Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark 513 - Best of the Year (Part II) About this episode On this best of 2025 quilt episode, we revisit Karen and Georgia's coverage of Queen of Sinking Ships, Violet Jessop, from July 3 and the Great Emu War from April 24.
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Transcript 12,134 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Karen Kilgariff? This is exactly right.
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0:36 Speaker 02 In New Orleans, truckers kept getting sideswiped the exact same way. When a man is found murdered under questionable circumstances related to these accidents, the rubber hits the road. And what the feds uncover is a complex scheme of staged wrecks, financial fraud, and a pair of conspiring lovers behind it. This is a story about fake accidents that led to real consequences. Listen to Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
1:12 Georgia Hardstark? The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Sonny's life is pretty great, until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his, with one exception: his mom.
1:25 Karen Kilgariff? Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nivola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.
1:32 Georgia Hardstark? Watch the Hulu original series, Phony.
1:34 Karen Kilgariff? Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.
1:39 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
1:57 Georgia Hardstark? Hello.
1:58 Karen Kilgariff? And welcome.
1:58 Georgia Hardstark? To My Favorite Murder. Today, we're starting the new year with a look back on two of our favorite stories from 2025.
2:05 Karen Kilgariff? That's right. We're taking two of our listener favorite stories and combining them into a Best of the year quilt episode.
2:11 Georgia Hardstark? So Karen's going to kick things off with the story of Violet Jessop, the queen of sinking ships.
2:16 Karen Kilgariff? And Georgia is going to take us through the unforgettable tale of Australia's great emu war.
2:23 Georgia Hardstark? That's right, right here on this true crime podcast. You're going to love it.
2:25 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
2:26 Georgia Hardstark? So enjoy this best of the year quilt episode and Happy New Year.
2:30 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, let's make 2026 a real one.
2:32 Georgia Hardstark? God.
2:32 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
2:35 Georgia Hardstark? The holidays are right around the corner, which means people are about to do a lot of shopping.
2:39 Karen Kilgariff? And if you have a small business, they could be shopping with you.
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3:13 Georgia Hardstark? That's Shopify.com/murder.
3:15 Karen Kilgariff? Go to Shopify.com/murder today to hear your first.
3:20 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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3:51 Karen Kilgariff? We've all had moments where dealing with healthcare or insurance feels completely overwhelming.
3:55 Georgia Hardstark? You're sick, worried about someone you love, trying to understand what comes next and suddenly you're spending hours on hold, filling out paperwork and trying to figure out who to call.
4:04 Karen Kilgariff? Research shows patients spend the equivalent of an eight hour workday every month, coordinating their own care.
4:10 Georgia Hardstark? Nobody hands you a roadmap when you're dealing with a diagnosis or ongoing health issues.
4:15 Karen Kilgariff? That's why there's Solace Health.
4:16 Georgia Hardstark? Solace provides personal healthcare advocates who average 16 years of health. ...experience and can help you get answers fast.
4:22 Karen Kilgariff? Think of them as someone in your corner who understands the healthcare system and can handle the logistics while you focus on your health.
4:28 Georgia Hardstark? They can help with appointments, insurance denials, medical bills, treatment options, and understanding doctor recommendations.
4:34 Karen Kilgariff? Research shows 92% of patients report a positive impact on their care from working with an advocate.
4:40 Georgia Hardstark? Advocacy improves outcomes and Solace advocates are covered by insurance nationwide.
4:45 Karen Kilgariff? Eligibility varies by insurance plan.
4:47 Georgia Hardstark? Advocates do not provide medical or legal advice or services, must be 18 years or older.
4:51 Karen Kilgariff? Go to solacehealth.com/murder to see if you qualify.
4:54 Georgia Hardstark? It takes about two minutes and it's covered by insurance.
4:57 Karen Kilgariff? That's S.O.L.A.C.E. health.com/murder.
5:01 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
5:04 Karen Kilgariff? We're going to go to a place we've been to before that I've actually forced you to come to twice before, but I need to go back and you'll see why.
5:12 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
5:13 Karen Kilgariff? So it's 2:00 a.m. on April 15th, 1912.
5:16 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
5:17 Karen Kilgariff? Get a sense of what we're about to do?
5:19 Georgia Hardstark? Nope.
5:20 Karen Kilgariff? We're in the middle of the North Atlantic where the Titanic is sinking.
5:24 Georgia Hardstark? Motherfucker.
5:25 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
5:25 Georgia Hardstark? The Titanic?
5:26 Karen Kilgariff? We're going back to the Titanic.
5:27 Georgia Hardstark? You love that guy.
5:29 Karen Kilgariff? I love the Titanic.
5:31 Georgia Hardstark? You love that vessel.
5:32 Karen Kilgariff? A lot of stuff happened on that vessel that I want to tell you about.
5:35 Georgia Hardstark? It's funny that you say 2012 and I'm in the middle of the night and I'm like, eh. I don't know.
5:40 Karen Kilgariff? 1912.
5:41 Georgia Hardstark? What did I say?
5:41 Karen Kilgariff? 2012.
5:42 Georgia Hardstark? Well, that was a bad year too, so.
5:44 Karen Kilgariff? 2012 was rough. Um, I fully agree.
5:47 Georgia Hardstark? I love your Titanic stories. It's just so funny.
5:50 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Here's the thing about me and the Titanic. I love to talk about the people that made it off of the Titanic.
5:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
5:58 Karen Kilgariff? It's pretty an amazing topic.
5:59 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
6:00 Karen Kilgariff? I have no interest to go down and look at the Titanic.
6:03 Georgia Hardstark? No.
6:03 Karen Kilgariff? A lot of people want to.
6:05 Georgia Hardstark? I think photos are cool, but they never, ah, they never give you what you want, you know?
6:10 Karen Kilgariff? They don't put you there.
6:10 Georgia Hardstark? They don't put you there. Maybe like a dish is so exciting, but like, that's about it.
6:16 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. And it's got all those weird algae on it, that dish?
6:19 Georgia Hardstark? So much algae.
6:20 Karen Kilgariff? And a couple snails?
6:21 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
6:21 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
6:22 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
6:22 Karen Kilgariff? Here, we're going to 1912. Everything is nail-free.
6:26 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
6:27 Karen Kilgariff? The Titanic is sinking, and when it finally disappears under the water, it will take the lives of more than 1,500 people with it. There will be around 700 survivors. The survivors we've talked about on this show, episode 411, which was entitled "Eight Years, One Episode", that's when I talked about the unsinkable Molly Brown. They actually called her Margaret Brown, but everyone knows her as the unsinkable Molly Brown. She makes it onto Lifeboat Six, and she spends her time on that lifeboat, rallying the terrified passengers and urging them to keep rowing. When the officer in charge starts to spiral in the midst of all the terror of what's going on around them, Molly threatens to throw him overboard. It's great for morale. Everybody keeps going. They survive.
7:11 Georgia Hardstark? Got it, girl.
7:12 Karen Kilgariff? At this same moment that she's doing that over on Lifeboat Six, the Titanic's baker, Charles Jockin, you might remember, he was the drunk one.
7:20 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
7:21 Karen Kilgariff? We learned about-
7:22 Georgia Hardstark? He was the drunk one?
7:22 Karen Kilgariff? He was-
7:23 Georgia Hardstark? Everyone was shitfaced on that.
7:24 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, that, you know, that band was barely able to like, keep the bow to the strings.
7:29 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God, so much good champagne.
7:31 Karen Kilgariff? If you want to hear me talk about Charles Jockin, it's episode 348. It's called "Old Biscuit", and we learn on that one that basically, the thing that saved Charles Jockin's life, they think, is that he got super shitfaced. As the ship sank, he jumped up onto the railing and rowed it down as the ship was going into the water. Then he tread water in 28-degree waves for several hours and lived. And it's like defy science, and they think it's because the liquor that was in his system just kept his body warm, almost like tricked him into being warm.
8:11 Georgia Hardstark? That's why I drink, is just to stay warm.
8:13 Karen Kilgariff? Same. Don't tell anybody. We gotta stay warm, guys, on this fucking Titanic that we're on.
8:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
8:20 Karen Kilgariff? So, when Charles Jockin is finally rescued, and we talked about this on that episode, but I still love this. He has two swollen feet, and that's it. That's the only thing wrong with that man who tread water in 28-degree ocean for hours until he got rescued.
8:35 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, I wake up in my bed in worse shape.
8:37 Karen Kilgariff? Two swollen feet? I wish that's funny. Okay, so let's see, what character is that? So, some of our favorites, but today I'm going to tell you about your new favorite Titanic survivor.
8:48 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
8:49 Karen Kilgariff? She's a third Titanic survivor, whose story is more unbelievable than the first two put together.
8:55 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-mm.
8:56 Karen Kilgariff? Throughout this woman's life, she'll be involved in not one, not two, but three historic maritime disasters. The sinking of the Titanic arguably is not even the worst one for her. Some people call her the queen of the sinking ships. This is the story of stewardess Violet Jessop.
9:14 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
9:14 Karen Kilgariff? So, main sources that Marin used for the story are Violet's memoir entitled Titanic Survivor: The Memoirs of Violet Jessop, comma, stewardess. She fucking worked on the Titanic.
9:26 Georgia Hardstark? Incredible.
9:27 Karen Kilgariff? And also a National Geographic article by journalist David Kindy entitled, "She Survived the Titanic, But It Wasn't the Only Time She Faced Death at Sea." And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. Okay. We start the story 25 years before the Titanic sinks, with an Irish Catholic couple from Dublin named William and Kelly Jessop. They have immigrated to South America, and now they have a sheep farm in Argentina. And in 1887, they welcome their first child, Violet. They will have eight more children in the coming years. Only six will survive childhood.
10:06 Karen Kilgariff? So this was the horrible infant mortality situation of the turn of the 1920th century. So Violet herself nearly dies of tuberculosis when she's little. She is sick for weeks, and later she'll describe this time as, "A dim awareness of being plunged into a very hot bath, then wrapped in cold, wet sheets, followed by long periods of nothingness."
10:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yikes.
10:31 Karen Kilgariff? So scary and sad for a child.
10:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
10:34 Karen Kilgariff? And speaking of, her coughing fits are so intense at this time, that, quote, "Blood seemed to be on everything." And her eventual recovery from this is said to be miraculous.
10:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
10:46 Karen Kilgariff? So normally Violet's day to day involves helping her family. She's the oldest sister in a big family, which means she's doing cooking, cleaning, taking care of her younger siblings, the whole nine. Then in 1903, when Violet is 16 years old, her father William dies while undergoing some kind of a surgery. It's sudden, it's shocking, the loss hits Violet especially hard. She was her father's favorite child. And she will later write, quote, "In my grief, I was tongue tied and stunned. Whenever I tried to speak, I discovered I had lost my voice completely." So sad. But of course, the family has no time to mourn because now Violet's mother Kelly is
11:27 Karen Kilgariff? a widow with six kids who has to find a way to support the family. So she moves the family back to Europe where they settle in England. And Kelly gets to work on ocean liners sailing between the UK and America. She's hired as a stewardess and that means she's doing things like cleaning cabins, serving meals, and even some light nursing duties. And while she's at sea, Violet is left to raise her siblings by herself.
11:54 Georgia Hardstark? Wait, her mom left to do that?
11:56 Karen Kilgariff? Yep.
11:57 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
11:57 Karen Kilgariff? And she's home with the five other kids. And the youngest is an infant.
12:02 Georgia Hardstark? No, no.
12:03 Karen Kilgariff? So they were just make and do.
12:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
12:06 Karen Kilgariff? For the next several years, Violet's basically a stay at home mom dreaming about the day her mother will come home for good. And when she does, Violet plans that she will join the convent. But that dream never pans out because instead in 1908, when Violet is around 21 years old, her mother gets very sick and it's serious enough that she has to stop working. So to keep food on the family table, Violet again steps up for the family. And even though she does not like the ocean, she does not know how to swim, and she is kind of freaked out by the vast openness of the sea, she starts looking for stewardess work. She knows it's a good job if she can get paid well, her mom can tell her how to do it, like.
12:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
12:50 Karen Kilgariff? And she not only has years of caregiving experience raising her brothers and sisters, she's fluent in Spanish from having been raised in Argentina.
12:58 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
12:58 Karen Kilgariff? But at the time, she struggles to get work as a stewardess, partly because she's so young, much younger than most of the stewardesses who are working at the time. But also Violet is very beautiful, which works against her because in a job like that, you're supposed to blend in and just be part of the wallpaper, right? And whether she wants to or not, Violet does not blend in.
13:19 Georgia Hardstark? I get it.
13:22 Karen Kilgariff? Nice.
13:23 Georgia Hardstark? JK, JK.
13:24 Karen Kilgariff? I've been through it.
13:25 Georgia Hardstark? I feel that.
13:26 Karen Kilgariff? I've never been a stewardess for that very reason. On the Titanic. So after she gets interviewed a couple of times and gets rejected, she starts dressing down for the interviews. She stops wearing makeup altogether, and it works. She ends up landing one job after another. And by 1911, 24-year-old Violet is hired by the White Star Line to work aboard the RMS Olympic. So at the time, the RMS Olympic is the largest passenger ship in the world. It's completely state-of-the-art. It has electric elevators, Turkish baths, a swimming pool, and ornate features like crystal chandeliers and marble statues and plush velvet furniture.
14:05 Georgia Hardstark? Amazing.
14:05 Karen Kilgariff? They really went all out. It was like the Empire State Building on the sea.
14:09 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
14:10 Karen Kilgariff? Not that tall. But anyhow, Violet isn't all that impressed. She's just there for the money. And that's what keeps her going when she has the experience that she really doesn't like, which is the passengers treating her like their servant, which happens often. And rich male passengers leer at her, they proposition her. Some even propose like the second they meet her. While the women passengers can be extremely cutting, very condescending. Later on, Violet will write, quote, "I often reflected that there must be some quality in a sea trip that affects character. Or maybe its enforced propinquity emphasizes how awful normal folk can become,
14:53 Karen Kilgariff? mean, paltry, and selfish to a degree when they are in the position of indiscriminate power."
14:59 Georgia Hardstark? Hmm, it's like, what happens on the Titanic stays on the Titanic.
15:02 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. And also, it's like, just because we're stuck on this boat together doesn't mean I gotta do everything you say.
15:08 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:08 Karen Kilgariff? Maren made a note to me, "Propinquity means physical closeness or nearness."
15:13 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you.
15:13 Karen Kilgariff? And then she was like, "I've never heard this word before."
15:16 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you, again.
15:17 Karen Kilgariff? Propinquity.
15:18 Georgia Hardstark? Propinquity.
15:19 Karen Kilgariff? It's your continual propinquity that causes the problem for me.
15:23 Georgia Hardstark? Say it in ASMR.
15:24 Karen Kilgariff? If you have a tendency toward propinquity.
15:28 Karen Kilgariff? Tapping your nails on stuff. Yes, misused. Okay, so now it's September 1911. Violet's been working as a crew member on the Olympic for months. And then one night, the boat she's on, the Olympic, collides with a British warship called the Hawk off the coast of the Isle of Wight. So the Hawk is this little, it's like a sixth of the size of the Olympic. And it's actually specifically built to ram and sink enemy vessels. So it's very strong. The two boats collide and the Hawk nearly capsizes, but it still manages to leave a 40-foot gash along the side of the Olympic. Water rushes into the bottom of the ship and it actually downs a propeller.
16:13 Karen Kilgariff? And of course, from her room, Violet hears and feels this horrible impact. Although no one's injured or killed from this crash. And the ships aren't very far from land. And even with that propeller down, the Olympic is able to just hobble back to port. So no one has to evacuate on lifeboats. So comparatively, this is probably the tamest of all the horrible ship accidents that Violet is involved in. She gets reassigned to another White Star Line ship. And it is the company's brand new luxury ocean liner that's gearing up for its maiden voyage. It is the Titanic.
16:50 Georgia Hardstark? Hey.
16:51 Karen Kilgariff? So we're back on the North Atlantic just before midnight on April 14th. Violet is in her quarters. She is getting ready for bed after being a stewardess all day on the Titanic.
17:03 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, the feet, the feet pain.
17:05 Karen Kilgariff? Just the feet, the work, the, um, over here. Can you get me a roll?
17:09 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
17:10 Karen Kilgariff? Snap, snap.
17:11 Georgia Hardstark? Snap, snap, roll.
17:12 Karen Kilgariff? So Violet's back in her quarters. She's holding a piece of paper that has a handwritten prayer on it. And it's one that's supposed to protect her from fire and water. Which is very Catholic. We have saints, they do very specific things for very specific people. I guess there's a fire and water saint. I'll look up who it is later. And as all of that is going on, Violet hears a huge crash, followed by a quote, "low, rending, crunching, ripping sound." So of course, it's a scary thing for her to experience, but like everyone else on board, they've been told time and again that the Titanic is unsinkable.
17:52 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
17:52 Karen Kilgariff? So no one's panicking, she certainly is not. But eventually, a shell-shocked Violet is called up to the deck. This will be her very last assignment on the Titanic. She's told to translate evacuation instructions for the Spanish-speaking passengers, and then to assist women and children getting on the lifeboats. So that's what she does until she herself is loaded onto Lifeboat 16.
18:17 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
18:17 Karen Kilgariff? Moments before her group is lowered into the ocean, an officer rushes over and says to Violet, quote, "Here, Miss Jessop, look after this," and then basically hands her a baby girl.
18:28 Georgia Hardstark? Ah!
18:29 Karen Kilgariff? The baby had been left alone on deck. And so the officer just basically made the hasty decision to grab this baby and throw it to Violet.
18:38 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
18:38 Karen Kilgariff? For safekeeping. So as their boat is lowered some 60 feet in the dark to the freezing cold ocean below, with icy wind whipping at their faces like, quote, "a knife in its penetrating coldness," Violet is trying to soothe this baby girl.
18:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
18:56 Karen Kilgariff? But the lifeboat hits the water hard. You don't think about that part of it where it's like, yes, you're being saved in a way.
19:03 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
19:04 Karen Kilgariff? But off of a sinking ship.
19:05 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
19:06 Karen Kilgariff? Into.
19:07 Georgia Hardstark? In a hurry.
19:08 Karen Kilgariff? The North Sea.
19:09 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
19:09 Karen Kilgariff? That we've all seen TikToks about.
19:13 Karen Kilgariff? Is it the North Sea? Yeah, well, the North Atlantic, yeah. So, the baby starts crying when the lifeboat hits the water. Again, just a quick reminder, Violet does not know how to swim. And she's of course terrified herself, but she focuses on the baby. She pulls the baby to her chest, hoping to keep her warm, and she just watches as the Titanic sinks into blackness.
19:33 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
19:34 Karen Kilgariff? And here's how Violet will later describe this moment. She says, quote, "I watched the Titanic give a lurch forward, one of the huge funnels toppled off like a... Like a cardboard model falling into the sea with a fearful roar. A few cries came to us across the water, then silence as the ship seemed to right itself like a hurt animal with a broken back. She settled for a few minutes, but one more deck of lighted ports disappeared. Then she went down by the head and a thundering roar of underwater explosions. Our proud ship, our beautiful Titanic, gone to her doom.
20:11 Georgia Hardstark? God, what a sight.
20:13 Karen Kilgariff? And you're like, however many feet away you could get away.
20:16 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
20:17 Karen Kilgariff? Looking at that, I don't like it. It's too big and it's too vast. I'm on Violet's side.
20:23 Georgia Hardstark? I don't like it.
20:25 Karen Kilgariff? That's why I need to keep talking about it.
20:27 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, I get it.
20:28 Karen Kilgariff? So for the next several hours, as traumatized Titanic survivors wait to be rescued, Violet clings to this baby, as you would. At one point, she worries that both she and the infant are going to freeze to death in Lifeboat 16. And then the rescue ship, the SS Carpathia, shows up around 4 a.m. So it's like about two hours.
20:49 Georgia Hardstark? Did we ever have the discussion about like the magnets?
20:53 Karen Kilgariff? How do they work?
20:54 Georgia Hardstark? How do they work? How do they maybe affect the Titanic's scouting system?
20:59 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
21:00 Georgia Hardstark? Do we talk about that in any of these?
21:01 Karen Kilgariff? I don't think so.
21:02 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
21:02 Karen Kilgariff? Do you want to throw some theories out?
21:04 Georgia Hardstark? I'll do it another day.
21:05 Karen Kilgariff? Have you been listening to RFK's podcast? What's happening? It's all magnets.
21:09 Georgia Hardstark? It's all magnets.
21:11 Karen Kilgariff? You think something interfered and that's how it drove into the iceberg?
21:15 Georgia Hardstark? But a natural phenomenon interfered and that, yeah, that's why.
21:18 Karen Kilgariff? Some like Bermuda Triangle stuff?
21:20 Georgia Hardstark? Exactly. So if you know what I'm talking about, send me the article that I write about. Please, because I don't remember.
21:26 Karen Kilgariff? If you know what we're talking about and you're in the North Atlantic right now.
21:28 Georgia Hardstark? Tell me.
21:29 Karen Kilgariff? Tell me what I'm talking about.
21:31 Georgia Hardstark? Tell me, was this just an episode of Below Deck and I'm totally fucking wrong? It could be.
21:37 Karen Kilgariff? I slept with him because of the magnets. They drew me toward his cabin.
21:40 Georgia Hardstark? His dick is the Bermuda Triangle.
21:42 Karen Kilgariff? It's not my fault that the draw is so strong. It's like two cartoon magnets pulling Wile E. Coyote off a cliff.
21:51 Georgia Hardstark? Dick was the lifeboat. Okay, stop it.
21:53 Karen Kilgariff? Stop it.
21:54 Georgia Hardstark? This is a serious podcast.
21:55 Karen Kilgariff? I was just talking about a baby.
21:56 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, you're playing this for your mom and now she's horrified. Okay.
22:00 Karen Kilgariff? We're gonna do a quote from Violet about the moment that she and the baby are saved. Okay, ready? I was still clutching the baby against my hard cork life belt when a woman leaped at me and grabbed the baby and rushed off with it.
22:15 Georgia Hardstark? Hey.
22:15 Karen Kilgariff? It appeared that she put it down on the deck of the Titanic while she went off to fetch something and when she came back, the baby had gone. I was too frozen and numb to think it strange that this woman had not stopped to say thank you. End quote.
22:31 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, so the mom came.
22:32 Karen Kilgariff? The mom was like, you have my baby. That's my baby.
22:35 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, well, everyone's panicking, so.
22:36 Karen Kilgariff? And nobody would blame. She thought she lost the baby.
22:39 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
22:40 Karen Kilgariff? Entirely, and there's a lady that has the baby.
22:42 Georgia Hardstark? But also, like, babies all look the same to me. Like, how do you know it's your baby?
22:46 Karen Kilgariff? And act the same.
22:47 Georgia Hardstark? Like, such babies.
22:48 Karen Kilgariff? The attitudes. Years later, Violet will receive a very short phone call from a woman claiming to be that baby.
22:56 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, the baby. The baby calls her around. Fuck. Hello, it's a baby. Call her ID. It's the baby.
23:04 Karen Kilgariff? That baby.
23:05 Georgia Hardstark? That baby.
23:06 Karen Kilgariff? Your favorite baby.
23:07 Georgia Hardstark? The Titanic baby.
23:08 Karen Kilgariff? From the North Atlantic. Some people say that that call was either a hoax or it wasn't really. Violet seemed to believe she really was the caller.
23:16 Georgia Hardstark? Sure, why not?
23:17 Karen Kilgariff? So, the Carpathia spends four hours pulling Titanic survivors from their lifeboats. Ultimately, they deliver around 700 people to safety in the New York harbor.
23:29 Georgia Hardstark? I thought they went to Canada.
23:30 Karen Kilgariff? I think they took the dead bodies to Canada.
23:32 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
23:33 Karen Kilgariff? That's where the big morgue was.
23:34 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
23:35 Karen Kilgariff? But, sorry, that's just what it said here, so you could be right.
23:38 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, that's probably below deck.
23:40 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, that's more below deck Newfoundland. From there, Violet catches a ship back to England, and not two weeks later, she signs back up to go out to sea to work as a stewardess once again.
23:51 Georgia Hardstark? Because, like, what are the chances, right?
23:54 Karen Kilgariff? I'm sure. And she's kind of like, this is a real skill. She probably can make good money comparatively.
24:01 Georgia Hardstark? And she needs the money.
24:02 Karen Kilgariff? She has to have it.
24:03 Georgia Hardstark? It's not like she can take time off.
24:04 Karen Kilgariff? No, she can't go find herself and do a year abroad.
24:07 Georgia Hardstark? Do you think there was a Titanic survivor fund or something? No, they didn't do that then.
24:11 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, you would think something. But anyway, she's kind of like all business, which, sorry, I do love that.
24:18 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:18 Karen Kilgariff? We're just like, hey, look.
24:20 Georgia Hardstark? It's Irish, man.
24:22 Karen Kilgariff? It's Irish Catholic, because it's like,
24:23 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
24:24 Karen Kilgariff? I'll get my reward later.
24:25 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
24:26 Karen Kilgariff? I'll go back on to the thing that tried to kill me last two times. Okay, she will say, quote, "I knew that if I meant to continue my sea life, I would have to return at once, otherwise I would lose my nerve, for I had no love for it, but I needed the work."
24:41 Georgia Hardstark? Girl.
24:42 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, intense. So Violet will later write about how the sinking of the Titanic changes her entire perspective on life and strengthens her already very deep faith. What it does not do is change how much she hates being at the beck and call of rich travelers. There's no faith strong enough to get you over rich people snapping their fingers at you.
25:03 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely not.
25:04 Karen Kilgariff? Violet writes on that topic, quote, "I wanted the quietness of happy contentment, not the hectic turmoil of riches, which sapped simplicity and spontaneous kindness out of people. I wanted desperately to shut out the encroachment of sea life on my inner self, to retain something I feared I was losing, a kind of action that's performed for the love of pleasing and not for gain.
25:26 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
25:26 Karen Kilgariff? I had gained one thing. I learned how to look very deeply into people and to value them for what I found. Famous names and possessions no longer moved me. I was more confident when confronted by some powerful woman whose cold eyes, as I served her breakfast, might once have shattered me." She's literally talking about my career. But each day, it was more, but each day it was more difficult to be my simple self, to ignore the pettiness, artificiality, and frothy gaiety that encompassed a stewardess's life on board a ship.
26:00 Georgia Hardstark? I fucking totally hear that.
26:02 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
26:02 Georgia Hardstark? As an ex-waitress, I fucking hear it.
26:05 Karen Kilgariff? Come on.
26:06 Georgia Hardstark? Like,
26:07 Karen Kilgariff? It's not-
26:07 Georgia Hardstark? Entitled motherfuckers.
26:09 Karen Kilgariff? On vacation being like, you make my vacation good.
26:12 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
26:12 Karen Kilgariff? So it's the literal opposite of a vacation for you.
26:15 Georgia Hardstark? You are here to serve me, and that's your purpose.
26:19 Karen Kilgariff? Snap, snap, snap.
26:20 Georgia Hardstark? Fuck you.
26:21 Karen Kilgariff? So, now, it's 1914, and World War I begins.
26:26 Georgia Hardstark? Heard of it.
26:26 Karen Kilgariff? Violet is 27, and as we all do at age 27, she decides to pivot. So what she does is become a war nurse.
26:34 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely, that's what you did.
26:35 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, you got to. So she's in the hospitals. Both on land and at sea.
26:40 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, honey.
26:41 Karen Kilgariff? She can't stop. In late 1916, she's assigned work on the Britannic, which is the third of the White Star Line's signature luxury vessels, this sister ship to the Olympic and to the Titanic.
26:54 Georgia Hardstark? Why don't they know when to quit? Or like, change the name of the company?
26:57 Karen Kilgariff? With this assignment, Violet will have worked on all three
27:01 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
27:01 Karen Kilgariff? of the White Star Line luxury ships.
27:03 Georgia Hardstark? There can't be a lot of them.
27:04 Karen Kilgariff? No. I bet you they gave her a nice pocket watch for it. So during the war, the Britannic is repurposed into a hospital ship. And on November 21st, 1916, it's moving through the Aegean Sea on the way to the battlefields in Turkey to treat wounded soldiers there. So they go pick up all the wounded soldiers and take them back away from all the war. So at a little after 9:00 AM, Violet has just left mass church. And she's now quietly eating her breakfast.
27:34 Georgia Hardstark? Eating in temple?
27:35 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
27:36 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, do I have to translate it for you?
27:37 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, thank you.
27:39 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, she's eating breakfast post-mass.
27:40 Karen Kilgariff? Post-mass and not Massachusetts. And her breakfast is interrupted by a loud boom. We're doing it again. For years, the cause of the blast will be unclear. But today, in 2025, it's believed that the Britannic hit a mine.
27:55 Georgia Hardstark? No way.
27:56 Karen Kilgariff? Yep. So the ship shakes violently, begins to sink. Violet yawns, checks her watch, looks around.
28:05 Georgia Hardstark? Is there a baby? Does anyone want to give me a baby?
28:07 Karen Kilgariff? Stop crying, it's not that big of a deal. I've seen worse. Does anybody have a baby? Hand me all babies.
28:15 Georgia Hardstark? I'll take the babies.
28:16 Karen Kilgariff? Hand the babies over here, please. She's finishing her English muffin. Okay. Officers immediately start moving people onto lifeboats, but Violet runs back to her room to get a prayer book and a toothbrush.
28:29 Georgia Hardstark? Honey.
28:30 Karen Kilgariff? Which is something she sorely missed after surviving the Titanic sinking. A friend had jokingly told Violet to, quote, "Never undertake another disaster without first making sure of your toothbrush." That's how much she complained about not being able to brush her teeth after surviving the sinking of the Titanic.
28:46 Georgia Hardstark? How much were toothbrushes back then? And then money, what did the toothbrush cost?
28:50 Karen Kilgariff? I think she was just like, it was no one's priority to get me a toothbrush after we got back to land. And so she's like, never again.
28:59 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, all right.
29:00 Karen Kilgariff? Girl.
29:00 Georgia Hardstark? Seems like you can use your finger like we all did when we crashed at a dude's house in our 20s.
29:07 Karen Kilgariff? So now Violet's loaded onto a crowded lifeboat. This is, if you are the kind of person that doesn't understand why you listen to true crime podcasts, because they're upsetting.
29:17 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
29:18 Karen Kilgariff? This part might upset you.
29:19 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, okay, got it.
29:20 Karen Kilgariff? This is a very upsetting part.
29:21 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, shit.
29:22 Karen Kilgariff? Especially if you have ocean issues.
29:24 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, or you're on a boat right now.
29:25 Karen Kilgariff? Or you're on a boat right now. So they're slowly being lowered into the water, which is not a smooth journey. The ship starts tilting. The lifeboat gets snagged on an open porthole. It almost flips upside down, but the people on the lifeboat managed to get it uncaught. Now it's scraping down the side of the Britannic as it's lowered. At one point, the ship takes another hard tilt and the lifeboat goes out and swings into the ship's green hospital band, which is made of glass. So it's, it's a hospital ship.
29:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
29:58 Karen Kilgariff? The green band around it is actually made of glass, which I didn't know that. So there's like a red cross up here, red cross back there. That's who you know, hey, don't bomb this ship.
30:08 Georgia Hardstark? Can we get canvas?
30:09 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
30:09 Georgia Hardstark? Was there a shortage of canvas?
30:11 Karen Kilgariff? I don't know who planned that, but they smash into it and glass shatters and Violet and the other people on the lifeboat are sprayed with shards of glass.
30:21 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
30:22 Karen Kilgariff? All the while Violet is looking down at the water. She can see two lifeboats are already down there and the people who are on those lifeboats are doing everything they can to row away from the ship itself. But the captain is still trying to move the Britannic towards shallower waters and he has not turned off the ship's propeller.
30:43 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, no.
30:43 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
30:44 Georgia Hardstark? No.
30:45 Karen Kilgariff? The propeller is now sucking the evacuees in their lifeboats.
30:50 Georgia Hardstark? No, no, no.
30:51 Karen Kilgariff? Toward the ship. Violet watches as the worst case scenario plays out in front of her. One of the lifeboats gets sucked into the ship's blades and the boat and all of the people on it are hacked to pieces and the water then turns red with blood. As she, as they're dangling over the same water they're supposed to go down into.
31:11 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, no.
31:13 Karen Kilgariff? Violet will later say, quote, "I gave that foolish, nervous laugh, as people sometimes do, when faced with an unpleasant discovery and a doubtful alternative."
31:24 Georgia Hardstark? That's a beautiful way of putting, "Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck."
31:28 Karen Kilgariff? Fuck, holy fuck. Just sitting there, looking down.
31:32 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god.
31:33 Karen Kilgariff? Violet's lifeboat is finally dropped into the same water. Almost on cue, everyone except for Violet and one other man, jump out of the boat and into the sea.
31:42 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
31:42 Karen Kilgariff? Violet will later write about this, quote, "Not a word, not a shout was heard, just hundreds of men fleeing into the sea as if from an enemy in pursuit. It was extraordinary to find myself in the space of a few minutes, almost the only occupant of the boat. I turned around to see the reason for this exodus, and to my horror, saw the Britannics' huge propellers churning and mincing up everything near them. Men, boats, and everything were just one ghastly whirl."
32:14 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, man, dude, shut it off.
32:16 Karen Kilgariff? So she turns around to see why everyone's jumping off the boat, and then when she turns back, the one guy that was left also jumps off the boat.
32:23 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
32:23 Karen Kilgariff? It's so horrible. She can't swim.
32:25 Georgia Hardstark? Right, that's right.
32:26 Karen Kilgariff? It's not an option, and yet, she knows if she stays on this boat, she's going into that propeller.
32:32 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
32:32 Karen Kilgariff? So she flings herself into the water, kicking and paddling for her life, and it is the very first time her whole body and her head are underwater like that.
32:41 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
32:42 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, I'm sure she took baths before, but like, never, she has never.
32:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:47 Karen Kilgariff? She's immediately jerked around by the power of these propellers.
32:50 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, they just suck you right in.
32:51 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, you're gonna go where that water takes you. Her head is hit onto the ship's keel, which is the bottom spine. Twice. She's pulled down and her head is knocked into the keel twice. She will later write, quote, "My brain shook like a solid body in a bottle of liquid."
33:07 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my god.
33:08 Karen Kilgariff? At the same time, the keel is also blocking Violet from being able to come back up and surface. So she is under there about to drown. She says, quote, "Suddenly, some twist of fancy made me see, even then, underwater, the humor of my situation."
33:24 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my honey.
33:25 Karen Kilgariff? And I chuckled. That was very nearly my undoing, for I swallowed what seemed like gallons of water and everything that was in it.
33:33 Georgia Hardstark? I love her.
33:34 Karen Kilgariff? I love her.
33:35 Georgia Hardstark? Like, how much fun was she to have a drink with?
33:37 Karen Kilgariff? Cause she is like, "You gotta be fucking..." Someone hand me a baby down here.
33:40 Georgia Hardstark? Can you believe it?
33:43 Karen Kilgariff? Miraculously, this is when the captain finally cuts the ship's engine.
33:47 Georgia Hardstark? Thanks, guy.
33:48 Karen Kilgariff? The propellers stop and now Violet's adrenaline kicks in. Yes, she's injured. It is a head injury, but somehow she forces her way to the surface and finds a life vest floating nearby. She holds on to that life vest, she keeps her head above water, and she swims past dismembered corpses and dangerous debris from the chopped up lifeboats.
34:11 Georgia Hardstark? Dude.
34:13 Karen Kilgariff? Horror show.
34:14 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. This is the worst one.
34:15 Karen Kilgariff? While the Britannic continues sinking behind her, Violet is far enough away, she gets far enough away. And when she does, she turns around and she watches it go down. Quote, she says, "All the deck machinery fell into the sea like child's toys." Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air, until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going resounding through the water with an undreamt of violence.
34:44 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
34:45 Karen Kilgariff? You just don't wanna be that close to these gigantic ships when they sink.
34:49 Georgia Hardstark? True. Like, really, you wanna be at home.
34:51 Karen Kilgariff? Far, far away. At home with your eight brothers and sisters. So Violet's out there bobbing in the water clinging to the life vest until a motorboat approaches and pulls her up to safety. She then realizes for the first time that her leg has been slashed and her head is quote battered almost to a pulp.
35:09 Georgia Hardstark? Oof.
35:10 Karen Kilgariff? Doctors are amazed by how mobile and alert Violet is. When she sees a Britannic doctor that she'd sat beside at Mass earlier that morning, he tells her, quote, "I know what saved you today, young lady."
35:24 Georgia Hardstark? English muffin.
35:26 Karen Kilgariff? Did you hear the way I choked on the finishing that sentence where I'm like, "Oh, wait, he means God. Hold on a second. Hold on a second."
35:33 Georgia Hardstark? What did she think about?
35:34 Karen Kilgariff? This, I don't know, I wasn't really thinking. It was like, "This is a highly Catholic Church sponsored episode."
35:40 Georgia Hardstark? It truly is.
35:41 Karen Kilgariff? The Britannic will sink in just under 55 minutes. It took the Titanic two hours and 40 minutes to sink. This thing went down fast. 28 people are killed when the Britannic sinks. It could have been much worse if the ship had picked up wounded soldiers, but it was on the way. Thank God.
36:02 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
36:03 Karen Kilgariff? Violet is patched up and she's sent home to England where she lives with her mom Kelly. She ends up getting a job at a bank and for-
36:11 Georgia Hardstark? That sounds way better.
36:12 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, but she's having problems with her, basically with her cognition because of the head injury. Years after the sinking, a doctor will be doing a routine exam on her when he tells Violet that she'd actually fractured her skull when her head hit the Britannic's keel. And she somehow not only survived, but was never treated for it and basically got through it.
36:37 Georgia Hardstark? Good to know.
36:38 Karen Kilgariff? So a few years after that, in 1920, when Violet is around 33 years old, she gets an itch to go back to sea. Violet will go back to the White Star Line on the restored Olympic, which is the ocean liner she worked on that collided with the Hawk.
36:54 Georgia Hardstark? Number one. Yes.
36:56 Karen Kilgariff? Okay. Violet immediately notices how different the Olympics passengers are from the last time she was on it. Instead of the stuffy, ultra-rich, bossy assholes that she had worked for before the war.
37:07 Georgia Hardstark? The Victorian Richie Riches.
37:09 Karen Kilgariff? Right. Now she's dealing with Americans. Many middle-class. They're just there to have fun.
37:15 Georgia Hardstark? Great.
37:16 Karen Kilgariff? Because on land, it's prohibition.
37:17 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
37:19 Karen Kilgariff? So that's a new responsibility as a steward and stewardesses on this ship. It's part of your job to basically help these VIPs to booze it up while they're on the ship.
37:30 Georgia Hardstark? Sounds great.
37:31 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm. And basically, part of the job is you have to hide the booze from customs agents.
37:36 Georgia Hardstark? Got it.
37:37 Karen Kilgariff? Violet will write about that quote, "It was all so fantastic. There were pillars of Wall Street, senators, lawyers, debutantes, all with their minds on the same problem as we approached the shores of the United States. How do we keep drinking?" So from here, Violet bounces around to other ships. She even completes two cruises around the world on the Red Star Line. And that experience means a lot to Violet. She's surrounded by diverse people. She's exposed to different world cultures. And this is when she really begins embracing her life as a stewardess, which she then comes to appreciate for its excitement and its unpredictability and the ways it's tested her spirit and resolve.
38:18 Georgia Hardstark? Fair enough.
38:18 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, that's quite a line, Maren, having written that, of like, testing her spirit and resolve. It's like, you almost died on a b- the ocean wants to kill you so bad, Violet.
38:29 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely. This is fucking Final Destination Victorian.
38:32 Karen Kilgariff? She's like, guess what? I was at church this morning, it's not happening today. That's right. Mass will keep you from dying. Violet spends the next several years at sea. She marries and quickly divorces a fellow steward. In 1950, she retires at the age of 63 and moves into a cottage in Suffolk, England, in a village called Great Ashfield, where she raises chickens, makes an adjacent field available for her neighbors' horses, who she loves like her own. And she even grows flowers that remind her of the ones that she loved as a little girl in Argentina. Violet Jessop dies of congestive heart failure in 1971, when she is 83 years old.
39:14 Georgia Hardstark? What a fucking life.
39:16 Karen Kilgariff? What a life. And despite her long career at sea, She ends her life very grounded, close with her family, doting on her neighbors' horses, tending to her garden, and every so often delighting in telling one of her unbelievable stories of survival. And that is the story and the legend of the so-called queen of the sinking ships, Violet Jessop.
39:41 Georgia Hardstark? Wow. Yeah, I'd take that. I'll take that life.
39:46 Karen Kilgariff? Chick, chick.
39:46 Georgia Hardstark? Chick, okay.
39:47 Karen Kilgariff? I'll take it all the way up until hovering over red water while people.
39:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yes. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I don't want that one.
39:54 Karen Kilgariff? Climb me!
39:55 Georgia Hardstark? I don't want that one. That's fucking wild.
39:58 Karen Kilgariff? It is. Not cool.
39:59 Georgia Hardstark? Wow. Great job.
40:00 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you.
40:01 Georgia Hardstark? You did it again.
40:02 Karen Kilgariff? Great job. My researcher, Maren McGlashan, who took that, basically was like, I think I found one that's crazier than all of the Titanic stories combined. I'm like, how is that possible?
40:12 Georgia Hardstark? That's a good one.
40:13 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
40:13 Georgia Hardstark? We believe you guys. We believe in you guys.
40:16 Karen Kilgariff? We believe you.
40:17 Georgia Hardstark? Good job. To everyone listening, don't forget, hashtag my favorite hot dog.
40:23 Karen Kilgariff? Hashtag it up. Prove to us that you like hot dogs the most.
40:26 Georgia Hardstark? We'll show you ours if you show us yours, right?
40:30 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
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41:06 Georgia Hardstark? You're sick, worried about someone you love, trying to understand what comes next, and suddenly you're spending hours on hold, filling out paperwork and trying to figure out who to call.
41:15 Karen Kilgariff? Research shows patients spend the equivalent of an eight-hour workday every month, coordinating their own care.
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42:11 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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42:54 Karen Kilgariff? ready for whatever's next. While the world tells us to keep going, Kit Kat reminds us that the best time for a break is now. Have a break, have a Kit Kat. Goodbye.
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44:00 Karen Kilgariff? Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com/mfm.
44:07 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
44:10 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
44:11 Georgia Hardstark? Now it's your turn. Now it's my turn. And we're gonna take a turn.
44:17 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, great.
44:17 Georgia Hardstark? Not right away. This is about a not well-known war that took place in Western Australia in the 1930s.
44:28 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
44:29 Georgia Hardstark? That, I mean, it's so not well-known that we got one email from a listener about it in the Gmail. That's it.
44:34 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
44:35 Georgia Hardstark? But I think it's gonna be your new favorite war.
44:37 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
44:38 Georgia Hardstark? Because I know you have so many.
44:40 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be tough. I'd say my first favorite war is MASH.
44:49 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna start cold and I'll tell you what it's called.
44:53 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
44:53 Georgia Hardstark? In a moment.
44:54 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, I'll wait.
44:55 Georgia Hardstark? Please wait.
44:55 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
44:56 Georgia Hardstark? Please hold. So we're in the aftermath of World War I. Thousands of veterans, who are nicknamed "soldier settlers," moved to Western Australia. And it's a vast area with a huge array of climates. There's tropical coast up north, desert in the interior, a Mediterranean climate similar to parts of California on the southwestern coast. It's a fucking beautiful place we should all move to.
45:18 Karen Kilgariff? We should.
45:19 Georgia Hardstark? Don't you think?
45:20 Karen Kilgariff? Remember, we did like, a tour which was kind of southeastern?
45:24 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, we didn't go to Perth.
45:25 Karen Kilgariff? We didn't go to Perth.
45:26 Georgia Hardstark? They were mad.
45:27 Karen Kilgariff? Dang. Next time.
45:29 Georgia Hardstark? So the Australian government has bought thousands of tracts of land to sell to the soldiers at discounted prices in an effort to reward the men for their service with farmland to develop and profit from. So they're trying to, you know, expand.
45:42 Karen Kilgariff? Give back, yeah.
45:43 Georgia Hardstark? There are more than 5,000 soldiers who buy land under the scheme. And the problem is that the amount of land with good soil for farming in Western Australia is kinda low. So many of these soldiers are stuck out on tracks with low-quality soil and a host of other issues that haven't really been thought through. In the end, most of these soldiers wind up raising sheep and planting wheat, which is what's most suited to the climate. And in the 1920s, there's actually a string of really good years. The wheat grows well, the farmers are insulated a bit from bad years by selling wool from the sheep, and everyone is making money. Everything's fine. Then, in 1929, your favorite Great Depression happens. The Great Depression.
46:26 Karen Kilgariff? The Great.
46:27 Georgia Hardstark? The greatest.
46:27 Karen Kilgariff? The greatest depression.
46:28 Georgia Hardstark? I was falling asleep last night to The World According to Kunk, by Philomena Kunk.
46:32 Karen Kilgariff? Of course.
46:33 Georgia Hardstark? It's truly one of the best books ever written, period.
46:37 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I thought you were talking about the TV show. You're listening to the book.
46:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, the audiobook I was listening to.
46:40 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, okay, got it.
46:42 Georgia Hardstark? At first, when the Great Depression starts, the price of wheat stays pretty stable. Other prices for goods tank in Australia, so the government pushes a big initiative to get farmers to produce more wheat, because it's selling. Hey, let's just do it. The slogan they come up with for the farmers to grow more wheat is, do you want to guess?
47:02 Karen Kilgariff? Hey, it's wheat time, guys.
47:04 Georgia Hardstark? Nope. It's more complicated. It's just grow more wheat.
47:09 Karen Kilgariff? Damn it.
47:09 Georgia Hardstark? They should have had you on their creative team.
47:11 Karen Kilgariff? Goddamn it.
47:12 Georgia Hardstark? The Australian Prime Minister promises the farmers that the government will buy the wheat at a good price. Australian farmers enthusiastically take him up on this offer, vastly expanding their wheat production, right? By the early 1930s, there's a new prime minister. That always fucking happens. You never planned for that.
47:30 Karen Kilgariff? Every time it happens, yeah.
47:32 Georgia Hardstark? That's Joseph Lyons, and the global price of wheat tanks. Tanks for nothing. The government...
47:43 Karen Kilgariff? You acted like you were reading off the page. Good one.
47:47 Georgia Hardstark? The government, which already is facing a massive deficit, actually goes back on the previous prime minister's promise, because they can do that. So the situation is already fairly bleak at this point, by October of 1932. That's where we are, when that year's wheat harvest is supposed to start. Farmers in the town, I'm going to get these wrong, Australians, I'm real sorry. Farmers near the towns of Campion... And Walgulin, that sounds right.
48:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
48:14 Georgia Hardstark? A important issue. So this area is one of the drier parts of the state, and it wasn't as well suited to farming already. Right before the farmers are meant to start harvesting their wheat on this land, a plague overtakes the farms and wreaks havoc on the crops. They trample, they devour, they're more than a nuisance. They're a downright pestilence of epic proportions. This is the story of the Great Emu War.
48:42 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, wow. What?
48:45 Georgia Hardstark? Emu.
48:46 Karen Kilgariff? All of a sudden, these poor soldier gentlemen farmers.
48:50 Georgia Hardstark? It's like, it's already not going great.
48:52 Karen Kilgariff? They're just trying to make the best of it, and suddenly...
48:55 Georgia Hardstark? They talked their wife into coming. It's gonna be great. We're gonna be farmers. We're gonna own land.
48:59 Karen Kilgariff? It's okay. You're afraid of birds. That's fine. There's hardly any birds out here.
49:03 Georgia Hardstark? No, no, it's totally fine. It's Australia. What could go wrong? I mean, wild animal, why is not?
49:08 Karen Kilgariff? Snakes, snakes.
49:10 Georgia Hardstark? Crocs.
49:10 Karen Kilgariff? Ah, okay.
49:11 Georgia Hardstark? And a big shout out to my researcher, Ali Elkin, for even coming up with this story, because...
49:17 Karen Kilgariff? So good.
49:17 Georgia Hardstark? I saw it and responded in all caps, because it was so exciting, you know?
49:21 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
49:22 Georgia Hardstark? So let me tell you a little bit about emus, since I don't know how familiar you are with them.
49:27 Karen Kilgariff? I could be thinking of kiwi, which is the small bird.
49:30 Georgia Hardstark? You're, it's not a kiwi. This is the large one that looks kind of like a...
49:34 Karen Kilgariff? Ostrich?
49:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
49:35 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
49:35 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
49:36 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
49:36 Georgia Hardstark? So emus are actually native to Australia, and I wrote, like Charlize Theron. Wait, that's not right. Is she?
49:43 Karen Kilgariff? No, I think she's South African.
49:44 Georgia Hardstark? Shit. You know who I met? I met Nicole Kidman.
49:48 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yes.
49:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, Barbie. I met Barbie.
49:50 Karen Kilgariff? Margot Robbie.
49:51 Georgia Hardstark? Margot Robbie's. Fuck, man, I can't even get that. Don't believe a word I say.
49:56 Karen Kilgariff? You had so many choices.
49:57 Georgia Hardstark? I did. Just blonde, beautiful actresses, and I picked the wrong fucking one. They're the world's second or third largest bird. I couldn't tell based on searching. They're right after ostriches, so ostriches are bigger than them. Then there's emus.
50:10 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
50:10 Georgia Hardstark? Emus are considered one of the closest living relatives to dinosaurs.
50:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
50:14 Georgia Hardstark? Right?
50:15 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
50:15 Georgia Hardstark? Particularly to raptors.
50:17 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, man.
50:18 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. They're the only species of bird that has calf muscles.
50:23 Karen Kilgariff? That's so creepy.
50:25 Georgia Hardstark? Isn't that creepy?
50:27 Karen Kilgariff? And little, like, fighting Irish tattoos on those calf muscles.
50:32 Georgia Hardstark? Exactly. And they can jump seven feet high. They can sprint for short distances of 40 miles per hour.
50:38 Karen Kilgariff? No.
50:39 Georgia Hardstark? That's fast.
50:40 Karen Kilgariff? That is very fast.
50:40 Georgia Hardstark? That's like on the freeway here. And that's actually about the speed of an average racehorse, too. So they're fucking fast little shit.
50:46 Karen Kilgariff? They're fast.
50:47 Georgia Hardstark? Right. Emus have a pouch in their throat that they use to make deep, booming, and grunting sounds for communication. So they're loud.
50:55 Karen Kilgariff? You know I was gonna say that.
50:59 Georgia Hardstark? This is you, too, particularly during breeding season.
51:01 Karen Kilgariff? Hey.
51:03 Georgia Hardstark? And then here is where, note to Georgia, Ally put a video of an emu running to see how fast it could go. And then I got into a fucking rabbit hole of emu videos.
51:14 Karen Kilgariff? How'd it go?
51:15 Georgia Hardstark? I wrote zoomies, because emus get zoomies. Emus playing fetch with a little girl, dog and baby. There's a, what were they, a dog and a baby emu playing. They're fucking adorable.
51:26 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so are do, is this like, people now have emu farms? Like, they're raising them like ostriches?
51:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
51:32 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
51:32 Georgia Hardstark? So, yeah, so I went down this rabbit hole. I saw them run. It totally looked like the beginning of Jurassic Park with all these long necks, just like, they're really fun, and I want one now.
51:41 Karen Kilgariff? And you're, yes, I was gonna say, and you're like, but Vince, come on, just one more.
51:45 Georgia Hardstark? Come on, we gotta save the emus. And actually, some emus can be gentle and affectionate if they're raised that way from a young age, but others can be aggressive and moody, especially if they're not socialized property.
51:57 Karen Kilgariff? Same.
51:59 Georgia Hardstark? And they may react angrily to being touched or handled.
52:02 Karen Kilgariff? Hey, what's up?
52:05 Georgia Hardstark? So, they have tiny wings, so they're flightless, but they're known to migrate very long distances in search of food and water. In the past, emus typically moved through this area that we're in toward the coast without staying long before. But there's been a drought in 1932, and the creation of this new farmland has both cleared areas of vegetation and obstacles, and has established new water sources for livestock and irrigation. It's the perfect place for emus. So, in this area, in this time period, guess how many migratory emus visit this area at once?
52:46 Karen Kilgariff? I'm gonna go ahead and say.
52:48 Georgia Hardstark? You don't have to guess if you don't want to.
52:50 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, look, I don't want to guess, but I have to guess.
52:53 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
52:54 Karen Kilgariff? No, I really want to.
52:55 Georgia Hardstark? You have one emu standing here. How many do you think fucking showed up for the Great Emu War?
53:00 Karen Kilgariff? 500?
53:01 Georgia Hardstark? 20,000.
53:02 Karen Kilgariff? Who what?
53:04 Georgia Hardstark? 20 fucking thousand emus.
53:07 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, no.
53:08 Georgia Hardstark? Onto this like, smallish area.
53:12 Karen Kilgariff? Cause also they're eating that wheat.
53:14 Georgia Hardstark? They're eating the wheat. Yep, they're drinking all the irrigated water. They're like stomping, they're trampling, they're like wreaking havoc.
53:22 Karen Kilgariff? Partying.
53:23 Georgia Hardstark? They're fucking partying.
53:24 Karen Kilgariff? This is their kind of, what do you call it, Burning Man? It's a 1932, early Burning Man.
53:31 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
53:31 Karen Kilgariff? Emu style.
53:32 Georgia Hardstark? Hey, meet me on the playa.
53:33 Karen Kilgariff? Hey, man, be yourself.
53:35 Georgia Hardstark? To put that number in perspective, Ally, let me know, that 20,000 emus would fill your typical arena where an NBA team would play. It's the exact capacity of the crypto.com arena. So you're not even playing basketball, and then you look up into the crowd and it's fucking just wall-to-wall emus.
53:51 Karen Kilgariff? And they're like doing weird shit like they're gonna come down.
53:53 Georgia Hardstark? Right, they're like getting ready to, and they're dinosaurs.
53:56 Karen Kilgariff? They're dinosaurs, same amount of feathers as ostriches?
54:00 Georgia Hardstark? Um, I think so, yeah. Yeah, they're similar to ostriches.
54:03 Karen Kilgariff? You would think it was an ostrich.
54:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, you would. You would, yeah, you'd get it wrong and you wouldn't be stupid.
54:08 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
54:09 Georgia Hardstark? For it.
54:09 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that's what we keep telling ourselves.
54:12 Georgia Hardstark? Right, and to make matters worse, high tariffs imposed in the post-war and depression area have made wire netting prohibitively expensive.
54:21 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
54:21 Georgia Hardstark? So they can't afford to fence out the emus, that's not a choice.
54:26 Georgia Hardstark? I know. So.
54:27 Karen Kilgariff? It's literally a perfect storm.
54:28 Georgia Hardstark? It is. So the farmers, who are all vets, remember, they're all veterans to World War I.
54:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
54:33 Georgia Hardstark? They do the level-headed thing, and they write to the Minister of Defense, asking to sup- Asking to be supplied with machine guns to kill the EMOS as you do.
54:43 Karen Kilgariff? Well, the problem is, and I think we've talked about this a lot, of like, it's sheer numbers, where it's like, if it was 500 EMUs, they would be a little more reasonable. 20,000 of these birds.
54:57 Georgia Hardstark? And then, so maybe because the government has jerked these farmers around so many times with the price of wheat already, they kind of know they're in trouble with these farmers already. They want to appear like they're helping them, so the minister says yes to the gun request. But since the government of Australia has smart brains that think in a normal way, machine guns are tightly regulated there.
55:18 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
55:18 Georgia Hardstark? Can you imagine?
55:19 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, what a world to live in. But also, just because the farmer soldiers asked for machine guns, why can't they just have regular guns?
55:30 Georgia Hardstark? Right, they wanted machine guns.
55:31 Karen Kilgariff? I know.
55:32 Georgia Hardstark? It sounds more fun, probably. They're probably bored out of their fucking minds at this point.
55:36 Karen Kilgariff? And they're enraged.
55:37 Georgia Hardstark? Enraged. So instead, three specially trained soldiers are sent from Perth to the region to operate the machine guns.
55:44 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
55:45 Georgia Hardstark? It's really like, everyone doesn't get a machine gun.
55:47 Karen Kilgariff? Great.
55:47 Georgia Hardstark? These three guys get a machine gun.
55:49 Karen Kilgariff? We'll send machine guns to you.
55:51 Georgia Hardstark? With people who can operate them.
55:53 Karen Kilgariff? Good plan.
55:54 Georgia Hardstark? And it's not just like a little machine gun that you can hold and operate and move around with. It's a huge tube that needs to be propped up. It has a wheel of bullets. It's like, you know, a World War I type gun.
56:04 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
56:04 Georgia Hardstark? The rest of the farmers are allowed to help shoot at the EMUs, but they have to use boring old regular rifles.
56:09 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
56:10 Georgia Hardstark? So the farmers also agree to house the three military specialists and to pay for the ammunition for the guns. It's not the greatest deal.
56:18 Karen Kilgariff? Plan or deal for them?
56:19 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
56:20 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, but you do have to do that thing where like, after a while, you're like, sure, but you did agree to do this huge crazy thing.
56:27 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, that's true.
56:29 Karen Kilgariff? And like, in...
56:29 Georgia Hardstark? But under what pretenses? Like, were they lies?
56:33 Karen Kilgariff? True, where it's like, oh, you can farm this beautiful area. But it's Australia, so it's like, it's all snakes and spiders.
56:40 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
56:40 Karen Kilgariff? They can't, the expectation couldn't have been-
56:43 Georgia Hardstark? Right, and no emus.
56:44 Karen Kilgariff? Easy breezy.
56:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, there was no, no emu clause.
56:47 Karen Kilgariff? No emu clause. We guarantee no large bird will come at you en masse.
56:52 Georgia Hardstark? Legit dinosaur.
56:53 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, hordes of them.
56:54 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, okay, so the army specialists are overseen by a man named Major Gwynedd Purvis. Wyn Aubrey Meredith is his name.
57:03 Karen Kilgariff? Or his six first names?
57:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
57:05 Karen Kilgariff? Cool.
57:06 Georgia Hardstark? And so he's there overseeing it, and then a cinematographer also joins the group to film the anti-emu offensive.
57:13 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
57:13 Georgia Hardstark? Which is great.
57:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
57:14 Georgia Hardstark? Presumably because people in the Australian government believed it would be successful. They're like, let's send a cameraman out there, and this will be great propaganda for like, what we do for our farmers. The soldiers arrive on November 2nd, 1932, and the war begins. On the first day they arrive, a flock of 50 emus is spotted at one of the farms, so they set up their guns on some nearby high ground. The guns jam almost immediately, and the emus scatter.
57:40 Karen Kilgariff? Ooh.
57:41 Georgia Hardstark? The next day, the soldiers have a bit more success when they set up ambushes around water sources, but it immediately proves to be very slow going. Between the rifles and the machine guns, the soldiers are able to pick off about, out of 20,000 emus in one day, they pick off about 12 emus, max, before the rest of the flock has scurried out of range.
58:01 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
58:02 Georgia Hardstark? So in a day's work, that's 12 emus out of 20,000, and that's a good day, it turns out.
58:07 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
58:07 Georgia Hardstark? The farmers and the military have woefully underestimated their adversaries. I told you about how fast they are, and I told you about how they have calf muscles, so they're like-
58:17 Karen Kilgariff? So they're cool.
58:17 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
58:18 Karen Kilgariff? Kinda hot.
58:19 Georgia Hardstark? The soldiers that were sent to the farms, they start getting nervous. They've been instructed by one of their commanding officers to bring back at least 100 emu skins, because emu feathers are used to decorate the ceremonial helmets for a particular military unit in Australia. So this commanding officer was like, hey, this is a great way to get a bunch of fucking emus. But it's becoming increasingly apparent that killing any emus, let alone 100, to bring back, is not going to be easy.
58:47 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
58:48 Georgia Hardstark? Because the emus have now started to appoint their own officers.
58:52 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
58:54 Georgia Hardstark? Who act as scouts for the rest of the flock.
58:56 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, yes.
58:58 Georgia Hardstark? They're fucking smart.
58:59 Karen Kilgariff? They went back to headquarters and they said, sorry, those guys on the hill do not want what's best for us.
59:04 Georgia Hardstark? No.
59:05 Karen Kilgariff? Something's going down.
59:06 Georgia Hardstark? That's right. One emu war correspondent wrote at the time, quote, "The emus have proved that they are not so stupid as they are usually considered to be." Because they do run around like fucking idiots. Like, they do run around like-
59:17 Karen Kilgariff? They look goofy.
59:18 Georgia Hardstark? Like turkeys.
59:19 Karen Kilgariff? But it doesn't mean they're dumb.
59:20 Georgia Hardstark? No. He says, "Each mob has its leader, always an enormous, black-plumed bird, standing fully six feet high, who keeps watch while his fellows busy themselves with the wheat. At the first suspicious sign, he gives a signal and dozens of heads stretch up out of the crop." Dinosaurs. "A few birds will take fright, starting a headlong stampede into the scrub, the leader always remaining until his followers have reached safety."
59:46 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
59:47 Georgia Hardstark? End quote.
59:48 Karen Kilgariff? Shit.
59:49 Georgia Hardstark? So fucking Papa Bear is like, hey, guys, here they are.
59:53 Karen Kilgariff? Also-
59:54 Georgia Hardstark? Scatter.
59:54 Karen Kilgariff? We've survived for hundreds of millions of years, so we got this.
59:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, we're fucking dinosaurs.
1:00:00 Karen Kilgariff? No one panic.
1:00:01 Georgia Hardstark? Remember those cavemen?
1:00:02 Karen Kilgariff? I-
1:00:02 Georgia Hardstark? From back then?
1:00:03 Karen Kilgariff? Remember those fools?
1:00:04 Georgia Hardstark? From like, real recently?
1:00:05 Karen Kilgariff? They barely made it. It's those guys. These are cousins of those guys.
1:00:09 Georgia Hardstark? And they think they're gonna kill us, their cousins. After the first week of the emu war, it is reported that the group have used 2,500 rounds of ammunition to kill just 300 emus.
1:00:21 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my god.
1:00:22 Georgia Hardstark? And that's a generous estimate that comes from one of the military specialists. And you know, they fucking raise those numbers.
1:00:27 Karen Kilgariff? Absolutely.
1:00:28 Georgia Hardstark? So, I'm gonna redo this quote. The one person who wrote to our Gmail about, like, you guys should cover this story.
1:00:33 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm.
1:00:33 Georgia Hardstark? It's really crazy, is someone named Zagreedy, she/her. And Zagreedy included a quote from someone named John P. Rafferty that came from the Wikipedia. So here is that quote that Zagreedy included.
1:00:47 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
1:00:48 Georgia Hardstark? Quote, "The machine gunners' dream of point-blank fire into serried masses of emus were soon dissipated. The emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic." Meaning, like, you're wasting your fucking bullets.
1:01:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yep.
1:01:09 Georgia Hardstark? Meanwhile, in Parliament, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, remember him? Is now facing questions about the expense of the Emu War. One of the members of Parliament from Sydney asked sarcastically if any of the parties involved in the Emu War should be receiving a medal.
1:01:23 Karen Kilgariff? Harsh.
1:01:24 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. And someone says, if anyone should be getting a medal, it should be the Emus. Sounds like a fun Parliament.
1:01:30 Karen Kilgariff? It's true.
1:01:31 Georgia Hardstark? After two weeks, the Emus seem to have learned the range of the machine guns. They fucking, you can't, you can't hit me this far? You can't get me? I'm out of your range?
1:01:40 Karen Kilgariff? It's like when you can't leave the part of the couch that you have won.
1:01:44 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:01:45 Karen Kilgariff? And so then your sister just walks just out of range of like, well, then I'll go get myself like a cookie and you can't have one.
1:01:51 Georgia Hardstark? Exactly. They set up shop in the wheat fields just out of that range and move every time the soldiers reposition themselves, scatter when the farmers get close with the rifles. All this scattering and running is also causing the Emus to trample more wheat than they would have if you had never started this fucking Emu War. After the most successful day of the war, where maybe two dozen Emus are killed, R.I.P., one of the military specialists examines one of the dead Emus and finds that it has five bullets in its body, some of which are clearly old wounds from the beginning of the campaign.
1:02:25 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, shit.
1:02:25 Georgia Hardstark? Which means that the Emus are staying alive and running at close to full speed, even after being shot multiple times. Like, they're fucking Terminator.
1:02:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. They're like, oh, no, we're going to win this.
1:02:37 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:02:37 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:02:38 Georgia Hardstark? Isn't that creepy?
1:02:38 Karen Kilgariff? Like, it's sending a message with his body.
1:02:42 Georgia Hardstark? It's looking more and more like the Emus will win the war until suddenly on December 2nd, the war is called off. I think they're like, let's cut our fucking losses.
1:02:51 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, this is insanity.
1:02:53 Georgia Hardstark? The soldiers claimed to have killed between 1,000 and 2,000 Emus out of roughly 20,000 that were in the combat zone. And the Emus seem to become a part of life for the farmers at this point, having bested the soldiers. Still, in future years, the soldier settlers will continue to request machine guns to fight off the fucking emus, because I'm about to reproduce them. But the Australian Ministry of Defence will turn them down every time. Instead, the soldier settlers are supplied with additional rifles, and eventually they become more successful at fending off the emus on their own.
1:03:25 Karen Kilgariff? Picking them off one at a time.
1:03:26 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Between the 1940s and 1960s, the farmers kill more than 200,000 of them under a bounty system.
1:03:34 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
1:03:34 Georgia Hardstark? That's a lot. PETA doesn't like that.
1:03:36 Karen Kilgariff? No, that's bad.
1:03:38 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, they're so cute. Little babies, they're so cute.
1:03:41 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, can't it be like you just get rid of enough so that your stuff isn't at risk?
1:03:47 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:03:47 Karen Kilgariff? It always has to be this like, now they've killed 200,000 and now they're endangered.
1:03:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, exactly. Okay, so then later, eventually, the price of fencing comes down, and this becomes a much more practical way to deal with emus than fucking killing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. Then in 1999, emus become a protected species in Australia.
1:04:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yay.
1:04:08 Georgia Hardstark? And there are about 600,000 of them living in Australia today, which is considered a strong population.
1:04:14 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
1:04:15 Georgia Hardstark? So, they're back baby.
1:04:16 Karen Kilgariff? Good, good, good. All riddled with bullets and old wounds.
1:04:20 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, grandpa is telling the stories about how he survived the emu war.
1:04:25 Karen Kilgariff? They got me with this one. I just kept running.
1:04:28 Georgia Hardstark? Major Meredith, remember him with the really long name? He goes on to have a storied military career, having already served in World War I. He also serves in World War II and in the Korean War with distinction, but I bet that emu war stuck in his craw.
1:04:42 Karen Kilgariff? That's the one that got him.
1:04:42 Georgia Hardstark? Don't you think? That's the one he fucking couldn't win.
1:04:44 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:04:45 Georgia Hardstark? And that is the story of the Great Emu War.
1:04:48 Karen Kilgariff? It's totally insane.
1:04:52 Georgia Hardstark? I know, why don't you picture us?
1:04:53 Karen Kilgariff? It's so good.
1:04:54 Georgia Hardstark? Here's a farmer with an emu, dead emu.
1:04:56 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
1:04:56 Georgia Hardstark? It's pretty sad.
1:04:58 Karen Kilgariff? He's all mad.
1:04:59 Georgia Hardstark? He's a big bird, right?
1:05:00 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that is a big old bird.
1:05:02 Georgia Hardstark? You know, he's saying, "Crikey."
1:05:05 Karen Kilgariff? He's saying, "My calves." "Please, my calves."
1:05:09 Georgia Hardstark? Um.
1:05:10 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
1:05:10 Georgia Hardstark? All right.
1:05:11 Karen Kilgariff? That was great.
1:05:12 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you. Thank you, Ally, for finding that in the depths of the internet.
1:05:15 Karen Kilgariff? Nice one, Ally.
1:05:16 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:05:17 Karen Kilgariff? I really didn't understand what we were doing at the beginning.
1:05:20 Georgia Hardstark? No.
1:05:20 Karen Kilgariff? But it was fun.
1:05:21 Georgia Hardstark? What'd you think was gonna happen?
1:05:22 Karen Kilgariff? I don't know, but I'm really happy to hear, like, the idea that, like, here's how we're gonna use sheer brute force to solve a problem.
1:05:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:05:31 Karen Kilgariff? And then that problem's like, "You're not going to, though."
1:05:33 Georgia Hardstark? That doesn't work that way.
1:05:34 Karen Kilgariff? That's always, I think, a better... You know, it's good. It helps people evolve better ideas.
1:05:41 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. You gotta learn how to live in harmony with nature.
1:05:44 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:05:44 Georgia Hardstark? You get your ass kicked if not.
1:05:46 Karen Kilgariff? Or how about somebody figures out cheap barbed wire, you fools? You could've saved yourself so much time.
1:05:53 Georgia Hardstark? Right. Thank you, guys, for listening. We appreciate you being here.
1:05:57 Karen Kilgariff? Stay sexy.
1:05:58 Georgia Hardstark? And don't get murdered.
1:06:00 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
1:06:11 Karen Kilgariff? This has been an Exactly Right Production.
1:06:13 Georgia Hardstark? Our senior producer is Molly Smith, and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.
1:06:16 Karen Kilgariff? Our editor is Aristotle Lasevato.
1:06:18 Georgia Hardstark? This episode was mixed by Leona Scolacci.
1:06:21 Karen Kilgariff? Our researchers are Mira McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
1:06:23 Georgia Hardstark? Email your hometowns to [email protected] .
1:06:26 Karen Kilgariff? And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.
1:06:29 Georgia Hardstark? Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:06:34 Karen Kilgariff? Or you can watch us on YouTube. Search for My Favorite Murder, then like and subscribe. Goodbye.
1:06:46 Georgia Hardstark? You know a favorite M-word? Magnesium.
1:06:48 Karen Kilgariff? Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.
1:06:51 Georgia Hardstark? Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals, it's designed to relax and prepare you for a night of rest.
1:06:57 Karen Kilgariff? If you need a reset after your day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine.
1:07:02 Georgia Hardstark? Generously spritz each foot before bed, and you'll be all set. I've actually started doing this, and I'm obsessed with magnesium. It does everything.
1:07:09 Karen Kilgariff? Something like this is just like, it's simple, it's easy, and it actually works.
1:07:12 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. For wellness, you can feel fine. Find Dr. Your teals, magnesium spray, online or in your local bath aisle. Goodbye.
1:07:19 Karen Kilgariff? Vacation planning should feel like a breeze, not a deep dive into countless travel sites searching for the best deal.
1:07:24 Georgia Hardstark? With CheapCaribbean's Budget Beach Finder, you can search every destination and every date, all in one search.
1:07:30 Karen Kilgariff? You'll save time and money with the Budget Beach Finder.
1:07:33 Georgia Hardstark? Say goodbye to endless scrolling and tab hopping and hello to budget beach bliss at your fingertips.
1:07:38 Karen Kilgariff? Go to CheapCaribbean.com to try out the Budget Beach Finder and see just how stress-free vacation planning should be.
1:07:44 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
1:07:46 Speaker 05 When you send a business gift, you're doing more than saying thank you. You're recognizing a moment, expressing appreciation, and making a statement about your brand. With Forimprint, that message lands with certainty. With thousands of customizable products, from premium apparel and branded drinkware, to smart tech bags and thoughtfully chosen office items, Forimprint helps your brand show up with the kind of care people remember. You can tailor every detail: your logo, your message, your look. And with thousands without a setup fee, it's easy to create meaningful moments without added cost. You'll also get expert support, dependable service, and their 360-degree guarantee, so you can be Forimprint certain your gifts arrive exactly as intended, on time and on
1:08:31 Speaker 05 brand. Because in a season built around appreciation, the right gift should say it all with confidence, care, and attention to detail. Explore gifting with certainty at Forimprint.com.
1:08:43 Speaker 06 Forimprint, for certain.
1:08:46 Georgia Hardstark? By now, you've heard about Reef's shoes and sandals, but we want to introduce you to their line of women's clogs for fall.
1:08:51 Karen Kilgariff? These are the kind of shoes you'll keep reaching for because they're genuinely comfortable, but still feel cute and current.
1:08:57 Georgia Hardstark? A cute, like, flowy dress and a pair of clogs is so timeless.
1:09:01 Karen Kilgariff? And we got to get some of these clogs. I couldn't believe how cute and comfortable these Reef clogs were. They have the arch support, they have the height, they give you a little bit of height, but they're kind of simple. Check out the clogs on reef.com and redeem 15% off your first purchase.
1:09:16 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
Previous Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 77: Live At The Keswick Theatre Next MFM Minisode 469 Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated