# Behind the Scenes Minis: Problematized

An episode of [Stuff You Missed in History Class](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/283605519), 24 Jul 2026, 17 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/cfb428ef-eafc-44d0-9d09-ae2701747e6f/986e1ea3-3944-47f8-89de-b490016b96ef/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=fb626e1f-112c-4246-a40d-ae2701747e7d

Tracy shares her irritation with word use in a recent government report. There is also discussion of strangers visiting manor houses. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
[0:04] Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
[0:14] Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frye. This week was our latest installment
[0:18] Speaker 1: of Unearthed on Earth. This was an unusually cramped writing
[0:24] Speaker 1: process for Unearthed because I lost a day of working
[0:30] Speaker 1: on it to the fourth of July holiday I'm sorry
[0:33] Speaker 1: on July third, and then also left a little early
[0:39] Speaker 1: on the second to go on a road trip. And
[0:43] Speaker 1: I as I left, I was like, you're making Tracy.
[0:46] Speaker 1: You're making Monday Tracy's life hard. Monday Tracy is gonna struggle,
[0:52] Speaker 1: which I did. I was a little tired from the trip,
[0:55] Speaker 1: but not too tired. But the day was a very,
[0:58] Speaker 1: very long day and also disrupted by irritating government reports
[1:05] Speaker 1: about the Smithsonian. Yeah that I was like, you already
[1:09] Speaker 1: have a twelve hour day lined up, There is no
[1:11] Speaker 1: time to be reading this one hundred and whatever page report. Yeah, Monday,
[1:15] Speaker 1: Holly is often paying for the sins of Thursday and
[1:18] Speaker 1: Friday Holly. So yeah, as I said, I did not
[1:22] Speaker 1: read the whole report, but in my skimming through it
[1:25] Speaker 1: just to sort of be like, is this what I
[1:27] Speaker 1: think it is, Yes, it is. There were a couple
[1:29] Speaker 1: of things that jumped out. One is that the passage
[1:33] Speaker 1: that we read from it used the word problematize. There's
[1:38] Speaker 1: a lot of footnotes. There was a specific footnote for
[1:42] Speaker 1: the source of where someone said that they needed to
[1:45] Speaker 1: problematize history at the National Museum of American History. I
[1:52] Speaker 1: am not confident that whoever prepared this report and whoever
[2:01] Speaker 1: was mad enough to provoke this being created. I don't
[2:04] Speaker 1: think they know what problematize means. No, So problematize and
[2:14] Speaker 1: problematic have taken on meanings through largely Internet discourse that
[2:22] Speaker 1: are not the actual meaning of the words. So problematize
[2:27] Speaker 1: does not mean to come up with a list of
[2:31] Speaker 1: ways that something should be on the your fave is
[2:35] Speaker 1: problematic templer that used to exist, maybe it still does.
[2:40] Speaker 1: Problematize means to strip away the conventional ideas about something
[2:47] Speaker 1: and approach it as a problem. And that doesn't mean
[2:49] Speaker 1: a problem like a negative thing to be solved. It
[2:53] Speaker 1: means a problem like a math problem, a problem to
[2:57] Speaker 1: be studied and evaluated and understood. It does not mean
[3:04] Speaker 1: come up with a list of ways something is racist.
[3:06] Speaker 1: That's not what it means and problematic. Although people basically
[3:12] Speaker 1: use it to mean said something offensive in the past,
[3:16] Speaker 1: in this context, that is also not what it means.
[3:19] Speaker 1: It is having the attributes of a problem. Yeah, similar,
[3:24] Speaker 1: similar thing. I just I can't help but laugh because
[3:27] Speaker 1: I think of the person who's typing this copy out,
[3:29] Speaker 1: like and you know, they're just like, yeah, I'm cooking, man.
[3:34] Speaker 1: So to be even more irritated about this one word
[3:39] Speaker 1: problematized the footnote for you know, the museum saying that
[3:44] Speaker 1: it needs to problematize history. The citation for that is
[3:51] Speaker 1: a lecture that was in the context of public history
[3:56] Speaker 1: as a field. It was not a lecture that was
[4:00] Speaker 1: given at the Smithsonian. It was a lecture given as
[4:03] Speaker 1: at a university as part of a lecture series, and
[4:07] Speaker 1: it was like about public public history is an actual
[4:11] Speaker 1: scholarly and professional field. The idea of problematizing something in
[4:17] Speaker 1: that context should be non controversial. There was also as
[4:22] Speaker 1: I was just I was literally scrolling to get through
[4:26] Speaker 1: to get to the footnotes to see, okay, what are
[4:29] Speaker 1: they referring to you here? And as I scrolled, I
[4:33] Speaker 1: saw a picture of a sculpture I've forgotten the name
[4:39] Speaker 1: of the person who made the sculpture, but he got
[4:41] Speaker 1: named rop on the show not that long ago. But
[4:43] Speaker 1: it is a picture of George Washington as I think
[4:45] Speaker 1: a Greek god a sculpture in that depiction, and it's
[4:51] Speaker 1: accompanied by the text description from the museum, and highlighted
[4:56] Speaker 1: is the word perceived George Washingt perceived strength. The person
[5:03] Speaker 1: who made this report is angry that they were referencing
[5:08] Speaker 1: Washington's perceived strength rather than his actual, incontrovertibly demonstrated strength. Yeah,
[5:17] Speaker 1: so anyway, Horatio Grenow is who you're thinking. That is
[5:21] Speaker 1: exactly Yes, that is exactly who that was. As soon
[5:24] Speaker 1: as you said the name, I'm like, yep, that's who
[5:26] Speaker 1: it was. So anyway that I don't know if we'll
[5:30] Speaker 1: talk about it more on the next on Earth. There
[5:34] Speaker 1: was probably be other stuff to talk about by then,
[5:36] Speaker 1: But I just I found it so maddening and so
[5:40] Speaker 1: frustrating and so infuriating, And the fact that they put
[5:43] Speaker 1: it out on the fourth of July, well, that's the
[5:46] Speaker 1: most patriotic time to release such a report. Let's celebrate
[5:50] Speaker 1: America's two fifty by cherry picking and bad faith arguing
[5:55] Speaker 1: about stuff. To move on to less annoying things. Often
[6:01] Speaker 1: there is an art section in Unearthed. Yeah, and then
[6:05] Speaker 1: we didn't have an art section this time. I know,
[6:09] Speaker 1: you cheated me out of art and made me talk
[6:11] Speaker 1: about toilets twice. I'm sorry, but I gave you the
[6:15] Speaker 1: toilets both times. I had a few things that were
[6:21] Speaker 1: that As I was collating the list of things to
[6:23] Speaker 1: talk about, there were five or six things that were
[6:25] Speaker 1: under the category of art. And then as I was
[6:30] Speaker 1: writing the episode, two things happened. One was I had
[6:34] Speaker 1: two full episodes of content. They were all there. And
[6:39] Speaker 1: then as I was doing a closer examination of the
[6:42] Speaker 1: things that I had bookmarked some of them, I was like, Okay,
[6:45] Speaker 1: this isn't actually a discovery of something. This is like
[6:49] Speaker 1: somebody auctioned something off. Oh right, And we talked about
[6:53] Speaker 1: We talked about auction sometimes because something was newly rediscovered
[6:58] Speaker 1: and then auctioned, but that was not the case with this.
[7:02] Speaker 1: It was just like the story was the auction and
[7:04] Speaker 1: that was it. There were a couple. There was one
[7:06] Speaker 1: thing that was about a search to try to figure
[7:10] Speaker 1: out the identity of the a sitter in a portrait
[7:15] Speaker 1: who was black, and I couldn't There did not seem
[7:21] Speaker 1: to be sort of a call to action, like if
[7:23] Speaker 1: you have information about this, here's suit to contact. And
[7:29] Speaker 1: it was also not something that had any kind of results.
[7:32] Speaker 1: I felt like it was a weirdly vague talking around
[7:35] Speaker 1: the thing gotcha. So ultimately I wound up with sort
[7:38] Speaker 1: of two art things, and neither of them felt like
[7:43] Speaker 1: something that could like neither of them felt critical to
[7:47] Speaker 1: talk about. We did not have some of the incredibly
[7:49] Speaker 1: cool things we've talked about as art before, where like
[7:52] Speaker 1: a restoration process reveals previously unknown details, or somebody realizes
[7:58] Speaker 1: they have a bunch of Salvador DOLLI work in their
[8:01] Speaker 1: attic or whatever. The dream the dream weird dry spell
[8:06] Speaker 1: for art stuff. I guess if we could get the
[8:19] Speaker 1: cursed tablet going, I wanted to find the Dolly that
[8:23] Speaker 1: was stolen from Rankers Island, which I think is destroyed
[8:26] Speaker 1: to the but that would be like a dream. On
[8:29] Speaker 1: my trip to England's back in May, we went to
[8:33] Speaker 1: Bath and I went to the bath. I forgot the
[8:38] Speaker 1: name of the museum, but it's the like the Roman
[8:40] Speaker 1: Baths Museum, I think is what it's called. And there
[8:43] Speaker 1: were so many cursed tablets in a display there. I
[8:47] Speaker 1: was so excited about it. I love curse tablets. Yeah,
[8:51] Speaker 1: a random thing, very silly story. The best flavor the
[8:56] Speaker 1: John Keats letters. Yeah. I think everything that I read
[9:02] Speaker 1: about the John Keats Letters described him as, you know,
[9:05] Speaker 1: poet blah blah blah, including such works as ode On
[9:09] Speaker 1: a Grecian earn. When I was in high school, I
[9:14] Speaker 1: was on the academic competition team, yeah, which some people
[9:19] Speaker 1: might call quiz bole U scholars. Yeah yeah, And so
[9:24] Speaker 1: I was on the English the team for English, and
[9:28] Speaker 1: the area that we really struggled with was poets, specifically
[9:34] Speaker 1: British poets. For whatever reason, it was just like a
[9:37] Speaker 1: whole in our education. And so every single time we
[9:41] Speaker 1: were asked a question that was about which British poet
[9:44] Speaker 1: blah blah blah, we would say John Keats. And if
[9:46] Speaker 1: it was which poem, it was ode On a Grecian
[9:49] Speaker 1: earned by John Keats. And one time we got a
[9:52] Speaker 1: question that was it had four answers. It was like,
[9:55] Speaker 1: identify these four poems, and so we said ode On
[9:58] Speaker 1: a Grecian earned by John k for all four of them,
[10:01] Speaker 1: and one of them was right. So we got a point.
[10:07] Speaker 1: That's very funny yeah, I still remember it all these many,
[10:12] Speaker 1: many many years later. I'm so embarrassed by the source
[10:15] Speaker 1: of my Keats knowledge. Yeah, which is that a problem
[10:20] Speaker 1: person who we didn't know was a problem person as
[10:23] Speaker 1: much back then, I think, I know what you're gonna say, Morrissey. Okay, Morrissey,
[10:29] Speaker 1: you know, saying about So there's a song called Symmetry Gates.
[10:34] Speaker 1: It's some sort of fighting about poets. You're very into
[10:38] Speaker 1: it when you're fourteen, but you know, as an adult,
[10:40] Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, readonk a doodle. But the thing was,
[10:43] Speaker 1: it was like she had Oscar Wilde on his side
[10:46] Speaker 1: and Keats and Yates were on the other side, and
[10:47] Speaker 1: so I was very like, well, let's learn about these
[10:50] Speaker 1: Keats and Yates fellas, so I know what we're That's
[10:53] Speaker 1: how I learned most of my Keats information. That's so funny.
[10:58] Speaker 1: I learned about a lot more British poets when I
[11:00] Speaker 1: got to college. Yeah, so some of some of the
[11:03] Speaker 1: holes were filled in somewhat. Anyway, Holly, did you have
[11:08] Speaker 1: anything else that you wanted to talk about from this
[11:12] Speaker 1: installment of Unearthed? You know, I'm still back on the
[11:15] Speaker 1: listener mail about house tours. Oh, yeah, yeah, because I
[11:21] Speaker 1: just think about it and I'm like, it's ghastly. Yeah,
[11:25] Speaker 1: it's ghastly, but it's it's I have to contextualize it, right,
[11:31] Speaker 1: because it's not like people are running to the movies
[11:35] Speaker 1: for an afternoon when they're bored, yeah, or something else.
[11:39] Speaker 1: Like you got to entertain yourself someway, and if that
[11:43] Speaker 1: is a la mude at the time, then that's what
[11:46] Speaker 1: you do. Yeah, let's go knock on people's doors and
[11:49] Speaker 1: ask them to let us in and see their stuff. Well,
[11:53] Speaker 1: in a lot of the places that people were touring
[11:55] Speaker 1: were the sorts of places where it is an estate
[11:58] Speaker 1: and they're tenants the historic home. There's a staff of
[12:05] Speaker 1: housekeepers and cooks and cleaning staff and that kind of thing.
[12:09] Speaker 1: So it's not just like your personal residence where you
[12:13] Speaker 1: are responsible for keeping it clean and ready for guests.
[12:17] Speaker 1: I am sort of reminded of how Patrick got an
[12:19] Speaker 1: award at work a couple of years ago, and the
[12:23] Speaker 1: acceptance of this award involved having dinner at the dean's
[12:27] Speaker 1: residence of the university where he works, and I didn't
[12:33] Speaker 1: really know what to expect, but it became clear the
[12:36] Speaker 1: course of the dinner that's somewhere in the dean's residence
[12:39] Speaker 1: there's a commercial kitchen, because the food being delivered to
[12:43] Speaker 1: our tables was clearly not being trucked across campus, right
[12:48] Speaker 1: like that, It was clearly there, and the ground floor
[12:52] Speaker 1: of the Dean's residence was clearly a place that was
[12:55] Speaker 1: for these kinds of glattering formal events and stuff. And
[13:00] Speaker 1: so I got kind of in the mental weeds of like,
[13:04] Speaker 1: what if you're the dean and you just want to
[13:06] Speaker 1: sandwich at three in the morning, is there a regular
[13:10] Speaker 1: people kitchen for regular stuff? What is it like to
[13:14] Speaker 1: live in this place where the ground floor is a
[13:18] Speaker 1: banquet space and public restroom. And I imagine that it
[13:23] Speaker 1: might be a little like if you were living in
[13:27] Speaker 1: you know, eighteenth century England and a manor house, there
[13:32] Speaker 1: might be spaces of the house that are for the
[13:34] Speaker 1: family that are not the spaces that are seen by
[13:39] Speaker 1: touring guests who are right traveling through the countryside of
[13:43] Speaker 1: the lake district or whatever. Yeah, and I mean there
[13:47] Speaker 1: are still historic estates, particularly in England, that people can
[13:52] Speaker 1: tour and people are still living there. Yeah, so it happens.
[13:56] Speaker 1: It's just it's such a funny concept to me of
[13:58] Speaker 1: like I heard you you have good stuff. Let me
[14:01] Speaker 1: look at it, bring it out like I yeah, yeah,
[14:06] Speaker 1: I'd be like, here's my Gredo collection, here's a look
[14:12] Speaker 1: at my shoes. I have a lot of fabric. Yeah.
[14:17] Speaker 1: Every time we're on a meeting call, not recording, because
[14:21] Speaker 1: recording we have backdrops. But whenever we have a meeting
[14:24] Speaker 1: call and I can see all of the Gredo around you,
[14:27] Speaker 1: I'm always excited and delighted by it. It's a lot.
[14:30] Speaker 1: I love GREETO. I love Rodeans. They're my favorite. Yeah,
[14:33] Speaker 1: I don't know why. I mean, I do know why,
[14:35] Speaker 1: but it's a long and boring, dairy star warsy nerdy thing.
[14:39] Speaker 1: I just love them, just love them. But that would
[14:41] Speaker 1: be funny if people just showed up at my door.
[14:43] Speaker 1: But also, we also live in a time now where
[14:46] Speaker 1: you don't publish your address right like most people do not,
[14:51] Speaker 1: which is also part of I think what it is right.
[14:53] Speaker 1: I'm so used to living in that like no concealed privacy,
[14:56] Speaker 1: privacy you can't let anybody know where you live. And
[14:59] Speaker 1: this again a very different time where of course people
[15:01] Speaker 1: knew where you live. I think too about Brian's aunt Beth,
[15:05] Speaker 1: who was an amazing woman and very smart and knew
[15:10] Speaker 1: a lot of the history of the area where their
[15:13] Speaker 1: family lived from like the eighteen hundreds on and still
[15:18] Speaker 1: live there herself. Like she could tell you who had
[15:21] Speaker 1: lived in every house at what you know, during what years.
[15:25] Speaker 1: And it's just a different time when people knew all
[15:29] Speaker 1: such things about Oh, of course that's the I don't
[15:32] Speaker 1: know the last names of people two doors down from me. Yeah,
[15:36] Speaker 1: it's a different different contexts. I need to get over
[15:39] Speaker 1: it with my fear of Rando's coming to the house. Yes,
[15:43] Speaker 1: fortunately you are not a You do not own a
[15:46] Speaker 1: manor in the If you come to my house, I'll
[15:51] Speaker 1: make you a cocktail I have. We have taken in
[15:54] Speaker 1: strays during snowstorms. Oh sure, when there's been accidents, because
[15:59] Speaker 1: we kind of live at the bottom of a shallow
[16:01] Speaker 1: bowl and sometimes people are stuck out there going I'm
[16:04] Speaker 1: gonna wait for the tow truck, and I'm like, baby,
[16:06] Speaker 1: it's not coming. Come inside. Do you want to come inside?
[16:09] Speaker 1: I have all the connac Well. I hope whatever is
[16:15] Speaker 1: happening on people's weekends that it's as as good as possible.
[16:19] Speaker 1: It's past weekend. I spent some time in the outdoors
[16:22] Speaker 1: and it was so beautiful and so refreshing. And if
[16:24] Speaker 1: that is refreshing to you, I hope you get to
[16:26] Speaker 1: do some of that. If you're an inside kid, whatever
[16:30] Speaker 1: your inside kid things are, I hope they're great. I
[16:34] Speaker 1: hope that everyone is kind to you, and that you
[16:37] Speaker 1: are kind to others, and that everyone is also patient
[16:40] Speaker 1: with themselves and with other people. We will be back
[16:43] Speaker 1: on Monday with a brand new episode, and of course
[16:46] Speaker 1: tomorrow we'll have a Saturday classic. Stuff You Missed in
[16:54] Speaker 1: History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
[16:58] Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit thee radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
[17:02] Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.

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