June 12, 2020 • 14 mins
Tracy and Holly talk about the unique identity of the Public Universal Friend, as well as whether Wat Tyler's story inspired modern storytellers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello, and Happy Friday. Our first
episode this week was about the public universal friend. I
said this, um in different words at the top of
(00:21):
the episode, but uh, this is not how I would
talk about the trans and non binary people in my
life or in more recent history. Generally, though, those folks
also would not describe their gender as having been died
and reincarnated as a genderlest divine spirit. Um. I just
(00:42):
want to make that clear, like it don't if you
go and you use that episode as an excuse to
disrespect a trans person's name and pronouns, I'm kicking you
out of the stuff you missed in History Class. Club.
I didn't know there was a club. Um, I just
made it up. I'm making up a club so I
can kick you out of it. You can excommunicate them,
(01:02):
as was so central to so many parts of this story. Yeah,
it's it's an interesting thing. I mean, we we talk
about this all the time, and you did talk about
it at length at the beginning of the episode. You know,
we can't always apply modern language to historical people because
we don't know right if that's what they would have
chosen for themselves or not. Yeah. Um, And this is
(01:24):
a uniquely difficult scenario because it is kind of outside
the scope of just about anything that has evolved linguistically. Yeah,
even if you are up on the very latest evolutions
of how language around gender and identity have evolved. Yeah, yeah,
I I am basically taking at face value, uh, that
(01:48):
that the friends sincerely held belief was having died and
been reborn. And I am not for example, like you
could speculate that that that was something that the friend
did uh to like deal with gender dysphoria, um, and
so like create a situation where they were able to
live in a way that accommodated their their own perceived gender. Um.
(02:15):
But like that's so speculative. We don't have any writing
on like the the early years of Jemima Wilkinson and
like any of that. Um. Also, though we did not
get into it in as much detail in the episode,
but a lot of the criticism and the derision that
(02:37):
the friend faced is a hundred percent parallel to like
the invasive questions and discrimination that trans and non binary
people face today in terms of like people being so
focused on like what what underwear does the friend have
on what is underneath these clothes? Is there some weird
(03:00):
sex thing happening? Like, Uh, you could move the whole
story a couple hundred years into the future, UM, when
different language existed to describe things about gender, and that
might read very differently, but like, you can definitely see
so many parallels in the friends story, UM, and in
(03:22):
the stories of our the lives of trans and non
binary people living today. Also, Uh, my spouse grew up
in this part of western New York. And so when
we sat down to dinner last night, I said, Patrick,
did you learn about the part of of New York
history where there was a dispute between New York and
(03:45):
Massachusetts about whether the land was in New York or Massachusetts?
And he said that would have been in fourth grade
New York History. And I don't remember anything about it. Um.
By comparison the UM when I was kind of doing
the thing that I know you also do sometimes where
I kind of just gave him the download of everything
(04:06):
we had been I had been researching in the episode
UM and and I was talking about the friend getting
ready to establish this settlement in western New York. Patrick
was like, when was this? And I was like right
after the Revolutionary War, and he went, oh no, because
he immediately knew the history of like the oppression of
(04:28):
indigenous peoples and that whole Scorched Earth military campaign. Like
he grew up right down the road from a reservation
in New York and like that, like that was part
of his um day to day life experience more so
than this whole weird and I found it incredibly convoluted
and confusing border dispute between New York and Massachusetts. Yeah,
(04:50):
but also the other thing in this piece of history
that UM I had kind of like my pedestrian reaction was, oh, no,
we're gonna go found our own communal society. Just we've
done so many episodes about attempts at communal living that
always fall apart. And once that property like exploded in value, Yeah,
(05:17):
there's there's no way people weren't going to be like, great,
we're rich, let's get out of here. Yeah. And like
with the caveat of like the indigenous people already living there,
and like I wish the only account I could find
where uh Indigenous people specifically referred to who was probably
(05:37):
the friend, because they talked about a white woman giving
Um an address at a treaty negotiation. Um. Like even
that was filtered through white observers um and like that
particular account did not seem like they were already familiar
with a friend like well unclear, but anyway, like, aside
(05:58):
from like that aspect of whole history of this, it
does seem like the community was pretty successful in terms
of being able to get crops established and get a
gristmill and a sawmill and like all of this stuff.
They seem to have been really productive, um and productive
and successful financially enough that they were able to keep
(06:19):
like maintaining the poorest members of the society for the
whole rest of their lives. UM. I did note when
I went to confirm that the friend's house is still
on the UH National Register of Historic Places currently, the
approval for the houses listing on the National Register of
Historic Places notes it's local historical significance, but not like
(06:44):
a statewide or national historical significance. UM. And I kind
of wonder whether, like the scope of lgbt Q history
and the importance of figures who you could describe as
queer in some way in history like Gaus, that becomes
increasingly important. Um. Whether the perception of the Friends importance
(07:05):
will move beyond just local Finger Lakes, New York into
a more national importance. We shall see. That's speculation on
my part. Our second episode this week was about the
one Uprising, sometimes called what Tyler's Rebellion, sometimes called the
Peasants Revolt. Lots of different names for that one, um,
(07:28):
and I did not pick that in response to anything
happening in the world. As I said, it was something
that was like written a couple of weeks back in
the middle of May. But I can understand if people
listen to it and see parallels in terms of the
violence and unrest that has been happening in the United
States over the last couple of weeks. And since this
(07:51):
episode is coming out, um, six entire days after I
said that, who knows what's going to be happening at
that point. Uh. Yeah, We've been very shruggy and frank
about this, like, we don't know. It's hard to select topics.
It's hard to deal with topics we've already selected that
we now are producing. It's a weird thing. Um, I
(08:16):
have a question for you about this. Yes, did you,
while working on this episode think a lot about fight
Club or is that just me. I didn't, but now
that you mention it, because Project Mayhem in Fight Club
was all about a similar erasure of records and identity
(08:40):
related to financial records in the hopes of a significant
shift in how society and government in the world works. Yeah, no,
I that now that you mention it. Uh yeah, I
wonder if Chuck Polinick was informed by these events as
he was writing that. Maybe you also, Um, you also
(09:01):
just asked me if I knew anything about a Star
Wars character with a similar name, which has become a
theme on the show. Right the irony v that you're
always the one doing it, like I should be the one.
If we're doing shows that connect to Star Wars characters,
it would be more likely one would think it would
be me. But no, um, yeah what Tambor is the
(09:25):
head of the Techno Union Army. He's not a good guy,
So I can't imagine. I mean, I we have talked
before about how, um, George Lucas really big history buff.
So there are characters that are actually, yes, for sure
named inspired by history. But I don't know if this
is a case or not. It may just be a
coincidental similarity. Well, and Um. One of the things that
(09:47):
had been in the outline for the episode that I
wound up cutting because it was becoming very long, UM,
was how I mentioned we mentioned that, um, the interpretation
of this rebel, and as is always the case, we
we re examine and we reargue history all the time,
and so the interpretation of what Tyler has shifted. It's
(10:09):
also shifted in literature, especially in England. Um. And so
for a time, particularly among the highest class people in England,
like what Tyler was a villain leading up to the
English Civil Wars, Like one of the precautionary speeches about
(10:30):
how things were going was that the long and noble
system of English government was going to fall to a
wat Tyler Um. And then in a totally different shift
during that same era where where Henry every was seen
as a like a pirate hero because people were just
really into pirates and outlaws, Like there were a bunch
(10:51):
of London theater plays that were written that were about
the almost Robin Hood esque figure of what Tyler Um. So, yes,
depending on who you're talking to and what there, what
their position in society is, and what century we're talking about,
people have had like vastly different, um interpretations of what
(11:12):
Tyler in particular, and the also the uprising as a whole,
and now I can think of as Tyler Dirton. Yeah,
maybe that's why Tyler Dirden was named that. Uh, I mean,
I suppose somebody could reach out to Chuck Politic and
ask him. Um, it's a really interesting thing, right. We
(11:32):
talked about how history gets reinterpreted all the time, and
part of it is we You even put it in
the outline that there were uh chroniclers at the time
that we're all writing about it, but they all bring
their own perspective to it, and they're so far outside
of it that even though that's a primary source, it's
a primary source with inherent bias. Right. I think there
(11:53):
was only one of those eight chronicles that that seemed
to think that the rebelling people might have had a point,
like well, the rest of them were sort of like
this poor rabble they tore up London, right. Uh. Yeah,
it's interesting and it makes me examine how I mean
(12:16):
we it gets talked about a lot right now, Um,
how events are framed by different news outlets, etcetera. But
even outlets that are you know, considered to be fairly
neutral and unbiased, you still have to recognize that the
people ultimately like writing the copy unconsciously have their own
(12:37):
bias in anything. It's always like a big, big thing
that has been on my mind a lot in the
last several months before all of this even is how
we present ourselves publicly through like our personal communications but
also bigger communications, and how that is going to be
interpreted by future historians. And I I mean, I don't
(13:02):
wish that I could time travel forward, but I do
think it would be interesting to see how all of
the things going on today are interpreted in the future.
And it would be cool to do a side by
side of something like that and something like what Tyler's
rebellion right and compare like the primary source chroniclers of
(13:22):
both eras. Yeah, but we can't do that, so I'm
just talking out my behind. We'll go on a list
of our our bad uses for a time machine, right anyway,
I think that's unless you had anything else you want
to bring up. I think that's maybe a good place
to call it. Uh No, I'm good, Okay, If you'd
like to write to us about this or any other
(13:44):
podcast or history podcast at I heart radio dot com.
We're also all over social media. Ad Missed in History
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcast
that I heart radio app and reals at your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
(14:07):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello, and Happy Friday. Our first
episode this week was about the public universal friend. I
said this, um in different words at the top of
(00:21):
the episode, but uh, this is not how I would
talk about the trans and non binary people in my
life or in more recent history. Generally, though, those folks
also would not describe their gender as having been died
and reincarnated as a genderlest divine spirit. Um. I just
(00:42):
want to make that clear, like it don't if you
go and you use that episode as an excuse to
disrespect a trans person's name and pronouns, I'm kicking you
out of the stuff you missed in History Class. Club.
I didn't know there was a club. Um, I just
made it up. I'm making up a club so I
can kick you out of it. You can excommunicate them,
(01:02):
as was so central to so many parts of this story. Yeah,
it's it's an interesting thing. I mean, we we talk
about this all the time, and you did talk about
it at length at the beginning of the episode. You know,
we can't always apply modern language to historical people because
we don't know right if that's what they would have
chosen for themselves or not. Yeah. Um, And this is
(01:24):
a uniquely difficult scenario because it is kind of outside
the scope of just about anything that has evolved linguistically. Yeah,
even if you are up on the very latest evolutions
of how language around gender and identity have evolved. Yeah, yeah,
I I am basically taking at face value, uh, that
(01:48):
that the friends sincerely held belief was having died and
been reborn. And I am not for example, like you
could speculate that that that was something that the friend
did uh to like deal with gender dysphoria, um, and
so like create a situation where they were able to
live in a way that accommodated their their own perceived gender. Um.
(02:15):
But like that's so speculative. We don't have any writing
on like the the early years of Jemima Wilkinson and
like any of that. Um. Also, though we did not
get into it in as much detail in the episode,
but a lot of the criticism and the derision that
(02:37):
the friend faced is a hundred percent parallel to like
the invasive questions and discrimination that trans and non binary
people face today in terms of like people being so
focused on like what what underwear does the friend have
on what is underneath these clothes? Is there some weird
(03:00):
sex thing happening? Like, Uh, you could move the whole
story a couple hundred years into the future, UM, when
different language existed to describe things about gender, and that
might read very differently, but like, you can definitely see
so many parallels in the friends story, UM, and in
(03:22):
the stories of our the lives of trans and non
binary people living today. Also, Uh, my spouse grew up
in this part of western New York. And so when
we sat down to dinner last night, I said, Patrick,
did you learn about the part of of New York
history where there was a dispute between New York and
(03:45):
Massachusetts about whether the land was in New York or Massachusetts?
And he said that would have been in fourth grade
New York History. And I don't remember anything about it. Um.
By comparison the UM when I was kind of doing
the thing that I know you also do sometimes where
I kind of just gave him the download of everything
(04:06):
we had been I had been researching in the episode
UM and and I was talking about the friend getting
ready to establish this settlement in western New York. Patrick
was like, when was this? And I was like right
after the Revolutionary War, and he went, oh no, because
he immediately knew the history of like the oppression of
(04:28):
indigenous peoples and that whole Scorched Earth military campaign. Like
he grew up right down the road from a reservation
in New York and like that, like that was part
of his um day to day life experience more so
than this whole weird and I found it incredibly convoluted
and confusing border dispute between New York and Massachusetts. Yeah,
(04:50):
but also the other thing in this piece of history
that UM I had kind of like my pedestrian reaction was, oh, no,
we're gonna go found our own communal society. Just we've
done so many episodes about attempts at communal living that
always fall apart. And once that property like exploded in value, Yeah,
(05:17):
there's there's no way people weren't going to be like, great,
we're rich, let's get out of here. Yeah. And like
with the caveat of like the indigenous people already living there,
and like I wish the only account I could find
where uh Indigenous people specifically referred to who was probably
(05:37):
the friend, because they talked about a white woman giving
Um an address at a treaty negotiation. Um. Like even
that was filtered through white observers um and like that
particular account did not seem like they were already familiar
with a friend like well unclear, but anyway, like, aside
(05:58):
from like that aspect of whole history of this, it
does seem like the community was pretty successful in terms
of being able to get crops established and get a
gristmill and a sawmill and like all of this stuff.
They seem to have been really productive, um and productive
and successful financially enough that they were able to keep
(06:19):
like maintaining the poorest members of the society for the
whole rest of their lives. UM. I did note when
I went to confirm that the friend's house is still
on the UH National Register of Historic Places currently, the
approval for the houses listing on the National Register of
Historic Places notes it's local historical significance, but not like
(06:44):
a statewide or national historical significance. UM. And I kind
of wonder whether, like the scope of lgbt Q history
and the importance of figures who you could describe as
queer in some way in history like Gaus, that becomes
increasingly important. Um. Whether the perception of the Friends importance
(07:05):
will move beyond just local Finger Lakes, New York into
a more national importance. We shall see. That's speculation on
my part. Our second episode this week was about the
one Uprising, sometimes called what Tyler's Rebellion, sometimes called the
Peasants Revolt. Lots of different names for that one, um,
(07:28):
and I did not pick that in response to anything
happening in the world. As I said, it was something
that was like written a couple of weeks back in
the middle of May. But I can understand if people
listen to it and see parallels in terms of the
violence and unrest that has been happening in the United
States over the last couple of weeks. And since this
(07:51):
episode is coming out, um, six entire days after I
said that, who knows what's going to be happening at
that point. Uh. Yeah, We've been very shruggy and frank
about this, like, we don't know. It's hard to select topics.
It's hard to deal with topics we've already selected that
we now are producing. It's a weird thing. Um, I
(08:16):
have a question for you about this. Yes, did you,
while working on this episode think a lot about fight
Club or is that just me. I didn't, but now
that you mention it, because Project Mayhem in Fight Club
was all about a similar erasure of records and identity
(08:40):
related to financial records in the hopes of a significant
shift in how society and government in the world works. Yeah, no,
I that now that you mention it. Uh yeah, I
wonder if Chuck Polinick was informed by these events as
he was writing that. Maybe you also, Um, you also
(09:01):
just asked me if I knew anything about a Star
Wars character with a similar name, which has become a
theme on the show. Right the irony v that you're
always the one doing it, like I should be the one.
If we're doing shows that connect to Star Wars characters,
it would be more likely one would think it would
be me. But no, um, yeah what Tambor is the
(09:25):
head of the Techno Union Army. He's not a good guy,
So I can't imagine. I mean, I we have talked
before about how, um, George Lucas really big history buff.
So there are characters that are actually, yes, for sure
named inspired by history. But I don't know if this
is a case or not. It may just be a
coincidental similarity. Well, and Um. One of the things that
(09:47):
had been in the outline for the episode that I
wound up cutting because it was becoming very long, UM,
was how I mentioned we mentioned that, um, the interpretation
of this rebel, and as is always the case, we
we re examine and we reargue history all the time,
and so the interpretation of what Tyler has shifted. It's
(10:09):
also shifted in literature, especially in England. Um. And so
for a time, particularly among the highest class people in England,
like what Tyler was a villain leading up to the
English Civil Wars, Like one of the precautionary speeches about
(10:30):
how things were going was that the long and noble
system of English government was going to fall to a
wat Tyler Um. And then in a totally different shift
during that same era where where Henry every was seen
as a like a pirate hero because people were just
really into pirates and outlaws, Like there were a bunch
(10:51):
of London theater plays that were written that were about
the almost Robin Hood esque figure of what Tyler Um. So, yes,
depending on who you're talking to and what there, what
their position in society is, and what century we're talking about,
people have had like vastly different, um interpretations of what
(11:12):
Tyler in particular, and the also the uprising as a whole,
and now I can think of as Tyler Dirton. Yeah,
maybe that's why Tyler Dirden was named that. Uh, I mean,
I suppose somebody could reach out to Chuck Politic and
ask him. Um, it's a really interesting thing, right. We
(11:32):
talked about how history gets reinterpreted all the time, and
part of it is we You even put it in
the outline that there were uh chroniclers at the time
that we're all writing about it, but they all bring
their own perspective to it, and they're so far outside
of it that even though that's a primary source, it's
a primary source with inherent bias. Right. I think there
(11:53):
was only one of those eight chronicles that that seemed
to think that the rebelling people might have had a point,
like well, the rest of them were sort of like
this poor rabble they tore up London, right. Uh. Yeah,
it's interesting and it makes me examine how I mean
(12:16):
we it gets talked about a lot right now, Um,
how events are framed by different news outlets, etcetera. But
even outlets that are you know, considered to be fairly
neutral and unbiased, you still have to recognize that the
people ultimately like writing the copy unconsciously have their own
(12:37):
bias in anything. It's always like a big, big thing
that has been on my mind a lot in the
last several months before all of this even is how
we present ourselves publicly through like our personal communications but
also bigger communications, and how that is going to be
interpreted by future historians. And I I mean, I don't
(13:02):
wish that I could time travel forward, but I do
think it would be interesting to see how all of
the things going on today are interpreted in the future.
And it would be cool to do a side by
side of something like that and something like what Tyler's
rebellion right and compare like the primary source chroniclers of
(13:22):
both eras. Yeah, but we can't do that, so I'm
just talking out my behind. We'll go on a list
of our our bad uses for a time machine, right anyway,
I think that's unless you had anything else you want
to bring up. I think that's maybe a good place
to call it. Uh No, I'm good, Okay, If you'd
like to write to us about this or any other
(13:44):
podcast or history podcast at I heart radio dot com.
We're also all over social media. Ad Missed in History
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcast
that I heart radio app and reals at your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
(14:07):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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