Juliet's Balcony with Chelsey Weber-Smith
00:00Who'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 hourslash pinata episode. I have Chelsea Webersmith of American Hysteria as my guest. We are doing alightning round of misconceptions and things that weren't there. We get topics and suggestions forthis show all the time and I find it so interesting to think about what can be expanded into a wholeepisode and what feels like it would be a really interesting conversation but one that would maybeonly take about five minutes. And this conversation was really fun for me because Chelsea makes a
01:02wonderful podcast and we got to talk about what do we have to think about when we're choosing atopic that we're going to talk about for an hour or so and also when we only have so many topicsthat we're able to choose and do justice to in the course of a year. American Hysteria, if youhaven't listened to it, is about moral panics which are of course a great way to understandAmerica itself and quite a lot about the satanic panic. So if you're not tired of the satanicpanic and how could you be, you got to listen. And of course because it's so rare that I get to havefellow satanic panic podcasters shop talk, Chelsea and I also get into that. This was a really funone for me. I hope it's a fun one for you and if you haven't gotten to enjoy Chelsea's work yet,
01:53I 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 atthe bottom of your pumpkin. Chelsea, who are you and what is your show and what happens when wediscuss things together? For sure. My show is American Hysteria and it covers a lot of similartopics to Sarah's show. We do moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories and more so even nowI would say fantastical thinking. So anything that has strange undertones or things that arerelevant historically to today but maybe not necessarily would qualify as a conspiracy theoryor a moral panic. We just covered boy bands and fangirls. Yes, the hysteria of the fangirl but
02:54also how we've manufactured an idea and an archetype ourselves. Yeah, we try to approachthings with empathy like you guys and try to understand what the fuck's going on a littlebit better. What the fuck is going on? In the words of Lucas and Empire Records, what's withtoday 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 themeof the history you're examining that it feels like America is like moral panics held together byfreeways. No, I don't feel like I'm going to run out of things to talk about but do I want to talkabout moral panics and conspiracy theories only? I think maybe that is more accurate is like opening
03:46up myself. Like you could. I could but like I just get pretty exhausted. Yes. It's dishearteninga 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 fromthings that are happening again all the time and travel back into history that's still superrelevant but maybe less saturated. I think the satanic panic, these things we talk about a lothave 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 panicin circa 2017 was perhaps the fact that we were just kind of looking around and being like, boy,
04:37it seems like this is about to make a giant comeback. Sure, sure. Like knowing that on somelevel. 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 growingup and so he didn't veer too heavy into satanic stuff. He had his satanic phase like when I was ababy but not when I was like tiny. You and Dean Winchester. So the Illuminati though has so manyof the same characteristics, foundations. Maybe I was more apt to have a reptilianstand in for a satanist. But it's the same basic argument, right? It's the same thing. There'slike a cabal which in itself is an anti-Semitic term, right? But a group of people controlling the
05:33world and harming children and hypnotizing all of the youth to become satanic agentsor stupefy them with fluoride in the water. Same type of stuff. So what about you, Sarah? Do youthink 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 withregards to this is that when I was in an MFA, I was writing a lot of short stories that were likereal gritty. You know, I was like Raymond Carver and Dennis Johnson are kissing and this is thebaby they had. You know, that was the dream obviously. God, I wish. We all wish. But a roadtrip that would be. Yeah. But so I was writing these stories about like this family of polygamist
06:26brothers 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 hadlike fighting dogs, like as gritty as you could possibly get. I was like more grit. I was likeVincent Gallo, you know, and it was all about the sort of teenagers who they married and who likebought into this sort of patriarchal power system and microcosm kind of way, which is what I wastelling 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 werestories where you were talking about characters where their outsides matched the inside of how you
07:13felt. And you were trying to express your psychological reality by talking about characterswho deserve to feel the way you did and have the problems emotionally. And like, that's what youhad to do to get there. And when I think about the satanic panic, and part of it being therapy isa way to validate emotional suffering. And also this idea that if anyone has any kind of familialtrauma at all, then like, it must have been this satanic sexual abuse that was apparently so everywherethe whole time. And no one stops along the way to be like, maybe this is, you know, maybe nothingillegal happened. And people can still really suffer and develop trauma because of that. And Ithink that's, that's certainly one of the things that draws me to it. Because I've had this journey
08:04of 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 thereality 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 thatwould feel validating. I imagine if you were like, listen, I was one of those group pony sacrificekids. I have a right to be unable to get out of bed today. Right. Because beyond like, these storiesis also recovered memory, right? And I think recovered memory is a big, because it extendsso far beyond the satanic panic and into this very day. It's shocking how much media is based around
08:51this really intense, complicated thing called recovered memory. And I think that the heart ofit, and we did this in our alien abduction episode, because that's so much, so much of alien abductioncomes from recovered memory as well. You get this like primordial soup of imagery, right, of thislike the grossest, it's like satanic panic, very unnerving, the darkest of the dark. But it doesseem to stand in for not being able to, you're to have your trauma validated trauma that isn'tas sensational. It's like this way to externalize a trauma, make it big enough that people give afuck, right? Right. So I also went to an MFA program, but in poetry. And what I think I'm sointerested in is that moral panics are in a way like metaphors, right? So they're like, this way
09:45that you blow out the satanic panic into this huge thing. But what you're really trying to say islike children are being abused. But your metaphor is this almost poetic, anti poetic, whateveryou want to say, but nonetheless, like poetic in that it's exaggerated and translating like anemotional experience into a visual image. So yeah, somehow it's an extension and more than just likewriting, 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, maleauthorities, like heavens know we must do something because before when the feminists were like,children are being abused by guys, everyone was like, well,
10:35yeah. 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 childrenare being molested by gay men, absolutely, right, unequivocally. But you know, yeah, I think thatthat has a ton to do with it. Yeah. So we, I want to do a couple of things with you today. This iskind of like a more game show like episode than usual. So I did a call on Patreon, I asked peoplefor 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
11:25like 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 bagof misconceptions. And I want to go through them with you and talk about basically all of theseare things that people falsely believe and that we can do a debunking of, but which of them areinteresting and why and so forth. And we're going to get more galaxy brain as we go on. And Ihave saved my favorite one for last. Good, good. Okay. Number one, baby carrots. You know whereI'm going with this? I don't. No idea. So I've heard people express amazement when they realizethat a baby carrot is not in fact a juvenile carrot, but it is actually an adult carrot that
12:14has 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 intoshredded carrot bags. That would be nice. I like to think that they have some kind of system thatuses 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 thefield. 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.
13:03Now they're ready to go into bags. Did we miss something? See, and I was wrong. They're notwhittled. 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 expandout. So what is this baby carrot? A symptom of what's a bigger issue that's happening here? Isit food waste? I think I would go with like ridiculous ways that we've altered food to likemake ourselves comfortable as humans. I don't know. I would want this great baby carrot storyin there, but it's not going to be enough for an episode, but it could be like a heart. It couldbe like the main story, right? Oh, yeah. It's like the popcorn method. I want to call it where you
13:52have 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 liketechnically that's a debunkable misconception. And I was like, and that's obviously like prettysimple and you know, who cares? But we watched that video and I was like, okay, this is causingsome thoughts to happen in my brain about like the mechanization of food, the issue of supplychains, which are all anyone ever talks about anymore. There is a big topic here and it's not
14:38baby 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 saywe need this carrot to be buffed completely of life and look like a cartoon taking this likewild 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 bythat time had been dead for 20 years. Who's not threatening a dead guy who was last cute in the
15:29Great 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 onHG 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 airin 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
16:20middle sexes east to Jamesburg under martial law. Incredible as it may seem, both theobservations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption thatthose strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invadingarmy from the planet Mars. 120 known survivors. What is there to live for? Well, there won't beany 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 spreadingfaster, it's reached Times Square. Now the smoke's crossing 6th Avenue.
17:13100 yards away.It's good stuff. It's great stuff. It's great stuff. But yeah, I mean, so basically the narrativethat I grew up believing, a lot of people grew up believing and that you get from official sourcesabout this was on PBS retrospective not long ago, stuff like that, is that this caused mass hysteriathat people, you know, that the streets were flooding with people panicking. You know what isan 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
18:12these legends about people being injured by scary stories. And when you check it out, it's likeeither 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 Worldsthat was never confirmed. What's interesting is that apparently not that many people were listeningto it. A lot of markets didn't even carry it. A lot of listeners were actually listening toEdgar Bergen, who is more popular. And to me, the funny thing about that is that Edgar Bergenwas a ventriloquist. And I will remind you that this medium is radio. Anyone can be a ventriloquist
18:57on the radio. However, some people get scared. There's a little bit of anxiety. It doesn't appearto be happening at anything approaching a significant scale. People aren't fleeing thecities. People aren't engaging in mass hysteria. But the newspapers exaggerate the idea that peopleare 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 newspapersare feeling a little bit anxious about the radio snapping up their job. And this is a nice timefor 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,
19:56no one really looks good. Yeah, that's great. The other thing, like if I were going to makean episode of this would be how it's coinciding with the first UFO sightings actually a little bitlater. But like one of the reasons I started wanting to make American Hysteria was readingCarl 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 cameabout as the Nazis were invading different countries. So like the idea of being invadedby an external force that you don't understand is permeating. I like to put it like crackle inthe air. There's something that's going to like catch. And so that would be what I would be most
20:49interested in is like, again, it's like the metaphorical part of it where like, what are theconditions 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 goingoff of my, my only historical literacy, which of course comes to me through a combination ofnewsies and swing kids. But even that tells me that this was a time when if you're are listeningto a show that you understand to be fictional, and you still hear this format of a nice evening
21:35of music repeatedly broken in by an urgent news broadcast that's telling you that the invadersare coming, they're coming now, and they have superior technology. And you're just kind offucked, aren't you? Yeah. One of the things that I would argue is that this is just a really goodpiece of horror. Yeah. And highly effective horror tends to be so effective for us because itconnects to something that we're actually afraid of in the real world. And it can lead us to createmythology about how it's capable of causing actual harm because we want to express the power of thetext. I'm also reminded of the myth that like the Omen was a cursed movie because people died whileworking on it. Yeah. When like, you know, people die working on romantic comedies, but we just don't
22:19create 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 ofdirectors at the time not giving a shit about their performer's safety. So it's like, that'sthe curse of the male artistic ego. Hey, oh. Exactly. Yeah. So the war of the world. I thinkthat 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? Likethe hysteria about a hysteria or the, you know, you're wrong about something that people are wrong
23:03about. 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 asthe holiday offering it was intended to be. We annihilated the world before your very ears andutterly 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
24:21know 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 ballsof your feet. It's just step, and then you go in a circle and you go in a larger circle aroundthe 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.
25:05It'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 toyour 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 thewaltz. And it was like, yes, waltzes. What was it like to write waltzes where they're like waltzone hit wonders? Was there waltzomania? Great questions. Yeah, did the parents freak out about
25:45the waltz? I'm sure they did. Yeah. What's the history of the time signature? That would be maybea little more boring, but you never know. Exactly. All you have to do is find the freaky inventor ofthe time signature and tell his story. And that's all you need. Auto von time signature. There'soften such fascinating human history attached to like sort of dry facts because like who comesup with these things, people who has messy lives, the very same ones. Yeah. Yeah. What would youthink about like a waltz episode? What's your level of enthusiasm for that? I mean, we did alot of dance stuff in our teenage sex episode, but there was definitely a time that the waltzwas the hot new dance that only the teenagers were doing. I love that. Yeah. Right. That's just a
26:32fun 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 teenagershave ever had anything to do with. I know the concept of the teenager is new, but the numbersare 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 quoteswere said by really hot people, I think. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. Especially on Tumblr. This
27:33was 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.
28:14Sure. 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 practicingwitchcraft 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 becauseyou're all the same. Yes. Well, I had an earnest feminist shirt in eighth grade that said, I thinkit, pretty sure it said feminism is the radical belief that women are human. And I thought thatwas just the bee's knees. Hot shit. Which like it is, but it was just like, I just, I'm like,
29:00Sarah, like you could have taken things slightly less seriously, you know, like you were in eighthgrade, like have some fun. Yeah, I wasn't a feminist yet. But it is a very much merged phrase andits origin unbelievably is in an academic article by a historian named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich thatshe published in 1976. Who's that? So what I find most interesting about the original usein the article is that it's not like an encouragement. It's like a statement. Justyeah, statement of fact. So it's from an article called Virtuous Women Found New England MinisterialLiterature 1668 to 1735, which you would not expect to contain a sentence that moves bumperstickers. And yet here we are, which was an American quarterly in 1976. And this is the
29:53passage preceding the sentence. Cotton Mather called them the hidden ones. They never preached or sat ina 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 leastonce a year and want to hear the minister preach even when it snowed, hoping for an eternal crownthey never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven't been. Well-behaved women seldom makehistory. So it's somebody quoting Cotton Mather. No, no, he didn't say he didn't know. He justcalled them the hidden ones. Okay, okay, okay. No, wouldn't that be incredible if it were a directCotton Mather quote? No, that would have made me the happiest. That would be truly, truly,
30:38truly outrageous. Yes, yes, yes. Wow, not what I expected though at all. How would you describe thatpassage? Well, it doesn't seem to be saying what we are saying. It's saying, right? It seems to besaying that you should behave and that your behavior, your lack of noticeable behavior ordoing 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 whofulfilled their duties as prescribed to them by the male society in which they live by PuritanNew England in this case didn't tend to be remembered to leave a mark on history. We have
31:30historical records of murderers and revolutionaries and people who either royally fucked up or werevery 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 toproselytize about their sins. If I could take a single thing from this conversation, I wouldprobably pick Cotton Mather wrote the first American true crime book and just stick with that for anhour. 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.
32:18Oh, please don't promise me that. And so Laurel Thatcher Ulrich after this phrase becomes the memethat it becomes writes a book. So did it become a meme in the 70s or did it become was it pulledin the 90s? Yes, it was the 90s. Yeah, do you want to hear that story? This is from her bookabout 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
33:02a 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 popularculture in 1995. When journalist Kay Mills used it as an epigraph for her informal history ofAmerican women from Pocahontas to power suits. Perhaps by accident, she changed the word seldomto rarely little matter. According to my dictionary, seldom and rarely mean the same thing. Wellbehaved 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 funeralsermons. In 1996, a young woman named Jill Portugal found the rarely version of the quote
33:47in her roommate's copy of the new beacon book of quotations for women. She wrote me from Oregonasking 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 beenfeatured in Cosmo Girl, the Christian Science Monitor and Creative Keepsake Scrap Bookingmagazine. According to news reports, it was a favorite of the pioneering computer scientist Anita
34:28Borg. 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'slike, 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 ont-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,
35:17we could get into that. But I guess I just mean not a corporation, just a single persondoing 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 hearit a little bit less. It's a big cycle when a runaway sentence happens, as she put it. I reallylike 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
36:02to 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 morethan 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 andmayors 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 deserveto be known for what they actually did. Yeah, you don't need to make up stuff about her
36:41for her to be a compelling individual. Yeah, and I love that we have a story of an academicwriting a sentence one way. It's kind of like when you have an outdoor cat that adopts anotherfamily, and then they just think they found a really friendly stray, but it's really like thecat has been presented with two options and chosen one. I think this tends to happen topeople 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 thinkthat that's what makes it the most interesting is that it meant something different. The statementis obvious in its truth as just a blanket statement and not an empowering political
37:31statement. It's just, I don't know, it's really cool. I love how academia can get translatedinto popular culture because that's its own need. And I think that's kind of what we try to do istake 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 presidentsmaybe. 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.
38:19Romeo, 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'tremember. 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,
39:04this is the kind of thing that like can make you question everything, in my opinion. And sothe reason that we have that, I was looking up an article that kind of explained the phenomenonhere, and it turned out to be written by Lois Levine, who I once did a book event with eightyears 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 toochilly. And we have an account by somebody who went to Europe in 1608 and described seeing abalcony. And I'm just going to read you this passage because I love it. Great. I noted anotherthing in these Venetian palaces, and it is very little used in any other country that I could
39:52perceive in my travels, saving only in Venice and other Italian cities, somewhat above the middle ofthe front of the building, or a little beneath the top of the front, they have right oppositeunto 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 tolean 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 partsof the city round about them. Galleries of pleasure that Jetteth and Buttheth, you know, and just likethe awe inspiring first time you see a balcony in England. It's beautiful. I love it. And I mean,
40:39this also to me screams the Mandela effect. Yes, totally. We all are remembering, we'remisremembering collectively. Or do you think more than Bozlerman, it was convenience of set designoriginally because it would be easier or would it be not easier to have a balcony on set? Theseare 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 similarplay 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
41:30was restored to the throne in 1660, and the theaters were reopened, Shakespeare plays wereput on again, including a 1662 revival of Romeo and Juliet. But far more popular was Otway's 1679play, The History and Fall of Chaos Marius, which graphs dialogue characters and plot from Romeo andJuliet onto an ancient Roman military and political struggle drawn from Plutarch. Although Shakespearehimself 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,
42:23this 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 arecreating 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,
43:02and 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'swhen 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.
43:48Chelsea, let's say that you've bought some sour cream. Yep. Okay. And you take it out of yourrefrigerator 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 hasexpired. This is perhaps the most consequential piece of information that I have to sharein this episode. Nay, perhaps in this program. All right. Okay. Use buy means this is the last dayof 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 myintuition because I eat things. The amount of yogurt that I have wasted in my life because
44:44I believe use buy meant expired and that like even if it looked fine, probably they knew better than Idid. 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 issaying 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 toprint that on the package, right? It's a demand. Use buy. Yeah. Well, I feel really vindicated
45:30in that I've eaten things way past their expiration date and I'm just a generallygross 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 buymeans 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 supposedto be. Only if it says expiration date, does that actually mean that that's when it's supposed toexpire? And obviously even that's conservative. So. Sure. They got to really play it safe on thatdate. Don't need anything you reasonably expected be expired, but also like we've apparently been
46:10told to throw away perfectly good food for our entire lives. So that's nice. I say follow yourheart. I like that too. Okay. And now our final debunking. I'm just going to search up a veryshort video to send you. Perfect. Okay. Three, two, one. Kylie Jenner to the foyer. Kylie Jennerto the foyer. I have a little surprise for you. Is that a chicken? Okay. All right. This is likeit'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 whatrenders 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
47:16that's the humorous thing is that it is clearly not a chicken. Yeah, it's clearly a pig. So it'slike 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 thisup 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 empatheticperson. Yeah. Well, and the right answer that I think like part of what made this popular as a
48:01meme 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 likespecifically asked her mom for a chicken as a housewarming gift. And then she was coming downto the foyer knowing that there was a surprise and knowing that she had asked for a chicken andapparently she couldn't see very well. And so she asked, is that a chicken? Not because sheinexplicably 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
48:44someone, 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 onebecause it's like the answer is right there. It makes total sense. It's still like a classicmeme that people love. And it also falls into the category that I think is like very well representedin misconception, which is like, look at this dumb bitch. Yeah. And I'm not going to like spend alot of energy going to the mat for the Kardashians. You guys have noticed that they don't appear onthe 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
49:26or the implications of their vast wealth or whatever. You still can't frame them for notknowing 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 debunkablething 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,
50:10you would be like, yes, I probably as a millennial have some awareness of who Amy Fisher is. Shewas mentioned in the Addams Family Values. Like, I kind of know that she did something bad in theearly 90s, but like, what were the circumstances? Yeah. You know, so like, that could be debunkingsomeone 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 youwere 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, HarryHoudini, we're going to learn all about him as a magician, when really you would learn probably
50:50all about him as a spiritualist debunker, because that story is so fantastic. Right. And then you'relike known as a musician also did this. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Like a characterlike 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 biggesttheme. That's great. Yeah. Mm hmm. I feel like that's maybe kind of the theme of this whole episodeis that like it's not the story itself so much as the way you approach it and the way you're able tolook at it in ways that tells you about what are the sort of human desires and fears andlongings that people are projecting onto these events this time. And then what does that tell
51:39us 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 youwant to hear more of Chelsea on this show, we have a Patreon episode about the whisper ofBaptist Church, which is just a beautiful, harrowing, and really thought-provoking diveinto 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, toCarolyn Kendrick, producer extraordinaire. See you next time.
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