Research Hole

Val has a new podcast, with frequent Research Hole guest, Leah! Listen to the first episode, then go subscribe to Books & Blooms. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What a treat! In this episode, author and recovering bluebottle Cory McCarthy joined us to talk about research holes from his latest novel Man O’War, a coming-of-age YA about a trans swimmer growing up near Sea Planet, a marine life theme park in small-town Ohio. I fully expected us to mostly talk about sea creatures, and then we had a heart-to-heart about the nuances of writing queer YA, parallels between growing up trans and animals in captivity, and who coming out is really for (*cough dinosaurs cough*). But don’t worry—there are still sea creature facts! Cory gave us tidbits about the inherent plurality of Portuguese man o' war, upsetting shark sex, and joyful penguin interactions, and more. Bonus game: count the times Cory and I laugh semi-maniacally about queer kidlit writer stuff, or the amount of times I say “that’s so real.” Remember, kids: it’s not that it gets better; it’s that straight people get less important. SHOW NOTES: The New York Times article “Boys Don’t Cry’ 20 Years Later: For Trans Men, a Divisive Legacy” gives an overview of the many complex responses to this movie. I personally like the piece “Fighting to Thrive: Reflecting on Boys Don’t Cry 20 Years Later” by William Horn on Bitch Media, which reminds us that the project of the movie is educating straight, cis people, and was not necessarily made for queer and trans people. Here’s a quote from Horn: “Boys Don’t Cry is powerful, but it’s traumatizing. The movie is intentionally designed that way: It pulls you into Brandon’s story so that you feel his fear and his pain. Good movies do that, and Boys Don’t Cry remains important viewing for a cis audience. For people like me, it’s a fear and pain that we already innately know.”The other trans YA novels I mentioned (published before 2011) were Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger and Luna by Julie Anne Peters. The two documentaries Cory mentioned are Blackfish and My Octopus Teacher. I asked Cory where he got his sea creature facts. He said many of them were from the science tomes of his youth, but he is also a lifelong fan of National Geographic for inspiring random research holes to go topple down into. [pic of preorder perk]From “Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Enduring Fame: Why the ’80s Art Star Remains Relevant Now” by Tessa Soloman in ARTNews: Jean-Michel Basquiat was a Neo-Expressionist artist who was famous in the 1980s, before dying of a heroin overdose in 1988 at 27 years old. He started as a graffiti artist, spray-painting walls around SoHo and the East Village with his friend Al Diaz, under the pseudonym SAMO, short for “same old shit.” He blew up after displaying work at a “New York/New Wave” show at P.S. 1, when viewers called him the new Rauschenberg.” His iconic works include Dustheads (1982), a seven-foot-tall canvas featuring two vibrantly colored, chaotic figures against a black background, and the sculptural painting Ten Punching Bags, a collaboration with Andy Warhol. The article Leah sent me was also from ARTNews, titled “The FBI Seized 25 Contested Basquiat Paintings from the Orlando Museum of Art.” I can’t really summarize it because it seems to deal with issues of authentication and theft specific to the high art world. But I’m glad it lead me to learn a bit about Basquiat!Visit the episode page on our website for the pics I promised: www.researchholepodcast.com/episodes/man-owar-and-sea-creature-facts-with-cory-mccarthy-episode-24You can learn more about Cory McCarthy by following them on instagram at @cory__mccarthy or visiting their website https://onceandfuturestories.com/. Follow me on instagram @val.howlett or support me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/valhowlett for bonus clips, extras, and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every time we say “pneumatic tubes,” take a drink! I continue telling Leah Felicity Lucci the life story of Inez Milholland, from her unpaid job as a PR symbol for suffrage to her uphill battle to become a lawyer. We contemplate the unimaginable horror of millions of bros, how happy Inez looks on a horse, and the dangers of pushing yourself too hard. SHOW NOTES: I could not find anything online to support my claim that women weren’t allowed to practice certain types of criminal law in the 1910s. Sorry about that. In the 1916 election was Woodrow Wilson, who had already been president for a term, vs. Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson was okay with letting suffrage get decided on a state-by-state basis, whereas Hughes endorsed a national amendment. But Wilson campaigned on keeping America out of World War I, while Hughes criticized his weak foreign policies. Hughes also was against some of the progressive policies that Wilson wanted to pass, including the 8-hour work day for railroad workers. He said they would hurt the economy :( So I was wrong about old timey Republicans being better. Brittanica.com gives a nice overview of the election. According to HopkinsMedicine.org, aplastic anemia is a form of bone marrow failure. Treatments include bone marrow transplants, blood transfusions, drug therapy, and supportive care. Inez died of aplastic anemia in 1916. She was thirty. The poem that coined the expression “burning candle at both ends” was titled “First Fig,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, published in 1922. Here’s the poem: My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night;But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!The music I played under Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem: Heartbreaking by Kevin MacLeod | https://incompetech.com/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/Creative Commons Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/The spongy moth is a highly invasive, non-native moth that defoliates hundreds of acres of forests across the country. You can read more about how they do this on MassAudobon.org. Which instar are you in? If you want to see that picture of Inez on a horse, visit https://www.researchholepodcast.com/episodes/inez-milholland-pt-2-burning-the-candle-at-both-ends. Support us on Patreon for extras and general good feelings at https://www.patreon.com/valhowlett. Follow Val on instagram at @val.howlett and Leah on instagram at @leelee_lulu_. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gather ‘round, kids, for another suffrage story: INEZ! Great friend of the pod Leah Felicity Lucci listens to me go on about historical suffragist Inez Milholland. And because I am long-winded, this is a two-parter. Part One covers Inez’s early life through her college years. We get into the idea of The New Women of the early 1900s—her Gibson Girl style, how she was marketed in the media, and how feminism is always complicated. With bonus detours into pneumatic tubes, historical allyship, and how Leah needs to get herself to England. SHOW NOTES: Leah’s Skillshare class: https://www.skillshare.com/classes/How-to-Destroy-Your-Sketchbook-Reclaim-Your-Art/2089505027Leah and I tried to describe pneumatic tubes, but if you want a slightly more scientific explanation, check out the youtube video How Pneumatic Tubes Work. Guglielmo Marconi lived a fascinating life and could be a future topic for a Wikipedia Special. Seriously, check out his page if you are ready to fall down a very deep research hole. As it turns out, Eastman is a common name! Max Forrester Eastman and Crystal Eastman were a radical sibling duo living in bohemian Greenwich Village in the early 1900s. They started a socialist magazine together, called The Liberator, in 1918. The magazine published essays, art, fiction, and poems by prominent figures including Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, and Claude McKay. Crystal was a lawyer who contributed to suffrage and the founding of the ACLU. Max was an activist who wrote about Marxism, communism, and eventually socialism, but changed his mind later in life and became an anti-Communist. He edited for Reader’s Digest for many of his later years. The Eastman that Leah was asking about was George Eastman, founder of the Kodak camera company. You can read his life story on DigitalCameraWorld.com. The two movies I confused were Enola Holmes (2020) and Suffragette (2015). More on Inez’s suffrage rally at Vassar: It was held in June, 1908, when Milholland was a junior and alumnae were on campus. She invited a badass roster of women to speak, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writer of The Yellow Wallpaper. They had the meeting in a cemetery because it was across the street from the college, technically not on campus. It was referred to as the “graveyard rally” in the many New York newspapers that covered it. I’m guessing the article Leah’s friend posted about LFO was “The Only Surviving Member of LFO Has a Story to Tell” in Esquire. That remaining member is Brad Fischetti. Rich Cronin died of leukemia in 2010 and Devin Lima died of cancer in 2018. The members of O-Town are still alive and kicking. Follow Leah on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/leelee_lulu_/. Follow Val @val.howlett on instagram, and/or subscribe to Val Howlett on Patreon for bonus episodes and other goodies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whether you think about it or not, many stories we know are chock full of governance. This is the second part of my chat with writer and programmer Shauna Gordon-McKeon. I enjoyed learning about governance in last week’s episode, but the conversation we had in this episode is my favorite. We get into what inspires us to (or to not) take action, the laziness of dictatorship-topple stories, and the ethics and logistics of writing major and minor characters. I also go off on a tangent about Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut because of course I do. If you have a governance story you love or just want to talk about, feel free to email me! [email protected]! Justice for rhubarb!Read Shauna’s story, Sunlight, for the After the Storm anthology here: https://medium.com/after-the-storm/sunlight-cdb9bb0be8bcThis note is from Shauna: There's a good article by Ada Palmer and Jo Walton on how over-reliance on heroic narratives leads to conspiracy thinking: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-protagonist-problem/. I don't think I referenced it explicitly but it's very relevant.If you want to read two very articulate views on the politics of Black Panther written by actual Black people, as an antidote to Shauna and I—two white people—just riffing, check out “There Is Much to Celebrate–and Much to Question–About Marvel's Black Panther” by Steven Thrasher and “The Passionate Politics of ‘Black Panther’” by Richard Brody. If you want to not be like Shauna and I and actually read the books we reference, you can check out Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War by Eric Bennett. The book I couldn’t remember the name of in the podcast was called Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Mathew Salesses. Before you plant nerds come at me, yes, I misspoke. Technically, rhubarb is a vegetable, though it is legally a fruit! So I was kind of right! The Huffpost article “So What Exactly IS Rhubarb, Anyway?” explains this distinction further. The article Leah referenced in her Something I Learned This Week email is “Listen to the Sick Beats of Rhubarb Growing in the Dark” on Atlas Obscura. You can learn more about Shauna by following her on twitter at @shauna_gm or visiting her website: http://www.shaunagm.net/. You can find bonus material, including a brief preview paragraph from Shauna’s governance story-in-progress by supporting me, Val Howlett, on Patreon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buckle up, anthropology, history, and political philosophy nerds! It’s a two-parter! Shauna Gordon-McKeon, a writer, programmer, and one of the most brilliant, multifaceted people I know, talks about how two books: The Dawn of Everything and Legal Systems Very Different from Ours, inspired her to think differently about progress and the possibilities of governance. In part one, we learn about: the myth of the evolution of civilization, historical seasonal governance structures, and what political egalitarianism and high school yearbook superlatives have in common. Books referenced: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverythingLegal Systems Very Different from Ours, by David Friedman, Peter T. Leeson, and David Skarbek: https://bookshop.org/books/legal-systems-very-different-from-ours/9781793386724ConstitutionFacts.com has a complete list of people who left the Constitutional Convention early. Note that it includes people who left in protest because they did not want to overturn the Articles of Confederation, but also people who left because of poor health, sick family members, etc. The historical cultures that Shauna referenced that had seasonal governance structures were Cheyanne Lakota, Inuit, and pirates. The Wikipedia article “Governance in 18th-century piracy” explains the leadership structure on pirate ships in detail.You can find the article "Why The inside of a Camel's Mouth is a Sarlacc Pit" on Mental Floss. You can learn more about Shauna by following her on twitter at @shauna_gm or visiting her website: http://www.shaunagm.net/. You can find bonus clips, including a chat I had with Shauna Gordon-McKeon about the movie Twelve Angry Men by supporting me, Val Howlett, on Patreon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When most people think of Philly and history, they think about the Liberty Bell. But there’s a tour company that goes way beyond that. Beyond the Bell Tours offers walking tours of women’s and queer history in Philadelphia. Rebecca Fisher, co-founder and tour guide, joins Research Hole to take us on a Pride-themed journey of the queer community’s fight for civil rights in Philadelphia. It ranges from marches of people wearing respectable suits to civil disobedience with giant witch puppets. We talk about Barbara Gittings, pre- and post-Stonewall actions, and how fights over identity politics are endless. Happy Pride, y’all!SHOW NOTES: I found a wonderful audio clip of Kiyoshi Kuromiya talking about his life of activism on Them.us. The other “one-dress lesbian” I referred to was Anna Howard Shaw. I don’t know if she actually only owned one dress—what I meant was that she stopped wearing pants because she felt comments on her appearance was distracting from the cause. Her obituary from the New York Times in 1919 does a pretty good job of giving an overview of her complex role in the suffrage movement. You can find a great rundown on John Fryer (Dr. Anonymous) and his historical marker sign (which you can go to 13th and Locust Street and take a pic with) on WHYY.org. The page includes a pic of Fryer with the mask on. Sadly, in the photo he is sitting and not standing at his full height. Philly Gay News article “Philly’s First Attempt at Nondiscrimination” takes an in-depth look at the fight for Bill 1275 and the role of Dyketactics in that fight. The Barbara Gittings Wikipedia page is a pretty thorough biography. If you want a briefer roundup of her many contributions to gay rights, you can find a sort of paragraph-long list on Legacy Project Chicago. We don’t explain OutFest on the podcast itself, but it’s a block party in the leadup to National Coming Out Day in October. Visit researchholepodcast.com to see the pictures! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

THAR she blows! Welcome to our first “Wikipedia Special,” an episode where someone tells us a story that you could otherwise find by reading one wikipedia page. Today’s page: “Essex (whaleship),” a story that features 300 turtles, a really big whale, and some difficult decisions. Historical figures Captain Pollard, Owen Chase, Michael Joy, and asshole Thomas Chapel make up our cast of characters. A fun activity: keep count of the working whale boats, keep count of the survivors. The wiki page is your built-in content warning - read it first if you have trouble with gross or unsavory material. SHOW NOTES: Our star of the episode: the wikipedia article Essex (whaleship). I don’t have a ton of additional links to share with you, because the entire story came from this one Wikipedia article, but I couldn’t help looking up: A “Nantucket sleighride” is the dragging of a whaleboat by a harpooned whale, according to wikipedia. Some basic facts about sperm whales: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/sperm-whaleIn the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of The Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick is a book that came out in 2001. A movie with the same name came out in 2015, starring Chris Hemsworth as a young Owen Chase. Wifi - learn what it stands for on our friend wikipedia! (or by listening to the end of this episode)Watch “Up to Here,” a short film by Joey Howlett, Steve Harrellson, and Luke Sarre on youtube at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAX8F6a3Rl4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Writer, cellist, and horror enthusiast Jane Flett joins the show to tell all about the literal and metaphorical grotesqueness of scurvy, rendering Val awed and sometimes speechless. The Age of Exploration was full of it! Vasco da Gama and Captain Cook get referenced, and we learn about the many cures that were attempted by James Lind, from good ideas to very bad ones. We also play a fun game: what wounds would open on your body if you had advanced scurvy? Your body, your meat sack: you gotta keep putting stuff in it. Bonus body horror: A fun fact about placentas!SHOW NOTES: According to Medical News Today, free radicals in the brain are “are unstable atoms that can damage cells, causing illness and aging.”The other podcast Val was referring to is called The Dream. Season Two interrogates/exposes the wellness industry. S2E3: “Magic Little Pills” tells the story of the history of vitamins. Scurvy gets a mention, and they cover the ensuing panic. AlphaHistory.com has a short but helpful article on James Graham and the practice of earth bathing. Also, as Jane put it, the James Graham wiki is *chefs kiss*An article about the soil study Val was vaguely referring to can be found on EurekAlert! and is called “Healthy fat hidden in dirt may fend off anxiety disorders.”If you’d like to learn more about scurvy and its history, here are some links that Jane recommends: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/scurvy-disease-discovery-jonathan-lambhttps://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htmhttps://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the-age-of-scurvyI got my own anxiety-assuaging info about vitamin C at https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/by-the-way-doctor-whats-the-right-amount-of-vitamin-c-for-meI googled “Why do people eat placentas?” and found a BBC article with just that name. Apparently, many mammals in the animal kingdom consume their afterbirth. Some people think eating the placenta can prevent postpartum depression, increase energy, and give other health benefits, but there hasn’t been enough science to confirm the claims or warn of risks. You can read (or listen to) Jane’s story “Mermaids” on PANK, and some of their poetry on Hobart. Learn more about them at http://janeflett.com/. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Minnie, a Mamie, and a Mary walk into a complicated, possibly polyamorous romantic friendship. Writer Marne Litfin lets me tell them a story involving M. Carey Thomas: famous suffragette, early Bryn Mawr College president, and complicated, racist historical figure. Mary Garrett, Mamie Gwinn, Alfred and Jessie Hodder, two ill-fated Olives, and even Gertrude Stein make appearances in this old timey scandal. Stay tuned for more about the Friday evening; I’m not done with them yet!SHOW NOTES: This episode is presented to you (and is inspired) by To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America by Lillian Faderman. The other Lillian Faderman book we mentioned is called Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. “Coercive philanthropy” is a term often used in tandem with Mary Garrett and first wave feminists of that time period, whereas I don’t see it used widely today, even though, as Marne pointed out, it still happens. Case in point: You can read an article on coercive philanthropist Charles Munger on CNN, with the great title “Warren Buffett's billionaire partner bankrolls windowless dorm. An architect quit.”Check out https://www.researchholepodcast.com/ for the pictures of the Friday evening and Alfred Hodder that we look at during the show. A great way to learn about the life of character and voice actor Arnold Stang is through his wonderful obituary in the New York Times. But you can also watch his string of chunky commercials here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpg2liApM0A. (Marne and I got through about five.) Other sources for this episode include the books The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz and Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age by Kathleen Waters Sanders. If you want to find Marne Litfin’s work, check out https://www.marnelitfin.com/ or start with their cool tweets at @jetpackmarne on twitter. Email [email protected] to share your research hole, something you learned this week, or corrections to the errors we inevitably made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.