Something You Should Know - How to Preserve Your Collectibles, Heirlooms and Family Treasures & The Story of Thanksgiving

Episode Date: November 19, 2018

Can certain sounds actually be good for your health? Yes, according to some important research. From a purring cat to the sound of a harp to crashing waves – certain sounds can have a very positive effect. We begin this episode with an explanation of which sounds do what. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/04/harp-music-blood-pressure-icu-patients-pain_n_1734615.html Somewhere in your home are some valuable family treasures or heirlooms that mean something special to you. Maybe it’s your mother’s wedding dress, your old record collection or a prized piece of old furniture. The enemy of all these things is time. All these valuables will deteriorate over time if you don’t care for them properly. Joining me with some real help is Don Williams. Don was the senior conservator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and he is author of the book Saving Stuff… How to Care for and Preserve Your Collectibles, Heirlooms, and Other Prized Possessions (https://amzn.to/2RWnW6L). No one knows better how to keep your stuff in excellent shape as it marches through time. While Thanksgiving is an important American holiday, much of the story we've been told is made up myth. Peter Mancall, professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California is an expert on early America. He joins me to explain the real origins of Thanksgiving, what the first Thanksgiving was really like and how it came to be a national holiday that ended up being celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. While some people seem to like to be touched more than others, physical human touch does seem to have real benefits for everyone. Listen as we explore some of the remarkable, positive effects touching has for children and adults. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mind-body-connection/201309/why-we-all-need-touch-and-be-touched This Week's Sponsors -LinkedIn Talent For $50 off your first job posting go to www.LinkedIn.com/podcast -Robinhood Go to http:something.robinhood.com to get your free account and receive a share of stock! -BetterHelp For 10% off your first month of counseling go to www.BetterHelp.com/something, promo code SOMETHING -Stitch Fix For an additional 25% off when you keep all the items in your box go to www.StitchFix.com/something -Madison Reed For 10% off plus free shipping on your first order go to www.Madison-Reed.com/something Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, certain sounds can actually have health benefits. From a purring cat, waterfalls and crashing waves. Then you'll get some important ways to preserve your family treasures. From your vinyl record collection, grandma's wedding dress, even old furniture. One of the things that really comes up is the whole notion of oiling and feeding your furniture. Well, furniture is dead and wood is dead and you don't need to oil it or feed it. Slathering ointments of

one kind or another on it, those are just a catastrophe waiting to happen. Plus, the importance of being touched by another human being and the fascinating history of Thanksgiving and why the Indians and Pilgrims got together in the first place. So one of the things that we know that happens is that each of them, that's the pilgrims on the one hand and the natives on the other hand, each of them seem pretty eager to trade with the other. So it's more a moment of, hey, what can you do for me? All this today on Something You Should Know.

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast

that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more.

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Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi. I do get emails fairly frequently, actually, from people asking about links and promo codes for certain sponsors of this podcast. So I like to mention from time to time that all of the links and the promo codes and everything you would need, I put in the show notes for each episode where those commercials appear. So if one of our advertisers sounds interesting to you, and I hope they do, you'll find the link to them and the promo codes that we use all in the show notes. First up today, I know you've heard that music

is good for you. It can soothe the savage beast. But did you know that other sounds are good for you too? A recent study of sounds has shed some light on some very specific healing powers of certain sounds. Here are a few. A purring cat can heal broken bones because they purr at the optimal frequency for bone stimulation. That purr can actually help strengthen bones and speed the healing of fractures. Studies are underway to see if purring can also help prevent osteoporosis. The sound of a harp can help with heart problems.

Vibration from harp music has been found to reduce blood pressure, calm the nervous system, and normalize irregular heartbeats. Some operating rooms even play harp music during delicate heart surgeries. Waterfalls. The sound of a waterfall helps soothe pain. Patients with chronic pain exposed to sounds of rushing water experienced a significant drop in stress hormones and less discomfort. The sound of ocean waves has the ability to wash away sadness and stress. It's the ultimate form of white noise and it induces serenity.

Students who listen to ocean sounds had less anxiety and less depression. And that is something you should know. If I were to walk into your home and looked around, which would be rather rude of me, but if I did that, I bet I would find stuff, old stuff, your mother's wedding dress, an old record collection, a photo album, your grandfather's military uniform, souvenirs, old furniture, the list is endless. Our attics and basements and closets are filled with this old stuff. Some of it may be valuable. Much of it may just have sentimental value. And as you know, the enemy to this stuff is the passage of time. It takes a real toll.

So here with some help to fight that enemy is Don Williams. Don was the senior conservator at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and he is author of the book Saving Stuff, How to Care for and Preserve Your Collectibles, Heirlooms, and Other Prize Possessions. Hey, Don, so why do you suppose it is we save all this stuff? I mean, I have stuff. I have stuff from my parents and even my grandparents and other relatives. I'm never going to use this stuff, but I can't get rid of

it. I don't know why. I'm never going to use it, but I can't get rid of it. Why do we do this? Why do people collect stuff? People save stuff because it is important to them at some emotional or psychological or historical level. Not everything is of great financial importance. Believe me, I know I've got a lot of things that I own that are important to me and, you know, maybe one or two other people on earth because of their esoteric nature, but they're never really going to be financially important. But in part, I preserve things because they reflect the stories of who we are as people, the stories of our family, a particular moment in time, in history. So the reasons why people save are varied.

You know, over my lifetime, I've saved, you know, three or four front pages of newspapers. For example, on 9-11 was being won. I saved the newspaper the day the Berlin Wall fell because I thought that these were really momentous events that were important to me. I think important in a larger context as well, but a lot of times we all save things simply because they're important to us, and there's no other reason beyond that. It's, in a sense, an extension of who we are as people. Well, it's interesting that we keep this stuff because we say it's valuable, but we tend to keep it in like the worst places. You know, we keep stuff out of the way in attics, which get, you know, really hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Or we keep

things in the basement, which can get wet and moldy and damp. So we keep our valuables in probably the worst place. You're right about that. So let's start with an example of something that you think is a pretty common problem. All your years at the Smithsonian, people have probably asked you an awful lot of questions. What are typically the things people ask most and your solutions? Well, I'll give one that has turned up time and time again, and that would be the family photo album. Very often, if we put them in an album at all, in my parents' case, they just sort of stuffed them in shoeboxes until they all got full, and then they got a new shoebox

out. To preserve the family photo album, you would want to get an archival album. By that, I mean one that's made with materials that are less damaging to the photographs and will last longer. Usually that includes rag paper pages, which is going to last for just about ever. And then rather than gluing the photos to the page, which is a very common thing, it's better to glue corner tabs down and then just simply slide the photograph into the corner tabs that are glued on the page to hold the photograph in place without running the risk of damaging it by gluing it or ungluing it.

And if you have a good sound photo album made of good materials, and you can keep it closed except when you're looking at it, and keep it high enough off the floor that it's not going to get flooded if there's a flood, and not in the attic, so it's not going to be baked. Just on a shelf in a dark closet, something like that, a photo album will last for thousands of years. A lot of us have old vinyl record collections, even though some people don't even have a turntable on which to play them anymore, but there are a lot of record collections sitting in homes all over the world. What is the best way to preserve them? Well, I have an old

record collection having been on radio while I was in college. I have 3,000 of them sitting around here. And really the most important things are to, A, get them clean. Make sure that there's no debris and dirt in the grooves. And in our book we describe some various methods for doing that so that the particulate matter isn't in there to scratch them. You should put records themselves in an archival glassine sleeve, which is pretty common, at least it was common, for really high-end audiophile records back in the day

when people still played phonograph records. And if the album cover itself is especially important, you probably should not keep the record inside the cover, but store the cover separately, almost as an artwork inside a Mylar folder or just a Mylar sleeve. And if you can do those things, again, records won't, they won't go bad unless you break them or scratch them. Or heat them up. Or heat them up. That's why you don't want to keep them just loosely around up in the attic.

You just said you recommended keeping the records out of the record jacket. Why is that? Because if the record, if the jacket is particularly, again, if a jacket is particularly important, if the record is in there, sooner or later the weight of the record down at the bottom crease, the bottom fold of the jacket will cut through the record cover. And it's just not a good thing to do that. If you want to make sure that you keep your record in a cover, you can probably make one out of a Cheerios box or something like that,

or you can order them from specialty audio houses. But the covers themselves are almost a separate type of artifact of value in and of themselves to some people. Different and completely, almost completely independent from the record itself. You mentioned you have a couple of ways to get the dust and dirt out of the grooves of the record. What are some of those? One of them would be to just gently wash the grooves with rubbing alcohol and a fairly soft artist's or makeup brush just to kind of loosen the debris that's in there and then blot it up with either a lint-free blotter paper or lint-free cotton lithography pads,

which are designed specifically not to leave lint behind. But anyway, just to moisten and loosen and then just kind of sop up the material because you don't want to be scrubbing a record because you'll just cause more damage by moving the particulate gunk around. Why not just hold it under the faucet? If you have absolutely perfect control and you won't be getting the label wet, you probably could do that. The only problem is that depending on where the water from the faucet comes from,

you could just be imparting a whole new level of contamination to the surface. What other common things do people ask you about that they're saving or they want to save and they want to keep in good shape? What are the things they ask? There seems to be a lot of interest in saving a dad or granddad's military uniform, for example. And conversely, on the distaff side, it would be great-grandmother's wedding dress or something like that. And the instructions for either of those two textile clothing items is pretty much the same. You want to make sure that you get it clean because the contamination from food and use and, you know, body sweat and oils and things like that are a buffet to a lot of insects. They may not want to eat your clothing, but they sure want to

eat the stuff you leave on it. But get your clothing clean. Make sure that you pack it out with either acid-free tissue paper or polyester batting so that there's no creases. Because if you have creases in textiles, that's a real place for damage to begin. And then if you can do that and just keep it in an archival acid-free box or something like that, you're good to go for a long, long time. My guest is Don Williams. He was the senior curator at the Smithsonian Institution, and he's author of the book, Saving Stuff,

How to Care for and Preserve Your Collectibles, Heirlooms, and Other Prized Possessions. You know, Don, I was wondering if there are things people save and collect, and they do things to them in the name of preserving them, and they're actually doing more harm than good. Yeah, I would think of a piece of furniture that's got a very fragile finish on it, whether it's painted or varnished. If you try really to do any intrusive maintenance on that, you're probably going to cause more damage than you're going to prevent. A lot of times, people do things to things that they think may be helpful and useful,

but in the long run are very destructive to them. One of the common things that I've come across is a large, you know, a huge photograph or a movie playbill or something like that, you know, a real big poster. And a lot of times people will glue fabric to the back of those to preserve them, when in fact, despite their good intentions, that's you just throw them in the box after Christmas and they sit in the attic until next year, which may not be the best way to preserve them. Well, yeah, if you throw Christmas ornaments in a box and just let them loose, then clearly you've made a decision that preserving them is not your highest priority or even a priority at all.

If you have interest in preserving ornaments, the most practical thing to do is just keep them in their original fitted container to store them. If you don't have a fitted container, you can make a fitted cavity pack, we would call it, to hold a fragile ornament so that it could be in a box that it would have specially designed and made by you, padding, to protect it for handling and so forth. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared.

It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for.

Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson,

Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know that in families there are still old eight millimeter home movies that have never, no one's ever done anything with. They've never been transferred to any kind of digital medium and maybe they'll never be transferred, but still they sit. So what's the best way to preserve them so they don't deteriorate? The nature of that deterioration is almost entirely chemically based. In other words, it's a chemical reaction that's ongoing. And the only way really to affect chemical deterioration is to lower the temperature.

And for every 10 degrees Celsius or 18 degrees Fahrenheit that you raise or lower temperature for a chemical reaction, it's going to double the reaction rate or cut it in half, whichever way you're going. In the case of film, movie film, and in fact, negatives from cameras, really the best thing that can be done for them is to put them into the deep freeze and just slow down the process as much as you can. Once you put photographic film artifacts into a deep freeze, their lifespan is really, at this point, an uncounted number of years. It is a huge number of years.

It makes it harder to enjoy the films and things like that. I understand that. So ideally, if you wanted to preserve the information, the movie, the animation, whatever it was, you'd want to have the film duplicated either on the CD, ROM, or DVD, or whatever is the appropriate medium, and then put the originals in the deep freeze. And that's really the only way we know how to do it so far. But if you're really only concerned with the images on the film, that in fact the film itself, the physical film, isn't that important to you. Just transferring it to another medium is probably sufficient,

and then you could throw the film away because it doesn't have any other real value. That is one way of preserving the image on the film. The difference that some people might take, and certainly I would take, is that I think that there is a certain evidentiary value of the original object itself. It's not always possible to preserve the original object, and sometimes it's not even of interest, but it's definitely something that you need to keep in mind, that when you copy something, what you have as a copy, you do not have the original information. Maybe the original information has no interest to you, but it's a consideration that I think should be taken. What about videotapes? So many people have old home movies that they shot on video,

or they have old movies that they bought on videotape. What about the lifespan of those? We have a pretty good idea, and we've already exceeded the lifespan of some of the earliest videotapes. Magnetic media on tape, depending on, again, its storage, has a lifespan of, say, maybe 20 to 100 years, most times since it's not in optimal storage conditions. You can notice demonstrable degradation of the signal on magnetic media and tape within two decades. So again, having the material transferred to some digital medium is probably a good

idea and sooner rather than later. Yeah, and we had a research project in our lab some years ago where we were looking at video and audio tape, and the best we could come up with was really no way to preserve the original artifact. That's one case where the original artifact was doomed. And the best we could come up with was a set of protocols for deciding how best to duplicate them under some other medium. What about old toys? I think most families have toys, stuffed animals, things that we don't take particularly good care of. They have some sentimental value.

Is there anything wrong with just, you know, throwing them in a box and that's it? You could, but they won't last as long as if you do a slightly different approach. But again, think back to how I talked about clothing and other textiles. You'd want to get toys clean by either carefully washing them or generally vacuuming them through. We prefer to vacuum textile through a piece of window screen so that the vacuum doesn't abrade the surface or you don't suck loose parts up into the vacuum, but getting the original toy clean and then keeping it wrapped in archival materials, whether that's acid-free tissue paper or washed, unbleached muslin, cotton, or linen, or even polyester batting is a good material.

And if you pack it and put it in an archival box, by that I mean one that's not going to go bad real fast, you can make toys last a very long time. But just tossing them into a bag puts them at risk of being jostled or abraded or snagging on each other or tearing open even. So for the toys that are important to us, we need to probably expend as much thought at least in preserving them as those things we think have great monetary value. Anything else that people ask you about frequently or that you specialize in? Some information that people could really use to help preserve the things they have? Well, my own specialty is furniture and wooden

objects and one of the things that really comes Well, my own specialty is furniture and wooden objects. And one of the things that really comes up almost every time I speak in public is the whole notion of oiling and feeding your furniture. Well, furniture is dead and wood is dead and you don't need to oil it or feed it. And for the most part, many of the concoctions that were developed over years, again, probably with good intentions, are in the long run imparting a tremendous amount of damage to the surface of furniture through chemical reactions with finishes and some of the goo that we put on. The surface of furniture will eventually destroy that surface. And so for the most part, in the case of furniture, the best thing is just keep it clean

and maybe put a coat of paste wax on it every 10 years or something like that. But the whole notion of actively maintaining it by slathering ointments of one kind or another on it on a regular basis, those are just a catastrophe waiting to happen. Well, that's interesting. You have to wonder where some of these ideas came from. As you say, a dead piece of wood isn't going to need a whole lot of care, and yet a lot of people with the furniture in their home spray all kinds of stuff on it, rub all kinds of stuff on it, and as you say, it's a dead piece of wood. You know, I think part of it was that it was providing a certain short-term rejuvenation, if you will, a visual enhancement, but people hadn't been doing this for long enough

to really see the long-term results of it. There's many a museum in the United States and Canada and elsewhere in Europe that were slathering these concoctions. Again, they thought they were doing the right thing, and now they're literally having to spend billions of dollars getting this stuff off because it has turned into chocolate brown goo on the surface of really fabulous stuff. Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you about. What about shiny things like silverware, grandma's old silverware that we take out once a year and use at Thanksgiving or other silver items in the house, is there any harm if you're not using it to let them tarnish

and then just shine them up when you need them? Or is there some benefit to keeping them shiny most of the time? As a general rule, I like to have silver objects kept shiny. And it's not hard to do that, actually. If pieces are in constant use, there's a certain amount of polishing that's going to happen just by washing and using them. If your silver is used only occasionally, you can keep them polished with a very, very fine polishing material, which I describe in our book as basically just pulverized chalk, if you will, in alcohol or mineral spirits. And that just is a very soft abrasive, keeps the corrosion off the surface, because that's what we're seeing when we're seeing tarnish, it's corrosion. And then for things that are only in frequent use,

you can just wrap them in a napkin-sized piece of silver cloth, or it's sometimes called Pacific cloth, which is available at most better fabric stores, and that will keep tarnish down to almost zero. And talk about your special warning about books and bugs. Well, there are two different kinds of bugs that love to eat books, and those would be, for the most part, silverfish and cockroaches. And silverfish tend to eat on the pages of the paper itself in a damp environment, and cockroaches love to eat the glue that binds books together.

So if you can control the environment where books are to especially minimize bugs, be they silverfish or cockroaches. And then if you can further control the humidity so that you don't get mold and mildew into your books, that's really the end of the introduction to the process that you need to do. Once you do those, keep bugs out, keep the humidity controlled, keep the temperature moderate. Basically, if you're comfortable, your books are comfortable. And if you can do that,

then your books will be around a long time, provided you don't misuse them. As long as you don't break them or tear them or fold the pages and, you know, break off the corners of the paper, your books will be around for centuries. Great. Well, that's good advice. Don Williams has been my guest. Don was the senior conservator at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. for quite a while, and he's author of the book Saving Stuff,

How to Care and Preserve Your Collectibles, Heirlooms, and Other Prized Possessions. You'll find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. I appreciate it. Thank you, Don, for being here. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most.

Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-onts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Why? Well, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. And there it stayed. But in 1933, November was a five-Thursday month. Just like this year, 2018, there are five Thursdays in the month. So retailers asked President Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving up a week

to help get an early start on the Christmas shopping season. He declined. But in 1939, November once again had five Thursdays in it. And this time, President Roosevelt agreed to change it to the fourth Thursday of November. There was a lot of controversy about it. Many people thought he was just bowing to pressure from retailers, which I guess he was.

And some states kept their Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. Then in 1941, Congress passed a law making the fourth Thursday of November the holiday of November. Then in 1941, Congress passed a law making the fourth Thursday of November the holiday of Thanksgiving, and it has stayed there ever since. But what about the first Thanksgiving? We all heard stories in school about how the pilgrims and the Indians got together to give thanks and they had dinner together. But how much of that story is true? How much of it is a myth? And what really did happen back then? And how has the celebration evolved from then to now? Here with some insight into that is Peter Mancall.

He is a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California, and he focuses on early America. Hi, Professor. Welcome, and happy Thanksgiving. Thank you very much for having me. So the story we all heard in elementary school about the Indians and the pilgrims and they get together, is that generally what happened at the first Thanksgiving? Well, we know from some of the documents that in the autumn of 1621, the pilgrims and their nearby native neighbors,

Wampanoags, got together for an autumn celebration that, according to one of the documents, lasted about three days, and they sort of sat and shared food and feasted together. The documentary record is not particularly thick on this, but we do have two observations for something that happened in 1621, and then we have a somewhat more detailed account of what happened in 1623. But I think we can be fairly certain that they did get together. It had been a terrible winter for the pilgrims. arrived in 1620 about half of the pilgrims didn't even survive that first winter they suffered from scurvy and malnutrition and so when they got to the autumn of 1621 that first harvest time it was really a time of great celebration because I think

it's signal to many of them that though they believed they would survive, they certainly hoped that God would take care of them, here was real proof that they would be able to make it in New England. So what was the nature of the relationship between these European settlers, the pilgrims, and the people who were already here, the Native American people? How did they interact, or did they interact much? What was the nature of this? So we know that other Europeans had been in this part of the Atlantic coast before the Pilgrims arrived, the Pilgrims arrived in late 1620.

So we know, for example, that the French explorer Champlain had been in the area, and we know that Captain John Smith, who we associate more famously with James Towner of Virginia, we know that he had been there. They had both described the area. So knowledge of the area had circulated, including some knowledge of the native peoples of the coast. And so when we get to the pilgrims arriving in 1620 we want sort of as you know many people want to look at this holiday and say well this is you know this sort of first dramatic moment but in fact

there'd been a history that led up to it and that history had talked told the English had told the pilgrims what the natives were alike and it had benefited the pilgrims because they arrived in were like, and had benefited the Pilgrims because they arrived in a place where there had been a very productive economy, where there had been cleared fields, where corn was growing, where people had sort of mastered the local environment. But on a day-to-day basis, I mean, what was this relationship like? Was it, you know, we're working together as one, or you guys stay over there and

we'll be over here, or let's go get a beer together? How did they interact? What's the nature of this relationship? So the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags, or with the nearby Massachusetts Indians, was not sort of, hi, how are you? So one of the things that we know that happens is that each of them, that's the Pilgrims on the one hand and the Natives on the other hand, each of them seem pretty eager to trade with the other. So that initial moment, you know, 1620, 1621, is not a moment of enormous suspicion. It seems more a moment of sort of, hey, what can you do? Sort of, hey, what can you do for me?

They greet each other as a source of possible new opportunity, not, oh, I need to be worried about you, nor, hey, let's go sit down and hang out because we're friends. It's in this middle ground. I mean, we have to remember that they can't speak to each other particularly easily. There is a language barrier that becomes reduced over time as people learn to communicate. But at this point, it's still pretty intense. And so people are still sort of, you know, figuring things out.

A number of the documents that survive from the period sort of show us this trepidation, this, you know, how do we reach out? Well, they, this is the English word, right? Well, they showed some interest in this thing that we had, you know, glass beads or axe or metal axes. And we, that is the English, you know, said, well, we're starving and we would really like to eat some of their corn. And so I think we see people who are trying to establish relations. And one of the things that we also need to remember is that we tend, it's our natural tendency, to sort of put them in this broad category of Wampanoags or other Agamben-speaking peoples on the one hand and English on the other.

But in fact, there's a lot of individuals going back and forth, and very soon, within a few years, in the 1620s, one group of the English breaks off from the others and has very extensive relations with these Indians in the area. And so, you know,

there are some who are absolutely embracing Let let's get together. But at that very first moment, I think it's really a sense of sort of, well, what can you do for me? I'm still a little nervous about things. And did they call them Indians? Yes, in the documents, some of the English often refer to them as Indians. It's a word that dates back, it's 100 years old by then. In some of the documents, we see them using the more characteristic word, which is American. I mean, that word Americans starts as a European reference to Native Americans, that is the occupant of this newly named place that the Europeans call America.

But by the time we get to the pilgrims, they're using the word Indians. The Thanksgiving three-day celebration, was one of the two groups clearly the host, or was it just a kind of a potluck, let's all just get together? What was the nature of this celebration? So according to the documentary evidence, the documentary is very fragmentary. We have one letter from one of the pilgrims, and then we have a somewhat more detailed count of an event two years later.

It is basically the pilgrims celebrating the bringing in of their corn, celebrating their first harvest. That is, they'd learned quickly from the Algonquians, from the Wampanoags, how to grow corn. And so they start to feast, and in this brief document they basically say, we invited our neighbors to come by, and Matt Masasoit, who's the local leader, and approximately 90 others of his people who are Wampanoags, we invited them to come, and they stayed for three days, and during those three days, we feasted on venison and fowl,

as well as corn, and we presumed that that fowl was turkey, and that's why turkey gets integrated into sort of the myth of the earliest Thanksgiving. When was the second Thanksgiving? They don't have regular Thanksgivings. I mean, so this is one of the features of where sort of American history and American myths sort of depart. So in 1621, we have this meal.

In 1623, according to his sort of definitive history, or most of the definitive history of the region, Governor Bradford writes that they had another meal. And this one he actually calls, he actually says, and there was, we gave thanks. This was a meal of thanksgiving. There were days of giving thanks to God, to the pilgrims, thanking their God. That would happen sporadically, in part because the pilgrims who go to New Plymouth in 1620, followed by the

Puritans who go to Massachusetts Bay starting in 1630, they tended to see the world as the unfolding of a divine plan. They were what we call providentialists. They believed in predestination. And so everything that happened, as they wrote about it, was sort of, you know, this is what had been intended. And so they would thank God when good things happened, and they would thank God when unfortunate things happened,

because it was in their nature to sort of acknowledge what they saw was this divine power over them. Thanksgiving as a holiday doesn't really begin to come in in any grander sense until during the Revolutionary War when the revolutionaries at some point celebrate something, say, well, we should have a day of Thanksgiving. And then it sort of becomes sort of a sporadic idea, and then it finally only becomes a national holiday during the Civil War in 1863. You know, a very different context from what was going on in early colonial New England. So there was the first Thanksgiving, the three-day celebration of people, then there was pretty much a break.

I mean, it didn't become any kind of annual anything for quite some time. It was a one-time event, and then life went on as life went on. What we know is that in 1621, the Wampanoags on the one hand and the Pilgrims on the other hand got together for a three-day feast. And we know that two years later in his history, Bradford writes of a day, another harvest sort of festival or meal in which they give thanks. Although he doesn't talk about hosting native neighbors during that. He then doesn't really write about it again, and he writes the definitive history, which stretches from the founding of New Plymouth in 1620

to about 1650 when he stops writing. So for those first 30 years, we have just these two mentions of it, one by him and one by another colonial observer. We don't know whether we should fill in the silence and say, well, they did this twice, maybe they were having these sort of things every day, I mean every year. And there's certainly no annual holiday. I mean the idea of an annual holiday wasn't really the way they thought about things.

So how do we read that silence? I read it as a historian to say, well, they did these things in the early 1620s. And knowing how they did things, they very likely, you know, sort of had celebrations each time they brought in a harvest. But did they have a three-day feast and it involved their native neighbors? That seems less likely. So you said that around the Revolutionary War, which would have been more than a hundred years after the first Thanksgiving, there were again celebrations of Thanksgiving. Now, were the celebrations of Thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War, were they linked to,

and did they reference back to the first Thanksgiving, the pilgrims, or were they celebrations of Thanksgiving to give thanks for what was going on right then? When the people that become Americans and call themselves Americans, that is, people who become residents of states in the late 18th century, decide to have days of Thanksgiving, that had nothing to do with what had happened in the early colonial period. It's not linked to a harvest celebration. It's not linked to sitting down with Native peoples. It's really, we have endured this terrible moment. We have come through. We have survived.

Let us give thanks to God. Let's have a day of thanksgiving. Let's have a day of public acknowledgment of God. And then the celebrations that started in the Civil War, were they again result of people coping with an extraordinary catastrophe, you know, the worst warfare that, as far as we know, we've ever seen in much of North America. I mean, the idea there, it's a campaign to get Lincoln to go along with it, you know, is sort of like we should pause and we should give thanks to God for everything that we have. It has nothing really to do in any obvious sense with what happened in early colonial New England,

although invariably there were people who are sort of looking back and thinking, well, once upon a time, in what was then sort of the myths of the past, you know, there were people and they came and they gave thanks to God and we should do the same thing. But it's not really the same motivation for a holiday. So if you were to put this on a timeline, there are four events on this timeline. There's the original first Thanksgiving in the 1600s with the pilgrims. Then there's a revolutionary war after the war Thanksgiving to give thanks for what they've been through. And then there's the Civil War Thanksgiving celebrations, which was more to do about what they've been through during the Civil War. But today's Thanksgiving celebration pretty much ignores the Civil War and the Revolutionary

War, and is really a celebration in remembrance of or in honor of that very first Thanksgiving back in the 1600s. That is correct. I mean, there are people who have studied the history of Thanksgiving, in the 1600s. That is correct. I mean, there are people who have studied the history of Thanksgiving and the official history of Thanksgiving, and it is really our modern holiday as a legal event. You know, it's a day that there's no mail, a day that there's no school. I mean, that comes from the 19th century. You know, it's an interesting question why we celebrate holidays in the ways that we do. I mean, even if we could imagine a

scenario where the people who campaigned for having a holiday to mark this, even if we could imagine a scenario that said, we should do this because there was a similar event back in the early 1620s, even if someone made that the argument for holiday, there's no reason it would necessarily stick. I mean, people, you know, celebrate holidays for various reasons, and they have various meanings to us, and holidays change over time. Well, you're right. It is a little strange that we celebrate a holiday that commemorates an event that is pretty fuzzy in the history books as to exactly what happened other than, you know, we gave thanks.

Nevertheless, Thanksgiving is an important American holiday. People like Thanksgiving. It seems to be a holiday as it's come to be celebrated in which we, that is collectively, want to reach back, and they want to reach back to this particular moment in the early 1620s. They want to reach back to this moment of people getting along. They want to reach back to a moment of celebration. By the time Thanksgiving becomes a national holiday, you know, there had been terrible things that happened to Native peoples across what becomes the United States. And I think in the modern telling of Thanksgiving, a lot of Americans would rather sort of, you know, think about the

comforting myth of, wait, we all could get along. It sort of plays into the way that we think about holidays. We want to go back to a simple sort of an urtext of the American experience, and we romanticize that. And what better way to romanticize that than these brief documents from the 1620s, in which people seem to be getting along? Well, there's been a lot in this discussion of things I haven't heard before, particularly about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and just an interesting take on Thanksgiving and how it got started and why it is the way it is. Peter Mancall has been my guest.

He is a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California. Thank you, Professor. Thank you very much. Some people like to be touched, other people not so much. Of course, I think it does have something to do with who's doing the touching, but we have rules about touching, who can touch and where and all that. But touching does seem to be a real human need. We know from research that touch improves trust between individuals and can decrease violence.

Child development experts say children who are touched less are more prone to violence as adults. There's also evidence that touching is good for overall well-being and can help your immune system. Touching even seems to improve your chances of success, probably because touching signals safety and trust. We know that NBA teams whose players touch each other win more games. The growing preoccupation with digital media versus personal contact, combined with the social and legal restrictions about physical contact in schools and at work, may unintentionally be robbing us of the benefits of touch. So reach out and touch someone, just make sure it's done in an appropriate fashion. And that is something you should know.

You can email me at any time with questions, comments, or ideas. I read every email I get, and you can send that email to mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers

at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family.

But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining,

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