Behind the Scenes Minis: Bad Goals and Spirit Clothes

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Episode: Behind the Scenes Minis: Bad Goals and Spirit Clothes

Date: January 9, 2026
Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Frey
Podcast by: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class offers a behind-the-scenes discussion on two main history topics: the legacy and attitude of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (especially Section 504 and the disability rights movement), and an unusual historic case involving grave robbing for clothes in Salt Lake City. Hosts Tracy and Holly reflect on the societal implications, personal experiences, and surprising details connected to both topics, all while maintaining a candid and conversational tone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nuances of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Section 504 Sit-ins

• Section 504’s Legacy and Limitations
  • Tracy revisits the Rehabilitation Act, noting that while interpreters and some accommodations are universally praised, the legislation’s overall focus is on “rehabilitating” disabled people primarily for vocational outcomes—often overlooking those who cannot or do not wish to work.

    “The whole underpinning is basically that the goal is to ‘rehabilitate’ people and the goal is to have a vocational outcome... The law acknowledges that that's not necessarily gonna work for everyone.” — Tracy, (02:25)

• Historical Documentary Reference: Crip Camp
  • Tracy watched Crip Camp, connecting its candid discussion of disabled life, sexuality, and accessibility to the discussion of Section 504. She notes frustration with the movie’s R rating, criticizing perceived bias in film rating systems, especially around sexuality among marginalized groups.

    “I think the idea of disabled people being sexually whole fulfilled people made reviewers uncomfortable and led to it being what I felt like was a harsher rating...” — Tracy, (05:10)

• Personal Insights on Accessibility
  • Both hosts share anecdotes: Tracy’s mother requires more accessible facilities than legally required; Holly discusses her husband’s work making vehicles accessible and how this changed her everyday perspective on accessibility standards.

    “Now I have become much more aware about it.” — Holly, (09:41)

• Ongoing Accessibility Challenges and Regulations
  • They highlight the uneven quality of accessibility retrofits (e.g., misplaced grab bars, ‘accessible’ hotel rooms one can’t really use), and lament shortcut solutions that tick boxes but don’t genuinely support people.
  • Tracy points out how expensive disability accommodations and equipment are, sharing that her mother’s wheelchair “cost more than the last car that I bought.” (19:46)
• Universal Benefit of Accessibility
  • Holly and Tracy debunk arguments against accessibility measures, noting that everyone benefits—for example, curb cuts help strollers and deliveries, too.

    “Anything that is put in place to make places accessible and fair and equal benefits everybody.” — Holly, (20:42)

Notable Quotes

• “There are places where regulations have not been put into place correctly... there’s so much of that stuff.” — Tracy, (11:08)
• “I almost hate calling them accommodations because it makes it sound like, oh, we have to go out of our way to do this… but you’re also benefiting, fool.” — Holly, (20:42)

Timestamps

• Rehabilitation Act and Section 504: 01:21–05:31
• Crip Camp & Movie Rating Discourse: 03:06–06:15
• Accessibility in Personal Life: 09:12–11:19
• Universal Accessibility Benefits: 20:28–22:24

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2. Intersectionality: Disability and LGBTQ+ Rights

• Tracy emphasizes the historical and ongoing connections between disability rights advocacy and LGBTQ+ advocacy, especially in the face of growing attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

  “Disability rights and LGBTQ rights have gone hand in hand the whole time... that is not new.” — Tracy, (19:52)

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3. The Black Panthers and the 504 Sit-ins

• Both hosts express admiration for the role of the Black Panthers in supporting activists during the 504 Sit-ins by providing food, situating their actions within the larger context of mutual aid and health care initiatives by the Panthers.

  “I really, really loved the whole aspect of how much the Black Panthers got involved, and that they were feeding everybody. I just — oh, the heartwarm.” — Holly, (23:41)

Timestamps

• Black Panthers discussion: 23:27–24:43

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4. Grave Robbing for Clothes: Religious and Psychological Angles

• Holly recaps a historic Salt Lake City grave robbing case focused on stealing burial clothes; the community’s reaction was unusually severe because of spiritual beliefs regarding the afterlife and bodily integrity.

  “The reaction in Salt Lake... to the concerns that the deceased’s afterlife had been adulterated was much greater…” — Holly, (26:23)

• They speculate whether people would worry about the deceased arriving “naked forever” in the afterlife, and discuss the practical side of the theft—did the perpetrator intend to use or sell the clothes, or was their hoarding more psychological?

  “Is the issue that if they arrive in heaven with no clothes, that they are naked forever? ... Is it impossible to put on clothes in heaven if you didn’t have them already?” — Tracy, (27:11)

• Drawing from Brigham Young’s sermon, they discuss efforts to comfort the community, emphasizing that “the higher powers will have taken care of that. They have tailoring skills. They will bring those disparate threads and fibers back together, and you will be a-okay.” — Holly, (31:17)
• Tracy and Holly laugh about the absurdity and unexpected twists in the story, like exiling the perpetrator and speculating about his fate.

Notable Moments

• “Of course, I have 18 boxes of dead people clothes that I took off of them after they were buried in my living room. That’s just what we’re doing.” — Holly, (29:36)
• “The ghosts are not asking you for clothes. The ghosts don’t need pants. They’re fine.” — Holly, (31:17)

Timestamps

• Grave robbing and spiritual consequences: 26:20–36:44

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Memorable Quotes

• “‘I think God would forgive me for showing up naked at the gates of heaven.’” — Tracy, (32:59)
• “It's all guesswork.” — Holly, on the grave robbery case, (29:56)
• “I'm like, oh, this is actually pretty interesting. I love the ghost part.” — Holly, (31:17)

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Episode Structure & Tone

• Conversational and Reflective: The episode maintains a candid, personal, sometimes humorous tone while also delving into serious societal issues.
• Personal Anecdotes: Tracy and Holly frequently draw on their own lives and families to illustrate the real-world impact of historical topics.
• Intersectionality Emphasized: The hosts make clear connections between disability rights, LGBTQ+ issues, and the broader history of civil rights movements.
• Emotionally Engaged: They express strong opinions about ongoing accessibility failures, deep respect for historical activists, and heartwarmth at mutual aid moments.

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Important Timestamps (MM:SS)

• 01:21 – 05:31: Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Section 504
• 03:06 – 06:15: Discussion of Crip Camp documentary and movie rating biases
• 09:12 – 11:19: Everyday accessibility barriers and personal stories
• 19:41 – 21:45: Expenses of disability and universal benefit of accommodations
• 23:27 – 24:43: Black Panthers’ role in the 504 sit-ins
• 26:20 – 36:44: Grave robbing case in Salt Lake City and its spiritual, psychological, and community effects

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For New Listeners

This episode combines the hosts’ reactions to recent historical episodes (in this case, disability rights and a grave robbing story) with thoughtful commentary, research insights, and personal stories. If you’re interested in how social policy, unexpected moments from history, and everyday life intersect, all delivered with warmth and wit, this is a great introduction to the show.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

[NFL Announcer]

The NFL playoffs are here and it all starts with Wild card weekend powered by Verizon.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Man, it all comes down to this.

[NFL Announcer]

12 teams, six games, three days and one epic weekend.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

My goodness.

[NFL Announcer]

It's win or go home and every moment counts on the road to Super Bowl 60. It's a touchdown wild card weekend powered by Verizon Jackson. January 10th through 12th. Visit watch.NFL.com for the full schedule.

[Evan Ratliff]

Hi Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

[Holly Fry]

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick.

[Evan Ratliff]

One page business plan for you.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Here's the link.

[Evan Ratliff]

But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with the story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast podcast shell game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Today we returned to the 504 sit ins to talk some about some of the specific people involved in it which we haven't done before.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And also talk more about the rehabilitation act of 1973. Because the vast majority of what people talk about with that today is that language at the end. Yeah, that's, you know, about section 504. There's not a lot of discussion about the tone of the overall rehabilitation act of 1973. It, to me, there's a very 1970s piece of legislation.

[Holly Fry]

Right. It's a lot of vibes in that legislation.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, like there's. I mean there's. And like we said, there's. There's stuff in it that was good. It is good to have funding for things like interpreters for deaf people and requirements for government agencies to have interpreters who can talk to people who need an interpreter. Right. All of all that part is good. Yeah. But there's the. The whole underpinning is basically that the goal is to quote, rehabilitate people and the goal is to have a vocational outcome, meaning a job. And like that is not. The law acknowledges that that's not necessarily gonna work for everyone. Some people cannot work for whatever reason. There's not an accessibility plan that will make work accessible to some people. But the like the vibe of the Law is definitely that, like the goal is a vocational plan for as many people as possible.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I watched the movie Crip Camp over the weekend because I like it has crossed my radar many times and I just had not had the opportunity to watch it. And so since it was relevant to this episode, I didn't realize how relevant it was to the episode because I didn't realize how much the movie was going to talk about beyond the years of the people at the camp. Right. It's a really good movie. It's a really good documentary.

[Holly Fry]

I.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Noticed after I have watched it that its MPAA rating is an R and I found that frustrating. It is not an R rated movie to me.

[Holly Fry]

Do you know why does it say like? For the following reasons.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It says something like some strong language and sexual situations. And I will freely admit I'm not a person that assigns film ratings. That is not my job. I do not have all of the standards in front of me of what goes into those ratings. But. But there have been various past documentaries that have looked at biases in those ratings and how the same sexual situation will receive a stronger rating depending on who it's involved. Like, who is it? Like if there's a sex scene that involves a white man and a white woman, that might be like a PG13 rating. And functionally the same scene involving two black men, that might be. Oh, we gotta rate this R. Yeah. And so my gut response to this rating is that it was probably rated this way because there are a couple of different conversations about sexually transmitted diseases. And I think the idea of disabled people being sexually whole fulfilled people made reviewers uncomfortable.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And led to it being what I felt like was a harsher rating or a stronger rating than after watching the movie. I really felt like it needed.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, there's also the like. I mean, ratings have long been problematic in a variety of ways because even, even in addition to the things that you just mentioned, like different people being involved in that leading to a different rating.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, sure.

[Holly Fry]

It also depends on what reviewers looked at it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, sure.

[Holly Fry]

And their own biases and their own things they may or may not be squinky about. I mean, theoretically they have training and they're objective enough in their job, but like no one can remove all of their bias in any, any way. You know what I mean? None of us can. We all have inherent biases. And so that also leads to another layer of like, yeah, this isn't always fair and sometimes it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I just felt like ultimately that was not an R rated movie to me. I mean, if you were gonna watch it with your kids and you maybe wanna have a conversation with your kids about topics like genital lice and gonorrhea, I'm laughing because the conversations around it in the movie, some of them are hilarious. Like there is just this candor about the fact that, like, there was a crabs outbreak at the camp. And some of the discussion of it is funny unless I was laughing.

[Holly Fry]

But anyway, see, I found myself laughing for the selfish reason of I never have to have these conversations with my cats. Like, there's a reason I'm not a parent. And it's because I'm not equipped to be a parent. I would not be a good one. And one of the reasons is that I wouldn't be good at conversations like that.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Something else that struck me about the movie which, you know, this camp existed in the Catskills from, I think I said, 1951 to 1977, something like that. And there's a lot of footage from the camp when it was in operation, recorded by different people. Some were filmmakers who went to the camp to record things. Some were campers or staffers themselves who recorded things. So there's a lot of, like, very 1970s footage from this camp. And one of the things that struck me is that, like, this was a camp for disabled teenagers. And a lot of the people on staff, some people on staff were not disabled, but some people on staff were. And still a lot of the things in the camp, like the things they were having to do to make things accessible. It's like there was not a lift to lift for people to go swimming.

[Holly Fry]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Like to get into. I don't remember if it was a lake or a swimming pool, but whichever it was to get into it, people were physically lifting you into it.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

People were physically being carried onto and off of buses because the buses did not have a lift or a wheelchair ramp or anything like that. Yeah. And so this is, you know, a time of history that, you know, I would be. I'm not quite old enough to remember the late 1970s because I would have been 2 and 3 years old. But when I got into my slightly older elementary years and then into my more adult years, seeing how many of those types of accessibility things have become more common and then how many things there still are that are just thrown together.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Like, in some ways we've come a long way and in some ways really not.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, I think too, we have the benefit because we get to travel for Work to foreign countries on occasion too. We also see like globally how things have and have not been handled.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, for sure.

[Holly Fry]

Which like it's very eye opening. It's something that I will confess I probably didn't think about enough.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Until my husband for a while worked for a company that provided and also enabled vehicles to be accessible. So like some of them were, we will just sell you an accessible vehicle. But in other cases, people would be like, I have a car. I love my car. But now I cannot drive my car anymore because I have had like an accident or whatever and. And I. Or I've had a progressive illness and I can no longer drive it. And they would basically like convert that vehicle.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

[Holly Fry]

And so now everywhere we go, Brian is always like, that's not compliant. That's not compliant. Like he points it out cause he's hyper aware. And now I have become much more aware about it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Something I see often that I hate is people who park their cars in the striped off area. That is for a wheelchair lift.

[Holly Fry]

Red Rage.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Absolutely hate it.

[Holly Fry]

It makes me so angry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I also notice occasionally I'll be staying at a hot. For whatever reason, they will have put me in a room that is meant to be accessible. And sometimes it will just jump out at me. How like, yeah, there's a grab bar in the bathroom, but it's not in a place that would allow a person to transfer from a wheelchair to the toilet. It's in a weird place that like, that's not helping anyone. Or I remember being in a room that was supposedly accessible one time and there was no way that a person who was using a wheelchair would have been able to get to the closet where their clothes would go. And it was like there was not a wide enough passage around the bed. And it's like there's so much of that stuff. So there are places where regulations have not been put into place correctly. Like places where it's like we installed a grab bar and the grab bar is not a good place.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. It's like they're going. They're going through a checklist to retrofit a space that was never designed with that in mind. And it doesn't. Technically they meet the requirements, but it doesn't really help anybody.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And then you have folks like my mom whose needs are greater than what the requirement is.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So like, traveling any distance away from home is really hard for my mom because she doesn't just need an accessible bathroom. The accessible bathroom needs to have enough room for a lift to fit into it to transfer her from a chair to the toilet. And even when she had more mobility and she was using a walker rather than using a power wheelchair, she was traveling with my dad one time and they stopped at a rest area and she went into the accessible stall and there was no way for her to get into the stall and get onto the toilet and also close the door behind her.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Which was, number one, embarrassing. Yeah. And then number two, a stranger came in and decided that my mom needed help and would not take my mom's assurances that mom needed help. And this person who meant well just. It was worse than if my mom had just been allowed to handle her own hygiene.

[NFL Announcer]

The NFL playoffs are here, and it all starts with wild card weekend powered by Verizon.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Man, it all comes down to this.

[NFL Announcer]

12 teams, six games, three days, and one epic weekend.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

My goodness.

[NFL Announcer]

It's win or go home and every moment counts on the road to Super Bowl 60. It's a touchdown wild card weekend powered by Verizon. January 10th 12th. Visit watch.NFL.com for the full schedule.

[Evan Ratliff]

Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link.

[Holly Fry]

Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick.

[Evan Ratliff]

One page business plan for you.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Here's the link.

[Evan Ratliff]

But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first.

[Holly Fry]

Year that there's a one person billion.

[Evan Ratliff]

Dollar company which would have been like unimaginable without AI. And now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.

[Holly Fry]

Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses.

[Evan Ratliff]

Listen to Shell game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

I will say I have a cool version of this.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

Of a retrofit that I saw.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

At a resort where they had expanded the resort and at that point they had enough surplus rooms that they could retrofit one whole portion of it. And what they did was to accommodate people like your mom, they combined two hotel rooms into one so the bathroom was enormous and had tons of space.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

And that way, like. And the doors were wide, and there was, like, ample room to maneuver around whatever kind of vehicle or assist lift you had. And I was just like, I know this isn't feasible for every hotel or resort, but this is incredible. And I wish they. I hope they teach other places how to do this, because it was like, oh, this is all actual functioning things that would help a person.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I read. I wish I could remember where this was, but I read an article somewhere that was about just really reimagining public restrooms.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Because there are a lot of people who need a restroom for a lot of different reasons. Like, there are parents who need to change a diaper, and there are people who use wheelchairs or walkers and, like, need enough space and the ability to get onto and off, like, all of this stuff. You know, maybe you have a job interview and you need to use the bathroom to change your clothes. Maybe you have a religious requirement to do some kind of, like, washing of your hands and face. Like, a lot of different reasons that people need to be in the bathroom. And it was envisioning this public bathroom space that would be able to meet all of these needs for all of these different people. And of course, it was, like, a spacious space that had privacy and had room for all of these different purposes. And I was like, that bathroom seems so amazing to me and so unlikely to ever be implemented at scale because everybody wants to save money and have less room dedicated to those kinds of things.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. I mean, another area that gets problematic is not even in a public space, but, like, there are huge tracts of neighborhood developments that were built during a period of time in the US when in real estate, you kept the bathrooms as small as you could to maximize the living areas of the home. And those are really, really hard to retrofit because, like, there just is not a place to expand out a wall unless you lose two thirds of your kitchen or.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

You know what I mean?

[Holly Fry]

Or give up a bedroom. And, like, I think. And I hope. I mean, part of this is just like, the McMansion of it all. Right. That now even, you know, relatively middle of the road houses have almost palatial bathrooms in many cases.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

But, like, when I think about some of the ones, like the neighborhood where my husband grew up, the tiniest bathrooms on earth. And I remember thinking when I first saw them, like, how would anybody get in here if they had any kind of, like, even if they were on crutches temporarily, how would they. You Know what I mean? Like, there are so many instances of spaces that are built like that that are private places and not even public spaces that need to be considered.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Patrick and I have had a conversation, sort of the conversation in that I have said we need to think about where we are going to live when we get old.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Because there will be a time in our lives when we will not be able to manage these stairs.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And Patrick is like, we will have one of those chairlifts put in. And I'm just like, babe, I don't think one of those chairlifts is actually gonna work in this stairwell that was built almost a hundred years ago. It seems unlikely to me. And, you know, that's one of the things about buying a house that's more than a hundred years old.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. I do have a friend who I met in the weirdest circumstance quite accidentally in New York, but she is in her 70s, she lives in England in an old house. And last year, she's perfectly like. She's spry as can be. She can get around anywhere right now.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Sure.

[Holly Fry]

But she recognizes that's not always gonna be the case, and it's sooner rather than later, and she doesn't want to. Her kids to have to deal with figuring it out. So, like, she put in her own elevator last year, and she's like, in the future, when I need it, I have it, and right now I can just enjoy it. I'm like, right on.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. A very long time ago, I had some friends who had a house built for their family to live in. And they had that house built with the mindset of, we're probably gonna live here for our whole lives, and at some point, probably a parent will come live with us. And so they built a house to have enough space to do that and also to have an elevator that went from the first floor to the second floor of their home. Yeah. Which, of course, you know, was incredibly smart, but also something that came with a lot of privilege to be able to afford a house that size with an elevator in it.

[Holly Fry]

Right. That is the other thing. Like, not. Not everyone is in a position where they can make those adjustments.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. And we haven't really talked at all how incredibly expensive being disabled is.

[Holly Fry]

So, so expensive. Like, prohibitively expensive.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, my mom's wheelchair cost more than the last car that I bought.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We also didn't. I hope that this was obvious from the episode itself. We didn't call it outspoken specifically, but I just also wanted to say that, like, disability rights and LGBTQ rights have gone hand in hand the whole time. Yeah. And so the fact that we're at this point now in US history where there are attacks on DEI and those attacks are targeting trans people and gay men and lesbians, other queer people, also disabled people, like, that is not new. That is stuff that has been going on this whole time.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. The other thing that always makes me irate though, is that any. I almost hate calling them accommodations because it makes it sound like, oh, we have to go out of our way to do this.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Sure, sure.

[Holly Fry]

Anything that is put in place to make places accessible and fair and equal benefits everybody.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It helps everybody. Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

It's not like whenever people make the argument in any of things that like, oh, why should everybody else have to go? And I'm like, because you're also benefiting, fool.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Like, I don't.

[Holly Fry]

This is so easy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Even like in ways that are just benign and like thoughtless.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

[Holly Fry]

If you are in a city that has really good curb cuts everywhere, things like deliveries get easier. Things like just walking around. For people that do not have any issue, walking gets easier. Like so many things improve.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Parents with their strollers, much easier.

[Holly Fry]

Life is easier. It's. Yeah. It's so silly that anybody would think that that was somehow.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Infringing on their.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Day to day life.

[Holly Fry]

It's like it's only making your life easier too.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Well, there's are still like, there's so much stuff with the ADA that still isn't fully implemented, with a lot of that full implementation still boiling down to, well, it's too expensive to put ramps everywhere. And it's like y' all thought it was a reasonable expense to build stairs for non disabled people when you first built the building. So there was money for that. How come there's not money for this? I have the same argument sometimes about things involving parking and bike lanes. If there's money for a parking lot, there should be money for a bike lane.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But that's just me.

[Holly Fry]

And if I see you parking in a handicap striped zone, Fury, I'm probably gonna say something really unkind to you because you will have deserved it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. I don't. This was when I was still living in Atlanta. I was out with a friend and we went. We were going to some store somewhere and there were two striped off spaces that were the wheelchair lift spaces and both of them had a car parked in them and they were just at like a cell phone store or something. Like they like. It was one of those parking lots that kind of Served a bunch of buildings. And I remember leaving ugly notes on both of their windshields because I was like, this is unacceptable. If a person is in a van and they need to get out of it, they cannot. Because you have chosen to illegally park your car here.

[Holly Fry]

Yep.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Just to be closer to the store. Cause there was plenty of other spots.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Anyway, strong feelings, interconnected things for me to be mad about.

[Holly Fry]

I did really, really love and got quite choked up about it. I got choked up about many things in this episode, but I had not realized and really, really loved the whole aspect of how much the Black Panthers got involved.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Holly Fry]

And that they were feeding everybody. I just. Oh, the heartwarm.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

So good.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We've talked about the Black Panthers on the show before and I don't actually remember, like, where we talked more about the Black Panthers and starting the breakfast program and all of this other stuff. Because so many people, particularly so many white people of a certain age have been told that the Black Panthers were dangerous and associate them only with being armed black men.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And number one, there's reasons for the armed people needing to protect their own neighborhoods. Like, there was a reason for that. It was not something they made up. And then number two, like, so much of what they were doing was like, we're gonna start a health clinic and we're gonna screen everybody in this neighborhood for sickle cell. That's gonna help make people's lives better. And then when it came to the 504 sit ins, just part of the thing being like, you are fighting for liberation and we are gonna help you with that. Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

I love it.

[NFL Announcer]

The NFL playoffs are here and it all starts with Wild Card weekend powered by Verizon.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Man. It all comes down to this.

[NFL Announcer]

12 teams, six games, three days and one epic weekend.

[Holly Fry]

My goodness.

[NFL Announcer]

It's win or go home. And every moment counts. On the road to Super Bowl 60. It's a touchdown Wild Card Weekend Powered by Veronica Horizon. 1.10.12 Visit watch.NFL.com for the full schedule.

[Evan Ratliff]

Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

[Holly Fry]

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick.

[Evan Ratliff]

One page business plan for you.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Here's the link.

[Evan Ratliff]

But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first.

[Holly Fry]

Year that there's a one person billion.

[Evan Ratliff]

Dollar company which would have been like unimaginable without AI.

[Holly Fry]

And now will happen.

[Evan Ratliff]

I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award winning podcast Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.

[Holly Fry]

Oh, hey Evan, good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses.

[Evan Ratliff]

Listen to Shell game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

We talked about Grave Robin this week.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We did.

[Holly Fry]

Which isn't necessarily a January themed thing, but just got interested in it and that's how it goes. This is very interesting to me for a number of reasons. So when I was doing Criminalia, we did an entire season about grave robbers, although that was mostly like people that stole bodies and sold them to science in many cases. What was very interesting to me was that while people were certainly upset in those instances and the many stories we told, the reaction in Salt Lake, based in significant part to the concerns that the deceased's afterlife had been adulterated was much greater than in a lot of the other cases where people actually stole bodies that I have researched. And I just found that fascinating.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. I had a number of mental questions happening as that I was like, is that there are some religious and spiritual traditions that, like, the idea is the state of your body at your death is what it is in the afterlife. And so it's really important that, like, people's bodies be intact. So I had this sort of mental question of, like, is the issue that if they arrive in heaven with no clothes, that they are naked forever?

[Holly Fry]

Yes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And that, like, is it impossible to put on clothes in heaven if you didn't have them already? And I just thought about that for a while. People have different beliefs and they can be different from one another. And that was just like a curiosity. But then I also was really fixated on, like, how there were boxes and boxes of clothes, because my first thought was, oh, obviously he was gonna, like, clean up these clothes and sell them in his shop. But when he apparently had boxes and boxes of them far more than he was selling in the shop, I was like, okay, what. What was your deal here, sir?

[Holly Fry]

What? I have theories.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Is one of them just, like, an unusual morbid fixation on dead people's clothes?

[Holly Fry]

Okay, no, mine is from personal experience. Those are unfinished objects in his sewing room Is what they are.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

That I had another thought as well. One I think probably he was getting clothes at a faster rate than he was turning them over because, like, he seemed to recognize he would go back and dig them up pretty quickly after their initial burial.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

[Holly Fry]

But he also seemed to recognize that, like, you have to let some time elapse before you refurbish this and put it up for sale or use it in some way in your tailoring business to lessen the likelihood that someone will recognize it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

So I really think it was a. He was not good at managing material in, material out.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

[Holly Fry]

I think that was part of it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay. Yeah. I was sort of mentally divided between poorly thought out criminal enterprise and psychological fixation, or maybe some combination of both.

[Holly Fry]

I think something has to happen in your head where you normalize it. And then he probably. It didn't seem weird at all. Of course, I have 18. I don't know how many there were. The numbers never specified. But of course, I have 18 boxes of dead people clothes that I took off of them after they were buried in my living room.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Of course, that's what I do.

[Holly Fry]

That's just what we're doing. There's a weird thing, but, I mean, I don't know. We don't have any of his own words other than what is relayed secondhand through accounts like Dewey's and Heath about what he said. So it's a little. We don't know. It's all guesswork.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

The questions that you had about concerns about nudity in the afterlife.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Some of those were also in that Brigham Young sermon that. I didn't want to quote the whole thing, but he mentioned specifically. He brings up an interesting example, which I guess is from a real situation, but we don't know of having seen a young boy talking to some women who were really distraught over this whole thing. And the kids take was like, hey, you know, garments get destroyed in a variety of ways. Like, people that burn in a fire, if they're devout and they're, you know, like, the angels will put their clothes back together for them. It's gonna be okay. And like, Brigham Young even mentions like, that, you know, your clothes degrade in the grave. And, like, it's fine when you get to heaven, you know, the higher powers will have taken care of that. They have tailoring skills. They will bring those disparate threads and fibers back together, and you will be a. Okay. I did find that. That whole sermon very reassuring, like, in tone. It was just like, oh, that's very, very. He took a really like. He was like, I don't want to talk about the horrible stuff because it's horrible.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

[Holly Fry]

And it's hard for any of us to understand that. How can I make you guys less scared?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right?

[Holly Fry]

And I'm like, oh, this is actually pretty interesting. I love the ghost part. The ghosts are not asking you for clothes. The ghosts don't need pants. They're fine.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

I just thought that was very, very entertaining.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The child logic involved there reminds me a little bit of when I was a kid growing up in the late 70s, early 80s, kind of in the era of child hijackings in. Yeah. The world of air travel. A thing that I was told in Sunday school and other people I know who were in other denominations in other states were also told in Sunday school, was that if you were on the airplane and the airplane got hijacked, the. The hijackers would demand that you spit on the Bible, and if you didn't spit on the Bible, they would kill you. A great thing to tell impressionable young children. And my thought at the age of, you know, five or six was like, I mean, if the choice is spit or die, like, I bet God would forgive me, Right? I think God would forgive me for showing up naked at the gates of heaven.

[Holly Fry]

It's gonna be fine. You're getting a robe. It's all good.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. I don't know. None of this is in line with any of my current thought about what happens when we die, but, like, for kids, stuff that, you know, when you're a child, things make sense in a certain way.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. We mentioned it a little bit in the show, but it sent me in this weird spiral where there are not a lot of newspaper mentions of this whole thing that are contemporary to it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

And at first, I thought I was losing my damn mind. I'm like, are all of my databases broken? Are all the archive sites that I use somehow broken? And some of it was that I was using his name, Jean Jian.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. And a lot of them had anglicized in mentions. But also then I was reading one particular paper, and it specifically said, there's not a lot of newspaper coverage from when this was going down. And that was on purpose because everybody was freaking out already.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

And I was like, aha. I understand. Like, the first thing that I found is that Brigham Young sermon.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Like, when I say the first thing, I had looked at other things, but that was the earliest mention in the papers that I found because there were people just already concerned it had already spread so quickly. And I think, personally, this is my speculation, that Salt Lake, because it was new, because we know it was founded as a religious community and as a haven for people that felt they were being persecuted. I think they were worried if they ran something like that in the paper, it would get picked up nationally. Oh, sure. Or internationally, even, and that word would spread that their church had this very ugly problem with one of their converts who they had raised up as, like, evidence of how wonderful their religion was and how it could offer people things that they couldn't find elsewhere. I think it might have been a little bit of image management. That is strictly my speculation.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right. That makes sense.

[Holly Fry]

But they really don't talk about it till a lot later.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And it also makes sense. I mean, and this continues to be relevant today, like the decisions that are made in news reporting of, is this story going to help people or harm people?

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And if it's going to harm them, is it newsworthy enough that it still needs to be published?

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And so it's possible that some of that may have been going on, too. Even though the state of journalism and journalistic ethics. Totally different in the 19th century versus today.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. Well, so was the state of the law. Right. This is a total extrajudicial solution. I'm using air quotes in my head like, well, I guess we gotta exile him. Cause they were also worried. It never came up specifically in any of the research. But I had another speculative theory that there were concerns that if they did execute him and bury him, that his grave would be constantly tampered with. Oh, sure. In a retribution move. And I also just think nobody wanted to kill somebody as a solution.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

It was a very fascinating. Very fascinating thing. I was wildly entertained, which sounds grisly, but just looking at the psychology of a community dealing with this was very interesting to me.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. When you sent me the outline and I read it through, I was also fascinated. And, like, it wasn't really a morbid fascination, but more of like a wow, this story has so many turns that I did not expect.

[Holly Fry]

Yes. I did chuckle when I first read. Nobody thought about the fact that he would take apart the. Yeah, no, nobody. I guess it's one of those things where, like, if you do not have a devious mind, it never occurs to you that that could happen.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Somebody might build a boat.

[Holly Fry]

Somebody will just take this shack apart, make a boat out of it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Make a little raft for themselves. And who knows, he could have just drowned in his escape and. Or he could have, you know, lived a weird life after that. I don't know.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Who knows? We don't know.

[Holly Fry]

But I'll be thinking about this one for a long time. Yeah, weird way to start the new year, I know. But here we are. If you are about to head into your weekend, I hope that it is as relaxing as possible, that you deal with no big questions of morality or any kind of problem that might cause you to have to think about what its implications are to your faith or your afterlife. I hope everybody's cool to each other and that you get to eat delicious things and relax and that the New year is treating you as well as it possibly can given the weird times that we live in. If you are not off this weekend, I still hope you eat a lot of delicious things and that you are surrounded by love and kindness. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and then on Monday we will have something brand new.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Stuff you missed in history Class is a production of I Heart. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[NFL Announcer]

The NFL playoffs are here and it all starts with Wild Card Weekend powered by Verizon.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Man, it all comes down to this.

[NFL Announcer]

12 teams, six games, three days and one epic weekend. My goodness, it's win or go home and every moment counts on the road to Super Bowl 60. It's a touchdown wild card weekend powered by Verizon. January 10th through 12th. Visit watch.NFL.com for the full schedule.

[Evan Ratliff]

Hi Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

[Holly Fry]

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick.

[Evan Ratliff]

One page business plan for you.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Here's the link.

[Evan Ratliff]

But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.