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