Behind the Scenes Minis: Self-talk Hoax

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Episode: Behind the Scenes Minis: Self-talk Hoax
Hosts: Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson
Release Date: April 3, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode features a candid and insightful “Behind the Scenes” discussion between Holly and Tracy, following up on two recent main episodes: one about Emile Coué and auto-suggestion (self-talk), and another about the Pompey Stone historical hoax (April Fool’s Day). The hosts reflect on Coué’s legacy in positive thinking and debunking pseudoscience, share personal stories about self-talk and wellness, and explore why certain historical hoaxes, like the Pompey Stone, persist in public imagination.

---

1. Emile Coué & Self-Talk – Discussion and Debates

[02:10]

• Holly and Tracy open by recapping the episode on Emile Coué, a French psychologist famous for promoting auto-suggestion (self-talk) and its effects.
• Both highlight how Coué’s ideas were received differently in France versus the U.S., especially regarding hypnosis, with U.S. interpretations criticized as overly sensationalized.

Notable Quotes and Insights:

• Holly:

  “Meanwhile, the ideas of the Nancy school had spread in America. They were being exploited and popularized with all the claptrap and noise that accompanies bluff.” ([02:38])
  She laughs at how Americans made hypnotism seem “magical,” frustrating for those genuinely pursuing scientific inquiry.

• Tracy:

  “The New York Neurological Institute described Coué as astoundingly ignorant of all scientific research and knowledge.” ([03:00])
  They discuss how scientific communities pushed back on Coué in the U.S., highlighting debates around legitimacy.

Personal Reflections on Wellness & Self-Talk:

• Tracy reflects on a workshop from her youth that mixed Coué-like techniques with “woo woo magic.” She discarded the magical parts but found value in self-affirmation and mindfulness, especially as her mom faced an incurable neurological disease ([03:26]-[04:36]).
• Tracy:

  “In terms of making [my mom] feel more in control...and improving her outlook and her mood...it was incredibly useful. I think all of that is important…sometimes the stuff that dismisses this kind of thing as not effective underestimates how important a person's mental state is just to existing.” ([04:36]-[05:26])

• Holly agrees mental state matters, regardless of clinical outcomes:

  “Your improved mental state while that’s happening means your life feels a little better.” ([05:49])

Science vs. Pseudoscience

• The hosts acknowledge that while there’s some scientific support for positive self-talk (immune benefits, coping skills), the field is “tricky” and can easily be overtaken by hucksters or “wellness grift” ([06:58], [07:58]).
• Holly admires Coué for not being a “grifter” and not monetizing his principles heavily, which distinguishes him from today’s wellness exploitation ([07:41]-[07:58]).

Memorable Moment:

• Holly:

  “The concept of positive self-talk is pretty bolstered by science at this point...Just because you’re kind of operating at a better starting point than if you were saying negative stuff to yourself.” ([05:57]-[06:58])

---

2. Massages, Practical Benefits & Coué’s Character

[08:01]

• Tracy draws a parallel between Coué’s practical attitude and her massage school experience:

  “[The anatomy teacher] was like, look, you don’t need to be telling your clients that their massage is going to cure anything...the fact that you will feel better by itself is important.” ([08:01]-[09:05])

• Holly jokes about her own inability to relax in massages, leading Tracy to offer a Coué-inspired auto-suggestion:

  “I am not responsible for everything in the world.” ([09:32]-[09:40])

Celebrating Coué

• They gush about Coué’s cheerful persona and iconic mustache, suggesting he “could potentially unseat Pierre de Coubertin as best mustache on the episode” ([09:48]-[10:07]).
• Holly:

  “He looks charming as heck…like Santa and Colonel Sanders had a very smiley baby.” ([10:12])

---

3. Practical Takeaways on Self-Talk

• Both hosts agree that experimenting with auto-suggestion and positive self-talk is harmless and can be beneficial.

  “Couldn't hurt, may or may not help, but it’s probably not going to do any harm if you just want to try it and see if it works for you.” ([10:36]-[11:00])

• Holly:

  “It helps me feel a little better about myself and the world and that’s good enough for me. It doesn’t have to be more than that.” ([11:37])

---

4. The Pompey Stone: A Lighthearted Hoax

[15:13]

• They pivot to the April Fool’s discussion of the Pompey Stone—a fake “historical” artifact that fooled earnest historians into elaborate speculations.
• Tracy reflects on its harmlessness:

  “Very little pain, kind of a whoops, but not anything evil.” ([15:23])

• They joke about the increasingly silly and detailed stories attached to the stone, with Holly calling one scholar’s work “Holmes fanfic.” ([16:01]-[16:08])

The Power of Wanting to Believe

• They discuss how people rationalized inconsistencies to maintain belief in the stone, reflecting a human “desire to want to believe things.” ([17:18]-[17:23])

Memorable Anecdote:

• Tracy recounts how, as a child, she found a skull near her house and hoped it was a dinosaur (it wasn’t), illustrating the allure of “wondrous discoveries” and believing in extraordinary explanations ([18:21]-[19:12]).

---

5. How Hoaxes Persist and Why We Misremember

• The hosts empathize with how errors or hoaxes linger, since information isn't always readily updated—and we tend to simplify lessons for kids or ourselves.
• Tracy:

  “If you never take a more advanced anatomy class, you just think of it as a membrane. It’s fine.” ([23:46])

---

6. Closing Thoughts

• The episode closes with Holly and Tracy wishing their listeners well, regardless of how they feel about April Fool's pranks, and looking ahead to upcoming episodes ([23:48]).

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Emile Coué & Hypnosis in France vs. U.S.: [02:10]-[03:26]
• Personal Workshop Experience and Mental State: [03:26]-[05:26]
• The Science/Critique of Self-Talk: [05:57]-[06:58]
• Coué’s Integrity and Wellness Grifts: [07:41]-[08:01]
• Massage School Analogy & Practical Benefits: [08:01]-[09:05]
• Celebrating Coué’s Persona: [09:48]-[10:42]
• Affirmation Experimentation Encouraged: [10:36]-[11:00]
• The Pompey Stone Hoax: [15:13]-[17:23]
• How Belief Persists / Childhood Discoveries: [17:18]-[19:12]
• Misremembering & Updating Historical “Facts”: [22:40]-[23:46]

---

Notable Quotes

• On wellness grift:
  Tracy: “No grift for him.” ([08:01])
• On historical hoaxes:
  Holly: “It really speaks to the human desire to want to believe things.” ([17:18])
• On positive self-talk:
  Holly: “It doesn’t have to be more than that.” ([11:37])

---

Tone and Style

The conversation is lively, thoughtful, filled with personal anecdotes, and gently humorous. Holly and Tracy maintain their signature blend of skepticism and empathy as they peel back the layers of historical hoaxes and self-help history.

---

Summary Prepared For:
Listeners seeking a full recap and insights from this “Behind the Scenes Minis” episode without the ads. This summary highlights all significant content and flows naturally for easy consumption.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an I Heart podcast, Guaranteed human brought to you in part by Vital Farms. I love eggs. I turn to them all the time as a quick and easy way to start a meal. And Vital Farms eggs are brought to you by hens that have access to fresh air and sunshine, and you can actually look up on the carton and see the farm that those eggs came from. Vital Farms is also a certified bee corporation with a purpose to improve the lives of people, animals and the planet through food. We look for the black egg carton in the egg aisle and visit vitalfarms.com to learn more. Vital Farms Good Eggs no shortcuts with

[Vital Farms Ad Voice]

Vrbill's last minute deals, you can save over $50 on your spring getaway. So whether it's a Mountain Escape city break or a week at the beach, there's still time to get great discounts. Book your next day now. Average savings $72 select homes only this

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

week with digital coupons at Safeway and Albertsons, get beef rib roast for $7.97 per pound. Member price with minimum purchase of $50 or transaction exclusions apply. See Store for details and Broccoli, cauliflower or russet potatoes are 97 cents per pound. Member price limit 6 pounds plus. Selected sizes and varieties of Lucerne butter cheese or Philadelphia cream cheese are $1.97 each. Member price. Visit safeway or albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.

[Apple Card Ad Voice]

This message is brought to you by Apple Card Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases or wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com welcome to Stuff you

[Holly Fry]

MISSED in History Class, a production of iHeartradio. Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

We talked about Emile Kuei and Auto Suggestion this week.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I had a lot of feelings.

[Holly Fry]

I knew you would. I also just thought there were a couple of fun quotes that I came across while researching.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

One was written by that biographer of Kue that we mentioned, and it is the French point of view criticizing the way Americans wrote about hypnosis.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

And he says, meanwhile, the ideas of the Nazi school had spread in America. They were being exploited and popularized with all the claptrap and Noise that accompanies bluff. And I just loved that. I was like, yeah, that's true. Because people were like, hypnotism, it's magical. And they were like, we are trying to do science. You're messing it up. You're making it harder.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Fascinating. On the flip side of that, there was in that criticism of COUE in the US particularly from the medical community. The New York Neurological Institute described KUA as astoundingly ignorant of all scientific research and knowledge. So, yeah. Point of view changes everything. Yeah. Start in with your many thoughts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Well, so when I was in high school, my mom took me to a workshop. I'm not gonna say the specific name because I don't wanna prompt like discourse. Right. But a lot of it had a lot of stuff in common with what Kuei was writing about.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A significant part of it did not and was way more woo woo magic. Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Which would have made him absolutely irate, I think.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. And so that part, like the whole woo woo magic part, I've pretty much jettisoned out of my mind. But that were more about like the, the more self affirmation.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Positive thinking, like that kind of stuff and some other aspects that had to do with basically, basically meditation and mindfulness. All of that I have found very useful to me for my whole life in the decades since then. When my mom first went to this workshop, she we've talked about on the show before, has an incurable, essentially untreatable, progressive neurological disease.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And this was happening when I was in high school. She had not progressed nearly as far as she has today. And this, the stuff that we learned in this class did absolutely zero to slow the progression of her disease. Right. But in terms of making her feel more in control in a situation that she had no control over and improving her outlook and her mood and just having a better mental state in the middle of all that, it was incredibly useful. And I think all of that is like important. And some of the stuff that dismisses this kind of thing as not effective. I think sometimes kind of underestimates how important a person's mental state is just to existing.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Like you could do a bunch of research about does a person's mental state affect how quickly they recover? Maybe that's maybe yes, maybe no. Whatever. But like, you also have the part where your improved mental state while that's happening means your life feels a little better.

[Holly Fry]

Exactly.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

While it's happening. And that's also important. Like I don't. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Holly Fry]

I think, I mean, the Concept of positive self talk is pretty bolstered by science at this point.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right.

[Holly Fry]

Like psychiatrists, psychologists will encourage you to use positive self talk as a way whether or not it improves anything, like health wise, it can improve the way you deal with the world, which is likely to have an overall improvement on a lot of other parts of your life. Just because you're kind of operating at a better starting point than if you were kind of down in the dumps and saying a lot of negative stuff to yourself. There are. I didn't dig into them. Cause they get really heady and really fast and it's a little bit hard to draw direct conclusions. But there are a lot of studies about not necessarily curing anything or fixing any malady, but like your immune system getting a boost from like a positive attitude and positive self talk. And it is tricky because it is stuff we don't always understand how it's exactly functioning.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right, right.

[Holly Fry]

Which does make it very open for people to be like a little hokey about the whole thing. And it kind of robs the legitimate part of it of its, you know, esteem because it has now gotten lumped in with a lot of other things. Hypnotism kind of is the same. Right. There are definitely studies of like smoking cessation.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh sure.

[Holly Fry]

And people, you know, having a better, more effective outcome and being able to stop smok if they are getting hypnosis for that versus not again though. That does all. There are other factors like who you are, what your brain is open to. Yeah, it's tricky.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

But I do love that Emile Kuay does not appear to have been a jerk.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I thought too. And I mean, it seems like he didn't want people really making a ton of money off of what he was doing. Like he would have been opposed to, to the world of wellness grift that we live in.

[Holly Fry]

Very much so. He did not believe in any of that.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

No grift for him. He reminds me in some ways of many, many, many years ago when I was in massage school. There were people in the class that would say stuff that was just not founded in reality at all. It was kind of frustrating. And we had an anatomy and physiology teacher who was a nurse and was very practical about things and was like, look, you don't need to be telling your clients that their massage is going to like cure anything that they have going on because just getting the massage feels good. I know you are not a fan of massage, Holly. I love a massage. And he was like, get a massage you will. You'll feel better.

[Holly Fry]

And like, that is reason enough.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That's enough. It's. That's enough. You don't need to be saying that, you know, your massage will help all of these other things. There is evidence for some stuff, but, like, the fact that you will feel better by itself is important.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The massage feels good to me. Yeah. The problem is that my brain gets real panicky that I am too relaxed and something bad will happen and I can't handle it. I don't know why I feel responsible for everything that goes on around me in the world, but I apparently do all the time. There's no reason for this. I'm not an oldest child.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Have you tried some auto suggestion? I am not responsible for everything in the world.

[Holly Fry]

I'm not responsible for all of it. Here is the other thing that I would like to discuss, and it's very important.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

And I especially like it because Emile Kuei appears to have been delightful. I think he could potentially unseat Pierre de Coubertin as best mustache on the episode. And then it will be someone who I don't think was a misogynist jerk.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, yeah, Great.

[Holly Fry]

Let's celebrate him. When you see pictures of him.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Nice. Nice.

[Holly Fry]

He looks so deli. He looks happy all the time. Not that everybody has to be, but like, he has just that sweet countenance. His smile is adorable. He looks charming as heck. Oh, sure. It's kind of like Santa and Colonel Sanders had a very smiley baby. He's so cute. He's so cute. Okay. And I. I love this.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I will see if I can find some pictures of him that we are allowed to use and we'll put it on our Netflix.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, I think probably there are. There are some. Some usable pictures. He is very, very. He's very sweet faced, like the kind of person. There are probably people who just by being in the room with him, felt better. And therefore, you cannot measure the efficacy of his method because it's like, well, you were with Emile Kuei. Of course you felt better. He looks very reassuring, brightening up the room. Just a charming little sweetheart. Everyone, every description of him, even people that wanted to debunk him, talked about how charming and kind he was, which is kind of a good measure of a man. Even if you don't agree with them, you still think they're a good guy. Yeah, that's not bad at all. So hopefully, if anyone out there is dealing with anything that perhaps could be helped by out of suggestion, like I said at the end of that episode, couldn't hurt, may or may not help, but it's probably not going to do any harm if you just want to try it and see if it works for you. You know, I'm a believer in positive self talk. It's a thing I've had to learn in recent it does seem to help me. I don't know that it would cure anything, but it helps me feel a little better about myself and the world and that's good enough for me. It doesn't have to be more than that.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Did you know that you can trace the history of teriyaki glazes all the way back to Edo period Japan? So that delicious combination of soy, mirin and sake that creates that incredible umami flavor that we all love so much. Delicious. Recently, True Nature Meats sent me their Japanese teriyaki chicken to try. I just heated it up for a couple minutes in the skillet and I served it with some sauteed vegetables from my garden and it was so incredibly delicious and kind of felt like I was taking a little walk through culinary history. Here's what's also pretty True Nature Meats has its own unique history. It has been supplying the finest restaurants globally for more than 30 years. Chances are you have eaten their chicken before and you just didn't know it. If this all sounds like an interesting walk down culinary history for you as well, head to TrueNatureMeats.com history get 20% off +free New York strip, Brazilian garlic beef and Mediterranean chicken. Offer ends soon. TrueNatureMeats.com history give it a taste.

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

Hey Donald, really flying on that treadmill.

[T-Mobile Ad Voice 2]

I'm trying to run as fast AS T mobile. 5G home Internet, Zach.

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

Well, you better pick it up because now T Mobile has the fastest 5G home Internet according to Ookla Speed Test.

[Holly Fry]

Really?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

How's this?

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

T Mobile's faster than that, bud. Speed up. Plus they've got a five year price guarantee. Come on.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Faster.

[T-Mobile Ad Voice 2]

How can I go any faster?

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

Channel the speed of t mobile. 5G home Internet. Think 100 meter dash fast. Think drag racing fast. Think speed skating fast. Now let's bump up your speed a notch.

[T-Mobile Ad Voice 2]

Hey, whoa, whoa. That's too fast.

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

You'll be all right.

[Apple Card Ad Voice]

Just walk it off.

[T-Mobile Ad Voice 2]

Get on the fast track. T Mobile now has the fastest 5G home Internet. And for a limited time, it starts at just 30 bucks a month with autopay and a voice line. Plus a five year price guarantee plus taxes and fees. Fastest according to Ooklo Speed test intelligence data. Second half 2025. All rights reserved. Guarantee for monthly price of 5G. Internet data on eligible plans, 5G exclusions

[Liberty Mutual Ad Voice]

and details@t mobile.com Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up, which could help your driving. Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What has keys but can't open? Locks? If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty Mutual AD. Now 12 months. A towel piano. Enjoy being fully alert.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Liberty. Liberty.

[Holly Fry]

Liberty.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Liberty.

[WSECU Ad Voice]

WSECU isn't just one of Washington's best credit unions. We're a Forbes Best in State five years running. Why? Because we put you first. Lower fees, early paydays, financial guidance and service second to none. As a member owned cooperative, we love Washington as much as you do. From the Olympic mountains to the rolling Palouse. Join us and discover how much we care about your financial well being. Because what we really do best is invest in you. Visit wsecu.org today to learn more. Washington let's Credit Union.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We talked about the Pompey Stone for an April Fool's Day episode with just a very low stakes historical hoax or prank.

[Holly Fry]

Very little pain, kind of a whoops, but not anything evil.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I found it very silly. And it became more silly the longer it went on. Like every, every new person who wrote a book just assuming that it was a historical relic that dated back to 1520 got a little funnier to me.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And then the fact that the last major publication on it was so detailed and so full of speculation, it was like 13 pages of speculating about stuff.

[Holly Fry]

I wrote a note and called it the Holmes fanfic because it was kind

[Tracy V. Wilson]

of a weird thing about making up

[Holly Fry]

a person that this was about with a shocking amount of like, believed details about that person's life. I was like, right, Were you just feeling creative, sir?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It's true that those are a lot of things that all happened. There really were a lot of expeditions that came to North America. There really were a lot of people from Spain on them. There really were a lot of people who for whatever means or reason went to live within an indigenous community. None of that meant that the stone was connected to any of it. No. I think the fact that while this stone was kind of a public curiosity and people were taking like a nail or a file to like clean the inscriptions out, that became an explanation for why it didn't look that old.

[Holly Fry]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Because it doesn't really look that old. And so people were like, well, of course, like, in the process of cleaning it up, this whole inscription has been freshened up. Like, that must be why. But that was. That was not why.

[Holly Fry]

It really speaks to the human desire to want to believe things.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Something that. I think Schoolcraft is. The person who said this craft, whose writing style was incredibly circular. Everything that he said took twice as long as it really needed to was very roundabout. But he was sort of saying that, like, one of the characteristics of the age that he was living in was turning any local artifact into a wonder, and that this had been done with the Pompey stone. Like, people sort of treated it as this wondrous thing, which led to a lot of people being overly credulous about it, I guess.

[Holly Fry]

I mean, there's also just the. Like, it's exciting to consider something like that. Like, can you believe that farmer just accidentally found this amazing thing? And I understand the impulse to jump on the bandwagon and get bullied about

[Tracy V. Wilson]

it, but when I was a kid, we had, like, the house that we lived in had a small amount of land. It was like one and a third acres or something like that. And so there was the house, and then there was a hilly wooded area. And then at the bottom was where we had a garden that for most of my childhood, we, like, we grew all of the vegetables that we ate. And if I'm remembering correctly, it was somewhere in that stretch of land or nearby my brother or I. One of us. The details are very fuzzy. Someone found a skull.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, as you do.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And, boy, did I want that skull to be a dinosaur. It was definitely not a dinosaur. I think it was a horse or a cow or maybe a deer.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Not remotely a dinosaur at all. But I remember in my very small childhood being like, but what if it's a dinosaur? Should we get someone to check if it's a dinosaur? It was definitely not a dinosaur.

[Holly Fry]

Yes, but you were a child.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yes, I was. I was a child. I mean, we also lived in an area where people would sometimes find, like, arrowheads or other projectile points or dinosaurs. Maybe dinosaurs somewhere. Definitely not that skull. I think my dad has started listening to the podcast. He may now fill in the gaps of my memory about the skull. I could be completely misremembering it from my very small childhood. Patrick grew up in New York, but much, much farther west in New York than where this happened. And so I asked him if he had Ever heard of it when. Cause I didn't quite real. I hadn't yet visualized the map where these places were on the map. And so I just. The names were reminiscent enough of some of the places that he did live very close to that I thought it might have been in his area. And I was like, did you ever heard. And he said, absolutely not. I have no idea what you're talking about. So even if it did make kind of a splash at the time, it's maybe outside of that immediate area of New York, maybe not as known, based on the sample of one person that I asked.

[Holly Fry]

Right. And also, I mean, to be fair, it was kind of like a. Ooh, this is so cool. This is so cool. It's not as cool as we thought, you guys. Let's just.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I like that. It did seem like he did not get a sudden wave of hate mail after debunking the pompystone and had instead somebody immediately corroborate, like, yeah, you're right, it's a fake.

[Holly Fry]

It is tricky, too. Like, even the people that invoked this as evidence of something, they wanted to be true after it had been debunked. I mean, I'm willing to give them grace because they didn't have things where they could just look it up and check if there were additional pieces of information. But it is quite funny how long that went on. Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Well. And I think at least two of the three people that we mentioned including it in stuff we're specifically writing about, like Catholic history. And. And so it would make sense to. If you had previously heard this thing about how there was, you know, a Spanish Catholic in New York in 1520, then especially if you just latched onto that might not go verify whether it has been debunked and the. However many years since you heard about it. I've honestly done that on this show, relied on something that I learned in childhood that is no longer accurate.

[Holly Fry]

I mean, I think most of us have things that we learned at an early age or at some point, not even necessarily an early age, in college, in high school, as an adult, that it turns out that people now know are not true, but that information doesn't automatically filter to everybody. If you're not.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Out there going, hey, was that debunked? You.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

You never know. Well, and there's also the stuff that you learn is like a much more simplistic way. Yeah. That. Then, like, the thing that always I remember is, like, when I was a child, I learned that your cells have a membrane around them.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And then when I got. I was an adult and I was in massage school and our massage school anatomy technique book was one that was used in nursing schools a lot. And I learned that this membrane that I had learned about was something called a lipid bilayer. Not remotely what I had imagined by the word membrane, not a sack.

[Holly Fry]

Well, when you're a school kid, right, like we all remember the exercise. Draw the cell and its component parts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Holly Fry]

And you started with like an oblong circle usually, and then put the pieces inside of it. So I mean, that makes. That makes sense.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Totally appropriate to teach the simplest, the simpler explanation of something to younger kids and then to build on that later.

[Holly Fry]

Or not. If you don't go to massage school, you may never.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

If you never take a more advanced anatomy class, you just think of it as a membrane. It's fine. If you love April Fool's Day pranks, I hope there were good pranks for you this past April Fool's Day. And if you hate that, I hope nobody messed with you. And I hope that no one fell for fake April Fool's Day articles on the Internet and then felt bad about it. Whatever is coming up for you this weekend, I hope that is also great. We will be back on Monday with a brand new episode, I think on nothing prank related. We'll be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow. 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 show. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.