Behind the Scenes Minis: Accidental Mary Week

Summary

Stuff You Missed in History Class: Behind the Scenes Minis: Accidental Mary Week
Release Date: January 10, 2025
Hosts: Holly Fry & Tracy V. Wilson
Production: iHeartPodcasts

---

Introduction

In the "Behind the Scenes Minis: Accidental Mary Week" episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, hosts Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson delve deep into the multifaceted legacy of Mary Elizabeth Lee. This episode explores the complexities of Lee's contributions to society juxtaposed with her problematic beliefs and actions, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of a historical figure often glossed over in mainstream narratives.

The Complex Legacy of Mary Elizabeth Lee

The episode opens with Holly introducing the topic of Mary Elizabeth Lee, highlighting her as a "mixed bag" (Holly Fry [01:52]). The hosts aim to unravel the paradoxes within Lee's life, acknowledging her significant impact while critically examining her flaws.

The Issue of Charity Racism

A central theme of the discussion is what Holly refers to as "charity racism" ([02:15]). This concept addresses the tendency to overlook or excuse racist behavior in individuals who contribute positively through charitable work. Holly expresses frustration over how some people dismiss Lee's racist actions because of her philanthropic efforts:

Holly Fry [02:15]: "There are definitely people who are willing to ignore when someone does really racist stuff if they're like... but they do so much good charity work. I kind of feel like that's happening here."

Tracy concurs, emphasizing the internal conflict of admiring Lee's achievements while condemning her racist ideologies:

Tracy V. Wilson [03:30]: "Like, how do these two people inhabit the same body?"

Researching Historical Biographies

The hosts discuss the challenges they faced while researching Mary Elizabeth Lee, particularly the discrepancies in available biographies. Tracy shares her struggle with widely repeated inaccuracies regarding Lee's family background:

Tracy V. Wilson [14:35]: "I started looking into this really early on... it was very easy to find quickly that there was this 1870 census that listed a child who was 1 and a child who was 3 in 1870. And that would mean both of them were born after the abolition of slavery."

This revelation led them to question the validity of commonly accepted facts, prompting a deeper investigation into primary sources versus secondary accounts.

Challenges in Modern Scholarship

The episode highlights the scarcity of comprehensive and accurate scholarly work on Lee. Tracy points out the high cost and limited accessibility of the most thorough biography available:

Tracy V. Wilson [08:33]: "The problem is that that biography, which is the people's Joan of Arc, Mary Elizabeth Lee's gendered politics and populist party politics in Gilded Age America is as expensive as a textbook. It's a really expensive book. It didn't. It was published by international academic publishers."

This financial barrier limits the ability of researchers and enthusiasts to fully grasp Lee's life and legacy, perpetuating a narrow understanding of her contributions and flaws.

Reflections on Historical Struggles and Legacy

Holly and Tracy reflect on the broader implications of Lee's story, connecting it to ongoing issues of wealth inequality and the manipulation by powerful entities to the detriment of the marginalized:

Holly Fry [12:17]: "It's always sucked and it always will suck, but I. It's always sucked. There's always been terrible wealth inequality and people fighting to just get by..."

Tracy adds a perspective on the portrayal of Black activists, cautioning against the romanticization that can obscure the systemic challenges they faced:

Tracy V. Wilson [20:46]: "There is a pattern that I have seen in working on this show for a really long time, in adding elements to the stories of black people, especially black women, that make them seem almost romanticized or superhuman."

Conclusions

The episode culminates in a balanced view of Mary Elizabeth Lee, recognizing her as a driven and exceptional individual whose legacy is marred by significant moral failings. Holly and Tracy advocate for a more honest and comprehensive portrayal of historical figures, urging listeners to appreciate their contributions while critically assessing their shortcomings.

Holly Fry [25:09]: "She was a very good orator, but I think in the long form of a book, she felt maybe a little whelmed."

In closing, the hosts emphasize the importance of rigorous research and the willingness to confront uncomfortable truths in history, ensuring that the full spectrum of an individual's impact is acknowledged.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Holly Fry [02:15]: "I kind of feel like that's happening here. Listen, have I gotten in a fight on the socials with a friend of one of my relatives."

• Tracy V. Wilson [03:30]: "Like, how do these two people inhabit the same body?"

• Tracy V. Wilson [14:35]: "It just seems to be a widely repeated bit of inaccuracy which happens."

• Tracy V. Wilson [20:46]: "There is a pattern that I have seen in working on this show for a really long time, in adding elements to the stories of black people, especially black women, that make them seem almost romanticized or superhuman."

• Holly Fry [25:09]: "She was a very good orator, but I think in the long form of a book, she felt maybe a little whelmed."

---

This episode serves as a thought-provoking exploration of how historical narratives are constructed and the importance of critically engaging with the past to understand the present better.

Transcript

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[Maria Tremarki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremarki]

Each season we explore a new theme, from poisoners to art thieves.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching.

[Maria Tremarki]

And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

[Holly Fry]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio. Hello and happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

We talked about Mary Elizabeth least this week.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Uh huh.

[Holly Fry]

The mixed bag that is Mary Elizabeth Lees.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Which makes me want to talk about a subject I don't want to say it's near and dear to my heart because I don't like it. But a thing that grinds my gears and is a soapbox, and that is charity racism.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

Because there are definitely people who are willing to ignore when someone does really racist stuff if they're like. But they do so much good charity work. I kind of feel like that's happening here. Listen, have I gotten in a fight on the socials with a friend of one of my relatives. And when I talked to that relative and said, what the hell, dude? That person's super racist. And they're like, they raise money for charities that help people who are. And I'm like, no, they're still racist. That doesn't exclude them from it. And it makes me furious. But what's really weird here, and we didn't get into it in the show because we didn't talk a lot about Mary's law practice, is that she did, like, her first case was a very prominent case where she represented a black man and argued in ways that you would think would not be the same person. That also said, you know, people of color, black people and Asian people are inferior to us, so we gotta be the boss of them.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Like, I'm like, how do these two.

[Holly Fry]

People inhabit the same body? It's so weird to me, but also so common that I know it happens all the time. She's such a pill in some ways, and I want her to be great, and I want to, like, be like, yes, Mary Elizabeth. But I'm constantly like, oh, Mary Elizabeth, shush. It's kind of like if you've ever had a politician where you're like, I really like what you're saying. Oh, you kept talking like, those have happened to me a few times.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. This is our last episode recording session of the year 2024. And so this morning, when I was looking over the outline, I was also distracted, kind of pulled in a bunch of directions, getting everything ready to, you know, have the year end. And so my initial read through had been sort of cursory. And when I got to the long quoted passages from the book, I just sort of was like, okay, that's a book quote, and didn't really thoroughly read it. And so then I got to the end of the episode the first time around and was like, huh? I, like, I feel like there was some problematic stuff in there, but not enough that, like, not the amount that would have warranted the kind of discussion at the very beginning of the episode.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And then on Read through number two, when I actually read those quotes, I was like, oh, my goodness.

[Holly Fry]

I literally. So the place that I read that book is an online source that's in the source list. And the way that it displays it when you're actually in the text of the book, it doesn't have, like, a header that says, you know, Mary Lise and the book title, it's just kind of all the text. And I literally kept going Back and forth and being like, is this someone else's book? Like, did this get. Because this is messed up.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Is this misfiled?

[Holly Fry]

This is messed up. But then when I was reading the biography by brooksbier Orr, which is really the one super comprehensive one there is, and I'll talk about that again in a minute, she was like, oh, this gets real weird and super colonizey. And I was like, okay, that is in fact the actual text I was reading. But it was very. It was so discordant.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Well, in addition to that part, the idea of, like, we'll just make everybody be farmers and then there won't be any, you know, alcohol misuse or crime or whatever, like, that also has problems.

[Holly Fry]

Oh, yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And is like similar to prison reformers who were like, we will send people to these penitentiaries where they will be penitent and they will do hard work and like that.

[Holly Fry]

That will make it all better.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, that also has problems.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. There are so many presumptions of superiority, like, you know, the correct way of life, you know, what is correct. And it's like, even if that is coming from what somebody believes is an altruistic point of view, those are exactly the kinds of things that so really gross stuff down the road, including thinking that we should colonize. As I said at the top of the episode, most of the quick biographies you read of her seem to completely ignore all of this. And I literally don't know if it is a case where they're like, I didn't read that book. It's so long and windy and meandery. And it is real meandery. It's like she invokes historical stories now and again to, like, support her point of view and, you know, likens. She was a very good orator, but I think in the long form of a book, she felt maybe a little whelmed. I could be wrong. That's just my supposition. But it is super weird. There's not a lot of close reading or acknowledgment of that outside of pretty heavy hitting biography study. And that is a little bit of a problem in and of itself because as I mentioned, that Brook Spear autobiography is the most comprehensive and prior to that there had only been one that was written quite a bit earlier that did not seem to apply the same rigorous standards of, like, research and citing primary sources versus secondary, et cetera. And the problem is that that biography, which is the people's Joan of Arc, Mary Elizabeth Lee's gendered politics and populist party politics in Gilded Age America is as expensive as a textbook. It's a really expensive book. It didn't. It was published by international academic publishers. So it is in that sort of text, textbook framework of cost.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

[Holly Fry]

Like, I got the Kindle edition of it, which are usually much less pricey, and it was more than $80. Like, it's a lot. So I think for a lot of people, especially people who are maybe even doing biographical research that maybe can't get directly to a primary source or look at public records, something like that is often gonna be out of reach. Because that is a lot to spend on one source.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. And even if you do something like interlibrary loan, a lot of libraries are not gonna have. A lot of libraries are not gonna have it. And the ones that do, like, there could be costs involved with getting it. Definitely. There's gonna be time involved in getting it.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think that has unfortunately been a barrier to people really getting the full scope of the things that she advocated for. Also. I mean, let's face it, it's more of a feel good story to be like she fought the man. She was, you know, trying to be a voice for impoverished farmers who had gotten completely screwed over by, you know, the industrialists and Wall street, which she did. But, like, problems. Yeah. The stuff that got said about her in the press, though, I don't know how she bore it in some cases. Like, a lot of it was just like the same kind of petty, gross stuff that you would see about someone today if they were trying to lobby against very powerful wealthy forces. Right. There were a lot of kind of insinuations that she was the man in her relationship with Charles and that he must be very effeminate and like, just super heteronormative, stupid stuff. And also, like, a lot of. A lot of kind of gendered attacks like that, that, like, she couldn't possibly be a real woman and just like, stupid, gross things that are easy to dismiss as well. That's stupid. But like, she was getting it from all quarters all the time. Like, even though she had a lot of supporters, she had just as many detractors who were just as happy to be loud about it. So it's a wild thing. But this is also one of those episodes that is both depressing and heartening for me because it's like, aside from the fact that I really hung up about this let's go colonize thing she had going on, but aside from the fact that from that she was fighting for the same stuff that we are still trying to get sorted out today, which is awful and depressing. But also there's part of me that's like, well, I guess everybody has always felt doomy, so we're not that unique. Even though we. We always feel like we're in the doomiest doom zone. Yeah, I don't know if that helps anybody. It's kind of a really a pessimist way to feel a little better about it. It's a little. It's a little. It's always sucked and it always will suck, but I. It's always sucked. There's always been terrible wealth inequality and people fighting to just get by and not. Not having the means to recognize or get around the manipulative ways that big business can hurt little guys without even caring.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

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[Maria Tremarki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremarki]

Each season, we explore a new theme. Everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's a fact.

[Maria Tremarki]

We also look at what kinds of societal Forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

One of our episodes this week in our Accidental Mary. Everyone this week is named Mary. Not on purpose. We talked about Mary McLeod Bethune. Let's talk about whether she was the first person in her family who was not enslaved from birth.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, you messaged me during your research and you were like, this is a mess. Well.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So I started looking into this really early on initially because I had at that point read like three or four really brief biographical sketches on places that should be pretty accurate, one would expect. Like, I don't want to name names actually. I just don't want to. I don't want to embarrass people or whatever. But like, I had read, you know, some. Some brief bio biographical sketches about her, and they all said this. They all said that she was either the 15th of 17 children or the last of 17 children. I think 15 of 17 is right. I think the number 17 is also right. She gave an interview later on in her life in which she was asked to name off all of her siblings, and she did only name 15. But I do think she had some siblings that died when they were babies.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And, you know, birth records not always kept very well for enslaved people. A lot of times there were references of like, how many people there were, but not necessarily their names and stuff like that. So I. We're just gonna work off the assumption that she was the 15th of the 17 children as correct. Now, immediately I was curious about this because 17 is a lot of children. Yeah, it is a lot of children at the time. It's a lot of children. For an enslaved mother who was enslaved for a chunk of that time, it's a lot of children. There is some physiology involved involving how long it takes to carry a child.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And how long a person's fertility lasts.

[Holly Fry]

Yes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And so the idea of somebody, even if she started having babies at a pretty young age, and even if she was having them very close together, the idea of having 14 children and then a decade long gap before having, I was like, it's not impossible, but it just seems not that likely.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So I was Like, I should go check on this. And it was very easy to find quickly that there was this 1870 census that listed a child who was 1 and 1 who was 3 in 1870. And that would mean both of them were born after the abolition of slavery.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We're not even gonna get into Emancipation Proclamation. And anybody born between 1863 and 1865. There's a lot of just questions right there. So I was like, wow, okay. This just seems to be a widely repeated bit of inaccuracy which happens. It has happened on our show. I'm sure that we have, you know, repeated something that has been repeated so much.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It's just ubiquitously everywhere. Where I started to feel like I was losing it was brand new academic work and brand new, as in within the last five years, biographies written by people with terminal degrees in their field. In at least one case, for an academic press, like I would expect, if you're writing a brief biographical sketch of somebody for a website, there's one level of research involved there. If you're writing a full on biography of somebody, I would expect this pretty to me obvious gap to at least raise some questions.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And so when it apparently hadn't, I was like, am I missing something here?

[Holly Fry]

Right. Did every copy editor not do a little math in their head?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I just.

[Holly Fry]

There are a lot of eyeballs that are. Have looked at some of those whose job it is to catch weirdness.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

I could see where it would make you feel like you were losing your mind.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I really. Yeah, I was questioning my own ability to read and do math. And I was like, am I confused about when the 13th amendment was ratified? And I think part of the reason that I got so focused on it is that there is a pattern that I have seen in working on this show for a really long time, in adding elements to the stories of black people, especially black women, that make them seem almost romanticized or superhuman. And I can see aspects to this as positive as like reclaiming a story and making it a story that is about inspiration and worth for black people who have not been covered that way in a lot of historical writing. But I also think it kind of adds into this idea. The black people, who throughout history have been the biggest activists and the most effective at what they were doing, were somehow exceptional as people. It wasn't just that they had access to education or that they had access to resources, but that they were somehow different from all of the other black people.

[Holly Fry]

Yes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And it carries through into things like this is not the case with Mary MacLeod Bethune. There is a ton of academic work about Mary MacLeod Bethune, but there are a lot of figures in black history, especially black women, where I can find children's books about them, but no academic scholarship. And I feel like all of this stuff is tied together.

[Holly Fry]

Yes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Interconnected. So, anyway, that was how I wound up spending an inordinate amount of time on this one question and also questioning my own, like, mental faculties. Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm Jason Alexander.

[Peter Tilden]

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the really Know really.

[Jason Alexander]

Podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions, like.

[Peter Tilden]

Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

[Jason Alexander]

We got the answer.

[Peter Tilden]

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

[Jason Alexander]

Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us.

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How are you? Hello, My friend Wayne Knight. About Jurassic Park.

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Wayne Knight, welcome to really? Not really, sir. Bless you, you all.

[Peter Tilden]

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[Jason Alexander]

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[Holly Fry]

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[Maria Tremarki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremarki]

Each season, we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's a fact.

[Maria Tremarki]

We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective.

[Holly Fry]

And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories. There's one for every story we tell.

[Maria Tremarki]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I love that she had faith in God and in Mary Bethune.

[Holly Fry]

That's such a great quote.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It is a great quote. She definitely accomplished so much, and so much of it traced back to being given the opportunity to go to school and being able to get scholarships for a more formal education. Sometimes she's described as the only, like, the first person in her family to go to school at all. And that does not seem 100% right to me. It does seem like some of her older siblings who were school age after the Civil War did have, like, they were able to go to a little bit of school.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But it did have to be, you know, very specific in the windows of time when that could happen.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

She was, was the first person who, like, had higher educational opportunities. There were not that many opportunities for, for black students to even in a lot of cases, get beyond, like, elementary school. Like, a lot of the first schools that were established for black students were more like elementary school level of education. So, like, getting to high school was a, you know, there were access issues there and then like, getting to college, a whole other thing. So anyway, yeah, I mean, I, you.

[Holly Fry]

Know, she is one of those cases where she was clearly exceptional.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Because. Which to me is evidenced by the fact that it took a lot of drive for her to continue to do all those levels of education.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Sure.

[Holly Fry]

Obviously, even if you have access, like, that's a lot of drive. But also, like, when her education was done, it was like she never slowed down. She just kept going, like, more on the plate, please. More on the plate. I could do more than this. I still have a little bit of room. You could put one more responsibility. I could take one more thing on. That's no problem. Just one. Sure, that's not a problem. Like, throughout her life, I get exhausted just reading her life story. I'm like, did you, did you ever just sit down quietly with a cup of coffee for an hour and chill out? Like, what hap. What happened there?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

She also did all of that. Well, a lot of it, while essentially being a single parent. And like, I didn't find a lot written about her son other than that he did feel like that he did not get a lot of attention because of his mother's work and her other, you know, everything that she had going on in her life. So, like, I didn't find a ton about him either. But, like, she still was, like, she was educating her son along with those, for those first Students that she had, and she was raising him while also doing 9,000 things like, let's start a school and a hospital and a mission for turpentine workers.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

At the same time.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. Exhausting.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Lie down, Mary. Like, I just wonder. I also found myself thinking when you were talking about that period later in her life where she, like, retired, and I'm air quoting that, because she unretired, like, in those roles, what is the transition for her going back into them? Like, did someone do that job and then go, no, I can't really handle this the way you could anyway, so have at it. Or, like, I mean, is it. I picture everything, all of the plates kind of spinning and then maybe hitting the ground when she's like, oh, I'm unwell. I can't work for a little while.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

More likely, I think she was so driven and organized that she probably had fail safes in place for times when she couldn't be there. But I just am like, I don't know how the world kept going when she was like, I need downtime.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Because that was a lot of stuff.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

[Holly Fry]

I mean, I get fussy when we have to, like, in cases like this, hurry up and get everything done before the holidays so we can, like, have a little break on the couch with a cup of coffee and not do.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Anything for a while.

[Holly Fry]

So I can't even imagine what that would be like.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Well, and there were definitely times where how much she was doing and how much effort she was putting in does seem to have led to some, like, maybe not led to, but at least contributed to some pretty serious illnesses.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Um. And so, yeah, yeah, I mean, I.

[Holly Fry]

See why she believed in Mary Mathune.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Because I do.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. She's a very incredible person. I've had her on my list for really so long. Incredibly long time. And, like, one of the reasons that I had not moved her up to the top of the list sooner is that there is just a ton out about her already. And so sometimes I have focused on people doing similar work that were maybe not as well known, but still she does not. I think that the men who were her contemporaries, who were also working toward a lot of the same issues specifically for. For black Americans, for, like, the freed people after the end of Civil War, have, I think, more name recognition than she does in a lot of areas today. So. Yeah. I'm glad we finally got to do this episode.

[Holly Fry]

Me too. I have a question that you will be answering now because we're recording this before it Comes out.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, sure did.

[Holly Fry]

Past you or future you? Time travel is hard. Watch this the day it dropped on December 20th.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Um, probably not on December 20th, because I am making a visit to see family. Um, and when I go to see my parents, I tend to spend all of my time with them, doing stuff for them at their house, that kind of thing. Um, and I don't know if there will be, like, downtime on the 20th to watch a whole movie that is. I don't know. Maybe my parents would like to watch it too. Maybe not. Pretty much. My mom has control of the remote and is the decider in what we are gonna watch. Seems fair, but I probably will watch it over the break after I am back home again. The break meeting meaning this time where we recorded the episodes in advance so that I could take it off.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, I'm working that day, so maybe I'll watch it while I work.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, that'd be cool.

[Holly Fry]

Sit here and cry for a while.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Try to type about something else happens.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I don't. I have no idea how. How the. You know, what, what the. Like, there are a lot of different ways you can focus a movie like this, since it is both about the postal directory battalion and also about World War II.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So it's like, how much war movie is it and how much is it about these women? Don't really know. Hasn't come out yet. As of.

[Holly Fry]

We'll find out.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Find out. I, as a person who has, like, a lot of pacifist ideals, I, yet still will find sometimes war movies incredibly moving. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see. Maybe I will report back afterward. Although at that point, it's going to be, you know, weeks after the movie.

[Holly Fry]

Right, right, right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So, yeah, whatever is happening on your weekend, which is like three full weeks after the day we're actually recording this episode. Whatever's happening, I hope it's great. I hope you're able to, you know, if you are pushing really hard on something that is important to you, I hope you're able to take a minute to breathe, because that minute to breathe can really help you get through all the minutes after that. We'll be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow and something brand new on Monday. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[Maria Tremarki]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarki.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Maria Tremarki]

Each season we explore a new theme, from poisoners to art thieves.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching.

[Maria Tremarki]

And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

[Holly Fry]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.