Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, the production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Okay, Holly,
Speaker 1: you and I are not too far apart in age. No,
Speaker 1: we both went to public school. Do you remember how
Speaker 1: your public school science textbooks talked about plate tectonics? Not really,
Speaker 1: because my high school biology teacher had a husband who
Speaker 1: was a geologist, and he came in and gave our lecture.
Speaker 1: So I had no idea what was in the book
Speaker 1: because he was like, we're not looking at that. Like,
Speaker 1: he was a very cool, fun guy. He had like
Speaker 1: a bumper sticker on his car that said Reunite Gundwana
Speaker 1: Land Like, okay, he was super fun, And so we
Speaker 1: got what was for the mid to late nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: pretty up to the minute information on plate tectonics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I had like the mid mid eighties to early nineties, uh,
Speaker 1: public school education, and by that point plate tectonics pretty
Speaker 1: well accepted in the scientific community, for sure. But I
Speaker 1: definitely remember having textbooks that had the diagrams of where
Speaker 1: the land bridges supposedly had been, and that Also it
Speaker 1: was like almost to teach the controversy kind of approach
Speaker 1: to like plate tectonics, even though by that point it
Speaker 1: was pretty much a scientific accepted like an accepted scientific idea, um,
Speaker 1: it was presented to us in more of a what
Speaker 1: do you think kind of way, not in a not
Speaker 1: in a like sometimes signos. Sometimes educators will will use
Speaker 1: that kind of framing to get people to try to
Speaker 1: think about things in a in a more involved way.
Speaker 1: But like this, more felt like that there might still
Speaker 1: be some questions. I like that they were passing the
Speaker 1: buck to children to decide. I remember that happened. This
Speaker 1: was not about plate tectonics or anything like that. But
Speaker 1: I remember specifically having a teacher who every week we
Speaker 1: had our spelling slash of vocabulary words. I guess it
Speaker 1: was really we called a vocabulary more by this point.
Speaker 1: But each of us was assigned a word that we
Speaker 1: had to look up the definition of and then present
Speaker 1: the definition to class. And there was one class where
Speaker 1: my classmate did not do this assignment, and the word
Speaker 1: he had been assigned was fascist, and so the teacher
Speaker 1: then just refused to explain what fascism was. And it
Speaker 1: was like but this is school. We're supposed to be
Speaker 1: learning things here anyway. That is something of a digression.
Speaker 1: I really like how differently the episode turned out from
Speaker 1: how I thought it was going to go when I
Speaker 1: started researching it. Yeah, and it's one UM, I didn't
Speaker 1: know a whole lot about Vigner, And it was kind
Speaker 1: of funny we talked about it before that it was
Speaker 1: pure coincidence that he got like a um a drive
Speaker 1: by mentioned in our nineteen San Francisco earthquake episode. So I, uh,
Speaker 1: we accidentally had a tea up on that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we also So it's not it's not very often when
Speaker 1: we say what the topic is of an upcoming episode
Speaker 1: on the show. Just a lot of it is just
Speaker 1: because of how our production schedule works. A lot of
Speaker 1: times when we're in the studio, we don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: what it's coming soon after after we get out of
Speaker 1: the studio. Um. But this was a case where uh
Speaker 1: that had come up in that the San Francisco earthquake
Speaker 1: and fire episode. That episode came out um either just
Speaker 1: before or right at the start of our tour through
Speaker 1: three cities in Texas that we just took. We had
Speaker 1: multiple people come up to us after those shows when
Speaker 1: we do kind of a meet and greet thing to
Speaker 1: tell us how excited that they were that this Alfred
Speaker 1: Wegner's story was going to be coming out soon, And
Speaker 1: then we've also gotten email about it. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where im like, is it are our
Speaker 1: people this excited about Alfred Beganer or is it just
Speaker 1: that we so rarely have a glimpse of what's coming
Speaker 1: up on the show soon? Why not? At least one
Speaker 1: of those people that mentioned it was a geologist, so
Speaker 1: they're legit into Vegan. Yeah, I hope they don't have
Speaker 1: four million things they wish I had said that. I
Speaker 1: did not say, hopefully not. Yeah, it's time for a
Speaker 1: little behind the scenes on the Italian Hall disaster. Tracy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why do you always pick sad things at Christmas? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't mean to um. I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize that the sad things at Christmas connection until the
Speaker 1: year that we did the Christmas tree Ship, because that
Speaker 1: was an episode that a lot of people had asked
Speaker 1: us to talk about and they had specifically said, maybe
Speaker 1: you could do it at Christmas time, And the fact
Speaker 1: that we've gotten that query phrased that way so many
Speaker 1: times made me think that this incident that I did
Speaker 1: not know anything about involved a heroic rescue of everyone
Speaker 1: aboard the Christmas tree Ship. If you haven't heard, that
Speaker 1: episode does not include an heroic rescue. It is misery
Speaker 1: from beginning to end. And I was like, why why
Speaker 1: are there so many, so many horrific things happening at
Speaker 1: Christmas time. I wasn't even necessarily looking specifically for a
Speaker 1: holiday time episode this time around. I was just scrolling
Speaker 1: through our list of of listeners suggestions, which at this
Speaker 1: point is is close to a thousand suggestions long. That's
Speaker 1: not an exaggeration, it's that there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: on there. UM, and I kind of went the Italian
Speaker 1: Hall disaster. I wonder what I don't really know about that,
Speaker 1: and the fact that someone had falsely shouted fire when
Speaker 1: there was no fire. I just kept thinking about as
Speaker 1: I was poking through all of these other things, like
Speaker 1: what is what? What is it? I was like, I
Speaker 1: gotta know more about this. There is some discussion about
Speaker 1: whether that particular disaster influenced in any way. UM. The
Speaker 1: Supreme Court case Schneck versus United States, which was about
Speaker 1: free speech, and part of all Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior's
Speaker 1: opinion on that was about how shouting fire in a
Speaker 1: in a crowded theater would not be a protected form
Speaker 1: of speech. Um. That, of course is a little unclear.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know what somebody's motivations were for any
Speaker 1: particular thing unless they wrote them down somewhere. Um. But
Speaker 1: there were other instances of that happening as well. So
Speaker 1: not a happy story at all. Oh, now that I
Speaker 1: have I have thrown you under the bus for picking
Speaker 1: sad things. I will point out that the thing is
Speaker 1: when there's just a lighthearted, easy next day, people don't
Speaker 1: report it as news, so it doesn't get written up
Speaker 1: as a historical event so much. When it's like the
Speaker 1: day was lovely, a little cold, but everyone got up
Speaker 1: and had pancakes and then head a delightful Christmas morning
Speaker 1: Like that stuff does because I get written up, which
Speaker 1: is why most of the historical events time to holidays
Speaker 1: seem like they are tragedies. Yeah, and we also uh
Speaker 1: to be fair our our listeners suggestion list in terms
Speaker 1: of actual events that um that have happened are heavily
Speaker 1: weighted towards tragedies, Like, we get a lot of emails
Speaker 1: that say something like, I would really love to hear
Speaker 1: more about the and it is the blah blah blah
Speaker 1: massacre or the blah blah blah fire or the blah
Speaker 1: blah blah cyclone. Like, there's just a lot of of
Speaker 1: tragedy in the list of things that people have specifically
Speaker 1: asked us to talk about, which, um, I think also
Speaker 1: influences what we end up talking about to a degree.
Speaker 1: I mean, the listener suggestion list isn't the only UM
Speaker 1: area where we get ideas from, but when we get
Speaker 1: a lot of requests for a topic, it definitely moves
Speaker 1: higher up onto mine to dows for sure. Yes, so
Speaker 1: listeners love tragedy as well. The takeaway well, and we
Speaker 1: know there are a whole other podcasts that are focused
Speaker 1: exclusively on tragedies. UM So that's a thing that people
Speaker 1: in general have a fascination with. I think, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: So anyway, one of the things that I was glad
Speaker 1: to talk about this one about is that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the tragic part um. It also had the whole
Speaker 1: context of labor rights and the strike that was going on,
Speaker 1: which was also important history to talk about. Two. We've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about labor um this year because the
Speaker 1: nineteen teens that was a lot there was a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff going on related to labor rights and labor
Speaker 1: organizations and worker protections, and we did several episodes that
Speaker 1: were related to things that happened specifically in nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: and and so it's been a theme that has come up,
Speaker 1: maybe more this year than previous years, but it's something
Speaker 1: that we talked about a lot in general. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's um. It's also interesting and you mentioned it in
Speaker 1: the episode that this is a case where the National
Speaker 1: Guard was called and it didn't immediately escalate the situation
Speaker 1: into a horrific series of violent events, which is incredibly unique. Normally,
Speaker 1: once we read in in one of our outlines when
Speaker 1: we're doing a show and then the National Guard was called,
Speaker 1: like you know, a lot of bad melee, probably death,
Speaker 1: people being treated really poorly is about to come up.
Speaker 1: And this seemed like they kind of came and were like,
Speaker 1: this seems fine. Everybody's I don't want to at all
Speaker 1: disparaged people who are serving in the National Guard now
Speaker 1: like not not at all, but like historically there have
Speaker 1: been so many accounts where and that the the National
Speaker 1: Guard was deployed ostensibly who protect someone or protect a
Speaker 1: group of people, and instead became part of a massacre
Speaker 1: or became part of the harassment that they were being
Speaker 1: sent in to protect like that. That has been so
Speaker 1: many times on the show that this one was striking
Speaker 1: in the fact that it didn't go that way this time.
Speaker 1: It's it's not a super fun topic, but it's still
Speaker 1: important and hopefully, uh, you know, none of us experienced
Speaker 1: a similar about this holiday, I hope not. Stuff you
Speaker 1: missed The District Class is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts For my Heart Radio,
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