Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark 512 - Best of the Year (Part I) About this episode On this best of 2025 quilt episode, we revisit Karen and Georgia's coverage of Locusta the Poisoner of Rome from January 30 and the mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart from April 3.
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Transcript 15,233 words · 9 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
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0:36 Speaker 01 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.
1:13 Georgia Hardstark? Between work, school, family obligations, and the endless Halloween hustle, it often feels like there's never a good time to slow down.
1:19 Karen Kilgariff? No matter how busy life gets, even a small break can help us recharge, reset, and enjoy the moment.
1:24 Georgia Hardstark? Breaks don't have to be the 15 minutes in your car while you wait for your kid to get out of school, or the two minutes while your little pumpkin is tying his shoes.
1:31 Karen Kilgariff? Kit Kat gives people permission to take the break they've earned and make it a better break.
1:36 Georgia Hardstark? While the world tells us to keep going, Kit Kat reminds us that the best time for a break is now.
1:41 Karen Kilgariff? Break now. Have a Kit Kat.
1:43 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
2:01 Karen Kilgariff? Hello.
2:01 Georgia Hardstark? Hello.
2:02 Karen Kilgariff? And welcome.
2:03 Georgia Hardstark? To My Favorite Murder.
2:04 Karen Kilgariff? We have a little gift for all the Christians and nonbelievers alike on this magical day, which is December 25th, Christmas.
2:11 Georgia Hardstark? We're combining two of our listener favorite stories and making them into the best of the year quilt episode.
2:17 Karen Kilgariff? That's right. So first, Georgia's going to revisit the story of Locusta, the poisoner of Rome.
2:22 Georgia Hardstark? And then Karen will tell the story of aviation legend Amelia Earhart and her mysterious disappearance.
2:28 Karen Kilgariff? So as you guys know, we have a holiday tradition where we make donations throughout the month of December to charities that make a real difference in people's lives.
2:36 Georgia Hardstark? So today, we're making our final donation of $10,000 to an organization called Feeding America. They're a part of a nationwide network of over 200 food banks and 60,000 meal programs so people can access food without judgment or stigma.
2:49 Karen Kilgariff? And they work with lawmakers to make it easier for people to get food by expanding access to food assistance programs.
2:56 Georgia Hardstark? So if you'd like to join us in giving to this very important cause, go to their website at feedingamerica.org.
3:02 Karen Kilgariff? You can also explore their volunteer opportunities like helping out at a food bank, hosting a food drive, or donating to your local food pantry.
3:09 Georgia Hardstark? Let's all find ways to look out for each other in the coming year.
3:13 Karen Kilgariff? So get cozy and enjoy this special best of the year quilt episode.
3:16 Georgia Hardstark? And happy holidays, whatever you celebrate.
3:19 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
3:19 Georgia Hardstark? Hey.
3:20 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
3:20 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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4:09 Karen Kilgariff? Hatch Sleep Clock.
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4:14 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
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5:01 Karen Kilgariff? your first purchase of a website or domain. Goodbye.
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5:31 Karen Kilgariff? And with Article's 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence, knowing that if you're not completely in love with your new furniture, you can easily return it. Man, there was nothing I loved more than when I was broke and I could still buy furniture that I needed at Article. It wasn't cheap-looking. It's like I was investing in these pieces that were comparatively inexpensive, and I was finishing rooms. I was getting the kitchen table that was bringing the whole thing together. And it was such an incredible thing because I never got to do that before. I love that about Article.
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6:17 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
6:20 Georgia Hardstark? I'm gonna tell you what I think might be the oldest story we've done, maybe. No, you did a really old one once.
6:28 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm. Remember when I did the weather in 14, like 13? It was like when the weather was so bad for a year and a half that everyone just like died.
6:36 Georgia Hardstark? This is fucking older.
6:37 Karen Kilgariff? No!
6:38 Georgia Hardstark? This is older.
6:38 Karen Kilgariff? Are you about to tell me a Bible story?
6:40 Georgia Hardstark? I'm gonna tell you a biblical fucking story.
6:42 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah!
6:42 Georgia Hardstark? I'm gonna, but we are gonna go back to the early days of the Roman Empire.
6:48 Karen Kilgariff? Girl!
6:48 Georgia Hardstark? Is that the earliest? Like Gladiator fucking days?
6:51 Karen Kilgariff? It's pretty early.
6:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
6:52 Karen Kilgariff? It's pretty early.
6:52 Georgia Hardstark? And it does sound like something straight out of Game of Thrones and actually was probably a likely source of inspiration for George R.R. Martin. This is the story of a woman that, what? You're gonna guess?
7:04 Karen Kilgariff? I don't know. I'm just, yeah, I'm ready for it.
7:06 Georgia Hardstark? This is the story of a woman some people describe as history's first documented serial killer.
7:11 Karen Kilgariff? Oh!
7:13 Georgia Hardstark? This is the story of Locusta, the poisoner of Rome.
7:16 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, yes.
7:17 Georgia Hardstark? You ready for her?
7:18 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, please.
7:19 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, let's do it. So, there are very limited primary sources about Locusta. She's only briefly mentioned in surviving histories of Rome. Of course, it's just like everyone's moved on from her.
7:30 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
7:31 Georgia Hardstark? Nobody cares.
7:32 Karen Kilgariff? They're over it.
7:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, they're over it.
7:33 Karen Kilgariff? All Italians are over it.
7:35 Georgia Hardstark? Let's not talk about it.
7:35 Karen Kilgariff? No one was talking about her when I went to Italy.
7:38 Georgia Hardstark? Right. Well, but the main sources for the story were an episode of adorable podcast called History for Weirdos, which is super lovely. It's this married couple. They're very smart. And an article from All That's Interesting by Genevieve Carlton. So, we don't know much about Locusta's early life. We know she was born in Gaul, G-A-U-L. This is the region of the Roman Empire that overlaps with modern day France and Belgium. Like, you knew that, though.
8:04 Karen Kilgariff? I honestly thought Germany, and I was like, you should say Germany and just sound really smart. And then I was like, the other voice that's finally grown in my head that goes, don't do it.
8:12 Georgia Hardstark? Don't even try.
8:13 Karen Kilgariff? You don't know these things.
8:14 Georgia Hardstark? Supped? Don't even try.
8:15 Karen Kilgariff? Supped? You're kidding yourself, supped.
8:19 Georgia Hardstark? She's born sometime around 1480, so, and of course, you know this as well, either at the end of the reign of Augustus or the beginning of the reign of Ty...
8:28 Karen Kilgariff? Tiberius.
8:28 Georgia Hardstark? Yes!
8:29 Karen Kilgariff? Was it Tiberius?
8:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah!
8:31 Karen Kilgariff? It's because I watched, uh, what's it called?
8:34 Georgia Hardstark? Gladiator 2?
8:37 Karen Kilgariff? Starring Paul Mescal. It's the PBS series from the 70s.
8:42 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, no.
8:42 Karen Kilgariff? And I keep wanting to take Caligula.
8:43 Georgia Hardstark? But you got it right, so congratulations.
8:45 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that does feel good.
8:45 Georgia Hardstark? Something stuck.
8:46 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, it feels good.
8:47 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, you should be happy for yourself.
8:48 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
8:49 Georgia Hardstark? So, these two men were Rome's first and second emperors.
8:52 Karen Kilgariff? You did do the whole first syllable.
8:54 Georgia Hardstark? No. I wouldn't have gotten Tiberius if I had heard Tiber. Isn't I Claudius Brett just found that?
9:01 Karen Kilgariff? It was I Claudius. Thank you. Thank you. I wondered where he was. I Claudius.
9:04 Georgia Hardstark? There we go. And before them, Rome had been a republic. We're not going to get into the weeds about Rome. Can we not?
9:11 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, we cannot, for sure.
9:12 Georgia Hardstark? I'd really rather not.
9:13 Karen Kilgariff? But I will tell you just this one thing.
9:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
9:16 Karen Kilgariff? I was so blown away when I went to Rome.
9:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
9:20 Karen Kilgariff? To see these places that they used to meet. They're fucking huge.
9:26 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
9:26 Karen Kilgariff? So like, you know, when you're thinking about it and you're just like, oh, friends, Romans, countrymen type of stuff. And you're like, oh, they're probably like on a weird little rock. Or you're thinking of like some Monty Python movie or whatever. It's like, they're all standing in a circle in a marketplace.
9:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
9:40 Karen Kilgariff? No, no, no. These things were like 15-story buildings.
9:44 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
9:45 Karen Kilgariff? Like.
9:45 Georgia Hardstark? And they're still standing, kind of.
9:47 Karen Kilgariff? Huge. And they're still standing. And then there's like metal statuary on top of that. Like, it was.
9:53 Georgia Hardstark? Mind-blowing.
9:54 Karen Kilgariff? What a time.
9:54 Georgia Hardstark? I want to go. But stop it, because we're not getting into the weeds.
9:58 Karen Kilgariff? I'm totally done.
9:59 Georgia Hardstark? Essentially, though, the empire emerged after a series of civil wars destabilized the republic. Julius Caesar, your BFF. A senator tried to seize power and install himself as a dictator, which is why he was famously assassinated. But Augustus, the first emperor, was his nephew, and he eventually overpowered the senators who had conspired against Caesar. So this is where we are now.
10:21 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
10:22 Georgia Hardstark? So right around this time, this is where Locustia ends up in the city of Rome. She's a young woman, and I looked at the like one or two drawings of her that I don't know what time period they're from. They could be modern, they could be old, but I cast her as Jessica Chastain.
10:38 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
10:39 Georgia Hardstark? Just for fun.
10:39 Karen Kilgariff? And interesting.
10:41 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. That's just was my immediate thought.
10:44 Karen Kilgariff? Got it.
10:44 Georgia Hardstark? And it's likely that she had been enslaved or brought there as a captive of Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul. So had the campaign where she's from, and she ends up there. So was probably brought over for like slavery purposes. Somehow during her upbringing, she learned a huge amount about herbs, plants, and poison-making.
11:05 Georgia Hardstark? But there's no record of how it's likely that this knowledge would have been passed down within her family as it was. And this period Locusta is born into, the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, is the beginning of what's actually a pretty great fucking time to be a Roman citizen. It sounds pretty sweet. It's where they get the saying, "bread and circuses," which I've never heard before, but Ally thankfully put in here.
11:27 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
11:27 Georgia Hardstark? And you're nodding like you've heard of it.
11:28 Karen Kilgariff? Well, it's the thing that they talk about, and we're like, that's how they distract us, and then that everybody's corrupt in the government, and they give us our bread and circuses.
11:36 Georgia Hardstark? That's what it says here. "The emperors keep the people happy by providing free food and entertainment, including the gladiators, and then they fuck off and do their own thing."
11:44 Karen Kilgariff? And then we all fight about like the Kim Kardashian of gladiators.
11:47 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
11:48 Karen Kilgariff? And we're all over here doing-
11:49 Georgia Hardstark? And they got more food and circuses than I did. And how dare, that person doesn't deserve as many circuses, because they're lower than me, and I'm, yeah, and then we fight with each other and ignore the fucking oligarchs.
12:00 Karen Kilgariff? And the billionaires don't pay taxes.
12:01 Georgia Hardstark? And the billionaires don't pay taxes, and corporations run the fucking country.
12:05 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
12:06 Georgia Hardstark? What, where are we?
12:07 Karen Kilgariff? What, Roman Empire, you say? Okay, I guess.
12:10 Georgia Hardstark? So this is where, kind of the beginning of the opulent, technologically advanced city of Rome, the expanding empire around it. It's good to be fucking wealthy in Rome at this time. But of course, at this point in time, it's not good to be a person living in one of the areas Rome is conquering. But within the city of Rome, even an average Roman citizen, life's pretty stable and conditions are comfortable, you know, comparatively.
12:33 Karen Kilgariff? Is no Victorian England?
12:34 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
12:36 Karen Kilgariff? Those are the two times I know.
12:38 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
12:39 Karen Kilgariff? Pretty much. In the 70s.
12:41 Georgia Hardstark? Yes. This period of time is called the Pax Romana, and it will last about 200 years. And then the Empire will decline and fall, and after that, it's the Dark Ages. Super fun. And then it's lights out for Europe until the Renaissance.
12:53 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
12:53 Georgia Hardstark? So that's where we're at right now, in this, like, time of wine and roses.
12:57 Karen Kilgariff? Hell, yeah.
12:58 Georgia Hardstark? Did I just make that up?
12:59 Karen Kilgariff? Lot of parades, lot of, like, right?
13:01 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
13:01 Karen Kilgariff? Lot of flowers being dropped down from high.
13:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
13:04 Karen Kilgariff? It's, like, this is around when the movie Gladiator takes place, or a little, Gladiator's a little later, but around this time.
13:12 Georgia Hardstark? But while normal people are enjoying themselves, the ruling class is still constantly full of infighting, jockeying for power and assassinating one another. It's kind of their thing. This presents an opportunity for a girl from Gaul with a deep knowledge of plants and poisons. You've got to use what you know.
13:30 Karen Kilgariff? Also, why don't we know it anymore? That's like, is that what's in the Vatican's secret library?
13:35 Georgia Hardstark? Ooh, it's like all the sorcery plant fucking recipes.
13:39 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, all the stuff that really used to help us.
13:43 Georgia Hardstark? So, in her early career in Rome, Locusta works with two other women to make poisons for wealthy clients. The three of them are often referred to as sorceresses. Locusta becomes independently wealthy for doing this. Fucking get it, girl. She would have used hashtag boss bitch if she had Instagram.
14:00 Karen Kilgariff? Do it.
14:00 Georgia Hardstark? You know? Locusta makes a name for herself.
14:05 Karen Kilgariff? She's boss bitching but writing it on the wall in Roman numerals somehow.
14:10 Georgia Hardstark? But I can't read. She makes a name for herself. She's hired by members of Rome's elite to help them carry out assassinations in their various power struggles. And by 54 AD, when she's about 40 years old, she's been arrested and convicted on multiple occasions. However, her powerful clients get her off every time.
14:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
14:30 Georgia Hardstark? We don't know about all the poisons Locusta uses, unfortunately. Those are secrets now. But records show that she used belladonna or deadly nightshade, as well as arsenic and a litany of other poisons. I think you'd have to imagine Sally from The Night Before Christmas. You know what I mean?
14:47 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, just a skinny pale girl that's like, I like to combine things.
14:51 Georgia Hardstark? Little of this. And it sounds like she also knows how to create new poisons from different combinations, so she's fucking smart.
14:58 Karen Kilgariff? Also, I didn't realize that until now. It's like, oh yeah, there was all kinds of poisonings happening, like palace intrigues type stuff.
15:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:06 Karen Kilgariff? Those rich people aren't just going to have poison on him. Like, they have to buy it from somewhere.
15:10 Georgia Hardstark? Right, they don't make it themselves.
15:11 Karen Kilgariff? I just realized that, yeah.
15:12 Georgia Hardstark? Poisoners.
15:13 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
15:14 Georgia Hardstark? So by this point, we're on Rome's fourth emperor, Claudius. Augustus, the first emperor, had essentially consolidated power and set Rome on this path to growth and conquest. And then there were two other emperors until Claudius. Claudius marries his niece, a woman named Agrippina, who had already been married, like, oh, my god, drama, and whose first husband had died, possibly by poisoning. Agrippina has a son from that previous marriage. His name... Want to try to guess? Yeah. You don't have to. No pressure. Does it start with N? Okay, start it, and I'm gonna say- You're gonna know the name, and so you're gonna think, I wish I had known. Oh. Nero. Oh, yeah.
15:56 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. So Nero, obviously, doesn't really have a particularly strong claim to the Roman throne, because he's the son of the second wife, you know what I mean? Yeah. But Agrippina is like, but let's change that. Right. I'm the new wife, or I'm the wife. Let me figure this out. Agrippina convinces Claudius to change his will, making her son Nero the heir to the throne. This is in spite of Claudius having a biological son. And after Claudius changes his will, Agrippina wants to make sure that he doesn't have time in life to change it back. Right. You know what I'm saying? So she turns to Locusta, who by this time is well-known among Roman elites.
16:38 Georgia Hardstark? Agrippina and Locusta wait for a day when Claudius's most loyal servant has the day off. They had days off back then. That's nice. Interesting. They poison a dish of mushrooms, which is Claudius's favorite food, and it's unclear if the mushrooms themselves are poisonous or if she applies poison to the mushrooms. We don't know how she sauteed and chauntayed. Other people say he was actually poisoned by Belladonna brewed into a tea. Regardless, the story goes that Claudius gets sick. His doctor comes to see him, and I don't know why every single doctor who went to see any patient ever was, back then, wasn't first like, you're being poisoned. Right. Because everyone's fucking being poisoned. Right. It was so common, especially in the palace. Right. Yeah, like, kinda should be number one. Number two is like gout or whatever, you know?
17:23 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know. What do they get? The doctor gives Claudius a feather to stick down his throat to induce vomiting. That's doctors then. I mean, that's also, but that's how they did it in the vomitorium. Right, right, right. But the feather has been coated in more poison. And we don't know if Agrippina did this, or if the doctor was involved. However. They're locking it down. Yeah. Okay. Claudius dies. Okay. After Claudius dies, Agrippina, who hired Locustus, has Locustus jailed for the poisoning, which seems like a bad idea, because you just talk, right? And you're like, oh, I didn't do this on my own. Right. I don't get it. It's a weird move, clearly, like a paranoia move. Yeah. Because also, it's all gonna be down to her, obviously. Totally. Yeah. Like, get rid of the evidence, but like, the evidence can talk.
18:08 Georgia Hardstark? But this doesn't matter, because her son Nero quickly frees her, because he also needs her help. Yeah. So Claudius's biological son is a man named? Give me the first letter. B. R. Britannicus. Oh. I wouldn't have got that. I wouldn't have got that. He's named this because the Romans had recently expanded the empire to Britain around his time of birth. I don't know. Britannicus. Sure. My name's Georgia. Like, I don't, what am I gonna say about that? Yeah, you can't judge. I can't. You can't. I truly can't. Britannicus still has a powerful claim to the Roman throne. Sadly, he's only 13 years old when his pops dies. In 55 AD, Nero pardons Locustus and quickly hires her to kill 13-year-old Britannicus.
18:51 Georgia Hardstark? Which is like, just send him to a fucking island. They can't. It's always killing with them. It's so much killing. It's so much killing. He wants her to make his death appear to be of natural causes at 13. Locustus attempts to poison him with arsenic, but it doesn't work. And Nero has her flogged for this. Hmm. I don't think that's the best idea. Has Locustus flogged? Yeah. Oh, okay. But they try again. Nero throws a dinner party. Wine is served. The Romans would serve their wine diluted with water, blah, blah, blah. Basically, before Britannicus takes a sip of his wine, his taster, who specifically had a test for poison, takes a sip, says it's fine, and then Britannicus is like, oh, top me off with that kind of, that water. Turns out, that was it. That water was the poison.
19:35 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
19:35 Georgia Hardstark? So the tester didn't drink it again. Britannicus drinks it. It's probably belladonna. And thing is Britannicus has epilepsy. The other people at the dinner party know this. So when he basically stops being able to speak, Nero's like, oh, he's just having a seizure. Which is like, again, let's start with poisoning.
19:53 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. In the, if you're like, well, there's the heir to the throne.
19:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
19:57 Karen Kilgariff? I'm sure there's no problem.
19:59 Georgia Hardstark? No, we're all fine.
19:59 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
20:00 Georgia Hardstark? Britannicus is brought to another room to recover, but it's where he ultimately suffocates and dies at 13. According to lore, the poison Locusta used was known by the Romans to turn a victim's skin red. And Britannicus is buried very quickly after his murder. This is so Game of Thrones, isn't it?
20:19 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, right.
20:19 Georgia Hardstark? With his face painted with a white chalk to hide his red skin. People just aren't really paying attention, I feel like, back then.
20:26 Karen Kilgariff? Or they're just not staring into that face maybe for very long.
20:30 Georgia Hardstark? Or they're like, I'm not the one to say anything.
20:32 Karen Kilgariff? Well, right, there's poisoners everywhere.
20:34 Georgia Hardstark? Poisoners, that's the fucking king or whatever. And you're just like, that's not for me.
20:38 Karen Kilgariff? I gotta tell you, if anybody wants to watch it, I Claudius is a pretty amazing. It's like old British incredible actors. Kind of is like they're doing a play on a TV stage.
20:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
20:50 Karen Kilgariff? And all of this stuff is, like, the stakes are insane.
20:53 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
20:54 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
20:54 Georgia Hardstark? I'm into it.
20:54 Karen Kilgariff? Because then it's like, if you live and you're the one that doesn't get poisoned, you get to have, like, all of Germany.
21:01 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
21:01 Karen Kilgariff? You know what I mean? You get to have, do you like Scotland? You can have it. We have, we have stuff all the way up in Ireland.
21:07 Georgia Hardstark? But then someone's coming for you, too.
21:09 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
21:09 Georgia Hardstark? You know?
21:10 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
21:10 Georgia Hardstark? You can't poison everyone who will ever poison you.
21:13 Karen Kilgariff? I know.
21:14 Georgia Hardstark? Something. But just because he has that chalk on his face, just before his burial, it starts to rain, showing the red skin under the white chalk. So it's immediately known throughout Rome that Britannicus has been poisoned.
21:25 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
21:26 Georgia Hardstark? There's just probably like a no snitching on, you know, Nero policy going on.
21:30 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah, he'll kill you immediately.
21:32 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely.
21:32 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
21:33 Georgia Hardstark? Like, just keep your mouth shut. Nero rewards Locusta for securing the throne for him. He pays her, he gives her land, and he ultimately tasks her with opening up a school to teach other people to be poisoners. It's like a happy ending.
21:47 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that is really positive.
21:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. He also grants her immunity for all future crimes. Does that sound familiar?
21:53 Karen Kilgariff? Not at all. Not in the least.
21:57 Georgia Hardstark? Anyway.
21:58 Karen Kilgariff? Fast forward.
21:59 Georgia Hardstark? Immunity. Some accounts say that Locusta is given enslaved people and prisoners to test her poisons on. That's just a rumor, and this is where the idea comes from, that she is the first known serial killer. Which is so funny, like, you don't think about, like, you think of serial killer as a recent thing.
22:17 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
22:18 Georgia Hardstark? But it was probably happening a lot.
22:19 Karen Kilgariff? Just the second, the first human brain that got a weird little
22:23 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
22:24 Karen Kilgariff? screw fall out of it.
22:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
22:26 Karen Kilgariff? Type of thing. Sorry, that's an oversimplification.
22:29 Georgia Hardstark? No, that sounds scientifically correct. From what I've read.
22:34 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, especially back then.
22:35 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
22:36 Karen Kilgariff? It was much, before it was a sin, you know it happened all the time.
22:39 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely. And some people say, at this point, she just starts poisoning people because she enjoys it. Sounds like she's good at it, you know? Not just as a hired assassin. We don't know much about what else happens to Locusta for about 15 years, until she's in her mid-50s. During this time Nero has made a lot of enemies. In fact, during this time period Nero actually murders his own mother.
23:00 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
23:00 Georgia Hardstark? Who fucking put him in the throne.
23:01 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
23:02 Georgia Hardstark? Like, thanks a lot.
23:03 Karen Kilgariff? Just ungrateful.
23:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
23:05 Karen Kilgariff? Little bastard.
23:05 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. In 68 AD Nero is unseated by a man named Galba and is forced to flee Rome.
23:12 Karen Kilgariff? Sorry, but right there, if I was like, "Galba's now in charge?" I'd be like, "Yeah, no, this isn't gonna last."
23:18 Georgia Hardstark? Why? Because you've never heard of it?
23:19 Karen Kilgariff? Galba?
23:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
23:20 Karen Kilgariff? That's not didditydiss? You don't have any I U S at the end?
23:24 Georgia Hardstark? No, right.
23:24 Karen Kilgariff? It's fucking Galba? Oh my god, it's over.
23:28 Georgia Hardstark? Let's all get the fuck out of here.
23:29 Karen Kilgariff? We gotta get out of Rome.
23:30 Georgia Hardstark? And Nero dies by suicide shortly after this. The new emperor, your best friend Galba, overturns Locusta's immunity, because that can be done as well.
23:39 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, we've heard.
23:40 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm. And this comes as part of a purge of all of Nero's closest advisors. So for 15 fucking years, Locusta was living the good life.
23:49 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
23:49 Georgia Hardstark? And, you know, nothing lasts.
23:51 Karen Kilgariff? No, it doesn't.
23:52 Georgia Hardstark? Time is a construct.
23:54 Karen Kilgariff? The pendulum swings and swings.
23:56 Georgia Hardstark? Exactly, flat circle. Galba accuses Locusta of killing more than 400 people and sentences her to death. So she is executed, although it's not known exactly how. There are two legends. The story always begins with her being marched through the streets of Rome in chains.
24:13 Karen Kilgariff? Shame.
24:13 Georgia Hardstark? All of Game of Thrones.
24:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
24:16 Georgia Hardstark? Some say she is then strangled, or burnt, or a combination of the two. Public executions are common in Rome and often take place during gladiator games. Like, there's that entertainment in circus that you wanted.
24:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
24:30 Georgia Hardstark? In addition to burning, other methods of execution include crucifixion, which seems like it's reserved for special circumstances, as well as exposure to wild beasts. That's a hell no. I mean, they're all hell no.
24:44 Karen Kilgariff? They're all pretty bad.
24:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:46 Karen Kilgariff? But yeah, would it just, you'd just get thrown in a pit with a bunch of coyotes?
24:51 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, God. Well, anyway, that's the end of Locust's story as we know it, which there isn't a ton. Let's get Jessica Chastain on the line and fucking get him exactly right pictures. Fucking movie out here.
25:04 Karen Kilgariff? Also, if you have a history podcast where you go into this part of Roman history in depth, I'll listen to it.
25:11 Georgia Hardstark? I'm telling you, history for weirdos. They clearly went to school, unlike us.
25:17 Karen Kilgariff? Should I go there first?
25:18 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, they know what they're talking about.
25:20 Karen Kilgariff? They're good explainers.
25:20 Georgia Hardstark? They're good explainers and they like have details off the top of their mind in a way that I don't understand.
25:27 Karen Kilgariff? Because they studied.
25:27 Georgia Hardstark? Because they studied and probably didn't drink themselves into oblivion in their 30s, you know?
25:32 Karen Kilgariff? I think the thing about people who learned a lot and stayed in school is that it's because they read books and got what was happening and then were like, oh, my God, this is a great factoid. Which I feel like you and I are both the kind of people, had we not been born with these brains, that would, we would have been those people. But like, the sitting in the seat and the being told what to do.
25:54 Georgia Hardstark? Totally, the distractions and the...
25:57 Karen Kilgariff? Time away from drinking, all of that.
25:59 Georgia Hardstark? The disinterest, yeah. And I'm fine with that. We're not all gonna be, we're not all supposed to be the same.
26:05 Karen Kilgariff? No, but I feel like these days, you know, history for weirdos. There are people who got really good at teaching because they understand what's interesting about history. Or like that it's, here's how you bring into history to life.
26:18 Georgia Hardstark? This podcast will kill you. Great example.
26:20 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, so smart. Learning about that kind of stuff where it's like, oh, often we put a mental block up.
26:27 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
26:27 Karen Kilgariff? It's like, oh, history, that's boring. It's like, it's so not boring.
26:30 Georgia Hardstark? It's so not boring. I'm a big fan of history. I really am. And that is everything we know about the woman who was possibly the first serial killer, Locusta, poisoner of Rome.
26:42 Karen Kilgariff? Wow, that was great.
26:44 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you.
26:45 Karen Kilgariff? If you want to dip into Roman, the Roman Empire every once in a while to tell me about it, I am here for it.
26:51 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, we have to. There's a whole, there's a whole time period.
26:55 Karen Kilgariff? Thousands and thousands.
26:56 Georgia Hardstark? Thousands of years.
26:57 Karen Kilgariff? Thousands of years ago.
26:58 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, well, good. I'm glad you liked that.
27:00 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that was great.
27:01 Georgia Hardstark? Thanks.
27:02 Karen Kilgariff? Wonderful.
27:03 Georgia Hardstark? All right, well, we did it. We got some beautiful, this has been a like huge, well-rounded episode.
27:10 Karen Kilgariff? And that's what we're like, you know what I mean? It's like, I feel like we're able to get in there and really produce.
27:17 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
27:18 Karen Kilgariff? Everything is handed to us as we walk in the door. Every single thing is thought through.
27:22 Georgia Hardstark? Except the ADHD, because we were born with it. Baby, can't hand that to me. Can't hand that to you.
27:28 Karen Kilgariff? Can't print that up on a copier in a different part of the building I've never seen.
27:32 Georgia Hardstark? No, you can't.
27:33 Karen Kilgariff? No.
27:33 Georgia Hardstark? Uh, well, thank you guys for being here, being part of this. So appreciative.
27:38 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, we really love it. And one last thank you to all our ceramic?
27:43 Georgia Hardstark? Ceramicists.
27:44 Karen Kilgariff? Ceramicists, artists.
27:46 Georgia Hardstark? For our ninth anniversary.
27:47 Karen Kilgariff? Including Emily, AKA Pottery Mama, Missy, AKA Young Yenta, Sam Regal with that beautiful mug, and Lindsay Cook with the Altered Moments.
27:59 Georgia Hardstark? Figurine.
27:59 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
28:00 Georgia Hardstark? So good. I've just been like talking to you this whole time and listening to you with these beautiful things behind your head and I'm so distracted and I keep just going, "Oh."
28:08 Karen Kilgariff? You know what we do is take these and put them down here and put these things up here. So these guys get a little time in the sun.
28:13 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
28:14 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
28:14 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely. We're interior designers.
28:16 Karen Kilgariff? We are. And we're going to fill up these shelves with all of the beautiful. It's just so nice that we have the kind of listeners that, and you guys have been like this from day one.
28:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
28:26 Karen Kilgariff? That like, we go like, "Hey, can we have a thing about something?" "Hey, will you teach us about Roman Empire?" And then it's like, boom, boom.
28:33 Georgia Hardstark? That's my specialty.
28:34 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
28:34 Georgia Hardstark? Boom. And I'm funny and creative.
28:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. It's incredible. And like the response, the ceramic response is to the point where the post office is kind of mad at us.
28:43 Georgia Hardstark? I knew they would be.
28:45 Karen Kilgariff? It's wonderful. Just like the early days when Georgia would go to her post office box.
28:50 Georgia Hardstark? And they'd be like, "What's murder?" They'd get mad about the word murder. I'm being like, "Listen."
28:54 Karen Kilgariff? Listen. It's been around for, at least since Locustus time.
28:57 Georgia Hardstark? Truly.
28:58 Karen Kilgariff? So.
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29:31 Georgia Hardstark? There are plenty of things that keep you up at night. Your sleep tracker shouldn't be one of them.
29:35 Karen Kilgariff? You know that feeling, laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, counting all the times you said something weird.
29:40 Georgia Hardstark? And then you wake up and check your sleep score. Now you have to start your day knowing that you failed at sleeping.
29:46 Karen Kilgariff? Hatch Sleep Clock does it differently.
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30:00 Georgia Hardstark? Fall asleep to the next chapter of an audiobook like The Odyssey, a nervous system reset meditation, or a calming sound bath.
30:06 Karen Kilgariff? Then you can find out which gives you 20 more minutes of deep sleep each night.
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30:16 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye. The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+
30:21 Karen Kilgariff? Sunny'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.
30:30 Georgia Hardstark? To everyone else, she's the same Ellen they've known their whole lives, but for Sunny, he knows something is off.
30:35 Karen Kilgariff? As his relationship with his mother begins to crack in unsettling ways, he's forced to question what happens when the perfect mom becomes a perfect stranger.
30:43 Georgia Hardstark? Is this all in his head, or is there really an imposter in his house?
30:46 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.
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31:01 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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31:34 Karen Kilgariff? I'm gonna turn it around.
31:35 Georgia Hardstark? Great.
31:36 Karen Kilgariff? I've got a 180.
31:37 Georgia Hardstark? I would love a 180.
31:39 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, good. Because Women's History Month just ended this week.
31:42 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
31:43 Karen Kilgariff? And yet, it feels to me like we should continue remembering women.
31:46 Georgia Hardstark? Shouldn't we?
31:47 Karen Kilgariff? In case we're wiped off the face of the planet here in America. You know?
31:52 Georgia Hardstark? In case we're Handmaid's Tale'd.
31:53 Karen Kilgariff? There's so much going on in the world, and I think talking about the women whose shoulders we all stand on is a good idea.
32:03 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, love it.
32:04 Karen Kilgariff? No matter what the story is.
32:05 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely.
32:06 Karen Kilgariff? And I like the idea that, you know, sometimes there's people who listen to our podcast, and they do have, you know, their young daughters in the backseat. Here's a story you can let them listen to. We'll try not to say the F-word very much.
32:17 Georgia Hardstark? I'm gonna try. Let's see if I can get through an entire story without cursing.
32:20 Karen Kilgariff? Or without saying fuck.
32:23 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
32:24 Karen Kilgariff? All right. So, I'm gonna tell you the story today of an American icon who, by boldly chasing her dreams, made an indelible imprint on our culture. But despite her extraordinary life, she's most famous for the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death.
32:41 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
32:42 Karen Kilgariff? Arguably, one of recent history's greatest unsolved mysteries. For nearly a century, searchers have tried to force a satisfying conclusion to her story, and they've always come up short. But because all the focus has been on how she died, the way she lived, including her many accomplishments and her advocacy, is often forgotten. So today, I'm gonna tell you the story of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart.
33:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
33:07 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
33:08 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God, I've been like, following the stories. I just always click on the stories of, they think they found this, they think they found that. Here's the next, like, I cannot not click on those.
33:17 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, cuz it's fascinating. It's like, they have to find something some, someday that's conclusive.
33:22 Georgia Hardstark? It's a legit mystery. Okay, tell me everything.
33:24 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so the sources for this story today are writer Doris L. Rich's book, A Biography Amelia Earhart, which is a primary. There's also a PBS documentary series that's American Experience that's all about her.
33:36 Georgia Hardstark? I fucking love American Experience. It's one of the best shows.
33:39 Karen Kilgariff? If you're just looking for something of like, if you've an empty day and you're trying to feel enriched while still being completely entertained, American Experience will do the job for you.
33:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I don't care if you don't give a shit about the fucking Dust Bowl, you'll be fascinated by the Dust Bowl while you do your nails.
33:55 Karen Kilgariff? And I have to say, home gym, I was raised by my father forcing me to watch PBS material. And so furious, where he would be like, right after Happy Days would end, he'd go, turn it over, let's see what's on PBS.
34:09 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God.
34:10 Karen Kilgariff? And then we'd have to watch an opera, we'd have to watch Carl Sagan.
34:12 Georgia Hardstark? And is it a coincidence that you're here, owning your own fucking business today? Probably not.
34:17 Karen Kilgariff? Probably not. I think PBS enriched my life. Did my father ever give them a dime in donations? Not only not once, and I'm sure he'll do this.
34:26 Georgia Hardstark? He sued them for money? Oh, no. He would have sued PBS.
34:31 Karen Kilgariff? For damages. Oh, my God. What? My mom would always like walk through and he'd be watching something and really enjoying it. You know, like a documentary on the automat or whatever. Had to watch that the last time I went home. Amazing. But my mom would always go, Jim, you have to give them money. And he would go, bullshit, they're not getting a dime out of me. And that was like his proud stance and he refused to give them money. PBS. It's the ultimate, like, um, he's gonna finally rip somebody else off. You're fighting the wrong fight, bro. Meanwhile, he has absolutely given them money and it was just a bit, basically. He's doing to piss my mom off. Phew. Right? Okay. He's not really a douchebag. Okay. Cause truly with the Kilgariff family has gotten their absolute fill from P- from free PBS.
35:16 Karen Kilgariff? Do you guys have from them is, that's how you know. That's right. Oh, so anyway, there's also a two-part National Geographic podcast called Overheard. Did you know there was a National Geographic podcast? No, I love it. Oh, I also, sorry, this should go up into the top, but since we didn't do it, I'll just say it now. On TikTok this morning, I learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center has just launched their own podcast. Ooh. Just at the beginning of this month. And it just covers all the stories, all of the things that they're like, basically them fighting for Americans in every way. The fact that they've been doing it for a hundred years, all these things. Go listen to the Southern Poverty Law Center's podcast, get them some numbers. Share it with friends.
35:58 Karen Kilgariff? Get that thing going, cause it sounded great, the little like clip and what I heard, I was like so excited that they're starting that. Amazing. Now let's start your story. Good vibes. Now to the story. Okay. Here's my writing when I go in and edit Maren's writing. The story of Amelia Earhart's story begins in late July of 1897. Okay. She was born in the northeast corner of Kansas in a town called Atchison. Okay. It looks like it's, I would guess, two hours north of Kansas City. Okay. Way up there in the corner, there's the ameliaearhart.org website. And they have a museum there that I think is built in her house. Oh, wow. But they have the best tote bags that I'm absolutely gonna get. That's weird that just I've brought up tote bag.
36:42 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that's right. Um, cause I was just looking on the website and it's just a painting of the house and that's the tote bag. Okay. We all need those. Murderinos? Let's, yeah, let's buy all the merch at the Amelia Earhart Museum. How you can spot a murderino in the wild at like the farmer's market is if she's a fucking, oh, I said the F word. She's a random. Amelia Earhart. I'm still on page one. Stop it, stop it. I've had too much fucking rosé. Let's go. Okay. Let's really focus on what we're supposed to be doing. Okay. Okay, so, she's born in Atchison in July of 1897. Her father Edwin is a lawyer from humble beginnings. Her mom Amy comes from a very prominent local family. And a fun fact, actually like a badass fact. Amy Earhart was the first woman to hike to the top of Pike's Peak. Wow.
37:27 Karen Kilgariff? In Colorado. Cool. So, she's from adventuring DNA. Makes sense. So, things aren't always smooth sailing for the Earhart family. Edwin has good and bad years financially. He takes job opportunities wherever they come. We later learn that it's because he's an alcoholic. And that's the way my mom grew up, where it's like, he does good for a little while. He's a lawyer. And then, he blows it and then has to, and then goes off the wagon and then... Has to dry out again. I can't say that that's exactly what happened in this family, but I'm recognizing it from what my mom told me about when you have like the long-term alcoholic that then gets better for a long time and then goes back. It's awful. So, they move around a ton.
38:11 Karen Kilgariff? And then when Amelia isn't moving around with her parents and they're just trying to go get him another job, she stays for long stretches at her grandparents' home. So, Amelia does have a younger sister named Muriel. They're just about two years apart, so they're very, very close. And they're not your typical turn-of-the-century girls. Because like, of course, at the time, girls had to wear long skirts. But Amelia and Muriel spend their weekends in bloomers because it's easier to play in them. Love it. And these girls love playing. Amelia is the daring ringleader and she can often be found with her little sister climbing over fences, shooting rifles, collecting bugs. Doris Elrich, Amelia Earhart's biographer,
38:55 Karen Kilgariff? writes about an incident when Amelia's seven years old and Muriel is four, and they are going sledding. So Amelia is about to head down a big snowy hill. So she does something most little girls would be conditioned not to do. Instead of sitting up on the sled and, and holding like the string like that, she lays down on her stomach. Yes. She pushes off. Face first. You gotta go face first. Face first, just do it. So she pushes off, she starts racing down the hill, flying down, and then she sees, here comes a horse-drawn carriage that's coming directly down her path.
39:30 Karen Kilgariff? Across her path, I should say. No. She starts yelling out to the driver because she can't stop. So she's yelling, but he can't hear her, he can't see her. So up on the top of the hill, Mural is watching her sister as she is about to crash in. So Amelia, at the same time, is like, I'm about to die. So instead of panicking, what she does is she puts her head down as low as she can. And somehow the timing works out perfectly and she just goes right under the wagon. Like Christmas Vacation, when they go under the fucking semi truck. Yes. Exactly like that, right? Or like when I was about six years old and I was riding my bike in front of my parents and their friends. And I went up in the O'Hara's big old gravel driveway that was like a quarter of a mile long.
40:13 Karen Kilgariff? And I was coming back down, racing back down. And my parents can hear a car that's going 80 miles an hour. Oh my god. And they watch as I just go directly in front of the car. Like the car's going so fast, it didn't have time to put on the brakes. Yeah. So I just went shh, shh, like that. And as I came into our driveway, my dad just picked me up off my bike and slapped me on the ass and I ran into the house. They never spanked us and he, like basically they all thought they were going to watch me die. Yeah. Amelia Earhart style. Fucking pet cemetery shit. Right. Oh my god. For real. Okay, so basically she goes under, she comes out unscathed. And when she finally comes to a stop, Amelia jumps up and smiles and waves at her sister.
40:54 Karen Kilgariff? And years later, she looks back on this moment and she'll say, quote, "That condemned tomboy method saved my life. Had I been sitting up, either my head or the horse's ribs would have suffered in contact, probably the horse's ribs." So by Amelia's teenage years, she's attended so many different schools that she basically doesn't have any friends at all. In one of her yearbooks, this makes me so sad, there's a photo of her and the caption reads, quote, "A.E., the girl in brown who walks alone."
41:26 Karen Kilgariff? Just like, cuz you have this fuck up dad. Right. You're gonna have to leave anyway, so you might as well not get to know people. Yeah. At home, Amelia's father's developed a serious drinking problem. I spoiled that one, but he struggles to hold down any job. PBS reports, quote, "Amelia adored her father, but he let her down so often she learned early on to be self-reliant." Yikes. So, she starts keeping a scrapbook with cutouts of newspaper and magazine articles about women with successful careers that are in traditionally male-only fields. It's like she's proving to herself that she can find success without relying on a man, and manifesting that future for herself, essentially.
42:09 Karen Kilgariff? When she graduates high school, it's the thick of World War I, so she drops out of finishing school. They sent her to finishing school. Finish what, dude? Yeah, finish walking around with a book on your head. Finish this.
42:22 Karen Kilgariff? So, she leaves to go tend to wounded soldiers in Canada, which is so badass. And she's like, "Thanks for the manners lessons. I've gotta actually go do something." How about, "Go fuck yourself." How about, "Go fuck yourself, I'm gonna work with the Red Cross." During this time, she briefly considers a career in medicine, and then one day, she goes to a flying exhibition in Toronto, and she watches a stunt pilot do their tricks in a colorful plane, and she's captivated.
42:50 Karen Kilgariff? She'll later say, quote, "I did not understand at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." Oh. It's just such a cool, I never thought about this, and I'm sure that my sister has like, books that she's read aloud to her class, that's like, Amelia Earhart, I'm sure she knows all the details, but I've never like, really thought about that fact of like, when women are born early, and they go through lives with like, say, an adventurer's spirit, in a time where they're like, "You better put that skirt on and go to finishing school." Right. It's almost... Luckier that she had to move around a bunch and had like an irregular family.
43:27 Georgia Hardstark? Like her dad wasn't paying attention and enforcing rules, so she could kind of get away with a lot more.
43:32 Karen Kilgariff? And it was kind of like, yeah, fuck it, because what am I gonna do? Go to finishing school, find a man, and then have this happen to me?
43:38 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
43:39 Karen Kilgariff? Like, I'm gonna go do my thing.
43:40 Georgia Hardstark? Also, like, can we just props to the baby sister, the younger sister, who's always, like, she doesn't get enough credit, like, the older sister always gets credit of like, she showed her how to do it, but like, if you didn't have someone to show how to do it?
43:51 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
43:51 Georgia Hardstark? I'm clearly giving us props.
43:53 Karen Kilgariff? It's about us.
43:54 Georgia Hardstark? It's about us. But like, if you didn't have someone to show off to?
43:57 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
43:57 Georgia Hardstark? Then what would you have done?
43:58 Karen Kilgariff? You would have never had that adventurous spirit.
44:00 Georgia Hardstark? Nothing.
44:00 Karen Kilgariff? If you didn't have a baby crying and saying, I need to go to the bathroom all the time, there would be no, nothing to fight against.
44:07 Georgia Hardstark? So you're welcome.
44:08 Karen Kilgariff? You're welcome, Laura and Leah.
44:10 Georgia Hardstark? And Leah.
44:11 Karen Kilgariff? So by 1920, Amelia is 23 years old, she's living back with her parents again. They're now in Southern California, so they really have moved all over the place. One day, her dad takes her to an event at a Long Beach airfield. Once again, Amelia's transfixed by the stunt pilot. So this was like a big thing that was happening at the time. She sees they're offering plane rides for the low price of $5 each.
44:34 Georgia Hardstark? That's a lot of money.
44:35 Karen Kilgariff? Worth about today.
44:37 Georgia Hardstark? What year?
44:38 Karen Kilgariff? Twenty, 20.
44:40 Georgia Hardstark? 2020?
44:40 Karen Kilgariff? Sorry, 20, plain old 20.
44:42 Georgia Hardstark? 1920?
44:43 Karen Kilgariff? 1920 is what I should have said. Yep.
44:45 Georgia Hardstark? Uh, and it's $5 and 19, oh, that's a lot of money, I'm gonna go 60.
44:50 Karen Kilgariff? 80, very close. But 80 bucks.
44:52 Georgia Hardstark? That's a fuck ton of money.
44:54 Karen Kilgariff? She somehow gets.
44:55 Georgia Hardstark? Oh god, I did it again, I'm so bad at this.
44:57 Karen Kilgariff? It's just, it's a fudge, it's a fudge worth of money. So she somehow collects up and gets that money. A couple days later, she goes back to the airfield and she takes a ride for the first time in a plane. And she will later say, quote, "As soon as we left the ground, I knew I had to fly." A little quote within the quote says, "I think I'd like to fly," I told my family casually that evening, knowing full well I'd die if I didn't.
45:23 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
45:23 Karen Kilgariff? She's like, her dream.
45:25 Georgia Hardstark? That's her passion.
45:26 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
45:26 Georgia Hardstark? It's beautiful.
45:27 Karen Kilgariff? So a year later, Amelia meets with a young female pilot named Nettie Snook, the best name of all time.
45:34 Georgia Hardstark? So good.
45:36 Karen Kilgariff? Ned is an aviation pioneer in her own right, and she agrees to teach Amelia how to fly. She's charging a dollar a minute, which would be basically sixteen dollars a minute in today's money, so it would be like paying nine hundred and sixty dollars for an hour's flying lesson. So it's very expensive. Yeah, Snooki's after it. Snooki's like, hey, then go find another woman to teach you how to fly a plane. Absolutely. So to pay for her lessons, Amelia takes on a bunch of odd jobs, including hauling gravel for a local trucking company and working as a stenographer. Okay. She's like, anything I can do. Yeah. Within six months, she manages to buy her own small, bright yellow biplane that she names Canary. That is so wild. Mm-hmm. She's in it.
46:21 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, I bought a Vespa when I was young, because I was like, I gotta stop writing on the back of douchebags' Vespas. And get your own. I need my own, or I'm gonna keep dating assholes, so I got my own, yeah. And then, did you go see Quadrophenia at the midnight show? Oh, yeah. I mean, I was obsessed, yeah. When the Vespa kids would come in for Quadrophenia. Yeah. That was my very favorite. I'm like, I can't get these outfits together, but I pick you of all the... It's so hot. I'm not picking Rocky Horror, and I'm not picking Heavy Metal. I'm picking Quadrophenia. Hell, yeah, you are. Those acid-washed jeans.
46:54 Karen Kilgariff? So she gets her pilot's license in late 1921, and she begins flying in derbies and setting all kinds of records. How old is she? So she's twenty-three and twenty, so she's twenty-four. Okay. I like the idea that they just start air derbies, where it's like, can you fly a plane, then come and do a race? Yeah. Hilarious. It's so good. So she sets all kind of records, like becoming the first woman to fly at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet. Okay. But actually, she wasn't trying to break that record. She just wanted to see how high the Canary could go. Oh. Later, she'll write quite modestly, quote, "Although my figure of fourteen thousand feet was not extraordinary, the performance of my engine was interesting. I had gone up much farther than some of the higher-powered planes, which should have been more efficient."
47:40 Karen Kilgariff? So her and the Canary are like getting in there and They've got a vibe. Yeah. In 1924, Amelia's life changes again. As her father continues to struggle with alcoholism, her parents get divorced. Now she's 28. She and her mom moved from California to Massachusetts to move in with Muriel, who's studying to be a teacher there in Boston. So Amelia gets a job there as a social worker. She gets paid $60 a month, which is roughly how much in today's money. $690. $1,000 a month. Wow, okay. So she's now supporting herself and her mother on this modest income. So basically, her expensive hobby of flying planes has to be paused.
48:23 Karen Kilgariff? But she does find a local flying community, and she's a vocal part of it. And local newspapers start writing about her fierce advocacy for women in aviation. Amazing. So even though she can't do it, she's still like, yeah, but we should get to do it. Yeah. The good news is she loves her job as a social worker. She works with immigrant families and children, mostly from China and Syria. And she really feels like she's found her calling. Author Susan Butler tells National Geographic, quote, "If anything, she was obsessed with being a social worker. She took it as her role in life to act as an agent for social change for women." Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. So I kind of like that, you know. Yeah. She was pivoting, doing what she could, when she could, and then also making a
49:07 Karen Kilgariff? life doing other stuff that was also very important. Her moral compass was there no matter what she was doing. Yeah, she was like, I'm gonna do good and make change and fight for women. Yeah. Very cool. So then in 1928, a man named George P. Putnam reaches out, and that changes everything in her life once again. Putnam is a wildly successful publisher, who is behind one of America's more notable fascists, Charles Lindbergh's smash hit autobiography, "We." Of course, Lindbergh was a huge aviating star, very prominent. You covered his baby's kidnapping. I was gonna say, you covered that, but okay. It was you in episode 119, "Fingers Everywhere." Of course, you remember that episode.
49:50 Karen Kilgariff? So Putnam is now on the hunt for his next aviation superstar. He's been given a short list of female pilots, hoping one of them will have that elusive and lucrative it factor. So he sets up a meeting with now thirty-one-year-old Amelia. And when he does, she walks in and he can't believe it. She looks a lot like Charles Lindbergh. So he's immediately convinced that she's the one. So George pitches Amelia the opportunity of a lifetime. He wants her to take a transatlantic flight, not as the pilot, but as a passenger. And like, it's all for publicity. But still, the trip would make her the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
50:30 Georgia Hardstark? Can you imagine?
50:31 Karen Kilgariff? I get so nervous when we fly to like, on tour to Europe and stuff, because you're just like, or to Hawaii. When you're just like, so we're just gonna be like, on open ocean for like, four or five hours.
50:42 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, but imagine being the first woman who gets to do that. And you're gonna know that, and it's never going to be changed. Cause you're the first woman to do it.
50:51 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
50:51 Georgia Hardstark? You know?
50:52 Karen Kilgariff? And she's kinda like, look, I survived that sled, I'll be fine. I'm sure that kinda is a part of it, right? She's like, get me out there, it'll be good if I do it. Okay, so she's all in, of course. She thinks that, Maren wrote, "It sounds like a blast." But of course, she also knows there's risks. Writer Anthony Brandt notes, quote, "It was still a very dangerous thing to fly the Atlantic Ocean. In the year after Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, which was nineteen twenty-seven, eighteen planes made the attempt, only three succeeded."
51:26 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
51:27 Karen Kilgariff? "Airplanes were a mere quarter of a century old. The North Atlantic is famously stormy, fog banks are common. Weather reports at the time were primitive and navigation was often haphazard. The plane she flew in was made mostly of sheet metal. It rattled and roared like an old steam engine."
51:45 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, I bet it was so loud.
51:46 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. The cabin door had to be tied shut with a small rope.
51:50 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my god, and the fucking...
51:52 Karen Kilgariff? Farting.
51:55 Georgia Hardstark? I was gonna say meal service, but yeah.
51:58 Karen Kilgariff? Because it's a tri-motor seaplane. It's a little guy with three people in it. Okay, so, all that in mind, on June 17th, 1928, Amelia takes off in the seaplane piloted by a man named Wilmer Stoltz and co-piloted by a man named Louis Gordon. But after 20 hours and 40 minutes of flight time, when they finally land in Wales, it's Amelia who steps off the plane and into instant celebrity.
52:25 Georgia Hardstark? Hey, girl.
52:25 Karen Kilgariff? Thousands of people are there waiting to catch a glimpse of the daring aviatrix, is what they call her. Amelia Earhart.
52:33 Georgia Hardstark? Do you think she slept a moment of that 20 hours and 40 minutes?
52:36 Karen Kilgariff? Probably, well, no, probably not, because she was probably thrilled out of her mind, scared shitless, and it was super loud and cold and windy.
52:44 Georgia Hardstark? And there was no bar cart.
52:47 Karen Kilgariff? She just has a little flask that she's sipping out of, from a straw. So newspapers run countless glowing features and newsreels declaring her the quote "Lady Lindbergh." It's the exact type of publicity George has worked so hard for, because now he wants Amelia to write a memoir that he can then turn into the bestseller. So it's, this is my experience doing it.
53:06 Georgia Hardstark? Got it.
53:07 Karen Kilgariff? George urges her to quit her job back in Boston, move into his New York home, and crank out this book, "That's Exactly How Lindbergh Did It." So he wants her to do it the same way. Amelia knows that if she does that, she can parlay all the attention into some real money, which then she can use to support her family and pay for her expensive flying lessons.
53:26 Georgia Hardstark? She's the original aviator influencer.
53:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
53:30 Georgia Hardstark? Hashtag.
53:31 Karen Kilgariff? For sure. And also, you see these, let me show you some of these early pictures. She's a gorgeous young woman. She has freckles in her bob hair or whatever, but she's like...
53:41 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, she's the cutest.
53:42 Karen Kilgariff? She truly has that face card that they're all looking for. And on top of all that, it's gonna give her a platform to share the message she's carried within her since childhood, which is that women can do anything men can do.
53:54 Georgia Hardstark? Awesome.
53:55 Karen Kilgariff? In the 20s. When no one was trying to say shit, they were like, "I'm gonna smoke a cigarette."
54:00 Georgia Hardstark? Jazz cigarette.
54:01 Karen Kilgariff? Jazz. So Amelia upends her entire life in Boston and starts writing a book that will eventually be titled, quote, "Twenty Hours, Forty Minutes." In it, there's a section titled "Women in Aviation," and in that Amelia writes, quote, "While this chapter is called 'Women in Aviation,' just as appropriate, a title might have been 'Women Outside of Aviation.' There should be no line between men and women so far as piloting is concerned."
54:28 Georgia Hardstark? Got it, like a female pilot. Nope, just a pilot.
54:30 Karen Kilgariff? Just a pilot.
54:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
54:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yep. Amelia's sister Muriel will later say that Amelia was embarrassed that her claim to fame was being a passenger on that transatlantic flight, which seems backed up by Amelia's own words. She was quoted as saying, "The boys did all the flying."
54:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
54:47 Karen Kilgariff? That is embarrassing.
54:48 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
54:48 Karen Kilgariff? For her, who is a pilot.
54:50 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, get your own Vespa.
54:51 Karen Kilgariff? Get your...
54:53 Karen Kilgariff? She also describes herself on that flight as, quote, "Just baggage, like a sack of potatoes."
54:57 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, god, that had a sting.
55:00 Karen Kilgariff? Well, I think it's she's the kind of person that's like, "If you're gonna applaud for me this much, just wait until you see me fly."
55:05 Georgia Hardstark? Right, this is nothing.
55:06 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. She also teases her dream of the future by saying, quote, "Maybe someday I'll try it alone." So now it's 1932, Amelia's in her mid-30s, and America's in the throes of the Great Depression, but Amelia's done extremely well for herself over the past few years. She's gotten paid endorsements from brands like Lucky Strike, and she's become the Aviation Editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.
55:30 Georgia Hardstark? That's made up.
55:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it is.
55:32 Georgia Hardstark? But I love it.
55:32 Karen Kilgariff? But that's how much of a trend flying was at the time, which is great.
55:36 Georgia Hardstark? You gotta get those, uh, sponsorships, man.
55:38 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
55:39 Georgia Hardstark? Me and podcasting, understand.
55:40 Karen Kilgariff? You're truly right about her being the original plane influencer. So at that point, she'd made enough money to buy herself a brand-new plane, which is the now iconic fire-engine-red Lockheed Vega. Amelia is also still devoted to empowering women. She is the founding member and the first president of a group called the Ninety-Nines, which is the first-ever organization for women in aviation. The ninety-nine refers to the number of the group's charter members.
56:09 Georgia Hardstark? Amazing.
56:10 Karen Kilgariff? So good.
56:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, what if it was like, "Twenty-three, the twenty-threes"? It doesn't sound the same. The ninety-nines is fucking...
56:16 Karen Kilgariff? Almost a hundred. On a more personal level, Amelia's father Edwin has passed away of cancer. And George Putnam, her publisher, has divorced his wife. He professes his love for her and proposes.
56:32 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, I wish I could have seen that.
56:33 Karen Kilgariff? She says no. He asks again, and he ends up proposing to her six different times.
56:40 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
56:41 Karen Kilgariff? Love him, love her.
56:42 Georgia Hardstark? Love it.
56:43 Karen Kilgariff? Amelia has been skeptical of marriage all her life for a very good reason.
56:47 Georgia Hardstark? Shocking, yeah.
56:48 Karen Kilgariff? But she genuinely cares for George, so she eventually accepts, but she has her conditions. She tells him she's gonna keep her own name, which at that time was unheard of.
56:57 Georgia Hardstark? I'm just, that's incredible.
56:59 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
56:59 Georgia Hardstark? Someone who kept her own name, I want to thank her for fucking blazing the way.
57:03 Karen Kilgariff? She blazed it. And then on her wedding day, she won't wear a traditional bridal gown. She wears a brown suit.
57:11 Georgia Hardstark? What?
57:13 Karen Kilgariff? Just like Fisk.
57:14 Georgia Hardstark? She's like, let me just go to work today.
57:17 Karen Kilgariff? She's like, here's the thing.
57:18 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
57:18 Karen Kilgariff? I'm not wearing your stupid fucking dress. And she also, the morning of their wedding, writes him a letter, which I really love, that says, quote, "I may have to keep someplace where I can go to be by myself now and then. I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage."
57:36 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god. Like, he loved that about her, you know?
57:39 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
57:41 Georgia Hardstark? Like, why he loved her is like, that's so incredible.
57:45 Karen Kilgariff? I think so.
57:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
57:46 Karen Kilgariff? This is my opinion, when you are raised feral, it's hard to even want to have anything traditional, even when the pressure to do it is so oppressive, because it's like, it was literally, she had the kind of household where it's like, go outside and play for 18 hours because everything is so fucked in here.
58:03 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
58:04 Karen Kilgariff? And so then it's like, yeah, I don't want to go back.
58:06 Georgia Hardstark? Why would I tie myself back to this?
58:08 Karen Kilgariff? That structure that I can't trust. If I couldn't trust my own father, how can I trust you?
58:12 Georgia Hardstark? I completely identify with that.
58:15 Karen Kilgariff? And George Putnam's like, I get it, I'll just keep asking you.
58:20 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
58:20 Karen Kilgariff? But also, a brown suit on your wedding day is just like badass to a degree where she's like, that isn't just like, I'm not gonna be traditional. She's like, fuck you, finishing school professor.
58:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Apologies to anyone who thought they were actually gonna play this for their children in the backseat of the car. Like, it was never going to happen.
58:38 Karen Kilgariff? We were lying to you, but more importantly, we were lying directly to your children.
58:42 Georgia Hardstark? And you were lying to yourself, if you fucking thought.
58:44 Karen Kilgariff? We screamed fuck you.
58:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
58:47 Karen Kilgariff? So around the same year she gets married, which is 1932, she publishes her second book. That one's called The Fun of It.
58:55 Georgia Hardstark? Cute.
58:55 Karen Kilgariff? I love that one.
58:56 Georgia Hardstark? Kiki.
58:57 Karen Kilgariff? She also announces with that that she's gonna fly across the Atlantic again, but this time as a pilot and this time by herself.
59:03 Georgia Hardstark? No.
59:04 Karen Kilgariff? At the time, no one, no man or woman, aside from Charles Lindbergh back in 1927, had ever completed a solo, non-stop, transatlantic flight, although 10 pilots had died trying.
59:16 Georgia Hardstark? No.
59:17 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
59:17 Georgia Hardstark? Don't like those odds.
59:18 Karen Kilgariff? So she's like, uh, uh, uh, uh.
59:21 Georgia Hardstark? 10 male pilots.
59:22 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, exactly. So immediately Amelia's inner circle, including her husband George Putnam, start wondering if she's experienced enough to pull off this stunt. Her own mechanic gives her, quote, "a one in 100 chance of surviving."
59:38 Georgia Hardstark? Cool, dude. Way to fucking be supportive.
59:40 Karen Kilgariff? Reminds me of when the fucking Eagles were like, "We don't want to tour with Linda Ronstadt. We're gonna start our own band." Like, fuck you.
59:47 Georgia Hardstark? Go ahead. See how it fucking goes.
59:49 Karen Kilgariff? Good luck. She's selling out fucking stadiums. Anyway.
59:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
59:52 Karen Kilgariff? God, that documentary, I loved it so much, but it, it, it filled me with a fury that will never go away.
59:57 Georgia Hardstark? That was the point.
59:58 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, she wasn't good enough.
59:59 Georgia Hardstark? You need it. You need that fury.
1:00:01 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. So the idea of making a transatlantic flight alone makes Amelia Earhart feel alive.
1:00:08 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, I was gonna be like, take a beta blocker if you're nervous.
1:00:11 Karen Kilgariff? She's like, "I can't. This day-to-day bullshit isn't good enough. I need to get up and over there."
1:00:16 Georgia Hardstark? What did she do to hype herself up before? Because before I came in here to record, I put on Yes, Anne by Ariana Grande, like, just to record a podcast that I've done for fucking nine years and I still knew that. Like, what did she do? Secrets being revealed.
1:00:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Well, here's, I can tell you, she writes a poem that says, quote, "Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace."
1:00:41 Georgia Hardstark? Hmm.
1:00:43 Karen Kilgariff? You gotta pay. You must. So on a warm May morning, I added in warm, I don't know why, on a May morning in 1932, Amelia takes off from Canada's east coast in her Lockheed Vega. From the start, it's an exhausting, difficult journey. Author Doris L. Rich writes, quote, "She was four hours out when she ran into a storm. She would go high and the plane would ice. Then she'd go down until she could see the waves to get the ice off."
1:01:11 Georgia Hardstark? Whoa.
1:01:11 Karen Kilgariff? How fucking scary would that be? She had no radio contact with anyone. The manifold on her engine broke and the flames from the backfire from it were coming out. There was a gas gauge over her head that began to leak and the gasoline was dripping down over her forehead and into one eye.
1:01:27 Georgia Hardstark? No, just crashed the whole thing into the sea.
1:01:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:01:29 Georgia Hardstark? That's what I would do.
1:01:30 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, well, after 15 grueling hours of flight time, Amelia Earhart lands her plane safely in Northern Ireland.
1:01:38 Georgia Hardstark? Amazing.
1:01:39 Karen Kilgariff? And this solo flight launches her to all new levels of worldwide stardom. She's mobbed by fans in London and Paris. And when she comes back to the United States, her success is felt as a much-needed moment of national joy, because it's still the Great Depression.
1:01:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:01:55 Karen Kilgariff? She even gets her own ticker tape parade in New York City.
1:01:58 Georgia Hardstark? Influencer.
1:01:59 Karen Kilgariff? Have you ever seen ticker tape parade footage?
1:02:01 Georgia Hardstark? It looks so messy.
1:02:02 Karen Kilgariff? It looks so awesome though. Like if you're down there and everyone's just throwing shit out the window and like, it's just such a true moment of glory.
1:02:10 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:02:10 Karen Kilgariff? Everybody got to focus on that.
1:02:12 Georgia Hardstark? Then the guy has to clean it up.
1:02:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, true.
1:02:14 Georgia Hardstark? Why do I think that way? Go on.
1:02:16 Karen Kilgariff? Some people like cleaning.
1:02:19 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so, a few months later, she then becomes the first woman to fly across North America and back. Amelia is now a global icon through and through. I also wonder how much of that is like, I'm proving I'm not a passenger over and over again.
1:02:33 Georgia Hardstark? For sure. That's like the best way to like, get yourself to do something. For me is like, oh, you don't think I can't do that? You think I'm a passenger?
1:02:40 Karen Kilgariff? Or to myself of like, oh, you're really ashamed because you had that one comedy set that was terrible that you're remembering from seven years ago? Well, then I'm gonna go out there and be the best. I think shame works.
1:02:50 Georgia Hardstark? Shame is a great motivator.
1:02:53 Karen Kilgariff? But being a career aviator, even when you're a famous one, takes a ton of money. So Amelia hits the lecture circuit. She goes on tour making exhausting back-to-back town-by-town appearances.
1:03:05 Georgia Hardstark? Tell me about it. TED Talks. OG TED Talks.
1:03:11 Karen Kilgariff? She's got like the head mic, but it's not connected to anything.
1:03:13 Georgia Hardstark? Cause there's no such thing.
1:03:16 Karen Kilgariff? Like, what's that thing by her mouth? Sometimes she earned $2,400 in a single week.
1:03:21 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:03:22 Karen Kilgariff? In two days' money. 1932, how much would $2,400 a week be?
1:03:29 Georgia Hardstark? Seventy-six thousand.
1:03:30 Karen Kilgariff? Fifty-five thousand.
1:03:32 Georgia Hardstark? I'm in the, I'm in the area.
1:03:33 Karen Kilgariff? Fifty-five thousand dollars a week.
1:03:35 Georgia Hardstark? That's insane. That's insane. She's, she started the first podcast.
1:03:39 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. She's also using her platform to campaign for women's empowerment, not only in aviation, but she's trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed.
1:03:48 Georgia Hardstark? Girl, like, don't rest. I love it.
1:03:51 Karen Kilgariff? She's invited to the White House in 1933. She becomes tight with the Roosevelts. Brag, brag, brag.
1:03:57 Georgia Hardstark? So fucking cool.
1:03:58 Karen Kilgariff? A not-so-fun fact about the Equal Rights Amendment, though. Advocates have been fighting to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment since the twenties.
1:04:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:04:06 Karen Kilgariff? Even though it's already met the required number of state ratifications, for some reason, it still has not been added to the US Constitution.
1:04:15 Georgia Hardstark? Imagine being invited to the White House and wanting to go and being like proud to go.
1:04:20 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:04:21 Georgia Hardstark? Can you, like, the Roosevelts? Fuck yeah, I'd go. Imagine.
1:04:25 Karen Kilgariff? It's just such the end of an era.
1:04:27 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:04:28 Karen Kilgariff? But the, it's an end of an era and what I'm talking about is democracy. Fucking, Jesus.
1:04:34 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my god, okay.
1:04:36 Karen Kilgariff? 1933 is a big year for Amelia, also because she breaks her own speed record on a second flight across North America. She's just getting it done.
1:04:45 Georgia Hardstark? Nice.
1:04:45 Karen Kilgariff? By 1935, 38-year-old Amelia has set records for solo flights from like Honolulu to Oakland, California, or LA to Mexico City. That's just a couple of them.
1:04:56 Georgia Hardstark? I've done those.
1:04:57 Karen Kilgariff? Right? And solo, you mean you just weren't talking to Vince? She's also campaigning for FDR and she launches her own fashion line called Amelia Fashion. Called brown suits. Called brown suits only. She explains- Ooh, if you could find one of those in the vintage shop, if you're like doing vintage shopping and then suddenly you see fucking Amelia Earhart fashion. By Amelia. Dude. So, the theory was that all flight clothing, of course, had been made for men up to that point. Right. So when you had your nice jodhpurs or your weird white shirt or whatever, leather jacket. Yeah, like horse riding. Yeah, so, so the idea was they were supposed to be, and of course she always preferred pants anyway.
1:05:35 Karen Kilgariff? So, I looked up on AmeliaEarhart.org and they had pictures from the newspaper of the ad of it and it said, "Sports clothes designed by Amelia Earhart," but then every single picture in that ad was models wearing dresses. There was not one pair of pants, which I was like- She never got a say in that. She sold her name. That's true. As busy as she is, Amelia still gets the itch to make another big flight. So she writes to her friends saying, quote, "I have the feeling there's just one more good flight left in my system and I hope this is it. It is my swan song as far as record flying is concerned, my frosting on the cake." Oh god, rest on your beautiful laurels sometimes, guys.
1:06:18 Karen Kilgariff? Sorry, I can't join adult children of alcoholics, so I'm gonna go ahead and keep on flying across this- Take a nice little nap on them laurels. Can't do it. So the next year, 1936, Amelia announces her plan to fly around the world. If successful, she'll be the first woman to ever do it, obviously. She and George fundraise for a brand new plane that's built specifically for this journey. They pay for it too, but they're, it's so expensive, it's $80,000. Wow. So, they need to fundraise. $80,000 back then is about how much in today's money? 350,000. 1.8 million. Dude, I've learned nothing. Your, your scale just went like that a little bit. I just don't know what's happening.
1:07:00 Karen Kilgariff? So, she calls this plane her flying laboratory because it's outfitted with all the latest technology, but she never learns to use much of it. Doris L. Rich writes, quote, "Amelia did not like radio communication. There's absolutely no doubt about it. That's like me and emails." It's so bad for business. She not only didn't bother to learn it, she didn't really find it necessary. There's a hint here of the ego that all great explorers and adventurers have. They have a certain faith that they're going to make it.
1:07:34 Georgia Hardstark? And when you spend one point and something on a fucking plane, you hope it flies itself just a little bit.
1:07:38 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, you would hope. There's an automated aspect to it.
1:07:41 Georgia Hardstark? Something.
1:07:42 Karen Kilgariff? Amelia wants to do the trip by herself, but it's eventually decided she will need a team, being that she doesn't like radio communication and all, so she hires three men. A technical advisor named Paul Mance, a marine navigator with radio operation experience named Harry Manning, and a former Pan Am navigator named Fred Noonan. So on March 17th, 1937, they take off from Oakland, California. They land in Honolulu. Then on March 20th, they take off for the second leg of this trip, but something goes wrong. The plane skids off course at the end of the runway and it crashes. It's a big enough accident that the plane has to be sent in for extensive repairs.
1:08:21 Georgia Hardstark? Bummer.
1:08:22 Karen Kilgariff? So, this is a deeply stressful moment for Amelia. She's basically gambled everything on this extraordinarily expensive flight during a national financial crisis.
1:08:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:08:34 Karen Kilgariff? So Doris L. Rich writes, quote, "After she cracked up the plane in Honolulu, she felt fear for the first time. The immensity of this project suddenly hit her. She knew that if she lost that plane or failed in this, she and George were dead broke, both of them." End quote. You can tell Doris L. Rich is writing from like, it's probably 1945 or something?
1:08:54 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:08:55 Karen Kilgariff? That's the vibe I get.
1:08:56 Georgia Hardstark? This is gonna happen.
1:08:58 Karen Kilgariff? They're dead broke, both of them. So, the crash in Honolulu also rattles Amelia's loved ones. According to BBS, friends urge her to abandon this mission. They also expressed concern over her exhausted and anxious mental state.
1:09:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:09:13 Karen Kilgariff? So it seems like she's kind of pushing it anyway, even though she's scared or she's worried.
1:09:17 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
1:09:18 Karen Kilgariff? This includes her husband, George, who writes her a letter promising that they'll figure things out should she abandon the flight.
1:09:24 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, there's time.
1:09:26 Karen Kilgariff? It's okay, but Amelia won't give in.
1:09:29 Georgia Hardstark? Give in and regroup a little bit and then come back stronger than ever.
1:09:32 Karen Kilgariff? I feel like this is that kind of thing. You know, there are people who are like, if you're a serious workaholic, you just can't consider taking a nap during the day.
1:09:39 Georgia Hardstark? That thing of like, rest is for the weak. And it's like, actually, it's a beautiful thing to give to yourself and it's okay.
1:09:46 Karen Kilgariff? It is okay, but sometimes you just can't because if you rest, that means like your momentum will slow, even if it's just your mental momentum.
1:09:54 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:09:54 Karen Kilgariff? And clearly, she's still on that sled, still going under that horse-drawn carriage.
1:09:59 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, but then it won't go away. You can still come back after it. And like, you're going to be more clear-headed and you're going to be older and smarter and like, give yourself a fucking break sometimes.
1:10:09 Karen Kilgariff? No.
1:10:10 Georgia Hardstark? And that shows why Karen CEO and I don't have a fucking office at Exactly Right Media.
1:10:16 Karen Kilgariff? It's not good.
1:10:17 Georgia Hardstark? It's not.
1:10:18 Karen Kilgariff? It is not good.
1:10:19 Georgia Hardstark? It's not. And she has two podcasts.
1:10:21 Karen Kilgariff? Good. And I'm gonna start a third. And it's called It's Fine to Do This to Yourself.
1:10:28 Georgia Hardstark? It's fine.
1:10:29 Karen Kilgariff? It's fine. That actually would be funny.
1:10:32 Georgia Hardstark? It's fine.
1:10:32 Karen Kilgariff? A podcast called It's Fine, and you just have people come on and talk about shit that is so not okay.
1:10:37 Georgia Hardstark? Right, that they put themselves through.
1:10:38 Karen Kilgariff? It's fine.
1:10:39 Georgia Hardstark? It was fine. I was fine.
1:10:40 Karen Kilgariff? No, I liked it. It was fine. By the time the plane is repaired, Amelia's team has shrunk. The technical advisor, Paul, and Harry, the marine navigator, the only guy with radio experience, both back out.
1:10:53 Georgia Hardstark? They were like, later days.
1:10:54 Karen Kilgariff? They're like, read the fates.
1:10:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I'm gonna go take a nap.
1:10:58 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it's nap time.
1:10:59 Georgia Hardstark? Mercury is in retrograde.
1:11:01 Karen Kilgariff? So now it's Amelia and Fred Noonan. Thanks to changing weather patterns, they're forced to come up with a whole new flight plan. So instead of leaving from Hawaii, they're now taking off from Miami, Florida. And on June 1, 1937, they do just that, this time without a hitch. And then they start on this 40-day, 20,000-mile trip.
1:11:24 Karen Kilgariff? Making several stops to refuel along the way. They soar over Africa, through the Middle East, over Southeast Asia, on to New Guinea. They have another stop before a very long stretch over the Pacific Ocean. They're the first people who have ever seen this from the fucking air. Like, how unbelievable. On July 2nd, 1937, Amelia and Fred take off from New Guinea. At this point, they've completed nearly three quarters of this journey, and the goal is to now get to a tiny sliver of land called Howland Island, roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii. Truly out in the middle of the Pacific. Yeah. And it's only about a mile and a half long island and a half a mile wide. That's a hard target.
1:12:08 Karen Kilgariff? That's a little tiny one. Tragically, Amelia and Fred struggle to find Howland Island. We know they arrive in the general area because Amelia starts radioing the Coast Guard, who have a ship called Itasca nearby, and they're receiving her messages. Some of these transmissions are so crystal clear that the men on the Itasca rush to the decks, thinking that the plane will be overhead. Wow. In one of her transmissions, Amelia says that she thinks she's close by, but she's lost, and she only has about half an hour of fuel left. But because she doesn't know much about radio transmission, she's sending these messages while on an improper frequency on the radio, so the Coast Guard is only able to respond to her with Morse code,
1:12:52 Karen Kilgariff? which neither she nor Fred understand. That's an important one. Lot of crucial. You gotta. Elements. Let's not criticize Amelia. Why not? You know where the story goes from here. The messages stop coming in. Thirty-nine-year-old Amelia Earhart and 44-year-old Fred Noonan and the plane that they're flying in together disappear. Almost immediately, FDR dispatches a huge crew to go look for them. It's made up of 10 ships and 65 planes. And that causes a lot of controversy, because it costs millions of dollars. It's still the Depression. So after two weeks of combing a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island
1:13:35 Karen Kilgariff? with no results, this search is called off. But George Putnam has his own search going. I forgot that. Yeah, okay. He funds an independent search himself and it goes until October of 1937. Oh, my God. So he just kind of never stops searching for her. Yeah. That also turns up nothing. In January of 1939, two years after vanishing, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan are legally declared dead. They turned up nothing, not a scrap. So they were like looking in the wrong area. Well. Okay. We'll talk about that in one second. Okay. There are countless theories of what happened during those final moments of Amelia's last flight. All have devoted supporters. Yeah.
1:14:16 Karen Kilgariff? As they usually do. Because the disappearance happened in the lead up to World War II, some people think that Amelia and Fred were captured by the Japanese military after a crash landing on a Japanese-controlled island. And they were either executed for being American spies or they were turned into spies for Japan and sent back to the US with new identities. No. That one's a little wild. Yeah. But what if? Yeah. Now we write that movie. Okay. Another theory is that Amelia wound up on an island called Nikamororo. Sorry for that pronunciation. A 400 miles south of Howland Island. Is this where they found her compact? Hold on. Wait, wait.
1:14:57 Karen Kilgariff? They think they might have lived as castaways there before dying of thirst or starvation. Some people believe this theory, then take it one step further, suggesting that massive coconut crabs could have consumed their remains and scattered their bones, making their bodies harder to find. Okay. Those fuckers are big. I mean, it's such a creepy idea. The island had been inhabited in the past, but it was uninhabited at the time of this flight. Despite this, intermittent radio signals were reported from that general area around the time they disappeared. Interesting. As if the plane's radio had remained intact and accessible and they were calling for help. Fuck. On top of that, in 1940, bones are found on Nikamororo.
1:15:41 Karen Kilgariff? They have since been lost, so the DNA has never been tested. Come on. Yeah. But again, that island had been inhabited, so there weren't necessarily. There's, searchers have found on that island
1:15:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
1:15:55 Karen Kilgariff? A single shoe.
1:15:56 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
1:15:57 Karen Kilgariff? A piece of aluminum.
1:15:58 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
1:15:58 Karen Kilgariff? And a jar of freckle cream.
1:16:00 Georgia Hardstark? Freckle cream.
1:16:02 Karen Kilgariff? Which certainly points to a person and maybe a woman having been there. And for what it's worth, Amelia Earhart had freckles that she was reportedly very self-conscious about.
1:16:13 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, first of all, it breaks my heart that she is so self-conscious that she brings freckle cream on this like adventure. But then I'm like, I wonder if that was like their SPF at the time. Where it's like you had to cover your freckles with this cream and maybe it wouldn't get worse.
1:16:26 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it was maybe like two for one where she's like, I need moisture because this wind's gonna whip around my face.
1:16:32 Georgia Hardstark? Sunscreen, it's an early sunscreen, okay.
1:16:34 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:16:35 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, yeah, it's her, it's theirs.
1:16:38 Karen Kilgariff? Could you imagine you're just on this island, it's mostly coconut crabs and then you're just like, puns, puns, cold cream.
1:16:45 Georgia Hardstark? What if the cold cream was like a sponsor of the flight? It's like, so she had to bring it.
1:16:49 Karen Kilgariff? What if it was the sponsor of this podcast?
1:16:51 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my god, freckle cream.
1:16:53 Karen Kilgariff? Freckle cream.
1:16:54 Georgia Hardstark? Freckle clem.
1:16:56 Karen Kilgariff? Amelia Earhart uses it and you can too. No, because now they love freckles so much that they have little freckle stamps.
1:17:02 Georgia Hardstark? And they have tattoos of freckles on your fucking face.
1:17:05 Karen Kilgariff? The kids these days with their big butts and their freckles and their attitudes. Okay. Those items are never confirmed as belonging to either Fred or Amelia. And modern day efforts to search the surrounding ocean near that island have turned up nothing. Of course, many people think Amelia's plane simply ran out of fuel and crashed into the open ocean because of the sheer size and depth of the Pacific. It hasn't been found. Amelia's sister Muriel thinks this is what happened. Quote, "I'm not happy with some of the dramas about Amelia where they went into fiction." So essentially, of course, that's how it always is.
1:17:43 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it's actually simple.
1:17:45 Karen Kilgariff? Fear rising, yeah. The hard truth, which presumably was much harder for Muriel, Amelia's mother, Amy, and her husband George, is that we simply do not know what happened to her. George Putnam died in 1950 at age 62 of kidney problems. Amy, Amelia's mother, died in 1962 at age 95. And her sister, Muriel, passed away in 1998 at the age of 98.
1:18:10 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:18:11 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Searchers continue to hunt for any signs of Amelia Earhart or her plane. As recently as 2023, a deep sea exploration group released an underwater sonar image of what they thought was the plane. But in 2024, they discovered it was just a bunch of rocks.
1:18:27 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, no.
1:18:28 Karen Kilgariff? Uh huh, plane-shaped rocks. All that in mind, instead of focusing on the mysterious ending of Amelia's story, we can always relish in what we do know about her life and her bold approach to living it. As writer Anthony Brandt has said, quote, "It wasn't that Amelia was willful, rather that she was free. She was calm, fearless, cheerful in the face of life, and she attracted everybody. She believed that women should live lives rich in experience and have careers if they possibly could."
1:18:56 Georgia Hardstark? Can you imagine?
1:18:58 Karen Kilgariff? And she lived her belief. She was a remarkable human being, a historic figure, one of those people who, skirting the farthermost edges of experience, open up possibilities for us all. And that is the story of pioneering aviatrics Amelia Earhart.
1:19:15 Georgia Hardstark? Boom.
1:19:17 Karen Kilgariff? High five for Amelia Earhart.
1:19:18 Georgia Hardstark? Good job.
1:19:20 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you.
1:19:21 Georgia Hardstark? Wow, had to be done.
1:19:22 Karen Kilgariff? If you're in the fifth grade and you heard anything I said that was wrong, please write in at [email protected] . Because we know you all have done reports on her.
1:19:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, we're open to corrections, always.
1:19:34 Karen Kilgariff? Women should live free. It's insane.
1:19:36 Georgia Hardstark? Can you imagine?
1:19:37 Karen Kilgariff? But it really is the truth.
1:19:39 Georgia Hardstark? It is. That was its own parade, I feel like.
1:19:42 Karen Kilgariff? I do, too.
1:19:42 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:19:43 Karen Kilgariff? That was pretty great.
1:19:43 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:19:44 Karen Kilgariff? Pretty great ending.
1:19:44 Georgia Hardstark? Still send us parades and comment them, but please.
1:19:46 Karen Kilgariff? That was it.
1:19:47 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
1:19:47 Karen Kilgariff? This week.
1:19:48 Georgia Hardstark? We've done all the work we need to do.
1:19:49 Karen Kilgariff? I agree.
1:19:50 Georgia Hardstark? Great, then stay sexy.
1:19:51 Karen Kilgariff? And don't get murdered. Goodbye.
1:19:55 Georgia Hardstark? Elvis, do you want a cookie?
1:20:04 Karen Kilgariff? This has been an exactly right production.
1:20:06 Georgia Hardstark? Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.
1:20:09 Karen Kilgariff? Our editor is Aristotle Lasevedo.
1:20:11 Georgia Hardstark? This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci.
1:20:14 Karen Kilgariff? Our researchers are Mira McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
1:20:16 Georgia Hardstark? Email your hometowns to [email protected] .
1:20:19 Karen Kilgariff? And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.
1:20:22 Georgia Hardstark? Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:20:27 Karen Kilgariff? Or you can watch us on YouTube. Search for My Favorite Murder, then like and subscribe. Goodbye.
1:20:39 Karen Kilgariff? Calling all amateur detectives and podcast obsessives.
1:20:43 Georgia Hardstark? Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage sets sail March 20, 2027, for a five-night escape to Grand Turk and the Beach Club at Bimini.
1:20:51 Karen Kilgariff? As part of the On Air at Sea collection, this immersive sailing brings together fan favorite podcasts, including Disgrace Land, Buried Bones, and Wise Crack, for live recordings, behind-the-scenes access, exclusive meet and greets, and crime-themed programming that you won't find anywhere else.
1:21:07 Georgia Hardstark? All aboard our award-winning, kid-free ships.
1:21:10 Karen Kilgariff? Head over to virginvoyages.com/trucrime to secure your spot. Goodbye.
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