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 B.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This week we talked about
Speaker 1: the platypus because when I was at my mom and
Speaker 1: dad's house but Thanksgiving, there was this Jeopardy rerun on.
Speaker 1: There was the final Jeopardy question that was about the platypus,
Speaker 1: and I emailed myself an email message from my parents
Speaker 1: couch that just said platypus in the subject line, so
Speaker 1: I would remember when I got back to work that
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a podcast about that. And then
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: gonna be enough for a whole episode by itself, and
Speaker 1: I set myself a second email that just said also
Speaker 1: Cela canth in the subject line. Um. But it did
Speaker 1: turn out to be enough for a whole episode by itself.
Speaker 1: So we did not talk about Cela camp No, but
Speaker 1: maybe later, maybe share. At some point there will probably
Speaker 1: be some Celia discussion. One never knows. Um. I had
Speaker 1: promised to mention my first exposure to a platypus, which
Speaker 1: evidence is the tiny skeptic. I was even at the
Speaker 1: age of six, which is that it came up for
Speaker 1: the first time in first grade. And I said to
Speaker 1: my first grade teacher, Mrs Hill, you are trying to
Speaker 1: trick us, Like I thought this was one of those
Speaker 1: like gotcha moments of education where they were like, sure,
Speaker 1: going to send us down a path and go ha ha.
Speaker 1: None of you thought to ask is this real? Because
Speaker 1: sometimes stuff like that. It's like when they give you
Speaker 1: the worksheet that the last thing at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the worksheet says, turn this paper over and write your
Speaker 1: name on the back. The instruction was to read the
Speaker 1: whole thing first, right. I thought it was a big
Speaker 1: fat trick and I was, yeah, um do in the
Speaker 1: squinty eyes of suspe mission. And when I went home
Speaker 1: that night, I looked it up in the encyclopedia and
Speaker 1: then I saw it. But you know, I understand how
Speaker 1: people buy into conspiracy theories because part of me was like, again, six, um,
Speaker 1: maybe she somehow planted this evidence, like I was ready
Speaker 1: to I and I love a hole. I love that teacher.
Speaker 1: I had no reason to be so very um loaded
Speaker 1: with doubt about it, but I was. It took a
Speaker 1: little while. Yeah, I don't remember what finally convinced me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember my reaction to seeing a picture of
Speaker 1: a platypus for the first time, But when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I was really really into dinosaurs, and there
Speaker 1: are so many dinosaurs that have like weird head crests
Speaker 1: and duck bills and strange frills around their bodies that
Speaker 1: I might have just rolled with it, like I probably
Speaker 1: thought it was some kind of dinosaur that's valid. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love a platypus because they now are to me,
Speaker 1: a symbol of the absurdity of all things. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: just you know, let's stick some pieces together and see
Speaker 1: what happens. Cool when they've they've become kind of a
Speaker 1: national symbol for Australia. We didn't really talk about that
Speaker 1: in the in the episode. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: their temperament is, Like I was really just looking at
Speaker 1: their physiology, but like, I kind of want to cuddle one.
Speaker 1: I know they have claws on their feet. They probably
Speaker 1: if they didn't appreciate being cuddled, they'd let you know that,
Speaker 1: But uh, I don't know. I just kinda maybe it's
Speaker 1: because it's just I want to pick up all and
Speaker 1: they're very cute. They're very cute. I understand the urge. Um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: in my head, I want them to be much bigger,
Speaker 1: like I want them to be, Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: size of a small to medium dog. I want like
Speaker 1: a really big platypus to walk. I remember being disappointed
Speaker 1: when I discovered they were fairly petite. Yeah, they're They're
Speaker 1: pretty small animals. So anyway, this was definitely a fun
Speaker 1: episode in the same way that the pilt Down Man
Speaker 1: episode had been, although that one was also infuriating because
Speaker 1: the you know, somebody had made up this hoax with
Speaker 1: the Piltdown Man, and it had wasted a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of scientific time. And this was more. It was a
Speaker 1: long process before the European scientific community agreed on what
Speaker 1: was up with the platypus. So while there was a
Speaker 1: lot of writing that was kind of weird and on
Speaker 1: the wrong track, it was moving toward an understanding rather
Speaker 1: than going down the wrong track for extended period of time.
Speaker 1: So it did not have the angering layer of a
Speaker 1: lot of the reading for the pilt Down Manhattan. Um,
Speaker 1: and I forgot that I had talked in that episode
Speaker 1: about how much I had enjoyed doing the research on
Speaker 1: it until I just re listened to it, uh, while
Speaker 1: making sure that we didn't make any gigantic mistakes in
Speaker 1: it before making it a Saturday classic. We talked about
Speaker 1: this week we did. I didn't pronounce it that way
Speaker 1: at although I didn't in the episode because it's Sira
Speaker 1: no um. It's like I said at the beginning of that,
Speaker 1: when I get real spitty if I say it that way. Yeah, uh, who,
Speaker 1: as you had said, you did not even realize for
Speaker 1: quite a while, it was a real personal and I
Speaker 1: really do think that I read something that he wrote
Speaker 1: in college, but my brain just didn't retain the information.
Speaker 1: What you don't memorize every single piece of information you
Speaker 1: come in contact with twenty years ago. Um and so like, because,
Speaker 1: like we talked about in the in the episode, there
Speaker 1: are so many fictionalized depictions of him. I really just
Speaker 1: in my head he had settled into a fictional character
Speaker 1: from probably novels that were then made into movies. That's
Speaker 1: sort of how my brain constructed who Serrano de Bergerec was. Uh,
Speaker 1: And most of them involved character having a very big
Speaker 1: nose and being in love with somebody named Roxanne. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's my brain. My brain just sort of boiled
Speaker 1: that down. Um, I mean, no one can blame you.
Speaker 1: I think probably most people feel that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing is right, like the Serranos story, this idea
Speaker 1: of loving someone and of which I mean the play,
Speaker 1: not his relations idea of loving someone thinking they will
Speaker 1: reject you because of how you look, and you know,
Speaker 1: this secondary love interest, who is beautiful using your words
Speaker 1: to woo someone. It's so common in our world. Obviously
Speaker 1: there have been, you know, many many instances of it.
Speaker 1: But like to me, where I notice it's so common
Speaker 1: is that, like it is a plot line that shows
Speaker 1: up in sitcoms. It was a Bomb's Burgers episode, I mean,
Speaker 1: which Linda calls a syrano to Burger act, which is
Speaker 1: one of the most brilliant turns of phrase on the
Speaker 1: planet in my world. Um, right, Like, it's that idea
Speaker 1: of like being enamored of someone and being afraid they
Speaker 1: will reject you is so common to everybody. I think
Speaker 1: that's why, like that play has endured for so long. Um,
Speaker 1: and it is it's like our modern mythology, right, That's
Speaker 1: why you could easily go no, that's not a real person.
Speaker 1: That's a story that Yeah, Well, we've talked about other
Speaker 1: other real people who seem like fictional characters, and people
Speaker 1: even remember as like one of the first episodes that
Speaker 1: I ever wrote for the show, many many years ago,
Speaker 1: it was on Johnny Appleseed, real person, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like, that's a real person. The other
Speaker 1: thing that surprised me somehow, uh, in addition to having
Speaker 1: either never really remembered or forgotten that he was a
Speaker 1: real person, was that this was in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 1: Somehow that never that I was like, oh really, but
Speaker 1: I probably because the play was from the nineteenth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's very Victorian, and it's it's um themes and
Speaker 1: it's you know, the way it's written. Um. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very much the Victorian ideal of a man who is
Speaker 1: both full of bravado and very sensitive. So that's like
Speaker 1: one of the you know, key figures of of that
Speaker 1: sort of character. That is again why people kind of
Speaker 1: gravitate to him and identify with the Syrano of that story.
Speaker 1: I suspect the real Syrano may have been a little
Speaker 1: more difficult to identify with in real life. Um, he
Speaker 1: seemed very fascinating and kind of like a lot but
Speaker 1: but also you know, and pretty pretty Um there's a
Speaker 1: whole side party that we didn't get into because it's
Speaker 1: really not germane to the Syran no story, But there
Speaker 1: was like a whole side drama with that head of
Speaker 1: the college that he satirized, uh Granger, And like we
Speaker 1: mentioned that there had been scandals around him, but one
Speaker 1: of the scandals around him was so fascinating to me
Speaker 1: because it was that he had, apparently for quite some
Speaker 1: time how had an affair with a woman who like
Speaker 1: worked in the school in some sort of like menial role,
Speaker 1: like as a cleaning woman or something, and everyone knew
Speaker 1: it and it was not an issue. But then he
Speaker 1: married her, which also was not an issue. But where
Speaker 1: people got mad and it became a scandal was that
Speaker 1: he tried to introduce her to society as his wife
Speaker 1: in a way that would be like equal to him
Speaker 1: in social standing, and people lost their minds, which is
Speaker 1: evidence has so many problems. But I was just like
Speaker 1: fascinated by that, and that whole drama could be its
Speaker 1: own new version of Syrano de Bergerac that we romanticize
Speaker 1: and write a play about. Um, there are a million
Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to mention that we did
Speaker 1: not I did not bring up here. You will sometimes
Speaker 1: see Syran now as also having the first name of
Speaker 1: the Q. Maybe maybe I didn't didn't bother to include it,
Speaker 1: because we would have buzzed right past it, because it's
Speaker 1: not one that's stuck m hm. In his constant mode
Speaker 1: of of reinvention. I did read a thing, and I
Speaker 1: it's not a thing you can really fact check. But
Speaker 1: I read one assertion that like his friends, his close
Speaker 1: friends would have called him by his name seven year,
Speaker 1: which he was born with, but that he would have
Speaker 1: always introduced himself, not with that name, but with Syrra
Speaker 1: no deficial crack, which is a just a fascinating little tidbit.
Speaker 1: If you time travel and meet him, you could call
Speaker 1: him that and he'll think you're a friend. Should we
Speaker 1: briefly mention that there's a new movie, just so folks
Speaker 1: know that we now there's a new movie. There might
Speaker 1: be more information about it coming we'll see on this
Speaker 1: very program. Uh yeah, keep your ears peeled so all
Speaker 1: I'll say there, Um, yes, Serra, no Serranos story. Do
Speaker 1: you have a favorite version of the Serranos story? In
Speaker 1: in fillmore television, other than Bob's Burgers, which I love
Speaker 1: maybe the most. I think the one that I probably
Speaker 1: have the most familiarity with is the movie Roxanne. Of course,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what year that came out, but that's
Speaker 1: a movie that I saw in theaters. Um let's look,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, my brain wants to say ninety three,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that I trust that. Um So,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a period in my life. I would
Speaker 1: be twelve, so at an age to be having crushes
Speaker 1: on people and very self conscious about my appearance. Um so, uh,
Speaker 1: that's probably why there was also just a few years
Speaker 1: after that, in is the Charade d Pardieu. Yeah, would
Speaker 1: I remember being I was working in college in the
Speaker 1: summers in a costume shop, and I remember all of
Speaker 1: the women that I was working with getting the vapors
Speaker 1: discussing Scharande Pardiu in that role. And I have such
Speaker 1: a strong memory of that discussion and how delightful and
Speaker 1: funny it was that it will stick with me forever.
Speaker 1: But really, until you've seen Tina Belcher do it, you
Speaker 1: haven't seen story which is not true. All of that
Speaker 1: is a very good one. Um uh, yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: good thing, right, If you are into the story, there's
Speaker 1: plenty to to watch. Keep you busy, Yeah, catalog them all.
Speaker 1: We hope that you have enjoyed this week with us,
Speaker 1: and that as you head into your weekend that it
Speaker 1: is filled with some rest and relaxation, or at least
Speaker 1: very smooth sailing if you don't have downtime to yourself.
Speaker 1: In any case, we will be right back here tomorrow
Speaker 1: with a classic, and then we'll see you again on
Speaker 1: Monday with brand new stuff. Stuff you missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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