Welcome to Women's History Month!!! We start with our Amelia Earhart - who will never be 40. Amelia HAD to fly. She had to fly for herself, she had to fly for women in aviation, and she had to fly for all of us. We needed a star to look for for adventure and strength, and Amelia was it. Join us in learning about her many pre-flight careers, her popularity as a pilot, and the records she made! What do you think happened to her on her last flight? Let us know!
Welcome to Women's History Month!!! We start with our Amelia Earhart - who will never be 40. Amelia HAD to fly. She had to fly for herself, she had to fly for women in aviation, and she had to fly for all of us. We needed a star to look for for adventure and strength, and Amelia was it. Join us in learning about her many pre-flight careers, her popularity as a pilot, and the records she made!
What do you think happened to her on her last flight? Let us know!
Sources:
“East to the Dawn” by Susan Butler - https://www.amazon.com/East-Dawn-Life-Amelia-Earhart/dp/030681837X
“The fun of it” by Amelia Earhart - https://www.amazon.com/Fun-Amelia-Earhart/dp/091586455X/
And I watched the 2009 film Amelia, starring Hilary Swank, Ewan McGregor, and Richard Gere.
Clip from Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed4jNb6jEas
Letters to her parents before the Friendship - https://earchives.lib.purdue.edu/digital/collection/earhart/id/3554
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1928/07/10/91690190.html?pageNumber=4
Vanishing Cream Story -
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna47623025
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of the State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my
fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your country there we go we are up and live
and recording Taylor how are you I'm good how are you I'm good I'm a little stinky just got back from yoga and um I
want to apologize yet again for needing to move the timing of this recording I wish I had a really good reason other
than the fact that I was extremely tired and kind of lazy and wasn't feeling super productive that's cool I was like
I was like on Saturday night I was like oh I could write but then I was like maybe I won't or whatever but then the power went out for 12 hours because it
was the windiest day of my entire life so like seriously actually insane um and
so I just went to bed because what can you do yeah yeah I um I wish I had a
better excuse than that um so I really appreciate you being flexible but on the plus side I just ordered six boxes of
cookies from I know you did thank you yeah there you go so I I redeemed myself
to whatever extent I am a redeemable redeemable person we did hopefully our last two cookie booths this weekend I
think we might have one more next weekend but man I'm ready to have that be over and then the next weekend
baseball games start on Saturday so you know no rest and then are you going to be Hawking cookies for the baseball team
or is are you done with that uh no no no cookies are with Girl Scouts those are almost done but I'm the I'm miles's
baseball coach got it we have practice twice a week and now then we'll have games on
Saturday and it's super fun I got 10 10 little cutie patooties on my team very very cute little patooties um cool well
we'll go ahead and kick things off this is of course St Neel joined here by fars and Taylor we are going to be covering
one story two stories this week one story by me one Story by Taylor they're going to be fun they're going to be
exciting I think hopefully presumably um and you are drinking some Moscato if I
am seeing that P lovely lovely I'm having a little bit
of water good stay hydrated after your yoga um okay fars I have the best news to share with you I held it in all day
but I'm very excited so last night I was wait I go first right that's you give
this over to me right I guess yeah go ahead yeah I think I go first today anyway but I wanted to tell you this great news so
last night I was like oh my God so I watched the John Oliver about airplanes that just came out last night and
freaking terrified it was very terrifying and then I looked up my trip to Japan I am taking a Boeing 787
Dreamliner which is very scary um so I was like looking that up but like feeling a little anxious so I was like
just going to do a puzzle so I did this I was doing a puzzle and I was listening to this is stupid also I'm going to say
this is d I was like I'm anxious what should I do so I I was like let me listen to the newest Dan car Carlin about the Holocaust because that'll calm
me down like anything anyway um because Dan Carlin's amazing then I'm listening
to it and he has this ad for his show in three three weeks and I was like what am I doing I'm so stupid I'm gonna go so I
bought tickets so me and Nicole are gonna go see Dan Carlin on the 21st wait where at
La no way and we we're both going to wear Doom to fail sweatshirts and we're
gonna meet people and wait where in La is it at the ace theater in downtown LA which is gross but whatever we'll go
anyway and um so cool is he I didn't even know he toured
he I this might have been like one of his first tours like he it's like a new thing he's like if you guys like it I'll keep doing it you know you know Dan you
know of course everybody's gonna like it Dan Carlin tour That's so exciting I I
didn't know that was I didn't even know that was a thing I would never even how did how did you even wait so you started
the Holocaust episode and like what what you like how did you find out he talks about it in the beginning and he talked about it before but like many years ago
when we worked in Downtown LA together Doris kieren Goodwin who's my favorite historian was speaking at the Disney
Center and I like asked in slack if anyone wanted to go with me and no one wanted to go so I didn't go and I was like I regret that every day so I was
like I have to make take my butt out to LA it's a Thursday night I'm gonna go in the
afternoon stay with Nicole and then come back really early Friday morning so I can go to work but like I'm like I'm G I'd regret it if I didn't go
I'm really happy you're doing that I did that one time as well where it was right after nor McDonald died and I was like I
need to see the people that like I like before they die and it was like literally that day I booked a ticket to
go see a show in um I think it was Nashville or something so yeah yeah I love that and and I just looked and he
is definitely not going to be in anywhere near um Texas he's doing
Califor he's doing La Salt Lake City Portland and New York they got four four dates coming up man if y'all are in
those towns go visit go check it out oh my God I can't wait I'm very very excited so and thank you thanks sh
Nicole who's like I will buy a doom to fail sweatshirt immediately so she's
very excited too thank you Nicole um awesome well congratulations
on that that's really really fun thank you congratulations for buying a ticket and making a plan honestly well no for
even like having the insight to look into it and see it and it's just it's just so so serendipitous I was seeing
that recently where I like occasionally look up venues or favorite comedians or whatever it's just like so serendipitous
you caught the right day at the right time and it wasn't sold out and yeah
go so sweet cool well I'm very excited about that so I was super excited to tell you because I can't wait and I will
let everybody know how it goes I bet it's gonna be great I'm positive it'll be great um all right but I am ready to
tell you a story for Mars if you're ready I am waiting with baited br
so as promised I'm super [ __ ] stoked for women's History Month okay um it is
March it is women's History Month I did tease last um episode that I will do a
woman's history fire um next week and my friend Morgan got it right away she texted me she knows exactly what it is
if you know you know I'll tell you about it next week but I wanted to take a break from fires and tell you about a
woman who is one of the most famous women of the uh 20th century and going
to list some of the things that she did as like jobs and have you guess who she is okay okay so super famous Helen
Keller no but that would be interesting I'll put that on my list
okay she's actually wildly successful which is like crazy because I would not bother learning another language if I
was hellor it's just very totally tot um no so this woman was a college student
studying medicine at Columbia she was was a nurses aid with the Canadian Red Cross during World War I she owned a
trucking business in California she was a photographer a social worker in
Boston an associate editor at Cosmopolitan magazine a book author she
wrote two books a fashion designer do you know who it is yet Anna wintor no
here's the last thing she was she was a pilot oh um oh God they found her plane
recently I don't know if they did I didn't even get that far but yes Amilia aart Amilia airheart indeed um so I'm so
excited to talk about Amelia airheart I I saw an article about her plane but you know what I didn't even read it because
I was busy reading a book about her and I'm like I don't know if this is true like will they find it it's in the news
now I'll keep you guys posted I'll read about that um but but here are some of
my sources so yes we're talking about Amilia aart who will never be 40 um she
I read a book called East to the Dawn by Susan Butler I read most of Amelia Art's
book the fun of it about flying so I will I want to finish that I will um I
watched the9 film Amelia starring Hillary Swank Ean McGregor and Richard
Gear I think it's the worst movie I've ever seen like like I feel like it might be
the worst it has a 19% oh my God it has a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes these are some of my I have
reviews that I've pulled out of this of the reviews one of them is a tiny and
barnacled Affair showcasing a peculiarly awful performance from Hillary Swank
another one says these have to be some of the least exhilarating flight scenes ever committed to film as Swank looks as
if she's been put in a box in a studio and told to imagine that she's up in the air which reminds me of I watched this
thing on Instagram the other day it was a clip of um sir Ian McKellen talking to
Ricky dvas about how you seen that it is the funniest thing I
just imagine he's like I'm not a wizard I just like pretend to be a wizard when the director says action I pretend that
I embody a wizard and then when he stops I stop embodying that W it's so good so
funny so that's what I was thinking about with that because it was like she just was so bad and then another one that was so good another review said
Hillary Swank is forced to deliver dialogue that sounds as if it was written in Chinese and then translated into English by a
computerz it's so bad um there were like 70 notes on Amazon you know when you're watching a movie on Amazon it has like
fun facts and trivia on the side so I clicked on that some of the things are like Amilia aart had a gap between her
teeth they only bothered to give Hillary Swank a gap between her teeth for the first scene and then they didn't do it
again and even then it's like they very clearly they just like drew a line between your teeth like a Sharpie you
know it was like not it's like the kind of movie I would make and then but like
at least keep doing it and then she was signing stuff in the movie and she was left-handed and I was like that is super
interesting because when you're left-handed you have to learn things differently because things are built for right-handed people and it's interesting
they even let her be left-handed in the 1920s or when she was born all these things and then the note said Amilia
arheart is not left-handed obviously Hillary Swank is are you freaking kidding me you guys
like I like literally noticed that cuz it's a big deal they used to not let people be left-handed I thought that was interesting and like they didn't even
bother she can't act with her right hand for two seconds signing something yeah didn't they used to like beat that out of kids if they were writing with their
left hand because it was a hand of the devil or something yeah well Juan is Left-Handed and his mom is right-handed but she was forced to be wow in like the
50s yeah um yeah so like there's like a thing where it's like you know there's a lot more left-handed people now than
there were before because now they're allowed to be left-handed weird they were always left-handed they're just like allowed to be now but anyway so I
don't recommend it all right counter recommendation by Taylor I do recommend the Night at the
Museum Battle of the Smithsonian which is the second night of the museum movie also from 2009 where Amy Adams does an
incredible job remember remember 10 out of 10 I have a clip I'll put it in the notes it's great so watch that don't
watch milliard so bad I feel like also like just because Hillary Swank was in one movie where she had short hair doesn't mean she should be in every movie with short hair I agree like
that's that's why they picture so anyway let's talk about our girl Amelia aart
Amelia Mary aart was born on July 24th 1897 in at Atkinson atson Kansas she was
born in Kansas she was a goddamn cutie patootie she was cute little girl rambunctious you know like as you expect
her father Edwin was a little bit of a drunk he worked on the railroads as a lawyer her mother was from a pretty
well-to-do family like they were like an American family that were like we were in the Revolutionary War we know what boats we came over on um all of those
things and um she had a sister Grace also cute who was born in 1899 and lived
to be n lived until 1998 which is fun sister a long time um Amelia spent time
back and forth with her grandparents and her parents they would play a game where they were like pretending to fly you
know just she was really adventurous and kind of like want she's a lot of things in her book um that I was reading were
like girls should be able to play sports there's no reason they shouldn't be you know like things like that like this it's silly that you don't let a girl
exercise because that was like not what you were supposed to do back then um so she was more Rous than the usual um her
dad would get good jobs and then lose them because of the drinking at one point he had a good job on a railroad
and they traveled around the country and they had a Japanese Butler which was like exotic and cool and he would like bring them things on the train which
sounds really fun um her mom would not leave her dad even
when her dad was like you should leave me I'm a drunk I'm like not good for you her mom refused to leave him she like really wanted to stay with him and when
her when Amelia's grandparents died the money was put into to a trust for her because nobody trusted the men in her
life both her father and her uncle were were drunks alcoholics and they were not able to like take care of themselves or
their families kind of aristocratic yeah because her because her dad wasn't her dad came from like a
poor family but the mom came from a nice family so they definitely weren't like she worked really hard but she was never like poor man that's what you got to do
marry up always marry up honestly that's the dream um she went to high school in
Iowa and in Chicago it was a fitt in school she kind of hated it like she didn't really like it there in 1917
during World War I she traveled to Toronto where her sister was in school and she saw the devastation and she
became a nurse's aid for the Canadian Red Cross so there she learned um a little bit about flying from the men
that she was like taken care of after they had been you know injured in the war so also a note in her biography that
I added to the thing is like she's like very flirtatious she likes she likes dudes she's like kind of dating people she's like you know meeting meeting
these guys and they take her to air shows you know she starts to get interested in flying and like seeing it for the first
time she's in Canada going to air shows with the Red Cross people and she's
starting to get interested in it she gets the Spanish Flu in 1918 and she needs to take a few months to rest so
she will have sinus problems kind of her entire life which must be knowing on a plane but I have a question for you fars
do you know anything I don't know this is my like I I didn't look this up I just haded to ask you for no reason but
do you think it's worse or better to be an oppress ized or a non-pressurized plane when your sinus is
hurt why worse right I feel like the pressurized plane is worse yeah the
pressure that's what I'm saying I'm saying the pressu plane is worse yeah I think so too so I don't think any of her planes were really pressurized that she
was in they were all pretty like low flying planes so imagine it like loud and you could like have the windows open
sounds okay well if you're trying to ask which one's better that's so much more terrifying I'd rather not saying better
but I'm saying for your scius is particularly if it's the comfort of your sinuses overpowering your will to live
then yeah that's better yeah so she spend some time resting in 1919 she goes
back to the US and enrolls in Columbia University to study medicine which is cool she's a woman studying medicine in
1919 she only stays about a year she was never pursuing a a degree she was kind
of like taking classes and then I looked it up cuz I was like oh okay that sounds very casual be able to do it Columbia in
1919 the tuition for undergrad was $200 um guess how much that's equivalent
to in 2024 um $43,000 now wait hold on I have to look
up so no $200 from 1919 is
$3,719 in 2024 money guess how much tuition is at Columbia this is such hor [ __ ] this is absolute horseshit I I
literally hate everyone tuition at Columbia is 66,000 I just watched a video of a woman saying
that she had $770,000 in student loans and she just pulled up her statement she's been paying on it forever and she
realized that she's down to like 65,000 but overall paid $120,000 in student loans so far it is
just that's where I am I I am I'm not I finally hit my middle where I'm finally
under the half but I've been paying for 20 years you know it's crazy I got yeah
it's I mean my my loss school student loans I mean they will outlive yeah
whoever inherits what is what meager EST State I have left absolutely it's insane
so that sucks everyone sucks um but so now that she is she leaves school she's
look kind of cute there there's like pictures of her that she would like climb the tower and like be a little
adventurous there but she starts to think about flying and flying is pretty new right now like planes are open you
know like you have like your little Shield but like you are a are open in the air um I also read a book about the
right brothers that was pretty interesting and all this happens like really fast after they figure it out one
of the right Brothers dies is pretty young but the other one lives to see the atomic bomb dropped you know like there's a lot it happens pretty fast
once they figure it out um I also had an idea for a TV show have I told you this called the right stuff with like w r i g
HT and it's the right Brothers just bumbling around because our sister Katherine was actually smarter than both of them that's good I like this I like
this idea we should I know um so you can fly low and
very slow right now so like low slow and a lot of people are dying because it is
dangerous and it is brand new the first thing they tried to do obviously is like how can we commercialize this so they
wanted to use it for the Post Office the first of the first 40 Postal Service
flights only nine survived hum insane did you say this is 1919 yeah was it a
car like invented like 20 years ago like barely yeah like what's next the air yeah
and it's just very very dangerous um and also like there was no way out like no
one parachuted out of a plane until 1921 so like they didn't even have parachutes so like if your plane was crashing
there's nothing to do you couldn't eject you couldn't get out of it um so Amelia is um at Columbia not really loving it I
wrote like she's she's I don't know she's special I lean towards cute but I mean cute like she's a she's a gem you
know like I don't know I if she I kind of feel a way about her that I feel about like Teddy Roosevelt like I love their like excitement and like their
thirst for she sounds like what what you would consider a whipper snapper yes it's a whipper snapper that's pretty
good it's a good one um I love that she leaves New York goes to California to be
with her parents she convinced her dads to take her to some more air shows um they go to one in Long Beach on December
28th 1920 and she had her first flight the next day with a pilot named Frank
Hawks which is a dope name for a pilot and she said quote by the time I had got two or 300 feet off the ground I knew I
had to fly and that's like her thing she just like had to do it in her heart and
sometimes I'm like people who climb Mount Everest and they die I'm like you're dumb like why did you do that you're stupid but like this time I'm
like she like needed to do this this was like we needed ailia aart yeah I wouldn't say like FR Sir
Francis Edmonds or whatever is D I mean I think I think if you're doing it now because you're worth $3 million and are
like this is how I can get away from My Wife and Kids for six months that's a stupid way to
die I think that is exactly right I think it's like it's like going down to the Titanic that's a stupid way to die
right but like the first people to do these things that are like really exciting like someone has to do it like why why not her you know right so in
California she got lessons from a woman named Neta snook and she got her a license um another thing that I'm not
going to get into the details about are like airplanes but there's so many different airplanes being made and it's like very specific like if you are like
a couple pounds overweight then like it's not going to work um you usually need to have a navigator and a pilot so
the Navigator can be like looking at the map looking at the stars looking at the wind doing all the things and the pilot actually controlling the plane and you
also have to own a plane so it's an expensive to have because you have to have a plane um she has a small trucking
company with her friend um she has some odd jobs um in 1921 she buys a Kinder
airster bip plane it's bright yellow she calls it the canary um and that's when she buys like a a Aviator um coat you
know like what those what you think wearing yeah and hers was like obviously new and she was embarrassed so she slept
in it and like stepped on it a bunch to make it look dirty like you do to look cooler um I do get that actually because
I almost bought an aviator jacket like a really authentic like wool and leather one and I was like I look like the
biggest [ __ ] in the world wearing this thing got you gotta you have you have to earn it I think yeah so in October 22nd
1922 she sets the record for altitude of female Pilots at 14,000 F feet and a lot of this is like men are saying that
women cannot be pilots and actually um Juan's cousin's husband was in the um
the merchant marines and he was saying or the Coast Guard and he was saying that like he thinks women make better Pilots than men cuz like the attention
to detail and whatever it is like this is one of those million things where men didn't want women to do it you know and
of course they didn't want to do it because of their periods really that's what it boil down to yeah and Amilia was
like you know there are if a woman really really feels so
terrible on her period she knows it and wouldn't pursue this but everyone else you never know like we are having our
periods all around you all the time and everything's fine um so she was definitely like talking about that um
there are some things that she um does talk about in her book about like you have to obviously have good eyesight you
have to have really good depth perception that's really important to know how far away from the ground you are and how far away things are so um
you also need to be able to stay awake a long time because you didn't really like have a co-pilot to switch out with you would just have to stay awake for these
like 20 hour flights so in 1924 um all of the money from her mom's
family is gone like she spent it on her things her dad has spent it like she just doesn't have a independent income
anymore so she tries to be a photographer she got a video of oil sprouting in California and sold it to a
real estate agent so she like does little things her parents finally get a divorce and she moves to Boston and
becomes a social worker at a place called Dennison house um and she loves lives there with like it's like
immigrant women and she loves it she's learning a lot about different cultures she's helping people she really likes living there in
1927 the Nazi Charles Lindberg flew across the Atlantic he was like the first person to do it and other women
wanted to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic not even like pilot
but like go across the Atlantic at all right and one woman who really wanted to do it was a rich woman who had been born
in the the UK named Amy guest she lived in America now but was born in in the UK
and her kids were like you can't do it like she was a little bit older they were like no but so she financed and bought the plane and that plane was the
friendship which is a dumb name for a plane it meant to to symbolize a friendship between America and and the
UK um but whatever so they wanted a cute girl to go on the trip to make it
more like it's palatable yeah exactly people be able to see it so they found
Amelia because she was still joining flying organizations and um she people like knew who she was she would fly out
on the weekends and so she was just a passenger on the Friendship she wasn't she didn't fly at
all she really just like sat in the back like that's it but um but she went and
the guy who got her to go was a publicist and book publisher named George putam he was a person who like
asked her to go and got her on the flight the pilot was a man named Wilmer stoz who would die the next year because
he was flying drunk and he he killed himself and his two passengers which is bad she should recreationally fly um
there was also a manand named Louis Gordon who was uh like the navigator on the plane as well before milia left she
didn't really tell her parents that she was doing this but she wrote them letters and the letters in the letter
she assumed that she was going to die and the letter show her mother it's intense letter show to her mother starts
with I'm sorry I had to pass out of the picture in such a way but her mom was
dead already no no her mom wasn't Dead Oh I thought there was an inheritance okay never mind it was from her
grandparents her oh got it okay yeah so she wrote to her mom and her sister and she was like the the letters were to be
delivered if she didn't make it kind of letters um but the flight left on June
17th 1928 there were a few tries One Pilot had to leave because of the weights there's like one left person the
door opened in the beginning people almost fell out then they closed it and everything was fine it took 20 hours and
40 minutes and they landed in Wales um which was fun because they were kind of aiming for whatever they were just aiming for Europe and they found they
landed in Wales and people are like like kind of waiting for them like they could come out of the clouds at any time um
when they got back to the United States there was a ticker tape parade she was now fully a celebrity oh good for her
yeah so in her book she talks about uh air sickness and turbulence and people like being afraid of like being on
planes being afraid they're going to get sick and something that she explains that makes sense is like you know if you
are in a boat and you're going slowly on the water you feel this like drifting
moving that might make you make you sick you know what I mean yeah yeah I'm doing this dance for you there's like drifting
moving but when you're going fast on a boat you're hitting the waves and the boat's going like boom boom boom boom
you know right and that's what a plane is doing so when you are going slowly over the air people get sick because
it's going like but when you're going fast you get that really bumpy turbulence because
you're going fast I mean how fast could the plane go back then um I have no idea I could look it up but not as not that
fast yeah of course um but you know she's also she talks about um how it's it's almost it's safer
when you go faster it's like when you are on a freeway it's like harder to merge in but once you're on the freeway
you know it's like easier so she kind of talks about about flying like that um during this time she's also BTW engaged
to a nice young man named Samuel Chapman he's a chemical engineer that she met when she was in Boston and he waited for
her for a long ass time like several years um she's now but she's now a celebrity she kind of pretended that she
was still going to be a social worker she moved to New York she lived in a settlement house there where she would have met Francis Perkins who we're going
to talk about next week um in regards to the story we're talking about next week but Francis per Perkins is the first
woman Cabinet member she was um fgr Secretary of Labor so we'll talk about her in a little
bit um so she is working a lot with George putam
the publicist from before he got her to endorse cigarettes um start her own casual fashion line she always has like
looked really casual but she worked really hard to look casual she like curls her hair and like you know it's
like casual but like hard you know it's like hips or Chic now well I guess like
10 years ago yeah yeah yeah it's like you know wearing cool casual clothes and being like oh she's so effortless but
like it takes her a really [ __ ] long time to get ready right um she wrote her
book she wrote for cosmol magazine she was everywhere and it was all because of George so George got her all of these
deals cuz she needed money to be able B to actually to do the flying so she would do like really fun things like fly
across the country and You' hear like Melee air H Hearts flying across the country and she would just like land in people's farms and be like where am I
and they'd be like Kentucky and she'd be like all right see you later and then like take off which is so fun that's awesome I love that um she invested in
an airline that went between DC and New York she was a vice president of National Airways so she was like working
in in these like um big organizations um incidentally the first commercial flights were between San Diego and Los
Angeles and they were like couches and non-pressurized planes so probably really
scary um so a big thing that is like her big thing and maybe her entire thing
it's about flying but it's also that women can do anything that men can do um and she showed that through flying she
was in a bunch of races across the country there was a woman's air Derby in 1929 um she got together with some other
women pilots and said should we start an organization and 99 women signed up so they called themselves the 99s an Amilia
was the president from 1931 to 1933 the 99s still exist are female pilot
organization right now there are about 6,000 members of the 99s it's fun yeah which is fun um she's in a lot of deres
she's setting records on April 8th 1931 she that's a world altitude record of 18,41 15 feet that's a world record not
a women record um she also doesn't mind if she loses she's just like in it for the thing she's like excited for
everyone so she doesn't really like show any like upset if she loses any of these um things um eventually Amelia breaks up
with Sam Chapman who had been waiting for her to come back and settle down um he never got married he just never loved
anybody else do we know why no he disappears into history um but Amelia is
spending a lot of time with George putam who we talked about earlier he's a
publicist he's 10 years older than her in the movie he is Richard Gear which is actually like pretty good a pretty good
likeness and they don't mention this in the movie but he's married when they meet so George putham is married to a
woman named Dorothy Benny she seems super fun Dorothy is the daughter of the
guy who invented Crayola crayons so she's rich and like can do whatever she
wants up always amazing then mean this is yeah he married her she's the the
rich one she loved exploring she was the second woman in Oregon to vote um they
lived in Bend Oregon where our friend Christine lives and um they had two sons
Dorothy was like having an affair for like a long time and something happened and she left George in the middle of a
party she's like that's it I'm leaving and she flew to Reno to uh live there for like six weeks and get a divorce
which is hilarious so um and then she was married four times in her life her last husband died in 1951 and she lived
until 1982 so she seems super fun just got to like be a rich old lady exploring
um but the three of them spent a lot of time together Dorothy George and Amelia so when George Dorothy divorced um it
was like to no one's surprise that George wanted to marry Amelia like immediately he asked her six times until
she finally said yes um it was clear that she wanted to be equal partners and
So at their wedding she sent him wrote him a letter that said like I don't want to be bound by medieval Fidelity so she
was basically like I need to live my life and like hopefully that's cool with you but she told them like on their wedding day
and um It's oddly not on her Wikipedia beage but it's like the main thing in
the movie is that while Amelia is married she does have an affair with um a man named Jean Vidal who was played by
Yan McGregor who is not British but they just let you and McGregor use his regular voice it feels like they didn't
really try that hard so I'm gonna forgive this this this one is probably more forgivable than having a gap in the
teeth and then not having a gap in the teeth like why did you even bother with like getting them like why they just
wear why didn't they just wear their 2009 clothes you know and like like who cares why don't they just have cell
phones if you're just gonna like not care about anything um she flying like an Airbus yeah exactly so um she I mean
my note was they spent a smidge too much time together and everybody kind of knew Gene Vidal was a um he was a sports
superstar in the 1920s um he played football for the Army at West Point he was in the 1920 Olympics for track it
was in anwp Belgium um so he seems like you know super cool she really liked him she would this is actually this is weird
um she would like women's undergarments were uncomfortable on the plane so she
would wear his his underwear so like they're definitely having an affair because you don't do that with people you're not having an affair and that's
good point um but also incidentally she probably just peed her pants when she was fying cuz being a woman is hard and
that's probably what she had to do um Lindberg peed in a can he would throw out the window and uh she probably just like
Peter but um so Jean Vidal's son gor vdal is an author um who's pretty famous
I haven't read any of his books but I do have a book that he wrote on on President Lincoln um that I'll read someday but he always said that he
wanted his dad to marry Amelia he knew that they that they really like loved each other um they became you know they were friends and Melia got him a job at
um the D he was the director of Aeronautics for the government he got that because Amelia asked Elanor
Roosevelt to give him that job and um what whatever you're bored you should
YouTube Norman mailer and gor Bal because they get into an outright fight on the Dick cavage show in like the
1980s and it's really fun it does sound fun because they're like intellectuals but they're just like exactly freaking
staunch stubborn old men and so it's it's just fun amazing anyway she's
definitely like having this affair prob George probably knows a lot of people probably know um and it's an but it's an
exciting time to be you know he's later is the Bureau of air Commerce that he is the director of um he was the first
person to organize air traffic controllers and he had an idea that he was like everyone will get everyone will
have a plane you know we'll have like a $700 plane everyone will fly everywhere people kind of made fun of him like that
will never happen and also I want to mention that I'm glad that we didn't pick flying cars I just feel like that's
I just I don't want that yeah no yeah I don't want that either you know um at
some point FD wanted to restructure the department and he was going to fire Jean and Amelia wrote a letter to Elanor that
said I will stop publicly supporting FDR if you fire Jean from his job and in the
book the rumor is that elanar brought the letter to FDR and he laughed for like five minutes and then said fine
because if anyone understands trying to get your lover a job it's FDR right it's
the Roosevelts you know right so he was like he was like fine um and she she
actually knows Elanor pretty well and I told this story I think in the Elanor hick episode um but they were at a party on April 20th 1933 and elanar was like
I've always wanted to fly so in their evening gowns with everyone was on the plane George was there elor's brother
Hall was there um she took them out uh she took them up in the air and they flew to Baltimore and back to DC and and
Elanor got to sit in the cockpit with Amelia and that is super fun she tried to get her license but FDR said no
because she couldn't have a plane it reminds me a lot of The Aviator um
where Hugh what's his name Hugh Howard Hughes he yeah like he takes up Audrey
heer or something and that in his like private plan like right Cather he um sounds kind of like that yeah totally
yeah super fun and it's like again brand new which is I don't know crazy and and fun um elanar had an idea that maybe her
and Amelia could travel around the country they could go to arthurdale which is where elanar had her like little village to like get people um in
Appalachia to get um you know job training and all of that she wanted to go around with her which would have been
super fun um but that ended up not happening but that would have been real fun to see that happen the whole tour but but they stayed friends um
so here we have Amilia art she's super famous it's the 1930s she wants to fly
to Paris she's done the trip across the Atlantic with other people but now she wants to do it by herself so she flies
totally solo from the US she lands in London Dairy North Ireland which if you
know is um where the show Dairy girls is located and that show is incredible I've
never seen that it's so cute it's so good so it has two seasons on Netflix it's great um so she landed in in in
London Dairy which again so funny she lands in a field and there's like these like Irish sheep herters being like
hello just so fun she's like pop out of the clouds um in 1935 she flew solo from
Hawaii to Oakland and Hawaii paid her to do this for like tourism and to get like on the map because Hawaii was not a
state yet they just like wanted like so and people kind of criticized her for taking their money but she was like I
need to fly and I can't do it for free you know like yeah I need to continue to do this and like continue to innovate
and do these records so between 1930 and 1935 she set seven women speed and
distance records so she's like they're getting broken all the time kind of going back and forth and there are a lot of other women pilots but that she's
breaking records she's magazines she's all over the place and 1935 the um
Purdue Purdue University offers her a job as a technical adviser to his Department of Aeronautics because that
was like a like a thing you could study at school you could take like flying lessons at
school so with that she got funding for a new plane and she really wanted to work with only women and when they
talked to her about like the grants that she'd been given um she announced that she would quote she would now give
neither time nor funds to Aid even deserving men unquote which I love and
reminds me personally offended by this it remind me when I told my last job in
like in front of exec that I am actively not quoting man presentations but I would work on finding a quote from a woman that would work for a
presentation Taylor we we got to stop being so honest I was riled up um but
she had a little dorm room at Purdue and the girls would like come over and like sit on the floor and they she talk about flying which was like
that's so fun yeah I can't imagine how fun that would be um so she was doing that she moved to California her and
George um she started a flying school with a friend of hers that lived in TCA lake so like around that area um so now
ail is about to turn 40 not a lot of people know this because she keeps lying about her age so they think she's like in her like early 30s but she's 39 and
the big thing next is a trip around the world so the first person to go around the world world was reporter Nelly blly
who is awesome I read a book about her a while ago she um there's also really
good Drunk History about her because she like exposed all these things that the oil industry was doing in like the 1920s
and then at the end they're like and then everything was fine in the oil industry was perfect and then they like they're just like trash and laughing
because obviously everything's still terrible obviously not yeah but um she went by boat and steamship and train and
all the things but now people want to fly and I think other people have done it had like men have done it but now she
wants to to to Pilot around around the world so it takes an insane amount of planning you need people at each stop to
like be ready to have the right parts to have the right radio to have all these things you really need like the best of the best and it's really expensive um
she ended up with a navigator named Fred Nunan he was great at his job he was one of the best Navigators out there he had
just divorced and remarried he was a Merchant Marine in World War I he was a
navigator for PanAm he was was 44 years old so he was you know really like the best that navigator that she could get
the flight is going to have stops there is an option to midair refuel but Amelia hadn't really done that so they didn't
want to count on that they wanted to be able to like stop at different islands and different places and um and refuel
and get repairs and like whatever they needed but Fred would be in the back of the plane and he would use the stars and
like the wind and his maps and all this stuff to figure out exactly where they were cuz there's something that you have to do with like
latitude and longitude and figuring out to help figure out like where you are in the sky um that he would sit all the way
in the back and she was sit in the front and they had like a like a string between them and they would just like put messages through it like talk to
each other why do you have to be all the way in the back because he had like a little desk back there he needed a lot
of room because he had like charts and maps and stuff so all right yeah um so
on March 17th 1937 they flew from Oakland to Honolulu they had another another person on the plane with them a
technical person um and they landed in Hulu the plane took three days to be serviced and then they were taking out
off from Honolulu to go west across the world and the takeoff uh failed the
crashed so they say the landing gear went bad maybe a tire blew but it kind of landed nose first and skitted on the
runway in the movie they say that she saved the day that it was like her decision which makes me feel like it's
not true because that movie is so terrible that it might have been her fault but just anything that is in the
movie is not believable at this point if it's the fact I'm like H I'm think there's also like they're also saying
during this time like she had fully broken up with with Jean and was just with George and I don't think she ever
really broke up with Jean I think they were both still like pretty committed to her and they both still loved her um but
so now it's going to take a couple months to fix this plane that just got that just got kind of messed up on the
runway so due to weather because like monsoon season is starting around the world if talk about like the weather
everywhere they decided to go East so instead of going west around the world they're going to go East around the world um they kind of stuck from Oakland
to Miami and they left Miami on June 1st 1937 this time it's just Fred and Amelia
and they're in her electr plane they fly over like down over South America over
Africa and India which is really cool like they are in these places that they never would have gone to you know
they're Landing in like the middle of the of the Desert in Africa and there's people there you know and they're like
excited and they give her gifts and like it's cool for everyone involved to be like oh my God there's a plane I don't know what this is you know just they're
flying everywhere um they um so I think that is I think that's super fun and I
also like you know she's just reporting back and at different places and like telling people where she is so they're
kind of just waiting and waiting for her to check in so they do 22,000 miles
together and they are 28 days in to their trip around the world they're in Lay New Guinea and on June 29th they are
going to set off for their last leg of the trip they only have 7,000 miles left just to go over the Pacific and land in
California so there's some things the hardest part though isn't it it's a big part and
there's nowhere to stop there's like very few Islands on the way like you that's why they were thinking of doing the midair refuel but like they decided
not to do that cuz she didn't know how so they were like they
it's it's risky but it's like the end she had like speaking engagements on July 4th like she was like I'll be there
soon like I'm this is my last leg so some other things some things are happening that like aren't 100% clear
and are like all speculation but like she's always been willing to take risks with the weather so she'll take off
other flyers won't because of like fog and rain and stuff so she's willing to take a little bit of risk that way the
radio that they have isn't perfect there's something that is like new about it is like a c circular radio that you
can see on top of her plane in photos and it only um like broadcasts on two
different uh waves and they don't have a way to receive Morse code they like had
the morse code radio but then she was like we're not very good at it it's just extra weight let's get rid of it so she
they got rid of that so they didn't have that um also there's something that she might have been upset about but no one
knows what it is so she allegedly called George and said that like she was having a Personnel problem and she didn't give
details but the they that people think it means that Fred was drinking and that she was
worried about his ability to navigate them home um but she was like I can take care of it it's fine and so then they
also think maybe it was a personal problem maybe like they just heard it wrong or whatever but um we'll never
know what happened but she might have been a little bit nervous but like no one is no one will ever know so they
should have taken them 20 hours to get from New Guinea to California the wind the headwind coming towards them was
worse than they thought so they were going to need more gas than they had but they weren't able to tell them that
because the radios were kind of messed up so they tried to land at the Howland Islands which are kind of like a tiny
tiny Island in between and there was a a um a tasa which was like a ship that was
near there um she would her really wasn't working but she
kind of got through a couple times and some of the last things that she said um at 7:30 a.m. State time she said air
airheart on Northwest says running out of gas only half hour left can't hear us at all we hear her and we're sending um
this is what they said they said she can't hear us we hear her we're sending on 3105 and 500 same time constantly so
they're constantly trying to radio her to tell her where to go and they know that she's running out of guest because they heard her say that but they can't
hear her because of of the something wrong with the radio the last thing they
hear from her is she says KH AQ Q that's her plane um itasa we must be on you but
we cannot see you gas is running low been unable to reach you by radio we are flying at 1,000 ft so they couldn't she
they couldn't find the island there was supposed to be to to to land on you know um they crossed the International Date
Line so that might have made friend's navigation wrong because you had to like your clock had to be perfect based on the Stars like based on all these things
and like so maybe that was why but they were they were lost they couldn't find they couldn't find this island they were
supposed to stop on her last transmission was at 8:43 a.m. Pacific time she said we are on the line 157 337
we will repeat this message we will repeat on 6210 kilo wait and that was it
they never heard from her or Fred again um
people say that they heard her hit the button a little bit because an emergency was like hit the button a bunch if you
can't get through some people say they heard that they did have a boat they did not have parachutes I don't think um and
they had joked about like landing on desert island or Landing in the jungle and like being able to take care of themselves
so there is an island called The Phoenix Islands that people say was uninhabited
and then there was like evidence that maybe someone had been there and like maybe they had landed there but there's no one's ever found this plane I'll
check the news on the other ones but you know people haven't found the plane at least like 100 in the last 100 years um
some people say that so um it was most expensive search ever put on by the US
government it cost $4 million in um that time the search was over by July 19th
and she was declared dead on January 5th 1939 so two years later so that puton could manage her money and like settle
all of her Affairs um so what happened is they probably just ran out of gas and
sang into the ocean that's like a probably what happened um people have ideas and like
conspiracy theories like maybe the Japanese took her and shot her down some
a woman said that she saw them get executed in Japan but like that's probably not true no one else saw that
um someone said they heard a radio transmission and they heard the words California and closet and the um they
think that that means cuz she had said to someone I think her sister that if she died her sister needed to burn all
of the letters in her closet which is so hilarious because that would be like me calling you and being like farce you have to delete my browser history if I
die it's already it's already written in stone Taylor you don't have to call me
thank you um so that's fun um people think that they were spies maybe they had a
new identity like all those quite silly things but really they probably just crashed and it was dangerous you
know and they were always you know it was dangerous that's all go ahead one thing I heard was that they on some
weird remote island that's uninhabited they found I'm like piecing together are
very Distant Memories so I'm probably wrong about all that but apparently Phoenix Islands yeah so apparently she
had freckles and heading freckles was sort of bad back then and so she used like Vanishing Cream on freckles and
apparently some country was going to build an air strip on this island that was uninhabited and they found this like
1930s whatever Vanishing Cream on there and they found like something that could
have resembled human remains on it was like very very ancient old and what they also found was that the island was
inhabited by like Legions of stone crab or coconut crabs which are land dwelling
crabs that are huge like they're like the size of like a large dog and they're incredibly vicious and powerful and they
are known to rip mammals to shreds when they catch them and consume them and so there's a theory that maybe she landed
on this island and when she was asleep that's when the stone crabs come out or coconut crabs come out
and might just destroyed her and killed her that way I don't know whoa I mean
that's crazy but I love that the The Vanishing Cream thing that's fun is that true I have no idea I look it out let me
look it up I could again like I'm pulling a very distant me out uhuh mil a
anti Freckle Cream jar possibly found okay there you go yeah it oh that's cool
what what wait what is this from this from NBC News 2012 um I'll put it in the notes cool I mean
I think it's so it's so it's so fun it's such an adventure story you know and then like you know every little girl
wants to be an who wants to be an adventurer you know you imagine yourself like Amilia aart she wanted to fly and
she wanted to show the world that she could and that women could um and she did she made it happen she knew the risks she knew that what she was doing
was dangerous but she knew that she had to do it um and I think she'd be happy
with the way that you know yeah she went out she lived like a gangster she went out like a gangster like I look at that
life I'm like nothing about that appeals to me I am a coward I know I'm a coward
I want to stay a coward I will never risk my life needlessly and I'm totally fine with that but God bless people that
will oh my gosh that's so funny um yeah I I love it it's so fun I love her I I'm
so happy that she you know is this fun it's a fun mystery for everyone it's a fun Idol to have being like have a dream
and do it even though people tell you you can't you know work really hard and um do things no one's done before
freaking cool I love it love it I love it um also I misspoke it's um Sir Edmund
Hillary was the Mount Everest guy and tensing nor um was the
poor Sherpa that schle all his [ __ ] up to top of Mount Everest on hisers who
have do all of the work and then rich people follow them yeah
um that's awesome yeah thank you I was excited it was very fun to learn about to learn about her it was fun to read
her book and hear from her and like hear her path and just all the cool the cool
[ __ ] that she did yeah she she was always like in the peripher of like you know people in history that I looked at
and was like you got to be nuts like you gotta be kind of nuts like like Taylor
like I thought about it recently because I was I went back and started looking at that Malaysian Airlines 37 or whatever
and like what happened to it or who knows what happened to it but um flying across the Atlantic today is
scary to me no I know me too and we have like and
it's like very nice like I have I literally got two Xanax pills from my doctor he'd only give me two so I could
take one on the way to Japan and on the way back from Japan and they serve you wine and
meals nice yeah but even now I get Terri because I'm like we're like a
self-contained City like these are the people that I could die with tonight like you know what mean I almost looking
at them I'm like the we on an island are we gonna be friends or not are you what going to be partners or are you gonna be a problem right right got to deal with
the problem it's like I'm I'm your flight attendant please stop talking to me like that um very cool Taylor thank
you so much for sharing very fun I'm sure uh mid journey is going to come up with some really interesting AI art
around this which is I got some cute ones but I will do I'll do maybe being eaten by crabs on an
island I mean look that up like I I swear I remember that I see it yeah
because again because nobody actually knows what happened we just like kind of hold on to whatever evidence we can get
and I heard that was like that's as plausible as anything else yeah it looks like they might have
boiled water and jars and I don't know we just won't know there you go um cool
well thanks for thanks everyone for listening if you have U I have some more women's History Month stories coming um
but if you have anything that you any ideas or thoughts please let us know we at Doom tood gmail.com if you're going
to Dan Carlin show on the 21st in LA tell me um I'm super excited about that and we're on the socials at Doom to Phil
pod lovely well sad um cool I'll go ahead and cut this off [Music]
and