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00:01:37
Own the dream. It's our one year bananaversary. It's been one year of bananas. That's all the strange news you can handle with fun stories and great guests like...
00:01:51
Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark from a little unknown podcast called My Favorite Murder on Exactly Right.
00:01:57
So if you like strange stuff and good friends having a fun time, listen to Bananas.
00:02:02
Check out the Bananas podcast. It's the Bananiversary one year birthday party episode.
00:02:07
It's the Bananiversary. Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstar.
00:02:31
That's Karen Kilgarith. And here we go. In week 3000 of The Quarantine. We're right near the end.
00:02:40
We're coming right up on the edge like Thelma and Louise. Grasping hands. Just going over the end.
00:02:49
You had a moment with Brad Pitt. It was excellent. He really was. I remember him entering screen when we saw that movie in the theater and going like, what?
00:03:03
I'm sorry. Excuse me? Legend of the Falls? That's what he is in, too, right? That's young.
00:03:09
What's up? He was in Legend of the Falls, too, right? He was later, yeah. Gorgeous child.
00:03:15
I mean, a gifted face. Absolutely. A gifted faced man Which is all you want in your youth
00:03:23
My peak Brad Pitt Has to be 12 Monkeys Which I just think is one of the best Still best movies
00:03:30
That's a good watch That's a great rewatch deep cut I feel like it's not given enough hurrah
00:03:37
That and then also I love fucking end of the world movies But Children of Men Yes
00:03:44
What's his name that's so sexy. Clive Owen. He's just like deep down by the world.
00:03:51
I mean, actually, you know what? I'm putting that on my list because I was scraping my brain.
00:03:57
It feels like we recorded the last episode yesterday. So I was like, and we talked
00:04:00
for so long on the top of that one that I was like, literally, I emptied the well of anything
00:04:07
I'm doing in my life. I feel like when we have long talks on one episode, it's guaranteed that the next one will be 20
00:04:15
minutes usually because we just blurred everything in our entire lives and brains out and then are
00:04:21
left panting on the shores of podcasting but i was going to say the i have a running list of movies
00:04:30
that if i'm laying on the couch and i'm not going to watch a swedish procedural i'm like okay but i
00:04:36
do have this very solid list which is a list from our staff meaning it's a list from this show it's
00:04:42
a list from kind of everything where it's just like, Oh, that's right. And children of men goes
00:04:47
right on that list because that thing is a tour de force. I remember making my dad watch it. And
00:04:54
I got so excited about that continuous shot where the they drive by and then the thing that's on
00:05:02
fire goes behind. And that whole thing is almost like a POV of if you're there too. And I kept
00:05:07
trying to explain to my dad how cool that was and how hard it was to do. Yeah. And he's like, all right, I get it.
00:05:14
You're in the movies. I was just like, but look, dad, dad, look at this thing. There's no cuts.
00:05:20
There's no cuts. There's no cuts. I will say too, that speaking of getting recommendations from this podcast, from the
00:05:27
advertisement for mayor of Easttown was really good. The first episode, of course it is.
00:05:34
It's Kate Winslet, but also Guy Pierce. No, Guy. Fieri? Fieri? It's Guy Fieri. He's the love interest.
00:05:45
Kate Winslet. Finally. There's a very sexy, sexy scene. No, the one from Hollywood.
00:05:52
Guy Pierce. Guy Pierce. Yeah. Guy Pierce You were right Who like oh he one of those men that you like how do you get hotter the older you get Gruff Because again gifted face Gifted face Gifted actor
00:06:05
But yes, he has those like he has a perfect nose. I cheekbones. Yeah. I guess that's the mask area.
00:06:14
Yeah. It doesn't matter with men what happens to the mask area. It's annoying. Scrape it up and women will like you more.
00:06:22
However, with women. Yeah. No, no. Kate Winslet looks incredible, though, too. Like, I think there is a similar age going on with them.
00:06:29
And they're both just like delivering the hotness. But Kate Winslet has always looked like a haunted portrait of a Victorian widow or something.
00:06:40
Yes. Like she is from Heavenly Creatures. Yes. Also, Melanie Linsky was the co-star and equally beautiful.
00:06:49
Kate Winslet, the more she went on, they just kept going, oh, cast her in a period piece.
00:06:54
Look at what she looks like in an empire waist dress. Like, insane. Hoist those fucking tits as high as they'll go.
00:07:03
Those milky, beautiful breasts. Excuse me. Wow. Jesus. Didn't know I was into that, but apparently I am.
00:07:10
But hey, if Merit gets it going for you, so be it. It does. And speaking of what you're speaking of, can I tell you a book I'm reading?
00:07:19
that halfway through, I cracked the fuck up. It takes place in the late 1800s. It's a true story, but it's like fictionalized in a really, really great way.
00:07:29
It feels like fiction. And it's about this woman who's a black widow. She kills everyone.
00:07:35
She comes over from Sweden. And so does her sister. No, don't say it. What? I read this.
00:07:43
I know. So halfway through, she kills her second husband And then marries a guy whose last name is Gunness, Guinness.
00:07:50
And I realized, wait, her first name is Belle. It's fucking Belle Guinness of Triflers Need Not Apply.
00:07:56
I didn't know that till halfway fucking through. I don't want to accuse you of anything.
00:08:03
Please do. But I have an idea that you might be doing to me right now what I did to you with the other book that I read.
00:08:14
And you were like, Hollywood Park. Can I get a witness? Is it am I talking into a black hole?
00:08:24
What's happening? But no, I read that book and I'm I'm pretty sure I recommended it.
00:08:28
But I might not. It's called In the Garden of Spite by Camilla Bruce. And it is Camilla riveting.
00:08:35
Fucking high five. Amazing. I knew the story. I did the story. And I still read it going.
00:08:43
What's going on? And I was like, hey. How about when she burned down her own candy store?
00:08:50
She burned everything to the ground. She burned everything to the ground. Everything.
00:08:54
And then so I don't know if it's part of the story, but it goes from chapter to chapter from Belle to her poor sister who doesn't want to believe any of it.
00:09:02
So that's what brings the story around. And you're just like, dude, your sister's a monster.
00:09:07
But it also tells of how she became that way, which I don't know if that's fictionalized as well, but it's also heartbreaking.
00:09:14
It's backstory that I wonder. I don't think you could put in that much detailed backstory and have it be.
00:09:20
I can't. I can't imagine. But who knows? But also, I think it so beautifully lays out what it would be like to be related to a sociopath.
00:09:30
Totally. Because it's the kind of thing where she just keeps going, no, she wouldn't.
00:09:34
I can't imagine. There's no way. There's no way. And at a time period when death was kind of a regular thing with children and people died very young, it wasn't like totally out of the ordinary.
00:09:44
But then there's so many actions that the sister's doing. That's so fun. Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:51
It's really intense. And the details. It was like all the details I wanted around that story that just you can't get from those historical stories.
00:10:00
Yeah. I can't put it down. In the Garden of Death. Spite. In the Garden of Spite.
00:10:05
In the Garden of Spite. Camilla Bruce. Excellent. Are you ready for the brag I'm going to drop on you then?
00:10:12
Always. Since I don't have anything else. I'm currently reading Moby Dick. But I'm doing it to be trendy.
00:10:22
But I'm reading the CliffsNotes version. It was like it was like something people started talking about on social media.
00:10:30
And then I was like, I should read that. I hear it like because people talk all the time about what beautiful writing is.
00:10:37
Every once in a while, there's someone in my Twitter feed that likes to retweet.
00:10:41
there's a Moby Dick bot that just will it'll just tweet like a phrase or a sentence from the book.
00:10:47
Oh, and there's amazing. It'll come up and you're just like, whoa, that's awesome. Yeah. So then I
00:10:53
was like, well, I should just read this. And it actually is a great, amazing read. Okay. Because
00:10:58
I don't like reading stuff out of guilt or out of like, oh, shit, I got to read that. No, it doesn't
00:11:03
work. It doesn't work like homework reading. Yeah, I won't do it. Speaking of homework reading,
00:11:08
this is just going right on to the next and you just pick up a history book look at this bullshit western sieve
00:11:15
instead of like writing them down I just brought all my books into the second bedroom with me
00:11:19
because I was like fuck it this one's called it's a workbook that my therapist suggested
00:11:23
called conquer your critical inner voice wow how's it going in that book well I haven't cracked it yet
00:11:32
but look my inner voice just keeps telling me you can't do it you can't do it it won't work on you
00:11:38
get in there see what happens you know that's oh yeah i do actually though wait speaking of this
00:11:46
that just made me think of because i so i had some shelves built no brag congratulations
00:11:52
i think i bragged about this though on the show before i know it important um it important it important to celebrate your wins wins Right And but I don have any books in the shelves Right Because I have a bunch of books
00:12:06
that I moved when I moved and then a bunch of them got moldy because the air conditioning
00:12:10
leaked. Right. I lost a bunch of books in the in the move. Heartbreaking. So I told my friend Paige that I like lost a bunch of books. She's like, OK, well, I'm going
00:12:21
to send you a couple starters. She's been sending me like beautiful coffee table books. Oh my God.
00:12:29
It like every day I'll get like a new thing from a different independent bookstore in a different
00:12:33
city. And then it's just like a Vivian Meyer coffee table book. Or I mean, she sent me a,
00:12:39
I was like, this is the greatest gift. Yes. They're like beautiful. They look amazing on
00:12:45
the shelf. It makes you look worldly and erudite and like well read. I haven't opened any of them.
00:12:52
I don't know what they're really about. There's a lot of like architecture books where I'm like,
00:12:56
yeah, I know architecture and Moby Dick motherfucker. Guess what? I can read. But at one point I go, and the cool thing is I can read all of them. And
00:13:09
then she just started laughing because I was like, purely I want them to fill up these shelves in a
00:13:13
very like yes stylish way as a tchotchke obsessed person i understand yeah you just don't want empty
00:13:20
shelves now it looks that looks bad fuck minimalism fuck it to hell so one of the books
00:13:26
she so she that got me started this really nice bunch of books thanks page but then i was like oh
00:13:35
it was her ideas were making me think of oh i need this i need this and one of the books is a book
00:13:42
by the cartoonist Linda Barry called What It Is. You told me about that. It's basically Linda Barry's creative writing book.
00:13:54
And if there's anyone out there who is interested in writing and getting into writing and kind of trying to figure out
00:14:02
what you want to write or how you want to write, get the book What It Is by Linda Barry.
00:14:07
And it will help you figure all those questions out and more. It's like it's also kind of like a workbook where there's she talks about different things and her different theories and then basically is like, now do this.
00:14:19
Now make a list of these 10 childhood memories that involve blank. She's the one that did the thing of you can't remember your phone number two phone numbers ago, but you can remember your first phone number from your first house.
00:14:32
You definitely suggested that to me when we were writing our first book and I was having an existential crisis and I definitely picked it up and read half of it, which was reflective in my chapters in our book.
00:14:45
But it was really helpful. It's really beautiful. It's well, and just those the things she has you do actually create nuggets of things you can then use for writing.
00:14:55
They're like little worlds that bloom because you like remember all that. Yeah, writing prompts.
00:15:01
I love those. right? It's very cool. Good. This is our lit episode. Can anyone handle it?
00:15:11
Oh, I'm off Instagram for the week. I shook Vince's hand and agreed that I wouldn't be on it,
00:15:17
but I will post on the animals page. I now have two animal pet Instagram accounts.
00:15:23
So you're on Instagram. How's it going? Comments and scrolling and any of that stuff.
00:15:30
It's great. I replaced the Instagram app button on my phone with like a printer or something.
00:15:39
And the amount of times I've absentmindedly scrolled and hit open the printer has like really taught me something about my automatic, you know, lizard brain need for stimulation.
00:15:52
And it's dopamine hits. Dopamine hits. Dopamine hits. That's what we want. Yeah.
00:15:57
That's the setup. I highly recommend it, everyone. And we'll see how it goes. I can't imagine it's not going to be positive.
00:16:04
How many days has it been? It was three o'clock on Saturday. It was a Saturday afternoon at three o'clock.
00:16:12
And today's Tuesday afternoon. So a couple days. And how much longer? You have to go till Saturday?
00:16:18
Yeah, go till Saturday. Maybe I'll go longer. People have gone longer, I guess, and thrived.
00:16:22
They have. Chrissy Teigen made it 24 days. You can do this. I'm no Chrissy Teigen, but I mean, but look, I think taking breaks from a thing that is not real and does not exist in reality is a very good idea to then spend time in reality.
00:16:40
I think like find the dopamine hits in reality, I guess, is the goal. That's a good point. And I'm also like when I have the urge to take a picture or video of something, usually my pets, I think, why don't you just enjoy it as is right now?
00:16:55
without because I do it and I have all these expectations of like, do something cute, do that
00:16:59
thing you just did. And they never do what they just did before I hit the camera. And then I saw
00:17:03
I miss it completely. I think a lot of people probably with kids have the same issue where it's
00:17:08
like, just remember this and how lovely it is. Yeah. And then you're not always going,
00:17:13
what will so and so think of it? It's just like, you have, you're just kind of in life,
00:17:18
which I think now seems social media makes it seem like that's a little dimmer than if
00:17:25
everybody else was consuming it. Definitely. What else have you? How are you? Well, you know
00:17:33
what I was going to tell you about was, so I think I've told you this already, but my Canadian friend,
00:17:39
Jacob Tierney, who's from Lederkani, he and I were for a little while doing, we would do movie nights.
00:17:46
Oh. And the recurring theme of the movie night was Gerard Butler. What? The French actor?
00:17:54
no that Gerard de Perdue Also a great actor Gerard Butler. Thespian. You know him.
00:18:09
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he is, so, you know, hits. I think we started at 300 where I was like, can we just watch 300?
00:18:15
Oh, I think it helps people. And he was like, of course. The most recent one, and the reason I'm bringing this up is because I really was scraping my brain for that legit recommendation.
00:18:24
But I was like, what is the most what's the movie you've watched recently that you genuinely enjoyed?
00:18:29
I already recommended Minari. So, like, if you haven't seen Minari, I'll re-recommend it because.
00:18:34
OK, clearly. I don't lie in the Oscars. Don't lie. It's a beautiful, beautiful, warm, lovely film.
00:18:42
But also you could say a lot of the same things that you might say about the beautiful film Minari about Gerard Butler's newest hit film, Greenland, because it is a movie.
00:18:54
that about the world ending and there's something about that these days like you were saying before
00:19:00
it's so satisfying yeah like it's emergency there's bad shit going on and it's a survival
00:19:07
situation yeah that thing where it's also entertaining when you have one single focus
00:19:12
and that's to survive the awfulness that has happened because of decades of the shit that
00:19:19
led up to it. I feel so satisfied with those kinds of movies. You know, survival. It's good. I would
00:19:25
recommend, although it's going to cost you $20, which is four people going to the movies for $5, or two
00:19:31
people going to the movies for $10, or you going for $20. Well, what if three people and a child
00:19:37
go? That's $17.50. A matinee? You're still getting a bargain. It's a bargain. Okay. Thank you, because I wasn't
00:19:45
going to do it until you broke that down, and you're right. Do you have anything else?
00:19:49
Are we scraped clean? I really don't. I've actually also, I haven't been on Twitter in a while just because it's all very bad.
00:19:56
Yeah, that's good. Look at us thriving. The anti-social media plan, I think, is good.
00:20:03
It's good to take breaks and practice taking breaks. Definitely. I'm all for it.
00:20:07
Sacred pause. I don't think that's what my therapist means when she tells me about that,
00:20:12
but I think that's what we should call it, maybe. Hold on. Let me look that up real quick.
00:20:16
it's oh it's tara brock's thing and it's a pause in the midst of meditation to let go of thoughts
00:20:23
and reawaken our attention to the breath to discontinue whatever we're doing thinking
00:20:28
talking walking writing planning but worrying and become wholeheartedly present attentive
00:20:33
often physically still that's what we're doing what's up tara brock you mean right now
00:20:39
no I mean with social media that's what you're doing we can but it's not great podcasting
00:20:48
we can and I don't want to argue I don't want to reward you for doing that but should we do exactly right corner and
00:20:55
very exciting news that we have to announce yeah very exciting news second as a build up
00:21:01
yes great so this week there are lots of great stuff happening on the network the exactly right network by the way um but just some of the some of the great ones are
00:21:13
svu fan worship podcast entitled that's messed up this is the 20th episode this week it went up on
00:21:22
tuesday 4 20 and in celebration karen lisa are joined by none other than bob saget uh because
00:21:31
he was in season eight of SVU and he's there this week. It's just the bookings. They're killing it.
00:21:38
The bookings are so good. Bob Rick and Saget. And as a, as a fan of that show, cause I have watched, I believe I've watched every single
00:21:48
one of them at least twice. You mean full house? Yes. Um, including the, the current one.
00:21:56
Oh, wow. I remember Nora going through a full house phase and me just being like, let me know when you're done.
00:22:01
I don't want you to talk to me about this anymore. Do you know that I'm actually friends with Jodi Sweeten on Instagram, who's a murderino?
00:22:09
She played Stephanie Tanner, the often suffering middle child, but she was my age.
00:22:15
And so all her choreographed jazz dancing that she did on the show, I was like obsessed with.
00:22:23
And now she like reached out and she's a murderino and we're friends on Instagram.
00:22:26
Little Georgia would fucking lose her mind Yeah Invite little Georgia in For some sacred pauses
00:22:36
And some jazz hands And some step ball changes Bananas Our fucking hilarious Funny news podcast
00:22:46
Hosted by Kurt and Scotty Is celebrating their one year anniversary By having guests
00:22:52
Karen and Georgia on None other than me and Karen that was the most fun it was so fun that I had a migraine
00:23:00
when we started and by the end of the episode I had laughed it away it was just incredible
00:23:05
and I just love those boys and their fans and the podcast so check out Bananas it's amazing that it's been a year
00:23:14
it went really fast and it feels to me like they've always had that podcast and they've always been doing it
00:23:20
they're just such naturals it's really cool Oh, on Do You Need a Ride this week, Chris Fairbanks and I have the legendary comedian Janelle James, who is truly the funniest.
00:23:34
Just a joy to talk to. It's just a fun one. I mean, I feel weird plugging my own show, but I love Janelle so much.
00:23:43
And it was just we all were just laughing our asses off the entire time. It was really fun.
00:23:48
Can I tell you a quick side, exactly right, family side story? Vince has been golfing a lot with friends and he just golfed with Chris Fairbanks the other day, which is...
00:24:00
Chris talked about it on our show. Oh! And then Murder Squad has a story about how in 2017, three women were found dead within a three block radius in Lumbertown, North Carolina.
00:24:13
And so there's all these ties to drug addiction and the deaths are undetermined.
00:24:19
Two more women disappeared. And so Paul and Billy look into whether the same offender could be responsible for all of them.
00:24:25
So it's incredible work they're doing. please follow and check out the murder squad, which you're probably already doing.
00:24:31
But we just love that. And those guys. Wow. Three block radius. That's not good.
00:24:36
Nope. That's not good. Nope. Oh, yeah. And then I just was going to say on I said no gifts this week.
00:24:43
Bridger has Cola Scola, the great and friend of the of the family, Cola Scola. It's just such a hilarious episode.
00:24:51
they have the funniest conversation and just delightful, like funny, like witty banter.
00:24:58
You know, I feel like that's one thing in the quarantine we've all lost out on. Just kind of like superficial, almost like between between strangers or light acquaintances,
00:25:10
banter, nothing deep. And it's just it's just a great one. Those two are just comedy geniuses. So I'm they are quite a combination.
00:25:21
And they're quite a combination. It's great. It's a great episode. Cool. All right.
00:25:26
That's our biz. Also, real quick, in the My Favorite Murder store, we have a bunch of toxic masculinity
00:25:32
ruins the party again, shirts and tank tops, classic and brand new styles. And the spring cleaning clearance sale is on now.
00:25:41
And first access goes to the fan cult members. So check that out before everything sells out.
00:25:46
And now. And now. The big announcement. that we've been waiting for truly months and months to tell you guys about.
00:25:55
It's going to be out of the blue. We haven't even hinted about this one. We've kept it under wraps.
00:26:00
That's right. Everyone knows the great Nick Terry who's been making MFM animated cartoons
00:26:06
of the little clips of the episodes for us voluntarily on his own time out of the goodness of his heart.
00:26:14
Mm hmm. He's been making listeners and us laugh. And he's been making my favorite murder meme dreams come true.
00:26:23
And just making these characters out of the just the words we say that just are so delightful.
00:26:30
And I'm sure you guys have seen them all. But guess what? We are. We have. We are.
00:26:36
Officially partnered with Nick Terry. And now the Exactly Right Network has their own YouTube channel where all 23 of Nick Terry's MFM animated episodes are going to live.
00:26:51
Plus, plus to entice you guys over to please subscribe. a brand new episode, never before seen episode of MFM animated is going up today, Thursday,
00:27:05
April 22nd. And it's called Snake Den. And we've seen it and are overjoyed. We can't wait for you
00:27:12
guys to see this. It's just a whole new ball game with Nick Terry at bat. And we're so excited to be
00:27:19
in the outfield catching those home runs. That doesn't, that's not how. The least baseball
00:27:26
a group of people doing baseball stuff and going straight to the top. But you're right in the way that I don't first, I don't think I've seen one that I didn't
00:27:40
adore and laugh so hard at. And I've talked about this where we I have caught myself showing people
00:27:47
MFM animated, completely realizing what a lunatic, like monster diva I look like of like
00:27:56
look at my thing. It's not. It's like, how did he do that? Totally. It's like, we just love him.
00:28:03
You don't realize that it's not our words. It's the, it's the jokes and the like visuals that he puts in that make it what they are.
00:28:12
And so fucking funny and beautiful. And these characters he does. I mean, yeah, he's so talented.
00:28:17
He's so talented. And we're together going to put out a bunch of new merch and it's just going to be a really
00:28:24
cool addition to the MFM family and Exactly Right family. So welcome. Yes. So welcome, Nick Terry.
00:28:31
We are so glad to have you and we adore you. Thank you for all your art. And there's going to be a brand new one every month from now on.
00:28:39
So please subscribe to the YouTube page. It's a youtube.com slash exactly right media.
00:28:47
Yeah. And we're happy to be on YouTube as well. So hoping a lot of content will be added to that in the coming time.
00:28:58
Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:29:05
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary,
00:29:13
massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science. and what happens when you wake up alone very far from earth.
00:29:21
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat
00:29:26
and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent?
00:29:31
And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have
00:29:38
in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me,
00:29:46
and I left it on the mic. That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like,
00:29:51
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See full terms at MintMobile.com. Okay. Well, I'm really excited to tell the story this week of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose
00:31:13
anti-Nazi youth movement. So I got information from Holocaust Resistance, The White Rose, A Lesson in Dissonant by Jacob G. Hornberger, an article called Sophie Shaw and the White Rose by Tanya B. Spitzer, a website called A Mighty Girl by Catherine.
00:31:34
It's just that Catherine, I couldn't find her last name. The website Holocaust Research Project dot org, an article by Aaron Blackmore and an article by Guido Factler.
00:31:45
And also my research was done this week by my new researcher, Haley Gray. So thank you so much.
00:31:54
OK, in 1933, as we all know, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime took control of Germany and immediately started to take away freedoms.
00:32:04
And that included controlling young people in order to make sure that they believed in the Nazi ideology so that they could carry it on through generations.
00:32:13
And in schools, textbook had to be approved by the Nazis. And a lot of the teachers were actually active members of the Nazi organizations. So they kept an eye on the goings on of parents through their students by asking the kids like innocent seeming questions about their parents and their actions, while actually then alerting authorities to any perceived infractions. And I think they got rewarded for that. So any little thing that they saw going wrong, they would, you know, tell.
00:32:42
Any teacher who wasn't down with the Nazis or refused to incriminate parents via their students or teach the Nazi approved curriculum were fired or sent away to detention camps.
00:32:53
The Nazis attempted to teach German children that Aryans, quote Aryans, were superior to Jews, disabled people, people of color, as well as Roman gypsies, which my family were Roman gypsies and Jews.
00:33:07
So that was rough. um Aryan kids were even encouraged by their teachers to bully Jewish students
00:33:14
can you imagine fucking adults saying go bully children it's just absurd and inhumane
00:33:23
one Nazi textbook used for very young children was called trust no fox on his green heath and
00:33:31
no Jew on his oath and it attempted to spread the word that Jewish people would murder Germans if
00:33:37
given the chance. Aryan kids aged 10 to 17 were also encouraged to join the Hitler Youth, or for
00:33:43
girls, it was the League of German Girls, and all other youth groups and organizations were banned.
00:33:50
The boys are trained to be soldiers, and the girls are trained to be mothers and housewives,
00:33:54
and both are trained to be loyal to Hitler. But not every young person joins the Nazi-approved
00:34:00
youth groups. Some join anti-Nazi groups like the Idleweiss Pirates, who are comprised mostly of
00:34:07
young workers and teenagers. And the group spreads Nazi slogans. They hide deserters, they assault
00:34:13
Nazis. And in 1944, later, they even killed the chief of the secret police, which then unfortunately
00:34:20
leads to 12 members being publicly hanged. Another anti-Nazi youth group is the Swing Kids.
00:34:27
they form after the Nazis start banning swing music. You know, jazz had been popular in the 20s in Germany,
00:34:35
and the social political atmosphere had grown darker in the 30s. So the new widely popular form of jazz, swing music, made its way across the Atlantic.
00:34:45
But soon the Nazis, you know, realized that the music had black roots, its perceived Jewishness and lack of restraint,
00:34:53
and the dance moves even began to raise alarms with the government. So technically, the movement wasn't a political one, the swing kids, aside from not wanting to be controlled or become Nazis themselves.
00:35:05
The swing kids did raise red flags with Nazi authorities as they tended to welcome Jewish teenagers into their groups and stand up for them.
00:35:12
And the Nazis started rolling out anti-jazz propaganda and rules. And then certain artist records are banned and Germans aren't allowed to listen to foreign radio stations.
00:35:23
But another much more political and anti-Nazi resistance group that formed was called the White Rose, and one of the key members was named Sophie Scholl.
00:35:33
So let me tell you about her. Sophia Magdalena Scholl was born in May of 1921 to an upper middle class family in the south of Germany.
00:35:43
When she was 10 years old, she and her family moved to a town called Ulm, where her father worked as a state auditor and tax consultant and was active in politics.
00:35:52
after the Nazis came to power in January 1933 Sophie along with her four siblings enthusiastically joined the National Socialist Youth Organization So they were all into it despite their parents open disdain for the Nazi movement which they viewed as evil and unchristian
00:36:11
Meanwhile, by 1936, any alternative youth group is banned. And then as a teenager, Sophie believed in the ideals of the movement.
00:36:20
And anyway, someone's interested specifically on the focus of nature and communal experiences.
00:36:26
But also, as did the majority of Aryan Germans, the Scholl siblings believe that Adolf Hitler was leading Germany and the German people back to greatness from, you know, their trouncing in World War I.
00:36:38
Sophie joined the League of German Girls and she quickly rose in their ranks. But her parents, especially her father, became even more critical of the Nazi Party.
00:36:47
He viewed the developments in Germany with horror and though not the norm of the time, because any vocal criticism was dangerous.
00:36:56
Robert, the father, discussed his views with his kids, you know, in their house and told them about the evils of fascism.
00:37:04
And he said he said to have told them, quote, all I want for you is to walk straight and free through life, even when it's hard.
00:37:11
In 1937, several of Sophie's siblings were arrested for being members of a non-Nazi youth group.
00:37:18
And this was a turning point for Sophie's life and ideals. And that kind of began the process that eventually would turn her from a proud supporter of the Nazis to an active resistance fighter.
00:37:31
On September 1st, 1939, Hitler invades Poland. And then two days later, France and Britain declare war on Germany.
00:37:39
Sophie's older brothers and her boyfriend were forced to fight on the front lines.
00:37:44
And then so after graduating high school in the spring of 1940, she started an apprenticeship to become a kindergarten teacher.
00:37:51
She wanted to study biology and philosophy eventually, but quickly her dreams were quashed because in 1941, a policy dictated that she had to serve six months of auxiliary war service.
00:38:06
So she's a free thinker. She's a nature lover. And she hates being in the war service.
00:38:12
So she finds solace in her own spirituality, led by the writings of theologian Augustine of Hippo,
00:38:20
and writing down her own thoughts as her doubts about the regime continue to grow.
00:38:24
In May 1942, she moves to Munich to start studying biology and philosophy. And there, her older brother, Hans, is now a medical student at the same university.
00:38:36
And he had already begun to actively question the system, along with some of his friends, including Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmoral, Willie Graf, and their psychology and philosophy professor, Kurt Huber.
00:38:51
So while serving on the Eastern Front, the group of boys had learned firsthand about the crimes committed in Poland and Russia.
00:38:58
And they had witnessed the violence with their own eyes, including witnessing the murder of Jewish civilians by SS troops and the mass graves they were buried in.
00:39:08
And that same year, Sophie's father was sent to prison after he was overheard calling Hitler, quote, the scourge of humanity.
00:39:16
So knowing that open dissent wasn't an option. In June 1942, they began printing and distributing an anonymous leaflet in and around Munich called the White Rose.
00:39:28
And they don't know for sure, but it might be based on the fact that there was a flower on the front of the leaflet.
00:39:34
It called upon their fellow students and the German public to act against the Nazi regime, which is dangerous in and of itself and just completely.
00:39:43
Insane. Yeah. The essays inside it said that it was time for Germans to rise up and resist the tyranny of their own government.
00:39:51
And at the bottom of the essay, they asked that the public make as many copies of the leaflet as possible and distribute them.
00:39:57
And their paper and ink were rationed at the time. So even asking German public to do that was just an act of defiance in itself.
00:40:06
It was the first time that internal dissent against the Nazi regime had surfaced in Germany.
00:40:12
So not wanting to stay passive anymore and finding out about her brother's involvement in the movement, Sophie joins.
00:40:20
So at first they only sent pamphlets via mail. They would get random addresses through the phone book and just send out thousands.
00:40:27
And they also sent them to professors, booksellers and authors. The members of the White Rose advocated nonviolent resistance.
00:40:36
However, they advocated sabotage of Hitler's war machine and gave clear advice in their pamphlets on how to take steps to do so.
00:40:45
So good. Yeah. One quote is sabotage in armament plants and war industries, sabotage at all gatherings, rallies, public ceremonies and organizations of the National Socialist Party.
00:40:57
More essays were written and leaflets covertly distributed. Also, they started to use graffiti to spread their word.
00:41:05
And it started appearing on the streets and buildings all over Munich, reading down with Hitler, Hitler, the mass murderer and freedom.
00:41:12
So as a woman, Sophie was able to play a key role in the distribution of pamphlets because as a female, she was less likely to be randomly stopped and searched by the SS than her male members of the White Rose, which is really cool and brave.
00:41:29
In the end, the group were able to distribute thousands of leaflets reaching households all over Germany.
00:41:34
And despite the Gestapo's best efforts, it was unable to catch the perpetrators and they had got out six pamphlets by the time their luck ran out.
00:41:42
So on February 18, 1943, as Sophie and Hans were distributing pamphlets at the University of Munich campus, they had covertly distributed most of the flyers.
00:41:54
They only had a small stack left And they went to the main atrium and climbed the staircase at the top floor And there famously Sophie flung the last remaining leaflets into the air
00:42:07
However, the drop was seen by a janitor. He happened to be a staunch supporter of the Nazis and Hans and Sophie were immediately arrested by the Gestapo.
00:42:17
the draft for the seventh pamphlet was still in han's bag and it had christopher prop's name on it
00:42:26
so he was arrested that same day so on february 22nd just four days after their arrest their trial
00:42:32
began no witnesses were called none of the defendants were permitted to give testimony
00:42:37
to defend their actions however they freely admitted to everything but they also attempted
00:42:42
to take responsibility fully in order to protect fellow members of the group. So the only statement on record belongs to Sophie, who regarding the group's actions
00:42:53
declared in court, quote, somebody after all had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others.
00:43:00
They just don't dare express themselves as we did. In the middle of the trial, their father, Robert Scholl, forced his way into the courtroom,
00:43:09
saying that he was there to defend his children. He was seized. He was forcibly removed.
00:43:16
And but the entire courtroom heard him shout, quote, one day there will be another kind of justice.
00:43:22
One day they will go down in history. The judge declared the three defendants guilty of treason.
00:43:29
Obviously, it was bullshit trial and that they would be sentenced to death by guillotine, which is to take place immediately that same day.
00:43:37
The guards allowed Hans and Sophie to have one last visit with their parents. According to writer Richard Hanser, who was a psychological warfare specialist in Europe during World War Two.
00:43:49
Sophie told her parents, quote, what we did will cause waves. Really quick. Can I tell you she's 21 years old at this time?
00:43:56
Whoa, I know. So it's hard to listen to that. It's like I'm not riffing with you or whatever, because this first of all, this parallels the movie Jojo Rabbit.
00:44:10
it so much that I almost feel like Taika Waititi or whoever I think he wrote it must have known
00:44:18
this story. Absolutely. Must have. Yeah. Because it's so similar. But the idea that you could do
00:44:24
anything when the Nazi regime is in power. I mean, it was so out of control. It's just like
00:44:31
the fact that they did anything is horrifyingly scary. Yeah. Like having that piece of paper
00:44:36
in your hand, even if you didn't weren't the one that printed it or wrote it. Definitely.
00:44:40
So in Munich's Stadelheim prison, both Hans Scholl and Christian Probst were beheaded.
00:44:46
And it said right before his death, Hans shouted, long live freedom. One observer described that Sophie walked to her death, quote, without turning a hair, without flinching.
00:44:58
And then they said that her expression was described as, quote, clear. And her smile was fresh and unforced with something in it that her parents read as triumph.
00:45:07
and at just 21 years old Sophie Scholl was then beheaded. After their execution the Gestapo
00:45:16
tracked down and tried and executed other members of White Rose including Alex Schmorrow who was 25
00:45:23
Willie Graff who was 25 Kurt Huber the teacher who was 49 and other students who participated
00:45:30
were either executed or sent to concentration camps. Can you imagine being so afraid of 20 year
00:45:35
olds that you have to send them away or behead them. It's just says so much more about them than
00:45:41
the. It's what they were doing to every single person, except for literally like the person that
00:45:48
was standing next to them wearing the SS uniform. It's what they did to everybody. It's insane.
00:45:54
So after their deaths, a copy of the sixth pamphlet was smuggled out of Germany and delivered to the
00:45:58
allies. It was retitled the manifesto of the students of Munich and allied forces drop millions
00:46:05
of copies. Whoa. Uh-huh. And they spread their words. Do you know when, what year?
00:46:12
It's just after they were put to death. And that was done in 1943. So, and the war ended in 45.
00:46:20
So, somewhere between there. After the war, verdicts like those against the Scholls were
00:46:26
overturned. And Germany now considers the White Rose members to be heroes. And in fact, today,
00:46:31
there's a square at the University of Munich that is named after Hans and Sophie Scholl.
00:46:36
And I know, and there's streets, squares, and schools all over Germany named in honor of the
00:46:42
members of the White Rose. In total, there were only six leaflets ever published and distributed
00:46:49
by Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends. Four were under the title The White Rose,
00:46:54
and two were titled Leaflets of the Resistance. Prison officials later remarked on Sophie's
00:47:00
courage as she walked to her execution. It said her last words were, quote, such a fine sunny day
00:47:07
and I have to go. But what does my death matter if through us thousands of people are awakened
00:47:13
and stirred to action? And that is the story of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose.
00:47:21
Wow. And there's a couple of books that you can pick up about it. You know, there's many
00:47:25
documentaries and books. There's one called The White Rose. There's one called A Noble Treason
00:47:31
and one called An Honorable Defeat. There's so much more information to be had about resistance
00:47:35
groups and just so much to learn from them. Yeah, it makes me proud. Yeah, it should. It's incredible. And also it's a beautiful symbol of how small gestures actually
00:47:52
can be very big. Yeah. And especially in a situation like that. Yeah. And bravery matters.
00:47:58
Bravery matters and... Anyone can do these little gestures. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn.
00:48:07
I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary.
00:48:21
Massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:48:28
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
00:48:36
And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:48:39
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:48:49
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:48:55
That's great. Because it served the story. people will say like oh my god i cried at the end it's like yeah dude me too
00:49:01
listen to ear say the audible and iheart audiobook club on the iheart radio app or wherever you get
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Data accurate as of 220-26. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone
00:50:13
can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities.
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So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to mint mobile today i'm told it's super easy to do
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at mintmobile.com slash switch up front payment of 45 for three-month plan equivalent to 15
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per month required intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available taxes
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and fees extra default terms at mintmobile.com are you ready for a survival story oh always and
00:50:44
forever right this is a story that actually jay found for me on the website atlas obscura which i
00:50:51
love and so good uh we use lots on this show because um they don't only do lists of amazing
00:51:01
interesting places that you can go to around the world but there's often very cool um stories
00:51:10
attached to them and so this was one of them and it was it was um on their website recently so thank
00:51:16
you atlas obscura for all you do for all of us if you've never used that website get over there
00:51:20
because it's amazing. Jay is the one who did the research. He also used Wikipedia,
00:51:29
a website called LitsiteAlaska.org. And there's information from the book written by Jennifer
00:51:36
Niven called Ada Blackjack, A True Story of Survival in the Arctic. So we'll start here.
00:51:43
When 23-year-old Inupiat woman, Ada Blackjack, agreed to join a 1921 Arctic expedition to a remote icy island just north of Siberia, she was skeptical.
00:51:56
She was told the four explorers making up the rest of her crew would be able to hunt enough food to sustain them for the two-year trip.
00:52:03
And she was there to cook and sew clothes out of the hides and furs left over from that hunting.
00:52:10
But one year into the trip, things go so terribly wrong that now she's facing isolation, starvation and death, possibly by polar bear.
00:52:21
Oh, no. So let me give you a little background first. Ada Blackjack is born Ada DeLutak on May 10th, 1898, in the small Inupiat settlement of Spruce Creek, Alaska.
00:52:35
The next closest town is a little village called Solomon, which is eight miles southwest of Spruce Creek.
00:52:42
And Ada is born the same year that the Alaskan Gold Rush begins. So a few thousand gold-seeking settlers move into Solomon.
00:52:51
The village developed significantly, and by 1904, it's grown into a town with a few saloons, a post office, a phone service,
00:52:59
and a boat that takes daily journeys to the nearest city, which is Nome, Alaska.
00:53:06
So in 1906, when Ada is, she's only eight years old, and she has about, they think, either three or four sisters.
00:53:16
Her father gets gravely ill after eating, like, bad meat, and her mother's away on a trip.
00:53:23
So it leaves her and her sisters to deal with this emergency by themselves. They don't have the resources necessary to help him in Spruce Creek or even in Solomon.
00:53:33
So they decide to wrap up their father in skins to keep him warm, put him on a dog sled and try to make it the 30 mile trip to the hospital that's in Nome.
00:53:44
But before they can get there, Ada's father dies. And with nothing left to do, the girls have to turn around and bring their father's body back home.
00:53:54
So not long after that in 1913 the thriving village of Solomon is hit by a terrible onslaught of coastal storms There winds up to 60 miles an hour
00:54:05
There's waves 40 feet high. And many of the town's resources are wiped out entirely, including the railroad tracks.
00:54:13
And then just five years later, a flu epidemic sweeps the area, wiping out even more people.
00:54:18
So Solomon's population dwindles from roughly a thousand people down to just 300 living in Solomon and Spruce Creek combined.
00:54:28
Wow. And then just before the flu epidemic, Ada's mom decides that she's going to send her to live with Methodist missionaries in Nome so that she can get an education.
00:54:42
So there she's taught to read and write English up to a third grade level. She learns basic math.
00:54:47
She's also taught practical household tasks like sewing, cooking, you know, cooking Methodist style, washing clothes, ironing, basic like home ec stuff.
00:55:00
And of course, she's taught the Bible because they're missionaries. So even though her education is useful and practical for growing up in Nome, she's away from her family.
00:55:10
She's cut off from her culture and she basically loses her cultural identity in the process of this education.
00:55:19
So she remains in the city of Nome and she gets part time work sewing clothes for local minors.
00:55:25
And people know her to be a sweet woman who has a real love for like fashion. and she likes to buy nice clothes that she can afford with her meager wages.
00:55:37
But she's very shy and private. But those who she does open up to find her very charming.
00:55:43
And she's also very small. She's just under five feet tall. So in 1914, when she's just 16 years old,
00:55:50
she marries a hunter and a dog musher named Jack Blackjack. They move out of the city to a remote part of Seward Peninsula,
00:55:59
and they have three kids, but only one survives past infancy, a little boy that they named Bennett.
00:56:06
But this is not a loving household. Jack is an abusive husband. He routinely beats and starves
00:56:12
Ada until he finally deserts his wife and his son just before her 23rd birthday in 1921.
00:56:20
So she's finally free from an abusive husband, but Ada is left with nothing. She's completely broke and she has nowhere else to go.
00:56:30
So she takes her five-year-old child and she walks the 40 miles to Nome to go back to her mother's house.
00:56:38
But Bennett is sick. He has tuberculosis and he can't walk for very long. So Ada carries him for most of that journey.
00:56:48
And once she gets back to Nome, she finds work sewing and cleaning. but it isn't enough to take care of herself, her mother and her sick son together, especially because of his illness.
00:56:59
And then she has to make the heartbreaking decision to take Bennett to an orphanage so that they can take care of him and tend to his tuberculosis, which she just can't do.
00:57:09
She knows it's what's best for him, but she also knows that she has to find a way to make money soon so she can bring her son back home.
00:57:17
And that's when she hears around town that there's a crew of explorers looking for a native woman to cook and sew for them on an upcoming expedition.
00:57:28
And they're paying well. So Ada is determined to get this job. So let me tell you a little bit about these explorers.
00:57:35
During the late 1800s and into the 1920s, rural America is swept with a popular trend called Chautauqua traveling shows.
00:57:44
and basically they were like a traveling circus except for these crews would go from town to town,
00:57:51
set up big tents, charge townspeople a small fee, and then the attractions were teachers,
00:57:58
musicians, preachers, showmen, scientists, and it was basically with the goal of bringing the arts,
00:58:04
culture, and education to America's most remote communities. And one such a speaker on the
00:58:12
Chautauqua circuit is a charismatic Icelandic American explorer named Vilhalmer Stefansson.
00:58:21
So this guy dazzles his audience with his tales about venturing by sea to the Arctic wilds and
00:58:26
hunting and surviving in the harsh, desolate landscapes. And people love him. He draws huge
00:58:32
crowds and he inspires young boys everywhere to follow his adventures. And one such boy is a boy
00:58:41
named Fred Maurer of Ohio, who always had a strong yearning for adventure, to the point where he,
00:58:49
when he's 18 years old, joins the crew of a ship. And shortly after that, in 1906,
00:58:55
Stephenson, he visits this ship that Fred's working on as a guest, and the two meet and
00:59:02
they start a friendship. So Stephenson is convinced that there's an entire undiscovered
00:59:08
continent further north, and he wants to be the one to find it. So in 1912, he recruits Fred as a
00:59:14
crew member for his 1913 Canadian Arctic expedition aboard a ship called the Carluk.
00:59:22
But what was supposed to be a journey to discover new lands up north aboard the Carluk becomes a
00:59:28
nightmare when the ship gets trapped in an ice floe just one month after setting sail. And if
00:59:35
That's not bad enough. Stephenson abandons his crew and makes his way to the Alaskan mainland
00:59:42
by foot across the ice while everyone else is left to fend for themselves on the harsh Wrangel Island,
00:59:50
which is just north of Siberia. Goodbye. Isn that like a huge no when you captaining anything to fucking later date your entire crew I mean any gal who seen Titanic knows you got to go down with that ship when you the captain
01:00:08
And this guy bailed and left everybody. In fact, out of the 25 crew members, 11 of them die on this island.
01:00:17
Fred Marr is one of these survivors. So he actually got to the island and then ended up living.
01:00:23
he's incredibly disillusioned he's sick and starving and he goes back home to ohio to recover
01:00:29
now the the the um remaining crew members and the canadian government all assume that stefanson is
01:00:38
dead um because he just walked off onto the ice and away he's getting cigarettes he's just gonna
01:00:45
grab some yeah right i'll be right back brb guys two years later another ship's crew spot steffanson
01:00:53
on the icy beach of cape kellett canada so he's he just found a spot and just started living there
01:01:01
he'd been living in the arctic on his own the whole time and upon his rescue he tells crew member
01:01:07
lorne knight who will return later it's just as easy to live up here as it is down home if you know
01:01:14
how. Lauren eventually ends up joining Stephenson's crew as well. So clearly he was very charismatic
01:01:21
and smooth talker. Okay. So Fred Maher, the guy that goes to Ohio that lived through the
01:01:29
abandonment, when he gets back to full health, he forgets all about that because he just wants
01:01:38
to go be an explorer and an adventure again. So he goes, meets back up with Stephenson on the
01:01:46
Chautauqua circuit, and he becomes his opening act. In 1920, Stephenson is called away from his
01:01:54
Chautauqua show. So he has Lorne Knight take his place. And so Knight and Fred Marr becomes fast
01:02:01
friends. And then a third young man, 19-year-old Milton Harvey Gale, joins Stephenson's team as
01:02:08
as the show Projectionist. So now he has this little band of employees that think he's the greatest and follow him around
01:02:15
and hang on his every word. Even though Stephenson never set foot on Wrangell Island himself,
01:02:22
that's just where the crew ended up, it becomes this huge point of interest for him.
01:02:28
And basically, he's decided that he wants to claim it for England. Okay. Stephenson talks about wanting to go to Wrangell and his three young employees are all completely down to join him.
01:03:14
The problem is that given his prior shipwreck with the Calic, Canada does not want to fund this trip.
01:03:21
And realizing that no one in his current crew is British or Canadian, which is the way he thinks he's going to get money from Canada.
01:03:28
He recruits a Canadian student. in March 1921, he sends a letter to the University of Toronto asking for a suitable student to join
01:03:41
their ranks. And they send 20-year-old Alan Rudyard Crawford, who hasn't graduated,
01:03:47
doesn't have any experience, but is very smart. He's an excellent student, and he really wants to be an explorer. So that's fine for Stephens.
01:03:54
Do you think everyone hated him? And they were just like, take old, what's his face over there?
01:03:58
I mean, it would be a good way. It would be like, oh, a two year Arctic exploration. You know who has to go.
01:04:05
You know who's really smart. Unfortunately, his idea of pulling in a Canadian to get Canadian money, that doesn't work.
01:04:17
Stephenson can't get government funding, but he is dead set on getting there. So he pays for the whole trip himself. And he figures once the island is claimed, Canada or Britain will pay him for it.
01:04:31
So in the summer of 1921, Stephenson and his crew hash out the plan. They're going to meet up in Nome and they're going to set sail for Wrangell Island from Nome, Alaska.
01:04:41
Because of his status as a Canadian citizen, Crawford, the 20 year old, is named the captain of the ship.
01:04:48
Oh, no experience doesn't know anything about it. But that's just so a Canadian is involved in Canada.
01:04:56
Canada will give him money. He has a big old red flag. Yeah, it's not a great plan for Arctic exploration, I don't think.
01:05:04
I'm not an expert. But it's only a name because Lorne Knight is the one with actual sailing experience.
01:05:11
And he's also almost 30. So he'll really be this ship's captain. the most shocking piece of information that I found reading this story is that Stephenson
01:05:22
will not actually be joining them he's not going to go on the trip he's just sending the boys
01:05:28
he makes so much money off of his books and off of the speeches on the Chicago circuit that he
01:05:34
decides he doesn't need to go on any more expeditions so he just sends other people
01:05:40
for real it's he's the worst yeah um stevenson advises the group that they only need to bring
01:05:48
six months worth of food and supplies with them because they'll just be able to live off the land
01:05:53
for their two stay there he never been to this island but that his uh that his advice He just says that they need native women who they can hire who can sew fur like snow outfits for them so that they stay warm in the wintertime
01:06:14
It's very specific. Basically, like use the whole animal when you hunt, you eat and then you take their furs and pelts and skins and you make clothes for yourself and you'll be fine.
01:06:27
so it's late summer of 1921 and this is when 23 year old ada blackjack hears that the crew is
01:06:36
hiring a seamstress and she also hears they're paying 50 a month this is far more than she's
01:06:43
been making it's a huge chance to make a big chunk of money and go get her son out of the orphanage
01:06:48
she jumps at the opportunity the crew immediately likes her um it's a huge plus that she can speak
01:06:55
and write and read English. So they hire her, they give her money to purchase supplies,
01:07:00
and they ask her to report to the docks on September 9th, 1921, as will the rest of the seamstresses that they have hired.
01:07:07
But when Ada arrives on September 9th, she notices none of the other women have shown up.
01:07:13
And that doesn't sit well with her, so she tries to back out. But the expedition team convinces her to stay.
01:07:21
They tell her that the boat, which is called the Silver Wave, is going to stop at a settlement on the way that's like north of Nome that's going to pick up some
01:07:29
other seamstresses. She's still skeptical, but she does not want to break her promise.
01:07:35
And it's a rare chance to make such a large sum of money that she might normally not have. So she
01:07:43
agrees to go. So the crew consists of Alan Crawford, who's 20. That's the Canadian student.
01:07:50
Lorne Knight, who's 28. He's going to be the captain. Fred Moer, he's the first.
01:07:56
He's the original. He's already been through this before, and he's going back for more.
01:08:00
And then Milton Gale, who's 19. And Ada, who's 23. And a cat named Victoria. Really?
01:08:07
Uh-huh. Oh, yay. It's an old sailor tradition. It's good luck to have a cat on board.
01:08:14
Oh, and also probably catches mice. Vermin. Yeah. Cute. Then the vermin don't get into your snacks.
01:08:22
Right. It's a Tom and Jerry cartoon, essentially. Right. They set sail that day, September 9th, 1921.
01:08:28
So everyone in Nome told these guys the waters are too rough and icy and they will not make it to the island.
01:08:35
But they're like, no, no, we're fine. And six days later, they do arrive there. So Wrangell Island sits about 87 miles north of the coast of Siberia.
01:08:46
So it's way up there. It's 93 miles long and 50 miles wide. In their first year on the island, the crew acclimates nicely.
01:08:57
So they start out living in a tent, but then they build themselves a snow house that's really sturdy.
01:09:03
And the men's days are spent venturing around the island, setting up photography equipment, taking photos of the land to document their findings.
01:09:13
The men, of course, also hunt. And then Ada takes all of the pelts and the skins and sews clothing for them out of the leftover furs and hides.
01:09:26
Any concerns about whether or not there'd be enough animal life on the island to sustain them disappear quickly?
01:09:32
They survive mostly on the food rations that they brought. And then in the spring of 1922, the men are able to hunt over 30 seals, 10 polar bears and a bunch of geese and ducks.
01:09:46
Wow. Which is kind of disturbing and upsetting to think about that. Polar bears.
01:09:52
But it was it had to happen for their survival so that they could have this island.
01:09:58
How do you even kill a polar bear? That seems impossible. I guess like you kill.
01:10:04
You wrestle it to the ground and then you strangle it with your hands. It's the only humane.
01:10:11
May the best man or bear win. Nope, they have big guns. So everyone in this team keeps a journal during their stay.
01:10:22
And Ada's entries are simple and benign at first, describing how they first got to Wrangell Island, how it looked very large to her.
01:10:31
But then she was told it was just a very small island, which it was. But as the summer of 1922 comes to an end and the weather turns colder, the availability of fresh meat starts to decline.
01:10:47
And Stephenson, who's back home with his feet up by the fire, he promised to send another ship called the Teddy Bear to drop off more supplies by the summer's end.
01:10:57
So the crew waits patiently for that delivery. But the ice has grown too thick in the water surrounding the island, and the teddy bear is forced to turn back without dropping off supplies.
01:11:11
So now as winter approaches, the crew is left to fend for themselves. And by January of 1923, they're starving.
01:11:18
To make matters worse, as the winter progresses, the typically strong, you know, captain alpha male type knight gets scurvy.
01:11:31
But he's determined to still be of use. So he insists that he should try to cross the ice to Siberia to go get help.
01:11:39
And so he grabs Crawford and they set out on January 8th. they're only gone two weeks,
01:11:47
and then Night Scurvy forces them to turn around and come back. Oh, no. So now it's the end of January.
01:11:54
The cruise situation is dire, and with no other choice, Crawford, Maurer, and...
01:12:00
they all decide to venture to Siberia themselves for help, and they leave Ada to care for Lorne Knight with scurvy until they can return with rescuers.
01:12:11
Wow. So now she's alone on the island with the sick guy, and she talks about the crew's plan in her journal,
01:12:23
and she basically says they promised that they would come back after they got to Nome with a ship,
01:12:28
And if they couldn't get there with a ship, they would come over with a dog team next winter.
01:12:34
They left with a team of five dogs and a big sled of supplies. But even if the men make the trip successfully, a year's wait is a very long time for Ada and Lauren to fend for themselves, especially because Lauren is too sick to do anything at all.
01:12:52
He can only be he's basically being catered to. And Ada, who if she had grown up with her family and in her village, she would have actually had a bunch of skills that would have been really helpful.
01:13:02
But they basically had been taught out of her by the missionaries. So February 1923, Lorne Knight is bedridden.
01:13:10
He's covered in bedsores. Ada has to learn how to hunt and trap on her own while tending to a sick and bitter man, soothing his bedsores with bags of warm sand by his feet and pillows stuffed with oatmeal.
01:13:24
But as Knight's illness gets worse, so does his treatment of Ada. He's angry at himself for being useless, so he takes it out on her, constantly berating her for the tiniest things.
01:13:37
He tells her she isn't doing a good enough job taking care of him, even though she's learning how to do difficult tasks with no formal training and the highest stakes possible, their survival.
01:13:47
So she's keeping them fed. She's going out there and hunting. She's doing all the work.
01:13:52
She's tending to him, and he's criticizing her. Of course. Ada writes in her journal that night, quote, never stops to think how much it's hard for women to take four men's place.
01:14:03
She's she's she's cleaning out his bedpan and he's criticizing her. Fuck you. So five months for five months, Ada's persistence, her nursing, her hunting and her cooking skills keep the two of them going until June of 1923.
01:14:19
1923, a full five months since the other three crew members left for Siberia. Then on June 23rd,
01:14:27
1923, Lorne Knight finally passes away. Ada marks the date in her journal. He died on June 23rd.
01:14:34
I don't know what time he died. Anyway, I write the date just to let Mr. Seffinson know
01:14:40
what month he died and on what date. So she's unable to move his body. So there's a dead body
01:14:48
in their snow house and she can't move it. She's too small and he's too big, obviously.
01:14:55
So she leaves him in his sleeping bag and she builds a wall of boxes around him to prevent
01:15:01
wild animals from getting to the body. And then she takes all her stuff and moves from the snow house to the supply tent.
01:15:09
And she lives there basically to get away from it. Yeah. So now she's kind of has a tiny bit easier because she doesn't have to tend to like an angry sick man.
01:15:22
Yeah. But she is now completely alone and isolated on this tiny island in the dead of winter with no food.
01:15:32
But one thought keeps her going, which is the thought of being reunited with her son.
01:15:38
her drive to hold him in her arms again and ignites a flame within her and she is determined
01:15:43
to survive but the odds are stacked against her because did i mention that there are polar bears
01:15:50
on the island oh i forgot about those guys they're um real good smellers real big teeth
01:15:58
love some meat love fresh meat so ada keeps a gun and ammunition close to her bed at all times
01:16:05
She has a couple close calls and she later recounts an occasion where she was hunting
01:16:10
seals and she accidentally comes too close to a polar bear cub. And so the mama bear goes on the attack and Ada says, I turned and ran just as hard as
01:16:22
I could until I got to my tent. I was just about ready to faint when I got there too So she outran a polar bear Oh my God girl So miraculously Ada survives this winter alone And then the warmer the weather
01:16:38
gets, the more animal life comes back to the island, which means more food for her.
01:16:42
So by the summer, she's taught herself to set fox traps. She's gotten good at really accurate
01:16:49
at shooting birds. She's even built herself a lookout above her tent so she can stand up on it
01:16:55
and spot polar bears as they're coming. Wow. She keeps herself safe. Thriving. Yeah. That's the word J use. She she even built herself a little boat out of driftwood and canvas
01:17:11
and she takes their photography equipment and that they were using to take pictures of the
01:17:17
island and she takes portraits of herself around the camp i'm going to show you oh my god yeah i'm
01:17:24
gonna show you because share look at what a badass she is yeah i can see it look at her
01:17:33
honey wait now i think because now i'm going to share another one never i've never used to use this technology before and i don't know how to fucking use it
01:17:44
oh look at her look at the fashion she made that that's gorgeous and that's her taking pictures of herself deserted
01:17:54
on a frozen fucking tundra trying to pass the time that smile says it all she's like
01:18:00
yeah yes that's me that's right check this coat out isn't that amazing she made it and the little
01:18:07
gloves and the stole she's awesome wow you guys listening that these pictures are in the Atlas Obscura article. So go when you go read it,
01:18:19
you'll see the pictures Ada took of herself to pass the time. It's the greatest. Ada's alone
01:18:24
on Wrangell Island for a full three months, and she manages to thrive without the men.
01:18:31
Finally, on August 20th, 1923, a schooner called the Donaldson, which is captained by one of Stephenson's colleagues, a man named Harold Noyce.
01:18:41
noise noise n-o-i-s-c n-o-i-c-e um it makes its way to the island and they rescue ada
01:18:51
she survived for two years in the arctic wilderness um and eventually she will learn that she is the five-person crew's only survivor so the three that
01:19:03
went to get help all died wow and the crew of the donaldson is astonished by her survival skills
01:19:10
One crew member later says that Ada, quote, mastered her environment so far that it seems likely she could have lived there another year, although the isolation would have been a dreadful experience.
01:19:23
So when she finally arrives back in Nome, of course, there's a flurry of attention, all the locals and there's media.
01:19:31
Stephenson issues her payment, which is, of course, a lot by her standards because it's two years at 50 bucks a month.
01:19:38
So that's awesome. Yeah. But she still gets less than she was promised. So he short shriffs her this SOB after all that.
01:19:47
And I wrote, it's too bad they didn't have Twitter back then. She could have just taken right to see.
01:19:56
But Ada doesn't care about any of the attention. She doesn't like any of the attention.
01:20:00
And she doesn't even complain about getting stiffed because she just wants to get her son Bennett back.
01:20:05
With money in hand, she heads straight for the orphanage and she finally gets to hold her son again.
01:20:11
She takes him to a hospital down in Seattle that's better equipped to treat his TB.
01:20:15
And while he's never cured of the illness entirely, the treatment in Seattle allows him to recover and grow into adulthood.
01:20:23
Amazing. Meanwhile, Stephenson does what he does best, which is he capitalizes on Ada's survival story.
01:20:31
Very typical. exploiting it for his own personal gain. He brags to the papers about how he handpicked her for his crew.
01:20:40
While Captain Noyce asserts himself as the real hero for finding and rescuing her from the island.
01:20:45
Great, guys. Good job, everybody. Good job all around. Great. Did you get your credit?
01:20:52
Did you get your credit? Does it feel good or does it not feel good That your work to do later Ada still shy not wanting the attention agrees to very few interviews But during one of the rare ones a reporter calls her brave
01:21:06
and she replies, brave? I don't know about that, but I would never give up hope while I'm still
01:21:12
alive. The papers dub Ada the female Robinson Crusoe, popular book at the time, racist book,
01:21:20
while the others criticize her for not taking better care of Knight. She actually gets criticized for not keeping him alive.
01:21:28
Ew! There are people who claim that she could have done more to save him, but her journal entries make it clear he was very ungrateful
01:21:36
and that she did everything she could to help him. Despite the popularity of the story,
01:21:44
Ada receives no further compensation for her troubles beyond her regular pay for the trip.
01:21:48
and of the various newspapers, articles, stories and books that were written about her
01:21:54
or cite her at the time. She gets no compensation, doesn't no one throws her money at all.
01:22:00
And she basically remains poor for the rest of her life. But she does go on to to live a long life.
01:22:08
And after she reunites with her son, Bennett, she marries another man by the last name Johnson.
01:22:13
And they have a child together, her second son, Billy Blackjack Johnson. and they raise the boys together in Seward.
01:22:22
Eventually she divorces her second husband and again she's left with nothing. So again she's forced to take her boys to an orphanage
01:22:30
until she's back on her feet again. She works and saves up money. She gets her boys back and they all move to Nome
01:22:38
where she gets a job herding reindeer for money. And then she also uses the skills that she learned on Wrangell Island
01:22:46
to hunt and trap her own food and feed her family. Oh, that's so cool. Her son, Billy, who grows up healthy, eventually moves out on his own,
01:22:56
but Ada continues caring for Bennett until 1972 when he dies of a stroke at age 58.
01:23:02
About a decade later, on May 29, 1983, Ada herself passes away in a state retirement home
01:23:08
called the Pioneer Home in Palmer, Alaska. She's buried in Anchorage in a grave beside her son, Bennett,
01:23:14
and her family remembers her fondly. Before passing away himself on June 22, 2003, at age 78,
01:23:22
Ada's second son, Billy Blackjack Johnson, said this about his mother, quote, I consider my mother, Ada Blackjack, to be one of the most loving mothers in this world
01:23:32
and one of the greatest heroines in the history of Arctic exploration. She survived against all odds.
01:23:39
It's a wonderful story that should not be lost of her self-discovery and her cultural reawakening.
01:23:44
And it's a story of a mother fighting to survive, to live so she could carry on with her son, Bennett, and help him fight the illness that was consuming him.
01:23:53
She succeeded, and I was born later. Her story of survival in the Arctic will be a great chapter in the history of the Arctic and Alaska.
01:24:02
Time is running out, and soon this chapter will fade away unless we care enough to make a record of it.
01:24:09
That was from LitsiteAlaska.org, that quote. And that is the amazing survival story of Ada Blackjack, one of the greatest heroines of Arctic exploration.
01:24:20
Oh, my God. Ada! Ada! You did it! That's two badass, strong women in this episode.
01:24:30
Great job. I'm looking at the photo right now of her. It's up on the screen still.
01:24:35
And she's just the most badass looking woman I've ever seen. And I'm in awe. I'm just going to really quickly rewrite the end of that story where Stephenson gives her the money she deserves for staying alive and handling shit.
01:24:51
And then she gets to start her own line of clothes because she was already doing it.
01:24:57
And clearly, like, you know what I mean? Like she made that fucking coat. I would wear that immediately.
01:25:02
It's so cute and functional, of course, and gets, you know, number one on the New York Times bestseller list and the top of Amazon.
01:25:11
Well, true, except it was pretty much like I shot a fox. I think it was real standard fare.
01:25:18
It sounds to me. Just literally the details of the day. Nothing. But the credit I think I do love the idea that she does deserve the credit She deserves to be on the bestseller list just for just for handling polar bears How about the bestseller life
01:25:36
She's the number one bestseller of life. Number one, Ada. Amazing. Great job. Great job.
01:25:42
Thank you. All right. That was a good one. Got it done. Did it. We did it. Three and a half hours long this time.
01:25:52
Don't worry. Next week we'll go four. hours just for the hell of it. Was that your new podcast?
01:25:57
On your new podcast? My new podcast called Four Hours of Silence. Four Hours of Sacred Pausing.
01:26:07
Yes. Well, let's address this monumental day. Earlier this week, we got very good news here
01:26:18
in America because Derek Chauvin actually got prosecuted for murder in the death of George Floyd.
01:26:31
He murdered him in the street and he's actually he was found guilty by the jury.
01:26:38
The thing that I was reading that I think was the most kind of that was affecting me the most on social media was people saying everyone's talking about that.
01:26:47
this is this, you know, defining moment in America when actually this is what's supposed
01:26:52
to happen when you kill somebody. Yep. It's it's standard. It should happen every time.
01:26:57
It's a human being being held accountable for their actions against another human being.
01:27:03
And that's all that's been asked time and time again for a very long time. Yeah, it's very good.
01:27:11
I almost started crying when I saw it. I got chills. I was really hopeful for it.
01:27:16
But of course, we're all really scared that it wasn't going to turn out this way.
01:27:20
And, you know. Yeah, there's there's good reason to be scared. But yeah, just some just justice actually took place.
01:27:29
Definitely. I don't know. I don't even know why we're saying it, but we're not going to not talk about it.
01:27:32
We can't not talk about it. Also, there's no way to encapsulate any of this in a soundbite way.
01:27:41
Right. So. And yeah, exactly. All right. Well, I think that's our fucking hooray, obviously.
01:27:49
Yeah. I mean, ultimately, we're both sighing and we're very worried about how we're stating this.
01:27:55
Yeah. But ultimately, this is forward movement. It's not enough, but it's good. It is good.
01:28:01
Yeah. It's very good. Definitely. Well, yeah. Thank you guys for listening and being here and giving us a little platform to talk our shit.
01:28:12
And thank you, Stephen Ray Morris, our incredible audio engineer, for supporting us for five freaking years.
01:28:20
And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Last night, you spent two hours deciding what to wear to the party.
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