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We have a little gift for all the Christians and non-believers alike on this magical day, which is December 25th, Christmas.
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We're combining two of our listener favorite stories and making them into the best of the year quilt episode.
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That's right. So first, George is going to revisit the story of Locusta, the poisoner of Rome.
00:02:23
And then Karen will tell the story of aviation legend Amelia Earhart and her mysterious disappearance.
00:02:30
So as you guys know, we have a holiday tradition where we make donations throughout the month of December to charities that make a real difference in people's lives.
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Let's all find ways to look out for each other in the coming year. So get cozy and enjoy this special best of the year quilt episode.
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I'm going to tell you what I think might be the oldest story we've done. Maybe. No, you did a really old one once.
00:07:26
Remember when I did the weather in 14, like 13? It was like when the weather was so bad for a year and a half that everyone just like died.
00:07:34
This is fucking older. No. This is older. Are you about to tell me a Bible story?
00:07:38
I'm going to tell you a biblical fucking story. Yeah. I'm not. But we are going to go back to the early days of the Roman Empire.
00:07:46
Is that the earliest? Like gladiator fucking days. It's pretty early. Yeah. It's pretty early.
00:07:50
And it does sound like something straight out of Game of Thrones and actually was probably a likely source of inspiration for George R.R. Martin.
00:07:58
This is the story of a woman that... What? You're going to guess? I don't know. I'm just... Yeah, I'm ready for it.
00:08:04
This is the story of a woman some people describe as history's first documented serial killer.
00:08:09
Oh! This is the story of Locusta, the Poisoner of Rome. Yes. Yes. You ready for her?
00:08:16
Yes, please. Okay, let's do it. So there are very limited primary sources about Locusta.
00:08:22
She's only briefly mentioned in Surviving Histories of Rome. Of course, it's just like everyone's moved on from her.
00:08:29
Nobody cares. They're over it. Yeah, they're over it. All Italians are over it. Let's not talk about it.
00:08:33
No one was talking about her when I went to Italy. Right. Well, but the main sources for the story were an episode of an adorable podcast called History for Weirdos, which is super lovely.
00:08:44
It's this married couple. They're very smart. And an article from All That's Interesting by Genevieve Carlton.
00:08:50
So we don't know much about Lacusta's early life. We know she was born in Gaul, G-A-U-L.
00:08:56
This is the region of the Roman Empire that overlaps with modern day France and Belgium.
00:09:01
Like you knew that, though. I honestly thought Germany. And I was like, you should say Germany and just sound really smart.
00:09:06
And then I was like, the other voice that's finally grown in my head that goes, don't do it.
00:09:10
Don't even try. You don't know. Supped. Don't even try. Supped. You're kidding yourself, supped.
00:09:15
She's born sometime around 14 AD. So, and of course you know this as well, either at the end of the reign of Augustus or the beginning of the reign of Tiberius.
00:09:26
Yes. Was it Tiberius? Yeah. It's because I watched, what's it called? Gladiator 2.
00:09:35
Seriously. Starring Paul Mescal. It's the PBS series from the 70s. I don't know.
00:09:40
And I keep wanting to say Caligula. But you got it right. So congratulations. Yeah, that does.
00:09:43
Something stuck. I mean, it feels good. Yeah, you should be happy for yourself. Okay.
00:09:47
So these two men were Rome's first and second emperors. You did do the whole first syllable.
00:09:52
No. I wouldn't have gotten Tiberius if I had heard Tiberius. Isn't I Claudius? It was I.
00:09:58
Thank you. Thank you. I wondered where he was. I Claudius. There we go. And before them, Rome had been a republic.
00:10:06
We're not going to get into the weeds about Rome. Can we not? Yes, we cannot for sure.
00:10:10
I'd really rather not. But I will tell you just this one thing. Yeah. I was so blown away when I went to Rome to see these places that they used to meet.
00:10:23
They're fucking huge. So like, you know, when you're thinking about it and you're just like, oh, friends, Romans, countrymen type of stuff.
00:10:29
And you're like, oh, they're probably like on a weird little rock. Or you're thinking of like some Monty Python movie or whatever.
00:10:35
It's like they're all standing in a circle in a marketplace. No, no, no. These things were like 15 story buildings.
00:10:42
Wow. And they're still standing. Huge. And they're still standing. And then there's like metal statuary on top of that.
00:10:50
Like it was mind blowing. What a time. I want to go. But stop it because we're not getting into the weeds.
00:10:56
I'm totally done. Essentially, though, the empire emerged after a series of civil wars destabilized the republic.
00:11:02
Julius Caesar, your BFF, a senator, tried to seize power and install himself as a dictator, which is why he was famously assassinated.
00:11:09
But Augustus, the first emperor, was his nephew, and he eventually overpowered the senators who had conspired against Caesar.
00:11:18
So this is where we are now. Okay. So right around this time, this is where Locusta ends up in the city of Rome.
00:11:25
She's a young woman, and I looked at the, like, one or two drawings of her that I don't know what time period they're from.
00:11:31
They could be modern. They could be old. But I cast her as Jessica Chastain. Oh.
00:11:37
Just for fun. Interesting. Yeah, that's just my immediate thought. Got it. And it's likely that she had been enslaved or brought there as a captive of Julius Caesar's
00:11:47
campaign in Gaul. So had the campaign where she's from and she ends up there, so she was probably brought
00:11:53
over for slavery purposes Somehow during her upbringing she learned a huge amount about herbs plants and poison making But there no record of how it likely that this knowledge would have been passed down within her family as it was
00:12:09
And this period Locusta is born into, the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire,
00:12:14
is the beginning of what's actually a pretty great fucking time to be a Roman citizen.
00:12:18
It sounds pretty sweet. It's where they get the saying bread and circuses, which I've never heard before, but Ali thankfully put in here.
00:12:25
Yeah. And you're nodding like you've heard of it. Well, it's the thing that they talk about.
00:12:28
We're like, that's how they distract us. And then everybody's corrupt in the government.
00:12:32
And they give us our bread and circuses. That's what it says here. The emperors keep the people happy by writing free food and entertainment, including the gladiators.
00:12:39
And then they fuck off and do their own thing. And then we all fight about like the Kim Kardashian of gladiators.
00:12:45
Right. And we're all over here. And they got more food and circuses than I did. And that person doesn't deserve as many circuses because they're lower than me.
00:12:53
And then we fight with each other and ignore the fucking oligarchs. And the billionaires don't pay taxes.
00:12:59
And the billionaires don't pay taxes and corporations run the fucking country. Yeah.
00:13:04
What? Where are we? What Roman Empire, you say? Okay, I guess. So this is where kind of the beginning of the opulent, technologically advanced city of Rome, the expanding empire around it.
00:13:15
It's good to be fucking wealthy in Rome at this time. But of course, at this point in time, it's not good to be a person living in one of the areas Rome is conquering.
00:13:23
But within the city of Rome, even an average Roman citizen, life's pretty stable and conditions are comfortable, you know, comparatively.
00:13:31
It's no Victorian England. Those are the two times I know. Yeah. Pretty much. In the 70s.
00:13:39
Yes. This period of time is called the Pax Romana, and it will last about 200 years.
00:13:44
And then the empire will decline and fall. And after that, it's the Dark Ages. Super fun.
00:13:49
And then it's lights out for Europe until the Renaissance. Yeah. So that's where we're at right now.
00:13:53
It's like time of wine and roses. Hell yeah. Did I just make that up? A lot of parades.
00:13:57
A lot of like, right? Yeah. A lot of flowers being dropped down from high. Yes. This is around when the movie Gladiator takes place or a little, Gladiator's a little later,
00:14:07
but around this time. But while normal people are enjoying themselves, the ruling class is still constantly full of
00:14:14
in fighting, jockeying for power, and assassinating one another. It's kind of their thing.
00:14:20
This presents an opportunity for a girl from Gaul with a deep knowledge of plants and poisons.
00:14:26
You've got to use what you know. Also, why don't we know it anymore? That's like, is that what's in the Vatican secret library or whatever?
00:14:34
It's like all the sorcery plant fucking recipes. Yeah. All the stuff that really used to help us.
00:14:40
So in her early career in Rome, Locusta works with two other women to make poisons for wealthy clients.
00:14:47
The three of them are often referred to as sorceresses. Locusta becomes independently wealthy for doing this.
00:14:53
Fucking get it, girl. She would have used hashtag boss bitch if she had Instagram.
00:14:58
Do it. You know, Locusta makes a name for herself. She's boss bitching, but writing it on the wall in Roman numerals somehow.
00:15:08
But I can't read. She makes a name for herself. She's hired by members of Rome's elite to help them carry out assassinations in their various power struggles.
00:15:18
And by 54 AD, when she's about 40 years old, she's been arrested and convicted on multiple occasions.
00:15:24
However, her powerful clients get her off every time. Yeah. We don't know about all the poisons Locusta uses, unfortunately.
00:15:31
Those are secrets now. But records show that she used belladonna or deadly nightshade as well as arsenic and a litany of other poisons.
00:15:40
I think you'd have to imagine Sally from The Night Before Christmas. You know what I mean?
00:15:45
Yeah. Just a skinny, pale girl that's like, I like to combine things. Little of this.
00:15:50
And it sounds like she also knows how to create new poisons from different combinations.
00:15:55
So she's fucking smart. Also, I didn't realize that until now. It's like, oh, yeah, there was all kinds of poisonings happening, like palace intrigues type stuff.
00:16:04
Yeah. Those rich people aren't just going to have poison on him. Like, they have to buy it from somewhere.
00:16:08
They don't make it themselves. I just realized that, yeah. Yeah, poisoners. Yeah.
00:16:12
So by this point, we're on Rome's fourth emperor, Claudius. Augustus, the first emperor, had essentially consolidated power and set Rome on this path to growth and conquest.
00:16:22
And then there were two other emperors until Claudius. Claudius marries his niece, a woman named Agrippina, who had already been married, like, oh my God, drama, and whose first husband had died, possibly by poisoning.
00:16:38
Agrippina has a son from that previous marriage. His name. You want to try to guess?
00:16:43
Yeah. You don't have to. No pressure. Does it start with no? Okay, start it. You're going to know the name.
00:16:50
And so you're going to think, I wish I had known. Oh. Nero. Oh, yeah. Okay. So Nero obviously doesn't really have a particularly strong claim to the Roman throne because he's
00:17:00
the son of the second wife. You know what I mean? Yeah. But Agrippina is like, but let's change that.
00:17:07
Right. I'm the new wife or I'm the wife. Let me figure this out. Agrippina convinces Claudius to change his will, making her son Nero the heir to the throne.
00:17:17
This is in spite of Claudius having a biological son. And after Claudius changes his will, Agrippina wants to make sure that he doesn't have time in life to change it back.
00:17:29
Right. You know what I'm saying? So she turns to Locusta, who by this time is well known among Roman elites.
00:17:36
Agrippina and Locusta wait for a day when Claudius' most loyal servant has the day off.
00:17:41
They had days off back then. That's nice. They poison a dish of mushrooms, which is Claudius' favorite food.
00:17:47
And it's unclear if the mushrooms themselves are poisonous or if she applies poison to the mushrooms.
00:17:53
We don know how she sauteed and shantayed Other people say he was actually poisoned by Belladonna brewed into a tea Regardless the story goes that Claudius gets sick His doctor comes to see him And I don know why every single doctor who went to see any patient ever back then wasn first like you being poisoned
00:18:12
Right. Because everyone's fucking being poisoned. Right. It was so common, especially in the palace.
00:18:16
Right. It kind of should be number one. Number two is like gout or whatever. I don't know.
00:18:22
What did they get? The doctor gives Claudius a feather to stick down his throat to induce vomiting.
00:18:27
That's doctors then. I mean, that's it also, but that's how they did it in the vomitorium.
00:18:31
Right, right, right. But the feather has been coated in more poison. And we don't know if Agrippina did this or if the doctor was involved.
00:18:39
However, they're locking it down. Yeah. Claudius dies. Okay. After Claudius dies, Agrippina, who hired Lucesta, has Lucesta jailed for the poisoning,
00:18:49
which seems like a bad idea because you just talk, right? And you're like, oh, I didn't do this on my own.
00:18:55
Right. I don't get it. It's a weird move, clearly, like a paranoia move. Yeah. Because also it's all going to be down to her, obviously.
00:19:03
Yeah. Like get rid of the evidence, but like the evidence can talk. But this doesn't matter because her son Nero quickly frees her because he also needs her help.
00:19:11
Yeah. So Claudius's biological son is a man named. Give me the first letter. B. R. Britannicus.
00:19:19
Oh, I wouldn't have gotten that. No, I'm not going to. He's named this because the Romans had recently expanded the empire to Britain around his time of birth.
00:19:28
I don't know. Britannicus. Sure. My name's Georgia. Like, what am I going to say about that?
00:19:32
I can't. You can't. I truly can't. Britannicus still has a powerful claim to the Roman throne.
00:19:37
Sadly, he's only 13 years old when his pops dies. In 55 AD, Nero pardons Locusta and quickly hires her to kill 13-year-old Britannicus,
00:19:49
which is like, just send him to a fucking island. They can't. It's always killing with them.
00:19:54
It's so much killing. It's so much killing. He wants her to make his death appear to be of natural causes at 13.
00:20:01
Locusta attempts to poison him with arsenic, but it doesn't work. And Nero has her flogged for this.
00:20:07
I don't think that's the best idea. Has Locusta flogged? Yeah. Oh, okay. But they try again.
00:20:12
Nero throws a dinner party. Wine is served. The Romans would serve their wine diluted with water.
00:20:18
blah blah blah basically before Britannicus takes a sip of his wine his um taster who's
00:20:25
specifically there to test for poison takes a sip says it's fine and then Britannicus is like oh
00:20:29
top me off with that kind of that water it turns out that water was the poison oh so the tester
00:20:34
didn't drink it again Britannicus drinks it it's probably belladonna and thing is Britannicus has
00:20:40
epilepsy the other people at the dinner party know this so when he basically stops being able to speak
00:20:46
Nero's like oh he's just having a seizure which is like again let's start with poisoning. Yeah.
00:20:52
If you're like well there's the heir to the throne I'm sure there's no problem. No we're all fine. Yeah. Britannicus is
00:20:59
brought to another room to recover but it's where he ultimately suffocates and dies
00:21:04
at 13. According to lore the poison Locusta used was known by the Romans to turn a
00:21:11
victim's skin red and Britannicus is buried very quickly after his murder. This is so Game of Thrones. Yeah. Right. With his face painted with a white chalk
00:21:19
to hide his red skin. People just aren't really paying attention, I feel like, back then.
00:21:23
Or they're just not staring into the face maybe for very long. Or they're like, I'm not the one
00:21:29
to say anything. Well, right. There's poisoners everywhere. There's poisoners. That's the fucking
00:21:33
king or whatever. And you're just like, that's not for me. I got to tell you, if anybody wants
00:21:38
to watch it i claudius is a pretty amazing it's like old british incredible actors kind of it's
00:21:45
like they're doing a play on a tv stage yeah and all of this stuff is like the stakes are insane
00:21:51
okay yeah i'm into it because then it's like if you live and you're the one that doesn't get poisoned
00:21:56
you get to have like all of germany right you get to have do you like scotland you can have it
00:22:02
we have we have stuff all the way up in ireland but then someone's coming for you
00:22:06
too. Yeah. You know? That's right. You can't poison everyone who will ever poison
00:22:10
you. I know. Or something. But just because he has that chalk on his face, just before his burial, it starts
00:22:16
to rain, showing the red skin under the white chalk. So it's immediately known throughout Rome that Britannicus
00:22:22
has been poisoned. Wow. There's also probably like a no snitching on Nero policy
00:22:28
going on. Oh yeah, he'll kill you immediately. Absolutely. Yeah. Like, just keep your mouth
00:22:32
shut. Nero rewards Locusta for securing the throne for him. He pays her, he gives her land, and he ultimately tasks
00:22:40
her with opening up a school to teach other people to be poisoners. It's like a happy ending.
00:22:46
Yeah, that is really positive. Yeah. He also grants her immunity for all future crimes.
00:22:50
Does that sound familiar? Not at all. Not in the least. Anyway, fast forward. Immunity.
00:22:59
Some accounts say that La Custa is given enslaved people and prisoners to test her poisons on.
00:23:04
That's just a rumor. And this is where the idea comes from, that she is the first known serial killer.
00:23:11
Which is so funny. Like you don't think about, like you think of serial killer as a recent thing.
00:23:15
Right. But it was probably happening a lot. Just the second, the first human brain that got a weird little screw fall out of it type of thing.
00:23:25
Sorry, that's an oversimplification. of psychopathy. Psychopathy, correct. From what I've read.
00:23:32
I mean, especially back then. Yeah. It was much, before it was a sin, you know it happened all the time.
00:23:38
And some people say at this point, she just starts poisoning people because she enjoys it.
00:23:43
Sounds like she's good at it, you know? Not just as a hired assassin. We don't know much about what else happens
00:23:47
to Locusta for about 15 years until she's in her mid-50s. During this time, Nero has made a lot of enemies.
00:23:54
In fact, during this time period, that Nero actually murders his own mother, who fucking put him in the throne.
00:24:00
Like, thanks a lot. Just ungrateful. Yeah. Little bastard. Totally. In 68 AD, Nero is unseated by a man named Galba and is forced to flee Rome.
00:24:10
Sorry, but right there, if I was like, Galba is now in charge, I'd be like, yeah, no, this isn't going to last.
00:24:16
Why? Because you've never heard of it? Galba? Yeah. That's not did-do-do-dis. You don't have any I-U-S at the end?
00:24:22
Galba. It's fucking Galba. Oh, my God. It's over. Let's all get the fuck out of here.
00:24:27
We've got to get out of Rome. And Nero dies by suicide shortly after this. The new emperor, your best friend Galba, overturns Locusta's immunity because that can be done as well.
00:24:37
Yes, we've heard. And this comes as part of a purge of all of Nero's closest advisors.
00:24:42
So for 15 fucking years, Locusta was living the good life. Yeah. And, you know, nothing lasts.
00:24:49
No, it doesn't. Time is a construct. The pendulum swings and swings. Exactly. Flat circle.
00:24:56
Gaba accuses Locusta of killing more than 400 people and sentences her to death.
00:25:00
So she is executed, although it's not known exactly how. There are two legends. The story always begins with her being marched through the streets of Rome in chains.
00:25:11
Shame. All of Game of Thrones. Yes. Some say she is then strangled or burnt or a combination of the two.
00:25:19
Public executions are common in Rome and often take place during gladiator games.
00:25:23
like there's that entertainment and circus that you wanted. In addition to burning, other methods of execution include crucifixion,
00:25:32
which seems like it's reserved for special circumstances, as well as exposure to wild beasts.
00:25:39
That's a hell no. I mean, they're all hell no. They're all pretty bad. But yeah, you just get thrown in a pit with a bunch of coyotes.
00:25:49
Oh, God. Well, anyway, that's the end of Locusta's story. as we know it, which there isn't a ton, let's get Jessica Chastain on the line and fucking
00:25:57
getting exactly right pictures. Fucking movie out here. Also, if you have a history podcast where you go into this part of Roman history in
00:26:08
depth, I'll listen to it. I'm telling you, history for weirdos. They clearly went to school like us.
00:26:15
Should I go there first? Yeah. They know what they're talking about. They're good explainers.
00:26:18
They're good explainers. And they like have details off the top of their mind in a way that I don't understand.
00:26:25
Because they studied. Because they studied and probably didn't drink themselves into oblivion in their 30s, you know.
00:26:30
I think the thing about people who learned a lot and stayed in school is that it's because they read books and got what was happening.
00:26:37
And then we're like, oh, my God, this is a great factoid, which I feel like you and I are both the kind of people, had we not been born with these brains, we would have been those people.
00:26:48
But like the sitting in the seat and being told what to do. Totally. The distractions and the time away from drinking.
00:26:56
All of that. The disinterest. Yeah. And I'm fine with that. We're not all going to be we're not all supposed to be the same.
00:27:04
No. But I feel like these days, you know, history for weirdos. There are people who got really good at teaching because they understand what's interesting about history or like that.
00:27:14
It's here's how you bring into history to life. This podcast will kill you. Great example.
00:27:18
So smart. Learning about that kind of stuff where it's like, oh, often we put a mental block up.
00:27:25
Yeah. It's like, oh, history. That's boring. It's like, it's so not boring. It's so not boring.
00:27:29
I'm a big fan of history. I really am. And that is everything we know about the woman who was possibly the first serial killer, Locusta Poisoner of Rome.
00:27:40
Wow. That was great. Thank you. If you want to dip into Roman, the Roman Empire every once in a while, they'll tell me about it.
00:27:48
I am here for it. Okay. We have to. There's a whole time period. Thousands and thousands of years.
00:27:55
Thousands of years ago. Okay. Well, good. I'm glad you liked that. Yeah, that was great.
00:27:59
Thanks. Wonderful. All right. Well, we did it. We got some beautiful. This has been a huge, well-rounded episode.
00:28:08
That's what we're like. You know what I mean? It's like, I feel like we're able to get in there and really produce.
00:28:15
That's right. everything is handed to us as we walk in the door. Every single thing is thought through.
00:28:20
Except that ADHD because we were born with it. Maybe you can't hand that to me. Can't hand that to you.
00:28:26
Can't print that up on a copier in a different part of the building I've never seen.
00:28:30
No, you can't. No. Well, thank you guys for being here, being part of this. So appreciative.
00:28:36
Yeah, we really love it. And one last thank you to all our ceramic. Ceramicists.
00:28:42
Ceramicist artists for our ninth anniversary. Including Emily, a.k.a. Pottery Mama, Missy, a.k.a. Young Yenta, Sam Riegel with that beautiful mug, and Lindsay Cook with the Altered Moments figurine.
00:28:58
So good. I've just been like talking to you this whole time and listening to you with these beautiful things behind your head, and I'm so distracted and I keep just going, oh.
00:29:06
You know, what we do is take these and put them down here and put these things up here so these guys get a little time in the sun.
00:29:11
Yeah. Right? Definitely. We're interior designers. We are. And we're going to fill up these shelves with all of the beautiful.
00:29:17
It's just so nice that we have the kind of listeners that and you guys have been like this from day one.
00:29:23
Yeah. That like we go like, hey, can we have a thing about something? Hey, will you teach us about Romeo Empire?
00:29:29
And then it's like, boom, boom. That's my specialty. Yeah. Boom. And I'm funny and creative.
00:29:34
Yeah. It's incredible. And like the response, the ceramic response is to the point where the post office is kind of mad.
00:29:41
I knew they would be. It's wonderful. Just like the early days when George would go to her post office box.
00:29:48
And they'd be like, what's murder? They'd get mad about the word murder. I'm like, listen.
00:29:52
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The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense,
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there's a podcast you should know about. It's called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn.
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Each episode takes a closer look at some of the most talked about new audiobooks on Audible,
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If you're looking for your next listen, this is a great place to start. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, on the iHeartRadio app,
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Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. I'm going to turn it around.
00:32:16
Great. I've got a 180. I would love a 180. Okay, good. Because Women's History Month just ended this week.
00:32:24
And yet it feels to me like we should continue remembering women. Shouldn't we? In case we're wiped off the face of the planet here in America.
00:32:31
You know. In case we're handmaid's tailed. There's so much going on in the world.
00:32:37
And I think talking about the women whose shoulders we all stand on is a good idea.
00:32:44
Love it. No matter what the story is. Definitely. And I like the idea that, you know, sometimes there's people who listen to our podcast and they do have, you know, their young daughters in the backseat. Here's a story you can let them listen to. We'll try not to say the F word very much.
00:32:58
I'm going to try. Let's see if I can get through an entire story without cursing.
00:33:02
Or without saying fuck. Okay. You just said it. Oh. So I'm going to tell you the story today of an American icon who, by boldly chasing her dreams, made an indelible imprint on our culture. But despite her extraordinary life, she's most famous for the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death.
00:33:21
Oh. Arguably one of recent history's greatest unsolved mysteries. For nearly a century, searchers have tried to force a satisfying conclusion to her story, and they've always come up short.
00:33:33
But because all the focus has been on how she died, the way she lived, including her many accomplishments and her advocacy, is often forgotten.
00:33:41
So today I'm going to tell you the story of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart. Right?
00:33:49
Oh, my God. I've been like following the stories. I just always click on the stories of they think they found this.
00:33:55
They think they found that. Right. Here's the next like I cannot not click on those.
00:33:58
Yeah. Because it's fascinating. It's like they have to find something someday that's conclusive.
00:34:03
It's a legit mystery. OK. Tell me everything. OK. So the sources for this story today are writer Doris L. Rich's book, A Biography, Amelia
00:34:11
Earhart, which is a primary. There's also a PBS documentary series that's American Experience.
00:34:16
It's all about her. Fucking love American Experience. It's one of the best shows.
00:34:20
If you're just looking for something of like if you've an empty day and you're trying to feel enriched while still being completely entertained, American Experience will do the job for you.
00:34:30
I don't care if you don't give a shit about the fucking Dust Bowl. You'll be fascinated by the Dust Bowl while you do your nails.
00:34:35
And I have to say, home gym, I was raised by my father forcing me to watch PBS material.
00:34:44
And so furious where he'd be like right after Happy Days would end. He'd be like, turn it over.
00:34:49
Let's see what's on PBS. And then we'd have to watch an opera. We'd have to watch Carl Sagan.
00:34:53
And is it a coincidence that you're here owning your own fucking business today?
00:34:57
Probably not. Probably not. I think PBS enriched my life. Did my father ever give them a dime in donations?
00:35:04
Not only not once. And I'm sure I could do this. He sued them for money? Oh, no.
00:35:09
What if he sued PBS for damages? Oh, my God. What? My mom would always, like, walk through, and he'd be watching something and really enjoying it.
00:35:18
You know, like a documentary on the auto mat or whatever. Had to watch that the last time I went home.
00:35:24
Amazing. But my mom would always go, Jim, you have to give them money. And he would go, bullshit, they're not getting a dime out of me.
00:35:31
And that was, like, his proud stance that he refused to give them money. It's the ultimate, like, he's gonna finally rip somebody else off.
00:35:40
Right, you're fighting the wrong fight, bro. Meanwhile, he has absolutely given them money, and it was just a bit, basically.
00:35:46
He's doing to piss my mom off. Phew! Right? Okay. He's not really a douchebag. Because truly the Kilgara family has gotten their absolute fill from free PBS How many tote bags do you guys have from them That how how you know that right oh so anyway there also a two national geographic podcast called overheard did you know
00:36:07
there was a national geographic podcast no i love it oh i also sorry this should go up into the
00:36:12
top but since we didn't do it i'll just say it now on tiktok this morning i learned that the
00:36:18
southern poverty law center has just launched their own podcast just at the beginning of this
00:36:24
month and it just covers all the stories, all of the things that they're like basically them
00:36:28
fighting for Americans in every way. The fact that they've been doing it for 100 years,
00:36:33
all these things. Go listen to the Southern Poverty Law Center's podcast. Get them some
00:36:38
numbers. Share it with friends. Get that thing going because it sounded great. The little like
00:36:42
clip and what I heard, I was like so excited that they're starting that. Amazing. Now let's start
00:36:46
your story. Good vibes. Now to the story. Here's my writing when I go in and edit Maren's writing.
00:36:52
The story of Amelia Earhart's story begins in late July of 1897. Okay. She was born in the northeast corner of Kansas in a town called Atchison.
00:37:03
Okay. It looks like it's, I would guess, two hours north of Kansas City. Okay. Way up there in the corner, there's the Amelia Earhart.org website.
00:37:13
And they have a museum there that I think is built in her house. Oh, wow. But they have the best tote bags that I'm absolutely going to get.
00:37:21
That's weird. that I brought up tote bag. Yeah, that's right. Because I was just looking on the website
00:37:25
and it's just a painting of the house and that's the tote bag. Okay, we all need those.
00:37:30
Murderinos? We all need those. Yeah, let's buy all the merch at the Amelia Earhart Museum.
00:37:35
That's how you can spot a murderino in the wild at the farmer's market is if she has a fucking,
00:37:38
oh, I said the F word. She has a random Amelia Earhart. You said the F word. I'm still on page one.
00:37:43
Guys, stop it. Stop it. I've had too much fucking rosé. Let's go. Okay. Let's really focus on what we're supposed to be doing.
00:37:49
Okay. Okay, so she's born in Atchison in July of 1897. Her father, Edwin, is a lawyer from humble beginnings.
00:37:57
Her mom, Amy, comes from a very prominent local family. And a fun fact, actually like a badass fact, Amy Earhart was the first woman to hike to the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado.
00:38:09
Cool. So she's from Adventuring DNA. Makes sense. So things aren't always smooth sailing for the Earhart family.
00:38:17
Edwin has good and bad years financially. He takes job opportunities wherever they come. We later learned that it's because he's an alcoholic. And that's the way my mom grew up, where it's like he does good for a little while. He's a lawyer. And then he blows it and then has to and then goes off the wagon and then has to dry out again.
00:38:37
I can't say that that's exactly what happened in this family, but I'm recognizing it from what my mom told me about when you have like the long term alcoholic that then gets better for a long time and then goes back.
00:38:48
It's awful. So they move around a ton. And then when Amelia isn't moving around with her parents and they're just trying to go get him another job, she stays for long stretches at her grandparents home.
00:39:02
So Amelia does have a younger sister named Muriel. They're just about two years apart.
00:39:07
So they're very, very close. And they're not your typical turn of the century girls because, like, of course, at the time, girls had to wear long skirts. But Amelia and Muriel spend their weekends in bloomers because it's easier to play in them.
00:39:21
Love it. And these girls love playing. Amelia is the daring ringleader, and she can often be found with her little sister climbing over fences, shooting rifles, collecting bugs.
00:39:33
Doris L. Rich, Amelia Earhart's biographer, writes about an incident when Amelia is seven years old and Muriel is four, and they are going sledding.
00:39:41
So Amelia is about to head down a big snowy hill. so she does something most little girls
00:39:47
would be conditioned not to do instead of sitting up on the sled and holding the string like that
00:39:53
she lays down on her stomach she pushes off face first, just do it so she pushes off, she starts racing
00:40:01
down the hill, flying down and then she sees, here comes a horse drawn carriage that's coming directly down
00:40:09
her path across her path I should say she starts yelling out to the driver because she can't stop.
00:40:16
So she's yelling, but he can't hear her. He can't see her. So up on the top of the hill,
00:40:21
Mural is watching her sister as she is about to crash in. So Amelia at the same time is like, I'm about to die.
00:40:28
So instead of panicking, what she does is she puts her head down as low as she can.
00:40:33
And somehow the timing works out perfectly and she just goes right under the wagon.
00:40:38
Like Christmas vacation when they go under the fucking semi-truck. Yes. Exactly like that, right?
00:40:42
Or like when I was about six years old and I was riding my bike in front of my parents and their friends and I went up in the O'Hara's big old gravel driveway that was like a quarter of a mile long.
00:40:54
And I was coming back down, racing back down. And my parents can hear a car that's going 80 miles an hour.
00:41:01
And they watch as I just go directly in front of the car. Like the car is going so fast it didn't have time to put on the brakes.
00:41:08
So I just went like that. And as I came into our driveway, my dad just picked me up off my bike and slapped me on the ass.
00:41:15
And I ran into the house. They never spanked us. And like basically they all thought they were going to watch me die.
00:41:21
Yeah. Amelia Earhart style. Pet cemetery shit. Right. Oh, my God. For real. OK, so basically she goes under.
00:41:29
She comes out unscathed. And when she finally comes to a stop, Amelia jumps up and smiles and waves at her sister.
00:41:35
And years later, she looks back on this moment and she'll say, quote, that condemned tomboy method saved my life.
00:41:42
Had I been sitting up, either my head or the horse's ribs would have suffered in contact,
00:41:46
probably the horse's ribs. So by Amelia's teenage years, she's attended so many different schools that she basically
00:41:54
doesn have any friends at all In one of her yearbooks this makes me so sad there a photo of her and the caption reads quote A the girl in brown who
00:42:05
walks alone. Just like, because you have this fuck-up dad. Right. You're gonna have
00:42:11
to leave anyway, so you might as well not get to know people. At home, Amelia's father's developed a serious
00:42:17
drinking problem. I spoiled that one, but he struggles to hold down any job. PBS reports,
00:42:23
quote, Amelia adored her father, but he let her down so often she learned early on to be self-reliant.
00:42:30
Yikes. So she starts keeping a scrapbook with cutouts of newspaper and magazine articles about women with successful careers that are in traditionally male-only fields.
00:42:41
It's like she's proving to herself that she can find success without relying on a man and manifesting that future for herself, essentially.
00:42:49
When she graduates high school, it's the thick of World War I, so she drops out of finishing school.
00:42:55
They sent her to finishing school. Finish what, dude? Yeah. Finish walking around with a book on your head.
00:43:00
Finish this. So she leaves to go tend to wounded soldiers in Canada, which is so badass.
00:43:09
She's like, thanks for the manners lessons. I've got to actually go do something.
00:43:13
How about go fuck yourself? Go fuck yourself. I'm going to work with the Red Cross.
00:43:17
That's right. During this time, she briefly considers a career in medicine. And then one day, she goes to a flying exhibition in Toronto and she watches a stunned pilot do their tricks in a colorful plane.
00:43:28
And she's captivated. She'll later say, quote, I did not understand at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.
00:43:38
It's just such a cool, I never thought about this. And I'm sure that my sister has like books that she's read aloud to her class.
00:43:45
It's like Amelia Earhart. I'm sure she knows all the details, but I've never like really thought about that fact of like when women are born early and they go through lives with like, say, an adventurer spirit in a time where they're like, you better put that skirt on and go to finishing school.
00:44:03
Right. It's almost luckier that she had to move around a bunch and had like an irregular family.
00:44:08
Like her dad wasn't paying attention and enforcing rules. Yeah. Kind of get away with a lot more.
00:44:13
And it was kind of like, yeah, fuck it, because what am I going to do? Go to finishing school, find a man and then have this happen to me.
00:44:19
Right. Like, I'm going to go do my thing. Also, like, can we just props to the baby sister or the younger sister who's always like, she doesn't get enough credit.
00:44:27
Like, the older sister always gets credit of like, she showed her how to do it. But like, if you didn't have someone to show how to do it.
00:44:32
Yeah. I'm clearly giving us props. It's us. It's about us. But like, if you didn't have someone to show off to.
00:44:38
Yeah. Then what would you have done? You would have never had that adventurous spirit.
00:44:41
But nothing. If you didn't have a baby crying and saying, I need to go to the bathroom all the time, there would be nothing to fight against.
00:44:48
So you're welcome. You're welcome, Laura and Lee. So by 1920, Amelia is 23 years old.
00:44:55
She's living back with her parents again. They're now in Southern California. So they really have moved all over the place.
00:45:01
One day, her dad takes her to an event at a Long Beach airfield. Once again, Amelia is transfixed by the stunt pilot.
00:45:07
So this was like a big thing that was happening at the time. She sees they're offering plane rides for the low price of $5 each.
00:45:15
That's a lot of money. Worth about today. What year? 2020. 2020? Sorry, 20. Plain old 20.
00:45:23
1920? 1920 is what I should have said. Yep. And it's $5 and 19. Oh, that's a lot of money.
00:45:29
I'm going to go 60. 80. Very close. But 80 bucks. That's a fuck ton of money. She somehow gets.
00:45:35
Oh, God, I did it again. I'm so bad. it's just it's a fudge it's a fudge worth of money so she somehow collects up and gets that
00:45:44
money a couple days later she goes back to the airfield and she takes a ride for the first time
00:45:50
in a plane and she will later say quote as soon as we left the ground i knew i had to fly
00:45:55
a little quote within the quote says i think i'd like to fly i told my family casually that evening
00:46:00
knowing full well i'd die if i didn't oh she's like her dream that's her passion
00:46:07
Yeah. It's beautiful. So a year later, Amelia meets with a young female pilot named Netta Snook, the best name of all time.
00:46:15
So good. Netta's an aviation pioneer in her own right, and she agrees to teach Amelia how to fly.
00:46:22
She's charging a dollar a minute, which would be basically $16 a minute in today's money.
00:46:28
So it would be like paying $960 for an hour's flying lesson. Fuck. So it's very expensive.
00:46:35
Yeah, Snooki's after it. Snooki's like, hey, then go find another woman to teach you how to fly a plane.
00:46:42
So to pay for her lessons, Amelia takes on a bunch of odd jobs, including hauling gravel for a local trucking company and working as a stenographer.
00:46:51
Okay. She's like, anything I can do. Yeah. Within six months, she manages to buy her own small, bright yellow biplane that she names Canary.
00:47:00
That is so wild. Mm-hmm. She's in it. I mean, I bought a Vespa when I was young because I was like, I got to stop writing on the back of douchebags Vespas.
00:47:09
And get your own. I need my own or I'm going to keep dating assholes. So I got my own.
00:47:13
Yeah. And then did you go see Quadrophenia at the midnight show? Oh, yeah. I mean, I was obsessed.
00:47:19
When the Vespa kids would come in for Quadrophenia. Yeah. That was my very favorite.
00:47:23
I'm like, I can't get these outfits together, but I pick you of all the. It's so hot.
00:47:27
I'm not picking Rocky Horror and I'm not picking heavy metal. I'm picking Quadrophenia.
00:47:30
Dr. Fetorfenia. Hell yeah, you are. Those acid-washed jeans. So she gets her pilot's license in late 1921, and she begins flying in derbies and setting
00:47:41
all kinds of records. How old is she? So she's 23 and 20. So she's 24. Okay. 24.
00:47:47
I like the idea that they just start air derbies, where it's like, can you fly a plane
00:47:51
and then come and do a race? Yeah. Hilarious. It's so good. So she sets all kinds of records, like becoming the first woman to fly at an altitude of 14,000
00:48:00
feet. But actually, she wasn't trying to break that record. She just wanted to see how high the
00:48:04
Canary could go. Later, she'll write quite modestly, quote, although my figure of 14,000
00:48:10
feet was not extraordinary, the performance of my engine was interesting. I had gone up much farther
00:48:16
than some of the higher powered planes, which should have been more efficient. So her and the
00:48:21
Canary are like getting in there. They've got a vibe. Yeah. In 1924, Amelia's life changes again
00:48:28
as her father continues to struggle with alcoholism. Her parents get divorced. Now she's 28.
00:48:35
She and her mom moved from California to Massachusetts to move in with Muriel, who's studying to be a teacher there in Boston.
00:48:42
So Amelia gets a job there as a social worker. She gets paid $60 a month, which is roughly how much in today's money?
00:48:50
$690. $1,000 a month. Wow. Okay. So she's now supporting herself and her mother on this modest income.
00:48:58
So basically her expensive hobby of flying planes has to be paused. But she does find a local flying community and she's a vocal part of it.
00:49:07
And local newspapers start writing about her fierce advocacy for women in aviation.
00:49:14
So even though she can't do it, she's still like, yeah, but we should get to do it.
00:49:17
The good news is she loves her job as a social worker. She works with immigrant families and children, mostly from China and Syria.
00:49:25
And she really feels like she's found her calling. Author Susan Butler tells National Geographic, quote,
00:49:32
if anything, she was obsessed with being a social worker. She took it as her role in life to act as an agent for social change for women.
00:49:39
Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. So I kind of like that, you know. Yeah. She was pivoting, doing what she could when she could,
00:49:46
and then also making a life doing other stuff that was also very important. Her moral compass was there no matter what she was doing.
00:49:53
Yeah. She was like, I'm going to do good and make change and fight for women. Very cool. So then in 1928, a man named George P. Putnam reaches out and that changes everything in her life once again. Putnam is a wildly successful publisher who is behind one of America's more notable fascists, Charles Lindbergh's smash hit autobiography, We.
00:50:17
Of course, Lindbergh was a huge aviating star, very prominent. You covered his baby's kidnapping.
00:50:24
I was going to say you covered that, but OK. It was you in episode 119, Fingers Everywhere.
00:50:29
Of course you remember that episode. So Putnam is now on the hunt for his next aviation superstar.
00:50:36
He's been given a short list of female pilots, hoping one of them will have that elusive and lucrative it factor.
00:50:43
So he sets up a meeting with now 31-year-old Amelia, and when he does, she walks in, and he can't believe it.
00:50:50
She looks a lot like Charles Lindbergh. So he's immediately convinced that she's the one.
00:50:56
So George pitches Amelia the opportunity of a lifetime. He wants her to take a transatlantic flight, not as the pilot, but as a passenger.
00:51:04
And like it's all for publicity. But still, the trip would make her the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
00:51:11
Can you imagine? I get so nervous when we fly to like on tour to Europe and stuff because you're just like or to Hawaii when you're just like, so we're just going to be like on open ocean for like four or five hours.
00:51:23
Yeah, but imagine being the first woman who gets to do that. And you're going to know that.
00:51:27
And it's never going to be changed. Because you're the first woman to do it. Yeah.
00:51:32
You know. And she's kind of like, look, I survived that sled. I'll be fine. I'm sure that kind of is a part of it, right?
00:51:39
She's like, get me out there. It'll be good if I do it. Okay, so she's all in, of course.
00:51:46
She thinks that Maren wrote, it sounds like a blast. But of course, she also knows there's risks.
00:51:52
Writer Anthony Brandt notes, quote, of sheet metal. It rattled and roared like an old steam engine.
00:52:26
Oh, my God. It was so loud. Yeah. The cabin door had to be tied shut with a small rope.
00:52:31
Oh, my God. And the fucking... Farting. I was going to say meal service, but yeah.
00:52:39
Because it's a tri-motor seaplane. Sure. It's a little guy with three people in it.
00:52:45
Okay, so all that in mind, on June 17th, 1928, Amelia takes off in the seaplane,
00:52:51
piloted by a man named Wilmer Stultz and co-piloted by a man named Louis Gordon.
00:52:57
But after 20 hours and 40 minutes of flight time when they finally land in Wales,
00:53:02
it's Amelia who steps off the plane and into instant celebrity. Hey, girl. Thousands of people are there
00:53:08
waiting to catch a glimpse of the daring aviatrix, is what they call her. Yes. Amelia Earhart.
00:53:14
Do you think she slept a moment of that 20 hours and 40 minutes? Probably. Well, no, probably not
00:53:19
because she was probably thrilled out of her mind. Yeah. scared shitless. Yeah. And it was super loud and cold and windy. And there was no bar cart.
00:53:28
She just has a little flask that she's sipping out from a straw. So newspapers run countless
00:53:33
glowing features and newsreels declaring her the, quote, Lady Lindbergh. It's the exact type of
00:53:39
publicity George has worked so hard for because now he wants Amelia to write a memoir that he can
00:53:44
then turn into the bestseller. So this is my experience doing it. George urges her to quit
00:53:49
her job back in Boston, move into his New York home and crank out this book. That exactly how Lindbergh did it So he wants her to do it the same way Amelia knows that if she does that she can parlay all the attention into some real money which then she can use to support her family and pay for her expensive
00:54:07
flying lessons she's the original aviator influencer yes hashtag for sure and also you
00:54:13
see these let me show you some of these early pictures she's a gorgeous young woman she has
00:54:19
freckles and her bob hair or whatever but she's like oh she's the cutest she truly has that face
00:54:25
card yeah that they're all looking for and on top of all that it's going to give her a platform to
00:54:30
share the message she's carried within her since childhood which is that women can do anything men
00:54:35
can do awesome in the 20s when no one was trying to say shit they were like i'm gonna smoke a
00:54:40
cigarette jazz cigarette jazz so amelia upends her entire life in boston and starts writing a book
00:54:47
that will eventually be titled, quote, 20 hours, 40 minutes. In it, there's a section titled Women in Aviation.
00:54:55
And in that, Amelia writes, quote, While this chapter is called Women in Aviation,
00:55:00
just as appropriate a title might have been Women Outside of Aviation. There should be no line between men and women so far as piloting is concerned.
00:55:08
Got it. Like a female pilot. Nope, just a pilot. Just a pilot. Yeah. Amelia's sister Muriel will later say that Amelia was embarrassed
00:55:16
that her claim to fame was being a passenger on that transatlantic flight, which seems backed up by Amelia's own words.
00:55:23
She was quoted as saying, the boys did all the flying. That is embarrassing. Yeah.
00:55:29
For her, who is a pilot. Yeah. Get your own Vespa. Get your own. She also describes herself on that flight as, quote,
00:55:36
just baggage like a sack of potatoes. Oh, God, that had a sting. Well, I think she's the kind of person that's like,
00:55:43
if you're going to applaud for me this much, just wait until you see me fly. Right. This is nothing.
00:55:47
Yeah. She also teases her dream of the future by saying, quote, maybe someday I'll try it alone.
00:55:53
So now it's 1932. Amelia's in her mid-30s and America's in the throes of the Great Depression.
00:55:59
But Amelia's done extremely well for herself over the past few years. She's gotten paid endorsements from brands like Lucky Strike.
00:56:07
And she's become the aviation editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. That's made up. Yeah, it is.
00:56:13
But I love it. But that's how much of a trend flying was at the time, which is great.
00:56:17
You got to get those sponsorships, man. That's right. We in podcasting understand.
00:56:21
You're truly right about her being the original plane influencer. So at that point, she'd made enough money to buy herself a brand new plane, which is the now iconic fire engine red Lockheed Vega.
00:56:35
Amelia is also still devoted to empowering women. She is the founding member and the first president of a group called the 99s, which is the first ever organization for women in aviation.
00:56:47
The 99 refers to the number of the group's charter members. So good. Yeah. What if it was like 23?
00:56:54
The 23s. It doesn't sound the same. The 99s is fucking. Almost 100. On a more personal level, Amelia's father, Edwin, has passed away of cancer.
00:57:03
and George Putnam, her publisher, has divorced his wife. He professes his love for her and proposes.
00:57:13
Oh, I wish I could have seen that. She says no. He asks again and he ends up proposing to her six different times.
00:57:21
Wow. Love him, love her. Love it. Amelia has been skeptical of marriage all her life for very good reason.
00:57:28
Shocking, yeah. But she genuinely cares for George. so she eventually accepts but she has her conditions she tells him she's going to keep
00:57:36
her own name which at that time was unheard of i'm just that's incredible yeah someone who kept
00:57:41
her own name i want to thank her for fucking blazing the way she blazed it and then on her
00:57:46
wedding day she won't wear a traditional bridal gown she wears a brown suit what just like fisk
00:57:54
she's like let me just go to work today she's like here's the thing yeah i'm not wearing your
00:57:59
stupid fucking dress and she also the morning of their wedding writes him a letter which i really
00:58:05
love that says quote i may have to keep some place where i can go to be by myself now and then
00:58:11
i cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage oh my god
00:58:18
like he loved that about her you know it's like that's like why he loved her is like that's so
00:58:25
incredible. I think so. Yeah. This is my opinion. When you are raised feral, it's hard to even want
00:58:32
to have anything traditional, even when the pressure to do it is so oppressive because it's
00:58:37
like it was literally she had the kind of household where it's like go outside and play
00:58:41
for 18 hours because everything is so fucked in here. Yeah. And so then it's like, yeah,
00:58:46
I don't want to go back. I tie myself back to this, that structure that I can't trust. If I
00:58:51
couldn't trust my own father how can i trust you i completely identify with that and george putnam's
00:58:57
like i get it i'll just keep asking you yeah but also a brown suit on your wedding day is just like
00:59:04
badass to a degree where she's like that isn't just like i'm not gonna be traditional she's like
00:59:09
fuck you finishing school professor yeah apologies to anyone who thought they were actually going to
00:59:15
play this for their children in the backseat of the car like it was never going to happen we were
00:59:19
We were lying to you, but more importantly, we were lying directly to your children.
00:59:23
And you were lying to yourself. We screamed, fuck you. Yeah. So around the same year she gets married, which is 1932, she publishes her second book.
00:59:34
That one's called The Fun of It. Cute. I love that one. Kiki. Kiki. She also announces with that that she's going to fly across the Atlantic again, but this time as a pilot and this time by herself.
00:59:44
No. At the time no one no man or woman aside from Charles Lindbergh back in 1927 had ever completed a solo nonstop transatlantic flight although 10 pilots had died trying No Yeah Don like those odds So she like 10 male pilots Step away Yes exactly
01:00:05
So immediately, Amelia's inner circle, including her husband, George Putnam, start wondering
01:00:10
if she's experienced enough to pull off this stunt. Her own mechanic gives her, quote,
01:00:16
a one in 100 chance of surviving. Cool, dude. Way to fucking be supportive. It reminds me of
01:00:22
when the fucking Eagles were like, we don't want to tour with Linda Ronstadt. We're going to start our own band.
01:00:27
Like, fuck you. Go ahead. See how it fucking goes. Good luck. She's selling out fucking stadiums anyway.
01:00:32
God, that documentary. I loved it so much, but it filled me with a fury that will never go away.
01:00:38
That was the point. Yeah, she wasn't good enough. You need it. You need that fury.
01:00:42
Yeah. So the idea of making a transatlantic flight alone makes Amelia Earhart feel alive.
01:00:48
Oh, I was going to be like, take a beta blocker. You're nervous. She's like, I can't.
01:00:53
This day-to-day bullshit isn't good enough. I need to get up and over there. What did she do to hype herself up before?
01:00:59
Because before I came in here to record, I put on Yes And by Ariana Grande. Like, just to record a podcast that I've done for fucking nine years and I still needed that.
01:01:09
Like, what did she do? Secrets being revealed. Yeah. Okay, go. Well, here's, I can tell you, she writes a poem that says, quote,
01:01:18
Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace. Think about it. I can't.
01:01:24
You gotta pay. You must. So on a warm May morning, I added in warm, I don't know why.
01:01:30
On a May morning in 1932, Amelia takes off from Canada's east coast in her Lockheed Vega.
01:01:37
From the start, it's an exhausting, difficult journey. Author Doris L. Rich writes, quote, she was four hours out when she ran into a storm.
01:01:46
She would go high and the plane would ice. Then she'd go down until she could see the waves to get the ice off.
01:01:52
Whoa. How fucking scary would that be? She had no radio contact with anyone. The manifold on her engine broke, and the flames from the backfire from it were coming out.
01:02:01
There was a gas gauge over her head that began to leak, and the gasoline was dripping down over her forehead and into one eye.
01:02:08
End quote. Just crash the whole thing into the sea. Yeah. That's what I would do.
01:02:11
I mean, well, after 15 grueling hours of flight time, Amelia Earhart lands her plane safely in Northern Ireland.
01:02:19
Amazing. And this solo flight launches her to all new levels of worldwide stardom.
01:02:24
She's mobbed by fans in London and Paris. And when she comes back to the United States, her success is felt as a much needed moment of national joy because it's still the Great Depression.
01:02:36
She even gets her own ticker tape parade in New York City. Influencer. Have you ever seen ticker tape parade footage?
01:02:42
It looks so messy. It looks so awesome. Oh, yeah. Like if you're down there and everyone's just throwing shit out the window and like it's just such a true moment of glory.
01:02:51
Yeah. Everybody got to focus on that. Then the guy has to clean it up. Yeah. True.
01:02:55
Why do I think that way? Go on. Some people like cleaning. OK. So. A few months later, she then becomes the first woman to fly across North America and back.
01:03:07
Amelia is now a global icon through and through. I also wonder how much of that is like I'm proving I'm not a passenger over and over again.
01:03:14
Sure. That's like the best way to like get yourself to do something for me is like, oh, you don't think I can't do that?
01:03:19
Yeah. You think I'm a passenger? Or to myself of like, oh, you're really ashamed because you had that one comedy set that was terrible that you're remembering from seven years ago.
01:03:27
Well, then I'm going to go out there and be the best. I think shame works. Shame is a great motivator.
01:03:33
But being a career aviator, even when you're a famous one, takes a ton of money.
01:03:39
So Amelia hits the lecture circuit. She goes on tour making exhausting back-to-back town-by-town appearances.
01:03:46
Tell me about it. TED Talks. OG TED Talks. She's got like the head mic, but it's not connected to anything because it's the 30s.
01:03:57
Like, what's that thing by your mouth? Sometimes she earned $2,400 in a single week in two days' money.
01:04:05
19.32, how much would $2,400 a week be? $76,000. $55,000. But still. I'm in the area.
01:04:14
$55,000 a week. That's insane. That's insane. She started the first podcast. Yeah.
01:04:21
She's also using her platform to campaign for women's empowerment, not only in aviation,
01:04:26
but she's trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed. Girl, like, don't rest.
01:04:31
I love it. She's invited to the White House in 1933. She becomes tight with the Roosevelt's.
01:04:37
Brag, brag, brag. So fucking cool. A not so fun fact about the Equal Rights Amendment, though.
01:04:42
Advocates have been fighting to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment since the 20s.
01:04:46
Yeah. Even though it's already met the required number of state ratifications, for some reason, it still has not been added to the U.S. Constitution.
01:04:56
Imagine being invited to the White House and wanting to go and being proud to go.
01:05:01
Yeah. Can you, like, the Roosevelt's? Fuck yeah, I'd go. Imagine. It's just such the end of an era.
01:05:08
Yeah. But it's an end of an era, and what I'm talking about is democracy. Fucking Jesus Christ.
01:05:15
Oh, my God. Okay. 1933 is a big year for Amelia also because she breaks her own speed record on a second flight across North America.
01:05:24
She's just getting it done. By 1935, 38-year-old Amelia has set records for solo flights from, like, Honolulu to Oakland, California, or L.A. to Mexico City.
01:05:35
That's just a couple of them. I've done those. Right? And solo, you mean you just weren't talking to Vince?
01:05:42
She's also campaigning for FDR and she launches her own fashion line called Amelia Fashions.
01:05:48
Called Brown Suits. Called Brown Suits Only. She explains... Ooh if you could find one of those in the vintage shop if you like doing vintage shopping and then suddenly see fucking Amelia Earhart Fashions By Amelia Dude So the theory was that all flight clothing of course had been made for men up to that point So when you had your nice jodipers or your weird white shirt or whatever leather jacket
01:06:09
Yeah. Like horse riding. Yeah. So so the idea was they were supposed to be. And of course, she always preferred pants anyway.
01:06:16
so I looked up on Amelia Earhart.org and they had pictures from a newspaper of the ad of it and it said
01:06:25
sports clothes designed by Amelia Earhart but then every single picture in that ad
01:06:31
was models wearing dresses there was not one pair of pants which I was like she never got a say in that
01:06:36
nah she sold her name that's true as busy as she is Amelia still gets the itch to make another big flight
01:06:43
so she writes to her friends saying quote I have the feeling there's just one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this is it.
01:06:50
It is my swan song as far as record flying is concerned, my frosting on the cake.
01:06:55
My God, rest on your beautiful laurels sometimes, guys. Sorry, I can't join adult children of alcoholics, so I'm going to go ahead and keep on flying across this.
01:07:05
Take a nice little nap on them laurels. Can't do it. So the next year, 1936, Amelia announces her plan to fly around the world.
01:07:14
If successful, she'll be the first woman to ever do it, obviously. She and George fundraise for a brand new plane that's built specifically for this journey.
01:07:23
They pay for it too, but it's so expensive. It's $80,000. Wow. So they need to fundraise.
01:07:29
$80,000 back then is about how much in today's money? $350,000. $1.8 million. Dude, I've learned nothing.
01:07:38
Your scale just went like that a little bit. I just don't know what's happening.
01:07:41
So she calls this plane her flying laboratory because it's outfitted with all the latest technology, but she never learns to use much of it.
01:07:50
Doris L. Rich writes, quote, Amelia did not like radio communication. There's absolutely no doubt about it.
01:07:57
That's like me in emails. It's so bad for business. She not only didn't bother to learn it, she didn't really find it necessary.
01:08:07
There's a hint here of the ego that all great explorers and adventurers have. They have a certain faith that they're going to make it.
01:08:15
And when you spend one point something on a fucking plane, you hope it flies itself just a little bit.
01:08:19
Yeah, you would hope there's an automated aspect to it. Amelia wants to do the trip by herself, but it's eventually decided she will need a team, being that she doesn't like radio communication at all.
01:08:30
So she hires three men, a technical advisor named Paul Mance, a marine navigator with radio operation experience named Harry Manning, and a former Pan Am navigator named Fred Noonan.
01:08:42
So on March 17th, 1937, they take off from Oakland, California. They land in Honolulu.
01:08:48
Then on March 20th, they take off for the second leg of this trip. But something goes wrong.
01:08:54
The plane skids off course at the end of the runway and it crashes. It's a big enough accident that the plane has to be sent in for extensive repairs.
01:09:03
So this is a deeply stressful moment for Amelia. She's basically gambled everything on this extraordinarily expensive flight during a national financial crisis.
01:09:14
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Doris L. Rich writes, quote, after she cracked up the plane in Honolulu, she felt fear for the first time.
01:09:22
The immensity of this project suddenly hit her. she knew that if she lost that plane or failed in this, she and George were dead broke, both of them.
01:09:30
End quote. You can tell Doris L. Rich is writing from like, it's probably 1945 or something.
01:09:35
Yeah. That's the vibe I get. This is going to happen. Dead broke, both of them. So the crash in Honolulu also rattles Amelia's loved ones. According to BBS, friends urge her to abandon this mission.
01:09:49
They also express concern over her exhausted and anxious mental state. Yeah. So it seems like she's kind of pushing it anyway, even though she's scared or she's worried.
01:09:58
Totally. This includes her husband, George, who writes her a letter promising that they'll figure things out should she abandon the flight.
01:10:05
Yeah. There's time. It's okay. But Amelia won't give in. Give in and regroup a little bit and then come back stronger than ever.
01:10:13
I feel like this is that kind of thing. You know, there are people who are like, if you're a serious workaholic, you just can't consider taking a nap during the day.
01:10:20
That thing of like rest is for the week. And it's like, actually, it's a beautiful thing to give to yourself.
01:10:25
And it's OK. It is OK. But sometimes you just can't. Because if you rest, that means like your momentum will slow, even if it's just your
01:10:34
mental momentum. And clearly, she's still on that sled, still going under that horse-drawn carriage.
01:10:40
Yeah, but then it won't go away. You can still come back after it. And like, you're going to be more clear-headed and you're going to be older and smarter.
01:10:47
And like, give yourself a fucking break sometimes. No. And that shows why Karen's CEO and I don't have a fucking office at Exactly Right Media.
01:10:57
It's not good. It's not. It is not good. It's not. And she has two podcasts. God.
01:11:04
And I'm going to start a third. And it's called It's Fine to Do This to Yourself.
01:11:09
It's fine. It's fine. That actually would be funny. It's fine. A podcast called It's Fine and you just have people come on and talk about shit that is so not okay at all.
01:11:18
Right. That they put themselves through. It's fine. It was fine. I was fine. No, I liked it. It was fine.
01:11:24
By the time the plane is repaired, Amelia's team has shrunk. The technical advisor, Paul, and Harry, the Marine navigator, the only guy with radio experience, both back out.
01:11:34
They were like, later days. They're like, read the fates. Yeah, I'm going to go take a nap.
01:11:39
Yeah, it's nap time. Mercury is in retrograde. So now it's Amelia and Fred Noonan.
01:11:45
Thanks to changing weather patterns, they're forced to come up with a whole new flight plan.
01:11:49
So instead of leaving from Hawaii, they're now taking off from Miami, Florida. And on June 1st, 1937, they do just that, this time without a hitch.
01:11:58
And then they start. on this 40-day, 20,000-mile trip, making several stops to refuel along the way.
01:12:08
They soar over Africa, through the Middle East, over Southeast Asia, on to New Guinea.
01:12:14
They have another stop before a very long stretch over the Pacific Ocean. They're the first people who have ever seen this
01:12:19
from the fucking air. Like, how unbelievable. On July 2nd, 1937, Amelia and Fred take off from New Guinea.
01:12:29
At this point, they've completed nearly three quarters of this journey, and the goal is to now get to a tiny sliver of land called Howland Island, roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
01:12:41
Truly out in the middle of the Pacific. And it's only about a mile and a half long island and a half a mile wide.
01:12:48
That's a hard target. That's a little tiny one. Tragically, Amelia and Fred struggle to find Howland Island.
01:12:54
And we know they arrive in the general area because Amelia starts radioing the Coast Guard, who have a ship called Itasca nearby, and they're receiving her messages.
01:13:04
Some of these transmissions are so crystal clear that the men on the Itasca rush to the decks thinking that the plane will be overhead.
01:13:13
In one of her transmissions, Amelia says that she thinks she's close by, but she's lost, and she only has about half an hour of fuel left.
01:13:20
But because she doesn't know much about radio transmission, she's sending these messages while on an improper frequency on the radio.
01:13:28
So the Coast Guard is only able to respond to her with Morse code, which neither she nor Fred understand.
01:13:35
That's an important one. A lot of crucial elements. Let's not criticize Amelia. We're not.
01:13:43
You know where the story goes from here. The messages stop coming in. 39-year-old Amelia Earhart and 44-year-old Fred Noonan and the plane that they're flying in
01:13:53
together disappear. Almost immediately, FDR dispatches a huge crew to go look for them.
01:14:01
It's made up of 10 ships and 65 planes. And that causes a lot of controversy because it costs
01:14:08
millions of dollars. It's still the depression. So after two weeks of combing a vast swath of the
01:14:14
Pacific Ocean near Howland Island with no results. This search is called off. But George Putnam has
01:14:21
his own search going. I forgot that. Yeah. Okay. He funds an independent search himself and it goes
01:14:28
until October of 1937. Oh my God. So he just kind of never stops searching for her. Yeah. That also
01:14:35
turns up nothing. In January of 1939, two years after vanishing, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan
01:14:42
are legally declared dead. They turned up nothing, not a scrap. So they were like
01:14:46
looking in the wrong area. Well, we'll talk about that in one second. There are countless theories
01:14:51
of what happened during those final moments of Amelia last flight I have devoted supporters as they usually do Because the disappearance happened in the lead to World War II some people think that Amelia and Fred were captured by the Japanese military
01:15:05
after crash landing on a Japanese-controlled island, and they were either executed for being American spies
01:15:12
or they were turned into spies for Japan and sent back to the U.S. with new identities.
01:15:19
No. That one's a little wild. Yeah. But what if? Yeah. Now we write that movie. Okay.
01:15:25
Another theory is that Amelia wound up on an island called Nicomororo. Sorry for that pronunciation.
01:15:32
A 400 miles south of Howland Island. Is this where they found her compact? Hold on.
01:15:37
Wait, wait, wait. They think they might have lived as castaways there before dying of thirst or starvation.
01:15:42
Some people believe this theory then take it one step further, suggesting that massive coconut crabs could have consumed their remains and scattered their bones, making their bodies harder to find.
01:15:56
Okay. Those fuckers are big. I mean, it's such a creepy idea. The island had been inhabited in the past, but it was uninhabited at the time of this flight.
01:16:05
Despite this, intermittent radio signals were reported from that general area around the time they disappeared.
01:16:11
Interesting. As if the plane's radio had remained intact and accessible and they were calling for help.
01:16:17
On top of that, in 1940, bones are found on Nucamororo. They have since been lost, so the DNA has never been tested.
01:16:26
Come on. Yeah. But again, that island had been inhabited, so there weren't necessarily.
01:16:33
Searchers have found on that island a single shoe, a piece of aluminum, and a jar of freckle cream.
01:16:41
Freckle cream Which certainly points to a person and maybe a woman having been there and for what it's worth
01:16:49
Amelia Earhart had freckles that she was reportedly very self-conscious about Oh, first of all it breaks my heart that she is so self-conscious that she brings freckle cream on this like adventure
01:17:00
But then I'm like I wonder if that was like their SPF at the time Where it's like you had to cover your freckles with this cream and maybe it wouldn't get worse
01:17:07
Yeah, it was maybe like two for one where she's like, I need moisture because this wind's going to whip around my face.
01:17:13
Yeah, and it's like a sunscreen. It's an early sunscreen. Okay. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's her.
01:17:18
It's theirs. Could you imagine you're just on this island? It's mostly coconut crabs.
01:17:22
And then you're just like, ponds. Ponds. Cold cream. What if the cold cream was like a sponsor of the flight?
01:17:29
So she had to bring it. What if it was a sponsor of this podcast? Oh, my God. Freckle cream.
01:17:34
Freckle cream. Freckle clem. Amelia Earhart uses it and you can too. No, because now they love freckles so much that they have little freckle stamps.
01:17:43
And they have tattoos of freckles on your fucking face. The kids these days with their big butts and their freckles and their attitudes Okay Those items are never confirmed as belonging to either Fred or Amelia and modern efforts to search the surrounding ocean near that island have turned up nothing
01:18:01
Of course, many people think Amelia's plane simply ran out of fuel and crashed into the open ocean.
01:18:06
Sure. Because of the sheer size and depth of the Pacific, it hasn't been found. Amelia's sister Muriel thinks this is what happened.
01:18:15
quote, I'm not happy with some of the dramas about Amelia where they went into fiction.
01:18:22
So essentially, of course, that's how it always is. It's actually simple. The hard truth, which presumably was much harder for Muriel, Amelia's mother, Amy, and
01:18:33
her husband, George, is that we simply do not know what happened to her. George Putnam died in 1950 at age 62 of kidney problems.
01:18:42
Amy, Amelia's mother, died in 1962 at age 95, and her sister Muriel passed away in 1998 at the age of 98.
01:18:51
Wow. Yeah. Searchers continued to hunt for any signs of Amelia Earhart or her plane.
01:18:57
As recently as 2023, a deep-sea exploration group released an underwater sonar image of what they thought was the plane.
01:19:03
But in 2024, they discovered it was just a bunch of rocks. Oh, no. Uh-huh. Plane-shaped rocks.
01:19:11
All that in mind, instead of focusing on the mysterious ending of Amelia's story, we can always relish in what we do know about her life and her bold approach to living it.
01:19:19
As writer Anthony Brandt has said, quote, it wasn't that Amelia was willful, rather that she was free.
01:19:26
She was calm, fearless, cheerful in the face of life, and she attracted everybody.
01:19:31
She believed that women should live lives rich in experience and have careers if they possibly could.
01:19:37
Can you imagine? And she lived her belief. She was a remarkable human being, a historic figure, one of those people who skirting the farthermost edges of experience open up possibilities for us all. And that is the story of pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart.
01:19:56
Boom. High five for Amelia Earhart. Good job. Thank you. Wow. Had to be done. If you're in the fifth grade and you heard anything I said that was wrong, please write in at myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
01:20:10
Because we know you all have done reports on her. Yeah, we're open to corrections always.
01:20:15
Women should live free. It's insane. Can you imagine? But it really is the truth.
01:20:19
It is. That was its own foray, I feel like. I do too. Yeah. That was pretty great.
01:20:24
Yeah. Pretty great ending. Still send us forays and comment them. Please. That was it.
01:20:28
Yes. This week. We've done all the work we need to do. I agree. Great. Then stay sexy.
01:20:32
And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Me? This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:20:47
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi Our researchers are Mira McGlashan and Allie Elkin
01:20:57
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. And follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder.
01:21:03
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:21:08
Or you can watch us on YouTube. Search for My Favorite Murder, then like and subscribe.
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That's stitchfix.com slash murder. Goodbye. If audiobooks are your thing, or if you've been meaning to listen to more of them,
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It's a fun, easy way to discover your next great audiobook. Check out Earsay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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