Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. Am Holly Fry and
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2: Wilson.
Speaker 1: We talked about divorce ranches. I'm so glad you picked
Speaker 1: this me too. I was for a while like, is
Speaker 1: there enough information on this?
Speaker 2: Yes? Their absolutely was.
Speaker 1: I feel like I was thinking about it at one point,
Speaker 1: and I could be totally making up. I think I
Speaker 1: heard an episode of the podcast Criminal that was about
Speaker 1: maybe a missing person's case connected to like the Nevada
Speaker 1: divorce industry, and I really feel like I was listening
Speaker 1: to this while walking on the beach at sunrise on
Speaker 1: a day that I had to take my spouse to
Speaker 1: the airport at a horrible hour of the morning because
Speaker 1: he had planned ahead, and rather than our getting divorced,
Speaker 1: I turned that into an opportunity to walk on the beach,
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts and drinking coffee as the sun came up.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: That sounds delightful. I have so many thoughts about things
Speaker 1: we touched on.
Speaker 2: Okay, great.
Speaker 1: First, I want to talk about Rhea Langham, who was
Speaker 1: married to Clark Gable.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, she was a very wealthy woman
Speaker 1: in her own right. She doesn't need my pity. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I feel really bad for her
Speaker 1: because the way that all shook out is she basically
Speaker 1: took care of Clark Gable when he was nobody, and
Speaker 1: then as he had his movie contract, and I think
Speaker 1: it was MGM really pushed him into stardom. They made
Speaker 1: it very clear that Ria Langham was not cool enough
Speaker 1: to be his wife anymore. And the press was along
Speaker 1: for that ride, where like, as he was seen out
Speaker 1: with other women, it almost seemed like she was villainized
Speaker 1: of like, uugh, why is this ugly old hag not
Speaker 1: letting this poor man go and have the fabulous life
Speaker 1: he deserves because he is hot and famous And it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: like the whole thing just made me feel lucky. It
Speaker 1: was really not cool. Yeah, it was not It was
Speaker 1: not cool. I don't like any of that. Listen, I'm
Speaker 1: not in their house. I don't know what their marriage
Speaker 1: was like, but like, that's a really really gross way
Speaker 1: for a woman to be treated in the press.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 1: I also didn't It never even crossed my mind until
Speaker 1: I was researching this that there have at various points
Speaker 1: been efforts for there to be a national divorce law.
Speaker 2: Right. I just had never thought about it before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in part because there have been so many arguments
Speaker 1: over the years of like why can Idaho have an
Speaker 1: easier divorce than us and we still have to admit,
Speaker 1: you know, adhere to its its judgment. Why can Nevada
Speaker 1: doy this? Why can any of the states that have
Speaker 1: been considered like divorce havens, right right? It made me
Speaker 1: think about uh marriages being like states have their own
Speaker 1: marriage laws. But the part about whether other states were
Speaker 1: going to recognize Nevada's divorces made me think about the
Speaker 1: whether other states were going to accept same sex marriages
Speaker 1: that had been conducted in states or it was legal,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately leaked to a Supreme Court decision because
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that I was thinking
Speaker 1: of as we were talking about this. Yeah, it's I
Speaker 1: just had not ever thought about it that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had thought about it in terms of marriages, right,
Speaker 1: for all the reasons you just listed, but I literally
Speaker 1: never crossed my mind, probably because I have not ever
Speaker 1: been divorced or been like you know, I never would
Speaker 1: have occurred to me like will this still hold in
Speaker 1: another place. I'm not well versed in divorce law in
Speaker 1: any state at all, but as I remember it growing
Speaker 1: up in North Carolina, I remember hearing about people having
Speaker 1: to have like a one year trial separation before their
Speaker 1: divorce could be finalized, which I think is still how
Speaker 1: it works in some states, it is, for sure. I
Speaker 1: don't know specific ones, but I know there are still
Speaker 1: some where you have to have a pretty lengthy period
Speaker 1: after you file where before they will find it, before
Speaker 1: it will finalize it, which like if you're for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: like whether it is that your the marriage is like
Speaker 1: verifiably abusive, or whether you're just unhappy, that just seems
Speaker 1: like a very long time. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's so
Speaker 1: wild to me too, in reading doing all of the
Speaker 1: research I was doing for this. We even talk about
Speaker 1: in the episode how divorce had this stigma around it,
Speaker 1: but there were still people doing it many times in
Speaker 1: their lives. Sure, you know there were people. I mean
Speaker 1: we mentioned that Rhea Lanham was on her third marriage
Speaker 1: before she even met Clark Gable, and she was not
Speaker 1: an outlier really in terms of like I feel like
Speaker 1: those rules applied to the lower income pieces of the
Speaker 1: economic instruction. Yeah, those rules apply to people who can't
Speaker 1: afford to overcome stigma with money, you know, because it
Speaker 1: was like one thing after another I would read about like, oh,
Speaker 1: this person was on their sixth marriage and blah blah.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait a minute, divorce was stigmatized, and then
Speaker 1: you realize it was. It just wasn't for people that
Speaker 1: were rich or famous. One of the stories a rabbit
Speaker 1: hole I went down while I was working on this
Speaker 1: That doesn't really make it its way into the episode
Speaker 1: at all, but I don't know, I feel like I
Speaker 1: want to talk about it a little. Is Rita Hayworth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had not done a ton of research into Rita
Speaker 1: Hayworth's life.
Speaker 2: It broke my heart.
Speaker 1: Oh now, because she's so beautiful, and even now when
Speaker 1: someone mentions Rita Hayworth, you think of this like gorgeous,
Speaker 1: bubbly movie star who was just like No, her life
Speaker 1: was awful. Oh no, she was married five times. It
Speaker 1: did not go well any of them. She had what
Speaker 1: there's a very interesting thing that goes on where she
Speaker 1: may or may not have had a drinking problem, and
Speaker 1: she was very irrational and had a lot of irrational
Speaker 1: anger behaviors and stuff that weren't diagnosed like starting in
Speaker 1: I think around the early nineteen sixties, and they weren't
Speaker 1: diagnosed as Alzheimer's until the nineteen eighties. And her daughter
Speaker 1: was like, now it all makes sense, Like we just
Speaker 1: thought she was an alcoholic, but really she had other
Speaker 1: stuff going on. But what I really really want to
Speaker 1: discuss is Orson Wells, because, Okay, do you know Rita
Speaker 1: Hayworth was Mary Dorson Wells. I did not remember that
Speaker 1: Mary Dorson Wells. And like it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where when I see pictures of them together, it is
Speaker 1: the sweetest thing. They look like the cutest couple on
Speaker 1: the planet. They look so into each other. They look
Speaker 1: like they are always laughing together, like exactly what you
Speaker 1: picture when you're like, what does a cool Hollywood couple
Speaker 1: look like? And she even said later in her life
Speaker 1: after they had gotten divorced, like he was the love
Speaker 1: of my life. I should have not left him, but
Speaker 1: like they didn't want the same things. He didn't want
Speaker 1: to like settle down and have a homie life and
Speaker 1: she did, and that wasn't going to happen. They weren't
Speaker 1: neither Any resolution would lead to one of them not being.
Speaker 2: Happy, right.
Speaker 1: But what was really really heartbreaking is that when she
Speaker 1: said in an interview towards the end of her life
Speaker 1: that he had been the love of her life and
Speaker 1: that she she really regretted not staying with him, and
Speaker 1: he had heard this, and his commentary on it really
Speaker 1: broke my heart because he was like, if what we had,
Speaker 1: which was sometimes fun, was the best time in her life,
Speaker 1: her life had to have been horrifying. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because he was like, we didn't have that great of
Speaker 1: a marriage, so like, if I was the nicest person
Speaker 1: she was ever with, this is a problem. And there
Speaker 1: are other accounts of like people that saw her out
Speaker 1: with some of her husbands, and one that's just hard
Speaker 1: to read of her just being verbally abused by these
Speaker 1: people all the time and treated like trash, which she
Speaker 1: was like famous and smart and interesting and she was
Speaker 1: a very shy person. Anyway, it just broke my heart.
Speaker 1: Rita Hayworth, I have new heart feels for you. It
Speaker 1: really really did. The last thing I want to end
Speaker 1: on because I think it's funny, and we mentioned the
Speaker 1: quickie marriage and how you didn't have to do blood
Speaker 1: tests or waiting periods, Okay, I got married long enough ago.
Speaker 1: I had to take a blood test. Yeah, no blood
Speaker 1: test for me, which is hilarious to me anyway, Like
Speaker 1: it feels so like such an arcane practice at this
Speaker 1: plight that when I tell people we had to take
Speaker 1: a blood test, they look at me with quizzical puppy face.
Speaker 1: But the funniest part was, because I got married in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, some of our listeners probably weren't even
Speaker 1: born yet. We asked the nurse who took our blood,
Speaker 1: what are you testing for? Because we we had always
Speaker 1: heard listen, don't anybody come for me. These are the
Speaker 1: things that have always were always rumored about the blood test,
Speaker 1: that it was because we live in the South, to
Speaker 1: check and make sure you were not too closely related
Speaker 1: to Okay, I always thought it was syphilis in it.
Speaker 1: It was syphilis and TB and that was it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking, like we got married, you know,
Speaker 1: after the AIDS crisis had come through, and I remember
Speaker 1: asking the nurse, like, have you guys never added additional
Speaker 1: things like wouldn't that be important information to like get
Speaker 1: in the midst of this, and like other things that
Speaker 1: you could capture and let couples know is going on,
Speaker 1: and she's like, no, it's just a really old law
Speaker 1: in the books.
Speaker 2: I don't even want to do it, but we have,
Speaker 2: And I was like, what.
Speaker 1: It? On the lighter notes of things, A thing I
Speaker 1: kept thinking about in this episode, of course, was how
Speaker 1: to pronounce the word nevadaa because that's not how I
Speaker 1: grew up saying it right. And the only reason that
Speaker 1: I say it that way is because I do not
Speaker 1: want people from Nevada to be upset with me. Something
Speaker 1: that is funny to me is that Nevada is not
Speaker 1: the only state where locals pronounce it slightly differently than
Speaker 1: a lot of other places. But I feel like Nevada
Speaker 1: is the state that has the reputation for being very
Speaker 1: focused on it.
Speaker 2: And it reminds me.
Speaker 1: A little bit of how there are several states that
Speaker 1: call themselves commonwealths oh right, but in my life experience,
Speaker 1: other people's experience might be different. In my life experience,
Speaker 1: Virginia is the state that cares if you don't call
Speaker 1: it the Commonwealth of Virginia. I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: ever bumped up against that enough to have a thought
Speaker 1: on it, but I see what you're saying, I do agree.
Speaker 1: I feel like, with no shade to people from Nevada, listen,
Speaker 1: you want what you want. But it is the one
Speaker 1: that I feel like residents are more likely to correct
Speaker 1: you on pretty vehemently. I will say to people as
Speaker 1: if someone says, like, my rules for correcting people are
Speaker 1: you only correct people to prevent embarrassment or prevent harm.
Speaker 2: That's my rule.
Speaker 1: And so if a friend of mine tells me, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go on vacation in Nevada, I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: just so you know, if you don't say it Nevada
Speaker 1: people might be upset with you. I know.
Speaker 2: This is also.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which speaking of people going on vacation to Nevada,
Speaker 1: this is preceding a trip I am making. I have
Speaker 1: never been to Las Vegas. Oh yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: how that.
Speaker 2: I said that. Surprisingly. I don't know why I said
Speaker 2: a surprise.
Speaker 1: Because it seems like a place I would go, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's drinking and carousing and giggling and all kinds of
Speaker 1: shows and wackiness like, and it's very bright and there's
Speaker 1: tons of visual stimulation.
Speaker 2: It seems like a place I would go place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never been, so I'm going I think by
Speaker 1: a four. I don't remember if it's before or after
Speaker 1: this episode will air. It's right around when this episode
Speaker 1: will air. We'll see if I love it. And then okay,
Speaker 1: remember to not say it incorrectly when I anybody asked
Speaker 1: me what state I'm in. I mean, all the talk
Speaker 1: about the divorce ranches in this episode just made me
Speaker 1: want to repeat the several days I spent last year
Speaker 1: at a health spa, at the place I have fraught
Speaker 1: feelings about, but I so loved just having all my
Speaker 1: meals included and continually having access to a swimming pool
Speaker 1: and massages. And I was just like, yeah, not the
Speaker 1: divorce part, but everything else about these ranches sounds great
Speaker 1: to me. It's not my jam. I'm like, is there
Speaker 1: a cocktail lounge in the spa? Is there a can
Speaker 1: you watch TV? Is there like a movie theater in
Speaker 1: the spa? Like I can?
Speaker 2: I can?
Speaker 1: I bring my sewing machine? Like I just I feel
Speaker 1: like just sitting and hanging out is never my thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went on a lot of walks. I love
Speaker 2: to go on walks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like going on walks, but I'm usually like,
Speaker 1: and now we go do a thing like now we
Speaker 1: go to a museum, Like it never feels like I'm
Speaker 1: doing a thing when I'm doing a walk, and so
Speaker 1: I get like I'm mentally antsy. Yea. Even though I
Speaker 1: often enjoy them and I feel relaxed after them, I
Speaker 1: think I need more stuff in my vacation. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is probably why most people are shocked when they find
Speaker 1: out I have not been a loss fac This is
Speaker 1: also why I went by myself. Patrick would not enjoy
Speaker 1: a vacation that involved taking walks and meditating and reading
Speaker 1: books by the fireplace like that's just not That would
Speaker 1: not be his jam. Me either me either. Can I
Speaker 1: listen to the book while I am also doing something kooky,
Speaker 1: throwing a clay pot, anything, Just something to keep my busy,
Speaker 1: busy hands busy. Otherwise I might do crimes. Tracy, you
Speaker 1: got to keep me busy.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: No, I envy people that can relax by relaxing, but
Speaker 1: that's not how my brain works. We talked about some
Speaker 1: etiquette manals this time.
Speaker 2: I sure did. I have a running.
Speaker 1: List of things to do episodes like installments of six
Speaker 1: Impossible episodes, and the etiquette manuals was not on there
Speaker 1: what actually, aside from just my ongoing interest in etiquette
Speaker 1: and how etiquette has evolved and what etiquette the role
Speaker 1: etiquette plays in society. Besides all of that, toward the
Speaker 1: end of February, I saw a piece at a website
Speaker 1: called public Domain Review that was about the galateo that
Speaker 1: was really interesting and kind of like prompted my brain
Speaker 1: of like, what else can we talk about with etiquette?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And that was what ultimately grew into this episode.
Speaker 2: And Man, my.
Speaker 1: Relationship with this is I would say, very complicated. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, I think society is better if we
Speaker 1: have some collective understandings of like, you know, what's rude,
Speaker 1: what's appropriate, what's inappropriate. I think this can help all
Speaker 1: of us just get along better together because we live
Speaker 1: together in the world. And it's really great if sort
Speaker 1: of everyone agrees that you should not, for example, take
Speaker 1: pictures of strangers and put them on your social media
Speaker 1: to make fun of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems like a basic one.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like it all boils down to
Speaker 1: at this point, we are less stuffy than previous generations
Speaker 1: have been.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, just be cool man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my incredibly short and non publishable etiquette book
Speaker 1: Be Kind, Be Cool, Try not.
Speaker 2: To be dust other people.
Speaker 1: At the same time, a lot of the more specific rules,
Speaker 1: like a lot of them have been used to just
Speaker 1: reinforce standards that are racist or sexist, or classist or colonialists,
Speaker 1: like a lot of stuff that has to do with
Speaker 1: things like eye contact, how to speak, how to.
Speaker 2: Interact with other people. A lot of that.
Speaker 1: There's increasing awareness that it can be really ablest, like
Speaker 1: the idea, oh yeah, that like autistic kids should be
Speaker 1: taught to make eye contact when it makes them uncomfortable
Speaker 1: or can even be like painful to try to do that,
Speaker 1: rather than like, let's change the rule to not focus on,
Speaker 1: you know, the whether someone is making eye contact with
Speaker 1: you as the arbiter of whether they are a trustworthy
Speaker 1: or not.
Speaker 2: There's all so much stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I will say this, I feel like you and I
Speaker 1: have very different takeaways on Emily posts, okay, because you
Speaker 1: found reading her very stressful. It's so yeah, and I
Speaker 1: found out the ways at opposite really because the even
Speaker 1: though yes, obviously very classiest, like her father found it
Speaker 1: a town that's still a very upscale community, like she
Speaker 1: clearly came from money and only knew that life, But
Speaker 1: the prevailing sentiment of her book to me was just
Speaker 1: make other people comfortable, and that was more important than
Speaker 1: anything else. So I kind of my read was always
Speaker 1: like that. There is an unspoken degree of in an
Speaker 1: example like you just gave Granted she would have to
Speaker 1: update some stuff to mat work, but that she would
Speaker 1: be like, well, obviously that doesn't make that person comfortable.
Speaker 1: I would never expect that, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: But I think there's an unspoken element of that to
Speaker 1: her work. Did you happen to stumble across the story?
Speaker 1: We did an episode about her husband's blackmail on Criminalia,
Speaker 1: which is why I have more Emily Post under my
Speaker 1: belt than I would have, you know, a year ago.
Speaker 1: There is a story about how she once was at
Speaker 1: a dinner eating the dessert, which was a fruit dessert,
Speaker 1: and several raspberries fell off her spoon onto the table,
Speaker 1: and how she was utterly mortified, but no one said
Speaker 1: anything or even acknowledged it, and how like that was
Speaker 1: one a moment of respect for her, like to not
Speaker 1: give grief to someone who is of, you know, such
Speaker 1: incredibly high rank and financial stature, but also like it
Speaker 1: made her it was a lesson to her about like
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to make me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, And.
Speaker 1: So for her that was a moment of like, yes,
Speaker 1: these rules are in place, but it's not like somebody
Speaker 1: goes to dessert jail if they do something wrong, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like it's fine. Yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: in her you know, all of the books that we
Speaker 1: have talked about have kind of the same core thing.
Speaker 1: That's like, try to make other people comfortable, try not
Speaker 1: to make other people uncomfortable, and don't be a jerk.
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of I can get behind all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was when I would get into this, like the
Speaker 1: specific examples that I suddenly would and I think this
Speaker 1: is probably more her writing style than the actual rules
Speaker 1: that she had in mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that, and.
Speaker 1: And I would be like, oh okay, I felt fine
Speaker 1: when it was once when you were introduced to somebody,
Speaker 1: the response is how do you do? And then when
Speaker 1: it suddenly had a lot of other examples following that
Speaker 1: of things not to say, I was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: what if I say one of these things? Like that
Speaker 1: was sort of where my mind went with it to
Speaker 1: nobody's going to make you uncomfortable. Yes, And that's the
Speaker 1: Trump rule, right, meaning that it Trump's other things don't
Speaker 1: make people uncomfortable and everybody will be fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And those books now have been updated so many times
Speaker 1: that I'm sure if I picked one up now and
Speaker 1: read it, I would have a totally different experience than
Speaker 1: reading the one that was from nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, stilted language will do that to me anyway,
Speaker 1: just reading something that's in like the vernacular or you know,
Speaker 1: typical sentence structure of I'm like, whoa, this feels very stiff,
Speaker 1: and it's really not. But that's the style of writing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also love that she was not a drinker. She
Speaker 1: never drank a single drop of alcohol in her entire life,
Speaker 1: but she always offered people cocktails.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She was like, some people want to drink, and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm big on that. Like, whatever your thing is, great,
Speaker 1: don't leave anybody out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I For some reason, starting on this, I did not
Speaker 1: realize how similar so many things in all of these
Speaker 1: books were going to be. Like, there's various details that
Speaker 1: are different. Right, The basic concept of trying to make
Speaker 1: people other people comfortable, try not to be a jerk,
Speaker 1: being kind of the through line of all of them.
Speaker 1: Something else that struck me was all of the stuff
Speaker 1: about making formal visits, which of course I knew was
Speaker 1: a thing. Yeah, I didn't quite realize that it persisted
Speaker 1: as long as it did in terms of these books
Speaker 1: that we have talked about, because like, by the time
Speaker 1: I was born, there were times that we made kind
Speaker 1: of like formal intentional visits to people which were a
Speaker 1: visit because of a thing that had happened, but like
Speaker 1: not with quite the formalized systemic focus that came across
Speaker 1: in some of these right, and so like I just
Speaker 1: didn't realize that it had quite gone on as as
Speaker 1: long as that had. The part about I think this
Speaker 1: was in Daisy Eyebright about how leaving your card with
Speaker 1: people when you're gonna go away.
Speaker 2: For a long time. That cracked me up.
Speaker 1: It cracked me up to you, and it reminded me
Speaker 1: of I have a friend that I have dinner with
Speaker 1: usually once a week on Thursdays, and we have a
Speaker 1: calendar like a meeting invite so that we you know,
Speaker 1: just remember that that's because we're busy people. And one
Speaker 1: time she had gone away for a couple or three
Speaker 1: weeks and I had gone into my phone to like
Speaker 1: just remove the meeting for the time that she was
Speaker 1: going to be gone, and I accidentally like fumbled my
Speaker 1: phone and deleted the whole thing, Like I deleted the
Speaker 1: whole recurrence.
Speaker 2: It was all gone, okay, And.
Speaker 1: So after she was back, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna set that invite back up because I accidentally
Speaker 1: deleted the whole thing. And she said, well, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 1: Way to trash our whole friendship though, and that made
Speaker 1: me laugh so hard. It was clearly a joke, obviously,
Speaker 1: it made me laugh so hard, but then it reminded
Speaker 1: me of like, uh, you know, forgetting to leave your
Speaker 1: card with somebody the way that was framed, and Daisy
Speaker 1: Ibright was like, and then your friendship is over. Well,
Speaker 1: like I feel like by her rules, nobody would ever
Speaker 1: be my friend because I'm a jerk and I don't
Speaker 1: mean to be. But like one, I also just think,
Speaker 1: like the modern era is very different, obviously, but like
Speaker 1: what it made me think about is how one, I
Speaker 1: have a close friend who we watch each other's pets
Speaker 1: when we travel, and there have definitely been times where
Speaker 1: I just assume she has psychically read my mind or
Speaker 1: looked at my personal to do list, and then like
Speaker 1: the day before we leave or somewhere, I'm like, you're
Speaker 1: available for the cats this week? Right, and she'll be
Speaker 1: like yes or no, And then there have been a
Speaker 1: couple moments where I've had to scramble and be like, okay,
Speaker 1: for Cember two, are you available? But also because I
Speaker 1: am extremely fortunate and I have friends in a lot
Speaker 1: of the places we travel, I am sometimes very bad
Speaker 1: about giving peace people everyone involved advanced warning that I'm
Speaker 1: com or forgetting to tell someone at all, and then
Speaker 1: I get home and they go, wait, you were in
Speaker 1: my city.
Speaker 2: Ye tell me.
Speaker 1: And it's not at all that I'm trying to avoid
Speaker 1: them or like, you know, I literally was just like
Speaker 1: everything was frantic right up till the moment we got
Speaker 1: on the plane, and then I don't know, my brain
Speaker 1: fell out. I didn't remember, and I feel like a jerk,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry this has happened to me too.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm also very lucky because I have a lot of
Speaker 1: friends who get that, and they'll be like, no, it's cool.
Speaker 1: I just presume like next time around, we'll do something
Speaker 1: like it's fine. I do the same thing, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but the idea of sending around a calling card to
Speaker 1: everyone to let them know when I'm traveling is like, oh,
Speaker 1: by her law, our friendship has been over multiple times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: multiple times.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that I had marked to talk about in
Speaker 1: this behind the scenes is there are some sample menus
Speaker 1: at the end of National Capital Code of Etiquette.
Speaker 2: Note.
Speaker 1: The following are appropriate menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
Speaker 1: and sufficiently elaborate for most occasions. They may be varied
Speaker 1: to suit the taste and purse of the hostess. Breakfast
Speaker 1: grapefruit cereal with cream, shirt eggs. Those are baked eggs,
Speaker 1: broiled lamb shops, hot rolls, buttered toast, French fried potatoes, coffee.
Speaker 1: The idea of French fried potatoes for breakfast. I liked
Speaker 1: that a lot. I like sometimes when you're at a
Speaker 1: hotel and the hotel breakfast includes hash browns that are
Speaker 1: really tater tots. And that's what reminded me of that. Oh,
Speaker 1: do you know what it makes me think of? What
Speaker 1: does it make you think of? The often served in California,
Speaker 1: the California breakfast burrito, which often has se yeaheah, yeah,
Speaker 1: bring it on, lunch, hotter, cold, consume and cups, salted wafers, olives,
Speaker 1: India relish, Saratoga chips, lobster ela, newburg, cold meats with potato, salad, orange, sherbet,
Speaker 1: small cakes, coffee. I had to look up what Saratoga
Speaker 1: chips were. That is a potato chip, but a black
Speaker 1: owned business still exists today. Dinner oysters served on the
Speaker 1: half shell, cream of tomato, soup, mixed pickles, salted wafers,
Speaker 1: chow chow, broiled black bass, small potatoes, roast chicken or turkey,
Speaker 1: mashed potatoes, green beans, corn fritters, tomatoes, lettuce, and asparagus.
Speaker 1: Tips served ice with mayonnaise, ice cream, layer cake, candies,
Speaker 1: raisin snuts, and coffee. I love that there is coffee
Speaker 1: at every meal. Yes please, I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: I found these menus delightful. I love reading them. I
Speaker 1: loved googling. I was like, what is sarah Tooga chips?
Speaker 1: Googling what that was? So yeah, yeah, there are of course,
Speaker 1: many many other etiquette manuals. I don't know if at
Speaker 1: some point in the future there will be another six
Speaker 1: Impossible episodes. Installments of etiquette books, but this one was
Speaker 1: a fun one to put together and interesting to see how,
Speaker 1: even though he did not actually coin the use of
Speaker 1: the word etiquette in English, how much Philip Stanhope, the
Speaker 1: fourth Earl of Chesterfield like went on to influence is
Speaker 1: the icon of it. Yeah, I think his name came up,
Speaker 1: if not in every other book that I read after
Speaker 1: that point, or almost all of them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1: Give a shout out to Ghiovanni Delakaza for making the
Speaker 1: case to like stop at the puns of the dad jokes.
Speaker 1: I intentionally put this in the episode because you and
Speaker 1: I have had some conversations about the puns and the
Speaker 1: dad jays. Here's the thing. Other people love them. You
Speaker 1: keep telling them, I just please leave me out of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I am. I have a short I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's an attention span or a short
Speaker 1: patience level of like memy jokes that get told over
Speaker 1: and over and puns like basically anything that someone is
Speaker 1: like at the end, you picture them going tadah with
Speaker 1: a jazz hand like acknowledge the cleverness, and I'm like no,
Speaker 1: And if I see a meme twice I'm done. Please don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to see it again. I sound so mean,
Speaker 1: but like, I just hate when that same iteration of
Speaker 1: a thing ripples through social media and everyone thinks they
Speaker 1: are very witty for telling the same joke that's been
Speaker 1: going around for a week, and I'm like, no, you're
Speaker 1: wasting to come up with something else witty. You're smart,
Speaker 1: So thank you jew money. I'm with you. I also thought,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously extravagant is not vulgar in my opinion,
Speaker 1: It's kind and it's a way to show somebody that
Speaker 1: they took extraordinary care of you and you appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I just feel that's important. Yeah, I believe in tipping
Speaker 1: as well as you possibly can, because yes, everyone knows
Speaker 1: the system is a mess and servers don't get paid right,
Speaker 1: and that is messed up, but it is the system
Speaker 1: we live in. As I think about reservoir dogs when
Speaker 1: mister Pink is like, you put it to a vote,
Speaker 1: and I'll vote for it. But what I won't do
Speaker 1: is playball. I will play ball.
Speaker 2: I want.
Speaker 1: I want to take care of those people all the time,
Speaker 1: because they take care of me and my ballooney and
Speaker 1: my leg. Please make me an absent drink as the coda, though,
Speaker 1: I had a sense memory that made me giggle while
Speaker 1: we were recording where we were talking about don't keep
Speaker 1: saying the person's name over and over in the Post thing,
Speaker 1: and I had this instant flash to a very old
Speaker 1: episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show when Tyra Banks was
Speaker 1: on it and she was talking about how she has
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble dating, and it kind of echoed
Speaker 1: this to me because she was saying, like, you realize
Speaker 1: halfway into the date that, Like, I'm probably misquoting all
Speaker 1: of this, this is a memory from like twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago, how she would always realize halfway into the
Speaker 1: date that they were dating her, not because they thought
Speaker 1: she was interesting or smart or witty, but because of
Speaker 1: who she was and how she knew was that they
Speaker 1: would always call her Tyra Banks. Like they would be like,
Speaker 1: what do you want for dessert? Tyra Banks, and she'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, my goodness, I mean, yes, that's my name,
Speaker 1: but I And it just gave me such a flashback
Speaker 1: to when Emily Post is saying don't say the don't
Speaker 1: take a name over and over, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, because it will make them feel potentially used,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting yeah, an interesting take. Make everyone comfortable.
Speaker 1: That's all you gotta do. Yep, that's my feeling. Try
Speaker 1: not to be a jerk, Try not to bother other people. Definitely,
Speaker 1: stop taking pictures of strangers and them on the internet
Speaker 1: to make fun of them.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: I have not seen a viral picture of a stranger
Speaker 1: on the internet lately, But every time I do, it
Speaker 1: bothers me so much. And oh yeah, because it's horrible
Speaker 1: privacy and it's mean. Yeah, yeah, there's no reason.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 1: I'm a firm believer that stuff comes back to bite you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it always does, whether something happens with that picture and
Speaker 1: a person is like, hey, by the way, that's my
Speaker 1: you know, beloved family member, et cetera, And now you
Speaker 1: are an a greade, a jerk and everybody knows it
Speaker 1: or it I mean, that energy will bite you on
Speaker 1: the button. Someday you're somebody's picture of like, look at
Speaker 1: this ding dong who doesn't know how to act right? Right?
Speaker 2: Don't do it just to everybody, be nice? Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Don't call out when people drop their berries. It's fine. No,
Speaker 1: are you haunted by the ghosts of your social mistakes. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes I am, and so that is why we will
Speaker 1: end behind the scenes a happy Friday. I hope if
Speaker 1: you are working with folks, if you are working with
Speaker 1: the public out in society this weekend, I hope everyone
Speaker 1: has some good manners in talking to you, and I
Speaker 1: hope everyone has good manners with everyone. Really, you know,
Speaker 1: as much as you're able, try not to be intentionally
Speaker 1: cruel or mean or rude to anyone. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with a Saturday Classic tomorrow, something brand new on Monday.
Speaker 1: And now I will go try to recover from the
Speaker 1: ghosts of my past missteps. Stuff you missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.