purpose. They were being buried for some other reason,
and the idea that somebody might come dig them up
later was secondary to that. But in a time capsule,
on the other hand, people intentionally gather and store objects
with the specific plan that someone else is going to
(07:16):
open them later, and usually there's a specified time frame
for what later means and for the For time capsule purists,
it's only a true time capsule if there's a specific
end date for the thing to be opened again. This
means that while a letter from a six year old
to his or her future self to be opened ten
years later is a time capsule according to this definition,
(07:37):
but a giant room of artifacts to be opened at
some undetermined time in the future technically isn't. Neither are
time capsules that include those same sorts of things but
are shot into space to be one day opened by aliens.
Maybe so basically, the end date is really like the
definer of what isn't isn't a time capsule. Another aspect
of time capsules is that they're preserving, usually a snapshot
(07:59):
of everyday life when they were sealed, and while there
are definitely time capsules that have a much grander scope
than that. They almost always also include things like coins, newspapers, photographs,
letters from notable people, and everyday items that are kind
of meant to give future generations a glimpse of what
life used to be like. This, including of everyday life snapshots,
(08:23):
is also why accidental preservations of everyday life, like say
the ruins of Pompeii, are sometimes described as time capsules.
And although there are time capsules buried all over the world,
the practice is largely a tradition that came from and
flourished in the United States, and there are a couple
of reasons for this. A big one is that the
(08:45):
first most famous examples of time capsules, which we're going
to talk about in just a bit, we're all developed
in the United States. But sociologists and psychologists also theorized
that another reason that the United States has been so
intent on encapsulating history to send it to the future
is that as a nation, the history of the United
States is pretty short. There were definitely people in North
(09:08):
America long before the United States was a thing, but
European presence in North America only goes back a few
hundred years. So the theory goes that people kind of
subconsciously want to instantly create something that counts as history
in the eyes of future generations. And we're going to
talk about some specific examples of time capsules after we
(09:29):
have a brief forward from a sponsor. We're going to
talk about the first true time capsule to start off with,
and the first time we know of that people sealed
things away with the specific intent that they would be
(09:51):
brought out again at a particular date in the future
was for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that
took place in eighteen seventy six. It had a century
safe that was meant to be opened in nineteen seventy six.
There might be earlier examples of time capsules out there that,
in addition to having been buried or sealed away, also
(10:12):
had a specified opening date, but this is the first
one we actually have documentation of. And the century safe
looked just like a safe, but with a purple velvet lining,
which is a detail I personally love. Uh. This safe
contained photographs, a book on temperance, and signatures of visitors
to the Centennial Exhibition, among other things. It was stored
(10:33):
under the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capital and opened
in nineteen seventy six. As intended, a new capsule, buried
in nineteen seventy six is to be opened in twenty
seventy six. Even though the Century Safe was the first
true time capsule, the word time capsule had not been
coined yet. That did not happen until nineteen thirty eight
(10:54):
leading up to the nineteen nine World's Fair. G Edward Pendre,
who was a public relations executive for Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing,
gets the credit for coming up with the term. Also, uh,
for a while, because of the shape of what they
were building, you thought about calling it a time bomb,
and uh, I'm kind of glad that didn't take off. Um.
(11:18):
Before the word time capsule was coined, people normally called
these sorts of things safes or boxes, or similar generic terms.
Westinghouse was involved with all of this because it was
constructing the physical container for the World's Fair time Capsule,
which was to stay underground until sixty nine, otherwise known
(11:38):
as five thousand years from its start date. Because these
capsules were supposed to stay buried for so long, the
containers had to be impervious to just about any kind
of damage that you could think of. The end result
was a seven and a half foot long or two
point two meter torpedo like tube made of a non
corrosive alloy with several interior layers meant to protect the contents.
(12:02):
These contents included cigarettes, men's and women's grooming tools, magazines,
and samples of seeds and fabrics. There's also a twenties
two thousand page microfilm essay, and there are letters from
such figures as Albert Einstein and then m I T
President Carl T. Compton. There was huge, huge fanfare around
(12:26):
the burying of this time capsule, and there's also a
total replica of it and its contents at the George
Westinghouse Museum. Running concurrently with the creation of the first
Westinghouse time capsule was the Crypt of Civilization, and I
know a lot about this one. This is an incredibly
huge and involved time capsule at Oglethorpe University, which is
here in Atlanta and where I used to work. Oglethorpe
(12:49):
President Thornwell Jacobs led this project, which is an attempt
to document all of human history. The idea is that
future archaeologists could just consult the material from this vault
instead of having to painstakingly recreate an idea of how
the world worked by piecing together information from lots of
different dig sites. The Crypt of Civilization today is on
(13:10):
a lower level of the Administration Building at Oglethorpe, And
in addition to all the physical items which are inside,
which are a lot things enormous, it contains more than
six hundred thousand pages of microfilm which document all sorts
of historical information. So this crypt was sealed on May nine,
forty and it's not supposed to be opened again until
(13:32):
the year eighty one thirteen, and this is six thousand,
one hundred seventy seven years from when it was sealed up.
The idea is that as of nineteen forty there were
six thousand, one hundred seventy seven years of recorded history.
This crypt acts as like a midpoint between the beginnings
of recorded history and six thousand, one hundred seventy seven
(13:56):
years in the future when people can just open this
thing up to find out all about the past. Yeah,
And it's just a big door, a big metal door
that you walk by when you're in the admin building,
and it has engraving on it, but it's just the
door that's there that never opens. Because people were inspired
by the first Westinghouse time Capsule and Oglethorpe's Crypt of Civilization,
(14:19):
the time capsule Heyday really spanned from nineteen thirty five
to nine two. Because of the Centennial Exhibition, one years
became a popular time limit for time capsules to remain sealed.
There are also some connections between that first Westinghouse time
capsule and the Crypt that Oglethorpe so g Edward Pendre
(14:40):
had actually called for public support of the Crypt project
as it was being developed, and conversely, one of the
letters inside the first Westinghouse time capsule is a letter
from then Oglethorpe president Thornwell Jacobs um so that like,
(15:01):
there was a lot of crossover between those two projects, uh,
which I think is pretty cool. We're also now I
can just talk about some other notable examples of time capsules,
and this is not at all an exhaustive list, not
even of the ones that are really big and impressive.
Westinghouse created a second time capsule for the nineteen sixty
(15:23):
eight New York World's Fair, and it's almost like an
update to the first one. It's the exact same size
and shape, and it's buried about ten feet away, but
its contents include things that didn't exist when the previous
time capsule had been put into the grounds, includes birth
control pills and artificial heart valve, credit cards, information about
(15:44):
atomic energy, and other more modern as of nineteen sixty
eight stuff. Both the first Westinghouse time capsule and the
second one are supposed to be opened in sixty nine
thirty nine together, so that second one sort of like
a supplement to the first one rather than a whole
separate thing with a separate opening date. Two identical time
(16:06):
capsules were made for expos seventy in Osaka, Japan, and
one of these is to stay sealed for five thousand years,
and the other is intended to be opened every one
hundred years after an initial opening in the year two
thousand and One reason for this plan is to check
in and make sure everything's okay, but the other is
to update the time capsules contents, so it kind of
(16:27):
becomes an ongoing living archive record. And these time capsules
are shaped like kettles and filled. They weigh two point
one to metric tons, and although their purpose was to
detail in a very broad cross section life in nineteen seventy,
which means that they include lots and lots of everyday items.
There's also historical information including leaflets, films, and other recordings, uh,
(16:52):
including artifacts from the bombing of Hiroshima. And you can
actually see the total contents of all these things online.
They are available, and there is so much stuff jammed
into them. Yeah, I really I had this moment where, Uh,
I was flummoxed because I stumbled across this thing, UH
that had, you know, a a comprehensive list of everything
(17:15):
that's in there, and there are pictures of a lot
of it, and I am used to when you see
older pictures of things that were taken with earlier digital cameras,
they look kind of terrible. And I had this moment
where I just forgot that there were there were film
cameras in nineteen seventy. You can you can scan pictures
from nineteen seventy or film fromteen seventy, like that still exists,
(17:39):
that didn't go away. So I had this just moment,
But I feel silly confessing, but I still want to confess.
Or I was like, wow, where'd they get all these
pictures from? All? Right? Cameras? They were still a thing Tracy,
it had been a long day. There is a one
year time capsule that was created in Juno, Alaska, in
(18:00):
and this one is huge because it was created using
thousands of items that were collected from Juneau residents. It's
housed in a converted lobby of a government building and
you can see some of the contents through two windows
that go to the outside. It's also lit with electric
lights that can be changed from the outside, so it's
it can be lit while still being totally sealed up.
(18:20):
That's a pretty cool feature. Uh. There's a fortieth anniversary
time castle that was buried in Disneyland in Anaheim, California,
on July seventeenth of n and that is to be
opened on that same date in the year. Here's hoping
I'm there for that. Yeah. I was like, it's hotly
gonna go. Uh. It does look like a castle, which
(18:42):
is why it is called that. Um. Really, a hundred
years is a pretty standard time for a time capsule now,
and then we have these really fascinating millennial ones that
go on for a thousand years and beyond. But when
the Internet took off and things started changing at a
super upid pace. M I t made a time capsule
(19:03):
of the Online world sor at the Sloane School of Management,
and that one was to be opened after five years
because the Internet was evolving so rapidly. Aside from those
that we've just mentioned, all over the world there are
boxes of documents, coins, and household items just waiting to
be dug up. And we'll talk about what can go
(19:23):
wrong on that front after we have another quick word
from a sponsor. So the sad truth is, as much
as people like the idea of burying things for posterity,
a lot of time capsules just fail. In some cases
(19:45):
they haven't even made it to their burial or their ceiling.
There was a time capsule made for the US by
Centennial that went on a national tour with signatures from
all over the country that we're supposed to be collected
and put inside, and it made it through that whole tour,
but then was dolan from the truck at the burial
site before it could actually be buried. Capsules and their
(20:06):
contents have also been lost thanks to leaks, demolitions, and
people just forgetting that they were buried in the first place,
or that they existed at all. So, in addition to
trying to preserve all of human history up to nineteen
forty in the Crypt of Civilization. Oglethorpe is also trying
to keep track of all those time capsules so that
nothing else gets lost, and that's via the International Time
(20:27):
Capsule Society, which was established in nine. Yeah. One of
the reasons that they really wanted to get that time
capsule out of the Lion's Head statue was because they
did not really know how it had been packaged and
whether everything and there had already been destroyed because of water,
which it hadn't, which was great. Uh, But there's also
the fact that a lot of times what's inside a
(20:49):
typical time capsule turns out to be really underwhelming once
it's opened. The very nature of time capsules means that
a lot of times they're full of newspapers and coins
and photographs people, uh, letters from people who were famous
a hundred years ago but nobody knows who they are now,
and basically obsolete junk. There's even article in the Onion
(21:13):
titled newly unearthed time Capsule just full of useless old crap,
which made fun of both people's responses to what you
usually find when you open a time capsule and the
types of things that people select to put in there,
like there's there's several layers of humor going on. Uh,
this is actually kind of funny to me. How often
(21:34):
people open a time capsule and like, no one is
impressed with what was inside because it's just newspapers and coins.
And yet when the time capsule was made, there were
knocked down, drag out fights about what to put inside
of there. Oh yeah, people are as angry about what
to put in time capsules as they were within all
of our Facebook posts about taking them out, because they
(21:57):
want to make sure the exact correct picture of at
time period is created with the contents. But even if
people didn't find their contents boring, more often than not,
the same objects placed inside time capsules are also preserved
better at museums and other archives. It's very rare that
someone opens a time capsule to discover something that's actually
(22:19):
a unique find. Usually you can see a better preserved
one of the exact same thing in one or many museums. However,
all of that said, time capsules usually inspire and interest
in history and some civic pride, at least in the
short term, and that counts when they're created, and again
(22:41):
when they're opened, and especially for the ones that are
meant to stay sealed up for thousands of years, the
containers themselves can involve tremendous speaks of engineering. This has
especially been true for all of these ones. They're supposed
to stay sealed up for many thousands of years. So
while people might classify their contents into the category of
war plus a junk, their creation has a different type
(23:04):
of worth. And back to those time capsules that we
talked about at the very beginning of the show, the
Lion statue is back on top of the Old State House,
complete with a new time capsule, and this time it's
in the lions scroll, so future generations will have easier
access to it. Among the contents of that capsule are
an iPhone five. Apple apparently would not provide an iPhone
(23:26):
six for this Foreign Relations of the United States nineteen
seventy seven to nineteen eighty volume three to replace a
copy of Foreign Relations of the United States eighteen ninety
six that was in the prior box, basically to fill space,
a number of letters and photos, and a Boston Marathon metal.
The original items were on display at the Old State
(23:46):
House for several weeks over December fourteen and into January.
The items inside were delicate enough that after that point
they were returned to the archives for preservation. Yeah, they
were actually preserved incredible well, uh, considering how old the
time capsule was and how it had just been in
the statue out in the elements for so long. But
(24:07):
they did want to make sure that they lasted long
into the future, so they didn't stay on public display
for all that long. The time capsule that was removed
from the cornerstone at the Old State House is also
going to go back in June, and it's going to
include its original contents having been cleaned and restored, along
with some new items along in the same vein basically
(24:27):
what was in there before. We're newspapers and coins to
things of that nature. Um. Its original contents were displayed
at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston during March
and April. The Bostonian Society and the Museum of Fine
Arts also both documented what was inside those boxes and
put lots of pictures and details on their websites. Yeah,
(24:49):
so people felt like they were being hidden away from
public view. They really really weren't, thank you. So much
for joining us on this Saturday. If you have heard
an email address or a Facebook you are l or
something similar over the course of today's episode, Since it
(25:09):
is from the archive that might be out of date. Now,
you can email us at history podcast at how stuff
Works dot com, and you can find us all over
social media at missed in History and you can subscribe
to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google podcast, the I
Heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
(25:31):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts. For
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Back before
we called it voicemail, or at least when voicemail means
(25:51):
something different and more specific, the world had the humble
Answering Machine. We're not right now, but we'll call you
that if you leave name and number. If you aren't
of the age to remember, the answering machine was a
physical audio recorder that plugged into your phone line. You
couldn't call into it remotely, You had to wait till
(26:11):
you got home to check your messages, and they were
the source for a lot of Seinfeld gaestssage. Most answering
machines recorded on cassette tape. Your magnetically recorded message would
be saved until you recorded over it or change the cassette.
(26:33):
When I was a little kid, my family had a
different kind of answering machine. It was actually tapeless. I
think it was a Sony and it was digital. That's
my dad, a man who's not apt to forget a
piece of telephone technology. It was like a little tower
with a big push button on top that would blink
(26:54):
once you had a message. In addition to play and
shuttle had a record button for your greeting. But on
this machine, you could also record your own messages directly
into it, like a voice mobile function on your phone.
(27:16):
I think the idea was if you were the husband,
wife passing, you know, running kids around and stuff, that
you could leave each other messages on it if you
were just standing in front of it, like you wouldn't
have to call it on your non existent cell phone
because none of us had cell phones back then. I
don't think Mom and I ever ever used that, but
you used it because you liked hearing yourself recorded him act.
(27:41):
It sat on top of my parents bureau. So I
must have had to climb on a stool or something.
But I spent untold hours talking into this device. Um,
my voice is going to come out all weird and
stay from the spring, recorded it and play many many times.
If you recorded multiple memos then hit the play button,
(28:01):
it would run them all back to back in the
order in which they were created. To a young me,
this was absolute magic. By this method, and in a
spirit of endless experimentation, I'd fill the tiny hard drive
with recordings structured as imaginary shows. I have no idea
(28:23):
what about I'm not sure I did then, probably just
whatever came to mind. I've listened through it a hundred
times and pieces as I built my episode up, and
a few times over as a finished product, and wait
for my parents to check their messages. I have great parents,
so they listened through with at least feigned enthusiastic, but
(28:46):
sooner or later we need the space, and with the
click of a button, it was all gone. Is anyone
there over? Okay? See you after it's gone. It's all by.
(29:07):
Soon enough, i'd make another, and none of those were saved.
This tape I've been playing is the closest thing I
have left. It was actually recorded on microcassette, which looks
just like a regular cassette tape, shrunk down to a
quarter of the size. My next fascination after answering machines. Here,
(29:27):
I'm wandering around my dad's office with his handheld voice recorders.
My dad, I sound about ten round. I made lots
of tapes like this, but as far as I can find,
this is the last one I have left from this
early in my life. Do I wish more had been saved,
(29:49):
especially those early answering machine productions, I don't know, I
guess so It's comparable to a baby picture, an old yearbook,
or some other keepsake, maybe the most like a Sunday
school craft project for Mother's Day. Ragged and potentially embarrassing,
however sentimental. But it's ephemeral. It's a fleeting moment and
(30:17):
it's gone. Even though I was young, I knew that
at the time. It's these moments. This show fixates on
lost materials, dropped threads, forgotten stories, ephemera in the way
that it's intertwined in our lives, all those things tangible
(30:38):
and intangible that you wish you could take just one
more look at before they vanish into the past. America
has produced like lots and lots of stuff, just piles
of stuff, and it's sitting around in storage spaces and
we keep making it and buying it, and then what
do you do with it? And it's got to somewhere.
(31:01):
The fact of the matter is is all day long,
every day, there are warehouses full of stuff getting just
pushed off a cliff, getting shoved off into the abyss
and being destroyed all day every day. Betsy in Naaski,
who runs the Canary Records label, a friend of mine,
uh Steve Smolean, who's a record guy like me, said
(31:21):
that what he loves is being the guy standing at
the edge of the cliff waving his arms going, wait, no,
let me look at those first before you throw them away.
I think there might be some good stuff in there.
I think there might be some stories. Well, I don't
think we should throw all those away yet, because museums
can't handle it, the big cultural institutions can't handle it.
There's just too much stuff. You know, they're getting donated
(31:44):
piles of stuff all the time. The fact of the
matter is they don't always know or care. They're looking
for specific things that relate to specific narratives, so you
always need somebody who's looking for a different story. We
have a season ten episodes of stories from that realm,
(32:05):
of things that were just barely saved, and in some
cases not saved at all. A bizarre tale of two
infamous New Yorkers booby trapped their home and turned it
into the shield fortress of a missing chapter of American
music history. There hasn't been a guess culturally that they matter,
(32:25):
so they got thrown in the garbage. A decade's worth
of original television lost to the airways. It's over. You're
gonna see something else the next second, and nobody's ever
going to see a piece of music that's defied convention
for seventy years. I had students write down the sounds
they heard during it, and one girl said, I never
realized there was so much to listen to and what
(32:47):
could only be called an audio mystery. It said nothing
on it and it clearly had been recorded, which intrigued me.
What is this going to be? These stories and more
given new life, if only for a glimpse. There's times
I can't help but feeling like that little kid again
talking into a machine that I'm sure won't save anything
(33:10):
I say into it. Also, is this podcast a piece
of ephemer in the making, A forgotten story about forgotten stories.
Only time will tell the Ephemeral debuts. Subscribe now on
Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you
(33:32):
listen to podcasts. And learn more at Ephemeral dot show.
End of messages.
Happy Saturday everyone. Our colleague Alex Williams has a brand
new podcast coming out called Ephemeral, and like its name suggests,
Ephemeral is all about things that are disappearing or have disappeared,
and forgotten people in places, and things that were barely
saved or not saved at all. So we've chosen today
Saturday Classic to go along with that theme. It is
(00:24):
our brief history of time Capsules from May. One thing
to note is that the mistakes that we make on
this podcast are not ephemeral at all. They last forever.
And in this episode, we made it sound like two
different time capsules came out of the old State House
in Boston, Massachusetts. We made it sound that way because
(00:44):
I thought that was how it happened. It did not.
The time capsule that was in a Lion's Head statue
was from the old State House, and then the one
associated with Paul Revere came from the current State House
on Beacon Hill. And stay tuned at the end of
the show for a little peak at Ephemeral. Welcome to
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
(01:05):
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
And Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Back
in October, a time capsule was removed from a lion
statue that normally is on top of the Old State
House in Boston, Massachusetts. The statue had been taken off
(01:29):
of the roof for restoration, and while they were at it,
restorers decided to check on rumors that there was a
time capsule in its head. This is something that had
been completely unknown until a couple of years before, and
they wanted to see if it was really there. It was.
They used to fiber optic camera to make sure that
it was really there, and then they very carefully removed
it and during a private opening, archivists lifted the lid
(01:53):
and immediately realized that what was in there was just
packed way too tightly to be taken out safely in
the studio where the statue was being restored, So they
took the time capsule to the Bostonian Society's Archives Center
where they could really take their time removing the contents
in a more controlled environment. Holly, do you remember this, Yes,
(02:14):
they do, right, because when we put this story on
our Facebook, people got so mad. They really did. There
were some very um you know, immediate response sort of
anger notes. Yeah, so this time capsule had been inside
the statue for a hundred and thirteen years, but people
felt like that was not nearly long enough for it
(02:35):
to be opened. And then other people interpreted this decision
to take the box somewhere more controlled to do the
actual unpacking that they thought this was a sign that
incompetent amateurs had been trusted with this delicate task, which
was absolutely not true. It was somebody with a master
of library science and archives of management like that. People
(02:55):
also argued that they should have just had the whole
statue removed somewhere safer, or that there was a lot
of questions about why the time capsule needed to be
removed in the first place. A lot of people wanted
it and its contents to go back where it was.
So then another time capsule was removed from the old
State House a couple of months later, and this one
(03:17):
dated back to and it had been put behind the
corner stone by Paul Revere, then Governor of Massachusetts, Sam Adams,
and Colonel William Scully. And so, based on what had
happened with that first time capsule, we were really careful
about what details we included when we put it up
on our Facebook. We noted that it had been taken
out as part of a repair to a water leak
(03:40):
behind the cornerstone, and we specified that professional professional conservators
had removed it, and that it was going to be
x ray and open under controlled conditions, and that it
was going to be put back after its contents had
been displayed for the public for a while. Holly, do
you also remember this, yes, because people were still so mad.
(04:00):
They were there's a fascinating reaction I think that people
have with time capsules and it it's I couldn't break
down the psychology of it because it varies a lot,
but there were definitely some angry responses. Yeah, people were
still really mad this time. They were mad that the
times capsule was going to be put back, which was
what people had wanted to happen with the other time capsules.
(04:21):
So at this point I kind of never wanted to
mention time capsules in the context of the show again,
which is one of the reasons why neither time capsule
was in the unearthed in episodes. But then this April
I got the chance to actually see the contents of
that cornerstone time capsule while they were on display at
the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and there was literally
(04:44):
a line all the way around the room to see it.
It stretched way out into adjoining galleries. Was just to
like in this little display case that was full of
coins and newspapers. Uh. Part of this is because the
time capsule was really small, so there was a little
display case people were waiting to see into. But part
of it is because people care apparently care a whole
(05:04):
lot about time capsules. Yeah, and I feel compelled to
mention that this sort of interesting um discussion that sometimes
got a little heated on our Facebook page, that is
not the only place that these were happening. If you
looked at news sites that were posting about it, their
comments sections were having very similar things play out. Yeah,
there was just angriness everywhere. So we're gonna talk about
(05:26):
time capsules today, maybe explore some of the reasons people
get so excited about them. Yes, and the tradition of
burying stuff really goes back almost to the beginning of
human history. The most obvious example is that most of
the world's cultures have at some point buried artifacts, letters, trinkets,
and other objects as parts of funeral rituals. People have
(05:48):
also been deliberately placing objects into building foundations and cornerstones
for thousands of years. For example, in Mesopotamia, a common
practice was to bury objects and building foundations for the
purpose of sanctifying the space and protecting it, or maybe
to commemorate something that was related to the building or
its builders or where it was being built. This practice
(06:11):
has continued throughout the ages and all over the world,
and it has also included embedding items of religious significance
in church corner stones, and the idea that these deposits
might one day be discovered again has also cropped up
at various times throughout history. For example, around the seventh
century b c, Assyrian king as her Hadn't had relics
(06:32):
and clay tablets put in the foundations of monuments, saying
that he quote deposited them in the foundations and left
them for future times. But all of these burials of
stuff are a little different from the idea of a
time capsule, although people of the past did sometimes think
or write about how future generations might someday stumble upon
(06:53):
their funerary deposits and their foundational deposits, which are what
those things are called. Uh, that was really secondary to
their purpose. They were being buried for some other reason,
and the idea that somebody might come dig them up
later was secondary to that. But in a time capsule,
on the other hand, people intentionally gather and store objects
with the specific plan that someone else is going to
(07:16):
open them later, and usually there's a specified time frame
for what later means and for the For time capsule purists,
it's only a true time capsule if there's a specific
end date for the thing to be opened again. This
means that while a letter from a six year old
to his or her future self to be opened ten
years later is a time capsule according to this definition,
(07:37):
but a giant room of artifacts to be opened at
some undetermined time in the future technically isn't. Neither are
time capsules that include those same sorts of things but
are shot into space to be one day opened by aliens.
Maybe so basically, the end date is really like the
definer of what isn't isn't a time capsule. Another aspect
of time capsules is that they're preserving, usually a snapshot
(07:59):
of everyday life when they were sealed, and while there
are definitely time capsules that have a much grander scope
than that. They almost always also include things like coins, newspapers, photographs,
letters from notable people, and everyday items that are kind
of meant to give future generations a glimpse of what
life used to be like. This, including of everyday life snapshots,
(08:23):
is also why accidental preservations of everyday life, like say
the ruins of Pompeii, are sometimes described as time capsules.
And although there are time capsules buried all over the world,
the practice is largely a tradition that came from and
flourished in the United States, and there are a couple
of reasons for this. A big one is that the
(08:45):
first most famous examples of time capsules, which we're going
to talk about in just a bit, we're all developed
in the United States. But sociologists and psychologists also theorized
that another reason that the United States has been so
intent on encapsulating history to send it to the future
is that as a nation, the history of the United
States is pretty short. There were definitely people in North
(09:08):
America long before the United States was a thing, but
European presence in North America only goes back a few
hundred years. So the theory goes that people kind of
subconsciously want to instantly create something that counts as history
in the eyes of future generations. And we're going to
talk about some specific examples of time capsules after we
(09:29):
have a brief forward from a sponsor. We're going to
talk about the first true time capsule to start off with,
and the first time we know of that people sealed
things away with the specific intent that they would be
(09:51):
brought out again at a particular date in the future
was for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that
took place in eighteen seventy six. It had a century
safe that was meant to be opened in nineteen seventy six.
There might be earlier examples of time capsules out there that,
in addition to having been buried or sealed away, also
(10:12):
had a specified opening date, but this is the first
one we actually have documentation of. And the century safe
looked just like a safe, but with a purple velvet lining,
which is a detail I personally love. Uh. This safe
contained photographs, a book on temperance, and signatures of visitors
to the Centennial Exhibition, among other things. It was stored
(10:33):
under the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capital and opened
in nineteen seventy six. As intended, a new capsule, buried
in nineteen seventy six is to be opened in twenty
seventy six. Even though the Century Safe was the first
true time capsule, the word time capsule had not been
coined yet. That did not happen until nineteen thirty eight
(10:54):
leading up to the nineteen nine World's Fair. G Edward Pendre,
who was a public relations executive for Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing,
gets the credit for coming up with the term. Also, uh,
for a while, because of the shape of what they
were building, you thought about calling it a time bomb,
and uh, I'm kind of glad that didn't take off. Um.
(11:18):
Before the word time capsule was coined, people normally called
these sorts of things safes or boxes, or similar generic terms.
Westinghouse was involved with all of this because it was
constructing the physical container for the World's Fair time Capsule,
which was to stay underground until sixty nine, otherwise known
(11:38):
as five thousand years from its start date. Because these
capsules were supposed to stay buried for so long, the
containers had to be impervious to just about any kind
of damage that you could think of. The end result
was a seven and a half foot long or two
point two meter torpedo like tube made of a non
corrosive alloy with several interior layers meant to protect the contents.
(12:02):
These contents included cigarettes, men's and women's grooming tools, magazines,
and samples of seeds and fabrics. There's also a twenties
two thousand page microfilm essay, and there are letters from
such figures as Albert Einstein and then m I T
President Carl T. Compton. There was huge, huge fanfare around
(12:26):
the burying of this time capsule, and there's also a
total replica of it and its contents at the George
Westinghouse Museum. Running concurrently with the creation of the first
Westinghouse time capsule was the Crypt of Civilization, and I
know a lot about this one. This is an incredibly
huge and involved time capsule at Oglethorpe University, which is
here in Atlanta and where I used to work. Oglethorpe
(12:49):
President Thornwell Jacobs led this project, which is an attempt
to document all of human history. The idea is that
future archaeologists could just consult the material from this vault
instead of having to painstakingly recreate an idea of how
the world worked by piecing together information from lots of
different dig sites. The Crypt of Civilization today is on
(13:10):
a lower level of the Administration Building at Oglethorpe, And
in addition to all the physical items which are inside,
which are a lot things enormous, it contains more than
six hundred thousand pages of microfilm which document all sorts
of historical information. So this crypt was sealed on May nine,
forty and it's not supposed to be opened again until
(13:32):
the year eighty one thirteen, and this is six thousand,
one hundred seventy seven years from when it was sealed up.
The idea is that as of nineteen forty there were
six thousand, one hundred seventy seven years of recorded history.
This crypt acts as like a midpoint between the beginnings
of recorded history and six thousand, one hundred seventy seven
(13:56):
years in the future when people can just open this
thing up to find out all about the past. Yeah,
And it's just a big door, a big metal door
that you walk by when you're in the admin building,
and it has engraving on it, but it's just the
door that's there that never opens. Because people were inspired
by the first Westinghouse time Capsule and Oglethorpe's Crypt of Civilization,
(14:19):
the time capsule Heyday really spanned from nineteen thirty five
to nine two. Because of the Centennial Exhibition, one years
became a popular time limit for time capsules to remain sealed.
There are also some connections between that first Westinghouse time
capsule and the Crypt that Oglethorpe so g Edward Pendre
(14:40):
had actually called for public support of the Crypt project
as it was being developed, and conversely, one of the
letters inside the first Westinghouse time capsule is a letter
from then Oglethorpe president Thornwell Jacobs um so that like,
(15:01):
there was a lot of crossover between those two projects, uh,
which I think is pretty cool. We're also now I
can just talk about some other notable examples of time capsules,
and this is not at all an exhaustive list, not
even of the ones that are really big and impressive.
Westinghouse created a second time capsule for the nineteen sixty
(15:23):
eight New York World's Fair, and it's almost like an
update to the first one. It's the exact same size
and shape, and it's buried about ten feet away, but
its contents include things that didn't exist when the previous
time capsule had been put into the grounds, includes birth
control pills and artificial heart valve, credit cards, information about
(15:44):
atomic energy, and other more modern as of nineteen sixty
eight stuff. Both the first Westinghouse time capsule and the
second one are supposed to be opened in sixty nine
thirty nine together, so that second one sort of like
a supplement to the first one rather than a whole
separate thing with a separate opening date. Two identical time
(16:06):
capsules were made for expos seventy in Osaka, Japan, and
one of these is to stay sealed for five thousand years,
and the other is intended to be opened every one
hundred years after an initial opening in the year two
thousand and One reason for this plan is to check
in and make sure everything's okay, but the other is
to update the time capsules contents, so it kind of
(16:27):
becomes an ongoing living archive record. And these time capsules
are shaped like kettles and filled. They weigh two point
one to metric tons, and although their purpose was to
detail in a very broad cross section life in nineteen seventy,
which means that they include lots and lots of everyday items.
There's also historical information including leaflets, films, and other recordings, uh,
(16:52):
including artifacts from the bombing of Hiroshima. And you can
actually see the total contents of all these things online.
They are available, and there is so much stuff jammed
into them. Yeah, I really I had this moment where, Uh,
I was flummoxed because I stumbled across this thing, UH
that had, you know, a a comprehensive list of everything
(17:15):
that's in there, and there are pictures of a lot
of it, and I am used to when you see
older pictures of things that were taken with earlier digital cameras,
they look kind of terrible. And I had this moment
where I just forgot that there were there were film
cameras in nineteen seventy. You can you can scan pictures
from nineteen seventy or film fromteen seventy, like that still exists,
(17:39):
that didn't go away. So I had this just moment,
But I feel silly confessing, but I still want to confess.
Or I was like, wow, where'd they get all these
pictures from? All? Right? Cameras? They were still a thing Tracy,
it had been a long day. There is a one
year time capsule that was created in Juno, Alaska, in
(18:00):
and this one is huge because it was created using
thousands of items that were collected from Juneau residents. It's
housed in a converted lobby of a government building and
you can see some of the contents through two windows
that go to the outside. It's also lit with electric
lights that can be changed from the outside, so it's
it can be lit while still being totally sealed up.
(18:20):
That's a pretty cool feature. Uh. There's a fortieth anniversary
time castle that was buried in Disneyland in Anaheim, California,
on July seventeenth of n and that is to be
opened on that same date in the year. Here's hoping
I'm there for that. Yeah. I was like, it's hotly
gonna go. Uh. It does look like a castle, which
(18:42):
is why it is called that. Um. Really, a hundred
years is a pretty standard time for a time capsule now,
and then we have these really fascinating millennial ones that
go on for a thousand years and beyond. But when
the Internet took off and things started changing at a
super upid pace. M I t made a time capsule
(19:03):
of the Online world sor at the Sloane School of Management,
and that one was to be opened after five years
because the Internet was evolving so rapidly. Aside from those
that we've just mentioned, all over the world there are
boxes of documents, coins, and household items just waiting to
be dug up. And we'll talk about what can go
(19:23):
wrong on that front after we have another quick word
from a sponsor. So the sad truth is, as much
as people like the idea of burying things for posterity,
a lot of time capsules just fail. In some cases
(19:45):
they haven't even made it to their burial or their ceiling.
There was a time capsule made for the US by
Centennial that went on a national tour with signatures from
all over the country that we're supposed to be collected
and put inside, and it made it through that whole tour,
but then was dolan from the truck at the burial
site before it could actually be buried. Capsules and their
(20:06):
contents have also been lost thanks to leaks, demolitions, and
people just forgetting that they were buried in the first place,
or that they existed at all. So, in addition to
trying to preserve all of human history up to nineteen
forty in the Crypt of Civilization. Oglethorpe is also trying
to keep track of all those time capsules so that
nothing else gets lost, and that's via the International Time
(20:27):
Capsule Society, which was established in nine. Yeah. One of
the reasons that they really wanted to get that time
capsule out of the Lion's Head statue was because they
did not really know how it had been packaged and
whether everything and there had already been destroyed because of water,
which it hadn't, which was great. Uh, But there's also
the fact that a lot of times what's inside a
(20:49):
typical time capsule turns out to be really underwhelming once
it's opened. The very nature of time capsules means that
a lot of times they're full of newspapers and coins
and photographs people, uh, letters from people who were famous
a hundred years ago but nobody knows who they are now,
and basically obsolete junk. There's even article in the Onion
(21:13):
titled newly unearthed time Capsule just full of useless old crap,
which made fun of both people's responses to what you
usually find when you open a time capsule and the
types of things that people select to put in there,
like there's there's several layers of humor going on. Uh,
this is actually kind of funny to me. How often
(21:34):
people open a time capsule and like, no one is
impressed with what was inside because it's just newspapers and coins.
And yet when the time capsule was made, there were
knocked down, drag out fights about what to put inside
of there. Oh yeah, people are as angry about what
to put in time capsules as they were within all
of our Facebook posts about taking them out, because they
(21:57):
want to make sure the exact correct picture of at
time period is created with the contents. But even if
people didn't find their contents boring, more often than not,
the same objects placed inside time capsules are also preserved
better at museums and other archives. It's very rare that
someone opens a time capsule to discover something that's actually
(22:19):
a unique find. Usually you can see a better preserved
one of the exact same thing in one or many museums. However,
all of that said, time capsules usually inspire and interest
in history and some civic pride, at least in the
short term, and that counts when they're created, and again
(22:41):
when they're opened, and especially for the ones that are
meant to stay sealed up for thousands of years, the
containers themselves can involve tremendous speaks of engineering. This has
especially been true for all of these ones. They're supposed
to stay sealed up for many thousands of years. So
while people might classify their contents into the category of
war plus a junk, their creation has a different type
(23:04):
of worth. And back to those time capsules that we
talked about at the very beginning of the show, the
Lion statue is back on top of the Old State House,
complete with a new time capsule, and this time it's
in the lions scroll, so future generations will have easier
access to it. Among the contents of that capsule are
an iPhone five. Apple apparently would not provide an iPhone
(23:26):
six for this Foreign Relations of the United States nineteen
seventy seven to nineteen eighty volume three to replace a
copy of Foreign Relations of the United States eighteen ninety
six that was in the prior box, basically to fill space,
a number of letters and photos, and a Boston Marathon metal.
The original items were on display at the Old State
(23:46):
House for several weeks over December fourteen and into January.
The items inside were delicate enough that after that point
they were returned to the archives for preservation. Yeah, they
were actually preserved incredible well, uh, considering how old the
time capsule was and how it had just been in
the statue out in the elements for so long. But
(24:07):
they did want to make sure that they lasted long
into the future, so they didn't stay on public display
for all that long. The time capsule that was removed
from the cornerstone at the Old State House is also
going to go back in June, and it's going to
include its original contents having been cleaned and restored, along
with some new items along in the same vein basically
(24:27):
what was in there before. We're newspapers and coins to
things of that nature. Um. Its original contents were displayed
at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston during March
and April. The Bostonian Society and the Museum of Fine
Arts also both documented what was inside those boxes and
put lots of pictures and details on their websites. Yeah,
(24:49):
so people felt like they were being hidden away from
public view. They really really weren't, thank you. So much
for joining us on this Saturday. If you have heard
an email address or a Facebook you are l or
something similar over the course of today's episode, Since it
(25:09):
is from the archive that might be out of date. Now,
you can email us at history podcast at how stuff
Works dot com, and you can find us all over
social media at missed in History and you can subscribe
to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google podcast, the I
Heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
(25:31):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts. For
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Back before
we called it voicemail, or at least when voicemail means
(25:51):
something different and more specific, the world had the humble
Answering Machine. We're not right now, but we'll call you
that if you leave name and number. If you aren't
of the age to remember, the answering machine was a
physical audio recorder that plugged into your phone line. You
couldn't call into it remotely, You had to wait till
(26:11):
you got home to check your messages, and they were
the source for a lot of Seinfeld gaestssage. Most answering
machines recorded on cassette tape. Your magnetically recorded message would
be saved until you recorded over it or change the cassette.
(26:33):
When I was a little kid, my family had a
different kind of answering machine. It was actually tapeless. I
think it was a Sony and it was digital. That's
my dad, a man who's not apt to forget a
piece of telephone technology. It was like a little tower
with a big push button on top that would blink
(26:54):
once you had a message. In addition to play and
shuttle had a record button for your greeting. But on
this machine, you could also record your own messages directly
into it, like a voice mobile function on your phone.
(27:16):
I think the idea was if you were the husband,
wife passing, you know, running kids around and stuff, that
you could leave each other messages on it if you
were just standing in front of it, like you wouldn't
have to call it on your non existent cell phone
because none of us had cell phones back then. I
don't think Mom and I ever ever used that, but
you used it because you liked hearing yourself recorded him act.
(27:41):
It sat on top of my parents bureau. So I
must have had to climb on a stool or something.
But I spent untold hours talking into this device. Um,
my voice is going to come out all weird and
stay from the spring, recorded it and play many many times.
If you recorded multiple memos then hit the play button,
(28:01):
it would run them all back to back in the
order in which they were created. To a young me,
this was absolute magic. By this method, and in a
spirit of endless experimentation, I'd fill the tiny hard drive
with recordings structured as imaginary shows. I have no idea
(28:23):
what about I'm not sure I did then, probably just
whatever came to mind. I've listened through it a hundred
times and pieces as I built my episode up, and
a few times over as a finished product, and wait
for my parents to check their messages. I have great parents,
so they listened through with at least feigned enthusiastic, but
(28:46):
sooner or later we need the space, and with the
click of a button, it was all gone. Is anyone
there over? Okay? See you after it's gone. It's all by.
(29:07):
Soon enough, i'd make another, and none of those were saved.
This tape I've been playing is the closest thing I
have left. It was actually recorded on microcassette, which looks
just like a regular cassette tape, shrunk down to a
quarter of the size. My next fascination after answering machines. Here,
(29:27):
I'm wandering around my dad's office with his handheld voice recorders.
My dad, I sound about ten round. I made lots
of tapes like this, but as far as I can find,
this is the last one I have left from this
early in my life. Do I wish more had been saved,
(29:49):
especially those early answering machine productions, I don't know, I
guess so It's comparable to a baby picture, an old yearbook,
or some other keepsake, maybe the most like a Sunday
school craft project for Mother's Day. Ragged and potentially embarrassing,
however sentimental. But it's ephemeral. It's a fleeting moment and
(30:17):
it's gone. Even though I was young, I knew that
at the time. It's these moments. This show fixates on
lost materials, dropped threads, forgotten stories, ephemera in the way
that it's intertwined in our lives, all those things tangible
(30:38):
and intangible that you wish you could take just one
more look at before they vanish into the past. America
has produced like lots and lots of stuff, just piles
of stuff, and it's sitting around in storage spaces and
we keep making it and buying it, and then what
do you do with it? And it's got to somewhere.
(31:01):
The fact of the matter is is all day long,
every day, there are warehouses full of stuff getting just
pushed off a cliff, getting shoved off into the abyss
and being destroyed all day every day. Betsy in Naaski,
who runs the Canary Records label, a friend of mine,
uh Steve Smolean, who's a record guy like me, said
(31:21):
that what he loves is being the guy standing at
the edge of the cliff waving his arms going, wait, no,
let me look at those first before you throw them away.
I think there might be some good stuff in there.
I think there might be some stories. Well, I don't
think we should throw all those away yet, because museums
can't handle it, the big cultural institutions can't handle it.
There's just too much stuff. You know, they're getting donated
(31:44):
piles of stuff all the time. The fact of the
matter is they don't always know or care. They're looking
for specific things that relate to specific narratives, so you
always need somebody who's looking for a different story. We
have a season ten episodes of stories from that realm,
(32:05):
of things that were just barely saved, and in some
cases not saved at all. A bizarre tale of two
infamous New Yorkers booby trapped their home and turned it
into the shield fortress of a missing chapter of American
music history. There hasn't been a guess culturally that they matter,
(32:25):
so they got thrown in the garbage. A decade's worth
of original television lost to the airways. It's over. You're
gonna see something else the next second, and nobody's ever
going to see a piece of music that's defied convention
for seventy years. I had students write down the sounds
they heard during it, and one girl said, I never
realized there was so much to listen to and what
(32:47):
could only be called an audio mystery. It said nothing
on it and it clearly had been recorded, which intrigued me.
What is this going to be? These stories and more
given new life, if only for a glimpse. There's times
I can't help but feeling like that little kid again
talking into a machine that I'm sure won't save anything
(33:10):
I say into it. Also, is this podcast a piece
of ephemer in the making, A forgotten story about forgotten stories.
Only time will tell the Ephemeral debuts. Subscribe now on
Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you
(33:32):
listen to podcasts. And learn more at Ephemeral dot show.
End of messages.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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