The voodoo doll in the White House lawn...

Highlights, reflections and recommendations from your pals at This Day podcast

Hi all, Jody here, welcome to our second newsletter ever. I’ll keep the intro short, I don’t have much to say, because over the last two weeks, my brain has been almost entirely filled with information about first-daughter Alice Roosevelt Longsworth, who we mentioned briefly in our episode about Nellie Taft. Alice reportedly buried a voodoo doll of Nellie Taft in the White House lawn. And that was like the 8th most interesting thing about her.

Attracting enormous publicity, she smoked, drove her own car, plunged fully clothed into a swimming pool, placed a bet at a race track, was seen in public wearing a boa constrictor around her neck, set off firecrackers and shot at telegraph poles from a train; she was universally dubbed "Princess Alice" after she christened the yacht of Kaiser Wilhelm's brother.

Anyway, you better believe we’re cooking up a proper episode. Let us know what catches your eye.

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Quotes of the Week

Hey everyone, this is Khawla, I’m one of the writers of this newsletter. I also transcribe episodes for the podcast. As someone who listens to these episodes every week, I know that our hosts and guests always have interesting, clever and amazing things to say. So in this section of the newsletter, we capture those moments.

This spreads real and understandable distrust that many Black Americans have towards the medical profession. Because there’s evidence that the US government was using Black men as medical subjects. So part of this apology is trying to restore some faith in the system. Which starts with the federal government acknowledging and apologizing for what it has done.

- Nicole Hemmer, from our episode on the 1997 apologies for the Tuskegee syphilis study, which ran between the 1930s to 1970s.

Oftentimes I think these fights are more than just teaching evolution or creationism. In the 1920s, the fight about Darwinism was really the fight over the expansion of compulsory schooling in rural America. Governor Peay of Tennessee believed that if we teach evolution in schools, rural families would keep their kids home, and they would not send their kids to public schools. And he didn’t want that happening. So it was easier to remove the barrier of evolution than it was to have the larger fights about schooling.

- Kellie Carter Jackson, from our episode on Tennessee removing the Butler act that prohibited teaching evolution in schools.

There’s this idea among the population that people will push the limits in the war. And so it makes sense that people would think that devastating warfare by bug really happened.

- Jody Avirgan, from our episode about the Colorado Potato beetles ruining East German crops in 1950, and the fears that it was part of an American assault.

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This Day on This Day

We’re on our third trip around the calendar, and stories we’ve done keep popping back up in the news. Here we highlight some previous episodes that feel timely again.

This Day In Esoteric Political History @thisdaypod

Since people are talking about the civility of protesting at homes today, worth remembering other moments when activists went to the suburbs.

Jody Avirgan @jodyavirgan

"We're here to say, you know, you mess with us and you're going to wake up one morning with a condom on your house." On this day thirty years ago, ACT UP covered NC Senator Jesse Helms's house with a giant yellow condom. https://t.co/4Fq9ZOTEmj https://t.co/4jZd7vWTK2

This Day In Esoteric Political History @thisdaypod

We recently did an episode about when McDonald's first arrived in Moscow. End of an era, and a big symbolic shift --> pod.link/thisday/episod…

Reuters @Reuters

McDonald's said it has started a process to sell all its restaurants in Russia, exiting the country after more than 30 years following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine https://t.co/XsHQzNnltJ

This Day In Esoteric Political History @thisdaypod

🔊 On this day in 1957, JFK, then a Senator won a Pulitzer Prize for “Profiles in Courage.” In 2021 we discussed the book, which profiled courageous Congress members — many of whom have been re-evaluated since. Plus, a ghostwriting controversy! 🎧 apple.co/3s3D3A2

apple.co‎This Day in Esoteric Political History: Kennedy’s Pulitzer Controversies (1957) on Apple Podcasts‎Show This Day in Esoteric Political History, Ep Kennedy’s Pulitzer Controversies (1957) - May 6, 2021

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Closing Esoterica

A thought or some links or something else to get you thinking…

• Oprahdemics dove into the messiness of Dr. Oz and Oprah’s role in giving him a platform. I thought they did a fantastic job.

(Oprahdemics is doing a live show with Wesley Morris in NYC on June 15th, by the way. Come say hi.)

• A podcast we love, that feels new and fun. Not Lost. A show about travel and discovery, in every sense of the word.

• Two instagram accounts that will make your feed better. ArtButMakeItSports and Ballhaus.

  b_a_l_l_h_a_u_s

  

  A post shared by Ballhaus (@b_a_l_l_h_a_u_s)

• A listener note about our episode on the history of smoking bans (one of our favorite episodes of the year)

Just now listening to the February 6 episode about No Smoking sections. The question was asked of whether people smoked in church. That brought back a childhood memory of standing ashtrays filled with fine sand at the end of every other pew. The “aisle seats” were the church’s smoking sections. I was constantly tempted to play with the sand. This was in Quebec in the early 1980s. I remember it with fondness.

It’s a great podcast, thank you all for making it.

Thanks for listening! And for writing in.

Have a great long weekend, all.