Behind the Scenes Minis: Piece of Work

a cat redemption story. Okay, on a previous behind the scenes I talked about how my beautiful angel baby Jesse seemed to hate one of my best friends. Correct we figured out what happened, well, I think we figured out what happened, okay, because Jesse and one of our other cats had to go in last two weeks ago for

dental surgery. And when we went and picked them up, the other cat who has very bad teeth, they are litter mates, they were like, oh, my mom was like she actually had much less in the way of problems than we expected. But Jesse had one tooth that was

really infected, oh really deep into her jawline. And I think what must have happened is that she just wasn't feeling good and our dear friend probably gave her a scritch along her jaw, and she just associated her with that because after she healed from her oral surgery, that friend came over and Jesse climbed her like a monkey, like purring and like rubbing her face on her. So I think so funny. She might not have hateful heart. She may have just felt really cretty and have just

been touched in a way that did not feel good. Yeah, my baby is my baby. It turns out she's a good girl. She's still a little bit of that. But I just wanted everyone to know she's not a monster. Okay, here's a takeaway of e Virgil Neil And really it's a takeaway that is also from the show I used to do, Criminalia. Don't mess with the post Office. They

will come for you. They will come for you. We did a whole season on Criminalia about fraudsters, and in so many of those instances, the thing that finally took somebody down was like an inspector or the somebody from the post office, like the Postmaster General activating an inspector and being like you have to go check this out. And that was how things all I mean bias for action. They will put together a case, they will get lawyers involved alongside, like it, don't mess with the post office.

It's the rule, yeah, which I just kind of love. Postal fraud will get you before anything else. Yeah, because there's a whole lot of other fraud that you know will happen. Nothing nothing, File your report with the FBI. What will happen. Nothing, zero things will happen. Call your local law enforcement about the fraud. Zero things happening. I have personal experience with this, and yeah, nothing, nothing will be done. Although I had a great check fraud story

that maybe we'll wait for another day. But there there was It was a good one. It was a good one. There was justice sort of never messed with the PO anyway. One of the other things that came up in some of the research on Evirgil Neil, again, I feel like his life story should be called that's not substantiated, because oh yeah, there's a lot can't be substantiated, and that so much of his life was built in a way that people could not substantiate things that it makes it

very hard. But one theory that had come up was that in his earlier days, and like people were like, Okay, why did he keep setting these businesses up in like Syracuse. Was that he was helping his parents or his mother solo his dad died at some point in there, and that is reported differently in different places, but that he may have been sticking close to her throughout all of it, and so like some of these sort of cockamy meat and in some ways nefarious businesses were kind of to

generate money that he could give to her. But I don't that seems like a very kind read on his situation. Yeah, but who knows, you know, even monsters will have pets. I found myself thinking about Robert Boyle during this episode, okay and his idea of healing at a distance. I yes, And I'm like, did they read his list his wish list of things that science might do one day? And go, people want that we can tell we have it even

though we don't have it. Look into the eyes of the photograph and a specific time, Yeah, when I think it was character delineator. Yeah, and I was like, this sounds like some kind of wo like this is like character delineator sounds like a term for a psychic who was going to observe you and say what your character is? Like? That was sort of yeah, where my brain ticket? Oh yeah, it's like a very specific form of cold reading. Yeah, it's it's wild. Here's the thing. Don't come for me.

I have a weird sort of reserved don't come for me. I'm not saying something bad, but it's gonna sound initially a weird sort of reserved admiration for e. Virgil Neil because he was clearly very smart and he you know, I mean I read a lot of his banking and accounting stuff and I'm like, this is a brilliant way to teach this stuff, Like this makes so much sense. It really like clarifies, demystifies, distills into like easily communicable and actionable activities like how to do these things? And

I'm like, this is true of it. He had an incredible skill as a writer and as a communicator, and he obviously knew how to manage money. And I'm like, you're so darned smart. If you had only had scruples, right, what could you have done like that? It's like the formula I wrote at one point in my notes was banking plus writing, minus conscience, Like that's the formula that makes e Virgil neil because I don't know how you go to sleep at night doing the things he was doing.

But I do marvel at the way he was able to like shift things around very carefully. He was really the only person who understood the whole web. He you know, like he was clearly making a lot of moves that were astute through a certain lens, but again just lacking morality or conscience, right right. So that's why I admire how smart he clearly was and how able he was to maneuver things to his own benefit. But I don't admire like what was motivating that or the outcome, right right, Yeah,

don't come for me. I don't think he was a good person. I just think he was smart. Yeah, fascinated, fascinated. Yeah, have you ever fallen into I bet you haven't. This seems like something you would not do. But maybe those phases of life where you love watching infomercials. I don't know if I would say that I loved watching them. I love them, I find them fascinating. Yeah. There was a period of my life where I worked at a place that was going to try selling its products through

an infomercial. So I did learn a lot about infomercials during that time, right, And I don't actually remember whether that effort got off the ground or not, Like I don't remember if that infomercial actually aired ever, But yeah, I have always been very fascinated because the here's the thing. There are even things that get sold and infomercials that are actually perfectly fine products. But the way that, like the sales tactic of it, we have the answer simplify

your life, baby, it's all going to get better. Just just just call and place your order. That's how old I am. You used to have to call order, you know, go online, put in the thing. And I mean those still exist in various forms now, just in like a more rapid fire pace on like Instagram ads. Take that, right. I'm fascinated by them, and sometimes I get influenced by them. I'm not gonna lie, usually in very benign ways, like I do need those shoes, but I just I find them.

It's it's wild because even as you are conscious of the cause and effect of how that marketing works, there will be moments where you're like, maybe I do need and it's like you have to pull yourself back and go no, no, remember these are all careful. It's like the same way that people talk about the food industry,

studying things like mouthfeel and creveability to make. It's the same thing, like there is psychological analysis around what will get people to, you know, eventually buy into a product, right, right, But even when you know that, it is very easy to be drawn in and be like that will solve that problem. Yeah. Well, And to be incredibly clear, the company that I was working for was selling actual legitimate products, like and actual legitimate products that had a very specific

legal regulatory like oversight involved with them. But the infomercial idea was totally like trying to bring these products that were made for business use into a home by saying, this will solve all of your problems. You know, how you have baked on gunk in your oven, this product which was you know, formulated for commercial ovens, It's totally going to solve all your problems. Don't take away my

flavoring gunk. I need the guck. And again I have I don't remember if that like, did that ever actually become a thing. I don't remember. I don't know. And so I mean some of those things do are perfectly legitimate products. Yeah, I'm fascinated by I'm fascinated by the idea. I feel like, in an alternate life, I must have worked in advertising because I am obsessed with commercials. Like

I have strong opinions about commercials. I will watch a whole show that's garbage, but if it's on like network television, I will turn to Brian and talk about the problems with the ads, and I just I love I love the concept of advertising as a field of study. I mean, I don't, you know, love the concept of advertising, but

I love analyzing it. I think it's really fascinating. You know, commercials are an interesting space in terms of like film and television technology, because in some cases that's where things get put, that's where the envelope gets pushed in terms of what's possible first, because it's much easier to fund a ninety second piece of film than it is an actual show or movie. So from that point of view,

I'm always fascinated by commercials. Anyway, I'm fascinating with advertising is the summation of that, which is probably part of why E. Virgil Neil is so right, just wildly engrossing for me. Yeah, well, in his like newspaper ads that

were basically advertorials. Yeah. I thought about that a lot because of, you know, my own history of having worked for a website and an editorial department in an era that there was, you know, the transition was being made from print media with you know, things that look like articles but said at the top, sponsored copy or something like that. Yeah, trying to ansfer that kind of mindset to the web. Yeah, I working in an editorial department

that was highly opposed to doing anything like that. So that's like, those are the things that I was thinking about while well, while talking about that part of his life story. Yeah, I mean, I it's such a weird thing. And I know most people hate ads in general, they hate advertising. I know we get complaints about advertising on our show sometimes, but like, and I have a very

it's stuck with me so hard. An interaction I had with a friend of mine, and it was in that time when a lot of network television was transitioning to having shows available online. Oh yeah, And this friend of mine was so irate that there were ads in the online version. And I was like, but there have to be what are you talking about? And she was just I write about it and I was like, she's like it should be free, and I'm like, okay, how do

you think they pay the actors, writers, set, directors, et cetera. Like, I know it's not fun always to watch an ad, but like, if you want the show now, of course the models are very different. But for network television particularly, it's like, if you want the show, you got to put up with that part unless you're subscribing to it in a different way, like the rules. That's just how

it works. It's fascinating to me, and I think the transition into online there was a gap for people in like understanding or accepting that initially that like, oh, the ads will follow us to they are also yeah, when I think they were thinking, if I'm not watching it on my television with my remote control, surely it's a different thing. This must be cheaper to run. They don't need the adds for this, and it's like no, they

they actually still do. It was in parallel with advertisers, no not seeing value and advertising on the web yet, so for some things there was just sort of this happened with podcasting a lot, like there was sort of a window when most podcasts didn't have ads on them because advertisers weren't interested in advertising on podcasts, and listeners got used to ad free podcasts, and those ad free podcasts, vast majority of them would have stopped existing because people

would have run out of money. Yeah, had the advertisers not eventually come yeah, it's weird, it's a weird dance. Yeah, I get the dismay. Yeah, I'm not. I literally right now my brain is taking through all of the copy and recent television ads I've seen that I hate. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs me to shout out their company for not liking your ads. Do you want me to tell you about the the memory that was jogged by our email about kids dressing up as historical figures? Yes?

I mean, like, have you ever had like a memory just kind and slap you in the face like that that you haven't thought about in this like forty five years. Yeah. In seventh grade, my best friend and I we had to do reports on historical figures in science and my best friend and I I don't know if we picked it or we were assigned the Wright Brothers, Okay, and we were like great. And she is still a friend of mine. She's one of the smartest people I know.

She probably did more of the like bookwork part of it. I don't know. We each picked one of the brothers and kind of went with it. But on the day of the presentation, I, I don't know if I just didn't communicate this or not, but I showed up in full historical costume. Oh no, and she did not. And it was It was just the most awkward, weird thing because it was like, I was That's what I wore to school that day. It wasn't like I could change, right, so there was no way to make it not look

like I had done more work than her in that regard. Yeah, no, she did just as much work as me, if not or on the like writing and prep part. And it was just like, I woo the way that memory came back so hard, Yeah, so hard, but also hilarious. That wasn't a very historically accurate costume, but it was more historically accurate than most kids would do at that stage of life. Listen, if this is your weekend coming up, I hope you only so if you want to. I

hope you only watch infomercials. If you want to. I hope you remember that advertising is often designed to appeal to that part of your brain that has wants and needs, and you don't get sucked into buying something you don't want, or, like me, you wake up in a fugue state, and that's when the ordering happens. It's a problem like where do these shoes come from? Oh? I did order those at six forty five am last Friday. It happens. Listen, it is what it is. But I hope that, like

you have a wonderful next couple of days. If you have to work, if you have obligations, maybe you have a family and you got to run people all over for all of their extracurricular activities or whatever they've got going on. I still hope you can steal away some fun time for yourself. Maybe find a bathroom with a disco ball in it. Maybe make a bathroom with a disco ball in it. Just embrace joy wherever you find it. Be kind to one another. We will be right back

here on Monday with new stuff. We will also be back here tomorrow with a classic episode. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.