You're Wrong About - Juliet's Balcony with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

What do Chopin, Kylie Jenner, baby carrots, and the War of the Worlds all have in common? They’re all part of Sarah and Chelsey Weber-Smith’s speedrun  through common misconceptions—plus a little Satanic Panic, as a treat.Here’s where to find Chelsey:Chelsey + American HysteriaSupport us:Bonus Episodes on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good[YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSome links + ephemera referred to in this episode:Baby Carrots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxwRmsCRb4War of the Worlds: https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth-the-infamous-radio-broadcast-did-not-cause-a-nationwide-hysteria.htmlJuliet's Balcony: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/romeo-and-juliets-balcony-scene-doesnt-exist/381969/Is that a chicken: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UxxGOYmC1u0 Links: https://twitter.com/amerhysteriahttp://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodhttp://maintenancephase.comSupport the show

Who's non-threatening? A dead guy who was last cute in The Great Depression. Hello and welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall. Today's episode is a little bit different. It's kind of a variety hour slash pinata episode. I have Chelsea Webersmith of American Hysteria as my guest. We are doing a lightning round of misconceptions and things that weren't there. We get topics and suggestions for this show all the time and I find it so interesting to think about what can be expanded into a whole episode and what feels like it would be a really interesting conversation but one that would maybe only take about five minutes. And this conversation was really fun for me because Chelsea makes a

wonderful podcast and we got to talk about what do we have to think about when we're choosing a topic that we're going to talk about for an hour or so and also when we only have so many topics that we're able to choose and do justice to in the course of a year. American Hysteria, if you haven't listened to it, is about moral panics which are of course a great way to understand America itself and quite a lot about the satanic panic. So if you're not tired of the satanic panic and how could you be, you got to listen. And of course because it's so rare that I get to have fellow satanic panic podcasters shop talk, Chelsea and I also get into that. This was a really fun one for me. I hope it's a fun one for you and if you haven't gotten to enjoy Chelsea's work yet,

I hope this is a gateway to that for you. You deserve it. Here's the episode. Enjoy. Welcome to Your Wrong About, the show where sometimes we eat all the little mini candy bars at the bottom of your pumpkin. Chelsea, who are you and what is your show and what happens when we discuss things together? For sure. My show is American Hysteria and it covers a lot of similar topics to Sarah's show. We do moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories and more so even now I would say fantastical thinking. So anything that has strange undertones or things that are relevant historically to today but maybe not necessarily would qualify as a conspiracy theory or a moral panic. We just covered boy bands and fangirls. Yes, the hysteria of the fangirl but

also how we've manufactured an idea and an archetype ourselves. Yeah, we try to approach things with empathy like you guys and try to understand what the fuck's going on a little bit better. What the fuck is going on? In the words of Lucas and Empire Records, what's with today today? Exactly. Have you ever felt like, oh boy, I might run out of stuff to talk about? I have never felt that. It seems like if you're looking at moral panics as the central theme of the history you're examining that it feels like America is like moral panics held together by freeways. No, I don't feel like I'm going to run out of things to talk about but do I want to talk about moral panics and conspiracy theories only? I think maybe that is more accurate is like opening

up myself. Like you could. I could but like I just get pretty exhausted. Yes. It's disheartening a lot of the time and sometimes I like to just veer into things that aren't quite so... I mean, I don't want to say relevant to right now but sometimes I need to just take a step back from things that are happening again all the time and travel back into history that's still super relevant but maybe less saturated. I think the satanic panic, these things we talk about a lot have become really saturated and I think there are a lot of other things to talk about as well. Do you feel in retrospect like the fact of both of us being really invested in the satanic panic in circa 2017 was perhaps the fact that we were just kind of looking around and being like, boy,

it seems like this is about to make a giant comeback. Sure, sure. Like knowing that on some level. I think on some level for sure. Right. Not conscious. I'm not saying consciously for myself. And I mean my history is with my dad being a Illuminati conspiracy theorist when I was growing up and so he didn't veer too heavy into satanic stuff. He had his satanic phase like when I was a baby but not when I was like tiny. You and Dean Winchester. So the Illuminati though has so many of the same characteristics, foundations. Maybe I was more apt to have a reptilian stand in for a satanist. But it's the same basic argument, right? It's the same thing. There's like a cabal which in itself is an anti-Semitic term, right? But a group of people controlling the

world and harming children and hypnotizing all of the youth to become satanic agents or stupefy them with fluoride in the water. Same type of stuff. So what about you, Sarah? Do you think you were like, where did it come from? What was like the crackle in the air for you, do you think? You know, one thing I find interesting that I've been thinking about a lot lately with regards to this is that when I was in an MFA, I was writing a lot of short stories that were like real gritty. You know, I was like Raymond Carver and Dennis Johnson are kissing and this is the baby they had. You know, that was the dream obviously. God, I wish. We all wish. But a road trip that would be. Yeah. But so I was writing these stories about like this family of polygamist

brothers who they weren't religiously polygamists. They just were like, you know, in a very true crime paperback kind of way. They like had this like auto salvic yard and they had like fighting dogs, like as gritty as you could possibly get. I was like more grit. I was like Vincent Gallo, you know, and it was all about the sort of teenagers who they married and who like bought into this sort of patriarchal power system and microcosm kind of way, which is what I was telling myself it was about at the time I was like, it's political. And in retrospect, I'm like, yeah, that's true. Because like, you were very smart and everything. But also like, these were stories where you were talking about characters where their outsides matched the inside of how you

felt. And you were trying to express your psychological reality by talking about characters who deserve to feel the way you did and have the problems emotionally. And like, that's what you had to do to get there. And when I think about the satanic panic, and part of it being therapy is a way to validate emotional suffering. And also this idea that if anyone has any kind of familial trauma at all, then like, it must have been this satanic sexual abuse that was apparently so everywhere the whole time. And no one stops along the way to be like, maybe this is, you know, maybe nothing illegal happened. And people can still really suffer and develop trauma because of that. And I think that's, that's certainly one of the things that draws me to it. Because I've had this journey

of being like, I've had what the true crime paperbacks call an idyllic upbringing. So like, it's fine. And a lot of, to me, the process of healing is about just sort of validating the reality of what happened to me purely because of how I feel. And the fact that there doesn't, you know, no one had to participate in a group pony sacrifice, even though that, yes, like that would feel validating. I imagine if you were like, listen, I was one of those group pony sacrifice kids. I have a right to be unable to get out of bed today. Right. Because beyond like, these stories is also recovered memory, right? And I think recovered memory is a big, because it extends so far beyond the satanic panic and into this very day. It's shocking how much media is based around

this really intense, complicated thing called recovered memory. And I think that the heart of it, and we did this in our alien abduction episode, because that's so much, so much of alien abduction comes from recovered memory as well. You get this like primordial soup of imagery, right, of this like the grossest, it's like satanic panic, very unnerving, the darkest of the dark. But it does seem to stand in for not being able to, you're to have your trauma validated trauma that isn't as sensational. It's like this way to externalize a trauma, make it big enough that people give a fuck, right? Right. So I also went to an MFA program, but in poetry. And what I think I'm so interested in is that moral panics are in a way like metaphors, right? So they're like, this way

that you blow out the satanic panic into this huge thing. But what you're really trying to say is like children are being abused. But your metaphor is this almost poetic, anti poetic, whatever you want to say, but nonetheless, like poetic in that it's exaggerated and translating like an emotional experience into a visual image. So yeah, somehow it's an extension and more than just like writing, you know? Yeah, maybe the central truth of it is that only when we were like, children are being abused in service of Satan by these satanic churches were, you know, male authorities, like heavens know we must do something because before when the feminists were like, children are being abused by guys, everyone was like, well,

yeah. And then as soon as they could like blame it on women who were putting their kids in daycare, that was right. It's like, what's the fastest route to blaming a lesbian? And how do we get there? Yeah, or like gay, you know, gay panic, it was just immediately like, yes, all of these children are being molested by gay men, absolutely, right, unequivocally. But you know, yeah, I think that that has a ton to do with it. Yeah. So we, I want to do a couple of things with you today. This is kind of like a more game show like episode than usual. So I did a call on Patreon, I asked people for episode topic suggestions, and I think got about a thousand responses. And they're just, you know, really fantastic. And I wanted to take a look at some of those with you and talk about

like what your thought process is thinking about how to make your show, which is pretty similar, I think, to a lot of the questions I have to ask myself making this show. I have a little grab bag of misconceptions. And I want to go through them with you and talk about basically all of these are things that people falsely believe and that we can do a debunking of, but which of them are interesting and why and so forth. And we're going to get more galaxy brain as we go on. And I have saved my favorite one for last. Good, good. Okay. Number one, baby carrots. You know where I'm going with this? I don't. No idea. So I've heard people express amazement when they realize that a baby carrot is not in fact a juvenile carrot, but it is actually an adult carrot that

has been whittled down to be small and oblong. So each of those just wastes a bunch of carrot? You know what? I have no idea. Let's see if we can find a video. Maybe the rest isn't goes into shredded carrot bags. That would be nice. I like to think that they have some kind of system that uses almost the whole carrot. It could go either way in America. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we got a video. All right. I like to say three, two, one, go. So. All right. Three, two, one. Oh, they start in the field. Good to know. I didn't know where they were grown. Looks like a thresher. Beautiful carrots. Fully intact carrots. Okay. They're washed, cut and peeled. They're going on the belt. Polished with smooth stone rollers. That's what I should do with my face every morning.

Now they're ready to go into bags. Did we miss something? See, and I was wrong. They're not whittled. They're buffed. You're out here spreading misinformation. Okay. So that's baby carrots. So if it were me, I would take this grain of something of baby carrots and I'd want to expand out. So what is this baby carrot? A symptom of what's a bigger issue that's happening here? Is it food waste? I think I would go with like ridiculous ways that we've altered food to like make ourselves comfortable as humans. I don't know. I would want this great baby carrot story in there, but it's not going to be enough for an episode, but it could be like a heart. It could be like the main story, right? Oh, yeah. It's like the popcorn method. I want to call it where you

have like the kernel. It can puff it out into something much bigger than what you started with. It's how popcorn works for people who don't know. Right. So if I'm thinking about this as a topic, you're hearing kind of to me how the process starts because I was like baby carrots. That's a thing. People think one thing, baby right in the name, but they're not. They're adult carrots. So like technically that's a debunkable misconception. And I was like, and that's obviously like pretty simple and you know, who cares? But we watched that video and I was like, okay, this is causing some thoughts to happen in my brain about like the mechanization of food, the issue of supply chains, which are all anyone ever talks about anymore. There is a big topic here and it's not

baby carrots exactly, but baby carrots like lit the way to the topic. Yeah, exactly. And like, what is up with the way that we fake food? Yeah. Why did we make a baby carrot? Why did we say we need this carrot to be buffed completely of life and look like a cartoon taking this like wild looking thing and making it as, uh, as sanitized as possible. That's the story we tell. Yeah. Okay. All right. Love it. All right. Number two, the war of the worlds. So the legend, of course, we should listen to some of this because it's just quite fun is that Orson Welles, on whom I had a giant crush when I was a teenager. Oh, wow. In the early 2000s, Orson Welles, who by that time had been dead for 20 years. Who's not threatening a dead guy who was last cute in the

Great Depression? Was he cute? He was so cute, Chelsea. All right. Okay. So hot Orson Welles, hot young Orson Welles, and he's working for CBS. He's doing a ton of radio drama. So this is, it's kind of like a mockumentary. It's basically a faux news broadcast based on HG Wells is the war of the worlds about our invasion by aliens. And let's listen to a little of it. You are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in an original dramatization of the war of the worlds by HG Wells. The metal casing is definitely extraterrestrial. I have been requested by the governor of New Jersey to place the counties of Mercer in

middle sexes east to Jamesburg under martial law. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars. 120 known survivors. What is there to live for? Well, there won't be any more concerts for a million years or so and no nice little dinners at restaurants. If it's amusement you're after, I guess it gains up. What is there left? Life, that's what. I want to live. I'm speaking from the roof of Broadcasting Building, New York City. Now the smoke spreading faster, it's reached Times Square. Now the smoke's crossing 6th Avenue.

100 yards away. It's good stuff. It's great stuff. It's great stuff. But yeah, I mean, so basically the narrative that I grew up believing, a lot of people grew up believing and that you get from official sources about this was on PBS retrospective not long ago, stuff like that, is that this caused mass hysteria that people, you know, that the streets were flooding with people panicking. You know what is an interesting thing, I'm sure you have a lot to say about this, is like Blair Witch Project, The Exorcist, The War of the Worlds. What thing are audience members supposed to be doing? What do you mean? They're getting sick. They're getting injured. They're fainting. There's all

these legends about people being injured by scary stories. And when you check it out, it's like either not true or partially a little bit true, but like. Like one person fainted for reasons unknown, maybe not related to the movie. Yeah. You know, like a legend about a guy having a heart attack while listening to The War of the Worlds that was never confirmed. What's interesting is that apparently not that many people were listening to it. A lot of markets didn't even carry it. A lot of listeners were actually listening to Edgar Bergen, who is more popular. And to me, the funny thing about that is that Edgar Bergen was a ventriloquist. And I will remind you that this medium is radio. Anyone can be a ventriloquist

on the radio. However, some people get scared. There's a little bit of anxiety. It doesn't appear to be happening at anything approaching a significant scale. People aren't fleeing the cities. People aren't engaging in mass hysteria. But the newspapers exaggerate the idea that people are panicking because of this radio show. And there's an article on Slate about this from 2013. I'll put it in the show notes that makes the argument that this is a time at which newspapers are feeling a little bit anxious about the radio snapping up their job. And this is a nice time for them to be like, Hey, radios are unreliable. They'll lie to you about being invaded by aliens. Trust the newspaper. And they're doing so by kind of making up a story. So ultimately,

no one really looks good. Yeah, that's great. The other thing, like if I were going to make an episode of this would be how it's coinciding with the first UFO sightings actually a little bit later. But like one of the reasons I started wanting to make American Hysteria was reading Carl Jung's book about flying saucers, which yes, whatever, Carl Jung, whatever, just let me be. So I was really interested in that book, though, because it talked about how these anxieties came about as the Nazis were invading different countries. So like the idea of being invaded by an external force that you don't understand is permeating. I like to put it like crackle in the air. There's something that's going to like catch. And so that would be what I would be most

interested in is like, again, it's like the metaphorical part of it where like, what are the conditions that are leading us to accept something fantastical in place of something logical, which is usually something scary, right? Something real and scary going on that we'd rather be like, oh, I'm scared of crazy UFOs than like I'm scared of getting invaded. Yeah. Right. And like if it's 1938, it's kind of a stressful time, you know, I mean, I'm just going off of my, my only historical literacy, which of course comes to me through a combination of newsies and swing kids. But even that tells me that this was a time when if you're are listening to a show that you understand to be fictional, and you still hear this format of a nice evening

of music repeatedly broken in by an urgent news broadcast that's telling you that the invaders are coming, they're coming now, and they have superior technology. And you're just kind of fucked, aren't you? Yeah. One of the things that I would argue is that this is just a really good piece of horror. Yeah. And highly effective horror tends to be so effective for us because it connects to something that we're actually afraid of in the real world. And it can lead us to create mythology about how it's capable of causing actual harm because we want to express the power of the text. I'm also reminded of the myth that like the Omen was a cursed movie because people died while working on it. Yeah. When like, you know, people die working on romantic comedies, but we just don't

create mythology around them. Yeah. Exorcists, too. I mean, I would say that the exorcists, like people were injured making that movie, right? Like probably do more to your responsibility. Yeah. I know. And to me, that's like, that's the curse of the auteur. That's the curse of directors at the time not giving a shit about their performer's safety. So it's like, that's the curse of the male artistic ego. Hey, oh. Exactly. Yeah. So the war of the world. I think that that would be great fodder for an episode because there's clearly so much going on there. I think that would be an easier lift than baby carrots. Yeah. And it's like a meta, right? Like the hysteria about a hysteria or the, you know, you're wrong about something that people are wrong

about. So yeah, it's a strong bully. This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that the war of the world has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. We annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it. So goodbye, everybody. And remember, please, for the next day or so, the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That was no Martian. It's Halloween. All right. Number three, the minute waltz. The minute waltz is two minutes long. Oh, wow. Okay. No, no, I would be interested in the history of the waltz, but not. I don't

know about this. Okay. All right. Do you know why it's called the minute waltz? Why? Because it's not minute. It's minute. It's a minute waltz. It's small. Oh, little waltz. I'll do a little waltz. What a nice dance. I don't know what a waltz is. It's just a one, two, three, pretty much. It's like step, step, and then you go up on the balls of your feet. It's just step, and then you go in a circle and you go in a larger circle around the room. This is like from my time living in Virginia. I learned about a lot of people, I guess, waltzing all over the place down there. No, we'd go to like punk square dancing, which was sick, like traveling punk bands that would also call square dances in like houses.

It's fantastic, but learned about waltz in there from all my cowboy friends. Minute waltz. How long are they normally? Like four? I mean, like a song, I guess four. Yeah, I guess it's, yeah, all right. Good, because this is also children. Why you should take your ideas to your friends and colleagues? Because I was just like the minute waltz. It's not minute, it's minute. I've known that for years. I think I learned it on QI. It's just kind of a fact that makes me happy. I could not think of a single way to expand it outward. And then you're like history of the waltz. And it was like, yes, waltzes. What was it like to write waltzes where they're like waltz one hit wonders? Was there waltzomania? Great questions. Yeah, did the parents freak out about

the waltz? I'm sure they did. Yeah. What's the history of the time signature? That would be maybe a little more boring, but you never know. Exactly. All you have to do is find the freaky inventor of the time signature and tell his story. And that's all you need. Auto von time signature. There's often such fascinating human history attached to like sort of dry facts because like who comes up with these things, people who has messy lives, the very same ones. Yeah. Yeah. What would you think about like a waltz episode? What's your level of enthusiasm for that? I mean, we did a lot of dance stuff in our teenage sex episode, but there was definitely a time that the waltz was the hot new dance that only the teenagers were doing. I love that. Yeah. Right. That's just a

fun concept to play with. I think there's a couple of themes here. One is that like, you're never that far from a moral panic as the crow flies, no matter where you are in history. So, you know, just enjoy that. Yes. Throw a rock and hit a moral panic. Anything that teenagers have ever had anything to do with. I know the concept of the teenager is new, but the numbers are not. There'll be interesting stuff around it. I promise. Yeah. Are you aware of the phenomenon where every quote in the world has been attributed to Marilyn Monroe? I've heard this before. This also happens with Audrey Hepburn. This need to believe that quotes were said by really hot people, I think. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. Especially on Tumblr. This

was huge on Tumblr when I was on Tumblr. That's not what your country can do for you. Exactly. Ich bin ein Berliner, Marilyn Monroe. But my favorite one of these is the phrase, well-behaved women seldom make history. Okay. Have you encountered this phrase in your life? Yes, I believe that I have. Who said it? Well, I first want to know where you've encountered it, because I definitely have memories of like growing up with it, like on merch as a tween. Yeah. I feel like it's common knowledge who said it and I just don't have it, but maybe that doesn't sound like it's the case. It's not common knowledge, I wouldn't say. Yeah. I would say it's common knowledge around like maybe like sort of historian academics.

Sure. Sure. Sure. But right. Like I would say that like as a feminist tween in like the year 2000, this phrase was like on bumper stickers and shirts at Powell's. Yep. Yep. Next to the ones that said, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Sorry, I missed church today. I was off practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian. Remember that? Yes. That was a good one. Spicy stuff. This was quite an era of shirts. Yeah. No, you laugh because I'm different. I laugh because you're all the same. Yes. Well, I had an earnest feminist shirt in eighth grade that said, I think it, pretty sure it said feminism is the radical belief that women are human. And I thought that was just the bee's knees. Hot shit. Which like it is, but it was just like, I just, I'm like,

Sarah, like you could have taken things slightly less seriously, you know, like you were in eighth grade, like have some fun. Yeah, I wasn't a feminist yet. But it is a very much merged phrase and its origin unbelievably is in an academic article by a historian named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich that she published in 1976. Who's that? So what I find most interesting about the original use in the article is that it's not like an encouragement. It's like a statement. Just yeah, statement of fact. So it's from an article called Virtuous Women Found New England Ministerial Literature 1668 to 1735, which you would not expect to contain a sentence that moves bumper stickers. And yet here we are, which was an American quarterly in 1976. And this is the

passage preceding the sentence. Cotton Mather called them the hidden ones. They never preached or sat in a deacons bench. Nor did they vote or attend Harvard, neither because they were virtuous women. Did they question God or the magistrates? They prayed secretly read the Bible through at least once a year and want to hear the minister preach even when it snowed, hoping for an eternal crown they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven't been. Well-behaved women seldom make history. So it's somebody quoting Cotton Mather. No, no, he didn't say he didn't know. He just called them the hidden ones. Okay, okay, okay. No, wouldn't that be incredible if it were a direct Cotton Mather quote? No, that would have made me the happiest. That would be truly, truly,

truly outrageous. Yes, yes, yes. Wow, not what I expected though at all. How would you describe that passage? Well, it doesn't seem to be saying what we are saying. It's saying, right? It seems to be saying that you should behave and that your behavior, your lack of noticeable behavior or doing anything out of line is bad because you want the modesty of not being remembered. Is that totally off? I think that's descriptive of the people who this passage is about. Yeah. Okay, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a descriptive passage essentially saying women who fulfilled their duties as prescribed to them by the male society in which they live by Puritan New England in this case didn't tend to be remembered to leave a mark on history. We have

historical records of murderers and revolutionaries and people who either royally fucked up or were very wealthy a lot of the time. And Cotton Mather did write the first true crime book. Of course. Is that the Elizabeth? No, he didn't write about Elizabeth Knapp. What's the first true crime? It was actually just a compendium. It was a compendium of criminals and his sort of chance to proselytize about their sins. If I could take a single thing from this conversation, I would probably pick Cotton Mather wrote the first American true crime book and just stick with that for an hour. Stick with it. You can learn more about it on our true crime episode, everyone. But anyway, all right, I promise that's my last Cotton Matherism.

Oh, please don't promise me that. And so Laurel Thatcher Ulrich after this phrase becomes the meme that it becomes writes a book. So did it become a meme in the 70s or did it become was it pulled in the 90s? Yes, it was the 90s. Yeah, do you want to hear that story? This is from her book about that. Yeah, sure. Because she's a really one of the few academic writers who I enjoy reading. God bless. So she writes, some time ago, a former student emailed me from California, you'll be delighted to know that you are quoted frequently on bumpers in Berkeley. Through a strange stroke of fate, I've gotten used to seeing my name on bumpers and on t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs, magnets, buttons, greeting cards, and websites. I owe this curious fame to

a single line from a scholarly article I published in 1976. In the opening paragraph, I wrote, well behaved women seldom make history. That sentence slightly altered, escaped into popular culture in 1995. When journalist Kay Mills used it as an epigraph for her informal history of American women from Pocahontas to power suits. Perhaps by accident, she changed the word seldom to rarely little matter. According to my dictionary, seldom and rarely mean the same thing. Well behaved women infrequently, or on few occasions make history. This may be one of those occasions. My original article was a study of the well behaved women celebrated in Puritan funeral sermons. In 1996, a young woman named Jill Portugal found the rarely version of the quote

in her roommate's copy of the new beacon book of quotations for women. She wrote me from Oregon asking permission to print on t-shirts. I was amused by her request and told her to go ahead. All I asked was that she send me a t-shirt. The success of her enterprise surprised both of us. Her success inspired imitators, only a few of whom bothered to ask permission. My runaway sentence now keeps company with anarchists, hedonists, would-be witches, political activists of many descriptions, and quite a few well behaved women. It has been featured in Cosmo Girl, the Christian Science Monitor and Creative Keepsake Scrap Booking magazine. According to news reports, it was a favorite of the pioneering computer scientist Anita

Borg. The sweet potato queens of Jackson, Mississippi have adopted it as an official maxim, selling their own pink and green t-shirt alongside another that reads, Never wear panties to a party. My accidental fame has given me a new perspective on American popular culture. I love that. You know how they're like, you can't like, one person can't change anything. And it's like, no, and it's usually not for the best that one person does change a whole lot of shit. But like, it just, that woman just did this one small thing of like, I'm going to put this on t-shirts, having no idea that it would echo the way that it has until it's a Marilyn Monroe quote. You know, it's this random person who didn't actually have any like systemic power, you know,

we could get into that. But I guess I just mean not a corporation, just a single person doing this avant garde t-shirt printing riot girl t-shirt. And now it's a total, I mean, it's become a very corporate co-opted. Yeah. As everything relating to feminism apparently does. Yes. It's obvious that, you know, this kind of started off as like a kind of a riot girl thing. And then has also become like, I think anytime a phrase becomes a meme, you like start to hear it a little bit less. It's a big cycle when a runaway sentence happens, as she put it. I really like the phrase runaway sentence. Yeah, I like that a lot. And so later on in this chapter, she says, when I wrote that well-behaved women seldom make history, I was making a commitment

to help recover the lives of otherwise obscure women. I had no idea that 30 years later, my own words would come back to me transformed. While I like some of the uses of the slogan more than others, I wouldn't call it back even if I could. I applaud the fact that so many people, students, teachers, quilters, nurses, newspaper columnists, old ladies in nursing homes and mayors of western towns, think they have the right to make history. I like it. Is it harmful? Probably not. You know, don't attribute it to Marilyn Monroe. That's not really harmful either, but like Marilyn Monroe deserves to be known for what she actually did and other people deserve to be known for what they actually did. Yeah, you don't need to make up stuff about her

for her to be a compelling individual. Yeah, and I love that we have a story of an academic writing a sentence one way. It's kind of like when you have an outdoor cat that adopts another family, and then they just think they found a really friendly stray, but it's really like the cat has been presented with two options and chosen one. I think this tends to happen to people sometimes after they've had a baby. Okay, not enough attention. You know, these cats, they can be free agents and it feels like the sentence did that. Yeah, yeah. I think that that's what makes it the most interesting is that it meant something different. The statement is obvious in its truth as just a blanket statement and not an empowering political

statement. It's just, I don't know, it's really cool. I love how academia can get translated into popular culture because that's its own need. And I think that's kind of what we try to do is take because I mean, I read so many academic papers and I'm like, how am I going to make this fun? Right. How do I translate this into English? So yeah, that's fun. I think it could be an episode, misattributed quotes and why and why they get attributed to either hot people or presidents maybe. I feel like a lot are misattributed to presidents, which is its own paternal nightmare. Or Shakespeare. Yeah, or Shakespeare, which is fair because he did make up half the words we use, it seems like. He did. He did. Why not? Oh, speaking of Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny they father and refuse thy name. Where does the scene take place, then I am quoting? I mean, I want to tell you it's a balcony, but now I know I'm wrong. You do want to say that. And I've read that book so many times and I don't remember. I just remember the Bostlerman scene. Yes. And who wouldn't? Yeah. Okay. But Chelsea, oh my God, there's no balcony in Shakespeare. Is there no balcony even invented back then? No. No, there were no balconies. The word balcony didn't exist. Shakespeare invented many words, but not balcony. Wow. Well, where did it take place, Sarah? It's just a window. Okay, all right. I mean, yeah, it doesn't ruin anything. It's fine. But I'm just like,

this is the kind of thing that like can make you question everything, in my opinion. And so the reason that we have that, I was looking up an article that kind of explained the phenomenon here, and it turned out to be written by Lois Levine, who I once did a book event with eight years ago in Corvallis. So hi, Lois, thank you. Beautiful. She wrote a book called Juliet's Nurse. So first of all, we didn't have balconies in England at the time, partly because it was too chilly. And we have an account by somebody who went to Europe in 1608 and described seeing a balcony. And I'm just going to read you this passage because I love it. Great. I noted another thing in these Venetian palaces, and it is very little used in any other country that I could

perceive in my travels, saving only in Venice and other Italian cities, somewhat above the middle of the front of the building, or a little beneath the top of the front, they have right opposite unto their windows a very pleasant little terrace that Jetteth or Buttheth out from the main building, the actuar of is decked with many pretty little turn pillars either of marble or freestone to lean over. These kind of terraces or little galleries of pleasure serve only for this purpose, that people may from that place as from a most electable prospect contemplate and view the parts of the city round about them. Galleries of pleasure that Jetteth and Buttheth, you know, and just like the awe inspiring first time you see a balcony in England. It's beautiful. I love it. And I mean,

this also to me screams the Mandela effect. Yes, totally. We all are remembering, we're misremembering collectively. Or do you think more than Bozlerman, it was convenience of set design originally because it would be easier or would it be not easier to have a balcony on set? These are great guesses, but you're never going to extrapolate. Well, you could extrapolate, but it would take you like at least 12 more tries. Okay, time we don't have. Yes. Okay, so to quote Lois Levine again. The answer is that Romeo and Juliet was usurped by a similar play by someone named Thomas Otway. This happened because quoting Lois Levine again in 1642, the Puritan Parliament at war with King Charles I closed London's theaters. After Charles II

was restored to the throne in 1660, and the theaters were reopened, Shakespeare plays were put on again, including a 1662 revival of Romeo and Juliet. But far more popular was Otway's 1679 play, The History and Fall of Chaos Marius, which graphs dialogue characters and plot from Romeo and Juliet onto an ancient Roman military and political struggle drawn from Plutarch. Although Shakespeare himself often borrowed heavily from a wide range of sources, Otway's own substantial appropriations, as when the young heroine Livinius lilicizes, oh Marius, Marius, wherefore art thou Marius, might strike modern audiences as a nearly sacrilegious level of plagiarism. So Otway, because he lived later on, was like, I'm putting a balcony in my show. And so for quite a while,

this was the dominant play, and it had a balcony in it. I mean, is this any different than Shazam? Really? The story of Shazam? It's just- It is Shazam. Yeah. But it's the same thing where two things are merging in our memory. Two similar things are creating a false, right? A false memory. Right. And somebody was just ripping off this play and changed the course of its history, I guess. Yeah. And then Romeo and Juliet starts becoming ubiquitous again in the 18th century, and it has a balcony in it, because we've been doing the rip-off version of it,

and that has a balcony. So why wouldn't this have a balcony? Now, Sarah, do you think in like 200 years they'll think Romeo and Juliet had an aquarium and a pool? I think it had an aquarium and a pool in it. And maybe Radio N wasn't there too, making the soundtrack. And John Leguizamo. You know those dates you see printed on food packages? Well, a lot of people think that's when you should throw the product away. Let's talk a little bit more about what the cell buy, use buy, and other code date phrases really mean.

Chelsea, let's say that you've bought some sour cream. Yep. Okay. And you take it out of your refrigerator and it's April 10th, and it says use buy April 10th. What is this package telling you? It's telling me, though I wouldn't heat it myself, it's telling me not. It's telling me that it has expired. This is perhaps the most consequential piece of information that I have to share in this episode. Nay, perhaps in this program. All right. Okay. Use buy means this is the last day of this product being at peak quality. If you were past the use buy date, it is below peak quality. But does not mean that it is harmful. No. To you. No. I could have told you that based on my intuition because I eat things. The amount of yogurt that I have wasted in my life because

I believe use buy meant expired and that like even if it looked fine, probably they knew better than I did. Probably it made sense to play it safe because I'm like phobic about getting food poisoning. And it turned out they just meant like this yogurt will be a little bit less perky. But that is such bullshit because like I feel like there's something in that. I mean, here's my conspiracy theorist that never leaves me. But like, come on. Use buy. That language is saying throw this out and buy more. Listen, I have no proof of this, but yeah. Sarah, this is. Right. Because if they wanted you to know last day of peak quality, they could find a way to print that on the package, right? It's a demand. Use buy. Yeah. Well, I feel really vindicated

in that I've eaten things way past their expiration date and I'm just a generally gross individual, but now I can tell other people and they'll have to believe me. Yeah. So take that. Yeah. And then, and so best before means the same thing. Best buy means the same thing. Sell buy means that's the last day at which it should move out of the store. So like if it's in your house after its sell by date, like that's fine. That's where it's supposed to be. Only if it says expiration date, does that actually mean that that's when it's supposed to expire? And obviously even that's conservative. So. Sure. They got to really play it safe on that date. Don't need anything you reasonably expected be expired, but also like we've apparently been

told to throw away perfectly good food for our entire lives. So that's nice. I say follow your heart. I like that too. Okay. And now our final debunking. I'm just going to search up a very short video to send you. Perfect. Okay. Three, two, one. Kylie Jenner to the foyer. Kylie Jenner to the foyer. I have a little surprise for you. Is that a chicken? Okay. All right. This is like it's like chick. Is it chicken of the sea? This is what it's reminding me of. Jessica Simpson. It is like that. Yes. But well, because this is an audio medium, can you tell me like what renders the situation humorous? Sure. Sure. Well, Chris Jenner is holding a pig as, is it Kylie? So Kylie then says, is that a chicken? Yes. Is that what she says? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So

that's the humorous thing is that it is clearly not a chicken. Yeah, it's clearly a pig. So it's like an amazing out of context clip. And it's just sort of a meme that just sort of still is around, I think. I certainly think partly in memes and a lot of people have this meme in their brain. And so I just think this is a funny one to debunk because the context, apparently, I looked this up the other day, because I was like, how could like did Kylie think that was a chicken? Like, how did she think that was a chicken? I was kind of trying to think like, could I possibly like think that that was a chicken? Like who knows, right? Always the empathetic person. Yeah. Well, and the right answer that I think like part of what made this popular as a

meme is this idea of like, how could you think that that's a chicken? That's ridiculous. Like, you're what an idiot. And what she says is that like, she had asked for a chicken. She had like specifically asked her mom for a chicken as a housewarming gift. And then she was coming down to the foyer knowing that there was a surprise and knowing that she had asked for a chicken and apparently she couldn't see very well. And so she asked, is that a chicken? Not because she inexplicably thought a pig was a chicken, but because she has specifically asked for a chicken, like the country boy she is. And she got a pig, like the country boy she is. Yeah. Well, that makes perfect sense to me. Although I will say that if you're getting a present from

someone, you shouldn't say that out loud. No, you shouldn't. You should keep it in your head. That's the real part of this meme that's important. Yes. So yeah, and I think that's just a good one because it's like the answer is right there. It makes total sense. It's still like a classic meme that people love. And it also falls into the category that I think is like very well represented in misconception, which is like, look at this dumb bitch. Yeah. And I'm not going to like spend a lot of energy going to the mat for the Kardashians. You guys have noticed that they don't appear on the show that much. They have, you know, other people are taking care of them right now. But like, I always think that it's silly if you have misgivings about what someone is up to morally

or the implications of their vast wealth or whatever. You still can't frame them for not knowing what a chicken looks like. No. It's not fair. It's not just. No, because it affects everyone. Trickles down, you know? Yeah. Attack her for her wealth and the way she treats her workers, but not for thinking a pig was a chicken. Well, so here's an interesting question too, is that I think to me there's a subtle but important difference between like, is this a debunkable thing versus like, is this something that people have some prior investment in? Like, not necessarily they think they know a story that you can then show them is untrue. Like, if I were to say like, we're going to do an episode on Amy Fisher, which we have in the past,

you would be like, yes, I probably as a millennial have some awareness of who Amy Fisher is. She was mentioned in the Addams Family Values. Like, I kind of know that she did something bad in the early 90s, but like, what were the circumstances? Yeah. You know, so like, that could be debunking someone with the specific idea that she was a criminal mastermind, or it could just be like, you're invested in this, you know that it happened, you know, adults were talking about it when you were little. I guess that's more of a popcorn. It's often you think the story is about this, but really the bigger story is about this, right? Like a larger, you know, you would think, oh, Harry Houdini, we're going to learn all about him as a magician, when really you would learn probably

all about him as a spiritualist debunker, because that story is so fantastic. Right. And then you're like known as a musician also did this. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Like a character like him is great because you can reach into like different things. Yeah. Simultaneous truths. Yeah. Like the truth being bigger than the space it takes up in your brain. Yes. Probably the biggest theme. That's great. Yeah. Mm hmm. I feel like that's maybe kind of the theme of this whole episode is that like it's not the story itself so much as the way you approach it and the way you're able to look at it in ways that tells you about what are the sort of human desires and fears and longings that people are projecting onto these events this time. And then what does that tell

us about the creatures that we are? Yes. Perfect. And that was our episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you to Chelsea Webber Smith. And if you want to hear more of Chelsea on this show, we have a Patreon episode about the whisper of Baptist Church, which is just a beautiful, harrowing, and really thought-provoking dive into not just an area of culture and religion, but just what it means for all of us to be human, which is what Chelsea's work often gets back to in the end. And thank you, as always, to Carolyn Kendrick, producer extraordinaire. See you next time.