Stuff You Missed In History Class

The story of how strawberries went from small forage item to one of the world’s most popular fruits – though they're technically not a true fruit – involves lots of crossbreeding experimentation, as you might expect, but also a bit of spy craft. Research: “A Transatlantic Tango: The Story of the Strawberry. Royal Horticultural Society. https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own/features/history-of-the-strawberry#:~:text=It%20is%20hard%20to%20believe,back%20on%20fortifications%20near%20Concepci%C3%B3n.  Allen, Mike. “The 18th-Century Spy Who Gave Us Big Strawberries.” Atlas Obscura. Nov. 16, 2017. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/big-strawberries-spy-chile-france  Barnes, Monica. “Frezier, Amédée François (1682-1773).” American Museum of Natural History. January 2008. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280567727_Frezier_Amedee_Francois_1682-1773 Darrow, George M. “The Strawberry: History, Breeding and Physiology.&

Dorothy Arzner wasn’t the first female film director in the U.S., but she was really the only one working in the studio system during most of the period that’s known as the Hollywood Golden Age. Her short career was still incredibly prolific. Research: "Dorothy Arzner." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, Gale, 2022. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631009688/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=19d5d3af. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025. Bryant, Sara. “Dorothy Arzner’s Talkies: Gender, Technologies of Voice, and the Modernist Sensorium.” Modern Fiction Studies , Summer 2013, Vol. 59, No. 2, Women's Fiction, New Modernist Studies, and Feminism (Summer 2013) Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26287651 Casella, Donna R. “What Women Want: The Complex World of Dorothy Arzner and Her Cinematic Women.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media , SPRING & FALL 2009, Vol. 50, No. 1/2 (SPRING & FALL 2009). https://www.jstor.org/stable

This 2017 episode covers the early days of Hollywood, and its reputation for debauchery. When a high-profile director was murdered, it added to that image, and revealed that Taylor, like so many in Hollywood, had lots of secrets.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy talks about the difficulty of finding English-language writing about another strike she'd like to cover. Holly talks about why Kurt Vonnegut appeals so deeply to teenagers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly is joined by guest host Bryan Young for a live show at Indiana Comic Con, focused on the life and work of the author Kurt Vonnegut, known for his dark humor and dystopian visions of the future.  Research: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Kurt Vonnegut". Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Feb. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kurt-Vonnegut “Kurt Vonnegut Lecture.” Case Western Reserve University. 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_RUgnC1lm8&t=551s Manikowski, Amy. “The Legacy of Kurt Vonnegut.” Biblio. https://www.biblio.com/blog/2022/11/the-legacy-of-kurt-vonnegut “Meet Kurt Vonnegut.” Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. https://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/biography/ Shields, Charles J. “And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, a Life.” St. Martin’s Griffin. 2012. Strand, Ginger. “How Jane Vonnegut Made Kurt Vonnegut a Writer.” The New Yorker. Dec. 3, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-jane-vonnegut-made-

The 1946 Oakland General Strike was part of a massive wave of strikes that took place in the U.S. in 1945 and 1946. Over two days in Oakland, California, and the surrounding area, thousands of strikers shut the city down. Research: “Oakland General Strike (1946) (Part 2).” From Golden Lands, Working Hands. Part Seven: We Called It a Work Holiday. Written by Fred Glass. CFT. Via YouTube. 7/23/2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-yFDzKzLfE “Oakland General Strike (1946).” From Golden Lands, Working Hands. Part Seven: We Called It a Work Holiday. Written by Fred Glass. CFT. Via YouTube. 7/22/2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfUmIeCTJTA “World War II Homefront Era: 1940s: Post War Workers Protest Salary Cuts & Layoffs.” Picture This: California Perspectives on American History. Oakland Museum of California. https://picturethis.museumca.org/pictures/oakland-general-strike Barbash, Jack. “Chapter 6: Unions and Rights in the Space Age.” U.S. Department of

This late 2021 episode covers a strike in Flint, Michigan, which was at the heart of auto manufacturing for General Motors in 1936. And while the strike was largely centered around Flint, it also involved workers at GM factories all over the U.S.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy discuss the creepy nature of the Children's Morality Code project. Tracy covers the varied conflicts that Mary Hunter Austin had with numerous people. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mary Hunter Austin was a U.S. writer known for walking throughout the American Southwest. But her life of activism was far more complicated than brief bios usually  mention.  Research: "Mary Hunter Austin." Encyclopedia of the American West, edited by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, Macmillan Reference USA, 1996. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2330100082/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=6a4f821e. Accessed 26 Feb. 2025. "Mary Hunter Austin." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, vol. 23, Gale, 2003. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631008133/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=ceca42e0. Accessed 26 Feb. 2025. #0840: Willa Cather to Mary Hunter Austin, June 26 [1926]. https://cather.unl.edu/writings/letters/let0840 Austin, Mary Hunter. “Earth Horizon.” Houghton Mifflin. 1932. Austin, Mary Hunter. “Experiences Facing Death.” Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1931. Blend, Benay. “Mary Austin and the Wes

In 1916, the National Institution for Moral Instruction had a contest to see who could come up with the best morality code. For kids. Evolving views on childhood, child labor laws, patriotism, and eugenics influenced this effort. Research: “$5000 Prize Winners Announced Oct. 1” Dean Bennion in Race.” Daily Utah Chronicle. April 23, 1917. https://www.newspapers.com/image/289878324/?match=1&terms=%22Morality%20Code%22%20winner “93 Virtues Make the Perfect Man.” Tulsa World. Dec. 22, 1919. https://www.newspapers.com/image/884436330/?match=1&terms=Iowa%20%22character%20education%22%20 Brimi, Hunter. “Academic Instructors or Moral Guides? Moral Education in America and the Teacher’s Dilemma.” The Clearing House, vol. 82, no. 3, 2009, pp. 125–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30181093 Character Education Inquiry. “Studies in the nature of Character.” New York. Macmillan. 1928. https://archive.org/details/studiesinnatureo0001ch

This 2019 episode looks at Couney's incubator sideshows of premature babies. This is complicated; Couney made money from this, and his medical experience was questionable. But premature babies weren’t getting a lot of care otherwise.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy notes the wild array of incorrect information that circulates about Lillian Exum Clement. Then she and Holly talk about childhood reading habits. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gertrude Chandler Warner's most well known writing is "The Boxcar Children." But that series is far from the only professional writing Chandler did – she made a career as a writer while also teaching elementary school for decades.  Research: Abate, M.A. Not Hoovervilles, But Hooch: Gertrude Chandler Warner’s The Boxcar Childrenand The Roaring Twenties. Child Lit Educ 47, 257–266 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-016-9275-5 Braccidiferro, Gail. “The Boxcar Children: A Museum Caper.” New York Times. June 20, 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/nyregion/the-boxcar-children-a-museum-caper.html Crowe, Chris. “Young Adult Literature: Rescuing Reluctant Readers.” The English Journal, vol. 88, no. 5, 1999, pp. 113–16. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/821799 Ellsworth, Mary Ellen. “Gertrude Chandler Warner and the Boxcar Children.” Albert Whitman & Company. Morton Grove, Illinois. 1997. Lindberg, Mary Anne. “Su

Lillian Exum Clement Stafford was one of the first women in North Carolina to practice law, and the first woman in the South to be elected to a state legislature. Research: “Letter from Elias Eller Stafford to Lillian Exum Clement, 1920.” North Carolina Archives. https://fromthepage.com/ncdcr-ncarchives/women-s-history-v5/pc-2804-lillian-exum-papers-b2f25-corr-eller-1920 “Lillian Exum Clement." NCpedia. Accessed on February 19th, 2025. https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/lillian-exum-clement. “Public laws and resolutions passed by the General Assembly at its session of 1925.” https://archive.org/details/publiclawsresolu1925nort/ “Wouldn’t Vote?” Asheville Citizen-Times. 11/3/1920. https://www.newspapers.com/image/196317737/ Asheville Citizen. “Society and Personals.” 4/5/1917. https://www.newspapers.com/image/200917154/ Asheville Citizen. “Speakers Heard at Suffrage Meeting.” 3/17/1916. https://www.newspapers.com/image/78407560/ Asheville Cit

This 2020 episode covers the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The Lost Cause was a distortion of the history of the U.S. Civil War that’s still affecting the world today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy shares issues she has with overly reductive internet videos that misrepresent the story of nixtamalization. She and Holly also discuss the various ways they like to eat corn.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode on the pellagra epidemic focuses on its prevalence in the U.S. in the early 20th century. Some of the scientific work done to understand it involves self-experimentation, and some of it is ethically problematic by today’s standards. Research: Akst, Daniel. “Pellagra: The Forgotten Plague.” American Heritage. December 2000. https://www.americanheritage.com/pellagra-forgotten-plague Baird Rattini, Kristin. “A Deadly Diet.” Discover. Mar2018, Vol. 39 Issue 2, p70-72. Bridges, Kenneth. “Pellagra.” Encyclopedia of Arkansas. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/pellagra-2230/ Clay, Karen et al. “The Rise and Fall of Pellagra in the American South.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 23730. 2018. http://www.nber.org/papers/w23730 Cleveland Clinic. “Pellagra.” 07/18/2022. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23905-pellagra Crabb, Mary Katherine. “An Epidemic of Pride: Pellagra and the Culture of the A

The pellagra epidemic of the early 20th century may have been the deadliest epidemic of a specific nutrient deficiency in U.S. history. Part one covers what it is, its appearance in 19th-century Italy, and the first reports of it in the U.S.  Research: Akst, Daniel. “Pellagra: The Forgotten Plague.” American Heritage. December 2000. https://www.americanheritage.com/pellagra-forgotten-plague Baird Rattini, Kristin. “A Deadly Diet.” Discover. Mar2018, Vol. 39 Issue 2, p70-72. Bridges, Kenneth. “Pellagra.” Encyclopedia of Arkansas. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/pellagra-2230/ Clay, Karen et al. “The Rise and Fall of Pellagra in the American South.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 23730. 2018. http://www.nber.org/papers/w23730 Cleveland Clinic. “Pellagra.” 07/18/2022. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23905-pellagra Crabb, Mary Katherine. “An Epidemic of Pride: Pellagra and the Culture of the

This 2020 episode covers the first protest march on Washington, D.C., led by Jacob Sechler Coxey in the 1890s. His plan was job creation for the nation's unemployed population with projects that would build the country's infrastructure.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly talks about how impossible it is to build a spite house now, thanks to municipal building codes. She also shares some uncertain stories of the childhood of Robert Morris.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.