Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday, everybody. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry and I'm pracybe Wilson Tracy. One of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about this week was Wilfred Voyage. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have an especial love of his story that is
Speaker 1: unrelated to anything about his story except for the fact
Speaker 1: that he was an antiquarian book dealer, which is that
Speaker 1: for a long time, more than a decade, I worked
Speaker 1: in a university library and I had originally been hired
Speaker 1: there to repair the book collection that was like circulating,
Speaker 1: which I did a little too quickly, and then my
Speaker 1: boss was like, I can fire you, or I can
Speaker 1: teach you how to catalog and I was like, cataloging
Speaker 1: sounds great. Um, So then I became a cataloging assistant,
Speaker 1: and then our acquisitions she was called the acquisitions librarian. Um.
Speaker 1: Did not have a library degree. So that's a little
Speaker 1: weird thing, right, Not everyone who works in a library
Speaker 1: as a librarian. But sometimes if you work in a
Speaker 1: library and people keep calling you a librarian, you get
Speaker 1: tired of making the distinction. So we have all accepted
Speaker 1: right where people would be like, here's Holley, She's a library.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not. I'm not a librarian. Um. But
Speaker 1: I took over the acquisition's role as well as doing
Speaker 1: cataloging assist at the time, and I did that for
Speaker 1: uh eight years, I think. But I one of my
Speaker 1: very favorite things was when our antiquarian booksellers would come
Speaker 1: and visit us, and we would take them to lunch
Speaker 1: or sit and chat, and they would talk about all
Speaker 1: these beautiful volumes they had found, and so like, those
Speaker 1: were some of my favorite people that I ever worked with.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I would end up calling similar people that
Speaker 1: we did not ever meet in person overseas, like with
Speaker 1: the you know, university credit card, trying to make a
Speaker 1: deal for something for the collection because like many universities,
Speaker 1: like you have different and focuses of what you're acquiring.
Speaker 1: Some of it is obviously like you want to make
Speaker 1: sure that the school's curriculum is supported and that you
Speaker 1: have those materials coming in. You also want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you have enough sort of um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: entertainment isn't the right word, but like you know, popular
Speaker 1: literature and fiction and stuff coming in that the community
Speaker 1: also has, Like that aspect of just the library as
Speaker 1: an entertainment source, and then most university libraries, at least
Speaker 1: at this time, I don't know how things have changed
Speaker 1: in the intervening years, would also have like their special collections,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, I would sometimes be on the
Speaker 1: phone with some of these people and so being like, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm in Georgia and there's a book in your catalog.
Speaker 1: We would like it. Um, here's a lot of money,
Speaker 1: which is very cool and fun and kind of thrilling,
Speaker 1: and so studying Voinage and his work in this space
Speaker 1: just like it took me back to all of that
Speaker 1: so quickly because it was honestly something I've really enjoyed. UM.
Speaker 1: And I definitely dealt with book dealers that had a
Speaker 1: very similar description to him of just being very winsome
Speaker 1: and like able to chat at length, very cultured, completely
Speaker 1: at home talking to just about anybody. And that was
Speaker 1: part of what made them good at their jobs, was
Speaker 1: that they could talk about things like inc nebula with
Speaker 1: people that didn't really understand what they were but knew
Speaker 1: that they probably should be like looking at those as
Speaker 1: part of collection development. UM. So it was a really wonderful,
Speaker 1: selfish trip down memory lane for me, and some were godards.
Speaker 1: That's so good. Um. Yeah, I had not realized his
Speaker 1: involvement in the revolutionary efforts in Russian occupied Poland. I
Speaker 1: had definitely not known that his father in law was
Speaker 1: the father of Boolean mathematics. So those were some fun
Speaker 1: little little things. And I really did get quite a
Speaker 1: kick out of reading the the his file. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: government investigation file, which you can literally find online. It's
Speaker 1: pretty simple to to find it all. It's some of
Speaker 1: the scans are like old school photostats, so they're a
Speaker 1: little fuzzy. Even though they've been scanned at a really
Speaker 1: high resolution, it's still just like degraded um ink over time.
Speaker 1: But it's really really fun to read in some cases
Speaker 1: this sort of exasperated tone of various people in the
Speaker 1: military and in as we said, the precursor to the
Speaker 1: FBI being like, no, we really have questioned this guy
Speaker 1: a lot. He's fine, you you don't need to be worried. Wait,
Speaker 1: he asked to travel back to England. Is this suspicious?
Speaker 1: It's really not suspicious. He's going to buy some books.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of the Cohen's Hell pro episodes. We
Speaker 1: did and how the opposite was happening, where the investigations
Speaker 1: were just continuing on forever even though there was no
Speaker 1: evidence of a person, like a particular person being a threat.
Speaker 1: Not quite how it went with Yeah, I mean, there
Speaker 1: were definitely people who had that thing of like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, this still seems suspicious, and we'll be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. He really he is legitimately an antiquarian
Speaker 1: book dealer. We checked him out. I love that. I
Speaker 1: love the whole Like the cipher is not has no
Speaker 1: military abuse. You gotta let this one go. Um. And
Speaker 1: there are cases, there are instances in several pieces of
Speaker 1: correspondence where the person writing the report is like I
Speaker 1: consider this case closed, but then somebody else kicks it
Speaker 1: up again later and they're like, what did I say?
Speaker 1: Look at that document? It's pretty fun anyway. That is
Speaker 1: Wilford Voyage, who I think he gets a little bit
Speaker 1: lost as a figure in relation to the Voytage manuscript.
Speaker 1: It's all about the book, but people don't realize he
Speaker 1: was just a dude who wanted it to ciphered as
Speaker 1: much as anybody, and also to sell it for a
Speaker 1: lot of money. I'm gonna be honest, it had been
Speaker 1: so long since we recorded the episode on the Voyage Manuscript,
Speaker 1: but I think I think there was the Voyage Manuscript episode.
Speaker 1: We did an actual update episode, where like we replayed
Speaker 1: the old episode with new information attached to it, and
Speaker 1: then it's also come up in Unearthed. I feel like
Speaker 1: many times, and I had forgotten that it was named
Speaker 1: after a book that like, I noow all that not
Speaker 1: in my head anymore. Yeah, and if he had had
Speaker 1: his brothers, it would have been the Bacon Manuscript. But um,
Speaker 1: there's a refresher in case anybody forgot. It was eventually
Speaker 1: carbon dated and the paper the vellum is from I
Speaker 1: think the fourteen hundreds, so it is too late to
Speaker 1: have been made by Bacon, even though that was where
Speaker 1: Voynage put it on the timeline, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: who created it remains a question? No, There there have
Speaker 1: been times over the years where people have been like,
Speaker 1: did Wilford Voyage make this thing up? No, the the
Speaker 1: scientific evidence doesn't doesn't hold up on that one either.
Speaker 1: Will we ever solve it? Probably not. I keep meaning
Speaker 1: to make a fabric print out of images from it,
Speaker 1: but I haven't gotten around to it yet, so maybe
Speaker 1: over the holiday break, that's what I'll work on. So
Speaker 1: this week, our last new episode of the year was
Speaker 1: on scurvy. Scurvy. Yeah, I know, it's so uh it's
Speaker 1: not at all unprecedented for like a serious thing to
Speaker 1: become something that's thought of as more like a joke.
Speaker 1: But this is an example of that in terms of
Speaker 1: pirate jokes especially. Yeah, it would be fascinating to track
Speaker 1: when it started to be funny. Yeah, and I'm putting
Speaker 1: funny in air quotes, but when people used it as
Speaker 1: a joke, Yeah, I don't. I still don't really know
Speaker 1: why my brain kept being like scurvy at leasta don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about scurvy. Should I be taking a
Speaker 1: multi vitamin? I did order some multi vitamins while I
Speaker 1: was working on this. Then you get into discussions of
Speaker 1: bioavailability and which multi vitamin is the best one. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it was less specifically because of the scurvy episode and
Speaker 1: more because I was like, you know, I really already
Speaker 1: know our food is doing okay at our house still,
Speaker 1: but like I'm really not going outside and the sun
Speaker 1: helps your body make vitamin D and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, that might actually be a thing that I
Speaker 1: should be supplementing at this moment. Also, the seasons tends
Speaker 1: to affect me, and I tend to do better when
Speaker 1: I have a little more vitamin D in the winter.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, it was a whole saga that I
Speaker 1: had sharing scurvy research. I think about the vitamin D
Speaker 1: thing because when I am not an outside kid, um,
Speaker 1: I mean I have done things outside. You know. I
Speaker 1: did a lot of running for a long time, so
Speaker 1: I was always outside for that. Most of the time.
Speaker 1: I'd prefer outdoor running to running on a treadmill. Um.
Speaker 1: But normally, if just left to my own devices, I
Speaker 1: have to remind myself, hey, you haven't even opened the
Speaker 1: door for six days. Like I and my last physical
Speaker 1: my blood work did come back a little low and
Speaker 1: vitamin D, which is well before the pandemic. But I
Speaker 1: need the reminder to like just go stand in the
Speaker 1: driveway for a little art, go take a drive with
Speaker 1: the moon roof open on the car, like whatever. Just yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm bad about it. Yeah, I Um. There was one time.
Speaker 1: It's been a couple of years ago. At this point,
Speaker 1: I had gone to a conference and I was staying
Speaker 1: at a hotel that was adjoining the conference, and so
Speaker 1: for a period of I think three days, I did
Speaker 1: not leave the conference or the hotel in any fashion.
Speaker 1: And on day three I was like, I feel bad.
Speaker 1: Why do I feel very bad? And I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe I should go into the out of doors. Well,
Speaker 1: that also gets into like the whole thing of like
Speaker 1: building air circulation and like conferences where the same people
Speaker 1: are kind of shuffling from one thing to another, that
Speaker 1: even without out of doors as has its own problem. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: since this is our last episode of last behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of h early Happy New Year into everybody. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess this is actually, now that I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the actual calendar, the scurvy episode is coming out? Is
Speaker 1: this one coming out on New Year's Day? Is New
Speaker 1: Year's Day of Friday? You can tell how this pandemic
Speaker 1: situation has just worn down my brain parts because yes,
Speaker 1: Happy Friday, It's New Year's Day. I love New Year's Day.
Speaker 1: As I've talked about before. Yeah, I'm a big believer.
Speaker 1: I like resolutions. I do them at this point kind
Speaker 1: of quarterly. But I just I like that sense of
Speaker 1: like renewal of Okay, we're gonna we're gonna start over,
Speaker 1: and I can't control what happens necessarily regarding pandemic and
Speaker 1: when I can go outside, but I can control how
Speaker 1: I react to it and what I do with my
Speaker 1: indoored time, of which there is a great deal so
Speaker 1: much yet. UM, I do want to note, since we're
Speaker 1: all here, UM, I think folks have come to be
Speaker 1: prepared for an Unearthed episode to come out the first
Speaker 1: couple of episodes of the new year. The Unearthed episodes
Speaker 1: are coming, but there's gonna be a couple of other
Speaker 1: episodes first, because you and I are going to take
Speaker 1: some very much needed time off. I think that's obvious
Speaker 1: by the tone of this episode and behind the scenes, UM,
Speaker 1: and I because of the way that scheduling worked out,
Speaker 1: I did not want to lose essentially the entirety of
Speaker 1: December of Unearthed stuff. So we're gonna be working on
Speaker 1: that first thing in the new year. Yeah. So hopefully
Speaker 1: this finds you well and safe, and may we all
Speaker 1: have a brighter than Yeah. We hope that you are
Speaker 1: headed into a fun weekend if you follow a normal
Speaker 1: work week. If you don't, we still hope the next
Speaker 1: couple of days treat you well and that you are
Speaker 1: being safe and that this strength time we're living in
Speaker 1: is one that is not too arduous for you to
Speaker 1: get through. You can always write to us at History
Speaker 1: podcast at i heeart radio dot com. We hope to
Speaker 1: hear from you and we will see you next week.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
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