Behind the Scenes Minis: Bad Science and Library Love

Summary

Stuff You Missed in History Class Episode: Behind the Scenes Minis: Bad Science and Library Love
Hosts: Holly Fry & Tracy V. Wilson
Release Date: May 30, 2025
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In this episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, hosts Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson delve into two main topics: the spread of misinformation surrounding autoimmune diseases, exemplified by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial statements, and a heartfelt exploration of the significance and challenges of libraries, particularly the Library of Congress.

RFK Jr.’s Misconceptions on Autoimmune Diseases

Timestamp: [02:51]

Tracy and Holly kick off the discussion by addressing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s remarks on autoimmune diseases. Tracy expresses frustration over RFK Jr.'s lack of awareness regarding conditions like juvenile diabetes (now known as Type 1 Diabetes), eczema, ADD, autism, Tourette syndrome, and other autoimmune disorders.

Tracy V. Wilson ([03:00]): "I'm so mad at RFK Jr. ... why he was saying that he had never heard of juvenile diabetes when he was a kid."

Tracy critiques RFK Jr.'s historical perspective, highlighting advancements in medical treatments since the 1950s and pointing out that many autoimmune diseases were indeed recognized and managed during his upbringing.

Impact of Misdiagnosis and Growing Awareness

Timestamp: [04:03]

The hosts discuss how increased awareness has led to more precise diagnoses of conditions such as ADHD and autism, replacing broader, less specific diagnoses like developmental delay.

Tracy V. Wilson ([04:21]): "Child that would have been diagnosed with something like developmental delay ... instead being diagnosed with something more specific, like autism spectrum disorder."

This segment underscores the evolution of medical understanding and the importance of accurate diagnosis in improving patient care and societal perception.

Critique of RFK Jr.’s Family Health Discussions

Timestamp: [06:02]

Tracy delves into RFK Jr.'s portrayal of his family's health history, particularly the understated chronic illnesses of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, and the tragic story of his aunt Rosemary's lobotomy.

Tracy V. Wilson ([07:44]): "He was talking about his own family as though they... time they were living through was exemplary in terms of health."

The conversation highlights the discrepancies between public perceptions fostered by RFK Jr. and the underlying health struggles within his family, emphasizing the dangers of misrepresenting such critical information.

The Role and Challenges of Libraries

Timestamp: [20:25]

Shifting gears, Holly and Tracy express their deep appreciation for libraries, drawing from personal experiences. Holly reminisces about her decade-long tenure in a university library, where she engaged in cataloging and managing acquisitions.

Holly Fry ([20:31]): "I worked in a library for more than a decade... I have deep fondness for libraries, in particular, Library of Congress cataloging."

Tracy adds her own experiences from middle and high school libraries, illustrating the foundational role libraries have played in their lives.

Importance of Librarians and Library Services

Timestamp: [23:16]

The hosts shed light on the multifaceted roles of librarians beyond the commonly perceived tasks, such as cataloging and curating collections. They emphasize the critical services librarians provide, including research assistance and data curation for academic and professional purposes.

Tracy V. Wilson ([25:08]): "Every once in a while, there will be discourse... someone is looking for a job and doesn't understand why a librarian needs to have a master's degree."

This segment aims to dismantle stereotypes about librarians, showcasing their pivotal role in information management and accessibility.

Library of Congress: Treasures and Threats

Timestamp: [34:28]

Holly highlights the treasures housed within the Library of Congress, such as the Bay Psalm Book, and discusses innovative programs like the "Mostly Lost Films," which engage the public in cataloging and preserving undocumented films.

Holly Fry ([34:34]): "There are some incredibly cool things... that are just lurking in libraries."

Tracy expresses concern over budget cuts impacting projects like the Chronicling America Historical Newspapers collection, stressing the importance of continued funding for preserving historical records.

Tracy V. Wilson ([34:28]): "There have been concerns about whether these cuts meant new items not being added to this collection."

Personal Reflections and Mental Well-being

Timestamp: [12:35]

Both hosts share personal strategies for coping with frustration over societal and political issues. Tracy discusses the benefits of volunteer work in maintaining mental health, while Holly reflects on finding Zen in repetitive tasks and the therapeutic value of reading and audiobooks.

Tracy V. Wilson ([14:19]): "I did some volunteer work... it was one of the best things that I did."

Holly Fry ([15:02]): "I found those oddly Zen and kind of good for my brain."

These insights underscore the importance of engaging in fulfilling activities to balance the stresses of navigating complex societal challenges.

Conclusion and Call to Action

Timestamp: [38:36]

As the episode concludes, Tracy and Holly urge listeners to support libraries and engage in proactive measures to preserve valuable institutions like the Library of Congress. They also advocate for critical thinking and informed discourse to combat the spread of misinformation in public health and other vital areas.

Holly Fry ([37:42]): "I hope everybody gets to read lots of books they love. Listen, it doesn't have to be highbrow. Reading is great."

The hosts leave listeners with a hopeful message about the enduring power of knowledge and community resources in fostering an informed and resilient society.

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Notable Quotes

• Tracy V. Wilson ([03:00]): "I'm so mad at RFK Jr. ... why he was saying that he had never heard of juvenile diabetes when he was a kid."

• Tracy V. Wilson ([07:44]): "He was talking about his own family as though they... time they were living through was exemplary in terms of health."

• Holly Fry ([34:34]): "There are some incredibly cool things... that are just lurking in libraries."

• Tracy V. Wilson ([14:19]): "I did some volunteer work... it was one of the best things that I did."

• Holly Fry ([37:42]): "I hope everybody gets to read lots of books they love. Listen, it doesn't have to be highbrow. Reading is great."

Final Thoughts

This episode eloquently intertwines a critique of misinformation in public discourse with a passionate celebration of libraries as bastions of knowledge and community support. Holly and Tracy effectively balance their critical viewpoints with personal anecdotes, making for an engaging and informative listen that underscores the importance of both accurate information and accessible public resources.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Holly Fry]

Are there any pictures of you online?

[Andrea Gunning]

Then?

[Holly Fry]

You could already be in a massive police database without even knowing it. Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts. I'm Dext Thomas, host of Kill Switch, a podcast about how living in the future is affecting us right now. Police. They are trusting the software with this magical ability to lead them to the right suspect. In this episode, we dive into how cops are using AI and facial recognition and sometimes getting it wrong and putting innocent people behind bars. So if your accuser is this algorithm, but you're not even being told that it was used, let alone given any of the details about how it works. Listen to Kill Switch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrars. Known as the wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s, her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We talked about some autoimmune diseases.

[Holly Fry]

Sure did. Very real ones.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Real autoimmune diseases that we're talking about. Because I'm so mad at RFK Jr. I listened to this entire speech because I wanted, like, I just had seen clips of it where he was saying that he had never heard of juvenile diabetes when he was a kid. And I was like, buddy, is it because the kids that you would have known would have died because treatment was not as available or understood when you were growing up? By that point, insulin did exist. Children with diabetes were living a lot longer by the 50s and 60s. But it's still. We have progressed since then. That is a thing that could have happened. But so I listened to this entire thing so that I could make note of all of the other things he. So here are some more things that he said he had never heard of besides the ones that we mentioned in the episode. Eczema.

[Holly Fry]

What? I mean, you're braver than me because I can't handle watching all of it. I'll read a transcript, but I can't.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I did watch it on two times speed so that it would be over with faster.

[Holly Fry]

And I think this came out while I was in Japan. And I was just like, you were in Japan? La la la la la la la. I'm gonna live in Japan for the moment and not get too wadded up in things back home.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. So after seeing the clip in which he mentioned juvenile diabetes, which isn't called that anymore, I sought out the whole thing. So in addition to things that we talked about, eczema, add, I don't remember exactly when those were first defined, but then speech and language delay. Okay, that's a whole category, right? Autism, Tourette syndrome, and then autoimmune diseases, another whole category. And I was just like, man, this. But some of these things are more recently described. But then you look back in history and you see evidence of them earlier on. And a lot of stuff like ADHD and autism, there is growing awareness, which means more people are being diagnosed when they may not have been diagnosed earlier on because that awareness wasn't there.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And if you look at charts of things over time, sometimes there will be, like, increases in diagnoses of things like autism. And adhd, but declines in more broad diagnoses of things like developmental delay.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So a child that would have been diagnosed with something like developmental delay, which is very general and broad, instead being diagnosed with something more specific, like autism spectrum disorder. Yeah, a lot of stuff there. So another thing that was happening in this speech that I just got so frustrated about it was that he made repeated mentions of his uncle and when his uncle was president and his uncle. And he was making it sound like his uncle was evident of robust health and that his uncle's presidency also a time of better health for the American people. John F. Kennedy had multiple chronic diseases.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. And also not a time of great health for people.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

No, no. So John F. Kennedy's various chronic diseases were not publicly discussed much in his lifetime. One would think that being a family member, RFK would have any idea of what was going on. But like, John F. Kennedy's medical records were released in 2002. He probably had some kind of genetic autoimmune disease. Also, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. S aunt Rosemary was given a lobotomy.

[Holly Fry]

That's exactly what I was going to mention.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It just made me so angry. He was talking about his own family as though they. And the time they were living through was exemplary in terms of health. They lobotomized her. It seems like she did have some kind of intellectual disability, maybe also a mood disorder. But it also seems like some of this lobotomy was about people just not liking her behavior.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And that lobotomy affected her for the rest of her life in a bad way.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. It was like a shameful thing that was hidden.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yes. So some of my notes in this part of the thing are in all capital letters and there are swear words that we don't say on the podcast. It made me just furious, though. Also, there's a plan to take artificial. A number of artificial food dyes out of the food system. Or like, at least voluntarily do that. Like I said in the intro to the episode, there's a whole can of worms about what these food dyes may or may not be connected to, but there's discussion of replacing them with so called natural food dyes. Something being natural doesn't mean that it's better for you or safer or there.

[Holly Fry]

Are a lot of naturally poisonous things in the world.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. Also, if the government in this administration were actually concerned about pollutants that really do make people sicker and air pollution that really does cause disease, if this was actually a concern to the administration, they would not be making big cuts to the epa.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And they would not be getting rid of what they say are burdensome regulations on industries.

[Holly Fry]

This makes me feral.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. I was so angry. If you actually wanted for people to be healthier, maybe a starting point could be universal health care.

[Holly Fry]

Well, that's hippie talk, Tracy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I know, right? I mean, we also didn't put it in the or. I didn't. I wrote this. I didn't put it in the Crohn's disease discussion. But like Dwight Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States and also a five star general, he had surgery for a bowel issue in 1956, and his symptoms are like. It has some consistencies with Crohn's. Again, can't really diagnose people from the past that way. But, like, he does seem to have had some kind of chronic bowel issue going on.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Could be in this umbrella. Anyway, we're just. We're gonna lose our reputation as a podcast that doesn't often say a lot of explicitly political things. But RFK Jr doesn't know what he's talking about, and he is making dangerous decisions that are gonna harm people.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. 100%.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And I hate it. I hate it deeply. I hate it. I know people who couldn't get their meds because they were being wrongly used for Covid.

[Holly Fry]

Mm.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Bad stuff. I also know what it's like to have a family member who has a disease so rare that when you go to a neurologist, the specialty related to their rare disease, you have to explain to them the rare disease that your parent has.

[Holly Fry]

Yes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I hate all of it.

[Holly Fry]

I hate it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I hate it.

[Holly Fry]

But do you like it a little?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Not even a little. Not even the tiniest bit. Um, I'm going to wind up on some kind of government list, I think my vocal criticisms. I mean, this administration's decisions.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It's totally possible that air pollution is contributing to rates of various autoimmune diseases.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The solution to that is not to roll back the air quality regulations.

[Holly Fry]

Right. It's also not to cut funding to.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Research or to, you know, try to eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid and. Anyway, anyway, not happy with a lot of things as they're happening right now. I feel like if I went and took my blood pressure right at this moment, the machine would be like, why? What is. Are you taking your medicine?

[Holly Fry]

I would do like a Tex Avery cartoon. Smoke coming out before it blows up with springy bits coming out of it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. So, you know, if you are as riled up about all of this as I am and you don't already have it and you live in the United States. There's an app called Five Calls will help you with contacting your reps. I also send them physical things in the mail.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And sometimes go out into the street and scream in a group.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And also try to take some moments to ground myself every day. I just got back from a week of vacation in which I had minimal time of looking at the chronic fire hose of news. I was not totally cut off from the news, but it was less of a continual presence all day long.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And it was a nice little chance for my brain to do some other things.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I vacillate. I feel like, so drastically between, like, trying to run to things that give me joy and then trying to acknowledge and stay on top of all of the horrors. And I'm like, I don't know. Is this constant, like, switching bad. I don't know. I can't tell. I don't know the right path.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. One of the things that I did on this vacation that I was on was that I did some volunteer work and that really helped with my mind. So if you are able to spend some time with an organization that you believe in, that's doing work that's important to you, if your job or your schedule allows you some time to do that. I spent a couple of hours repackaging an enormous volume of black beans into two pound bags of black beans at the food bank.

[Holly Fry]

Nice.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And honestly, it was one of the best things that I did.

[Holly Fry]

I also find, like, when I have had in my early adult life, like, jobs that were kind of like monotonous, laborious jobs, I found those oddly Zen and kind of good for my brain.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Like, unfortunately, they don't pay a living wage often, but, like, I remember for a while when I was in college, in the summers, I would work in resorts, cleaning rooms.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. Which is a hard job.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

But there was something very, like, Zen about walking in and being like, okay, I need to make order out of this chaos. It's low stakes. Like, I don't have any emotional attachment to any of this. I can just, like, get the bedding, get the linens out to the laundry. I can put fresh things down. I can just make this clean and get out. And it was very good for me. So I often find when I have done volunteer work that's like, that aside from knowing that it's good and, you know, feeling good that you're doing something right. Like just doing a repetitive task for a couple hours.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, very slow. I feel like I have seen Allison from the Ask a Manager blog talk about how doing a volunteer task that was very different from her normal work, which is, you know, writing about workplace advice, doing a volunteer thing that was just dramatically different from her day to day work life, like really helped with burnout because it was a productive task requiring a totally different area of her brain and a totally different style of working than writing about work. I think that's probably good and I should probably find a way to do more of that in my regular life than when I'm not on vacation.

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[Andrea Gunning]

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[Andrea Gunning]

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the podcast Betrayal. Police Lieutenant Joel Kern used his badge to fool everyone, most of all his wife, Caroline.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He texted me, I've ruined our lives. You're going to want to divorce me.

[Andrea Gunning]

Caroline's husband was living another life behind the scenes. He betrayed his oath to his family and to his community.

[Holly Fry]

She said you left bruises, pulled her hair, that type of thing.

[Andrea Gunning]

No. How far would Joel go to cover up what he'd done?

[Holly Fry]

You're unable to keep track of all your lies. And quite frankly, I question how many other women may bring forward allegations in the future.

[Andrea Gunning]

This season of Betrayal investigates one officer's decades of deception. Lies that left those closest to him questioning everything they thought they knew. Listen to betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

We talked about the Library of Congress this week.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Indeed.

[Holly Fry]

I sure love it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, me too.

[Holly Fry]

There were several times where I got very choked up about it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yep.

[Holly Fry]

Because I worked in a library for more than a decade.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

And I, I, I worked in a University of library that used Library of Congress cataloging. My trajectory there was weird because I got hired initially. I've had strange career shifts in my life. I had been working in a salon. I was very tired of it. And I got hired at this university library to repair old books, which they hired me just because in the interview, it was apparent that I was very crafty and I was willing to look up methods, the things that Library of Congress had developed in terms of preservation. And so I did that, and I loved that job. And I was a little too fast about it because then they were like, well, we don't have enough books needing repair to sustain a position anymore. We can either let you fixed them all high kind of. We can either let you go or we can teach you cataloging. And I was like, cataloging, please. So I was kind of in a paraprofessional role that probably would have benefited from a library science degree, but I did not have One. But I was cataloging a lot. And it's one of those things that I think people who know me were a little like, this is a very anal retentive job that doesn't seem like your jam. I loved it. I loved cataloging. And then I ended up getting moved over and kind of managing the library's acquisitions after that. And it was just. It was a time in my life where I did not make a lot of money, but I really, really liked my job most of the time. So I have deep fondness for libraries, in particular, Library of Congress cataloging.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I don't clearly remember exactly how this came to be it. I think it was when I was in middle school, I was in the strings class, and my middle school had way more kids doing band than doing strings. And somehow the only way to have enough kids for the strings class was to put me, who was in the last year of middle school, into a room with kids that were only in there every other day. So every other day, I needed to be kept occupied some other way. And that some other way was helping in the middle school library. And most of what I did was tidy up and wipe down the tables and shelf books that had been returned or put on the little carts. Um, and sometimes reading the shelves to look for things that were missing.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. Oh, shelf reading is hard for me.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Miss. Miss. Shelved. Incorrectly shelved. Um, and then when I was in high school and we needed to do some kind of service activity for National Honor Society, one of the things I did was the same work in the high school library.

[Holly Fry]

I have questions.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

Was your middle school library using LC or Dewey? Probably Dewey.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Dewey, yeah. They were both using Dewey. But then I. In college, the college library was doing Library of Congress.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I've mentioned before, I am married to a librarian. I think a lot of people aren't really aware of, like, the scope of different things that librarians do. Every once in a while, there will be discourse that starts going viral on, you know, TikTok or Instagram Reels or whatever, where someone is looking for a job and doesn't understand why a librarian needs to have a master's degree. Because they think that what a librarian does is scan the barcode to work the circulation desk. Yeah, yeah. Which might be one of the tasks that a librarian does, but there's also, like, cataloging and curating the library's collection. You know, being a reference librarian and a resource for the people who come in. My spouse's job as a librarian does not look anything like most people might expect of a librarian because what he's doing is like curating sets of data for researchers. Yeah. And if he's going into the stacks for something, it's literally to find a book that I asked for. I don't think he ever goes into the stacks for like, the core of his job.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. And there are a lot of reference librarian positions in places you wouldn't expect that do things like that. Like, he works at a university. But like, I have had friends that have worked at like, the libraries for, like, big media companies where like their news channel comes to them and is like, I need context for this thing going on now. And they help pull.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Academic journals sometimes, but rarely books. But like, you know, things like newspapers, et cetera, that will help them build a story. Like, that's another thing that reference librarians do.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

In those specialty kind of libraries.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It's been a while. We used to get periodically emails from folks who were asking for advice about how to research. Some like a. Maybe a family member. And they know that their family member did something related to their local history or maybe they were involved in a particular battle in World War I or World War II or something like that. And usually my first recommendation to the folks that wrote in would be like, so start by talking to the reference librarian. If your local library has a reference librarian.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. There are some great stories from the reference desk that I have heard over the years.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

One of which I will retell in the most nebulous way so nobody gets in trouble. One of my friends who was working in a university library, so an academic library, had been working with this woman who was older than like your average college age student for a while on various projects. And she. It had come up in conversation at one point like, oh, you know, are you. Did you decide to go back to school for, you know, work? Or blah, blah, blah. And that is when we found out that she was in fact doing all of the research and writing of her son's work.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, no.

[Holly Fry]

And it was like, oh, ma' am, this is not what you should be doing at the library.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

No.

[Holly Fry]

There are some. There is one particular story that I found I don't. Charming. I don't know if it's endearing. It's also like, dude, you got to do the thing you got to do. We mentioned that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence had gone to Fort Knox during World War II.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yep.

[Holly Fry]

But even before that, there had been efforts to get them moved. And that was to the National Archives, which was founded in the mid-1930s. But at that point Putnam was the Librarian of Congress, and he like couldn't bring himself to part with those documents. And so everyone was like, that's fine. And then he retired in 1939, so everyone was like, okay, now we can move those to the National Archives. But then World War II happened and everything got really busy and dangerous. And so then even like once things were gonna come back, there were protests from library staff. There was library staff that definitely thought like, we have been the caretakers of these documents and we want to retain them. And there was a little bit of push and pull over whether they would go to the National Archives, which they eventually did.

[Colgate Total]

Colgate Total may make your favorite toothpaste, but it's also a science innovator committed to oral health. For instance, the Colgate Total Active Prevention System with a cutting edge toothbrush, refreshing antibacterial mouthwash and a reformulated toothpaste. With a technology so innovative it won the 2024 Edison Patent Award, the Colgate Total Active prevention system is 15 times more effective at reducing bacteria buildup to fight the root cause of oral health problems in six weeks starting from week one compared to a non antibacterial fluoride toothpaste and flat trim toothbrush. Talk about science. Get the Colgate Total Active Prevention System today so you can be dentist ready. Shop now by visiting shop.colgate.com Total.

[Andrea Gunning]

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[Andrea Gunning]

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the podcast Betrayal. Police Lieutenant Joel Kern used his badge to fool everyone, most of all his wife, Caroline.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He texted, I've ruined our lives. You're going to want to divorce me.

[Andrea Gunning]

Caroline's husband was living another life behind the scenes. He betrayed his oath to his family and to his community.

[Holly Fry]

She said you left bruises, pulled her hair, that type of thing. No?

[Andrea Gunning]

How far would Joel go to cover up what he'd done?

[Holly Fry]

You're unable to keep track of all your lies, and quite frankly, I question how many other women may bring forward allegations in the future.

[Andrea Gunning]

This season of Betrayal investigates one officer's decades of deception. Lies that left those closest to him questioning everything they thought they knew. Listen to betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

The Library of Congress also does a lot of very cool programming and has done a lot of very cool programming over the years, one of which is a thing that they did for a while, I don't know if they're still doing it, called their mostly lost films programs, where it would be like they would show pieces of films that are not necessarily documented in terms of attribution, who is in them, et cetera. And the audience could actually help. Like, a lot of cinephiles would go and they would be like, I have seen that actor in this other movie. Can we cross reference him and figure out his name so that we have credits for this movie? It's like a really fun way to crowdsource people who love movies into helping to create more robust and complete records, which I love. And it also sounded like just a super fun way to spend a night out. Yeah. There are so many fascinating treasures. One of the things that I love in every interview I've ever seen Dr. Carla Hayden do is she talks a lot about, like, the incredible treasures that are actually in the Library of Congress and in libraries in general and like finding them and making sure the public understands what those things are and how they came to be in the library and how they tell the story of us as a people, as a nation, as a global community, et cetera. Like, there are just some incredibly cool things. The Bay Psalm book, which was published in 1640, is one of the. Is that the first book that was actually completely published in the North American colonies? I think. But they have one of the only surviving copies of it which was bequeathed to them. It was loaned to them, I think, in 1965, by Mrs. Adrienne Van Sindren. And then when she passed, it was bequeathed. It was on loan until she died, and then the library took ownership of it officially. But there are a lot of little things like that that you think about that are incredibly rare and interesting that are just lurking in libraries. Some you can't necessarily see, some are in special collections that, like, you have to jump through some hoops to get access to for reasons of preservation. But it's just incredibly cool stuff, in my opinion.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I love a Library of Congress. A Library of Congress thing that we sort of alluded to in the episode but didn't specifically talk about was the Chronicling America Historical Newspapers collection.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That you can get to online, which is jointly done by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. There have been obviously budget cut and other cut things affecting both of these. The last I saw, there were concerns about whether these cuts meant new items not being added to this collection. And like, I don't know if there's been a more recent update on that, but, like, that's something that I use for the podcast just continually.

[Holly Fry]

It kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier. I don't think people necessarily realize how much librarians do and how many different sorts of services they offer. I mean, even, you know, in the case of the Librarian of Congress, there are parts of that job that we might not think of. Like, that is who selects the Poet laureate, which I'm sure to some people seems like a very esoteric, lofty. Right. Like, removed from our immediate day to day doings. But, like, that's an important role because it's a person that represents a moment in time of our history, our communal history and our written history. And I just. These are important responsibilities in addition to all of the other administrative stuff and being like the final word on decision making and whatnot for the library. The. I really encourage anyone who is interested in Carla Hayden to just do a search for her online because you will find story after story after story of colleagues of hers who talk about her dedication, her understanding of the importance of libraries, her just willingness to do the work, whatever that requires. When she was in Baltimore working in a library, it needed a lot of cleanup, and she did not hesitate to get in there and do cleaning shifts with the rest of the staff and make sure that everything was getting done and that there were just enough people on hand and enough, you know, arms to do the labor. And she is dedicated, and that's why it really upset me when she was fired. So. Lest I cry some more.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

I'm trying to think of another funny library story other than, you know, people doing all of the research work for their kids to get a degree that they didn't earn. I still marvel at that one. I'm like, have you thought this through? Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I feel like that kind of feeds into a bigger conversation that's going on now about the use of large language models and things like ChatGPT and kids using those to basically write their papers. And it's like the process of writing the paper is what's important here. Like, yes. Like, that's your. That's part of the learning and the demonstration of what you have learned.

[Holly Fry]

Well, and it's like, I want to be like, look, I get it. We essentially write a research paper every week. Some weeks, too. Yeah. Because that's our job. And it can be arduous. And there are days where you're like, I don't want to. And I understand the impulse to give into that.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

But, like, you're. I mean, I still in my mid-50s, having done this job for a while, I still feel like I'm learning new ways to research all the time and about new research resources. And all of that is both illuminating and enriching. Like, the hard parts often result in, you know, a feeling of growth in terms of. Even if it's just my grasp of what's available to me. So I hate to think of people cheating themselves out of that discovery. But that may also sound very pie in the sky. I don't know. Anyway. Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I'm just looking at our production calendar, and I just realized it is unplanned that Monday's episode was inspired by that RFK Jr. Speech, and this one is inspired by the firing of the Librarian of Congress. Like, that we didn't come together and say, let's have a really political week of the show.

[Holly Fry]

No. And the thing is. Right. Like, I know. I'm sure there are people for whom I was thinking about this while I was working on this one, that they'll be like there are way bigger, scarier things going on than Library of Congress related stuff. And I 100% understand that. This one really hit me because of my background in working in. In university libraries and my fondness. Listen, I have such Fond Memories of AACR2 manual, which is not what's used anymore. That was the Anglo American Cataloging Rules. And I loved my AACR2 manual. Now that it's replaced, is it Resource Description? I don't remember the name of the new manual. I'm sorry. That came out after I stopped cataloging. But I think about it because in thinking about that and wondering, are people gonna think this is an unimportant aspect of avalanche of Tumult that's going on? I remember at a pretty early age, I was either a senior in high school or possibly a freshman in college. But I remember talking to my childhood best friend. And this will sound like the silliest, nerdiest conversation, but we were literally having this conversation about what a miracle a book feels like because you literally have at your fingertips a portal into someone else's thoughts and how it is such a unique resource and such an amazing thing. And having those kinds of things available to us, and particularly the efforts that have gone on since Dr. Hayden's appointment to really open the doors of the Library of Congress. So everyone has access to an entire universe of being able to tap into the things other people have thought and believed and questioned and discussed that it. That's why it sort of hits me very, very hard. It's like, don't close that door. We need that one a lot. Anyway, I'm talking very pie in the sky about my feelings in books. But I hope everybody gets to read lots of books they love. Listen, it doesn't have to be highbrow. Reading is great. It's great therapy. It's great to make your brain happy. It can be very soothing. It can be enlightening.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And if you're reading, is audiobooks amazing? Also great.

[Holly Fry]

I'm a big audiobook fan. Cause I don't. Sometimes my eyes are just tired. We read a lot for our job sometimes if it's my pleasure.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That's true.

[Holly Fry]

My pleasure. Reading is often audiobooks because I could just sit and I can do stuff in the sewing room or paint something or be driving or whatever. And I still get the information. It makes me very happy. In any case, if this is your weekend coming up and you have time off, I hope that you get to read for pleasure. Enjoy an audiobook, whatever makes you happy. I hope that everybody's cool to you and that you can be kind to everyone you encounter and that nobody's a jerk. That may sound like a very high bar, but I'm hoping. I'm gonna hope every time. I'm gonna be optimistic about it. If it's not your time off, I still hope that everybody's cool to you and that your responsibilities do not preclude you from reading or listening to an audiobook or doing whatever it is that makes you feel refreshed, renewed, revitalized and enriched. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and then on Monday we will have something brand new that may or may not be inspired by current events.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Colgate Total]

Colgate Total may make your favorite toothpaste, but it's also a science innovator committed to oral health. For instance, the Colgate Total Active Prevention System with a cutting edge toothbrush, refreshing antibacterial mouthwash and a reformulated toothpaste. With a technology so innovative it won the 2024 Edison Patent Award, the Colgate Total Active prevention system is 15 times more effective at reducing bacteria buildup to fight the root cause of oral health problems in six weeks starting from week one compared to a non antibacterial fluoride toothpaste and flat trimmed toothbrush. Talk about science. Get the Colgate Total Active Prevention System today so you can be dentist ready shop now by visiting shop.colgate.com total.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Are.

[Holly Fry]

There any pictures of you online? Then you could already be in a massive police database without even knowing it. Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts. I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Killswitch, a podcast about how living in the future is affecting us right now. Police. They are trusting the software with this magical ability to lead them to the right suspect. In this episode, we dive into how cops are using AI and facial recognition and sometimes getting it wrong and putting innocent people behind bars. So if your accuser is this algorithm but you're not even being told that it was used, let alone given any of the details about how it works. Listen to Kill Switch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremerki, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of The Highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrars. Known as the Wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We love learning about this extraordinary universe.

[Holly Fry]

And we love sharing what we've learned. And on our podcast Daniel and Kelly's.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Extraordinary Universe, that's what we're gonna do.

[Holly Fry]

I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist and I think our universe is absolutely extraordinary. I'm Kelly Wienersmith, I study parasites and there's just endless things about this universe.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That I find fascinating.

[Holly Fry]

Basically, we're both nerds. Each Tuesday and Thursday we take an hour long dive into to some science topic. Learn all about our amazing and beautiful universe on Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

[Andrea Gunning]

Every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio.

[Holly Fry]

App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an iHeart podcast.