Mary Elizabeth Lease

Mary Elizabeth Lease was a progressive political activist who fought big business, worked on behalf of the common man, and believed strongly in the importance of third parties in the U. S. political system. But there are also some really problematic parts of her story and ideology.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast. In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity. Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no know-it-all hosts, just real people being real. Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on,

• 1:29Speaker 01

  so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly

• 2:14Speaker 01

  you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say this is a job for sponsored jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I almost said I'm Holly Friday. I don't know what that's about. I literally had to pull myself back. But today, we are talking about Mary Elizabeth Lees. And I will tell you upfront, she is a mixed bag. In initial research on her, what I kept finding was most biographical sketches describe her in pretty positive terms, even though she was not universally beloved. She was a progressive political activist. She fought big business. She worked on behalf of the common man, particularly farmers, and she believed really strongly in the importance of third parties in the US political system. All of that's true, and

• 3:41Speaker 01

  it makes her sound pretty cool, but it leaves out some really problematic parts of her story and ideology. Her story, which also plays out during the Gilded Age, when, much like today, the difference between rich and poor in the US, very stark, very unbalanced, with just a handful of people holding the vast majority of the nation's wealth. But it also offers a glimpse into the repetitive nature of politics and social structure in the US. As a lot of the issues she spoke about and advocated for are things we are hearing about all the time in the news today, there is also a moment in this show where one of her detractors says something that sounds like you heard it on a soundbite from

• 4:26Speaker 01

  1969. It was, took me so by surprise. So Mary Elizabeth Clions was born September 11th, 1853, in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Her father was Joseph P. Clions and her mother was Mary Elizabeth Murray Clions, and both of them were Irish and had immigrated to the United States. Mary had two older brothers who had been born in Ireland. They were Patrick and Daniel. The family had left their home country after Joseph had been involved in a conflict with British landowners. He had lost his tenant property during the famine and had also been instrumental in leading a revolt against the landowners, and that had made him a wanted man. During the US Civil War, which started when Mary was just eight, her father Joseph and her two brothers served in the Union Army. Joseph was drafted, but her brothers volunteered.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Both of her brothers, one of whom was adopted, were killed in action, and Joseph is said to have starved to death while he was a prisoner of war. There is, we should note, some conflicting information about all of this because in some accounts, Joseph, Patrick, and Daniel are said to have received money to service stand-ins for military service. We've talked about this practice on the show before, where they would report in lieu of wealthy draftees who basically paid them to say, "Go be me" for this conflict. Mary, after all of this had happened, believed that the war was entirely the fault of the Democratic Party and that it was the direct cause of her sorrow, and she grew up with

• 6:07Speaker 01

  a deep disdain for pretty much all Democrats. The Democrat Party at this point in history was generally a party of wealthy, white slave owners. That's where we are in the arc of political parties in the US. So Mary Elizabeth attended St. Elizabeth's Academy in Allegheny, New York, and graduated in 1868 at the age of 15. She taught in a school in Pennsylvania for two years before moving to Kansas in search of better wages for teachers. She'd already shown an interest in the labor movement at that point. Even as a teen, fresh to the profession, she had tried to get a teachers' union together at her first job, primarily because of poor pay.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Clions got a teaching appointment in a Kansas Catholic school, which was St. Anne's Academy, and that was in the town of Osage Mission. In Kansas, Mary Elizabeth met a pharmacist clerk named Charles L. Leese, and the two of them married on January 30th, 1873. According to Charles's account, it had been Mary who pursued him. He had not particularly been interested in courtship or marriage, and then she kind of inserted herself into his life. Because Mary was politically active before she met Charles, they had what was probably sort of a unique marriage for the time, one in which she and her husband were of differing political views. Although it seems that Charles was a lot less passionate

• 7:36Speaker 01

  about his Democrat affiliation than Mary was about her ideologies. Mary left her teaching job when she married Charles, and she became a homemaker, although that role did not particularly suit her. She started coming up with ways to stay mentally stimulated, and one of them was that she started writing. And among the works that she wrote during this time was a play that was put on at one of the local schools that imagined what the US might be like if it had been run by women. Charles and Mary Elizabeth moved to Kingman County, Kansas, in early 1873. They got a plot of land through the Homestead Act, and they started a farm there. They had borrowed money to set up the farm with everything that it needed,

• 8:20Speaker 01

  but they found that things were really rough going. After living a pretty comfortable life for their first several months of marriage, they found themselves living in a dugout house before they could get a sod house made. They also realized that farming is very difficult work. They were not good at it. They did not produce anything to sell. They defaulted on their loans, and the farm was repossessed. Just a year after they had ventured into farming, they had lost everything and moved to Dennison, Texas. Yeah, I get the vibe, because farming will come up again, that Mary had kind of a romantic idea of What it was to be a farmer, even as she became very well acquainted with a lot of farmers.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  She really thought that was going to be a great life. Mary was pregnant when they made this move to Dennison and she gave birth to their first child, Charles Henry, in late 1874. In Texas, Charles found work at a pharmacy once again. This time, he was working for Atchison's Drugstore. And to help make ends meet, Mary Elizabeth worked as a washerwoman. And during this time, she also started studying law. Now, this was not a case where she attended law school. Rather, she apprenticed with the law firm of Aldrich and Brown. And she studied law there. Apprentices who learned in this manner were allowed to sit for the bar exam. And Mary is said to have pinned her law notes over her wash tub. So as she did her customers laundry, she could also study.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Atchison's Drugstore provided the leases with more than an income for Charles. It was owned by Dr. Alexander Atchison and he and his wife Sarah became a significant influence on Mary Elizabeth. Sarah Atchison was active in the temperance movement and she recruited Mary Elizabeth into that cause. Mary Elizabeth joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union and started giving speeches to promote temperance. She was really good at this. Many years later, the New York Times would write of Mary, quote, "She had a resounding voice and a knack for forceful phraseology that carried conviction and enthusiasm." So that voice and her use of it would really define the rest of her life.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Charles, meanwhile, was trying to improve their finances by flipping lots. He recognized that Dennison was growing and so he would purchase empty lots when they came available. And then he would sell those lots at a markup as the town expanded. In 1880, Mary and Charles also had a second child Evelyn and then a third child in 1883. That was their daughter Grace. After almost a decade in Dennison, Mary and Charles moved back to Kingman County, Kansas. They didn't completely leave Dennison behind, though, at least not financially, because Charles continued to be active in the real estate market there for years. They had decided to try to farm again in Kansas.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  This time, they went with the route of renting a house with land instead of... Taking on property. They didn't have a whole lot greater success the second time than they had the first, though. Although they apparently did a little bit better in terms of producing an actual corn crop, it still didn't make them very much money. After they moved back to Kingman County, the Leeses had a son named Ben Herr. Biographer Brooks Spear Orr theorized that he was named after the character in the book, which came out in 1880. Mary and Charles had two other babies during their time in Dennison, who did not survive their infancy. The family moved from their failed second

• 12:00Speaker 01

  farm to Wichita, and over time, Mary used her growing circle in Wichita society to talk to other women about things like temperance and suffrage, and soon she was a leading voice in women's activism circles. Mary became involved with the Knights of Labor, which had been founded in 1869 to advocate for reforms in labor practices, including things like an eight-hour workday, ending child labor, and also ending the use of incarcerated people as laborers, as well as other reforms. Unlike a lot of other organizations, the Knights of Labor also advocated for women's suffrage and labor equality. And through this group, Mary was engaged as a speaker. And that was something that brought her in contact with a lot of

• 12:44Speaker 01

  other activists of note, including Susan B. Anthony. Mary often invoked her own experiences when she talked about issues like class inequality and the ways that banking and industrial companies actively harmed the nation's farmers with their policies. We'll talk about another significant step in Mary's activism after we pause for a sponsor break.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Deanna Flores, flag football star, trailblazer, broadcaster, and entrepreneur, knows what pressure feels like. She knows what it takes to step up in the moment, and she knows that even the biggest achievement is never the end of the story. In the new podcast, Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness, and entertainment. To find the whole person behind the public identity. Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into a pitch, or a musician before a show, the conversation starts with the official bio ends. Every episode, Deanna shares her own experiences, questions, and even doubts. Her guests learn from her, she learns from them, and you might pick up something along the way. No lectures, no know it all host,

• 13:56Speaker 01

  just real people being real. Come curious and leave with something you can use. Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  It was good arrival, anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change. Your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home

• 15:58Speaker 01

  security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:15Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Ledge. How does music actually enter your mind?

• 17:38Speaker 06

  I'm not sure why or how the music comes to me, but I think people who love music and write music, our brains are just filled with music. Like, we have listened to so much music. We've been a part of so much music. I think of- The story that I want to tell, the mood that I want to create with the music, start playing chords, see where they lead me.

• 17:59Speaker 05

  Sometimes I'm just not even thinking about music, right? And I hear this little thing and I go, oh, that could be this.

• 18:09Speaker 06

  You know, you just have to be ready for when the inspiration hits.

• 18:12Speaker 05

  And it comes.

• 18:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  Experience before the moment, the Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  In 1888, Mary's involvement in activism kind of shifted into high gear when she attended the Union Labor Party's state convention. She had been aligned with the Republican Party prior to that, but the party's stance on tariffs as good for the economy and their lack of support for farmers had soured her opinion of the organization. In contrast, the Union Labor Party wanted a financial structure for the country that was beneficial to the people actually doing the work. So it was very much in line with her ideology. Lee actually ran for office as a member of the Union Labor Party. At the convention in 1888, she was chosen as the Union Labor candidate for superintendent

• 19:10Speaker 01

  of Sedgwick County Schools, although neither she nor the other candidates that the Union Labor Party put forth for various offices fared well at all in the election. After the election, Lee stayed active in the Union Labor Party and even edited its newspaper. Before the end of the decade, though, Mary moved to the Farmers Alliance, which had started in Texas almost two decades earlier. She wasn't eligible for membership in the Farmers Alliance because she was not considered to be part of a farming family, but she was welcomed as a participant and her involvement really drove the membership numbers way up. We've already said she was a compelling speaker, but she also offered women in farm

• 19:52Speaker 01

  communities a glimpse at ways that they could be politically active. And a lot of that growth came from women joining the movement. The Farmers Alliance wasn't a political party. It was a protest group and an agrarian movement. As Mary Lee's involvement in activism with the Farmers Alliance was heating up, she gained a very powerful enemy in Kansas Republican Senator John James Ingalls. Ingalls was anti-suffrage, and he made statements about activists that truly sound exactly like conservative rhetoric in the 1960s. This is what I mentioned at the top of the show. He said of women's suffrage that it was, quote, "that obscene

• 20:33Speaker 01

  dogma whose advocates are long-haired men and short-haired women, the unsexed of both sexes, human capons and episines."

• 20:44Speaker 01

  That sounds like he's like, "You hippies." Yeah, maybe without the capons and episines part, it does sound like he's talking about hippies.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  He and his wife made a lot of public comments about Mary Lee's being ladylike and insinuating that she was quite vulgar. By the way, it wasn't like she was out there swearing. She just was very, very direct and very vocal, and that was not cool for women in their eyes. Mary, as a consequence, made it her mission to publicly criticize Ingalls for his stance and the entire Republican Party along with him. The two of them traded barbs in the press, and it made big news every time one of them said something about the other. And as this was all playing out, although she was really busy as an activist and she was still a full-time mom, Mary was able to complete her law studies, and she passed

• 21:38Speaker 01

  the bar exam in Kansas in 1889. And at that point, she and another woman named Mary Merrill opened a law practice together. During the 1890 election cycle, Mary campaigned hard. She made more than 160 speeches. Ingalls was up for reelection, and she and the Farmers Alliance were very focused on making sure he was defeated. In her speeches, she talked about how he and other Republicans were ensuring that wealth inequality was the standard, with a small group of men controlling most of the money in Kansas. Some of her rhetoric regarding Ingalls would be perceived as dangerously close to a threat of physical violence today, likening their vote to pulling a trigger to take out the mark.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  When Senator John Ingalls was ultimately defeated in the election, which took a long time due to legal tie-ups over certification, Mary openly stated that she was the reason why he had lost. This was probably true, at least to a degree. One of Lisa's most famous speeches during this time is often referred to by the title, "Wall Street Owns the Country," although you will sometimes also see it referred to by other names. And in this speech, she denounced the entire setup of the US economy. This is a really good example of the kinds of things she said, so I want to include a lot of it. That speech opens with, quote, "This is a nation of inconsistencies.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our vice president is a London banker.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The political parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us." The speech continues by noting that farmers were told they just needed to produce a good crop, but when they all managed to do so, they were told they had overproduced, and thus their various products like corn, beef, and eggs would be devalued. She notes that they were told that there was too much product, but according to the statistics, there were 10,000 kids starving in the U.S. every year. She finished with a threat, quote, "We want money, land, and transportation.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  We want the abolition of the national banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out. We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary. And we will not pay our debts to the loan shark companies until the government pays its debt to us. The people are at bay. Let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware." There is also another quote that's attributed to Mary during this phase of her activism, in which she was alleged to have told farmers in Kansas to, quote, "Raise less corn and more hell." This is something that still gets repeated today, but she did not say it.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  And when asked about the quote, Mary said that, no, she hadn't said it, but she did think it was pretty good advice. Mary's rhetoric in her speeches roused a lot of people, but by its very nature, it also turned off a lot of people, even in the groups she's most associated with. For example, the Daily Kansas People and other papers ran an account of the Farmers Alliance picnic that was held in August of 1890, that described an estimated 10,000 attendees, but also notes, after mentioning that M.W. Wilkins and Mary E. Leese were speakers, quote, "The speeches were of intolerable length and were not very well received."

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I ran across that after I had seen several instances of people talking about the crowd she drew and saying, like, there were instances where 10,000 people at a time came to see her speak. And it's like, well.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  They were there for a picnic and they also didn't all seem to really like it. In 1892, the Farmers Alliance, which had realized that their political influence would always be limited if they couldn't actually put candidates on ballots, formed the Populist Party officially. And Mary was, of course, a major player in the Populist Party, and it was within that group that she got the nickname "The People's Joan of Arc." When James Weaver ran for president as the populist candidate in 1892, Mary traveled the campaign trail with him. And Weaver was amazed at the way that Lees was received by people on the campaign trail. He described her in the ways you would describe like a rock star walking into an auditorium today.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  In 1893, she briefly ran for senator, but papers reported in January of that year that she had chosen to withdraw from the race. Some accounts noted that it was, quote, "in the interest of harmony." Her candidacy had caused so much debate, even among the people who supported her. There were concerns that she would be polarizing in a way that would lose the Populist Party votes, or that even people who agreed with her politics wouldn't vote for her because she was a woman. She was also relentlessly attacked by her rivals, who suggested that no woman would have the Constitution to handle public office.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  That same year, Mary also had a very public conflict in Kansas after she became president of the Kansas Board of Charities, and that was an appointment she received just after she withdrew from the senate race. In this role, which oversaw a mix of asylums, homes for the poor, and specialty schools, she ran into problems in working with Kansas Governor Lorenzo Llewelling, who had actually been the one that appointed her to that job. The two of them butted heads over a number of things, including connections to the Democratic Party. Llewellyn had run as a populist Democrat under the populist Democrat coalition, and Lees hated this.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  She did not believe in the two parties fusing, and she was completely comfortable being very vocal about it, and also saying that she simply did not want to work with anyone who had been elected as a fusion candidate. She also got really mad when Luelling appointed Democrats to the Board of Charities, not only because of their political affiliation, but also because she thought that she was supposed to be the only one who could make decisions on who was going to be on the board. Luelling grew so irritated and frustrated with Mary and her furious pronouncements about his politics that he tried to have her removed from her role with the Board of Charities. This proved to be more difficult than he had anticipated, though.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Mary fought him tooth and nail in his efforts to take her out of her position, and things got really ugly. Luelling's office even circulated rumors that she and presidential candidate Weaver had an affair on the campaign trail. And Lees accused Luelling of things like having taken bribes from the railroads. The conflict ended up in front of the Kansas Supreme Court, and Mary emerged victorious. Yeah, there were a lot of other allegations in the midst of all of that mudslinging, but those were like the two big ones. Although Mary had been legally vindicated at this point, her political standing really faltered in the wake of the court's decision.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  People really started to consider that she was so staunchly dug in on her views that she could never compromise or really work with others. And because she was seen as one of the primary voices of the populist party, that meant that shifting opinions about her also tarnished the party's reputation. This, in turn, led to poor support for the party in the 1894 election, and the party was unable to secure even a single office that it had run a candidate for. Although the political party tried to recapture its momentum, it kind of sputtered out before the century ended. Coming up, we're going to talk about Mary's book, which was kind of a rambling pastiche of sociopolitical ideas.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  And spoiler alert, it's got some problems. We'll get into it after we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Deanna Flores, flag football star, trailblazer, broadcaster and entrepreneur, knows what pressure feels like. She knows what it takes to step up in the moment, and she knows that even the biggest achievement is never the end of the story. In the new podcast, Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness and entertainment, to find the whole person behind the public identity. Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into a pitch, or a musician before a show, the conversation starts with the official bio ends. Every episode, Deanna shares her own experiences, questions and even doubts. Her guests learn from her, she learns from them, and you might pick up something along the way.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  No lectures, no know it all host, just real people being real. Come curious and leave with something you can use. Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart

• 32:31Speaker 05

  Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren. I'm like a kid when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions. You know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played, or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know, there's every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio, or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back. You know, I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album. So, and you, you obviously are an expert here.

• 33:26Speaker 05

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment. The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers. Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  In 1895, Mary published a book titled The Problem of Civilization Solved.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Just pretty bold. Yeah. In it,

• 34:52Speaker 01

  she examines the rising numbers of the lowest income classes in the United States. And she explains what she feels are the causes of this problem. She does so this way. Quote, "The tide of pauperism is steadily rising and we are rapidly approaching the condition of Europe in the last century. Class legislation has done much to swell the list of America's paupers, but Europe's system of dumping its pauperized class upon our shores has done more. An ever-increasing swarm of dependents are with us. The cause can be traced to class legislation and militarism. The one, the curse of our free institutions, and the other, the bane of European civilization.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  The remedy lies not in doling out alms to humanity until the recipients of charity become chronic beggars, but in first removing the cause of extreme poverty by giving every toiler access to the soil, making the ballot the key to unlock the garner where his birthright lies." The solution she puts forward in this writing to pull people out of poverty is offering them land to work on with the potential to earn its ownership. Quote, "A cabbage garden or potato patch with the incentive of proprietorship and compensation will keep drunkards from tippling, deadbeats from indacity, criminals from crime, and prove not only the source of health, happiness, and honesty, as well as a source of revenue

• 36:20Speaker 01

  to the Commonwealth, but a panacea also for tough sinners where soap and water, sunshine and air, work and play will take the place of the seven sacraments and the 40 days fast on fish and eggs. It is time for earnest men and women to act. Never were needs so pressing and deeds so necessary as today. Gigantic want and gigantic wealth step side by side, but the cry of the untaught, uncomforted millions sending forth like tortured beasts, an inarticulate cry from the depths of their destitution and debasement, is unheeded if not unheard."

• 37:00Speaker 01

  So if all of this rhetoric sounds a little bit sketchy to you, rest assured, it gets a whole lot worse. And it really gets outright racist and white supremacist. And this is a racism that is completely slathered in white saviorism. She notes that one of the things that is damaging people is overpopulation. So the population, by which she really means the white population, should spread out by taking land from other people. Note, as we go into this, that this quote has some very outdated language. Quote, "The homeless condition of the highly enlightened Caucasian and the debased degradation of the Negro and Oriental calls in thunder tones to heaven for a great readjustment of the social condition of mankind.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Europe and America are on the eye of a dire revolution before which all modern civilization may go down to ruin in blood and fire or perish more slowly beneath the iron hoofs of Russian despotism. Between the dreaded modern goth of Russian supremacy or universal empire and the vandalism of the British financial system, which threatens to enslave the industrial world, our civilization cannot long survive. The only hope of averting this universal reign of terror lies in inaugurating the most stupendous migration of races the world has ever known and thereby relieve the congested centers of the world's population

• 38:28Speaker 01

  of half their inhabitants and provide free homes for half of mankind. This can be done by colonizing the tropics in America and Africa with 50 million white families as planters on estates of 200 acres each, with three families of Negroes or Orientals as tillers of the soil." Through all the vicissitudes of time, the Caucasian has arisen to the moral and intellectual supremacy of the world. Until now, this favored race is fitted with the stewardship of the earth and emancipation from manual labor. The era has arrived when the Caucasian must either sink to barbarism

• 39:09Speaker 01

  or become the planter by occupancy of the tropics and the professional man and business manager for the inferior races. The Oriental and Negro are in a pitiable condition of ignorance, destitution, and misery from a lack of proper encouragement and a just and intelligent supervision of their efforts. Cannot the resources and genius of Christendom rescue civilizations from its perils by tropical colonization?

• 39:39Speaker 01

  She says a lot more, of course. She mentions, for example, how dangerous it would be if Russia were to diminish Britain's power in India, even though she doesn't love Britain, because that would undermine the arch of Western supremacy. In 1896, Lees moved to New York City, where she took on a number of roles that gave her an expanded platform. She started writing for the New York World and became an editor for the National Encyclopedia of American Biography. Mary's advocacy had made her famous, and her arrival in the city was reported in the New York Times in an article that opened with, quote, "We noticed that Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lees has arrived in this city and that she

• 40:20Speaker 01

  is to address public audiences on behalf of Mr. Bryan and the 53-cent silver standard." That Bryan was William Jennings Bryan, and while Mary certainly didn't want to join the Democratic Party, she did support Bryan in regards to his stance on establishing a silver standard, as famously stated in his Cross of Gold speech at the Democratic Convention in 1896. In it, Bryan concluded his argument for bimetallism with, quote, "Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for

• 41:01Speaker 01

  a gold standard by saying to them, 'You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.'"

• 41:13Speaker 01

  So that article in the New York Times that mentioned that they had noticed she had arrived in New York was not complimentary of Mary. It featured a quote that she gave to the press, which was, quote, "We out West think it's time for a financial system of our own without the interference of European moneylenders. Some people in the West think the East is acting very selfishly. It is the debtor party that is going to elect Bryan and Sewell." But the paper had dug up information on that mortgage that Mary and Charles had defaulted on in Kansas, having spoken with someone at the Jarvis Conklin Mortgage Trust Company. And the Times referred to this mortgage in question as, quote, "a matter

• 41:55Speaker 01

  of legitimate public interest." And it insinuates that Mary and other populists were basically trying to cheat the system by never paying back money they borrowed and then claiming that this was because the odds had been stacked against them. This is an example of how the overall conflict regarding the populist party was playing out on the public stage. Mary and other members of the party were lobbying for legislation against predatory lending practices, while their opponents responded that farmers had basically just been bad at business. When Mary moved to New York with the children in 1896, she had done so without Charles, and the couple started living separately at that point. The press had hinted for a

• 42:38Speaker 01

  long time that their marriage must be trouble. There were insinuations the woman like Mary couldn't be a good wife, along with other barbs at both her and Charles. There had also been a distance growing between them, some of which was just a matter of logistics. Mary was in demand as an orator, and so she wasn't home a lot of the time. And it does seem that her activism made Charles uncomfortable over time, especially as her fame grew, and she was often embroiled in very public feuds with prominent people. The two of them seemed to have maintained a pretty cordial relationship, although they did divorce in 1902.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  In 1912, Mary joined the Bull Moose Party, and she spoke at rallies supporting Teddy Roosevelt's campaign that year. By this time, she had nothing positive to say about the Democratic or Republican Parties. She called the Democrats "a political putrescence," and she referred to the Republican Party as, quote, "the slave of the money power." But she felt like Roosevelt aligned with what she had advocated for as a populist, and she even stated to the press that, quote, "Rooseveltism spells populism." But she didn't stick with Roosevelt, and by 1914, she was critical of the party, claiming that it had stolen its entire platform from the populists, and she claimed that she had not been paid her speakers' fees by Roosevelt's campaign.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  So she made a switch to supporting Woodrow Wilson, but that didn't last, largely because he was really not a supporter of women's suffrage. As the 19 teens wound down, so did Mary. She retired from political life by the end of the decade, although she was still involved in various reform movements, especially in support of women's interests. She lived in Brooklyn until 1930, when she moved to Long Eddy, New York, on the Delaware River. Mary Elizabeth Lees died on October 29, 1933, in Calicoon, New York, from complications of a leg infection. She was 80 years old at the time, and, as her obituary in the New York Times noted,

• 44:46Speaker 01

  quote, "The populists were fighting for direct election of senators, postal savings banks, government control of railways, federal supervision of corporations, the initiative and referendum, the income tax, woman's suffrage, prohibition, and free silver." She lived to see every one of those planks, except the last, put into effect, to varying degrees of success. Right. That is what is kind of a very abbreviated version of Mary Elizabeth Lees, because she was so publicly active that there is a lot of documentation of not only just what she said, but how people perceived her, which was not always great.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  We can talk about some of that on Behind the Scenes, as well as that really problematic...

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yearn for colonization. But before that, we'll have adorable kitty talk. This is from our listener, Kelsey, and it's a short email, but it is adorable. Kelsey writes, just dropping a line to wish you a merry festive season and grace your inbox with an image of my cat assistant, Jack. He was desperate to help with baking, but had to settle for early morning coloring and podcast listening. With gratitude for all you do to educate and entertain us, huddled masses in bleak midwinter and all through the year. Jack is an adorable orange creamsicle baby. Oh, his little feet. He's so cute. He's so cute. And I also want to give a shout out to Catherine, who shared her adorable

• 46:20Speaker 01

  orange tabby on Twitter and is pretty insistent that he is not one of the smart ones.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  But he's adorable and he looks sweet as pie. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at [email protected]. You can also subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere it is that you listen to your favorite shows.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast. In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity. Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no know-it-all hosts, just real people being real. Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores, out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories, life with a severe autoimmune

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on,

• 48:30Speaker 01

  so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  This is Stugatz from Stugatz and Company Live. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla Sedan. With the latest features and tech, or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you can get more at trade-in. Get a great deal today, and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 49:21Speaker 04

  Welcome everyone to Fanta in 60, a brand new show with me, John Fanta, and my co-host, Jay Croucher. Join us as we bring the fan-first energy to NBC Sports Now. My new show is the place for understanding the week in sports. We'll talk big storylines, viral moments, and most importantly, we'll hear directly from you, the fans. It's going to be a great hit. I can't wait for you all to see it. Fanta in 60 airs Mondays at 6 PM Eastern on NBC Sports Now and NBC Sports Radio. See you there.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.