Behind the Scenes Minis: Bad Laws, Bad Cats

algorithm showed me this clip. It was an audio clip with you know, a picture in the background of sodam Oor and Sour having this conversation about Thinned, I was like, oh, yeah, I want to talk about Thinn right now, because a lot of people had seen that clip, and I was not sure how many people had any idea what was being discussed in terms of Thinn right.

never made it up until now. I re listened to that one episode of Seeing White just because I was like, I want to refresh my memory on what exactly they said that made me think, Hi, maybe my show should talk about this eventually. And Bagat Singh Thin's son was interviewed on that and you apparently like this was not something that his father ever really talked about. He knew his father as a spiritual teacher. He really didn't know

anything about this at all. And when they got into the the kind of ways that Thinned and other people from India would talk about their own race and talk about race in general while making the argument that they were white so that they could become citizens. There was just there was a lot of racism involved in those conversations, right, And he was like, that is not that does not sound like my father to me. He did not think of his father as someone to make those kinds of arguments.

And there are a number of other podcasts besides ours that have spent sort of more time looking at that part of it. On the sort of the interconnection between different groups of people trying to move to become citizens of live in the United States and the intersections of

these different types of racism involved with that. Well. And there are also things that happened that we talked about in this episode, right where like, within the legal framework that exists, you kind of have to go down a path that has racist tones to it and basically be right, I'm not black, you know what I mean, Like, there's inherently a racist element to that, but it's the only

path available to somebody, right, which stinks. And it kind of gets to that bigger picture that always comes up when people are talking about issues of control and race and marginalized or perceived lower class citizens, that like part of the maintenance of power is turning people that don't have power against one another. And this is the kind of an elegant way that they managed to do it, which is it's just troubling and heartaching. Yeah, there's no way,

there's no other path to walk, which stakes. Yeah, we didn't use the word socially constructed in this episode anywhere, but this case is sort of an example of how the idea of race is socially constructed, not something that's biologically immutable. And while the Court was not sort of making an argument about the social construction of racial categories, but that's basically what, you know, what the court was saying when the verdict was, well, he's not white, and

a common person knows that. That was sort of the what it boiled down to. Also the fact that this was part of a pattern of whether the US government has viewed different people as white, and how a lot of time that has had to do with like whatever was most expedient with what the government.

they evolve and change and learn and grow. In another it's the same thing again. Oh yeah, yeah, an unpleasant noise. I just made sorry, kind of a growl and a sigh.

felt a little silly. I was like, oh, these places are not actually that much farther north than we are but then I, you know, I reminded myself at the time that you saw the aurora at Tracy, you were at Helk, So yeah, I've only I've only really seen it once I was in Iceland. It was not our Iceland trip where we went aurora hunting. I was the cree Is time in May, which is not normally the time you would see them. Yeah, that was just a freakish good bit of luck that they were like, oh,

the aurora's out. So when we went to Iceland for our honeymoon, it was very end of April beginning of May, and it was out while we were there, but we were in a place that was overcast when it happened. And the next night we were staying at a different place and they had this list at the front desk that was put your name on the list than if the aurora comes.

it is is twilight. Yeah, at that point we missed it. But there was one time that it was pretty bright in a lot of Massachusetts and I could see it a little bit with the unaided eye. At my house, I could see it through my phone camera exceptionally well.

And when we went back to Iceland on the trip that we took for the show where we actually had an aurora chasing scheduled, Patrick and I arrived a day early to try to get a little acclimated, and we were walking around Reykiavic at night trying to see if we could see the aurora, and it really did not look like we could, And it also did not look like we could through the phone screen. And it wasn't

until I looked more closely at the pictures. I think even after we were home that I was like, oh, wait, this is Aura. There's a little something something well something happening there that I could not see it all and could not see on the phone screen. I would see looking at the picture on the computer. So anyway, very much would be excited if I if we saw the aurora on the trip, but if we don't, it's fine. Yeah,

it's just a good fortune thing. There is some speculation that Frederick Edwin Church's painting of the Aurora borealis, which is the painting that we have used for the little artwork for the show on our Netflix, that that was inspired by this. He was in Newfoundland and Labrador that summer when it happened, and then he painted this in eighteen sixty five. And I didn't have a good place in the episode itself to mention that. Just blurted out like I did that. I went to Galileos too, just

blurt it out. I do blurt some things out that, like an aurora was a surprise to me. So yeah, if you're in Santa Croce, which is a basilica in Florence, we went because we were on our art pilgrimage and that is where Michelangelo is also buried. Yeah, and we were there, but then we were walking along and I was like, is that Galilea. It's literally right there in the same right there, huge, huge, like you know, big

monument and whatnot, as well as Machiavelli. It's a it's quite a gallery of people assembled there for their final resting place. Yeah, that's sort of like the Pantheon Parthenon. Pantheon, Pantheon Pan Parthenon. Which one is it. I'm gonna say the two words over and over, the one where all the French people are.

they got a little shout out here. Is that the trip where you stayed at a place that I would call an affordable motel experience and someone who was with you was unhappy, Yes, I don't know if they were unhappy about that. Okay, they were unhappy about a variety of things. Uh huh, that is all but the nice thing and it wasn't it was. It's a hotel, but it's definitely not like a fancy pants unicorn hotel. And it's just the place that there is convenient to the yes,

and there's not a lot near there. But what we kind of lucked out with is that that was also the same place that all the people from god Aard do their monthly social hour. Okay, it happened on the night we were staying there, so we got to hang out then. Listen, one of my proudest moments in my life is that I taught a bunch of engineers and scientists that if you salt your napkin before you put your cocktail down, it won't stick to your drink. And

they were astounded by this. I love it, and I like, you are so smart about all the things, but I can't teach you drinking tricks.

best they can. Yeah, if people are curious. The video game I was playing that suddenly reference to the Carrington event was The Long Dark, a game that I have played a lot over the last more than a decade, And in hindsight, that made total sense because one of the things that was introduced as part of that game was Aurora that cause electrical devices to work when they

do not work in other circumstances. So like radios that are in houses, you can turn the radio on and music will play when there's no power in any other circumstance. In the new I knew it's a few years old at this point, a DLC there is a radio that is powered by the aura that you can talk to a trader and trade things with.

three new cats last year. One of them, Jessie, is like kind of like I always joked that she's me as a cat, right. She's kooky, her noises are hilarious. She always sounds mad even when she's happy. But I love her desperately, And she's also a big, beautiful woman. She's tipping close to seventeen pounds and she's also a

large cat. So one of my best friends, who I also love, who is like a sibling to me, watches our cats when we travel, and she has mentioned a couple times you know, I sometimes I'm a little afraid of Jessie, and I'm like, uh huh. She's all talk. She's a big cuddler, Like even when she's unhappy, she never lashes out at all. She's like super you know, she's like, I don't like this, but she won't do anything wrong. And then I got sent a video of Jeszi while we were away, and I was mortified because

I was suddenly that parent. You know, we've all known that parent whose kid is a little bit of a terror and genuinely mean, and they're like, not my baby, not my precious baby. Yeah, my precious angel baby. JESSI, who I love desperately, was not just yelling at our poor cat center. She was hissing, swatting, and lunging at her with bared teeth, and I was like, oh, what the heck is going on here? And we have done

some testing since then, Uh huh. She just does not like that person, which, like you know how people are like trust the instincts of animals, not this time. Yeah, every this is a person that stray dogs will run to for help, Like she is a cat whisperer. She is one of the kindest souls i've ever met. We had another friend of mine visiting right before I left for Italy. We went to Italy together and she flew here first, and so I was like, great, we can

do an actual like control group situation test. Here's another person this cat is not even though our friend watched the cats is at our house a lot, she knows all of our animals. But I'm like, here's the person this cat isn't familiar with. She's met her before, but she's not here all the time, well cuddly as the day is long with her. And then our other friend walked in the room and the cat was like, oh, no, fied at my terrible child. Yeah, that is my confession.

I have never I don't know what's going on with her. I don't know jealousy, jam, I don't know what's up.

vet recommendations. I was given a vet recommendation. I went to this vet one time. I think because I got there and I was like, I don't feel like this office.

other things. But then they were gonna get exams at shots and all of that, and the vet tech who was helping put on like the big gauntlets to handle my cat, and there had been no real indication for me ever that like any of the cats needed gauntlets to be examined, right, And I think the fact that they were in a place that they could smell dogs, which was not usual for them, and then was being handled with these gauntlets by someone who clearly thought there

was a need for gauntlets. Anastasia lost it and I was like, bab I have never seen her behave like this in my life, very and like at that point, she was a fully adult cat and had plenty of VET experiences under her belt and had never behaved like that, and I was like, this is not right. Not the vet for me. We did have a cat that needed the gloves. And you know who I'm talking about, I absolutely do. Mister Burns, the scourge of veterinary science. Yeah,

the chillest cat I've ever met at home. But man, yeah, he hated the vets office.