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Tracy V. Wilson
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Holly Fry
Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos, but now the old Gays are pulling back the curtain with their new podcast, Silver Linings with the Old Gays, brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Vive Healthcare. Hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse serve their lifetime of wisdom when it comes to love, sex, community and whatever else they've got on the gay agenda. So check out Silver Linings with the Old gays on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ed Helms
This is the story of the One As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Granger, because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs, and next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
Johnny Knoxville
Hello America's sweetheart. Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless Hillbilly Heist from Smartless Media, Campside Media and big money Players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist.
Ed Helms
Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.
Johnny Knoxville
It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing.
Ed Helms
They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape.
Holly Fry
So we're sitting like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do?
Ed Helms
That was dumb. People do not follow my example.
Johnny Knoxville
Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Holly Fry
Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartra.
Tracy V. Wilson
Hello and happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
Holly Fry
And I'm Holly Fry.
Tracy V. Wilson
We did our unearthed installment for the autumn of 2025. All week long this week.
Holly Fry
We sure did.
Tracy V. Wilson
We did. What should we talk about first, Holly?
Holly Fry
So at the end of the first episode, you talked about a study about the way that bias factors into reporting on historical and specifically archaeological finds.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
My question throughout all of that, because I have not read this paper.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
Was there any weight or factoring given to language?
Tracy V. Wilson
So these, what they were looking at was papers that were published in these, the specific set of peer reviewed journals, which I could be mistaken. I do think those are all in English. I do not know if any of them publish articles that are not in English. And I don't recall if. I don't recall if, like there was a language specification in the paper.
Holly Fry
But that's kind of my question. What makes it into those journals?
Tracy V. Wilson
Right. So that.
Holly Fry
So what starts out with a bias already.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. Yes. And that is something that the paper did not really look at that much.
Holly Fry
And I'm not, to be clear, I'm not dogging on the paper writers. I'm just saying the bias layers go even deeper and I was curious about where they started from.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. So one of the things I had a lot of thoughts when I was reading this and one of the things that I think is absolutely true is that the layers of what factors are going on here do definitely involve, like, they start prior to even submitting the paper to a journal. Like it involves, like, who is doing research, where are they doing it? Can they get funding for that research? Does that funding require them to publish? Are there factors in how that publication has to happen? Or where are the places that people would like to do work safe for researchers and specifically a lot of the time safe for researchers from somewhere else. Like, there's so many factors that go into, like before, before the paper even gets published.
Holly Fry
Yeah.
Tracy V. Wilson
And I think some of that, as I was looking at this paper, I was sort of surprised because when I am working on these, I feel like there is a huge disparity involving the entire continent of Africa. There's a lot of research that is involving Northern Africa and especially Egypt, but I don't see nearly as much stuff about the rest of the continent. Right. But then in terms of what this paper looked at, which was comparing the publications in the journals to whether it gets mainstream news coverage, like, that wasn't as pronounced because they were starting like they were comparing peer reviewed publications to news articles and not like comparing the world of archeology to what gets published in one of these journals. Does that make sense?
Holly Fry
Yes.
Tracy V. Wilson
So yeah, there's many layers involved with this. As far as I know, those journals are published in English, which means that, you know, somebody doing the research would need to be writing in English, able.
Holly Fry
To translate or have resources to have a paper translated by someone with archaeological knowledge.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. So one of the things that happens somewhat regularly is that I will have bookmarked a news article that says sounds really interesting, that is from China or Japan or India or Vietnam. And what I have is like a really brief article in the English language version of a mainstream newspaper published in one of those places. But I'm not able to figure out like, was there a journal article about this? Where can I find that journal article? Can I find more information beyond this one, like three to four paragraph news story? And sometimes I just can't, I can't trace back the details that are in the news story to find more information from like a university that might be writing about the research's press releases or a paper or something like that. So there are multiple intersecting layers that go into all of this. We have talked about, or I have talked about before, about how I started really trying to focus on research that is collaborative and community led when it comes to indigenous peoples as much as possible. And that winds up excluding some things from the show a lot of the time, because as a field, archeology has sort of approached a lot of indigenous peoples around the world as like objects to be studied rather than human beings who are here and present with us on earth. And so a lot of times when I see an article that seems really interesting that is about something involving an indigenous community, my first question is like, did you ask, like, are the people living here today, do they want this work to be done and are they involved in it? And like that. Those are all questions that were just, they were not part of this study. The study was just really about like, what are trends and potential biases involved in like the gap between peer reviewed journals and news articles. Another thing that was quoted or a quote that I had pulled out from the article that I did not wind up getting into in the episode itself because I, I just, I felt like that was getting a really long was quote, skewed coverage may be particularly charged for archaeology, a field with large public interest that generates understandings about past cultures with real or imagined descendants. When mischaracterized archaeological data can fuel harmful ideologies. And so what this part of it was about was the misuse of archeology to like support racist narratives. We have talked about people trying to argue that Britain and Northern Europe, Norse countries as a place that was historically exclusively white, which is just not true, but how archaeological findings about, say, Vikings can be used to try to support these racist ideologies that are not grounded in any kind of fact. I also think it's possible for archaeological data to be presented in a way that's not mischaracterized at all, but is also used to harm, to fuel harmful ideologies, which is like as just a made up hypothetical example. We are here in the United States going through, just as we talked about in the show, just ongoing assaults on the fields of history and the idea that we should be accurately reflecting the past, including the many ways that things have gone really wrong. And I think it's totally possible to look at an archeological site of say a colonial community and say, oh, it looks like this colonial community had a bunch of different people from a bunch of different races and ethnicities. And based on this evidence, it seems like everybody was living a pretty egalitarian, equality based lifestyle and then trying to use that to like undermine the fact that there was a lot of slavery, inequality, genocide and inequality going on. But like then this hypothetical made up thing that could have been particularly true, like for this one community, like we are living through an era of the federal government trying to create narratives using history and by extension archeology. And I think it's, it's so easy for me to, to imagine things that can be picked out of, you know, the, of history and historical documents and archeological research and all of that. That straightforwardly correctly interpreted findings can then be used to further hateful agendas. And I was like, this explanation of this has become incredibly long. Let's narrow down the focus of the discussion of this paper to be a little more, a little, a little more on the what the core of it was, which was this comparison of peer reviewed articles to news coverage.
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Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu. Every single episode.
Tracy V. Wilson
32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop. What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s.
Ed Helms
Basketball player who still wore knee pads. Yes, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow, Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.
Tracy V. Wilson
What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?
Ed Helms
Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.
Tracy V. Wilson
I forgot whose podcast we were doing.
Ed Helms
Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's, let's, let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Sacred Scandal Narrator
At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Martial Maciel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.
Elena Sada
My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. It's the story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually how I got out.
Sacred Scandal Narrator
This season on Sacred Scandal, hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determined survivor as Helena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Sacred the Many Secrets of Marcial Maciel as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your.
Jonathan Goldstein
Podcasts, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.
Tracy V. Wilson
How can 101-year-old woman fall in love again?
Jonathan Goldstein
And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at.
Holly Fry
Him and said, this isn't a joke.
Jonathan Goldstein
And he got down.
Holly Fry
And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.
Jonathan Goldstein
Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism.
Sacred Scandal Narrator
We could give you a whole brand.
Ed Helms
New thing where you're, like, super charming all the time, being more able to look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.
Jonathan Goldstein
Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tracy V. Wilson
Other random stuff that I had written down. One of the news articles that I had found that I had bookmarked that I was gonna put in, and then I was like, I think this might be of interest only to me, which is that the Louvre has stopped renting out Nintendo 3DS for their audio and video tours at the museum.
Holly Fry
Yeah.
Tracy V. Wilson
When you were at the Louvre, did you get one of these? No. Patrick and I did, and it was really cool.
Holly Fry
Keep in mind, I went to the Louvre when we were all there in Paris with my gaggling group of friends.
Tracy V. Wilson
Okay.
Holly Fry
We're not. We want to talk to each other. We want to comment on the art. We're not going to sit there and listen to headsets.
Tracy V. Wilson
So funny to me. So whenever 90% of the time, I would say, when Patrick and I go to a museum together, we get the audio tour. And when we were in Paris, to get the audio tour at the Louvre, you had to give them your ID because they were renting you a Nintendo 3DS. And because of the location awareness abilities of the 3DS, it knew where you were in the museum, and it could pull up contextually relevant stuff for you.
Holly Fry
Yeah.
Tracy V. Wilson
And there were also places that had, like, a 3D counterpart to the object that you were looking at. So, like, let's say you're looking at one of the statues that has lost various pieces of it in the millennia since it was made. The 3Ds could have on the screen, like, a 3D overlay view of what all the pieces were. It was really, really cool. And so when I saw this article, I was like, oh, we're gonna talk about that. And I was like, I don't think that's relevant to, like, 90% of the people who would be listening to this, especially since there was no indication of what is replacing it at the Louvre. Like, what is. They've stopped issuing them as part of this, but they have not said like, what is the next thing that will be available as some kind of audio or video tour?
Holly Fry
Yeah. It makes me wonder if they're gonna go with an app.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. So many places now have apps or just QR codes on the wall that you can look at with your phone. Yeah. Which is also really cool and I think helps to make museums in some ways more accessible. I would say the, the typical person coming to a museum who's an adult probably has a phone and hopefully earbuds with them and can be a little easier, especially if you already have accessibility settings on your device that help you with things that might be a little easier than like the, the units that you carry around with plug in earphones. Yeah.
Holly Fry
I don't, I don't love being in public with headphones on.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
It makes me super uneasy.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
Because I'm like, if there's an emergency and I don't hear it.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
Listen, my whole life is situational awareness, so I'm like, I don't want to. I very. It's infrequent that I will listen to headphones even on a flight. I'll subtitle it and sit there and be on my reading.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. Yeah.
Holly Fry
I don't know what that's about. I don't know what part of me is like, you're going to miss something important if. If it's kind of the same part of my anxiety that doesn't like taking like prescription grade pain because I'm like, I will not be prepared in an emergency.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. What if something happens? Right. Another note that I had jotted down about this installment of Unearthed was two things about the Song of Wade. One, one of the researchers involved with this was named James Wade, not related to the Song of Wade, but boy, did it make various reading about this confusing to me because there would be references to Song of Wade and Wade the character and then James Wade the researcher. And every once in a while I was like, wait a minute, who are we talking about here? Are we talking about a poem or a living person? Also, as someone who has for my entire life had bad handwriting, boy, do I empathize with the idea that some. Some scribe working with a la a document that was in both Latin and Middle English might have just made some unclear writing choices that people later were like, what does this say?
Holly Fry
Although theoretically, if that person had bad handwriting, they wouldn't be a scribe.
Tracy V. Wilson
Well, they might have just been tired.
Holly Fry
Maybe, or they may have already given notice and they're kind of coasting, you.
Tracy V. Wilson
Know, a short timer day.
Holly Fry
Like, what are they gonna do, fire me? I'm just gonna whip through this as quick as I can. Let's throw in some mythological creatures and really jack it up.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
Yeah.
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Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode.
Tracy V. Wilson
32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop. What Ernie Shackleton says sounds like a.
Ed Helms
Solid 70s basketball player who still wore knee pads. Yes, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow, Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.
Tracy V. Wilson
What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?
Ed Helms
Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.
Tracy V. Wilson
I forgot whose podcast we were doing.
Ed Helms
Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's, let's, let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Sacred Scandal Narrator
At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Martial Maciel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.
Elena Sada
My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually how I got out.
Sacred Scandal Narrator
This season on Sacred Scandal, hear the full story from the woman who lived there. Witness the journey from devout follower to determined survivor as Helena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Secret the Mini Secrets of Marcial Maciel as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Jonathan Goldstein
I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.
Tracy V. Wilson
How can a fall in love again?
Jonathan Goldstein
And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at.
Holly Fry
Him and said, this isn't a joke.
Jonathan Goldstein
And he got down.
Holly Fry
And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.
Jonathan Goldstein
Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism.
Ed Helms
We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time, being more able to look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.
Jonathan Goldstein
Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tracy V. Wilson
I guess the last thing that I wanna talk about is from the very beginning of the two parter where I had to read something the President put on Truth Social.
Holly Fry
Yeah.
Tracy V. Wilson
Which I ask you ahead of time. And I said, you would rather not.
Holly Fry
I'm pretty game for most stuff, but I was like, girl, I can't do it.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. So I what I wanted to talk specifically about, one of the portions that was in all capital letters of this Truth Social post was about how the United States cannot be woke because woke is broke. And so I just want to talk about the word woke for a minute. The first time I remember seeing anyone use the word woke. I do not remember exactly which incident this was because there have been so many, but it was probably 10ish years ago and was one of the many incidents we have had in the United States in which police killed an unarmed black person. And there was horrifying video of what had happened. And on Twitter, because this was back in the earlier era of Twitter, someone tweeted they were a, they were a black person. You, you could tell from the tone that they were, were tweeting two other black people.
Holly Fry
Yeah.
Tracy V. Wilson
And said, if you are just waking up, stay woke. And so the idea was, if you are seeing this and you're really absorbing what is happening for the first time and you're horrified. Stay, stay present with this. Stay aware of what's happening. And so this is a term that has been used primarily among black Americans for a really long time with those kinds of ideas being awake and aware to what is going on around you.
Holly Fry
Right. It's like situational awareness at the meta level.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. And to like the world that we are living in and to like the realities of that world and the harm that it causes specifically to black people. And so the fact that people have taken that term and turned it into like political correctness version 2.0 to criticize anybody who tries to use like progressive language or to try to inc. Be inclusive in terms of how they talk about things like sex and gender, to be racially progressive, to be anti racist, to be any of that. The fact that it's become this weird insult about a lot of the same things that people used to yell at us about being too PC over. Yeah. It just makes me really angry. Yeah.
Holly Fry
And I will say this. Some of the problem comes from the appropriation of language like that by well intentioned white people.
Tracy V. Wilson
Sure.
Holly Fry
Who then adopt it into their vernacular. Probably misuse it a lot.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
And that makes it easier for people with nefarious intent to then twist the meaning. Which is why I think it's super important for people to be careful.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
About trying to be cool. And I'm putting that in quotes. That's definitely in scare quotes. But like appropriation of language, there's a reason that we're so nitpicky about it. And that's an example of why.
Tracy V. Wilson
Right. There's also at this point an increasing body of research on things like social media and linguistics, how we use different language and how things are being covered in media and talked about in media. That is remarking on a, like a big disparity between what progressives are actually saying and what conservatives are saying they're saying. And it's like what conservatives are saying progressives are saying is driving the bus rather than what is actually being said. So yeah. I did not like having to read that true social post on the show. But I also felt like it was an important part of context.
Holly Fry
Right.
Tracy V. Wilson
For the letter to the Smithsonian, which read on a just straightforward surface level, I can see people being like this sounds reasonable though. They're saying it's collaborative and forward looking, but not like, I don't know.
Holly Fry
But also I go back to the thing that like the Smithsonian should not be getting that Letter.
Tracy V. Wilson
Right.
Holly Fry
Right from the White House.
Tracy V. Wilson
Period.
Holly Fry
End of. End of discussion.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. Also, anytime I have gotten a letter or an email instructing me of something and telling me that this instruction is collaborative, I'm like that. That's not what collaboration means. Accurate collaboration is not. You tell me to do something and then I do it. Yeah.
Holly Fry
Anyway, would you like to end on a note? That is my ding dongery.
Tracy V. Wilson
I would love that.
Holly Fry
I love any and every time that Unearthed features the Antikythera mechanism because I love it to begin with. As you know, that's extremely my jam. But also because now I can just, you know, in my head, it's like Pavlov's dog. The bell rings and I just hear the incredibly, incredibly appealing Mads Mikkelsen saying etikatera and I'm like, okay, I'm good.
Tracy V. Wilson
I'm good.
Holly Fry
For at least the next 10 minutes, my dopamine needs are handled. Great.
Tracy V. Wilson
Oh, yay. Yay. I will make sure every single time. Well, since this. Since this five year project of dives to the Antikythera shipwreck is over, I'm not sure what the next finds related to that might be.
Holly Fry
Surely someone else is in line for their next shot at it.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, I will make sure to always include that. I think I just heard a siren. Everything's fine at my house. If anyone is alarmed. Whatever's coming up on your weekend, man, boy do I hope it is just as amazing as possible. If you like to go outside and sit in the warm grass and there's warm grass you can go sit in. I hope you get to do that and then check yourself for ticks afterwards, if you would. If you're more of an inside kid and you want to spend some time playing video games or watching tv, boy do I hope you have the best video game and TV watching time. We will be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow. We will have something brand new on Monday. Stuff you 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.
Johnny Knoxville
Hello, America's sweetheart. Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless Hillbilly Heist from Smartless Media, Campside Media and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high functioning knitwear who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist.
Ed Helms
Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.
Johnny Knoxville
It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing.
Ed Helms
They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape.
Holly Fry
So we're sitting like, oh, God, what do we do? What do we do?
Ed Helms
That was dumb. People. Do not follow my example.
Johnny Knoxville
Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snafu.
Holly Fry
Every.
Ed Helms
Every single episode.
Tracy V. Wilson
32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop.
Holly Fry
What?
Ed Helms
Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna. Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tracy V. Wilson
Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one of them will end up dead and. And the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream. A nature reserve and a spectacular new home. But little by little, they lose it. They actually lose it.
Holly Fry
They sort of went nuts.
Tracy V. Wilson
Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Ed Helms
Sacred Scandal is back, the hit true crime podcast that uncovers hidden truths and shattered faith. For 19 years, Alena Sada was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season, she's telling her story.
Elena Sada
When I first joined the Legion of Christ, I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Marcia Almasel, the leader of the Legionaries, looked me in the eye and told me I had a calling.
Ed Helms
Surviving meant hiding. Escaping took courage. Risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to Sacred Scandal, the many secrets of Martial Maciel on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tracy V. Wilson
This is an iHeart podcast.
Episode: Behind the Scenes Minis: Bias 3DS
Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Frey
Release Date: October 17, 2025
This behind-the-scenes minisode features hosts Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey reflecting on the week’s “Unearthed” episodes and diving into recent discussions about bias in archaeological reporting, language and accessibility in historical research, and museum technology. The conversation offers a meta-analysis on how history gets filtered through multiple systems before reaching the public, layered with personal anecdotes, reflections on media discourse, and their trademark banter.
(03:14 – 13:01)
Layers of Bias in Publication
The hosts reflect on a paper discussed in the main episode, exploring how bias affects not only which stories get covered by press, but also who gets to do, fund, submit, and publish research in the first place—especially in archaeology.
“The layers...do definitely involve, like, they start prior to even submitting the paper to a journal… so many factors that go into, like before, before the paper even gets published.”
(04:35)
“What makes it into those journals?... So what starts out with a bias already.”
(04:11)
Geographical Gaps and English-Language Dominance
Tracy observes persistent regional disparities in coverage, especially across Africa outside of Egypt, and the hurdles for non-English-speaking researchers.
“As far as I know, those journals are published in English, which means that, you know, somebody doing the research would need to be writing in English, able to translate or have resources to have a paper translated…”
(06:34–06:51)
“So one of the things that happens somewhat regularly is that I will have bookmarked a news article…But I'm not able to figure out like, was there a journal article about this?...Sometimes I just can't…”
(06:58)
“…archaeology has sort of approached a lot of indigenous peoples around the world as like objects to be studied rather than human beings…”
(07:51)
The Dangers of Misuse and Mischaracterization
Both hosts explore how archaeological findings can be exploited to support harmful ideologies.
“When mischaracterized archaeological data can fuel harmful ideologies...I also think it's possible…for archaeological data to be presented in a way that's not mischaracterized at all, but is also used to fuel harmful ideologies...”
(09:54)
(Relevant in the above segment)
“Quote, skewed coverage may be particularly charged for archaeology, a field with large public interest that generates understandings about past cultures with real or imagined descendants. When mischaracterized archaeological data can fuel harmful ideologies.”
(09:54)
(17:01 – 20:29)
Retirement of the Nintendo 3DS at the Louvre
Tracy shares news about the Louvre discontinuing the use of Nintendo 3DS devices for its tours—devices she enjoyed for their geolocation features and 3D visualizations.
Tracy:
“When we were in Paris, to get the audio tour at the Louvre, you had to give them your ID because they were renting you a Nintendo 3DS...it knew where you were in the museum, and it could pull up contextually relevant stuff for you…”
(17:45–18:12)
Holly shares that her group preferred to socialize over using headsets. Tracy speculates the Louvre may shift to app- or QR-code-based tours for convenience and accessibility.
Tech and Accessibility
“I don't love being in public with headphones on...I'm like, if there's an emergency and I don't hear it.”
(19:44)
(20:29 – 21:59)
Tracy recounts confusion reading research on the “Song of Wade” due to name overlaps between characters and researchers. As someone with bad handwriting, she relates to medieval scribes making mistakes.
Tracy:
“...some scribe working with a document that was in both Latin and Middle English might have just made some unclear writing choices that people later were like, what does this say?”
(21:21)
Holly:
“Although theoretically, if that person had bad handwriting, they wouldn’t be a scribe…Or they may have already given notice and they're kind of coasting, you know, a short timer day.”
(21:33–21:44)
(26:06 – 31:43)
The Misuse of “Woke”
Tracy discusses her discomfort with reading a presidential Truth Social post on air and delves into the origins and pejorative twisting of the word “woke.”
“The first time I remember seeing anyone use the word woke…was one of the many incidents we have had in the United States in which police killed an unarmed black person…And [the tweet said] ‘if you are just waking up, stay woke.’”
(26:20–27:41)
Cultural Appropriation and Political Distortion
“Some of the problem comes from the appropriation of language like that by well intentioned white people...”
(29:18)
“There’s also…an increasing body of research…that is remarking on…a big disparity between what progressives are actually saying and what conservatives are saying they're saying...”
(30:02)
Smithsonian Letter and Power Dynamics
“Anytime I have gotten a letter or an email instructing me of something and telling me that this instruction is collaborative, I'm like that. That's not what collaboration means. Accurate collaboration is not. You tell me to do something and then I do it.”
(31:19)
(31:48 – 32:34)
“…in my head, it's like Pavlov's dog. The bell rings and I just hear the incredibly, incredibly appealing Mads Mikkelsen saying 'etikatera' and I'm like, okay, I'm good.”
(32:13)
On Layered Bias:
“The layers of what factors are going on here do definitely involve, like, they start prior to even submitting the paper to a journal.”
— Tracy V. Wilson (04:35)
On ‘Woke’ Appropriation:
“Some of the problem comes from the appropriation of language like that by well intentioned white people... Who then adopt it into their vernacular. Probably misuse it a lot. And that makes it easier for people with nefarious intent to then twist the meaning.”
— Holly Fry (29:18)
On Collaboration:
“Accurate collaboration is not: You tell me to do something and then I do it.”
— Tracy V. Wilson (31:19)
On the Antikythera Mechanism:
“Pavlov’s dog. The bell rings and I just hear the incredibly, incredibly appealing Mads Mikkelsen saying 'etikatera' and I’m like, okay, I’m good.”
— Holly Fry (32:13)
The conversation is thoughtful, candid, and personal—balancing intellectual critique of academic and media structures with vulnerability and humor. Holly and Tracy’s rapport brings even complex power dynamics and media criticism to an accessible level, while ending on light personal joys, like the enduring mystery of ancient Greek engineering.
Summary by expert podcast summarizer – for listeners craving context, nuance, and the flavor of the original voices.