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Tracy V. Wilson
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Tracy V. Wilson
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Holly Fry
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
And this week was our latest installment of Unearthed.
Holly Fry
Unearthed.
Tracy V. Wilson
This was an unusually cramped writing process for Unearthed because I lost a day of working on it to the 4th of July holiday observed on July 3rd and then also left a little early on the 2nd to go on a road trip. And as I left, I was like, you're making Tracy. You're making Monday Tracy's life hard. Monday Tracy is gonna struggle. Which I did. I was a little tired from the trip, but not too tired. But the day was a very, very long day and also disrupted by irritating government reports about the Smithsonian that I was like, you already have a 12 hour day lined up. There is no time to be reading this hundred and whatever page report.
Holly Fry
Yeah, Monday Holly is often paying for the sins of Thursday and Friday Holly.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, as I said, I did not read the whole report. But in my skimming through it, just to sort of be like, is this what I think it is? Yes, it is. There were a couple of things that jumped out. One is that the passage that we read from it used the word problematize. There's a lot of footnotes. There was a specific footnote for the source of where someone said that they needed to problematize history at the National Museum of American History. I am not confident that whoever prepared this report and whoever was mad enough to prepare provoke this being created. I don't think they know what problematize means.
Holly Fry
No.
Tracy V. Wilson
So problematize and problematic have taken on meanings through largely Internet discourse that are not the actual meaning of the words. So problematize does not mean to come up with a list of ways that something should be on the. Your fave is problematic Tumblr that used to exist. Maybe it still does. Problematize means to strip away the conventional ideas about something and approach it as a problem. And that doesn't mean a problem like a negative thing to be solved. It means a problem like a math problem, a problem to be studied and evaluated and understood. It does not mean come up with a list of ways something is racist. That's not what it means. And problematic. Although people basically use it to mean said something offensive in the past, in this context, that is also not what it means. It is having the attributes of a problem. Yeah, similar. Similar thing.
Holly Fry
I just, I can't help but laugh. Cause I think of the person who's typing this copy out like, and you know, they're just like, yeah, I'm cooking, man.
Tracy V. Wilson
So to be even more irritated about this one word, problematize, the footnote for, you know, the museum saying that it needs to problematize history. The citation for that is a lecture that was in the context of public history as a field. It was not a lecture that was given at the Smithsonian. It was a lecture given at a university as part of a lecture series. And it was like about public. Public history is an actual scholarly and professional field. The idea of problematizing something in that context should be non controversial. There was also, as I was just. I was literally scrolling to get through to get to the footnotes to see, okay, what are they referring to here?
Holly Fry
Right.
Tracy V. Wilson
And as I scrolled, I saw a picture of a sculpture. I've forgotten the name of the person who made the sculpture, but he got name drop on the show not that long ago. But it is a picture of George Washington as I think a group Greek God, a sculpture in that depiction. And it's accompanied by the text description from the museum. And highlighted is the word perceived. George Washington's perceived strength. The person who made this report is angry that they were referencing Washington's perceived strength rather than his actual incontrovertibly demonstrated strength. Yeah.
Holly Fry
So anyway, Horatio Greenough is who you're thinking.
Tracy V. Wilson
That is exactly. Yes, that is exactly who that was. As soon as you said the name, I'm like, yep, that's who it was. So anyway, that. I don't know if we'll talk about it more on the next Unearthed. I. There was probably be other stuff to talk about by then, but I just. I found it so maddening and so frustrating and so infuriating. And the fact that they put it out on the 4th of July, well,
Holly Fry
that's the most patriotic time to release such a report.
Tracy V. Wilson
Let's celebrate America's 250 by cherry picking and bad faith. Arguing about stuff to move on to less annoying things. Often there is an art section in Unearthed. Yeah, and then we didn't have an art section this time. I know.
Holly Fry
You cheated me out of art and made me talk about toilets twice.
Tracy V. Wilson
I'm sorry, but I gave you the toilets both times. I had a few things that were that. As I was collating the list of things to talk about, there were five or six things that were under the category of art. And then as I was writing the episode, two things happened. One was I had two full episodes of content. They were all there. And then as I was doing a closer examination of the things that I had bookmarked some of them, I was like, okay, this isn't actually a discovery of something. This is like somebody auctioned something off. Oh, right. And we talk about auctions sometimes because something was newly rediscovered and then auctioned. But that was not the case with this. It was just like the story was the auction and that was it. There were a couple. There was one thing that was about a search to try to figure out the identity of a sitter in a portrait who was black.
Holly Fry
Oh yeah.
Tracy V. Wilson
And I couldn't. There did not seem to be sort of a call to action, like if you have information about this, here's who to contact. And it was also not something that had any kind of results. I felt like it was a weirdly vague talking around a thing.
Holly Fry
Gotcha.
Tracy V. Wilson
So ultimately I wound up with sort of two art things and neither of them felt like something that could. Like neither of them felt critical to talk about. We did not have some of the incredibly cool things we've talked about as art before, where like a restoration process reveals previously unknown details or somebody realizes they have a bunch of Salvador Dali work in their attic or whatever.
Holly Fry
The dream. The dream.
Tracy V. Wilson
Weird dry spell for art stuff, I guess
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Tracy V. Wilson
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Tracy V. Wilson
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Tracy V. Wilson
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Holly Fry
If we can get the curse tablet going, I want it to find the dolly that was stolen from Riker's island, which I think is destroyed. It's in the east river, but that would be like a dream.
Tracy V. Wilson
On my trip to England back in May, we went to Bath and I went to the bath. I forgot the name of the museum, but it's like the Roman Bath Museum, I think is what it's called. And there were so many curse tablets in a display there. I was so excited about it. I love curse tablets. Yeah, A random thing, very silly story.
Holly Fry
The best flavor.
Tracy V. Wilson
The John Keats letters. Yeah, I think everything that I read about the John Keats letters described him as, you know, poet, blah, blah, blah, including such works as Ode on a Grecian Urn. When I was in high school, I was on the academic competition team, which some people might call Quiz Bowl's proper name. Yeah, yeah. And so I was on the English, the team for English and the area that we really struggled with was poets, specifically British poets, for whatever reason, it was just like a hole in our education. And so every single time we were asked a question that was about which British poet, blah, blah, blah, we would say, John Keats. And if it was which poem, it was Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats. And one time we got a question that was. It had four answers. It was like, identify these four poems. And so we said Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats for all four of them. And one of them was. Right. So we got a point.
Holly Fry
That's very funny.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. I still remember it all these many, many, many years later.
Holly Fry
I'm so embarrassed by the source of my Keats knowledge. Yeah. Which is that a problem person who we didn't know was a problem person as much back then.
Tracy V. Wilson
I think I know what you're gonna say.
Holly Fry
Morrissey.
Tracy V. Wilson
Okay.
Holly Fry
Morrissey, you know, sang about. There's a song called Cemetery Gates. It's somehow sort of fighting about poets. You're very into it when you're 14, but, you know, as an adult, I'm like, oh, we're Donkadoodle. But the. The thing was, it was like he had Oscar Wilde on his side, and Keats and Yates were on the other side. And so I was very like, well, let's learn about these Keats and Yates fellas. So I know what we're up against, and that's how I learned most of my Keats information.
Tracy V. Wilson
That's so funny. I learned about a lot more British poets when I got to college.
Holly Fry
Yeah.
Tracy V. Wilson
So some of. Some of the holes were filled in somewhat. Anyway. Holly, did you have anything else that you wanted to talk about from this installment of Unearthed?
Holly Fry
You know, I'm still back on the listener mail about house tours.
Tracy V. Wilson
Oh, yeah.
Holly Fry
Cause I just think about it, and I'm like, that's ghastly. Yeah, it's ghastly, but it's. It's. I have to contextualize it. Right. Because it's not like people are running to the movies for an afternoon when they're bored.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
Or something else. Like, you gotta entertain yourself some way. And if that is a la mode at the time, then that's what you do.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
Let's go knock on people's doors and ask them to let us in and see their stuff.
Tracy V. Wilson
Well, in a lot of the places that people were touring were the sorts of places where it is an estate and there are.
Holly Fry
It's like a historic home.
Tracy V. Wilson
It's a historic home. There's a staff of housekeepers and cooks and cleaning staff and that kind of thing. So it's not just like your personal residence where you are responsible for keeping it clean and ready for guests. I am sort of reminded of how Patrick got an award at work a couple of years ago. And the acceptance of this award involved having dinner at the dean's residence of the university where he works. And I didn't really know what to expect, but it became clear over the course of the dinner that somewhere in the Dean's residence there's a commercial kitchen. Because the food being delivered to our tables was clearly not being trucked across campus.
Holly Fry
Right.
Tracy V. Wilson
Like, it was clearly there. And the ground floor of the Dean's residence was clearly a place that was for these kinds of gatherings, formal events and stuff. And so I got kind of in the mental weeds of like, what if you're the dean and you just want a sandwich at 3 in the morning? Like, is there a regular people kitchen for regular stuff? What is it like to live in this place where the ground floor is a banquet space and public restroom? And I imagine that it might be a little like if you were living in, you know, 18th century England in a manor house, there might be spaces of the house that are for the family, that are not the spaces that are seen by touring guests who are.
Holly Fry
Right.
Tracy V. Wilson
Traveling through the countryside of the Lake District or whatever.
Holly Fry
Yeah. And I mean, there are still historic estates, particularly in England, that people can tour and people are still living there.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
Holly Fry
So it happens. It's just. It's such a funny concept to me of like, I heard you have good stuff.
Tracy V. Wilson
Let me look at it.
Holly Fry
Bring it out. And like.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, yeah.
Holly Fry
I'd be like, here's my Greedo collection. Here's. Look at my shoes. I have a lot of fabric.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. Every time we're on a meeting call, not recording, because recording we have backdrops. But whenever we have a meeting call and I can see all of the Greedo around you, I'm always excited and delighted by it.
Holly Fry
It's a lot. I love Greedo. I love Rodians. They're my favorite. I don't know. I don't know why. I mean, I do know why, but it's a long and boring, very Star Warsy, nerdy thing. Just love them.
Tracy V. Wilson
Just love them.
Holly Fry
But that would be funny if people just showed up at my door. But also, we also live in a time now where you don't publish your address.
Tracy V. Wilson
Right.
Holly Fry
Like, most people do not. Which is also part of, I think, what it is Right. I'm so used to living in that, like, no concealed privacy. Privacy. You can't let anybody know where you live. And this was again, a very different time where, of course, people knew where you live. I think too about Brian's Aunt Beth, who was an amazing woman and very smart and knew a lot of the history of the area where their family lived from like the 1800s on and still lived there herself.
Tracy V. Wilson
Like, she could tell you who had
Holly Fry
lived in every house at what, you know.
Tracy V. Wilson
Oh, sure.
Holly Fry
During what years? And it's just, it's a different time when people knew all such things about. Oh, of course. That's the. I don't know the last names of people 2 doors down from me. Yeah, it's a different, different context. I need to get over it with my fear of randos coming to the house.
Tracy V. Wilson
Yes. Fortunately, you are not a. You do not own a manor in the era of great manor houses.
Holly Fry
If you come to my house, I'll make you a cocktail. We have taken in strays during snowstorms.
Tracy V. Wilson
Oh, sure.
Holly Fry
When there's been accidents. Cause we kind of live at the bottom of a shallow bowl. And sometimes people are stuck out there going, I'm gonna wait for the tow truck. And I'm like, baby, it's not coming.
Tracy V. Wilson
Come inside.
Holly Fry
Do you wanna come inside? I have all the cognac.
Tracy V. Wilson
Well, I hope whatever is happening on people's weekends that it's as good as possible. This past weekend, I spent some time in the outdoors and it was so beautiful and so refreshing. And if that is refreshing to you, I hope you get to do some of that. If you're an inside kid, whatever your inside kid things are, I hope they're great. I hope that everyone is kind to you and that you are kind to others and that everyone is also patient with themselves and with other people. We will be back on Monday with a brand new episode. And of course, tomorrow we'll have Saturday Classic. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Foreign. This is Troy Millings from Earn your Leisure. When you think about discovering small brands, what store pops in your mind? Well, it should be Walmart. Seriously, Walmart has thousands of small brands and they're all in one place. Just go online or in store, discover and shop. It could not be easier. Every one of these brands has a real story and real people behind it. They're true American success stories, and you can find them all at Walmart. Discover thousands of small brands@walmart.com today.
Podcast Advertiser/Announcer
One last thing before you go. You know that feeling when feedback, notes and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all, turning scattered inputs into ready to review work. With your permission, work and ChatGPT can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help finalize high quality documents for your team or client. Stay in control as you move from a goal to polished. Work faster with ChatGPT work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work.
Tracy V. Wilson
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Date: July 24, 2026
Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Fry
Episode Summary
This "Behind the Scenes Minis" episode offers a candid, conversational debrief on the recent installment of the "Unearthed" series — a recurring segment where the hosts, Tracy and Holly, discuss newly discovered artifacts, recent history findings, and related news. The episode zeroes in on the writing process's unique challenges this time, the meaning and misuse of the word "problematize," and some noteworthy (and missing) segments from the new Unearthed episode. The hosts also share personal anecdotes about tour traditions, their own educations, and a few nerdy asides.
Conversational, wry, geeky, and personal, with moments of frustration (at bad-faith criticism and language mangling), humor (toilet talk, quiz bowl stories), and warmth (well-wishes and hospitality stories).
This episode will be valuable to those interested in how history gets reported and interpreted, how language shifts over time, the quirks of research behind the podcast, and the oddball winsome chemistry of Holly and Tracy as they share both their peeves and enthusiasms.