Transcript: MaYaND 002: CB 02: The Hidden Staircase
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[Sound cue: Eerie piano tune reminiscent of the Nancy Drew PC game soundtracks]
Colleen: Welcome to Me and You and Nancy Drew, the podcast where I, Colleen-
Meghan: -and I, Meghan-
Colleen: -explore the Nancy Drew-niverse, looking at the food, fashion, history, and inherent queerness of the Nancy Drew books, TV show, games, etc.
Meghan: This week we have read the second novel in the original series, The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene.
Colleen: This is the rewritten-in-1959 version, so if you, for some reason, are reading along with your version from the 30s, it's gonna be a little bit different, probably. We still haven't found-
Meghan: Do we- I was gonna say, “Do people actually-?”
Colleen: Someone has to!
Meghan: I mean, I'm sure people actually own these 1930s versions, but I'm sure that, I feel like that would be like a collector's item.
Colleen: Right, right, right. They're probably not actually going around reading them. This is something on a shelf behind glass. But if you've already memorized your 1930 copy, I'm sorry. It will probably be a little different. I really-
Meghan: Yeah. Or maybe it isn't. I don't know.
Colleen: She's two years older. That could be the only difference.
Meghan: This is like, I really- That could be the only difference, but what if there's more? I need to know.
[Sound Cue: Synthesized pentatonic scale underneath the spoken words “Drew Haiku”]
Meghan: If you didn't listen to last week's episode, or you forgot what a haiku is, a haiku is a poem that has three lines. The first line has five syllables, the second has seven syllables, and the third line has five syllables again. Go ahead, Colleen, with your haiku.
Colleen: [ostentatiously clears throat] “Haunted house, we think? / Mr. Drew gets kidnapped! And: / Costume party time.” I hope you could hear the punctuation that I threw in.
Meghan: I love it.
Colleen: Copious punctuation.
Meghan: So much information in such a small poem.
Colleen: All right. Haiku me.
Meghan: “Nancy's second case. / Find the secret passageway. / Shady guy takes Dad.” I needed to make sure that we referenced the kidnapping.
Colleen: No, for sure. I do have a question.
Meghan: Yes?
Colleen: Is the first line of all of these going to be “Nancy's first case,” “Nancy's second case”?
Meghan: Maybe.
Colleen: Okay, I was just curious
Meghan: Maybe. I can't make any guarantees.
Colleen: Because for the first one, I was like, “Yes, absolutely.” And now-
Meghan: Poem-writing stresses me out! I'm sorry. It was a given first line. I was like, “Okay, now that I have a first line, I can get started.”
Colleen: But there's so much more to cover than Nancy's second case. But also, you did a good job of making it- Last time it was “Nancy Drew's first case” because of syllables. So, good work.
Meghan: Yes. I adapted.
Colleen: You did adapt, overcome... There's another one.
Meghan: Improvise?
[Sound Cue: Clock ticks underneath the spoken words “Thirty-Second Recap”]
Colleen: So do you want to do an actual recap that's not-
Meghan: Oh we can try!
Colleen: It will still be constrained. It will be constrained. You have thirty seconds.
Meghan: Wait, do I have to go first again?
Colleen: You don't have to, do you want me to go first?
Meghan: Yes, but then I'm going to disappoint- Be disappointing.
Colleen: You are not disappointing! I have already forgotten everything about this book and I read it last night.
Meghan: I have also forgotten and I read it this morning.
Colleen: You read it this morning! And you read it digitally, which apparently doesn't stick as well in your brain?
Meghan: I don't know. Yeah, I think I need a physical- Like, I don't remember all the details, so I'll do my best, but-
Colleen: All the bits and bytes just fell out of your ears.
Meghan: Yeah, so would you?
Colleen: Yeah, I'll go first. I'll go first.
Meghan: Okay. Ready, set, go.
Colleen: [clock ticks underneath the book summary] So Nancy is concerned because some guy comes to her house and says, “Oh, your dad's in danger, ‘cause he is doing lawyer stuff, I forget why, and you should follow him!” And she's, like, “Oh my god, that means I can't go on a case with my friend Helen who says there's a haunted house and that her great-aunt or some old relative of hers is in trouble and sad and old and there's a ghost!” And so her dad says, “Go anyway,” and she does, and she solves that mystery, but her dad gets kidnapped anyway, and they were kind of related all along, because the same guy, Mr. Goomber or something, Goomba was involved. The end! [ticking stops, clock bongs]
Meghan: Very good. Very good.
Colleen: What's his name again?
Meghan: G-I-
Colleen: Gomber?
Meghan: Gomber. Is that- We’re gonna go with that?
Colleen: I'm gonna go with Goomba. I think that that's right.
Meghan: Goomba? Gomb. Goomba?
Colleen: All right, are you ready? Reset. Ready, set, go.
Meghan: [clock ticks underneath the book summary] Nancy and Helen decide to go and investigate her great-aunt and her great-grandma's haunted house. All the while, Mr. Drew is somehow missing with a lawyer thing and the railroad is involved. And so they go to the house, there's a secret passageway connecting a different house that's exactly the same, and they do some stuff. They dress up in some really pretty gowns, and they find Nancy's dad because it turns out he had been kidnapped by the guy who was trying to buy the house. [ticking stops, clock bongs]
Colleen: Good job! Very nice. Right under the wire.
Meghan: Okay I kind of forgot-
Colleen: What was the lawyer stuff? I’ve already forgotten.
Meghan: Okay, so Mr. Drew-
Colleen: -is a lawyer-
Meghan: -is a lawyer and they're building a railroad.
Colleen: The lawyers aren't. Somebody else is.
Meghan: Yeah, sorry, no. There are construction people. They just keep saying, “The railroad is doing this.”
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: So they're building, it seems like, some sort of bridge from one area to another, and they've sold all of this land. All these different people have sold the land to the railroad. But one lawyer who died the next day didn't do the 100% due process and so they can't-
Colleen: Oh! On the, ‘cause the land got signed off, but he didn't get a witness or something to see, and he didn't get it notarized?
Meghan: Yes, so he didn't get a witness, and he didn't get it notarized. And so now the guy who signed it is claiming he didn't sign it at all, and he's asking for more money. And now the other people are like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, wait, we also want more money, too.”
Colleen: Okay, okay. There's a lot more lawyer stuff in the Nancy Drew books than I remembered.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: And I knew that her dad was a lawyer. I remembered- Her dad's possibly the best lawyer, according to Nancy, who is, perhaps, biased.
Meghan: Very biased, I would argue.
Colleen: A little biased. But I just didn't remember there being notaries. They run and get a notary at one point, like, with his notary kit, and I was like, “This is not interesting.”
Meghan: And, like, everyone's talking about, like, whether things are legal or not. I don't know I- Maybe because I've watched Veronica Mars so much more recently, I thought that Nancy did a lot more illegal things.
Colleen: Yeah.
Meghan: And I'm actually impressed she's-
Colleen: She's a very-
Meghan: She is very by the book, most of the, most of the time.
Colleen: Above the law, this book! Or not above the law, but [indistinguishable].
Meghan: Below the law?
Colleen: Below the law! She's below the law. She's following the law. She is by the book. That was a better phrase that you already did.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: But she wants to go investigate this house, the one that is identical to the first house, to see if there's a passageway between them, because they're trying to figure out how this, like, ghost figure, who Nancy disbelieves from the start is a ghost.
Meghan: But still refers to this mystery figure as a ghost.
Colleen: Oh, throughout!
Meghan: She's like, “Maybe the ghost is there!” But she knows it's not a ghost.
Colleen: She- It's definitely a man. She knows this. She doesn't even bring up the possibility of“It's not a man, but it is a human." There's- It is a man. And she's right. But she does refer to him as a ghost the whole time. But anyway, so, she wants to go investigate the house that is connected and is identical, but it has been sold and she's not allowed to. And she thinks for a moment about breaking in, but then she doesn't, because it would be illegal. And I'm like, “Good job!”
Meghan: But then the realtor, well I guess the realtor does have, like, can legally let her into the house because the guy hasn't moved in and it hasn't been finalized.
Colleen: Because he does.
Meghan: Yeah, well he doesn't originally because he's like, “I don't want to make Goomba mad.” [crosstalk] I'm just gonna call him Goomba now. Mr. Goomba, mad. And then he's like, “Aaaaaa, never mind, Nancy, let's go.”
Colleen: So Goomba comes up and is trying to warn (at the beginning) and tries to warn them about Carson being in danger, but actually he's the one causing the danger.
Meghan: The warning is very much an intimidation.
Colleen: Oh, hundo p. But Hannah Gruen, the housekeeper-slash-second-mom is, like, “Oh my god, my, my-” and it's not a romantic relationship, but Hannah is described as her second mom, which
Meghan: Yes, yes.
Colleen: And that is how I interpreted it, reading it, but I didn't realize it was laid out so explicitly, and I love that. So it's not a romantic thing, but it is like, “Oh, the co-parent of my child-”
Meghan: Yes, yes.
Colleen: “-basically, is in danger, and I care very deeply for him, but not in a romance way.” I just think that's cool, because you don't really see that. And yes, she is an employee, but not-
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: Not emotionally. They do, like, Nancy does errands for her, kind of thing. So it is kind of like a non-traditional family setup. And I love that.
[Sound cue: High-pitched whistle-like note descending in pitch underneath the stretched-out, also-descending-in-pitch spoken word “Cliffhangers!”]
Colleen: In Nancys and Hardy Boys, they tend to end every chapter with an exclamation point, sometimes a fully italicized sentence, which is arguably not necessary. But I found one right in the middle of the chapter that I needed to tell you about. Oh, it was just page three.
Meghan: Oh!
Colleen: This is Goomba coming in and going, "Your father is in great danger, Miss Drew." And- I don't know why he talks like that, but he does. and there was, I think there was one more right in the middle. Oh, no. So that one was actually, like, “Oh okay, I actually am interested, even though this is just a random guy who came over.” But the cliffhanger I love from the actual end of the chapter is at the end of chapter- What is this Roman numeral? At the end of Chapter Twelve. The last sentence is, “But he had an athletic build and his left ear was definitely crinkly!” Exclamation point! Which is referring back to a description of this crime-inal that they have heard earlier.
Meghan: And they only describe him as, like, “the crinkled-ear man.”
Colleen: That's the only descriptor! There's nothing else. Oh, I guess “athletic build,” but that's, like, nothing.
Meghan: No.
Colleen: That just means he has muscles. This is- This is one of the kidnappers?
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: But he's not, the, like, brains behind the operation. He's the muscle. And the ear.
Meghan: Yes. yeah. The crinkly ear. Oh my god.
Colleen: What does that mean? Then she's, like, the first person to describe it is like, “He's got kind of a crinkly ear, if you know what I mean,” and Nancy's like, “Yes I do.”
Meghan: I don't.
Colleen: I don't, either. Did you have a cliffhanger?
Meghan: Yes. And so, yes, my favorite cliffhanger was at the end of Chapter Five, when they're trying to figure out how the chandelier started swaying, and Nancy goes upstairs to go and try and, like, stand over the chandelier and see if, if she stood there-
Colleen: -if she could-
Meghan: -if she could reenact it.
Colleen: ‘Cause they think it's a ghost.
Meghan: And then, yes, “She had barely started the test when from the first floor, Helen Corning gave a piercing scream.”
Colleen: You love a piercing scream.
Meghan: I love a piercing scream. It builds so much dramatic tension.
Colleen: And it wasn't even about the chandelier! It was, like, a separate issue!
Meghan: Well, and that's why I was really confused. Again. I'm often confused.
Colleen: That's fair!
Meghan: But I was trying to figure- Like, when I originally read it, I was like, “Wow, Helen's being soooo dramatic.”
Colleen: Because Nancy said-
Meghan: You already saw the chandelier shake, and Nancy's like, “I'm gonna go upstairs and try and make the chandelier shake.”
Colleen: Exactly.
Meghan: And it did. And then she starts screaming. I'm like, “Oh my gosh, Helen!”
Colleen: “Calm down!”
Meghan: “Get it together!” So then I read, and I was like, “Oh wait, no, there's actually something else going on.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Meghan: A jump scare happened to Helen downstairs!
Colleen: I really also thought-
Meghan: She wasn't even looking at the chandelier!
Colleen: I thought it was also about the chandelier. Like, “I literally told you I was gonna do this thing. You know it's not a ghost this time.”
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: It was arguably never a ghost.
Meghan: And so I feel like there weren't as many memorable cliffhangers in this one.
Colleen: Nah, those are the only two I flagged.
[Sound Cue: Kitchen tools clink underneath the spoken words “Cooking Corner”]
Meghan: In this segment, we look at the wonderful food that Nancy gets to experience in this novel. Colleen, would you like to go first and describe one of your selections?
Colleen: I would, yes. Yes, yes, yes. So. Chapter Three. We get out, like, a full, like, several-course meal as- So Nancy and her dad have been trying to track something down and they end up taking an unexpected swim. More on this later during the fashion watch actually. Okay. And so they change into dry clothes and bathe all the mud off, probably the other way around, actually. And so they come back, and Hannah had placed sherbert glasses, sorry, sherbet. My dad gets very mad at this.
Meghan: Yes, I looked up the difference. I had never heard of a sherbet glass, but I searched up “sherbert glass” and it was like, “Do you mean sherbet?” and I was like, “I guess I do!”
Colleen: What about you? What meal did you flag?
Meghan: So I have a few other things flagged that I do want to come back to. But I think the number one food item that really spoke to me and, again, inspired me to go search up what this was, and look up a recipe for it, and then highly consider going into my kitchen and starting to make this, and then I didn't do it but I still kind of want to is, it was described as “A yummy floating island for dessert.” And I was, like, “Okay. What's a floating island?” Basically a custard and then overtop of that is a meringue-
Colleen: Oh?
Meghan: -that has been poached instead of baked, and you place it on top, then you drizzle it with either chocolate or caramel, and you can place little, you know, fruits like strawberries and blueberries. It looks so good.
Colleen: That sounds so good.
Meghan: It's so many steps because you have to temper all sorts of different things.
Colleen: Right.
Meghan: And, you know, there's a lot of different steps.
Colleen: That's so stressful.
Meghan: Yeah, that's- That's also why I decided not to make it, because I was like, “Whoo. I feel like I'm just gonna cry because I'm gonna get really upset when this does not work.”
Colleen: I will happily watch somebody else make it, but I think that that would not work.
Meghan: I would also very happily eat it.
Colleen: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Meghan: And so this is made while they are in the haunted house.
Colleen: Oh yeah!
Meghan: And great-grandma, Miss Flora, is, like, on the verge of heart attacks.
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: And everyone is very stressed out. I'm like, “Who is making this floating island dessert?!” Maybe, you know, for someone maybe, I mean I know a lot of people [who feel] that baking is a very relaxing endeavor and they do it as a stress release. That would not be that way for me.
Colleen: But they also know that someone is listening somehow to everything they're saying and doing, so I would want to, like, do things quickly, make a quick dinner, something that, like, doesn't take a lot of time so I can get out of the house.
Meghan: And they do later. Later on they've got these, like, quick meals, and I guess this is earlier in the mystery-solving.
Colleen: True.
Meghan: Because as it continues, and as Miss Flora gets more and more stressed, and, like, the doctor has to visit more and more frequently, their foods become, like, soup. Do you have any other cooking things?
Colleen: Oh yes, yes, yes. I have a couple, actually. I really enjoyed Nancy going to the drugstore. She's, like, just killing time so she can, like, talk to somebody who's on a lunch break. And so she's like, “Okay, I've got like an hour to kill. I’ll go to the drugstore, get a little snack, read a detective story in a magazine,” which, I love that she's just reading this in her car. It's [the magazine is] so intriguing that the time passes quickly. But she goes in and she's like, “I just need, like, a little snack.” And you know what I do when I want a little snack? I eat split pea soup. Just as a little, like, casual, just a little on-the-go split pea soup. Like, okay?! It's delicious I'm sure, but I go to, like, a bag of chips or a handheld sandwich or something.
Meghan: And funny that you mentioned peas…
Colleen: Oh no.
Meghan: Because they are involved in almost every single meal featured in this story.
Colleen: They are! Was this, like, sponsored by Big Pea?
Meghan: Fresh peas with Hannah and Carson. Fresh peas with Helen and her great-aunt and her great-grandma. The split pea soup! And then later, one of the foods they realize is missing is canned peas.
Colleen: Canned peas! And that's, the ghost has been eating their food.
Meghan: I don't think- I can't remember the last time I ate peas.
Colleen: I like them!
Meghan: I do too!
Colleen: But I don't go out of my way to have them for every meal. I do have one more meal, but do you have any others?
Meghan: It's just that this entire-
Colleen: This conspirac-pea?
Meghan: No, it's the-
Colleen: I'm so sorry.
Meghan: “Conspirac-pea.” Please. No.
Colleen: I'm so sorry.
Meghan: No, it's just all peas. It's all peas and soup. This, like, the second half of the book.
Colleen: And sometimes both!
Meghan: Yes, yes, sometimes pea, split pea soup.
Colleen: So Miss Flora has had maybe a heart attack, not really, but she's been, she's had quite the fright by this ghost. The last meal that I flagged was they get some, some chicken soup and some toast for her and then they just get her a saucer of plain gelatin. Delicious. So good.
Meghan: At that point you're just eating texture.
Colleen: You're just eating texture!
Meghan: Are there even calories?
Colleen: There have to- Does it have sugar?
Meghan: I don't know!
Colleen: I’ve never thought about plain gelatin at all. I've seen it as an ingredient in a gummy bear or whatever, or, I don't know, a marshmallow. I don't even know what gelatin is in. But like, who's sitting down to have a nice flavorless Jell-O?
[Sound cue: Ocean waves crash underneath the spoken words “Ship of the Week”]
Meghan: In this segment, we look at the relationships from this novel and we decide which one we support. Which pairing do we hope lives happily ever after?
Colleen: Which ship do we want to sail?
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: So my ship this week is, of course, Master and Mistress Colonial America. So Nancy and Helen are hanging out in this colonial house, and it's great because the, the older relatives keep talking about “the olden days,” meaning, of course, colonial times. But of course, these books were written in the 30s, which is almost a full hundred years ago for us reading them. So, like, yes, “the olden times.” Very old. Different from where you are, for sure. So at some point, even though, they're being haunted and there's a gorilla-faced man outside and all this different stuff- It's a whole thing. They're taking a night to enjoy themselves and they're dressing up in these colonial- They call them “costumes,” but it is just, just clothes from the colonial era. And since they're a private collection, they belong in this house, you get to try them on, which you would, I feel like, never get to do now, because it would be in a museum, right?
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Indiana Jones: “It belongs in a museum.” Whether it does or does not is, you know, up for debate.
Meghan: And we can talk more about the details of the clothing when we get to the Fashion Police segment.
Colleen: Yes, yes, yes, but this is all to say they spend the night dressing up. It's very great. After they dress up- So Nancy is Mistress Colonial America, and Helen is dressed in men's clothes and she is Master Colonial America, and they are, they are going to this imaginary dance together just in, like, the house. And they're clasping their hands, and they're strutting, and they're, it says [they] “even put in a few steps with which no dancers in colonial times would have been familiar,” which feels, “Oh my!” And it's very lovely, and they bow, and they- It's just very cute. They're having a nice little almost-date-night with Master and Mistress Colonial America. And then they do have to go run out and talk to an official police chief in their costumes, and he doesn't really comment on the fact that they're dressed up.
Meghan: Yeah, he's like, “Oh. Okay.”
Colleen: There's a picture of this normal policeman and a guy he's caught and then these two that are totally in, like, breeches and he's like, “Yeah, anyway, here's a crime that happened.” And they're like, “Oh, okay!" So that's my ship. I love Master and Mistress Colonial America.
Meghan: So for me, for my ship this week, I wanna break the mold, kind of like you did last week.
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: And I chose an anti-ship-
Colleen: Excellent.
Meghan: -who I definitely do not want to end up together. Nancy, near the beginning of the book, goes on a date with Dirk, a former high school tennis champion. And my issue- I just hope I never hear about Dirk again. He just seems really boring! And their date is a double date to amateur theatre. Not that I have anything against amateur theatre at all!
Colleen: For sure!
Meghan: But it ends up being just two paragraphs! Two paragraphs dedicated to this date. And then he's never mentioned for the rest of the novel.
Colleen: He's not even mentioned in the recap of the date. She's like, “I had a great time at the amateur play and then seeing the dancers and then we, I dunno, got dinner or something.” But she doesn't say, “And it was great to talk to Dirk.”
Meghan: Yeah, no, he's not- He's not involved. She just had a fun time.
Colleen: And there was also a man.
Meghan: And Dirk was there for some reason. I don't know why.
Colleen: Dirk Jackson.
Meghan: Dirk Jackson.
Colleen: It's a very American name.
Meghan: So I hope that Nancy never goes on another date with him again.
Colleen: Well, and just the fact that he's described as a former high school tennis champion. That's his-
Meghan: He's already peaked.
Colleen: He's peaked! He's done.
Meghan: Yeah.
[Sound Cue: European-style emergency vehicle siren sound plays underneath the spoken words “Fashion Police”]
Meghan: In this segment, we look at the fashion from this book. Colleen, what fashion did you want to start with?
Colleen: I wanted to talk about the olden-time ladies' gloves. "In olden days, Aunt Rosemary said, no ladies’ gloves were the pull-on type. They all had buttons."
Meghan: Ohhh.
Colleen: And so they actually ended up using the buttonhook to yank something that is hidden in the ceiling. So this is just like a throwaway fact of like, “By the way, I have this buttonhook.”
Meghan: “By the way, you need this buttonhook. Also, it might be a special tool you need later.”
Colleen: It's a special tool for her inventory. And then she immediately takes it out of her inventory and puts it in the ceiling crack and yanks something down that is hidden there. But I really enjoyed it just because, I mean, I loved the Nancy Drew games, and so you find something that's meant for one thing and then use it for something else. So, like, you get a magic wand, and you stick some gum to it, and then you can get the key out of the crack.
Meghan: I love that.
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: I love that. And I just, like, love just the fashion. Like thinking about, like, we don't use buttonhooks.
Colleen: No! Why would we?
Meghan: ‘Cause I want to talk about the colonial stuff, but I also do want to talk about the very beginning of the novel.
Colleen: Oh yes.
Meghan: Where Nancy and her dad are at the railroad construction site and she's wearing these pumps.
Colleen: Sensible pumps.
Meghan: Sensible pumps. And her father is like, “Mm. Are you sure you want to walk through the construction site with me? You could stay in the car.” She's like, “No.”
Colleen: They're coming from church.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: So she’s all dressed up. I do appreciate her dad, because he's not like, “Why'd you wear these pumps?” It's like, “By the way, there's a lot of mud. We're right by the river.”
Meghan: “In case you want to sit this one out, Nancy, I understand.” And she's like, “No.”
Colleen: And then she immediately does lose them in the water.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: And they weren't trying to go in the water. They were going to go look at things. And then, like, a car comes at them?
Meghan: A truck.
Colleen: Oh yeah!
Meghan: Yes. The truck rolls down the hill with no one driving it. Straight at them!
Colleen: We think it was done by Mr. Goomba.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: It's never really confirmed.
Meghan: It's implied.
Colleen: But it was, like, an intimidation tactic. They're about to get run over and they can't get to the sides. They can't jump out of the way because there's these giant concrete pillars. So it was like, you're going to get hit by the truck unless-
Meghan: -you go swimming.
Colleen: -you go swimming, and then go to the side of the river. And so she does lose her pumps in the water. But her dad helps fish them out, which is very nice.
Meghan: Yes, good dad moment. Good parenting.
Colleen: I love to see it. I also noticed a sports dress. Thoughts?
Meghan: So I did do a little bit of research. It was actually really difficult to find information about this.
Colleen: Because I think [that] I think of, like, Venus or Serena Williams wearing, like, a tennis skirt, and that's all I got.
Meghan: That's exactly what I imagined, and I was like, “That can't be right.”
Colleen: For a variety of reasons.
Meghan: Yeah. Exactly. So what I was able to find [were] vintage sewing patterns-
Colleen: Nice!
Meghan: For 1930s sports dresses and 1950s sports dresses.
Colleen: No 1940s?
Meghan: No. I don't know.
Colleen: Because the 30s is where it was initially published, and then the 50s is this version.
Meghan: And so I'm constantly asking myself while I'm reading these, is this a 1930s reference or is this a 1950s reference?
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: And I mean, the sports dresses are mentioned, I mean, like, within the same chapter, like two or three different times. Because then I think that's where Helen gets-
Colleen: She gets a bunch of dust on her because they're, like, opening up the chimney.
Meghan: Yeah, and doesn't she, like, fall through?
Colleen: I think, yeah.
Meghan: Like, fall through one of the old buildings? And she's fine.
Colleen: Helen's constantly, like, just getting dirty.
Meghan: So Nancy is like- Like, helped her clean up.
Colleen: Oh, yeah. More on that later. She's winking. It's an audio medium. She's winking aggressively at me.
Meghan: She helps Helen get changed into another sports dress.
Colleen: Thank god.
Meghan: And so, I was like, “Okay, so clearly we're supposed to know what the sports dress looks like.”
Colleen: And they're not playing sports. I need to stress that. They're just hanging out with Helen's aunt.
Meghan: So this would require, I think, a lot more research. But the ones that I'm seeing kind of have like that A-line silhouette where they're more fitted at the top and, like, loose at the bottom.
Colleen: Would they spin- If you spun, would they flare out?
Meghan: I mean, this one for the 50s does look like it probably would. It's very pleated, but I don't think it would be, like, a full circle skirt.
Colleen: Okay.
Meghan: And the ones from the 30s have, like, capes.
Colleen: They do! Yeah, like a little shoulder cape! It's very short!
Meghan: There's little shoulder capes in two of those.
Colleen: Maybe to protect you from the sun?
Meghan: I don't, yeah, I'm not sure. What both decades have in common is they're buttoned all the way, it looks like up and down.
Colleen: Interesting.
Meghan: The ones from the 50s have the collars. This was- My first favorite type of vintage dress was, kind of, this kind of outline. So I'm like, I don't know if that- Would that count?
Colleen: And they only button down to the waist.
Meghan: Yes, this one buttons down to the waist. So does that one.
Colleen: They look like they have, like, a little belt. Actually all of them have, like, little belts. Is that what you're talking about with the cinched waist? I do not know a lot about fashion.
Meghan: Yeah, yeah. The thing is, I don't really either.
Colleen: You know more than me.
Meghan: So that's what I could find about sports dresses.
Colleen: Okay, well, talk to me about this colonial fashion though.
Meghan: Okay. Yeah, so-
Colleen: You, you, you do have more expertise in these, because you did live in a colonial reenactment?
Meghan: I did live near a colonial historical reenactment town for college. They kind of, they don't go through the full layering that you need for the colonial garb.
Colleen: In this book they don't?
Meghan: No, they don't. There was one thing, because, again, I don't really recognize- I've never gotten to wear a colonial garb and I was very into Felicity.
Colleen: An American Girl!
Meghan: American Girl Felicity. But one of the things it mentioned that- I think that it's pronounced panniers? It looks almost French.
Colleen: Spell it for me.
Meghan: P-A-N-N-I-E-R-S.
Colleen: Okay.
Meghan: And so when I looked that up, it's when they're fitted at the top, almost like with a corset. And then at the hips, it goes out drastically.
Colleen: Voluminously.
Meghan: Voluminously. It does not match an actual human being's hips. And so the word “panniers” means baskets and it's for, like, beasts of burden, the, like, kind of, matching double baskets on either side of them, so I'm assuming that's where it came from, fashion being, like, “It's like how the donkey has two baskets on either side! You have these two structured hip expanders on your dress!”
Colleen: “That's no donkey, that's my wife!” ...I'm so sorry.
Meghan: But I was looking, like, modern-day, because when I searched the word “panniers” by itself, it came up with baskets for bikes, not, like one that you put on the front, but-
Colleen: Like the two on each side!
Meghan: Yeah, two on each side. Like if you're, like, long-distance bike riding. So it's still a word, apparently, that we use today.
Colleen: I really love that. So that is what Nancy's wearing, or? I forget.
Meghan: Yes, Nancy is wearing the panniers.
Colleen: Right, when she's Miss Colonial America. Oh, and then she's talking about- “Laughingly, she added, ‘But I'll probably have to hold my breath to close it in the middle! My, but the women in olden times certainly had slim waistlines!’”
Meghan: Except it fits her perfectly.
Colleen: It does, yes. Yes, yes.
Meghan: And then just one little bonus fact, because I'm a huge fan of these in modern-day women's fashion-
Colleen: Oh yeah?
Meghan: Later in the novel, right kind of near the end when they're exploring, Nancy and Helen put their flashlights in their skirt pockets.
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: And I feel like skirt pockets are finally back. But I get the impression that in the 50s, women had pockets in their dresses and their skirts, for practicality, I hope.
Colleen: I hope so too! Well, it doesn't say, like, “And their pockets which had-” or, “And their skirts, which had pockets,” like, it's just, like, “Yeah, yeah, in the skirt pocket, you know, the skirt pockets we all have, we all know about this.”
Meghan: So I'm glad because I- When I make my own skirts, I definitely put very deep pockets.
Colleen: Yeahhhh! Which I appreciate!
Meghan: I get really upset when I buy dresses and skirts now that don't have any pockets.
Colleen: And they're big enough for a flashlight! Like, flashlights aren't small.
Meghan: No.
Colleen: Especially not in the 50s.
Meghan: Yeah, so they definitely have some really good skirt pockets and I approve.
Colleen: I approve as well. Excellent.
[Sound Cue: High-pitched sounds imitating a camera flashbulb play underneath the spoken words “Picture Perfect”]
Meghan: One of the things the original Nancy Drew books were well known for was their intermittent illustration, the, like, pen-and-ink illustrations throughout the book. And so in this segment, we discuss the best, the worst, the noteworthy, the confusing illustrations in the novel. Colleen, which one would you like to start with?
Colleen: Let's do the two-page spread because I always think that's interesting, and I noticed one in the first book, but it didn't seem necessarily worth talking about until this one, because you were reading a digital book, or you're reading on your phone.
Meghan: Yes, so I was reading it digitally on the Kindle app on my phone.
Colleen: And so for mine, this is Helen and Nancy on the- Well, specifically, Nancy on the roof and Helen's kind of, like, supervising. There's, like, a tower on the top of the house and they don't know how to get into it, but they think the thief has been hiding there, and then they find, like, a hole in the attic ceiling. So Nancy goes up on the roof and she's being very careful and Helen is...also looking at the roof.
Meghan: From the trap door.
Colleen: From the trap door. She is not on the roof. She's like, “Oh! This looks scary! You go ahead!” And so like, you see on the one page for me, Helen's looking at her and being very worried, and Nancy's crawling determinedly toward the tower, and it, like, is the bottom half of two the pages, but there are still, like, paragraphs at the top of the pages. I feel like I don't see that kind of at all. Like we work in elementary schools, like, we see a lot of, like, chapter books, right? And I feel that you will either see pictures that take up the whole page, or no pictures. Or maybe a tiny picture above the beginning of the chapter, but you don't see, like, “Oh, here's the middle of the chapter. Here's several paragraphs, half the picture, several paragraphs, half the picture.” I don't know.
Meghan: No, it's definitely interesting, and it looks so much better in your book, which- I feel like these were meant to be read as books and not on a digital Kindle.
Colleen: I'm sure they had never thought of the possibility of a digital Kindle.
Meghan: Yes. So it's not as-
Colleen: You can't tell it's a two-page spread.
Meghan: I could tell because, like, in that it was on two different Kindle pages. It has a lot less text than yours does, but they don't seem to really be one single painting as they are on yours. So I was kind of confused why they did two pictures at two slightly-different angles. Is this two different moments? Not realizing, until I saw yours, that this is one page, like, a spread.
Colleen: That had been split on yours.
Meghan: Yes, and so it looks very nice. Bringing up how different the illustrations can appear on the digital- The very first, you know, catch-your-attention, you open the book, it's trying to- It'll usually have, like, one exciting line from that part in the book to like-
Colleen: This is before the title page. There's one picture and one sentence of, like, “Are you excited yet? Even if it starts kind of slow, it's gonna get cool!”
Meghan: Yeah, “Don't you worry!” And so, the, the phrase we have is “Both girls froze in their tracks.”
Colleen: There was no period.
Meghan: Nope.
Colleen: Which is interesting.
Meghan: It's just- Yep!
Colleen: I would describe this as an MC Escher staircase? It's not quite, it's not like it's never-ending, you don't know, but I genuinely am not sure whether the girls are coming up or going down the stairs.
Meghan: Yeah, are they going down the stairs and they turn to look behind them? Are they coming up?
Colleen: Where are we in this picture as we're looking? Are we at the bottom? Are we at the top? I will post a picture on the Patreon and you do not have to be, like, a paying patron to view this, but I need you to see how weird this picture is and how I can't tell what's going on. So on your- But on your phone how does this look?
Meghan: On my phone, this image is kind of terrifying. In yours, you can see the detail of the cobwebs. Mine looks like it has been overexposed multiple times. Helen has no eyes! She has a blank face!
Colleen: She really is [inaudible].
Meghan: Yes, it's terrifying. And this is, you know, I said- I feel like it's supposed to, like, get you excited to read the book. I'm like, “Oh my god.”
Colleen: It didn't work! I don't want to read this book. Helen goes- She gets blinded? Or never had eyes? Is she okay?
Meghan: You can barely tell that they're on stairs. I can see brickwork, but they also might be floating through outer space.
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: Like, it is confusing and scary and I don't like it.
Colleen: Because I have seen pictures that have been overexposed and it's just, like, a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox and it's just distressing. I don't like yours either.
Meghan: Zero out of ten on this picture for me.
Colleen: Would not recommend. Excellent.
Meghan: I think if I had the book- The book, it's got this pen and paper, like, you can see each stroke of the pen.
Colleen: And the cobwebs are even in white, like they were colored around-
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: -and left blank, and that's a really cool detail. There's a lot of cross-hatching, a lot of, like, shading and texture in the book.
Meghan: And that does not translate well to digital.
Colleen: It doesn't translate! It's not good. Poor Helen.
[Sound Cue: Synthesized harp plays descending notes under the spoken words “Blast from the Past”]
Meghan: In this segment, we look at just how things have changed from the 1930s-slash-50s to our modern times. So things that stuck out to us, things that inspired research, things that aren't, maybe, okay anymore, that haven't aged well.
Colleen: Maybe they weren't okay to begin with, but nobody really knew, or just assumed it was fine. So let's start right on page four. This Goomba guy comes over and is, like, threatening her father, because he is doing some lawyer work for these railroad people and they think the people who sold the property were shafted out of some of their money. But that is not the word they use. They use the word that is spelled G-Y-P-P-E-D, which is based on a slur for the Roma people, G-Y-P-S-Y. Spelling out loud is hard for me, but I think I did it. And it's basically based on the incorrect stereotype that all of the Roma people would steal money from people and take more than they needed to and all this different stuff. And so it's not great, but I feel that I didn't learn this until a couple years ago. And so I was still using this word because I just heard it and that's how you pick up words.
Meghan: I mean it's even in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Colleen: Yeah, absolutely. And that's not-
Meghan: Or are you talking about the stereotype?
Colleen: Oh, I'm talking about using it to be, like, “I have been shafted out of something.”
Meghan: Got it.
Colleen: And I had not connected that to-
Meghan: And actually, that's what I wanted to say is, when I was reading it, I had always heard the word and thought it was J-I-P-P-E-D.
Colleen: Right! So in which case it doesn't feel connected to anything.
Meghan: Yeah, and so while I was reading it, I was like, “Mm! I see this spelling. Hold on.” My brain automatically made the connection. And I was like, “This is not okay.”
Colleen: So I do feel that I learned, maybe later than I should have in life, that this is where that came from, but I know now, so we can do better.
Meghan: I feel like there are a lot of people who still don't know. I hear people using the slur for the Roma people.
Colleen: As like, as almost, like, an aesthetic, right? Yeah. You have cottagecore, and then if you were a wanderer or a traveler people use this word and that's not great. It's not ideal.
Meghan: I think that there's maybe not as big of a focus on it, but if the Roma people themselves are saying that this is not an okay word for us to be using-
Colleen: -which they are-
Meghan: -then we shouldn't be using it.
Colleen: Exactly, Exactly. So I just wanted to address that, because I was like, “Okay, page one, page two, page three, doing great. Oh, great! Awesome, loving page four. This is not ideal.”
Meghan: That's, I think, the only one that stuck out, that maybe felt outdated and kind of negative, the one that has not aged well.
Colleen: Yes. Yeah. And I'll take that, you know? It could have been worse.
Meghan: Looking at the past from a different angle, the railroad is a huge focus in this book. It's very integral to the plot of what's going on with the railroad. And what's interesting to me is that in modern-day America, the railroad, while extremely important and still stretches across the country, is not really a part of most Americans’ day-to-day lives, unless, I think, you live in a major city.
Colleen: Or unless something gets disrupted, like with a strike or potential strike, for example. But I feel like- And then there's a difference, because I had always thought of “railroad” as all trains, but I feel like this was specifically- Was this about passenger trains or freight trains? Because I think that those are even different, right?
Meghan: I don't know if it specifies!
Colleen: I don't know either. It was a railroad for sure. They did say “railroad” probably one hundred times in this book.
Meghan: Yes, and I spent lot of time in Europe because of my family's connections to the military and railroads are a big deal in Europe and a very easy way to travel all over the place
Colleen: It's accessible, and you don't need a car as much as you do in America, right?
Meghan: Yep! And so people take the trains so often, and it was very, very convenient and affordable. And so, I don't know, I wish that we had better public transportation in this country.
Colleen: I wish that the railroad was as big a deal to our life as it is to Nancy's life in this book particularly.
Meghan: Yes! Like, even if we're not looking at the railroad from, you know, the freight aspect, or the fact that they're building this, Nancy is also waiting for her dad to come back from…Chicago?
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: I think it was Chicago, on a train, and so just showing it's very important for traveling across the country.
Colleen: Another part of Blast From The Past: Waiting for Mr. Drew to get off the train to Chicago. Nancy's waiting to hear from her dad. 'Cause he calls her [inaudible]
Meghan: And he's like, “I am planning on-”
Colleen: “-being back on this date, will you meet me at the train station?”
Meghan: Yeah, and so she goes there and waits and waits and waits and-
Colleen: No, she does not! Yes? No.
Meghan: Oh gosh.
Colleen: No, he calls her on one day and says, “I'm planning this. Yes.” Then she gets a telegram.
Meghan: That's right!
Colleen: She gets a telegram. And, fun thing about telegrams, rather than a person's voice, you can fake a telegram so easily. It's not from Mr. Drew. We don't find this out until she goes and waits and waits and waits, and her dad's not there. And it's because of the telegram that says, like, “Yeah, actually, I'll be here earlier or later or whatever.”
Meghan: Later.
Colleen: Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Meghan: Because then someone comes and gets him, like a taxi from the railroad.
Colleen: Yesssss. Yes. They force him into a taxi and then, and then they chloroform him! They chloroform Mr. Drew! And I know this isn't Wound Watch, ‘cause Wound Watch is mostly about Nancy, but he got, we've got our first chloroform count! [crosstalk] And so they're like, “Oh my god, this, so, so-” So, Mr. Drew gets off the train, these two guys that work for Goomba- And then the two guys are like, “We're gonna, I decided we're gonna, like, Uber Share.”
Meghan: Yes, yes, that's exactly what it was.
Colleen: “We're going right past where he is. Don't even worry. If he says ‘no,’ don't worry, we got this, we're gonna pay you, and we'll go right past where he is,” and then they-
Meghan: And then they chloroform him!
Colleen: And they're, like, “Oh my god, our, our friend is so sick, we're gonna take him. Don't worry, we got this, and if you tell anybody that you saw us, your kids are gonna get hurt. Anyway, have a great day.” So that happens, but Nancy doesn't see any of this because she got the telegram “from her father” that he's gonna be late, so she goes later.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: She sees none of this. So yeah! So a telegram, very easily fakeable. We were talking about “telegram” versus “telegraph”?
Meghan: Yes, telegraph, because I feel like I used them interchangeably in the past until I was like, “Wait, before I-”
Colleen: “-go on a podcast,” for example.
Meghan: “-go on the podcast and mess this up, which one's which?” So “telegraph” is the machine and the technology to send a telegram, [which] is the individual message.
Colleen: What else did you notice? This had like a lot of interesting-
Meghan: It did. I think that I have a few other ones. So interestingly, in this novel, you've got the blast from the past of when we're looking at when these books were written and the technology there. But this book takes place in a Colonial–[America]-Era property.
Colleen: Right.
Meghan: And so there's also these blasts from even further into the past.
Colleen: And they always say “in the olden times” and it's so cute!
Meghan: In the olden times.
Colleen: I love it.
Meghan: But one of the cool things that I just really liked was one of the houses on the property, or buildings on the property is an ice house.
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: And this is where they would store huge blocks of ice during the year so that they could keep things cold. They've also got a smokehouse, where you would smoke your meats. And I just think it's really cool. And I love the way technology has progressed.
Colleen: Yeah, I liked it because, well, with the games you always learn something about either a part of the world that you might not know about, or like, there was one that was about, like, Mayan culture, like ancient Mayans and whatever, and so you're working in this museum that focuses on that, and while you're solving the mystery you have to put the exhibits back together that got broken. “Learn about Mayan numerals!” So this is like, “Learn about ice houses! Learn about smokehouses!” That was very cool. I just had a very silly one which was when we were talking about the floating island.
Meghan: Yes?
Colleen: Helen is so excited about this and instead of going, “Mmm,” they spell it “U-M,” in italics, so it does look like she's like [stereotypical Valley girl voice] “Ummmmm, steak and a floating island?! Like, oh my god!!” I was like “I must have read that wrong.”
Meghan: [pronouncing “um” with a very shortened “u” sound at the front, so it sounds more similar to “mm”] “Ummmm!”
Colleen: I think that's what it has to be! But I’ve never seen it written like that, and it just cracked me up.
[Meghan and Colleen try saying “um” in a variety of different pronunciations]
Colleen: [stereotypical Valley girl voice] “Ummm, like, are you sure you want a floating island? Like...okay…”
[Sound Cue: The spoken words “Wound Watch” are followed by a low voice exclaiming as if punched in the stomach]
Meghan: In this segment, we tally up all the injuries that Nancy sustained during the book, and possibly mention some other injuries from some of our other characters. So I'll start. This is not necessarily, I guess, an injury sustained, but something that I feel like Nancy maybe needs to go get checked.
Colleen: Just a chronic situation.
Meghan: Yes. So, on page one, her eyes are described as “dancing.” Dancing eyes.
Colleen: I don't like it.
Meghan: I think she might need to go see an optometrist.
Colleen: Maybe some kind of, like, get an eye patched until she can get that figured out.
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: I just feel like the eye should kind of stay in, in the socket-
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: -[and] not be dancing all around. It does feel concerning. And the sparkling eyes I will allow, it does feel like maybe some some glitter got in there and that might be an issue, but every other chapter she has either sparkling eyes or dancing eyes and I am, I am pretty concerned about it
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Yeah, she did also fall down the stairs, but she's fine.
Meghan: Yep, she fell down some stairs.
Colleen: It truly do be like that sometimes. What else?
Meghan: She gets attacked by an owl.
Colleen: Oh yeah, she totally does! Yeah, somebody like-
Meghan: Do they put the owl in there or is there just accidentally an owl?
Colleen: No, they’re trying to- So Goomba or somebody, the ghost on the property (who is not a ghost, he is a man; they do only call him the ghost as previously discussed), but, so, so, the ghost sneaks an owl in, and the older relatives- There's, like, the great-aunt and then Miss Flora, who's, like, the great…?
Meghan: Great-grandmother.
Colleen: Great-grandmother. And they're both old, and maybe frail, and they've already been startled enough by this ghost. So Helen knows darn well that this owl has to have been put in there by a person. And Nancy says, “Oh, it must have…come down the chimney flue. We must have left it open earlier. Remember when you got covered in dust and there was a whole sports dress shower situation? Uh, yeah, we totally left it open then and that's how the owl got in. Do not worry about it and we'll take care of it.”
Meghan: “Wink wink wink.”
Colleen: “Wink wink wink.” I think she actually, physically, like, does wink, and Helen's like, “Yes and!”
Meghan: That's right!
Colleen: Yeah, so, so Nancy just, like, was like, “Oh, yeah, let me get on my gloves and just put this owl outside, as you do!”
Meghan: But she does sustain owl pecks up and down her arms.
Colleen: Where the gloves are not. Which makes sense! Because it's a wild animal.
Meghan: Yes, so we've got some arm injuries. And the last one I have is the entire ceiling falls on top of Nancy Drew.
Colleen: Yep! So our knockout count is at one so far.
Meghan: One.
Colleen: So we're at one for two. And this one actually, they thought the ghost had done something to the ceiling. No, it's just an old house.
Meghan: This was a little bit of, like, a little red herring where you're like, “Oh my gosh, the structural integrity of the house is, is compromised-”
Colleen: “-by this man so that he can spy easier!” No, the house is just old.
Meghan: It's just old!
Colleen: So it falls on Nancy and Helen, and Helen's, like, coughing but she's fine. Nancy's completely out, does not respond to anything. Helen's too dazed to move so the older ladies get her out of there and Nancy's, just, like, not awake.
Meghan: Yes, so our first knockout. Wow.
Colleen: So sad. So sad.
[Sound Cue: The spoken words “Drew’s Clues” are followed by the sound of the dog from Blue’s Clues barking four times in a recognizable pattern]
Meghan: In this segment, we take a look at what makes Nancy tick. You know, what clues did we get to, kind of, build the entire personality and thoughts of Nancy?
Colleen: Yeah.
Meghan: So what did you find, Colleen?
Colleen: Okay, so I think we talked about this a little in the first episode. When I think of Nancy, the supporting characters I think of are of course Carson and Hannah, which we have met. And then I think of her best friends, Bess and George, and her usual steady, Ned. And we haven't seen any of those three yet! We've seen Helen, who I vaguely now remember. And we've seen Chief McGinnis, who's, like, the police chief she works with sometimes. But she does go on a date with Dirk Jackson.
Meghan: Don't like that guy.
Colleen: I don't like that guy! But, like, I don't think he ever comes up again because I've never heard of him. Or I don't remember hearing of him. I assume I read this, when I was reading the whole series. But her dad is just, he's supportive of her and he's like- I don't know, I found it interesting, because, oh, right before she goes on her date with Dirk Jackson, she's worried because her dad's been threatened. So he comes home and he's safe. This is, like, the very beginning. And she's like, “Dad, I'm so glad to see you,” and gives him a big hug. He goes, “Aw, what have I done to rate this bit of attention? Oh, you don't have anybody to go to the play with. You need a substitute because your date canceled.” She's like, “No, no, no, the date's still on. But I am gonna cancel it.” And he goes, “Why? Isn't Dirk gonna stay on your list?” So, like, her dad's totally fine with her dating around, which I would not have assumed was like, what was happening in the time period. I guess I don't know a lot about it, but I feel like you had a steady or you didn't.
Meghan: I don't know, I will say, like, some of the conversations with my grandma, she was like, she was going on so many dates.
Colleen: Alright! Yeah, but I just like that her dad's supportive, and he, like, goes down in the river and gets her pumps out of there. He's like, “Oh, your pumps, I don't know, are you gonna be okay in the mud?” And then, and then they have to go in the river. He's like, “Alright, I got you.” So I just liked seeing the father-daughter relationship build even more.
Meghan: Yes, I love that.
Colleen: What about you?
Meghan: I think that we really see another example of Nancy having a really good read on people.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: So we saw this in the first novel, where she just met people and she's like, “I love you. You're the best person I've ever met.”
Colleen: Or she had her enemies from her high school, right? Those two girls, and then they kept just just being snotty.
Meghan: But when she meets Gomber, Goomba, whatever, she immediately is like-
Colleen: “Hate this guy!”
Meghan: “I don't trust this guy. Something is off.” And she's right! I mean, he's the guy behind this entire mystery.
Colleen: Not only behind the railroad stuff, but behind the haunting of the house.
Meghan: And the kidnapping of her father!
Colleen: And the kidnapping of her father! He's everywhere! He's the ultra villain here.
Meghan: Yeah, he is. Yeah. And she, the second he walks in, she's like, “No, no.”
Colleen: And she takes the threat to Carson seriously, but she's also like, “But this guy is no good. Whether or not I'm going to believe that this threat is serious, I do believe that this guy is up to no good.” Yeah. My other thing that I really liked is she had an hour to kill before she could meet with someone, so she, like, got a magazine of detective stories and was just reading in her car. And I was like, “Same, girl. I love this for you. That's awesome.”
Meghan: Yes, I love it. I wanted to bring attention to- In the first chapter when Helen comes to tell her that her family is terrified of this haunting in the house, Nancy is ecstatic. She is so excited. I mean, that just seems to be part of her personality. She loves the drama, if there's any sort of mystery to solve, but I do think that maybe she could work a little bit on her…
Colleen: Tact?
Meghan: Yes. Maybe take a little bit of a chill pill, work on some, you know-
Colleen: Well, yeah!
Meghan: -work on her outward-facing response.
Colleen: Maybe keep that excitement on the inside and be like, “I am so sorry that you are having such a scary experience with this ghost at your house.”
Meghan: Nope! She’s just like, “Yes, we're going now, let's go.”
Colleen: “Haunted house? That's for me!”
Meghan: And then the last thing I wanted to bring up is that Nancy is religious.
Colleen: Yeah! I don't remember that at all!
Meghan: I don't know if that's more of a time-period thing of making sure that, you know, “Oh, we're talking about how this is Sunday, and of course, Nancy was at church.”
Colleen: Before she did her sleuthing. And Hannah, the housekeeper, is not at church because she's going to a special service later, but she will be there.
Meghan: It, like, almost explains so that Hannah can have lunch ready. Hannah also went to church. She's just going- Or she's still religious. She's going to church, too.
Colleen: But it's later so that's why Hannah's not at church and then going to get run over by a truck and jump-
Meghan: Yeah!
Colleen: I didn't remember any of that. I'm curious to see if that is a trend that we continue to see in the books.
[Sound Cue: Simple piano tune underneath the spoken words “Sleuthing Skills”]
Meghan: In Sleuthing Skills, we discuss what skills do you, our listener, need in order to follow in the footsteps of Nancy Drew?
Colleen: These are- You're not gonna learn these at detective school. You need to have these already down pat before you even start at the detective academy.
Meghan: Watching some YouTube videos, going out into the world, learning from trial and error.
Colleen: So there's a lot in this book to pick up on. So why don't you go ahead and start? Because I have so many Post-It notes.
Meghan: So we have another instance showing Nancy's affinity for tracking.
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: She's looking for footprints and I think they find the footprints under the window after the gorilla face appears.
Colleen: I noticed that she and Helen had to memorize, and I assume the villain did this as well- So this is, you gotta learn some of the bad stuff so that you can catch up with them. But there's a creaking staircase. This is not the hidden staircase in the title. This is a separate- This is a visible staircase. But it creaks very badly, and so to sneak around or to be out at night when the older women are asleep and we don't wanna wake them up, you have to memorize which stairs to skip, and which ones you need to step on the very right side very lightly so that nobody creaks. And so they memorize a pattern up and that is, not to mention the games again, but I'm pretty sure there is a- I know there's at least a staircase that, like, sings, and you have to make it sing a certain song. And then-
Meghan: Oh my gosh, I love that.
Colleen: It's great.
Meghan: Another skill that you need is animal husbandry and avian care.
Colleen: Husbandry is a strong word, but definitely avian care.
Meghan: Nancy just- As we mentioned with the owl pecking her arms, she is very confident. She's like, “Let me get on my gloves-”
Colleen: “Open the window-”
Meghan: Yep, I would not. I don't think I'm ready to follow in the footsteps of Nancy Drew just yet. I really need to improve my own personal avian care. Owls are my favorite animal, but-
Colleen: -but we're not going to touch one in the wild.
Meghan: I don't know if I'm confident enough to go grab one out of a room.
Colleen: You've also got to be really good at having a photographic memory, à la Cam Jansen.
Meghan: “Click!”
Colleen: Exactly, you see it. But she didn't say “click,” so she just remembers! So they're up in the attic, getting their costumes for their costume party, and then later that night, Nancy's like, “I just remembered something looked weird in that attic, and I didn't notice it at the time, but I think there's a section of the paneling that's different from the rest. I bet there's a hidden passageway. We'll check it out tomorrow!”
Meghan: And there is! A hidden passageway to the hidden staircase.
Colleen: [gasps] Spoilers! Exactly.
Meghan: The last sleuthing skill that I found that you need to work on is interrogation skills. Nancy interrogates both the crinkled-ear man and the taxi driver. The police interrogate him and Nancy's like, “Can I please just have a few minutes in there?”
Colleen: And they're like, “Sure, sure. Of course.”
Meghan: And she's not, you know, bullying or, like, you know, think of, like, Good Cop, Bad Cop.
Colleen: Right.
Meghan: She's very reasonable and really tunes into more of the emotional, like, “This is why I need this information.” This, like, “I know you're not a bad person deep down” kind of thing. And it really ends up with a sense of restorative justice.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: So not just, like, yelling and screaming until you get the information you need. It's very human.
Colleen: I found the section. It is! So when she talks to the crinkly-eared man who is- So the taxi driver didn't really do anything wrong, he just didn't want to talk about it because he was worried his kids were gonna get hurt. And she's like, “I get that. We can have someone protect them,” whatever. And then when she talks to the guy who actually did the kidnapping and the chloroforming and everything, and some other stuff, she goes, “Mm, we all make mistakes at times. We are often misled by people who urge us to do things we shouldn't. Maybe you're afraid you'll receive the death sentence for helping to kidnap my father. But if you didn't realize the seriousness of the whole thing, then maybe the complaint against you may turn out to be just conspiracy.” Like, kind of also telling him exactly what to say to get out of this.
Meghan: Because she does have that law information and background.
Colleen: That law background! I loved it. I was like- And then the police were, like, very impressed by how quickly she got answers.
Meghan: She's like, “Done!”
Colleen: Yep! “Got all I needed! Thank you! I said ‘a few minutes,’ I'm done! You're welcome!” They're like, “Oh, okay! Great! Thanks!” It's good. It's good stuff.
[Sound Cue: Four distinct drum beats that mimic the opening of the song “Accidentally in Love” by Counting Crows, followed by the sung words “Accidentally Gay”]
Colleen: In this segment we look at the inherent queerness of these books. Some of it, perhaps all of it, was not intended by the author and just, we phrase things differently now, ninety years later, than Mildred Wirt Benson, I mean, Carolyn Keene would have. Just some parts of the book that we thought could be interpreted as queer and bring us joy, or at least brings me joy.
Meghan: Brings me joy too.
Colleen: When they're looking in the chimney, because they think that the ghost man person is hiding in the chimney, because it's, like, “Well, where did we not check in this room?” And the answer is “The hidden staircase, because you don't know about it yet.” But, so, Helen opens it up and immediately just gets totally drenched in soot. “Drenched” may not be the right word, but just completely covered in soot. And she's like, “Give me a towel, will you, Nancy?” And then Nancy goes and gets a couple of towels and wraps them around her friend, and then goes with Helen to help her with a shampoo and general shower of like, “Oh yeah, you know.” A very normal thing that I do heterosexually with all of my friends is just help them with their showers.
Meghan: I felt very much like a little bit of a romance novel stereotype or trope where, “Oh no, there's only one bed in this bedroom that we have to share!”
Colleen: That's right! They have to share a room while they're at the house!
Meghan: And I do kind of feel like there's probably plenty of bedrooms in this colonial house?
Colleen: It's a huge house. But maybe it's scary.
Meghan: Maybe.
Colleen: Because later Helen clasps Nancy's hand in fright! And maybe it's just her emotional support girlfriend! Also, as mentioned in my ship, they dress up as Master and Mistress Colonial America. And I had actually, I think I had mixed up who was who, because it's been four weeks since we initially read the book. But you had noticed that Helen is like, “Yeah, there are lots of dresses here. But I am electing to dress up in the men's clothes. I think those are going to work for me.” Although the shoes are, in fact, literally twice her foot size. So she's like, “Never mind.” Oh, you found this one too, right? She announces gaily, “Never mind. I'll stuff the empty space with paper.” She announces gaily as they're about to go on their gay dance.
Meghan: Yes. Yes.
Colleen: It's very good. It's very cute. They have all these steps that they do, and the two older women are giggling and clapping of how lovely it is, and they wish President Washington would come to see them dance. It was very good. Oh yeah, and “Master Corning, wilt thou accompany thy fair lady?” Yes, Nancy is your fair lady! You're right! I love it.
Meghan: This really is just a little like the beginning of a romance novel, I feel like.
Colleen: It really is! No, we're just doing it for a costume party. Yeah, no feelings here. It was very cute.
[Sound Cue: Scribbling as of a pencil on paper underneath the spoken words “Miscellaneous Mysteries”]
Meghan: In this segment, we take a look at miscellaneous mysteries, things that didn't really fit in any other segment, but we want to make sure get touched upon. What are some miscellaneous mysteries that you discovered?
Colleen: Okay, tell me more about this river that they had to go in with with Nancy's sensible pumps. Do you remember anything about it? That's right. It was wet. No, that's not the mystery. You just looked stumped, so I'm just gonna take that off your hands. It's called the Muskoka River. M-U-S-K-O-K-A. I do not actually know how to pronounce it, but anyway, so, I looked it up because I thought, “Okay, they are usually saying Nancy lives in River Heights. This is somewhere in New England-ish.”
Meghan: It's a fictional town.
Colleen: It's a fictional town and they, and they try not to, like, triangulate it. They don't even say “This is in, this is near Boston,” or whatever and so I said, “Oh my god, did they slip up because it's the second book?” Right? And I looked up where the Muskoka River is. It's in Ontario, Canada?
Meghan: ...what?
Colleen: And I had a brief moment of “Has Nancy been in Canada this whole time and I didn't notice?”
Meghan: Nancy is Canadian?
Colleen: No. So I'm looking at this. It rises in the highlands of Algonquin Park. It's 177 meters long. All this important stuff. And then on this Wikipedia page, there is a brief “In Fiction” section and it is one sentence that says “There is also a Muskoka River in Nancy Drew's fictional hometown of River Heights, located somewhere in the Midwestern United States.” So not only is it not New England. It's the Midwest. But also, just, this river is real! And I'm thinking, I'm thinking that the writer maybe heard this name, maybe even went there, and at the time, who's gonna check an atlas-
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: -and say “Oh, Muskoka, Muskoka, where's that at? Let me look at the index real quick.” They're like, “Okay, Muskoka River, whatever.” And now I'm just googling it, it takes me three seconds, like, “Oh my god, that's a real place!” Right. I just thought that was hilarious.
Meghan: Oh my gosh.
Colleen: Here's this real Canadian river, not affiliated with River Heights, Ohio or Michigan or wherever the heck River Heights actually is in the Midwest, apparently. Yeah.
Meghan: I figured it needed to be in the Midwest, only because they're going to Chicago for, like, a day trip.
Colleen: Oh yeah, they're, like, always in Chicago. Okay. Okay, okay. Yeah, that was, that just tickled me to no end.
Meghan: So I only have one miscellaneous mystery-
Colleen: Okay.
Meghan: -but I feel like it was looming in the back for the entire novel. In the first chapter, while Helen is telling Nancy about this haunting and how she's like, “I should be terrified, but I just, I'm so happy.” And Nancy's like, “Mm, huh?”
Colleen: “Why?”
Meghan: And she's like, “I am engaged.”
Colleen: And then Nancy stops the car to tell her how it- Like pulls over.
Meghan: Yeah, is like-
Colleen: “I'm so happy for you-”
Meghan: “-and also, let's discuss this-”
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: “-because we are best friends.”
Colleen: “It's been two months since last we spake.”
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: She didn’t say that.
Meghan: And that's- Exactly! Within the two months that they've seen each other, Helen has met a man named Jim Archer. It's a big secret that they're together.
Colleen: Because it's only been two months and maybe that's a short engagement.
Meghan: It's been two months. He is described as “simply out of this world.”
Colleen: Oh my. He is an alien. He is a Martian.
Meghan: No. He works for an oil company and has spent two years abroad and they met on one of his brief visits back to the United States, and he's going to be moving back soon for a position in the United States, and he proposed to her last night. Over the phone.
Colleen: Incredible. Great.
Meghan: I'm just getting a lot of red flags.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: To be honest, this is what the mystery is for me. I was figuring this was going to feature more heavily into the story-
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: -because this doesn't seem...normal.
Colleen: I thought this was foreshadowing and he was just interested in the property of her family or something like that.
Meghan: The property! Yes! No!
Colleen: No, he doesn't! He's not mentioned again except later when Nancy's like, “Oh my gosh, we found this hidden passage. I bet if this person was in the passage, they could hear us talking about stuff.” And that's when she starts, like, writing notes about their plans to Helen, which is kind of cool. And then they burn it because she thinks of everything. Anyway, she's like, “Oh my gosh, I'll go in the passage and you say something and I'll see if I can hear you, and maybe that's what the ghost has been doing.” And so Helen uses this time to be like “Oh my gosh, Nancy, will you be my bridesmaid?” Which is adorable.
Meghan: Adorable. Adorable.
Colleen: But that's it! And so I need to, like, know if Jim's in the next book! If this is like-
Meghan: Yes, is this going to come back? This is my mystery that I need to be solved.
Colleen: What's going on? Because Nancy does mention, “This is a little unusual, but I'm happy if you're happy,” right? It seems really weird.
Meghan: I'm concerned.
Colleen: I'm concerned about Helen! But I'm glad she told Nancy so that if, you know, something's going on or feels hinky-
Meghan: And she got her father's permission, and her father said she couldn't announce it until he was back in the States because maybe he's like, “Yeah, I don't know if this is going to actually happen, so why don't we wait until he's back here?”
Colleen: “-and then announce it-”
Meghan: “-and then we can take it from there.” So she does have people looking out for her.
Colleen: [Another] miscellaneous mystery, so they're talking about Miss Flora and, like, probably eight times, if not more, in the book, they constantly are saying “She's so sweet and a little forgetful and we're worried about her.” And there's not one example of her forgetting anything.
Meghan: Hmm.
Colleen: This is a very “tell, don't show.” This feels almost like, “If we say it enough times then it's, you know, believable when we put her in a home.” I don't know, it felt weird. They don't disrespect her. They take care of her. They give her, you know, a nice bowl of plain gelatin when she's upset. It's the grossest thing. I can't imagine that. But yeah, I don't know. That felt weird that they mentioned it so many times, but it's not like, “We think the silver in the house has gone missing 'cause she's forgetful. No, there's a thief.” And then, I don't know. It just felt weird.
[Sound Cue: Upbeat synthesizer chords reminiscent of a game show introduction play underneath the spoken words “Gumshoe Game Show!”]
Colleen: So I try to make the game show based on something in the book and when they're describing this mansion, they're like, “This mansion has a canopied mahogany bed and the dresser is mahogany and the dressing table is mahogany. The chairs…also were mahogany.” So I'd like to introduce to you: Mahogany in Literature: The Game Show.
Meghan: Oh no.
Colleen: Yes. “Literature” is used very loosely here.
Meghan: Okay. Media? Or is it written word?
Colleen: It is media. I've decided- You know what? Mahogany in Media is more, like, alliterative, but I'm sticking to it, and I've decided it's Mahogany in Literature.
Meghan: Okay.
Colleen: Number one.
Meghan: Is this multiple choice?
Colleen: This is multiple choice and there are five questions.
Meghan: Okay. Five questions, multiple choice. Got it.
Colleen: Mahogany in Literature. Number one. In Dragon Ball Z: The Abridged Series, noted literary piece, from where is King Yemma's reality-warping mahogany desk? A) The planet Malchior 7, where the trees are three hundred feet tall and breathe fire. B) The planet Earth, also referred to as Dragon World. C) The planet Heaven, which is covered with flowers and plants and glows strangely. Or [D)] The planet... May-a-nay? Mayonnai. It appears to be the singular of “mayonaise.” It does! It's spelled like that! [This planet is] also known for its space pirate battle with some of the characters.
Meghan: I'm gonna go with A. Just because of the giant trees.
Colleen: You are correct! Yes! Very, very good. I cannot get past Mayonnai. It's spelled M-A-Y-O-N-N-A-I. That's the planet. It's one mayonnaise.
Meghan: One mayonnaise.
Colleen: Number two. Stuart Woods, author of more than ninety crime novels and therefore enemy of many shelvers in public libraries (him and James Patterson), wrote one of his many, many books about lawyer/investigator/playboy Stone Barrington, centering around a mahogany secretary, which is a type of desk, apparently-
Meghan: Oh, yes, yes.
Colleen: -that is worth 24 million dollars.
Meghan: Holy cow.
Colleen: What is the title of this book? A) Mahogany After Dark. B) Secretary's Day. C) The Mahogany Murders. Or D) Hot Monog-
Meghan: You can't even get that one out.
Colleen: D) Hot Mahogany. Not to be confused, as your host did, with hot monogamy. A different thing.
Meghan: Oh gosh, all of those are terrible.
Colleen: Yeah, they're pretty bad.
Meghan: I'm gonna go with C.
Colleen: No, it is, in fact, Hot Mahogany.
Meghan: Awww, I thought that was the funny one!
Colleen: You were wrong! Secretary's Day was meant to be the very wrong one. But I was like, yeah, “Mahogany secretary, what does that mean?” It's a type of desk, I guess.
Meghan: Oh my goodness.
Colleen: Okay, number three. When did the word “mahogany” first appear in print?
Meghan: Ooo. I love this question. I don't know the answer, but I'm excited.
Colleen: Alright, we've got A) 1776 CE in the Declaration of Independence. B. 1671 CE in John Ogilby's America, which is his English work on the New World. We've got C) 1648 CE in the Treaty of Westphalia, which of course deals with the Roman Empire. And D) 350 BCE in Theophrastus’ Enquiry Into Plants.
Meghan: Ooo. I'm gonna go with C, 1648.
Colleen: No, it is actually 1671. You were very close.
Meghan: I was.
Colleen: You were as close as you could be. In the work on the New World, it's in a piece just called America. All the stuff we knew about America. Number four, the New Yorker's July 2nd, 2007 issue, I'm sure you're familiar-
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: You were probably in what, like, ninth grade? -featured a fictional tale called “The Mahogany Elephant.” What is it about? A) A cursed figurine with similar properties to the monkey's paw except it's the trunk that moves. B) An archaeologist who discovers a heretofore-unknown ancient species of elephant ancestor whose bones are almost like wood. C) A couple who doesn't love each other anymore, which spends far too much time focusing on the male narrator's thoughts on how often and for how long his female partner uses the bathroom. D) The diary of an elephant that has moved beyond merely painting with its trunk and progressed to wood carvings out of, say, mahogany.
Meghan: I'm gonna go with A.
Colleen: It was actually C.
Meghan: Oh my gosh! No!
Colleen: It was like, “You could tell the marriage-” I read the whole thing. “You could tell the marriage was falling apart because she wouldn't let him into the bathroom when she was peeing anymore.” And I'm like, I know that some couples do that. I have never felt that that showed that I was in love with the person. In fact, I wanted them to love and respect me by staying out of the bathroom while I was in the bathroom.
Meghan: What does that have to do with a mahogany elephant?
Colleen: She brought it back from her travels and he had thrown it away.
Meghan: Ohhh.
Colleen: I can't believe you didn't just know.
Meghan: I didn't know where the maho- That's why I eliminated it. It had nothing to do with elephants.
Colleen: I'm so sorry. I did not really mean to trick you, but it was a bananas story.
Meghan: Wow.
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: So I'm doing quite poorly.
Colleen: I believe you have only gotten one right.
Meghan: I have. I have gotten one right and three wrong.
Colleen: Can you predict- You will get all the points if you can predict the general topic of my final Mahogany in Literature.
Meghan: Hunger Games!
Colleen: You got it! Yes! Here is the question. The 2012 meme popularized on Tumblr, “That-
Meghan and Colleen: “-IS MAHOGANY!-”
Colleen: Thank you. -stemmed from Effie Trinket yelling this in [the] The Hunger Games movie. Why does she yell this? Would you like to hear my choices?
Meghan: Sure, but I do know.
Colleen: Do you know it already?
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Please tell me.
Meghan: So doesn't Haymitch stab the desk, or the something, with his pocketknife?
Colleen: You're very close, but not correct.
Meghan: Oh!
Colleen: You're very close, but not correct. A) Peeta incorrectly calls the training room floor “Oak or something.”
Meghan: No.
Colleen: B) Haymitch drunkenly vomits on a mahogany desk in front of her. C) Katniss sticks a knife in a wooden table out of frustration at having to deal with Haymitch.
Meghan: Ohhhhhhhhh.
Colleen: Or D) Mahogany is the name of one of the Hunger Games contestants and she was just introducing her.
Meghan: No.
Colleen: No. Yeah. Which- I think that's a solid guess because some of them are named, like, “Fish” or whatever. Yeah, not really but like they're all named after-
Meghan: Foxface.
Colleen: Foxface. Well, that's not her name.
Meghan: I know.
Colleen: But there's, like, Rue, who's a plant and there's, yeah, Clove, I think.
Meghan: That sounds maybe right.
Colleen: I should know this.
Meghan: I don't know. It's been a long time.
Colleen: But there's a lot of them that are named after nature because of, like, that's their district.
Meghan: So do I still get-
Colleen: Oh you get all the points because you guessed what it was gonna be about.
Meghan: Oh, okay, cool. So I already automatically win.
Colleen: What do you win? What do you win? In the last game you won a clock. I don't want to give you a st- because Nancy had also won, she got to keep the clock.
Meghan: So what does she get to keep and what do I, in turn, receive?
Colleen: ‘Cause I don't [want to] give you the whole staircase. I feel like it's not going to fit in your car.
Meghan: It's too much and it's, it is hilarious to think, but-
Colleen: It is good.
Meghan: We need some practicality. Yes. I'm thinking maybe the gorilla mask.
Colleen: Ooo, that is good. I like the gorilla mask.
Meghan: I was thinking maybe like the tricorn hat.
Colleen: Right. Something from the costumes. What would you prefer?
Meghan: I feel like the gorilla mask is a little bit more tied to the mystery.
Colleen: It is, but at the same time, I feel the tricorn hat is more of the fun part of the times, and it would be more useful in your classroom.
Meghan: And it represents the location as well.
Colleen: It does.
Meghan: Since it was a Colonial-Era-
Colleen: So you win the tricorn hat!
Meghan: Yes!
Colleen: And so does Nancy.
Meghan: Yes!
Colleen: I'm gonna write that down for our Drewseum, where all the stuff I assume that she keeps from her adventures [goes].
Meghan: Yes, so she keeps the tricorn hat. Which also, because Helen was wearing it, so it's a memento.
Colleen: So it's kind of, like, a cute little memento of their dancing date.
Meghan: I'm so excited for my tricorn hat.
Colleen: Well good work on the Gumshoe Game Show. I really like the giving you a way to earn it all back.
Meghan: Yes, I appreciate that. Otherwise I would just give up!
Colleen: No, that's fair! You are doing great. You are a game show winner! Two for two.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Alright!
[Sound cue: Same eerie piano tune reminiscent of the Nancy Drew PC game soundtracks that played at the top of the episode, now extended to play underneath the rest of the episode.]
Meghan: Thank you so much for joining us on Me and You and Nancy Drew.
Colleen: This podcast is lovingly dedicated to the memory of my wonderful mother, Char, World's Best Mum, and the woman who got me hooked on sassy female detective stories. I also want to thank my brother, Ben, for creating most of our sound and music cues for this podcast. Thanks, Ben.
Meghan: You can check out our website, MeAndYouAndNancyDrew.com, for show transcripts, links to our social media and our Patreon, where we'll post any images that we described during the podcast. Those will be visible to anyone, without a paywall, so that we're not describing nebulous images that you can't see at home. But if you'd like to become a patron, there are various perks there, including outtakes or things that got cut for time, stickers and cross-stitch patterns to create your own Drewseum at home, and more.
Colleen: Thank you, Meghan, for editing the podcast, doing a lot of research about podcast creation, and adding a few additional sound cues as needed.
Meghan: Thank you, Colleen, for also editing the podcast, for transcribing it, and for helping create our logo.
Colleen: Thank you to our partners for all the support and love, and especially for lending us their microphones that they bought for a completely different purpose but said we could borrow once in a while.
Meghan: Thank you to libraries everywhere for giving access to Nancy Drew books and all the other books that we mentioned today, and just media of all kinds to people everywhere for free.
Colleen: And finally, thank you, of course, to Carolyn Keene for independently writing each of the Nancy Drew books from 1930 to modern day. We couldn't do this without you and your six hundred and thirteen individual novels.
Meghan: And don't forget the moral of this episode: “‘We’re often misled by people who urge us to do things we shouldn’t.’”
