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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your

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Speaker 2: weekly reminder that when bad things are happening, we can

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Speaker 2: look at how people did good things in the face

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Speaker 2: of the aforementioned bad things. I'm your host and the

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Speaker 2: determiner of what is both cool and bad Artur Kiljoy

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Speaker 2: and my guest is Susanne Cope.

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Speaker 3: Hi.

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Speaker 2: How are you Hi?

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Speaker 4: I'm great.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Suzanne. As people probably aware because they probably

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Speaker 2: listen to part one, but I continue to always make

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Speaker 2: fun of people who jump in a Part two is

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Speaker 2: the author of the upcoming book Women of War, The

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Speaker 2: Italian Assassin, Spies and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis, which

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Speaker 2: comes out from Dutton on April twenty ninth, And you

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Speaker 2: should read it. And I have it in front of me,

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Speaker 2: and it is a very pretty book. And I am

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Speaker 2: a sucker for books that are actually pretty.

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Speaker 4: Do you have the advanced copy or do you have

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Speaker 4: the hard copy?

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Speaker 2: I have a hard copy.

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Speaker 4: The hard copies just came in.

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Speaker 5: Look at that spine, Yeah, with the lady and the

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Speaker 5: spine so good.

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Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Well, if you want to know what we're

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Speaker 2: talking about, you're going to be sad that this is

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Speaker 2: not a video medium. But I'm gonna be happy that

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Speaker 2: it's not a video medium, because I was just explaining

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Speaker 2: I dropped a two by four on my head yesterday.

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Speaker 2: I have a large bump and wound on my nose,

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Speaker 2: and you're just gonna have to imagine that pump and

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Speaker 2: wound except one person who won't have to imagine it

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Speaker 2: because it is also on the call. It's Sophie. Hi, Sophie.

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Speaker 1: I'm really glad this is not a video as well,

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Speaker 1: because there's something going on with my camera that makes

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Speaker 1: me look like Casper the friendly Ghost, which also makes

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Speaker 1: me look more like my older brother, which is fun

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Speaker 1: for me.

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Speaker 2: But there were so many houseplants that you all are

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Speaker 2: missing by not having it be video. Yeah, the listeners,

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Speaker 2: not us. We can see each other's houseplants.

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Speaker 5: I do love to plant things inside and out, and

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Speaker 5: it's almost well.

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Speaker 4: It is planting season here in Brooklyn.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, planting season here in Portland. Planting season is the best.

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Speaker 2: I tried to grow potatoes because it felt on brand,

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Speaker 2: but I failed last year. But this year, well I

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Speaker 2: did eat. Actually I grew a couple and I ate

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Speaker 2: my sweet potatoes grew last year.

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Speaker 4: Oh nice?

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Speaker 2: Anyway, wait, what are you all going to grow this year?

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Speaker 2: I swear we'll do the podcast too eventually, but first

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Speaker 2: y'all grow on anything. Just houseplants. It's okay this houseplants.

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Speaker 4: Oh, I'm growing many things.

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Speaker 5: I'm part of the community garden around the corner, and

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Speaker 5: so I'm part of the community beds team, and so

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Speaker 5: I organize what we grow in the beds that we

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Speaker 5: share with everyone. So it's many things in my neighborhood

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Speaker 5: of Bedstie, Brooklyn, and so we have collars, not yet,

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Speaker 5: but we'll We have some kale and some I just

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Speaker 5: checked on them today. A little baby radishes, very baby

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Speaker 5: like baby seedlings, and lettuce, creams, tomatoes, peas, many things.

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Speaker 2: Well, if people want to hear more about Brooklyn community gardens,

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Speaker 2: they can listen to my two parter about Brooklyn community Gardens.

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Speaker 2: I swear I didn't set that up on purpose.

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Speaker 4: I don't know. I need to listen to it. I

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Speaker 4: bet I'm going to know some folks there.

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Speaker 2: Probably New York did a whole lot with public gardens

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Speaker 2: and community gardening for reels. I know we've done a

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Speaker 2: lot of New York episodes. There's a couple places in

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Speaker 2: the world where a lot of episodes are based in

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Speaker 2: New York City is one of them, Yeah, but entirely

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Speaker 2: unrelated to that. But just me continuing the credits, is

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Speaker 2: that our audio engineer is Rory Hi Rory Hi Ri

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Speaker 2: Hi Roor and our theme music was written for us

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Speaker 2: by on Women. And this is part two of the

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Speaker 2: two parter about women of war. The Italians, spies, assassins, couriers,

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Speaker 2: but in the correct order, who fought the Nazis. And

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Speaker 2: we heard about one of the assassins earlier this week,

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Speaker 2: but do you want to tell us about some of

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Speaker 2: the more characters that you profiled.

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Speaker 4: Sure.

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Speaker 5: So we were moving from south to north in Italy

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Speaker 5: like the Allied forces were, and they liberated Rome first,

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Speaker 5: and so we talked about Carla, whose picture is on

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Speaker 5: the front.

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Speaker 4: Of the book.

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Speaker 5: So now Rome is free and she's actually part of

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Speaker 5: kind of the new ad hoc police force that is

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Speaker 5: helping to keep it safe and the Nazis actually the

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Speaker 5: Axis fighters. They actually left without much of a fight,

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Speaker 5: which was surprising because south in Naples, they really thought

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Speaker 5: that the Italians were going to just roll over and

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Speaker 5: be like, yeah, take you know, whatever you want, and

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Speaker 5: then they were going to bomb all this shit and

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Speaker 5: just you know, leave the city in ruins. And there

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Speaker 5: was this spontaneous uprising of the Napolese Napolis Neapolitans who

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Speaker 5: came together and the Nazis were so shocked that they

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Speaker 5: they bombed a few things, but then they left, and

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Speaker 5: so the Romans were ready to do the same thing.

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Speaker 5: They passed out guns. They had the secret code word

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Speaker 5: or code phrase that.

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Speaker 2: Wait, do you know what the code phrase?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it was something like the snow falls in the

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Speaker 4: mountains or something. It's in the book.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And so they but they didn't have to

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Speaker 5: use it because the Germans actually left without much.

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Speaker 3: Of a fight.

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Speaker 5: And so now they are terrorizing Florence. So it's now

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Speaker 5: summertimes in Florence. And I was in Florence in the

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Speaker 5: summer and it's very hot and it kind of crowded

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Speaker 5: and stuff, and they're running out of food and things

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Speaker 5: are awful. Theresa Matte had been active in Florence for

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Speaker 5: a while and she was the one in episode one

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Speaker 5: where she was the one of the four women where

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Speaker 5: they really she really was pretty actively brought up as

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Speaker 5: an anti fascist.

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Speaker 4: Her parents were very active in the movement and so she.

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Speaker 5: Pretty quickly became kind of go between between some of

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Speaker 5: the kind of upper leadership because she was trusted and

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Speaker 5: so she was doing a lot of things. She was doing,

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Speaker 5: she was bringing messages around, she was a courier, and

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Speaker 5: then she became part of the APISTI in in Florence

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Speaker 5: and those are the folks were doing kind of the

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Speaker 5: gorilla warfare. And so she's been doing these different things,

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Speaker 5: supporting these different resistance groups. She's also part of the

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Speaker 5: Youth Front. And also I failed to mention last time

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Speaker 5: that there was this feminist group called abbreviated the GDD

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Speaker 5: and it's a very long name in Italian, but it's

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Speaker 5: like the groupie di da fasa. It's like the women

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Speaker 5: who are you know, who are in defense of this

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Speaker 5: and in support of that, but abbreviated the GDD.

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Speaker 2: I love a good long weird acronym.

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Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's so long. And so they were

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Speaker 4: coming together.

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Speaker 5: It was really helping to educate the women, bring them

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Speaker 5: together in these you know, small groups throughout the country.

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Speaker 4: So is this first, is.

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Speaker 2: This before the part? Is this like thirties and early

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Speaker 2: forties having once after occupation.

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Speaker 5: So it was formed in November nineteen forty three, and

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Speaker 5: so these women are now becoming politically activated.

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Speaker 4: They didn't even know any of this.

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Speaker 5: They didn't realize their own power, and the GDD is

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Speaker 5: helping them find it. And it's also kind of showing

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Speaker 5: them how they could recruit more people and support the

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Speaker 5: partisans who are now hiding in the hills or hiding underground.

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Speaker 5: And so these women, there were, you know, tens of

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Speaker 5: thousands of women in the GDD that are now material support,

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Speaker 5: organized material support and becoming activated themselves. So Theresa was

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Speaker 5: a leader in the GDD. We had Carla, who we

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Speaker 5: talked about last time, was also part of the GDD,

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Speaker 5: but that wasn't kine of one of her main things.

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Speaker 5: And our other two women who will get to Bianca

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Speaker 5: and Anita, were also both part.

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Speaker 4: Of the GDD. And so Treesa's Theresa is doing a

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Speaker 4: number of things.

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Speaker 5: She's probably the person who of the four where she

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Speaker 5: really kind of was useful in a lot of different ways.

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Speaker 5: There is a dramatic story because I don't want to

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Speaker 5: give all the good stories away, but she at one

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Speaker 5: point it's you know, very tragic. Her brother, her older brother,

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Speaker 5: was actually a bomb maker in Rome. He was actually

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Speaker 5: making bombs for Carla's crew, and he gets arrested and

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Speaker 5: horrifically tortured, and so she makes her way to Rome,

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Speaker 5: or tries to make her way to Rome to be

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Speaker 5: with her parents who were in hiding in Rome, and

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Speaker 5: to get word of his fate, and she's captured and

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Speaker 5: ends up escaping in oh shit. Yeah, and it's a

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Speaker 5: it's a dramatic and you know, horrific story of war.

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Speaker 5: But she persevered and would later share her stories, so

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Speaker 5: there's a to read later. I don't want to give

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Speaker 5: that spoiler away. But she makes her way back to Florence.

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Speaker 2: You know, everything that our audience likes. They love it. Okay,

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Speaker 2: was it with a tunnel?

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Speaker 5: No, but she did do something else with the tunnel.

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Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, people like tunnels, so all right, So if

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Speaker 2: you want to know more about the tunnel.

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Speaker 4: That's another tragic story too. Oh well, I mean it's war, where's.

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Speaker 5: Full of tragedy, right, and tunnels and tunnels, Yeah, a

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Speaker 5: lot of good tunnels. So so yeah, she does some

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Speaker 5: things with tunnels and death and perseverance.

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Speaker 4: And so she helps at the well.

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Speaker 5: An interesting dramatic story of when Florence is now going

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Speaker 5: to be imminently liberated. So the Allays are relatively close

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Speaker 5: and they don't seem to be moving with a lot

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Speaker 5: of expedients, and so the Florentines need to do what

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Speaker 5: the Folks and Naples did and what the Romans thought

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Speaker 5: they maybe had to do, because it was clear that

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Speaker 5: now the Germans are pissed.

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Speaker 4: They're stealing everything they can.

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Speaker 5: They're taking the lenses out of microscopes, They're stealing all

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Speaker 5: any animals they could find. Maybe they'll butcher them later.

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Speaker 5: I mean, they're just they're ransacking. They're stealing a lot

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Speaker 5: of art, and they're afraid they're going to start, you know,

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Speaker 5: bombing shit. And so they also destroy all the bridges

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Speaker 5: because and this is of course a tactical move, they

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Speaker 5: don't want to make it easy for the Allies to

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Speaker 5: make their way from one part of Florence to the other,

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Speaker 5: and so they destroy almost all the bridges except for

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Speaker 5: the ponte Vecchio. So if anyone goes to Florence, that's

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Speaker 5: the only original bridge. The other ones are recreated to

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Speaker 5: look like they did. Some of them look new, but

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Speaker 5: they so there's all this rubbic down right by the

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Speaker 5: by the river, in by the Arnou and Florence was

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Speaker 5: was destroyed. And they and what they did that people

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Speaker 5: wouldn't go over the ponte Vecchio is they destroyed the

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Speaker 5: buildings on either side and then they wired it with

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Speaker 5: mines so that if you tried to go up over

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Speaker 5: the rubble you might explode.

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Speaker 4: But for anyone who's done the you know, high.

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Speaker 5: School tour of Florence, right, you know, the tourists one

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Speaker 5: oh one, you might remember that above the ponte Vecchio

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Speaker 5: is the Vasari corridor. And so this was how like

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Speaker 5: the fancy Medaiceese could get from one side of the

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Speaker 5: river to the other without messing around with the hoay peloi.

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Speaker 5: And there's a couple moments of the ponte Vecchio in

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Speaker 5: the book, and I tried to have them echo each other,

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Speaker 5: but this last one is during this insurrection, so Florence

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Speaker 5: is in a battle between the last remaining Nazis and

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Speaker 5: the people of Florence. And there's this, you know, a

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Speaker 5: longer drawn out story of they were under Basically, they

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Speaker 5: could not come out of houses for days on end.

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Speaker 5: It was super hot, there was like a lack of water.

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Speaker 5: If someone did go out, they might get shot by

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Speaker 5: the Nazis patrolling, so there might be dead bodies out there.

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Speaker 5: If the Partisans snuck out, they might find a Nazi

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Speaker 5: and shoot him, and so maybe there'd be another dead

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Speaker 5: body they have to bury in the in the garden,

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Speaker 5: or they'd throw it in the river if they were

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Speaker 5: close enough. So it's a really horrific scene in Florence.

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Speaker 5: And then finally they erupt into battle, and so she

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Speaker 5: is one of the leaders during this. She's helping to

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Speaker 5: lead a group in honor of her brother who was

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Speaker 5: killed in Rome.

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Speaker 4: And so they do have a couple day.

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Speaker 5: Battle before the Allied soldiers make their way to Florence,

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Speaker 5: and they're the ones who, like Rome was ready to do,

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Speaker 5: pushed actually pushed the last of the Nazis out and

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Speaker 5: saved some of their infrastructure and saved some things from looting.

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Speaker 5: And so I actually am writing an article about this.

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Speaker 5: I handed in a draft today because I think this

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Speaker 5: is really important for the Italians and particularly the resistance members,

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Speaker 5: the people who were a part of this army, but

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Speaker 5: they were ruled or the government they recognized was a

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Speaker 5: coalition of the different parties than non fascist parties who

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Speaker 5: came together, and I think this is a good lesson

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Speaker 5: that we need to come together despite our differences if

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Speaker 5: we all have this common enemy. Right, And so they

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Speaker 5: came together and they really were a trusted government for

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Speaker 5: those who wanted to recognize them as the hopeful potential

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Speaker 5: post war government. And so they were kind of the

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Speaker 5: ones who were giving the mastermind, you know, kind of

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Speaker 5: top down orders, and they wanted to show the l's because,

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Speaker 5: as we mentioned last episode, they didn't really trust them.

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Speaker 4: They're like, can these people rule themselves?

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Speaker 5: They haven't been prone to government. Maybe they're still fascists. Likewise,

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Speaker 5: they also were like, maybe they're going to be you know,

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Speaker 5: maybe they're going to become communists.

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Speaker 4: Oh this bad word, right, right?

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Speaker 2: Y are yeah?

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Speaker 5: I mean they were right, yeah, But they wanted to

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Speaker 5: show that they could be trusted and that they were

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Speaker 5: and that they can rule themselves and take care of themselves.

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Speaker 5: And so it was very important for those reasons, not

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Speaker 5: just because they didn't want their city destroyed, but because

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Speaker 5: they wanted to show that they could take care of

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Speaker 5: themselves and they could rule themselves. And so they were

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Speaker 5: able to push them out of Florence. And so now

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Speaker 5: it's Theresa was part of that and she was a

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Speaker 5: trusted partisan.

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Speaker 4: And so now they're moving northward. It's now summer.

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Speaker 2: Wait wait, I want to we're well, we're still talking

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Speaker 2: about Theresa. Two things. One, instead of having the high

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Speaker 2: school field trip to to Fionanza, I went years ago.

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Speaker 2: This is just a story I just like, so it's

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Speaker 2: completely unrelated.

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Speaker 4: Hey, it's your podcast.

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Speaker 2: My first book with my name on the spine was

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Speaker 2: actually an Italian not English, even though I don't speak Italian,

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Speaker 2: because Italian anarchists took one of my zines and turned

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Speaker 2: it into a bound book. And then I went on

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Speaker 2: like a month long book tour around Italy.

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Speaker 4: Oh my god, how cool.

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Speaker 2: It was amazing. And but I speak any Italian, and

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Speaker 2: so I was getting by with my terrible Spanish. I've

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Speaker 2: said this like about every episode. I was like I

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Speaker 2: was in France. I got by with my terrible Spanish.

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Speaker 2: Everywhere I go, I just get buy a terrible Spanish.

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Speaker 2: And but my experience of Fernanza was a squatted villa

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Speaker 2: where I couldn't talk to anyone. But there was a

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Speaker 2: party and I was at it, but I just didn't

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Speaker 2: really interact with anyone. But then I went to the

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Speaker 2: art museum the the big fancy ones is maybe yeah,

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Speaker 2: maybe maybe, I don't remember, but I got to see

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Speaker 2: a lot of the like big important paintings of the

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Speaker 2: world because we went to the back entrance and one

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Speaker 2: of the employees was an anarchist and led us in

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Speaker 2: and gave us a tour.

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Speaker 5: Awesome, So a little one, a little yeah, and.

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Speaker 2: So Todisa saved some of the art that I got

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Speaker 2: to see. That's my that's my story about it.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 5: I met some anarchists in Reggio, which was really fun.

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Speaker 5: I had one of the archivists was taking me on

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Speaker 5: a tour and he's like, here's where their anarchists have

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Speaker 5: their office or have their.

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Speaker 4: Little and then someone walks U out.

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Speaker 5: He's like, oh, he got all excited because he had

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Speaker 5: never been in there. And so we went in and

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Speaker 5: hung out with the anarchists for a little bit cool

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Speaker 5: in there, a little underground layer.

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Speaker 4: It was awesome.

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Speaker 2: Yeah fuck yeah, okay, so yes, Well, so you were

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Speaker 2: talking about Todysa. The other thing I want to ask

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Speaker 2: about the Florence thing. Were you moving north to Florence

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Speaker 2: to then talk about one of the other people, because

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Speaker 2: I wanted to ask a little bit more about Todisa.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, let's let's talk about today.

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Speaker 2: My two thoughts is, so, the big thing that comes

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Speaker 2: up when you search her is that she helped write

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Speaker 2: the Italian constitution. That's the sort of government body that

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Speaker 2: you're talking.

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Speaker 4: About, right exactly.

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Speaker 2: And I find that so fascinating because like, that's the

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Speaker 2: kind of thing that those of us who grew up

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Speaker 2: in Cold War America like can't imagine that the constitution

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Speaker 2: of a democratic country was written by someone who was

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Speaker 2: in the Communist Party at the time.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, there were there were many Communists.

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Speaker 5: I mean they were one of the five coalition groups

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Speaker 5: that made up the CLN, which was that the coalition

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Speaker 5: I mentioned, Yeah, but yeah, I don't think Anita kind

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Speaker 5: of declared herself as part of any group, but yeah,

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Speaker 5: I think three out of the four were communists. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And then although I this is the kind of bullshit

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Speaker 2: that I get really nerdy about. I looked at both

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Speaker 2: Bianca and Today's I left the Communist Party in the

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Speaker 2: fifties because they disagreed with Stalin, which from my point

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Speaker 2: of view is like a thumbs up for both of them.

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Speaker 5: But well, when you think, when you think, what did

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Speaker 5: they know about the Communist Party at the time.

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Speaker 4: I mean, first of.

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Speaker 2: All, this is the militant group that's fighting the Nazis

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Speaker 2: and doing very well.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and they knew they well, they knew very little

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Speaker 5: about almost any party, right, and what they did know was, yeah,

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Speaker 5: it was really about worker rights. And you know, maybe

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Speaker 5: they read the Communist Manifesto, they read what Trotsky's autobiography.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe not all of them.

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Speaker 2: I don't.

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Speaker 5: I mean I know that Bianca read Trotzky, and I

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Speaker 5: know Karla red Marks, and you know, you can assume

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Speaker 5: that I think I know Teresa Redmark. You know, so

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Speaker 5: they this is what is based on and these ideals, right,

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Speaker 5: they sound they sound pretty great when you're no. Yeah,

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Speaker 5: and I'm thinking about this too, as I you know,

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Speaker 5: spoiler for many many years down the line. But I

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Speaker 5: mean that I'm researching communism now, particularly in America, but

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Speaker 5: also the larger narrative is it's so hard to kind

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Speaker 5: of divorce what we know now with what people would

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Speaker 5: have known at the time. And and so that's part

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Speaker 5: of the larger story that I'm interested in telling, is Yeah,

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Speaker 5: and I'm finding these stories of people being so passionate

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Speaker 5: about the Communist Party because it really, you know, in

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Speaker 5: its ideal format, really sounds yeah, like it supports the people, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally and and well, okay, and then this

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Speaker 2: ties into the other question I have about Tadisa is

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Speaker 2: I read about that she was involved in killing one

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Speaker 2: of the ideological leaders of fascism, like one of the

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Speaker 2: ideals of this guy, Giovanni, and that apparently because you

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Speaker 2: mentioned with Carla that some of the actions of the

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Speaker 2: Gapistas was polarizing. Yeah, right, and apparently also this killing

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Speaker 2: of Giovanni was incredibly polarizing, and that only the Communist

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Speaker 2: Party was like, no, it's good to blow up. They're like,

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Speaker 2: I don't know. They oh, they shot him through his

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Speaker 2: car window, but it's like, good to kill that guy.

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Speaker 2: He's an ideological father of Nazis or fascism. But then

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Speaker 2: everyone else was like, we don't know about that. I

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Speaker 2: don't know.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, the debate was and so this happened before the

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Speaker 5: end of the war, and it's in the book, and

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Speaker 5: she did feel kind of bad about it, but you know,

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Speaker 5: I don't she kind of stays away from analyzing this

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Speaker 5: moment I have.

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Speaker 2: That makes sense. I probably would too, you know, I.

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Speaker 5: Do have her own report of her kind of being

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Speaker 5: embarrassed because what she does is she points him out

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Speaker 5: to the people who will eventually kill him. And so

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Speaker 5: she knows that she's pointing him out to future assassins,

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Speaker 5: but he doesn't know. And they were apparently on friendly terms.

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Speaker 5: And so I think this is something she kind of

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Speaker 5: had to grapple.

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Speaker 2: With, is that, Oh she knew Giovanni.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, he was her professor, and so she kind of

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Speaker 5: she kind of liked him.

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Speaker 4: I mean, she thought he was a nice enough guy.

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Speaker 4: He allegedly as it were, he was like, oh, well.

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Speaker 5: I'm going to help save the Jewish people, I like,

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Speaker 5: you know, and so I mean, you know, he wasn't

402
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Speaker 5: a jerk, I'm using scared.

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Speaker 4: Off, right, right, Yeah, but he also was and so

404
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Speaker 4: but a lot.

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Speaker 5: Of people didn't like the fact because they didn't like

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Speaker 5: killing for he didn't like ideological killings, right, And and

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Speaker 5: so that was kind of the main debate was that

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Speaker 5: was the one act maybe not the only one, but

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Speaker 5: the one they really talk about of killing and it

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Speaker 5: wasn't an act of war explicitly.

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Speaker 2: Right, Oh, that's fascinating. And then it like one of

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Speaker 2: the things that I think is there's a disconnect from

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Speaker 2: what we assume about history versus like everyone living in

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Speaker 2: the United States right now is literally in the process

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Speaker 2: of watching a government become a f ashist government, right

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Speaker 2: And there's this disconnect where you're like, I don't know,

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Speaker 2: going to the mechanic and then being like, wait a second,

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Speaker 2: this guy that I'm friends with, like is moving towards fascism.

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Speaker 2: And we have this sort of Nazis as cartoon villains

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Speaker 2: thing in our head, right, which is unfortunately it flattens things,

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Speaker 2: so it becomes harder to understand the fact that the

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Speaker 2: disconnect that I think we're all living through right now.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, yeah, and I live in a bubble

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Speaker 5: in Brooklyn, and so I don't encounter that, although I do.

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Speaker 5: I do go upstate and my family is from a

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Speaker 5: kind of purple town upstate, so and I have family

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Speaker 5: members who are not blue, and so I like, you know,

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Speaker 5: with those kind of interactions, you can kind of stay

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Speaker 5: away from certain things. But right I don't encounter it

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Speaker 5: that often as many people probably do.

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Speaker 2: And it's like, who knows what that will reach eventually,

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Speaker 2: And there's a sadness to that. There's a the actual

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Speaker 2: sort of brother versus brother, a conflict of high tension,

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Speaker 2: you know. But you know what doesn't give me any tension.

435
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Speaker 2: I feel completely fine about everything we advertise. All of

436
00:21:11,720 --> 00:21:14,600
Speaker 2: it is amazing. Even the bad stuff that I wish

437
00:21:14,640 --> 00:21:17,080
Speaker 2: we didn't advertise is amazing. And some of the ads

438
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Speaker 2: are genuinely good. Some of them are for things that

439
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Speaker 2: are amazing, like every now and then we get go

440
00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:25,439
Speaker 2: outside with your friends ads. I love those ads. You

441
00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:27,919
Speaker 2: should do that. Here's a free ad, go outside with

442
00:21:27,960 --> 00:21:41,600
Speaker 2: your friends. It's nice. Here's ads, and we're back. Okay,

443
00:21:41,960 --> 00:21:45,080
Speaker 2: so we've talked about Florence, and then you said you

444
00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:46,560
Speaker 2: were going to take this further north.

445
00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:51,640
Speaker 5: So now pretty much Florence. It took a little while

446
00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:54,480
Speaker 5: to get all the bad guys out. They have some

447
00:21:54,520 --> 00:21:55,280
Speaker 5: people up there.

448
00:21:55,440 --> 00:21:58,600
Speaker 2: The cartoon bad guys who are completely one dimensional. Yeah, exactly,

449
00:21:58,920 --> 00:21:59,880
Speaker 2: I'm still fine with kicking.

450
00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:02,800
Speaker 5: Yeah, anyway, there's snipers and so anyway, it takes a

451
00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:04,920
Speaker 5: little while, and then finally the Allies show up and they

452
00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:09,159
Speaker 5: help out that last little bit. But now it's fall,

453
00:22:09,240 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 5: it's autumn, and you know, the Allies are getting.

454
00:22:12,040 --> 00:22:14,399
Speaker 4: A little distracted. There's other things happening. It's now autumn,

455
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:18,080
Speaker 4: of nineteen forty four. Then the weather starts to get

456
00:22:18,160 --> 00:22:22,359
Speaker 4: bad in November, and so they just announced, like over

457
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:25,960
Speaker 4: the radio, they say, all right, I'm giving you the

458
00:22:26,040 --> 00:22:30,840
Speaker 4: slightly hyperbolic but only slightly hyperbolic gist of it. All right, Partisans,

459
00:22:30,920 --> 00:22:33,320
Speaker 4: you guys just pack up and go home for the winner.

460
00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:35,840
Speaker 5: We're gonna we're not really going to do anything this winter.

461
00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:37,640
Speaker 5: So you guys go home, and.

462
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:39,440
Speaker 4: Then we'll start this war back up in the spring.

463
00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:41,919
Speaker 4: It's like, lighit what happened?

464
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:43,080
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.

465
00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:45,000
Speaker 5: And so even the New York Times read this article

466
00:22:45,040 --> 00:22:47,080
Speaker 5: that was like, I mean, this is it. They said,

467
00:22:47,119 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 5: this is a death sentence for the Partisans. This is

468
00:22:50,160 --> 00:22:52,440
Speaker 5: not a summer sport, is what they say.

469
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:53,040
Speaker 2: The quote.

470
00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:58,280
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so the Nazis are psyched because they're like, oh,

471
00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 5: we don't even have to worry about the Allies, focus

472
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:02,720
Speaker 5: on rooting out all these Partisans. And now they're in

473
00:23:02,760 --> 00:23:05,600
Speaker 5: a smaller space, you know, they're now farther north, and

474
00:23:05,600 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 5: they're also mad because they kept losing.

475
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:10,080
Speaker 4: And so now we're left.

476
00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:14,600
Speaker 5: With we have Anita who's in the mountains around Reggio,

477
00:23:14,960 --> 00:23:18,199
Speaker 5: and then we have Bianca, who is in Turin. And

478
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:21,280
Speaker 5: then she keeps going to the Alps, where her boyfriend

479
00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:25,480
Speaker 5: actually is stationed with a bunch of other partisans, and

480
00:23:25,520 --> 00:23:28,160
Speaker 5: so they're both doing different things. And so Anita also

481
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:32,639
Speaker 5: around the time that Florence was falling, was not falling,

482
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 5: it was rising again.

483
00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:36,800
Speaker 4: She ends up. She's been doing a lot.

484
00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 5: Of courier work for the most part, and she gets

485
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:43,320
Speaker 5: caught or suspected, and they bring her in and they

486
00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:46,760
Speaker 5: question her, and they said, all right, come back tomorrow,

487
00:23:46,880 --> 00:23:48,399
Speaker 5: and so she goes and she's like, what am I

488
00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:52,119
Speaker 5: supposed to do? Asking the partisan leadership, and they're like,

489
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:54,400
Speaker 5: you have to leave. They're gonna they're going to arrest

490
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:56,200
Speaker 5: you tomorrow. You have to go, and so she packs

491
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:58,159
Speaker 5: a bag. This is the first moment she tells her

492
00:23:58,160 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 5: parents she's part of the resistance.

493
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:00,360
Speaker 2: Oh my god.

494
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 5: Both of her brothers are in the resistance. In fact,

495
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:04,160
Speaker 5: even her dad has done some things for the resistance.

496
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:05,000
Speaker 4: But he's like, I.

497
00:24:05,040 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 5: Never expected you a girl. But he gives her some

498
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:13,439
Speaker 5: pants and some in a blanket. Anyway, and she goes

499
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:15,920
Speaker 5: to the mountains and so she becomes one of the

500
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:19,080
Speaker 5: first women in the mountains. And this is now, yeah,

501
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:22,400
Speaker 5: like late summer fall of forty four. So now she's

502
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:24,960
Speaker 5: in the mountains and more people are coming.

503
00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:29,920
Speaker 4: But this is where she really becomes even more.

504
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 5: She gets a gun, and she becomes a very trusted

505
00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:35,359
Speaker 5: person in the mountains, but she's also in charge of

506
00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:38,239
Speaker 5: because even if you're in the mountains, they still need

507
00:24:38,280 --> 00:24:42,199
Speaker 5: women who are less able to be suspected to be

508
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:43,480
Speaker 5: going from camp to camp.

509
00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:47,120
Speaker 4: And so they built all of these amazing paths.

510
00:24:47,119 --> 00:24:48,720
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I'm sure the paths existed, but they

511
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 5: use these existing paths, and they had their their kind

512
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:53,960
Speaker 5: of their way between the different camps and between the

513
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:57,679
Speaker 5: towns and the trusted farms maybe where they had some

514
00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:00,280
Speaker 5: of that would keep them overnight or give them something

515
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 5: to eat. And it's amazing because today these paths have

516
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:05,800
Speaker 5: been kind of cleared up in the last couple of

517
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:07,879
Speaker 5: years and you can you can hike the same paths

518
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:09,920
Speaker 5: that the party is. That's cool and so I hiked

519
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:11,520
Speaker 5: just a very small part of it, but I would

520
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 5: love to go back and do it again. And they have,

521
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:15,679
Speaker 5: you know, some monuments along the way, and it's a

522
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 5: really powerful, powerful place.

523
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 2: And they give you a wool blanket and a rifle

524
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 2: at the base of the path and then they like,

525
00:25:21,560 --> 00:25:23,960
Speaker 2: don't mention the current state of the Italian government and

526
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:27,679
Speaker 2: just sort of leave it as exercise for the reader.

527
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:30,920
Speaker 4: But it was really amazing.

528
00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:35,639
Speaker 5: So she's in the mountains and in the meantime she

529
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 5: breaks up with her fascist boyfriend.

530
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 4: She's like, he finds out she went to the mountains.

531
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 4: He's like, no woman of mine is going to be a.

532
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:46,479
Speaker 5: Sled up here in the mountains with these guys. And

533
00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 5: she's like, screw you, this is my life. She'd already

534
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 5: been talking about it, you know, getting rid of him,

535
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:58,600
Speaker 5: and so she dumps him and she maybe meets someone else.

536
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 5: But I don't want to tell you this part because

537
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 5: it's one of the most favorite parts of the whole book.

538
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 2: There's a love story in the book.

539
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:09,160
Speaker 5: Okay, they end up having this very horrific fight because

540
00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 5: now the Nazis are like, hey, we know where all

541
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 5: the partisans are. They're in this basically this you know,

542
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 5: these two ridges that go down into this valley and

543
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:18,439
Speaker 5: it's part of the Appenine Mountains just outside of Reggio.

544
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:22,119
Speaker 5: And so she is her job and some of the

545
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 5: other stuff Thatta as part of this fight is too

546
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:27,919
Speaker 5: is to be kind of bring the information between and

547
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 5: among all of these different groups that are fighting, and

548
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:32,679
Speaker 5: it's it's very horrific. It was very bloody and awful.

549
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 5: I know what's crazy about this story. It's the called

550
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:38,280
Speaker 5: the Battle of monte Cayo, and that's the name of

551
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 5: one of the mountains around there. It's very hard to

552
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 5: find anything out about it in English. It's almost uncovered

553
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 5: in almost any you know, history of the war, even

554
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:51,520
Speaker 5: though it's it was a pretty major battle for the

555
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:52,840
Speaker 5: for that particular region.

556
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 2: And you think that's just because the Allies weren't involved.

557
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:56,879
Speaker 2: Do you think it was just because it was a

558
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 2: partisan fight?

559
00:26:57,920 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 4: I mean probably, yeah.

560
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:02,200
Speaker 5: And so even the fact checker is like, I can't

561
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 5: find this, and so I had to dig up some

562
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 5: things in Italian because the fact checker didn't have access

563
00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:08,720
Speaker 5: to everything I did, and I was like, here, here's

564
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 5: where it's talked about. I swear it exists. I'm not

565
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 5: making this up. But it's interesting that it's, yeah, that's

566
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 5: really discussed so rarely, and even in histories of Italian

567
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 5: what was happening in the war in Italian that's written.

568
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:23,560
Speaker 4: In Italian, That's what I mean.

569
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 5: So Reggio, it has this brutal winner. And we have Anita,

570
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:33,240
Speaker 5: who I do love. She's super scrappy and just she

571
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:36,600
Speaker 5: just has a lot of personality. And so she's living,

572
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 5: you know, in a camp, a freezing camp, and you

573
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 5: can't let a fire because then they'd be like, oh.

574
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 4: There they are, you know, and they're just doing the

575
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 4: best they can.

576
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:48,000
Speaker 5: And so then they make it through to the spring,

577
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 5: and so you know her, that was kind of the

578
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 5: most dramatic moment. There's still some other like smaller actions

579
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:57,879
Speaker 5: that she's doing. And you know, whoever survived the Battle

580
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:02,239
Speaker 5: of monte Cayo, and then what happens with Reggio, And

581
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 5: then I'm going to skip up to Bianca, because both

582
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:08,239
Speaker 5: of these cities are liberated one right after another at

583
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 5: the end of the war. And so Bianca I love

584
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:12,439
Speaker 5: beyond I mean, I love all these women. It's like

585
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 5: they really are my children. I can't pick a favorite.

586
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:21,200
Speaker 5: So Bianca is a she quits that job where she,

587
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 5: as I mentioned last time, she was working at a factory,

588
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 5: and she's a social worker, right, She's a social worker,

589
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 5: and she was connected to a lot of women, but

590
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 5: also I think she worked with some men as well,

591
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 5: just like the workers there, and so she really was

592
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:37,520
Speaker 5: connected to these workers and getting very activated around workers' issues.

593
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 5: And so now she's part of the GDD, this women's group,

594
00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:44,000
Speaker 5: and she's helping to organize them, and she ends up

595
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 5: quitting the party.

596
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 4: The Communist Party said we want.

597
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:50,760
Speaker 5: To we want to pay you to be basically a

598
00:28:50,800 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 5: partisan full time, and so she quits her job at

599
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 5: the beginning of nineteen forty four and ends up working

600
00:28:56,600 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 5: for them full time.

601
00:28:57,520 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 4: And she's but.

602
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 5: She's still kind of going to the factories in organizing

603
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 5: these people and writing a lot of publications. She was

604
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:06,280
Speaker 5: our journalist of the I mean, there were many people

605
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:09,280
Speaker 5: doing this, but that was what I ended up writing

606
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 5: about a lot, because she was really, you know, trying

607
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 5: to get these stories out there. And she's bringing these

608
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:17,880
Speaker 5: heavy printing presses. She's just carrying them on the tram

609
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 5: around Turin, trying not to get caught. And she also

610
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 5: is riding her bike from Turin to the Alps. I mean,

611
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 5: she probably took the train part of the way, but

612
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:31,400
Speaker 5: still she is riding her bike up the Alps. And

613
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:35,200
Speaker 5: also as part of this research, I drove part of

614
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 5: the way that she was riding her bicycle and this

615
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 5: is treacherous and amazing. So she's bringing anything she could bring.

616
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 5: Her boyfriend's up there. She's good friends with this other woman,

617
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 5: Ada Gobetti, whose son is up there, and her boyfriend

618
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:49,960
Speaker 5: and her friend AIDA's son are just a couple of

619
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 5: years apart, and so they are friends in the same

620
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 5: partisan band, and they're bringing information, they're bringing food, they're

621
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 5: bringing snacks. Sometimes she's bringing her uh huh. So she

622
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 5: she writes in one of one of the testimonies, you know,

623
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 5: she said, people think feminists invented sex later on, but

624
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 5: we were having lots of sex, So I love it.

625
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:16,959
Speaker 2: I would imagine a mixed gender partisan camp would have

626
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 2: a lot of people being like, well, we're going to

627
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 2: die tomorrow. It's kind of cold out.

628
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:24,320
Speaker 5: They and also they had been totally like Anita, for example,

629
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 5: had never even spent time alone with a man, and

630
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,680
Speaker 5: she's in her early twenties, and so yeah, yeah, I'm

631
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 5: not saying that she.

632
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 4: Did that, there's no report of that, but.

633
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 2: But yeah, her boyfriend fascist boyfriend thought she.

634
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:42,120
Speaker 5: Was exactly and so so yeah, there was a lot

635
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 5: of a lot of snuggling happening, and and so she's

636
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 5: Bianca's going back and forth, and she has some some

637
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:51,960
Speaker 5: close calls where she has to pretend that she is

638
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 5: working at this like you know, a hotel basically, or

639
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 5: she was about ready to be caught by these fascists.

640
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 4: Things came in in the middle of the night.

641
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:04,720
Speaker 2: When she has to say that she is working at hotel.

642
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 2: One of the things that is always buried in history,

643
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 2: besides just women doing things is sex work. In particularly,

644
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 2: is that code for doing sex work if she's worked,

645
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 2: if she has to pretend like she's working at hotel.

646
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 5: No, she So she was caught after curfew and she

647
00:31:19,080 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 5: knew of this place that where that was friendly to

648
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 5: the partisans, and so she gets there and they allow

649
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:25,680
Speaker 5: her to come in and they're like okay, yeah. And

650
00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 5: then she had just gotten there and then the bunch

651
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 5: of fascist knock on the door and they're like, let.

652
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:30,640
Speaker 4: Us in for the night.

653
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:32,360
Speaker 5: And then it's like, how are you going to explain

654
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 5: this young woman here barely you know.

655
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 2: And so as she works here, she hands.

656
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 5: Are a yeah, hands are an apron and says now

657
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 5: she serves all of the fascist.

658
00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 4: Drinks like just get them drinks in. Yeah.

659
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 5: And then there were also partisans in the beds so

660
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 5: the proprietor proprietress had to go and sneak all the

661
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 5: partisans out and get the rooms ready for the fascists

662
00:31:55,480 --> 00:32:01,000
Speaker 5: on beds. Yeah, and then Bianca's here is serve everyone drinks, right,

663
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:04,479
Speaker 5: and then one guy recognizes her from university and he's like,

664
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 5: why are you here? Weren't she getting a law degree?

665
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:12,440
Speaker 5: And so yeah, it was this tense.

666
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:13,280
Speaker 4: Tense moment.

667
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:16,719
Speaker 2: That's the moment that would be in the movie, like

668
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 2: instead of oh, what's the movie about killing Nazis? Or

669
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 2: they are sitting in a bar and they count wrong.

670
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 4: Oh the inglorious bastards.

671
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like see this, this story is better. I

672
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:31,320
Speaker 2: mean probably because it's real and partly because women get

673
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 2: to be protagonist of stories sometimes.

674
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 4: But wait, can I tell you a secret?

675
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, I've never said this out loud, So hey, producers,

676
00:32:38,520 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 5: if you're listening, I'm writing a screenplay.

677
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah.

678
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,479
Speaker 5: And it's so exciting because I get to put the

679
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 5: things I am you know, so much like different things

680
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 5: that I imagine because you can be I'm I'm hewing as

681
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 5: closely to the story as possible, but I get to

682
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 5: be a little like out of.

683
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 2: Fat you got to do some Yeah, because.

684
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:58,480
Speaker 5: That's what it would be. But anyway, so that's exciting.

685
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 5: But you're right, I haven't gotten to that scene yet.

686
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 5: It's a good one.

687
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 2: Hell yeah. Well, speaking of secrets, if you listen to

688
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 2: the first word of each of these advertisements and then

689
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 2: open up a copy of Moby Dick it has to

690
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 2: be the right edition, and then cross reference it to

691
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:21,400
Speaker 2: that copy, you will find a secret message. That's why

692
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 2: we have ads. Here they are and we're back. I

693
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 2: sure enjoyed learning about I don't know anything about Moby Dick.

694
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 2: I know the tiniest bit. Never mind, I can't continue this.

695
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:45,880
Speaker 2: The bit is going to fall apart. But okay, yes,

696
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 2: so she has to hide herself as a hoteller, as

697
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 2: someone working at a hotel.

698
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 5: Yes, then she well, we know she makes it home eventually.

699
00:33:57,560 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 5: You'll have to read that section to find out.

700
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 4: Okay, but she is.

701
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:05,760
Speaker 5: It's amazing that she's going up and down these mountains

702
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 5: so often, and then she makes her way back to Turin,

703
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:12,319
Speaker 5: and so she's constantly going back and forth. But her

704
00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:14,879
Speaker 5: I would say, one of the two main things she's

705
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:20,240
Speaker 5: doing is publishing a lot of these papers for different groups,

706
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 5: and then also helping to support the mostly men in

707
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:25,160
Speaker 5: the mountains.

708
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:30,240
Speaker 4: And so now so that was Now we're getting close

709
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 4: to the end of.

710
00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:36,280
Speaker 2: War and total, not this war, but just war in general.

711
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:43,120
Speaker 5: I wish wouldn't that book be a bestseller? And so

712
00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 5: it's now springtime and the Allies are allowing the Nazis

713
00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:51,320
Speaker 5: to fight them again, and.

714
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 2: Oh, because they really do kind of have to hunk

715
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 2: her down all winter because without Allied support, there's like

716
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 2: not a lot of point in them fighting on their own.

717
00:34:57,560 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 2: Is that.

718
00:34:57,800 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 5: I mean, they did some things, but you know, it

719
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:02,000
Speaker 5: also was very brutal. It was one of the coldest winners.

720
00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:04,760
Speaker 5: It wasn't I think Bianca said it wasn't. She reports

721
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 5: at some point it wasn't super snowy, but which was

722
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:07,960
Speaker 5: a blessing.

723
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:08,800
Speaker 4: But it was very cold.

724
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 5: And yeah, but what she puts her energy into in

725
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 5: come February pretty much is she starts planning another strike.

726
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 5: So if you recall there was a strike that influenced

727
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 5: her political agency in episode one, and then what I

728
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:29,920
Speaker 5: didn't mention is that she actually planned I should I

729
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:31,879
Speaker 5: need to go back and mention this now because it's

730
00:35:31,960 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 5: really bad ass, because I'm just getting to Bianca now

731
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 5: because I think this is it's so instructive. Let's put

732
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 5: it that way. So let's back up about a year

733
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:40,919
Speaker 5: Spring of forty four.

734
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:44,759
Speaker 4: We are in like nothing has been literated.

735
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 5: We are in the depths of war, and Bianca is

736
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:52,120
Speaker 5: one of the main organizers of a general strike around

737
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 5: occupied Italy cool and she organizes. There was a lot

738
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 5: of factories. It was mostly factory workers, but not definitely

739
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 5: more than just factory workers. In fact, the newspapers weren't

740
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:05,760
Speaker 5: even published for a while because they went on to strike.

741
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 5: Like some shopkeepers, like streets were closed, you know, with

742
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:11,600
Speaker 5: shops on them, because a lot of the women who

743
00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:13,800
Speaker 5: worked in the shops and other shopkeepers just were.

744
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 4: Like, I'm going to go on a strike.

745
00:36:15,440 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 5: And so she calls for this general strike and it

746
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 5: millions of people take part, and a lot of them,

747
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:25,759
Speaker 5: some of them, you know, protests, have placards.

748
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 4: Some of them just don't go to work.

749
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 5: In some cases, they knew about this ahead of time

750
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 5: because they're you know, they're organizing, they're going to find

751
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 5: out that Sometimes they close some of the they preempted

752
00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 5: the factory or preempted the strike and just said we're

753
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:38,120
Speaker 5: going to be closed.

754
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:39,760
Speaker 4: In a holiday or you know something.

755
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 2: Was this unions or was this existing unions that have

756
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 2: been underground or stayed above ground, or was this like.

757
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 5: I mean, they didn't have very any unions. They had

758
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 5: were a little at hoc. Yeah, they were illegal. I mean,

759
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:57,360
Speaker 5: they just organized the hell out of it, and it's

760
00:36:57,440 --> 00:36:59,239
Speaker 5: so and they had millions.

761
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:00,400
Speaker 4: I mean, it was the the.

762
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 5: Biggest general strike of Nazi occupied territory during World War two,

763
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 5: and they basically shut down the country for you know,

764
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:13,279
Speaker 5: for almost a week, and there was horrific retribution. I mean,

765
00:37:13,320 --> 00:37:17,560
Speaker 5: they arrested thousands of people and many of them ended

766
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 5: up deported in concentration camps that didn't make it home.

767
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 2: And I mean it's just as much a military action

768
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:27,439
Speaker 2: as like military action is, and it's just as commendable. Yeah,

769
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 2: you know.

770
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 5: Yeah, But what it said was, first of all, this

771
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:33,719
Speaker 5: is how many people we have who are willing to

772
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 5: stand up against the Nazi fascists. And so it was

773
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:41,880
Speaker 5: very powerful because so many Italians saw who was willing

774
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:44,960
Speaker 5: to put their basically their lives on the line for

775
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 5: this cause.

776
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:47,280
Speaker 4: Brought more people into the fold.

777
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:50,239
Speaker 5: And then also it has been reported that a lot

778
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:52,600
Speaker 5: of these people this was the moment.

779
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 4: That they felt like they were part of the resistance.

780
00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:57,880
Speaker 5: So even though they were kind of ostensibly being like,

781
00:37:57,960 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 5: I don't want because a lot of what was happening

782
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 5: is they they were pissed that they were making things

783
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 5: that were being sent to Germany, and they also were

784
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:06,880
Speaker 5: taking skilled workers and sending them to Germany.

785
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:09,560
Speaker 4: So they had some specific demands.

786
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 5: Around don't take like no manned Germany, no machine to Germany.

787
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:15,319
Speaker 5: They didn't want things being deported. But then they also

788
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:18,160
Speaker 5: wanted more rations. But you know, they also were like,

789
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:20,799
Speaker 5: we're going to stand up for what we believe in.

790
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 5: And so suddenly this resistance was galvanized and they saw

791
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 5: the Nazi fascists, saw what they were up against. And

792
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:31,400
Speaker 5: so this was a very powerful moment in the resistance.

793
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 5: And you know, side note, I hear different things around

794
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 5: the power of general strikes, and they can be incredibly powerful,

795
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 5: and this is such an important example of that power.

796
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 5: And and it was kind of I mean, it was not

797
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 5: an easy street after that, but it was downhill.

798
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 4: Basically from then on out.

799
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:53,280
Speaker 5: I mean, that's I would say that the the Italians

800
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 5: kind of operated as if they knew they were going

801
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 5: to win. At some point, you know, like they really

802
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 5: felt like the side had turned at that with that

803
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:04,839
Speaker 5: general strike, and just all of the supported galvanized in

804
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 5: March of nineteen forty four, Okay, and so now.

805
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:11,320
Speaker 4: I'm going to move us forward.

806
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:14,360
Speaker 5: So this is then we have Rome is liberated and

807
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 5: Florence is liberated.

808
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:18,719
Speaker 4: Then we have this horrific autumn. Yeah, and then now

809
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:19,359
Speaker 4: we are in.

810
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 5: Spring, well winter, end of winter, beginning of spring in

811
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,360
Speaker 5: nineteen forty five, right near the end of war. And

812
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:29,240
Speaker 5: so Bianca helps organize another strike. It's not quite as dramatic,

813
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 5: but it was also kind of the strike that was

814
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 5: going to happen just to kind of remind people that

815
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:36,399
Speaker 5: this is, you know, we we.

816
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 2: Have the power is our country, yeah.

817
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 5: Exactly, And so that helps galvanize people again in March,

818
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 5: and then they organized kind of another kind of ongoing strikes.

819
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:48,640
Speaker 4: This is what she's helping to organize. And it was just.

820
00:39:48,600 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 5: To you know, meet it could be just I'm going

821
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 5: to help this factory organize this strike because they fired

822
00:39:54,600 --> 00:39:57,600
Speaker 5: this woman because she was speaking out against you know,

823
00:39:57,680 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 5: not being not having enough ration.

824
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 4: So it was very cool.

825
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,600
Speaker 5: It's a lot of worker power stuff and organizing and

826
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:07,080
Speaker 5: this also helped them organize for the insurrection. At the end,

827
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 5: Anita was in the mountains, and so she wasn't part

828
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:14,160
Speaker 5: of any insurrection organization in Reggio, and there wasn't really

829
00:40:14,239 --> 00:40:17,879
Speaker 5: fighting around Reggio. It's a pretty small city, and so

830
00:40:17,920 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 5: that there was. I didn't follow any woman from Bologna.

831
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 5: But Bologna is a great revolutionary city, and so there's

832
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 5: some interesting stories there that I would love to tell

833
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 5: at some point. But by now, by the spring of

834
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:36,400
Speaker 5: nineteen forty five, the Allies are pretty much marching.

835
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:37,760
Speaker 4: They figured out how to get over.

836
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:40,319
Speaker 5: This little mountain range, big mountain range, and now they're

837
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:43,840
Speaker 5: marching through the Po Valley towards Turin, towards the Alps

838
00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:44,840
Speaker 5: and pushing.

839
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 4: The Nazis out.

840
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:50,319
Speaker 5: And there was a big final insurrection, a battle in

841
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 5: Turin and also Milan, but I didn't write about that,

842
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:58,760
Speaker 5: where Bianca helps to lead and organize just the people

843
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 5: of Turin. There's interesting images of a lot of them.

844
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:04,360
Speaker 5: Men from the mountains came down to be soldiers in

845
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:07,120
Speaker 5: this final insurrection. So you see these pictures of men

846
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 5: and you know the kind of like dirty not fatigue,

847
00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:11,400
Speaker 5: you know, like worker uniform and then you see a

848
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 5: guy in a suit basically, and they're standing with guns

849
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 5: side by side, like looking around a corner, you know, ready.

850
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 4: To fight for their city.

851
00:41:20,160 --> 00:41:23,320
Speaker 5: And there's women and she was pretty much a career

852
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:26,839
Speaker 5: she didn't really take up arms. But yeah, the book

853
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 5: ends before the epilogue, but it ends kind of right

854
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 5: before they fully succeed in getting the Nazis out.

855
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 2: And one of the things I like about you mentioned

856
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 2: earlier about how in the GGP or whatever the GGD

857
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:45,640
Speaker 2: that there was like tens of thousands of women in it,

858
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 2: you know, and because people have this sort of attitude

859
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 2: of like, it's more fun to tell history when you

860
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 2: pick characters and follow them through, right. But obviously the

861
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 2: one of the big problems of this is the big

862
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:00,760
Speaker 2: man of history theory. But then there's almost like inversion

863
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:03,440
Speaker 2: of the big Man of history theory, where people when

864
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:05,840
Speaker 2: you mention a white guy who is sort of in charge,

865
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:07,759
Speaker 2: everyone's like, oh, he did it all. But then when

866
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:11,759
Speaker 2: you mentioned like someone who's marginalized who is involved, they're like, oh,

867
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 2: that's a token, Like oh, yeah, I guess some women

868
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 2: were involved, right, Like, oh, you found the only four

869
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 2: women who actually did partisan stuff. And you're like, no,

870
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:22,800
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of women did this stuff, and even

871
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:26,799
Speaker 2: just in that one organization, let alone all of the

872
00:42:26,920 --> 00:42:30,720
Speaker 2: like unpaid labor of revolution that happens behind the scenes,

873
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 2: but you know, all of the like weird home stuff

874
00:42:34,560 --> 00:42:38,240
Speaker 2: and all of the there's so much that happens. Yeah, yeah,

875
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 2: totally exactly. And so I think it's interesting because whenever

876
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:45,400
Speaker 2: you have an informal military, there are women in it.

877
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 2: You know, like, this seems to be, as far as

878
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:50,880
Speaker 2: I can tell, somewhat universal, and especially if it's leftist.

879
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think that right wing militias are

880
00:42:53,719 --> 00:42:55,919
Speaker 2: going to start letting women in anytime soon.

881
00:42:56,320 --> 00:43:00,400
Speaker 5: Now they need their treadwives doing their chadwive things. Yeah,

882
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 5: there's some statistic at the end. I probably am not

883
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 5: going to find the exact thing really quickly, but there's

884
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:08,480
Speaker 5: a statistic about will I will give you the rough

885
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:12,799
Speaker 5: statistic about how many for this kind of you know,

886
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 5: to support this kind of ad hoc army. There's something

887
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 5: like you need statistically like seven support people per army

888
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 5: person who you're supporting, And in the Italian situation that

889
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:27,239
Speaker 5: we just talked about, there was something like twelve or

890
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:31,280
Speaker 5: fifteen that were supporting each army. So there was so many,

891
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 5: exponentially more people who were you know, even if they

892
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:38,799
Speaker 5: were giving a couple lira that they desperately needed to

893
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:42,760
Speaker 5: feed their kids or they had a blanket to spare, Yeah,

894
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:45,480
Speaker 5: just any little bit also helped them feel like they

895
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 5: were part of the resistance and like they were doing something.

896
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 5: And that was so much of it is not just

897
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:54,759
Speaker 5: what they could give, but feeling like they were unified

898
00:43:55,239 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 5: because you know, as we were talking about last episode

899
00:43:57,960 --> 00:44:00,920
Speaker 5: and also obviously now, is that you know, they were

900
00:44:00,960 --> 00:44:04,960
Speaker 5: recreating or co creating what they wanted their country to

901
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 5: look like. They weren't like the French, where like we

902
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:09,360
Speaker 5: just want to go back to how we were.

903
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:10,320
Speaker 4: A little bit ago.

904
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 5: They didn't have a little bit of go So how

905
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:15,759
Speaker 5: are they going to come together and figure out where

906
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 5: they want to go next?

907
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:18,320
Speaker 4: And that's why it was so powerful.

908
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 5: And that's another important role of these underground papers that

909
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:23,920
Speaker 5: it sounds like you guys talked a lot about, but

910
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:27,440
Speaker 5: is unique to maybe not just to Italy, but is

911
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 5: unique among most of you know, World War two resistance

912
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:32,919
Speaker 5: is that that's part of what the newspapers were doing too,

913
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 5: is saying this is, you know, let's talk about where

914
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:37,319
Speaker 5: we're going to go from here, not just how we're

915
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 5: going to do the thing right now and get back

916
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:39,319
Speaker 5: to where we were.

917
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:41,400
Speaker 2: And I think which makes so much sense to me.

918
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:43,160
Speaker 5: No, I was just going to say, I think that's

919
00:44:43,160 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 5: what makes the story so unique, and yeah, yeah, it

920
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:49,239
Speaker 5: gives us so many, so many things to think about

921
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:50,640
Speaker 5: and learn historically.

922
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 2: But fortunately it's all just history and has absolutely no

923
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 2: burying on the present. But if it were to have

924
00:44:57,640 --> 00:44:59,120
Speaker 2: buried on the present, one of the things I like

925
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:03,320
Speaker 2: about it, you know, you're describing how there's not really

926
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:06,840
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a you can divide a mountain fighter,

927
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 2: a city fighter, and a striker and a support person

928
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 2: if you want, right, you can. You can make categories

929
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 2: to understand certain things. But all of it was part

930
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:20,759
Speaker 2: of what defeated fascism. And I love the fact that

931
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 2: strikes and partisans are coexisting in the same movement because

932
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:30,879
Speaker 2: they seem fundamentally at odds, right, because you're like, well,

933
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 2: if you're a striker, then that means you're friends with

934
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 2: the terrorists in the mountains, you know, and like.

935
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 5: Well, if you think about it, the strikers were actually

936
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 5: creating things for the enemy.

937
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:43,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they wanted to stop, but they had no choice.

938
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:46,920
Speaker 5: I mean they literally would starve their children with I

939
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:48,879
Speaker 5: mean it was something. And so there's so many yeah,

940
00:45:48,920 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 5: interesting nuances about these choices that you have to make,

941
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,840
Speaker 5: and also about not being an absolutist.

942
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:55,200
Speaker 4: Right.

943
00:45:55,520 --> 00:45:58,719
Speaker 5: People are doing the best they can, yeah, with where

944
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 5: they are and what they have.

945
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:05,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I don't know, do you have any like

946
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 2: the final thoughts on this book, or like how it

947
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:13,399
Speaker 2: relates to things happening now or anything that you feel

948
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 2: like talking about.

949
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:20,320
Speaker 5: Well, I just I felt, not too long ago, this moment,

950
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:24,160
Speaker 5: many moments of what do I do? Well, how do

951
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 5: I act? What is the thing I should do right now?

952
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,960
Speaker 5: Of feeling like I wanted to do something because I'm

953
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 5: clearly a politically minded person, and I also know very

954
00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:39,400
Speaker 5: acutely the issue with not acting and sitting back and

955
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 5: letting things happen. And so I was paralyzed or somewhat.

956
00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:50,200
Speaker 5: And then I thought, Yo, listen to the women. What

957
00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:53,880
Speaker 5: did they do? Not just women of War, but also

958
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 5: my previous book of Power Hungry. And in fact I

959
00:46:57,120 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 5: was probably nudged a little bit because Power Hungry was

960
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 5: on a list that someone made and it was published

961
00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty one, so it's you know, it's not

962
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 5: that recent around what we could learn about mutual aid

963
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:09,720
Speaker 5: and how we can support others.

964
00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:12,320
Speaker 2: Well, twenty twenty one is next year. It's still twenty twenty.

965
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:13,359
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about.

966
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 5: I wish it was twenty nineteen maybe, but.

967
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 4: And so I was like, Okay, people are finding this instructive.

968
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 4: I'm the one who.

969
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:26,319
Speaker 5: Wrote the damn book, and you know, was learned so

970
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 5: much from all of these amazing women, and so I

971
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 5: just listened to the women. I'm like, okay, you just

972
00:47:31,960 --> 00:47:34,240
Speaker 5: none neither of these none of these movements I've written

973
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 5: about came out fully formed. It was just one or

974
00:47:37,239 --> 00:47:40,239
Speaker 5: two or ten people doing something, and then they get

975
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:42,359
Speaker 5: connected to someone else, and then they do something else,

976
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 5: and then more people are inspired, and then they ask.

977
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:48,320
Speaker 4: What can we do for those who need help the most?

978
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:53,759
Speaker 5: And they are incredibly brave in the face of being

979
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:58,080
Speaker 5: scared shitless that they might get arrested, but because the

980
00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:02,920
Speaker 5: alternative is that what is happening will keep happening.

981
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 4: And so I found their bravery inspiring.

982
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:09,160
Speaker 5: I found it very instructive to think I've written a

983
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:12,120
Speaker 5: book about how this was, you know, started slowly, step

984
00:48:12,160 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 5: by step, so I too can do things slowly, step

985
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:17,920
Speaker 5: by step. And that was a really wonderful thing to

986
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 5: realize and kind of help me do something, you know.

987
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:23,719
Speaker 5: And the first thing I did was email a bunch

988
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:25,400
Speaker 5: of friends and be like, hey, let's just get together

989
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 5: and talk and share what we know. And then I also,

990
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:32,800
Speaker 5: of course, unsurprisingly, I have been writing articles.

991
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:34,560
Speaker 4: Most of them are coming out in the next couple

992
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:34,960
Speaker 4: of weeks.

993
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:35,600
Speaker 3: You know.

994
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:38,120
Speaker 5: They're talking about the power of the underground press and

995
00:48:38,160 --> 00:48:40,040
Speaker 5: connecting that a little bit to today. I did write

996
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 5: an article what we could learn from a couple of

997
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 5: these other movements in the past, and a lot of

998
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 5: it is around.

999
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 3: You know.

1000
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 5: Again, this is right when I was learning this from

1001
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:53,440
Speaker 5: my women, relearning it the power of political education, understanding

1002
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 5: that you just need to take things one step at

1003
00:48:56,160 --> 00:49:00,440
Speaker 5: a time, you know, just how they began their as

1004
00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:03,440
Speaker 5: also not feeling because this was something I was feeling

1005
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 5: at the time I was writing this. It's like feeling like,

1006
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 5: oh my god, I need to react to everything. You

1007
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:11,719
Speaker 5: can specialize if this is what you could do, you're

1008
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:13,719
Speaker 5: part of the community. Garden and that's what you're really

1009
00:49:13,760 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 5: good at, and those are the people you're connected with,

1010
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:18,320
Speaker 5: and think about how you could use that to further

1011
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 5: the things that you want to further. If you are

1012
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:23,040
Speaker 5: working in a factory and you need this job, you

1013
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:25,719
Speaker 5: can't quit it, then how can you make the most

1014
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:28,800
Speaker 5: of your time working in a factory like the folks

1015
00:49:28,800 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 5: who were just talking about. And so those were three

1016
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 5: of the lessons that I really took away from the

1017
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:37,879
Speaker 5: different women throughout a couple of different books that I've

1018
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:38,880
Speaker 5: been researching.

1019
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:42,840
Speaker 2: No, it makes sense. I think what people sort of forget.

1020
00:49:43,840 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 2: I think our society and the way we're taught and

1021
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,319
Speaker 2: things that kind of strip the idea that we can

1022
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:50,600
Speaker 2: do things away from us. Especially people are marginalized in

1023
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 2: this or that way. Right, But at the end of

1024
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:56,320
Speaker 2: the day, everything that has happened that humans do was

1025
00:49:56,360 --> 00:49:59,360
Speaker 2: done by humans doing things. And we're humans and we

1026
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 2: can do things. And it starts by talking to your

1027
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,600
Speaker 2: friends and saying what is the problem and what are

1028
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:09,759
Speaker 2: the steps that we can start taking towards that, and

1029
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 2: especially in a kind of like a step by step,

1030
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:17,200
Speaker 2: you know, like and don't start with the big problem necessarily,

1031
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:19,520
Speaker 2: but start with the immediate problems and learn how to

1032
00:50:19,520 --> 00:50:22,120
Speaker 2: do it. And I like the examples that you end

1033
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 2: up writing about, partly because one of the things that

1034
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:25,759
Speaker 2: comes up a lot on the show is that we

1035
00:50:25,760 --> 00:50:28,200
Speaker 2: talk about how, look, if you don't know what else

1036
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 2: to do, feed people. Yeah, you know, mutual aid is

1037
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:36,920
Speaker 2: a great first step or last step towards making a

1038
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 2: better world. And when in doubt, if there's people who

1039
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:42,920
Speaker 2: need stuff and you know how to organize to get

1040
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 2: them the stuff that they need to be alive, you

1041
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 2: kind of can't go wrong.

1042
00:50:47,560 --> 00:50:51,920
Speaker 5: Yeah, especially, Yeah, that's going to be furthering you know,

1043
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 5: people's comfort. It's also going to be bringing people together

1044
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,319
Speaker 5: and saying, oh, yeah, this is the way the world

1045
00:50:57,360 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 5: should be, we should take care of each other, and

1046
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 5: then helps more people realize that this.

1047
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:05,480
Speaker 4: Is what you should. So it compounds in a wonderful way.

1048
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:10,360
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, well, okay, So some of the things that

1049
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:12,359
Speaker 2: you will learn from this book, not you you already

1050
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 2: know it because you wrote it, but everyone else who's listening.

1051
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:17,520
Speaker 2: You will get to learn a love story. You'll get

1052
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:20,319
Speaker 2: to learn something about tunnels. You'll get to learn a

1053
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:24,560
Speaker 2: prison escape. You'll get to learn how to coordinate drop

1054
00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 2: offs of things, And probably we didn't even talk about

1055
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:32,680
Speaker 2: how many bicycles are in this but that's cool, more

1056
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:36,160
Speaker 2: useful than people will give them credit for. Yeah, is

1057
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 2: there any other I don't know. People should go and

1058
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:41,600
Speaker 2: read Women of War The Italian Assassin, Spies and Couriers

1059
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:43,840
Speaker 2: Who Fought the Nazis by Suzanne Cope. And something that

1060
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:45,560
Speaker 2: I've talked about I think on this show and also

1061
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 2: just in general, is that pre orders really matter. Preorders

1062
00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:52,799
Speaker 2: have it far. If you want your purchase of a

1063
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 2: book to impact positively that author's life, preorders magnify that.

1064
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:01,359
Speaker 2: Because we live in a really weird world and capitalism

1065
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:04,400
Speaker 2: is the thing that controls things and literally algorithms that

1066
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 2: shouldn't run our world. Look at the number of sales

1067
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:09,120
Speaker 2: of a book all at once, and so the number

1068
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:12,760
Speaker 2: of sales they all hit the day that the book releases.

1069
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 2: So if you want Suzanne Cope to be a New

1070
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 2: York Times bestselling author, you should pre order this book.

1071
00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:21,440
Speaker 4: Crossing those fingers.

1072
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:24,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then even if not, and if you want

1073
00:52:24,480 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 2: more publishers to give Suzanne even you know, more book

1074
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 2: deals and things. Pre ordering is really good, not that

1075
00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:33,880
Speaker 2: you clearly have written more than one book. I'm not

1076
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:36,440
Speaker 2: saying it's like hanging in the balance.

1077
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:38,640
Speaker 5: But even to look more broadly, if you want more

1078
00:52:38,719 --> 00:52:42,400
Speaker 5: stories like this, if you then tell those publishers this

1079
00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:45,440
Speaker 5: is what they can put their money into. Because I

1080
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:48,760
Speaker 5: had it was such an honor to tell these stories,

1081
00:52:48,920 --> 00:52:52,399
Speaker 5: and you know, I'm just so excited to just be.

1082
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:54,560
Speaker 4: In the beginning of my path to sharing them with people.

1083
00:52:54,640 --> 00:52:57,920
Speaker 5: So I'm really excited to keep talking about them.

1084
00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, all right, Well, well that is the end

1085
00:53:01,640 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 2: of this episode except for other plugs. Do you want

1086
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 2: people to like follow you on social media and stuff

1087
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:07,960
Speaker 2: for your good?

1088
00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 3: Like?

1089
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:10,240
Speaker 2: What are you sure anything else you want to plug?

1090
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:12,960
Speaker 5: You know, I should, I should have come up with

1091
00:53:12,960 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 5: something since last time, but no, I'd love to continue

1092
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 5: this conversation. And you know, some of my social media

1093
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:25,000
Speaker 5: is turning a little politically as far as like who

1094
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 5: to follow and amplify these stories. So that's what I

1095
00:53:27,080 --> 00:53:30,840
Speaker 5: want to plug, amplifying stories of people who are making

1096
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:33,319
Speaker 5: a positive difference. So if you want to find me

1097
00:53:33,400 --> 00:53:37,799
Speaker 5: on blue Sky and threads and Instagram, I'm trying to

1098
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:39,920
Speaker 5: do that to varying degrees.

1099
00:53:40,239 --> 00:53:44,080
Speaker 2: Okay, And I hate the fact that I'm still on

1100
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:46,120
Speaker 2: social media. But you can follow me at Magpie, kill

1101
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:49,200
Speaker 2: Joy and or Marty or Killjoy at various things. I quit. Actually,

1102
00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 2: all this left is Instagram and blue Sky, and I

1103
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 2: don't know what else to plug. Uh, Sophie, what do

1104
00:53:55,560 --> 00:53:56,040
Speaker 2: you want to plug?

1105
00:53:57,080 --> 00:54:01,000
Speaker 1: Ah? You can follow what cool zone Media and all

1106
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:04,479
Speaker 1: the things for all my projects, and if you happen

1107
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:07,319
Speaker 1: to find me, you'll find pictures of my dogs. And

1108
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: dogs are good, very good dogs.

1109
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:13,879
Speaker 4: Margaret, this is such a pleasure. I had so much fun.

1110
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:16,279
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, all.

1111
00:54:16,239 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 2: Right bye everyone.

1112
00:54:23,239 --> 00:54:25,759
Speaker 3: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1113
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:28,880
Speaker 3: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,

1114
00:54:29,040 --> 00:54:32,279
Speaker 3: visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out

1115
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:35,280
Speaker 3: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1116
00:54:35,440 --> 00:54:36,600
Speaker 2: You get your podcasts.