Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. As folks know if they've
Speaker 1: been listening for a while on Friday, as we take
Speaker 1: a little time to talk about the week's episodes and
Speaker 1: sometimes what the research process was like, sometimes what we
Speaker 1: personally connected with while working on it. Unearthed has become well,
Speaker 1: it's been a favorite thing to work on for a
Speaker 1: long time, but lately it's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: it's a favorite thing is that I know when it's
Speaker 1: time to do it, and that is a week where
Speaker 1: I don't have to figure out what the topic is. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of relief in that
Speaker 1: moment of not yeah, what's next? Yeah, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot that goes into my thought process of
Speaker 1: what I'm going to talk about on the show next,
Speaker 1: and a bazilion factors that get weight into it, like
Speaker 1: whether I'm going to be able to find the material
Speaker 1: for it in time and all this other stuff. And
Speaker 1: so when it's Unearthed time and I have already spent
Speaker 1: the entire last three months bookmarking things to go through.
Speaker 1: It's like a whole giant don't even have to think
Speaker 1: about that. It is already settled and done. It's right there. Smart. Smart.
Speaker 1: I have a personal and ridiculous point of pride in this,
Speaker 1: which is that when we got talking about the possible
Speaker 1: Praetorian guard in the Plenty soldier story, I did not
Speaker 1: take a Star Wars related side street. So I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna curtsey to myself here in the shoe closet where
Speaker 1: I record, well, do you want to take it now? Sure? So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not that thrilling, and it involves a
Speaker 1: thing that tends to get some people very I rate. So, um,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't need to hear. If you hate
Speaker 1: the thing I love, that's fine. But in the last Jedi,
Speaker 1: those red guards with the the sort of tear almost
Speaker 1: armadillo esque armor or Coulpritorian guards named after the actual
Speaker 1: historical ones. But um, that's what I think of when
Speaker 1: I read it. So in my head, plenty haad Pal's
Speaker 1: dressed in all red teared really cool armor. Not really sure,
Speaker 1: not really. I did want to ask you because I
Speaker 1: know I have strong feelings having worked in a library
Speaker 1: for many years. And your beloved also a library person.
Speaker 1: This whole library fine sensationalism business, yeah, red rage. He
Speaker 1: does not like it either, and was was very happy
Speaker 1: to learn that the Summerville Library, which I used to
Speaker 1: frequent all the time when we lived in Summerville, was
Speaker 1: very happy that they've gone fine free. Uh. My funny
Speaker 1: story about that is, at some point something happened during
Speaker 1: my my borrowing history from that library. I don't remember
Speaker 1: exactly what it was, but I turned in something late
Speaker 1: and I incur a I think it was a ten
Speaker 1: cent fine. I had ten cents of fine or five
Speaker 1: cents of fine. It was a less than a quarter
Speaker 1: fine um, which I paid by handing the person at
Speaker 1: the circulation desk a coin, and they sort of looked
Speaker 1: at me with an expression of like, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what you want me to do with this, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't it's it's the fine that I'm paying.
Speaker 1: I don't know what else to say about it, uh,
Speaker 1: and whatever. It never it never came off of my account.
Speaker 1: And so when learning this whole thing about the library
Speaker 1: books that had been found in return and learning that
Speaker 1: the Summerville Library has gone fine free, I went and
Speaker 1: looked at my account, which still exists, because like that
Speaker 1: library cards has I think like a year before it expires,
Speaker 1: and my fine is no longer there, no longer the
Speaker 1: Summerville Public Library five or ten cents. Uh. Yeah. Patrick
Speaker 1: was very happy to hear that they have gone fine free.
Speaker 1: He does not He does not like the twenty seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollar fine stories, and he doesn't really like the
Speaker 1: financially punitive measures for being late with library books. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean here I have feelings, and probably Patrick has
Speaker 1: has similar ones. I know, like for me, when I
Speaker 1: was a college student, I had several books out that
Speaker 1: were overdue, and then I was so broke that I
Speaker 1: knew if I returned them I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: pay the fine, and I was like scared of getting
Speaker 1: I don't know, yelled at indentured by the library people.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I was afraid of, but so
Speaker 1: I did a very nefarious thing which I don't recommend.
Speaker 1: But I went and reshelved them myself and then said
Speaker 1: I turned those books in months ago. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but understand the dirt poorness that I was dealing with.
Speaker 1: There was no way and it wasn't even that much,
Speaker 1: it was like twenty bucks. But in the late eighties
Speaker 1: and early nineties, when you are nineteen and twenty, twenty
Speaker 1: dollars felt like an awful lot of money that I
Speaker 1: was never going to come up with um, and so
Speaker 1: don't don't do that, don't be like me. But then
Speaker 1: when in later years I worked at a university library,
Speaker 1: I mean I saw students with that same fear on
Speaker 1: their face. And I didn't work circulation, but thankfully, like
Speaker 1: we had a lot of people in our library that
Speaker 1: we're very understanding of that and not you know, hardcore
Speaker 1: by the book, and they would be like, that's fine,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna wave it. Please don't stress over this.
Speaker 1: You have like exams this week or whatever. Like it
Speaker 1: just it's one of those things that gets so watted
Speaker 1: up in like classism, because people don't always have the
Speaker 1: availability to pay a fine, and like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that is so potentially painful
Speaker 1: because some libraries used to I don't know if they
Speaker 1: still do have those whole things of like, well, if
Speaker 1: you have an unpaid fine, you don't get borrowing privileges,
Speaker 1: and like for a student, I mean, that's debilitating for
Speaker 1: their work. Um and for a research which you're even
Speaker 1: like most people that are at universities doing research are
Speaker 1: also not particularly wealthy usually. Um, that's part of what
Speaker 1: a library is for because you can't reford to purchase
Speaker 1: those materials. So I yeah, I'm with Patrick, I feel
Speaker 1: higher over library fine issues. I would say that here
Speaker 1: in the US, libraries have not always lived up to
Speaker 1: their ideals of being a free resource for everybody. Like
Speaker 1: we've talked about times when uh, libraries were segregated or
Speaker 1: when you know, a city didn't have a library that
Speaker 1: would allow black patrons at all, Like that kind of
Speaker 1: thing has been ongoing. Then there's like a whole history
Speaker 1: of that. Um. But like sort of the ideal of
Speaker 1: a library is for it to be a free resource
Speaker 1: that is accessible to everyone. Uh. And if you're going
Speaker 1: to ban people from the library because they re late
Speaker 1: with something and they can't afford to pay the fee,
Speaker 1: like that's that runs counter to that ideal. You're locking
Speaker 1: out exactly the people who need the resources most. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so yes, it was also, Um, I kind of
Speaker 1: want to just make a little field trip over to
Speaker 1: Somerville or I don't live anymore. To see like the
Speaker 1: newly the newly restored West Branch Library that was part
Speaker 1: of that, because it, you know, it had a beautiful facade.
Speaker 1: When I was going to that library, like you said
Speaker 1: it was, it's a Carnegie Library. It was built more
Speaker 1: than a hundred years ago, but the interior of it
Speaker 1: especially was like getting really shabby, and so it was
Speaker 1: a very very badly needed restoration project to go on.
Speaker 1: I'm very curious what it looks like now now that
Speaker 1: it's not a library anywhere close to me. Um, I
Speaker 1: also have a confession of strange and to me areas
Speaker 1: place my brain went when you sent over your outline
Speaker 1: and I was reading it, huh. When we got to
Speaker 1: the Greek curse jar, for a fleeting second, my brain
Speaker 1: was like, were they really charging for swear words? And
Speaker 1: then I just had like the cartoon that automatically runs
Speaker 1: in my head that my brain builds without my permission
Speaker 1: of like people in ancient times and they're weird curse
Speaker 1: jar where they had to somehow turn in chicken bones.
Speaker 1: But that's so funny. I had not even thought of
Speaker 1: that reading of the word curse jar. Yes, uh, if
Speaker 1: you are a potty mouth like me, that's a phrase
Speaker 1: that carries a lot of weight and fear. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about maybe the potty mouse whose name was right, those
Speaker 1: are the people who said all the bad words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you watch the Mummy parade that we talked about.
Speaker 1: I thought parts of it and I saw a lot
Speaker 1: of photos from it, but I didn't see the whole parade.
Speaker 1: It was very, very beautiful. I mean, I'm glad we
Speaker 1: talked about how like, yes, it's very carefully framed not
Speaker 1: to show anything in savory, but it was kind of
Speaker 1: mind blowing in terms of just if you're into theatricality
Speaker 1: and spectacle along with your history, it had it in spades.
Speaker 1: It was so beautiful. Um, My very best friend, who
Speaker 1: is big into Egyptology, was like texting me the whole
Speaker 1: time as she watched it. Um, And you know, was
Speaker 1: was very moved by the whole thing that also happened.
Speaker 1: It seems like the day I finished writing the previous
Speaker 1: Unearthed script for the previous installment of the Unearthed, that
Speaker 1: parade happened, and I was like, we're just going to
Speaker 1: have to do that next time. I settled or have
Speaker 1: I simple We have a thing that somebody sent as
Speaker 1: an email or a message of some sort. This morning,
Speaker 1: a link to something that I started looking at. I
Speaker 1: was like, do I need to stop what I'm doing
Speaker 1: and get this into the thing that we're recording it
Speaker 1: to on o'clock And then I was like, we're just
Speaker 1: I'm talking about that next time. Yeah, uh yeah. My
Speaker 1: other note that I made while we were doing this
Speaker 1: was the idea when we were talking about the h
Speaker 1: M s Urge M and the other one that was
Speaker 1: found off the coast of Libya that people had thought
Speaker 1: was the Urge, And I was like, how many conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists are going to run with this and say there
Speaker 1: were two urges because they really want that one off
Speaker 1: the coast of Libya to have been involved in some
Speaker 1: secret completely like undocumented. I also like how sometimes it
Speaker 1: can be really hard to like conclusively I D a shipwreck,
Speaker 1: especially if it's something that has has not held up
Speaker 1: well in all of its years on the ocean floor,
Speaker 1: or you know, it was no longer on ocean floor,
Speaker 1: gets buried in sand or something like that. Uh, it
Speaker 1: can take a whole lot of work to figure out
Speaker 1: what exactly ship we're talking about. So I I really
Speaker 1: love it when it's like it's written on the Conning
Speaker 1: Tower right there. It's just right there. So yeah, there
Speaker 1: it is. Yep yep. So I hope people enjoyed our
Speaker 1: unearthed uh have another another round of it in about
Speaker 1: three months, with or without historical curse charts. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: see see uh so again. Happy Friday. I hope everything
Speaker 1: goes well over your weekend and we'll be back tomorrow
Speaker 1: with a classic and Monday with a brand new episode.
Speaker 1: And have a great weekend. Stuff you missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
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