0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of iHeartRadio,

0:11

Hello and Happy Friday. We had

0:14

our live show from

0:17

the Ace Hotel, Los Angeles, South Bay.

0:20

We sure did shared this week. We

0:23

think we

0:26

are as we record this still reviewing audio

0:28

to see what's workable from the live show and what isn't.

0:30

Yeah, so we still don't know how much you're

0:33

going to get that's actually from

0:35

the event itself versus from us

0:37

recording in the studios

0:39

that are in our homes.

0:42

What a fun night though, it was very fun.

0:44

I wanted to make sure to thank number

0:46

one, to thank Marriott

0:48

for sponsoring the show.

0:52

The Marriott AC Hotel

0:54

where we had this live event

0:58

was really nice. The

1:00

whole venue was great, everyone

1:02

we worked with was great. And then

1:04

suddenly, in the middle of recording the episode,

1:07

there was a flash and a pop and the

1:10

power was out for the whole neighborhood. And

1:12

it stayed that way. It stayed that way for

1:14

a long time. I think when we left after

1:17

everything was over. Uh huh,

1:19

our hotel was still running on a generator.

1:22

Yeah yeah, yeah, which I should

1:24

say, even before any

1:26

of that happened, AC

1:28

Hotel South Bay was already being

1:32

real flexible because originally we

1:34

had at the end of this event, we had a cocktail

1:36

demonstration, right, And originally

1:38

it was supposed to happen on their rooftop

1:40

bar, right, but it rained that day,

1:43

so the whole thing moved inside downstairs

1:45

to their lobby bar. And they were so accommodating

1:48

with that. Yeah, And it was

1:50

a beautiful setup, and I so

1:53

like right out of the gate they were already rolling

1:55

with some wild times and then it

1:57

just got wilder for us. Yeah. Yeah, because

2:00

La does not have a lot of rainfall.

2:03

That rooftop bar isn't a bar that

2:05

has an additional roof over it. I

2:08

know a lot of the rooftop bars that I have been to

2:10

in like Massachusetts or North Carolina

2:12

or whatever, like it's sort of an open

2:15

air bar, but there's also a roof, and this

2:17

was more of an open space. So having

2:19

the event there in the rain was not

2:21

not feasible, not really feasible. So yeah,

2:24

we had it downstairs instead, Yeah,

2:26

which was also very very fun. Yeah,

2:28

we had a great time. That was so fun. I

2:31

love making a drink and I love making

2:33

a drink with a big room full of people, and it was really

2:35

really great. I will say I was kind of impressed

2:37

and delighted with our listeners. I mean I always

2:39

am, but I have done an event

2:42

like that at other things that

2:45

I was not hosting, but I was like part of. And

2:49

it went on. They go off the rails

2:51

really easily, where it's like once you say poor

2:53

the first ingredient and everybody's kind

2:55

of doing their own thing and it's all and our listeners

2:58

would chat while they were doing the ingredient and they

3:00

would all be ready to like be like, Okay, what's next,

3:02

what's the next step? Yeah, And so it was really

3:04

lovely because then when we all finished together,

3:06

we got to toast together, and that made me very

3:08

happy in my heart. Yeah, we had kind of

3:10

prepared as we were doing our walkthrough for the

3:12

possibility of going off

3:14

the rails immediately. So when the power

3:17

went out and it turned out that we were

3:19

not going to have the amplification of our headset

3:21

mics for people to hear us, I

3:24

was like, oh, I'm not sure how this

3:26

is going to go. But it went totally fine.

3:29

Everybody, all the listeners, great

3:31

fun. I think folks had a great time. All.

3:35

We had a couple of other teams from

3:38

iHeartRadio who were there with us as part

3:40

of event. All of our colleagues also

3:42

were great, so I wanted to shout out to all of them.

3:44

There are so many. I don't feel like I even have

3:47

everybody's names in my head. Yeah,

3:50

I would start naming them, but if I do, I'll

3:52

leave somebody out. Then I'll feel like a jerk. So we're

3:54

gonna skip that. Just know that we appreciate you

3:56

all. I do want to talk about some stuff

3:58

related to our our actual

4:01

topic content. We

4:04

never told anybody what the Pierre Collins

4:07

was. Oh no, we didn't. I have a

4:09

guess. I was assuming it was going

4:11

to be something that had Champagne in it. No,

4:13

it has cognac. Oh

4:15

wow, So it to Tom Collins with cognac

4:18

in it. Okay, delicious, listen,

4:21

I love a little coognac. There

4:23

was also a thing that I wanted to mention because

4:26

we talk about the origin of that Tom

4:28

Collins hoax being attributed to

4:32

a minstrel performer named Harrigan.

4:35

Huh. That is a confusing

4:37

point because that paper

4:39

that we read from mentioned

4:42

specifically that it

4:44

is a black performer. Okay,

4:48

I could not find any evidence of

4:51

a black performer named Harrigan

4:54

at that time that would

4:56

have been well known enough to have

4:58

the kind of pull that he could have gotten

5:00

every service person in

5:02

New York City. And on the joke, there was

5:05

a performer named Harrigan who was white

5:08

and I believe appeared in blackface

5:10

as part of his show, And that may

5:12

be where the confusion is. But just in case you're

5:14

ever like, wait, what is this scoop with that? Or you

5:16

know enough about minstrel history

5:18

that that raised a little question for you,

5:21

there seems to be confusion on the part of that paper,

5:24

is my guess. The

5:26

other thing I want to talk about maybe

5:30

my most coveted thing in

5:32

the world right now. Okay, that

5:34

nineteen twenty nine book that we mentioned, Cocktail

5:37

de Perie is very

5:39

hard to get. Even a

5:41

pretty beaten up copy is going to run you

5:43

eight or nine hundred dollars, oh my goodness,

5:46

because I think there weren't very many, and

5:49

they just are not in

5:52

rapid supply, and the people that do have them are

5:55

probably people that are really really into

5:58

Cocktail and bar his Way and are not going to

6:01

part with them. Right. Are there

6:03

scans of it? Well? I

6:05

found one okay, and

6:08

it will be listed among our show notes.

6:10

Okay, this show and it is spectacular

6:13

because this is I'm

6:16

trying to figure out where this is

6:18

housed, because I kind of stumbled

6:21

upon just the active live

6:23

page scam where you can flip through the whole thing.

6:25

Oh sure, and I will say this is

6:27

one where you really want to flip through

6:29

the whole thing because it's

6:32

illustrated beautifully in you

6:34

know, this art deco style.

6:38

They have a great page turning noise that I

6:40

don't normally love when things do that, but theirs

6:42

is extra good and you just see the layout

6:45

because this was also I presume sponsored

6:47

by a lot of spirit

6:50

brands, because there are things like you

6:52

know, hand

6:54

drawn ads for quantrolle and whatnot

6:56

in it, and it's all quite beautiful

6:59

and I'm obsessed with it and I just like looking

7:02

at Even if you don't speak French, you don't

7:04

really need to. It is all in French,

7:06

but like you can translate these recipes

7:09

pretty well, and it's just

7:11

a good insight into how like cocktail

7:13

books were working at the time. And

7:15

I love it and I covet it now. So I

7:19

will be that weirdo who's searching for a

7:22

a copy that magically does

7:24

not cost nine hundred dollars. Sure, but

7:26

I love it. This is my new

7:29

white Whale perhaps of books. It's

7:33

just a I don't know, I just love it. It's adorable,

7:35

it has some little notations

7:37

in it, this copy. I'm

7:41

into it. I'm super into all of it. And it's

7:43

also just a good record of what was going on in

7:46

Paris in the nineteen twenties in terms of,

7:48

like it's party culture. So

7:51

I'm in. I hope if

7:54

you go looking for this you are as charmed

7:56

by it as I am. You

7:58

know. This was also an interesting episode

8:01

in that we don't often talk about alcohol

8:03

on the show. Right when we do,

8:05

we try to talk about it. Historically, we don't advertise

8:08

alcohol on the show. Sure, So

8:10

this was a little bit of a tricky

8:12

one to figure out the right path, and

8:15

hopefully it was enjoyable and fun and

8:17

thinking about how how these things come

8:20

to be rather than the idea of

8:22

getting drunk. Please drink responsibly. If you drink,

8:26

will be a fun ride for other people. I

8:29

love this particular area of history.

8:32

I love talking about where cocktails come from

8:34

and how they've changed, and who invented

8:37

them, and that

8:39

most of them are as you know, because we've talked

8:41

about some of them on Eponymous Foods

8:43

before. It's contentious.

8:46

There are people who really believe one version or

8:48

another and they will fight about it online. So

8:50

tread carefully if you go wandering

8:52

into any discussions. But it is a

8:54

super fun space and I really

8:57

just I like how it traces human history

9:00

through the ways we have, you know, engaged

9:03

in social scenarios or tried

9:06

to relax through the

9:08

imbibing of spirits

9:11

or not. I still really love that Jerry

9:13

Thomas has a temperance section. Yeah,

9:15

and I'm going to call them temperance drinks going

9:17

forward. We

9:30

talked about the monastery at Montserrat

9:32

a bit. Yeah, you

9:34

did different stuff there than I did. I did

9:36

totally different stuff there than you did. Yeah

9:39

you did the funicular, right, Yeah, we

9:42

we. This was one of two funicular trips

9:44

that we took on our trip to

9:47

Barcelona. Took the funicular

9:49

up to the top of It's not the very

9:51

top. You can climb farther up from there. But when

9:54

you look at that finnicular from the ground,

9:57

it looks terrifying, like it looks

9:59

like a sheer vertical climb, which

10:02

it does not feel that way really when you're

10:04

on it. But yeah, we took the funicular.

10:08

We walked around at the top. There's there are some

10:10

like pilgrimage paths

10:13

up there, and

10:15

we walked a bit and then we came back down

10:17

and we were going to get lunch. The

10:20

restaurant seemed to be having

10:23

some issues that day. It looked like maybe they

10:25

were having some kind of plumbing

10:27

struggle, so the restaurant was closed the

10:32

I don't think you were at the same restaurant that well.

10:35

There was also a cafeteria that had a very long

10:37

line, and so we made

10:40

a meal out of things that were

10:42

sold in this little like sort of tent market

10:46

there where people sold

10:48

a number of locally

10:50

made things. So there's a cheese

10:53

that's kind of like a ricotta that's served

10:55

with honey on it. I had some of that. I

10:58

had some candied almonds, and I had

11:00

some of these little fig cakes. And there

11:02

are names for all of these that I don't remember,

11:04

and I did not look up before we came to

11:06

record this. It's called a circle of flavor. Yeah,

11:09

that's

11:12

described them. I loved our

11:14

guide in Barcelona she was amazing.

11:17

Unlike prior trips that we've done, we

11:20

had the same guide with us for

11:22

most of the things that we did the whole time. There were

11:24

a couple things that we had, like a guide

11:27

that was like for like, we had a different right

11:29

Segretta Familia has its own guide structure,

11:32

so she couldn't be our guide in there. Yeah,

11:34

so we had a different sogratta familiar guide, and

11:37

we had an audio tour at the Picasso Museum

11:39

and not a like human

11:42

guide guiding us. But she was with us the rest of the

11:44

time and was great with

11:46

some hilarious language

11:49

difficulties is not even the right word,

11:52

the things that translate a little bit

11:54

differently than you would say

11:56

them if you grew up speaking English as your first

11:58

language, exactly. Her command of

12:01

English is just fine. I don't want to make it sound

12:03

like we're in any way, like I

12:06

don't speak Spanish that well, and I certainly

12:08

don't speak Catalonian. So

12:10

she was amazing, But there were a couple times where

12:12

it was like, this is not quite how

12:14

we would say that. Yeah, I

12:16

would say we spent more time on

12:19

the bus, like

12:22

talking about the English word for wingsuit

12:25

because she told us the story about a wingsuit

12:27

diver who had famously

12:31

done a dive at Monserrat and also at

12:33

some point died doing a dive,

12:36

but like that she didn't know the word for wingsuit

12:38

in English. I would say we spent more time

12:41

on that conversation on the bus, but

12:43

we did clarifying the statue

12:48

conversation that you and I and

12:50

I know at least a couple of other people in the group were

12:52

all similarly intrigued by.

12:55

So yes, yeah, it was

12:58

very, very fun. But yeah, I went. I

13:01

went to the museum. Yes, because

13:03

they have a lot of signs for the

13:05

museum, most of which taut

13:08

that it has a caravaggio, which it

13:10

does, but it only has

13:12

the one, which is right. Again, I don't

13:14

own a caravagia, have no shade there. But

13:16

like, I feel like that under sells what that

13:19

museum actually is, because it's

13:21

really quite an astonishing collection because

13:25

there have been so many people that are just

13:27

like art collectors, that have bequeathed

13:30

their their stuff there that like, I

13:32

mean, I was just a gog and so I

13:34

was like, what is he? And

13:38

while we were there, they also had a secondary

13:40

exhibit that was going on. That

13:42

was some of the art posters

13:45

of like the poster work of Picasso. Oh,

13:47

okay, which I will I will confess upfront,

13:49

I had weird Picasso

13:52

things on this trip, okay,

13:55

because I just you know, now that I know

13:57

that he was a jerk, his art is a little

13:59

ruined for me, all right, And

14:01

so like the Picassa museum, I was like, oh, like

14:04

I just I was. I had a bad attitude about it. It

14:07

was like not great, and so I didn't go look at

14:09

the posters, but my good friend Kristen

14:11

did. But again

14:13

that museum, though, is really really beautiful

14:15

and the staff is super nice. We

14:18

just had a great time, and there were several of us

14:20

from our little group that went there, and

14:22

I really really enjoyed walking around

14:24

because it was like, it's just it's a

14:27

beautiful setup. The flow of it is quite

14:29

nice. It's multiple floors.

14:32

That Johnsinger sergeant that they have is gorgeous.

14:35

Yeah, there was a lot of art

14:37

that I was not familiar with from artists

14:40

by artists that were from Spain, Barcelona

14:43

and Catalonia in particular, that

14:46

I am trying to figure out how to maybe

14:48

do, hopefully an episode

14:50

about but it's it's tricky. I

14:53

will tell you. One of the things that I was really struck by

14:55

in general on our trip, particularly

14:57

in that museum, was the

15:00

there is so much history to Spain

15:02

and Cataloonnia that we don't ever get,

15:05

No, we're really in English speaking

15:07

countries, Like I don't

15:10

know if it is as

15:12

we have both encountered doing research on

15:15

episodes since we have come back, that like it's

15:18

a little bit hard to grasp all

15:20

of the nuances of the way things have played

15:23

out, because there are a lot of long, ongoing

15:26

conflicts that aren't necessarily

15:28

at fever pitch, but they just kind of simmer

15:30

constantly in the background that

15:33

are a little bit hard to grasp, like why

15:36

something has or hasn't happened. And I don't

15:38

know if that has made it harder for English

15:40

language research or

15:43

writing about it to happen. Yeah,

15:45

I mean, I hope there's more. But it really was eye

15:47

opening in that regard where it was like, there is just so

15:50

much about Spain and Catalonia that I

15:52

did not know had no grasp

15:54

of, completely ignorant

15:57

and blind too. And one of those was

15:59

how many amazing artists

16:02

have been part of their tradition that haven't

16:04

really some of them. You'll see their paintings

16:07

in museums in other parts

16:09

of Europe or the US,

16:11

but not enough

16:13

in my opinion, because there's some really incredible

16:16

art that I was not the least bit familiar

16:18

with. Yeah, yeah, I so one

16:20

time years ago, I was at

16:23

I think it's just called the Philadelphia

16:25

Art Museum, big Art museum

16:27

in Philadelphia. I have not googled

16:30

the name of it before coming in here to have this unscripted

16:32

conversation. And

16:35

there was some Spanish art that I

16:37

saw in an exhibit

16:39

there that I found so striking

16:42

and I was so captivated by, and I was

16:44

like, I want to do an episode on

16:46

the person who made this art after I get back home

16:49

from this trip to Philadelphia. And I similarly

16:51

had just

16:54

no success finding

16:57

resources in English about

16:59

this part, yeah,

17:01

or even for me media enough resources

17:04

that even if I managed to get them translated,

17:06

would really offer more than like six

17:08

bullet points, right right, Yeah,

17:12

Yeah, we had very similar

17:14

experiences regarding like that. We

17:16

are recording another episode in this recording

17:18

session today that's going to come out a little bit later

17:21

that is literally inspired by the

17:23

fact that I was reading the signage at

17:25

the museum, a different museum, and

17:28

was like, I'm clearly missing key context

17:30

here, like something

17:34

that's so basic that like the person

17:36

who wrote these signs did not think it needed to

17:38

be explained. And yeah,

17:41

it this more, much more so

17:43

than our trips to Italy or

17:46

France. This trip really

17:49

highlighted like big holes in

17:51

what our education has focused on. I think,

17:53

agreed, yeah,

17:56

and I don't. I don't know how how

17:58

that gets fixed. I

18:00

mean, more people need to be

18:02

researching and writing about Spanish history

18:04

and Catalinian history. But

18:07

that's easy to say because

18:11

I'm like, not me. I'll do what we

18:13

can do here, but I don't

18:15

have the linguistic knowledge

18:18

or base to be able to go a whole lot further.

18:30

So there's some other interesting things about Monsirat

18:32

we did not talk about in this episode. We

18:35

mentioned briefly that it

18:37

had a history before

18:41

the finding of the Madonna and the

18:43

building of that monastery, like the Romans

18:45

had a temple to Venus there, And

18:48

I have to say, walking around up there,

18:50

that makes all the sense on earth that

18:52

it would be a temple to a Roman god, because

18:55

it is, as I said at the top

18:57

of that episode, you feel like you're on the top of the world.

18:59

It's so beautif and

19:01

the view is so vast,

19:04

and it's just very striking. But here's the one

19:07

that really got me. And I couldn't

19:09

find verification

19:11

of this, but it makes

19:13

some sense knowing what we already

19:15

do know about this particular

19:18

chunk of history, and it lines

19:20

up, which is that we know

19:22

for a fact that Himmler

19:24

visited Montserrat when Franco was

19:26

in power. The part

19:29

that is not verifiable is that

19:31

he is rumored to have been looking for holy

19:33

relics for the Third Reich, particularly

19:36

the Holy Grail. Okay, we

19:38

don't know. That's one of those things that pops

19:41

up on like you know, underground

19:44

Montserrat websites, like

19:47

is the Holy Grail or really on Monserrat that we know

19:51

that Hitler in particular was

19:53

very fascinated by

19:56

biblical relics and he kind of was

19:58

thinking he would use them as like some

20:01

sort of retroactive proof of divine

20:03

provenance of the Third Reich. And so this

20:06

was presumably if they

20:08

were looking for the Holy Grail, they're hoping they

20:10

would find another significant

20:14

religious relic. It would presumably be

20:16

in service of that goal, but it

20:19

also just is like, yeah,

20:23

yeah, Nazis. Yeah, I

20:26

have the Indiana Jones theme in my head now, of

20:28

course I always do. Just as a rule of thumb,

20:32

we didn't get into it because again

20:34

I couldn't find a I didn't have

20:36

a lot of time to go

20:38

down this particular side street. But that

20:42

secret police

20:44

officer who was murdered Manzanas

20:49

was also,

20:54

if not a collaborator, at least sympathetic

20:56

to and friends with Nazis. So

21:00

that too, is another element of nuance

21:03

in that whole case, the ETA, which

21:06

is I kept finding myself

21:08

as I was writing that section, I'm like, I really we have

21:10

to set up why this is all happening. But

21:12

am I talking too much about this

21:14

weird crime and murder case and

21:17

this terrorist organization? But without any

21:19

of that context, that sit in makes no sense

21:21

right right right? And I had even

21:24

told you before we started recording

21:27

the episode that I was like, you know,

21:29

this is this sit in is kind of blipped

21:32

through on lists of things that have happened

21:34

at at Monsterrat like it'll get mentioned,

21:36

but not necessarily. And I think part of

21:38

it is that it's hard to talk about it without

21:41

going really into a

21:43

good bit of detail about like the timeline

21:46

and the process that played

21:48

out there. Sure, but it is

21:50

also very fascinating to read. In

21:53

this case, we do have accounts in English

21:57

some of the news reporting from that time, because

21:59

that was, you know, nineteen seventy from

22:03

American and British journalists who

22:05

are like, what the heck is going on here?

22:07

Like this is messed

22:10

up and recognizing

22:13

that like wait, this woman is here

22:15

and she's on trial, but there's no actual charge.

22:18

As we said in the episode, that did not go the way Franco

22:20

had anticipated, right. He thought they

22:22

were going to be like, yes, you will see my power, and it

22:24

was like what we see is not what you want us say,

22:27

right, which is kind of interesting. Anyway,

22:30

Moncerot really really struck me. I

22:32

loved. Here's another

22:35

thing I loved. You know. We were there in

22:39

the Basilica and it

22:41

was absolutely beautiful. I

22:44

am often very struck by religious art.

22:46

I just think most of it is so incredibly

22:49

beautiful because there's so much

22:52

sort of pressure on it from the beginning to be that

22:54

beautiful, because it has to be worthy of its

22:57

location and whatnot. But what I really really

23:00

loved particularly about that basilica

23:02

was that they have a lot of art

23:05

within the basilica that is more like museum

23:08

pieces that are not necessarily

23:11

what you would think of, Like some of them are very

23:14

modern, some of them are. It

23:16

just was very like the little side chapels off

23:18

of the main area where you would get I don't

23:20

know how many of those you popped into, but

23:22

like several of them kind

23:24

of had their own I don't know if

23:27

you would call it a vibe

23:29

their decor convention, or it'd be like

23:31

this one is the very modern minimalist chapel,

23:33

this one is the very Rococo looking child

23:36

like. It was just all really really

23:38

astonishingly cool and

23:42

just images that I like, I said, I had never

23:44

seen. I was blown away by the art. Blown away.

23:47

Let's go back. I'll

23:50

get on a plane tonight. It

23:53

was monserrat. I sure liked it. Yeah,

23:56

it was lovely. I sure liked it. Waiting

24:00

on waiting on my cava to arrive. Oh

24:03

yeah. We went to a vineyard where they

24:06

make kava, which is in

24:08

the sloppiest way I can put it, a

24:10

sparkling wine that some people would probably

24:12

compare to like their version of champagne or

24:14

prosecco. Sure, there's

24:18

certainly more nuance to it. But I

24:20

ordered so much on the way out of there and it

24:22

hasn't come yet. So I'm waiting. I'm anticipating,

24:25

hoping for my cases of kava.

24:30

When we left that lovely

24:32

little tasting that we had, I

24:35

thought our departure was imminent, so

24:38

I got on the bus and then

24:40

I was on the bus for a while because

24:42

people were ordering a lot of kava, and I wound

24:44

up having to get off the bus and go pee again

24:47

before Yeah,

24:52

I ordered a lot of kava. I

24:54

hope it comes here. I literally just held up the thing.

24:56

It was like dose dose dose, dose,

24:58

dose, dose dose. Down the line, there are

25:00

cases cases of cova. I

25:03

can't wait, all right. We

25:05

hope that if you are about

25:07

to have a couple of days off as we head into this weekend,

25:10

that you can enjoy kava or whatever

25:12

beverage alcoholic or not is suitable

25:15

for you and your tastes and your age.

25:17

Please don't please don't drink if you're underage,

25:19

and please drink responsibily. If

25:23

you do not have time off,

25:25

we hope that you still manage to get a little relaxation

25:28

and just some me time and take some deep breaths

25:30

and find some peace

25:32

in your little part of the world. We

25:34

will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode,

25:36

and then on Monday you'll have another brand new one.

25:44

Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of

25:46

iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

25:48

from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio

25:51

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

25:53

listen to your favorite shows.