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Welcome to Beyond the Beauty, a podcast from My Heart Radio, I'm your host, Bobby Brown. I've been in the beauty industry for a long time and I've learned a lot. I have watched makeup, skincare and beauty change more than I ever could have imagined. This season on Beyond the Beauty, I'm exploring the beauty industry past and present. I'm reflecting on my own experiences and I'm talking to some of the biggest and brightest names in beauty today. Listen to the brand new season of Beyond the Beauty on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to stuff you missed in History Class, A production of I Heart Radio. Happy Friday, I'm Tracy B. Wilson. I'm Holly Fry, one of the episodes we talked about this week with Celia paying Aposhian pretty great, pretty great.

Like I said at the top of the show, I don't love the sexism that was part of this episode, but I do love her. One of the points that has been made about her is that her discovery was of the same caliber as like the discovery of gravity, like like she should have a name that's recognizable as recognizable as somebody like Isaac Newton.

But it's not and something that I read in several places and thought myself that I didn't get into in the episode because it is really conjecture is she was so brilliant and so meticulous and so determined. What else might she have discovered if she had not had to be Hala Shapeways assistant. Right. Because of her sex, if she could have just been exploring what excited and interested her? Yeah, we will never know. Know. But she should be as well recognized as Isaac Newton or an Einstein or we're going to keep fighting the fight.

Right. We at least get her name out there a little more. Yeah. And then the next person can talk about her to somebody. You go, hey, have you ever heard of this woman? And then, yeah. Will eventually get her more recognized as well. And I do really want to recommend the new biography of her. It just came out, I feel like maybe March of this year. It's pretty name by Donovan Moore, and it's called What Stars Are Made of the Life of Cecilia Paying.

A portion of it is from Harvard University Press. It's really lovely and really, I mean, obviously very thoroughly researched with lots and lots of footnotes. You can also find her her autobiography. Still, she loved literature so much that the way she wrote about things could be like very lyrical and beautiful, in addition to just interesting and full of details about her life.

Do you know, this occurred to me during the episode and I didn't want to derail us with this question. But did you ever find because you mentioned her students talking about how she was very intimidating, but her lectures were very beautiful and very memorable. Are there lecture notes like did do we ever have any of her? I don't know, because that would be amazing.

Reading, I think would be amazing. Well, and considering that she she was alive into the 70s, like, I wasn't able to watch the whole talk, but I watched the the beginning of a talk that was about this book by the author. And in the introduction, the person introducing the author talked about having actually taking classes with her back in the 70s when she was still teaching at Harvard. So it's it would not surprise me. I know there are collections of her, her manuscripts and whatnot.

Yeah. If there were not a pandemic, I would just go over to Harvard.

Well, one day the list of things to do, put it in the dream book of things you wish to do after this is all over. Yeah, I feel like she's one of those people I knew a veterinarian. This is going to sound like it's completely different, but I'm making a point.

I knew a veterinarian at one point that one of their colleagues was telling me that they always loved to like they were always very comfortable stepping into treating a patient for that, that if she was ever out because her notes and her details about everything that had gone on were so meticulous and so well-written that it was almost like reading a novella about that animal. Like you would know, walking evely not only what all of its medical stuff was, but like about its disposition.

And you had a pretty good sense of like the creature you were about to treat. And I feel like her notes in prep for her lectures are probably very similar. Yeah. One of the reasons that I feel a kinship with her, I am not in any stretch the the brilliant. Scientists just mind in general that she was, but the way her early school teachers approached her like making her the object for the rest of the class. I had teachers that did that to me and it sucked.

So some of the story is about like, you know, this this child being all of you in this exam. How did you let this child do that? Like, I would be the sometimes I would be the like Tracy behaved. Why can't the rest of you behave like Tracy? And I was like, well, now I'm mortified and my peers are going to bully me. Like, that was a piece of our story that there was overlap in.

And I just I wanted to go yell at her teachers who are all dead from so long ago at this point.

That didn't bother me, although it does remind me of a funny story that I will tell you that is embarrassing because I definitely like I was that kid for a long time. And then as I got into my teenage years and started sowing my wild oats, I stopped being so much that kid and I pretty much like maxed out in terms of like the amount of study I was willing to do. And so there were classes that I ended up getting into that I probably shouldn't have been in.

But there I was. And I just kind of soldiered through. And the first exam that we had, senior year in physics, I was the only person who got in a oh, wow.

Oh, don't. Even because this teacher went on about like how promising a student I was and all girl, I made that stuff up.

I was like guessing. I didn't it was literally like winning the lottery of exams like I had. No, I didn't I couldn't have told you a single thing or understood a single concept on that test. Oh, wow. We were. And so it was like this awkward thing, as you know, in those kinds of classes go and you form study groups and people are like, oh, Holly probably knows this.

I mean, I don't know what you're talking about, definitely down.

And then I just underperform the rest of the year. So just to balance it out, I had quite forgotten that until just this moment.

Well, today's behind the scenes includes stories from Tracy and Holly's earlier academic life anyway. I love Cecelia Pancha, Paskin.

Great. You can find pictures of the portrait of her online. I do not know where that is hanging at Harvard is a place that's accessible to the public. But if it is, that will also be on the list of things to do.

After the pandemic, which one can hope will ever be over, I know my list is getting very long while we wait.

This week, we talked about Maria on a Mozart, hmm, who is someone who kind of pops up in my consciousness and on my list, and then I have gone to other things, but it felt like time for her. It's interesting because I think she gets sensationalized a little bit as like the other wunderkind of the Mozart family who was, you know, cast aside. And that's not entirely accurate. One thing that I found really, really interesting in all of my research is the different ways that different historians and biographers have characterized their father, Leopold.

Hmm.

Because some make him out definitely to be something of a controlling monster, whereas others really are like, well, wait, some of this looks really controlling to the modern eye. But like his whole thing of like I don't want you to perform anymore could legitimately have been a concern that he was afraid she would never get married and have like a normal life if she did that right. There's certainly also benefits to him keeping her at home, taking care of him in the house and all of his stuff.

It's an interest. And we'll never know, really, because there there are some pretty big gaps in the record of some of those relationships, some of which we talked about on this show. Allegedly letters between Wolfgang and Leopold about Constanza got burned by Constanza. So we don't really know what discussions happened between father and son about that marriage. There's a lot more there. Obviously, it wasn't an episode about. Wolfgang, but his whole like life story is complicated and full of twists and turns, and like Constanza was not the first sister of that family that he had been involved with.

And like there's an extra layer of complication there. Drama.

Yes, there's a lot a lot of drama. But it is it's a very interesting, you know, that whole family there's so many people who literally just focus on that family. And it's it's far reaching, you know, influences on music and culture that we still feel today. But I would I would never claim to be anything more than a dilatant in that regard. But it is pretty fascinating to read different people talk about. Their theories about the family interpersonal communication.

Sure, I mean, I, I the whole allowing her father to raise her son is a is one that people get really hung up on, which understandably, it's super weird. It's not super strange necessarily for a grandparent to raise somebody's child. Yeah. The nature of that whole like I went and gave birth and then I left the kid with my dad and went home to my home where theoretically that child could have returned home. There was no you know, that makes it a little bit hard, I think, for people to wrap their brains around.

Yeah, well, and it's I can imagine scenarios where it doesn't seem that strange at all. And some of them we kind of nodded to like there were already a lot of children at home. But a lot of the time, like when I have known people who say had a sibling and a lot of kids in the siblings family, and usually it's been one of the older children who has come to live, but not a newborn. A newborn is the part that that makes it a little bit a little bit hard to to pass.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, as as you're pointing out, right. Every family has its its own dynamics and shifts and ways to like function and cope. And in times of strain that one just seems like a strange Leopold wanting to then be like, no, this is a permanent arrangement. This is I'm raising him as my kid does.

I mean, I, I don't I my initial reaction was, oh, I bet he wanted Mozart part to Mozart, the sequel, especially when you consider that, you know, he had reached that point where he was no longer really part of his son's career in a way I think formed his identity for a long time. So then to kind of be like, we don't need you in that capacity anymore, probably messed with his head. That's always my thing that I try to remember.

I think you do as well. I think most people probably do, whether they're conscious of it or not.

Any figures we talk about in history were humans that were dealing with their own complex internal stories, whether they were aware of how they were processing things and behaving or not. You know, we there's humans. I mean, how many times have any of us I know it's happened to me where I'll be behaving in a way. And even I know, like, this is making unnecessary friction in my life. Right. And then I'll think about it and go, oh, I see.

I'm not actually coping with this other thing. But if you don't think about that, you never get to that solution. And the behavior continues and it creates all kinds of other and everybody has had that. So I think about how many big historical moments or events or even figures in terms of specific people have really been formed by that kind of thing where like a moment of introspection would have completely changed the trajectory.

We can never know. It's just a fascinating sort of brain puzzle to distract yourself with.

Yeah, it's the thing that I think makes me the saddest about their story. Like, I wish she had been able to have a career publicly as a as a musician or a composer. But like that society was not really open to that at the time. No, there were a few women who performed in music. But again, those were like the outlier, right? They were not right.

But just in terms of their personal story, the fact that they had that that she and her brother have been so, so close when they were little and then and when they became adults, each of them really did not have a sense of what was going on and the other one's life anymore. And that's that's the part to me that makes me really sad for them. Yeah. Like this I have, you know, a sort of alternate history, which like some I'm imagining somebody has written a historical novel about things went differently and she was able to continue and perform as an adult.

But like the thing that I really just wish I could go back and do is like get get them just to be more connected to each other as they grew up. Right. Yeah. It's also interesting because as much as Leopold may not have been particularly enthused about Constanza and perhaps Maria wasn't either like that really does seem to have been a pretty good match for Wolfgang in terms of like she stood by him through a lot of stuff, you know, wealth and poverty and having many children and a lot of stress.

And so it is it's a little interesting that their judgment on that matter might not have been awesome. And as a consequence, that's that's where, you know, that breakdown seems to have happened for a lot of their their family relationships. And it it does like you said, it's it's heartbreaking that they probably could have helped each other through some unhappy times. Mm hmm.

You know, certainly there were bigger issues in play than like anybody can magically fix for someone else. But it still is. That is, I think I agree, the heartbreak really of their story. Oh, siblings.

Yeah. So that wraps up our our casual Friday for today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And if you would like to subscribe to the podcast, you absolutely can do that. And we welcome it. And you can do that on the I Heart radio app at Apple podcast or wherever it is you listen.

Stuff you missed in history class is the production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts from my Heart Radio is it by her radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows? I'm Shonda Rhimes. If you watch Grey's Anatomy or any of my TV shows, you know, I love to tell a good story. Well, now there's Sandland Audio. We partner with I Heart Radio to launch a slate of great podcasts. You can listen the first four right now, Katie's Krib criminal.

You go ask Ali and you down and we have so much more coming your way. We can't wait for you to hear it all. Welcome to Shadowland Audio. Listen to all the new Sandland audio shows on Apple podcasts.