Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People That Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 1: the only history podcast. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 1: with me today is a guest I'm super excited about.
Speaker 1: It's Julie Holland. If you haven't heard Julie Holland's music,
Speaker 1: you're living your life from How Are You Today? Julie.
Speaker 1: I am super super extra psyched because I love this podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy here. Yeay yeah. I had a moment
Speaker 1: where I was like kind of fan girl and when
Speaker 1: I realized that Julie Holland followed me on social media. Um.
Speaker 1: So our producer is the one and only Sophie Lijaman.
Speaker 1: Hi Sophie, how are you? Hi? Magpie? I'm well, how
Speaker 1: are you? You know? Life continues a pace. Our audio
Speaker 1: engineers Ian. Our theme music was written for us by
Speaker 1: a woman. So so today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: one of the most legendary gender benders in history. A
Speaker 1: prolific writer who loved drinking and fucking, who's got to
Speaker 1: complicated as fun childhood and a company gad his fun adulthood.
Speaker 1: And I figured, if she's good enough to get name
Speaker 1: dropped in a Jolie Holland song, she's good enough for me? Uh?
Speaker 1: Whoa are you talking about the Isabel ever heard? The
Speaker 1: nihilist writer? Yep, Isabel ever heard? Or Yeah, actually I'm
Speaker 1: curious so how much. I don't want to put you
Speaker 1: on the spot, but is this like are you already
Speaker 1: like have you written biographies about her already? Or just
Speaker 1: kind of like so clearly anyone who's listening. Um. One
Speaker 1: of Jolie's songs, Old Fashioned Morphine has a line that says,
Speaker 1: if it's good enough for Isabel ever heard, it's good
Speaker 1: enough for me? Um, And I'm gonna curious your background
Speaker 1: with Isabel ever heard? I think that I found a
Speaker 1: book around the house and I lived with in a
Speaker 1: big house in San Francisco where there were a bunch
Speaker 1: of artists back before or the culture of San Francisco
Speaker 1: was completely destroyed by tech bros. Yah. Yeah, that seems
Speaker 1: like a good way to I don't know whether the
Speaker 1: first time I ran across as a Harberhart was either
Speaker 1: through you in that song, or whether it was through
Speaker 1: Eberhart Press, which is a an anarchist publisher based in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest that uses her as a namesake. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's what we're gonna talk about today and or
Speaker 1: as she was known to many of her friends and
Speaker 1: lovers see Mahmasati, because she was Muslim and dressed as
Speaker 1: a man and had a man's identity as often as
Speaker 1: a woman's identity. And we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of how complicated and hard to map our current
Speaker 1: understandings of gender onto her life is. She's practically a
Speaker 1: saint to the middle class European traveler vagabond who does
Speaker 1: so safely but in search of authenticity, that sort of
Speaker 1: like going out to go backpacking, you know, instead of
Speaker 1: going to college immediately, sort of person um. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't that wasn't Isabelle's thing at all. She did not
Speaker 1: embrace safety. She threw herself uncompromisingly into life, desperate for
Speaker 1: meaning and adventure. And she didn't come up on short
Speaker 1: on any of those things, while she came up short
Speaker 1: on life actually in the end. But we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: And she's got more than one side to her at
Speaker 1: any given moment. She's got more than one name, she's
Speaker 1: got more than one motive, more than one set of
Speaker 1: loyalties and goals, and she's really hard to pin down.
Speaker 1: Lots Before I've tried, and we're going to give it
Speaker 1: a shot at pinning down Isabel everr heart excited. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited this is Yeah. I've read a bit about
Speaker 1: her and she I think she was the first person
Speaker 1: who was raised nihilist that I learned about, and I
Speaker 1: don't know like how much she continued to embrace that identity. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna A lot of what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about is that is that her parents were anarchist nihilists, um,
Speaker 1: and there's like interesting ways that that crops up throughout
Speaker 1: her life, even though that isn't her identity. By the
Speaker 1: end um spoilers, she's has quotes about how she's much
Speaker 1: more Muslim than she ever was anarchist, or that she's
Speaker 1: better at it, I think is the way. Whatever, there's
Speaker 1: a direct quote that somewhere in the script that you
Speaker 1: will hear, like a lot of the best history is
Speaker 1: about Eberhart's family background. Sounds like some ship that's somebody
Speaker 1: made up, and honestly like she did really amazing ship
Speaker 1: and so did her parents. You've got her mom who
Speaker 1: was born Natalie Eberhart, and she's aristocratic as fuck in Russia.
Speaker 1: The ebber hearts had been hanging out in the circles
Speaker 1: of the czars forever, and there's some stuff that I've seen.
Speaker 1: She might have been an illegitimate child with a Jewish dad,
Speaker 1: but if so, that's kept under wraps because she's in
Speaker 1: the aristocracy and through rubbing noses with the rich os,
Speaker 1: young Natalie meets her husband, who is forty three years
Speaker 1: older than her. His name is Senator General Pavel Karlovitch
Speaker 1: de Murder Mortar, by the way, means murderer in Germany.
Speaker 1: That again, Margaret Murder. No, the entire name Senator General
Speaker 1: Pavel Karlovitch de murder based. Yeah, well he sucks, but
Speaker 1: it's a base name exactly, and it's like and nowhere
Speaker 1: in any of the sources does anyone like point out
Speaker 1: that his name means murderer, Like, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: the Cooper's they make barrels and the smiths make like
Speaker 1: stuff with out of iron and the murders. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: this guy is a senior advisor to the czar, as
Speaker 1: both a senator and a general, which is really rare.
Speaker 1: He's like very high up, thus the title Senator General.
Speaker 1: His brother tutored the czar. He's a widower, and he
Speaker 1: marries the young Natalie and soon he's having a bunch
Speaker 1: of kids with her. She is not happy, she's not
Speaker 1: excited about what life has to offer her young Natalie.
Speaker 1: So she does what rich people do when they're unhappy.
Speaker 1: She retreats, retires to her country estate and spends her
Speaker 1: days riding horses and sighing and letting the servants take
Speaker 1: care of the kids. She also maybe does the unhappy
Speaker 1: rich person thing that I wish more unhappy rich people did,
Speaker 1: which was become an anarchist, militant class trader. And so
Speaker 1: this tutor shows up, and his name is Alexander Nikolovitch Trufamosky,
Speaker 1: and he's full of fire, and he's young, I mean
Speaker 1: not actually, he's like more than a decade older than Natalie,
Speaker 1: but that still leaves him thirty one years younger than
Speaker 1: her husband, the Senator General. So you know, like the bars,
Speaker 1: well the bar is not low, the bar is very high. Whatever.
Speaker 1: He's really smart. He speaks Russian, French, German, Italian, Arabic,
Speaker 1: and Hebrew, and he was Armenian, probably from a Turkish
Speaker 1: and Muslim family background, though he was an Orthodox priest
Speaker 1: immediately before he became an anarchist and a nihilist. And
Speaker 1: and this part, I'm going to be kind of curious
Speaker 1: your take on this, both of you all. So he's
Speaker 1: a feminist in his way, like probably he's not faking
Speaker 1: this to get into her pants. And he hates the
Speaker 1: institution of marriage. For example, he left his wife and
Speaker 1: kids because marriage is bad. And I don't know why, Right,
Speaker 1: it could have been this like whoa babe, Marriage is
Speaker 1: bad for women like gott to go have fun taking
Speaker 1: care of the kids. But I actually feel more likely,
Speaker 1: based on everything else that I've learned about him, I
Speaker 1: think he had a major ideological break with his younger
Speaker 1: life and it no longer suited him or his wife
Speaker 1: to stay together, and she might have caught him out
Speaker 1: of the kid's life and her life. So because he
Speaker 1: went from Orthodox priest to anarchist, Orthodox priests were allowed
Speaker 1: to be married as long as they were married before
Speaker 1: their ordination. So for whatever reason, he has left his
Speaker 1: wife and kids, and now he shows up as a
Speaker 1: tutor in the house of this fabulously rich noble. And
Speaker 1: for more background for anyone who's curious, we have an
Speaker 1: episode about the Russian nihilists and all the conspiracies that
Speaker 1: the anarchists were up to at the time and the
Speaker 1: nihilists were up to at the time, which is like
Speaker 1: a ven diagram, right, not all the anarchists or nihilists.
Speaker 1: Not all the nihilists or anarchists. This man is both.
Speaker 1: He has both of these identities. As far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, Alexander is part of all of it. It's
Speaker 1: possible that he found his way into tutoring the kids
Speaker 1: of the Senator General as a plot, part of a
Speaker 1: plot to kill the Senator General. And this makes me
Speaker 1: very happy. And so he did funk up the Senator
Speaker 1: General's life. Whether or not he killed the Senator General,
Speaker 1: no one actually knows. There's people who claim he did,
Speaker 1: and there's people who claim he didn't. He might have
Speaker 1: just been really really good at his job. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, And like that's what that's what you want,
Speaker 1: you want, you want like nobody to know? Yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: And and the fact that she gets raised into all
Speaker 1: of this secrecy and plotting is not only a huge
Speaker 1: part of her life, but it's a huge part of
Speaker 1: trying to untangle her life a hundred years later, because
Speaker 1: she was up to some ship, probably in the background
Speaker 1: of everything we're going to talk about today, but no
Speaker 1: one knows quite how much ship she was up to
Speaker 1: at what given point. And I like conjectures, because of
Speaker 1: course I do, but anyway the way, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: like you're you're in a good position to imagine about
Speaker 1: that more than other people. I have personally never been
Speaker 1: part of a plot to assassinate high up Russian nobility.
Speaker 1: I wasn't insinuating that her, to be perfectly clear, I
Speaker 1: wasn't insinuating allegedary Yeah. No. That is actually something that
Speaker 1: I find very frustrating about reading a lot of the
Speaker 1: histories is that it's clear that the histories are written
Speaker 1: by people who are excited about her as an adventurer
Speaker 1: and as like a feminist icon, and they're going to
Speaker 1: be doing certain types of work to recuperate her into
Speaker 1: certain types of ways of thinking. And also specifically, like
Speaker 1: don't really understand I don't totally understand anarchist nhilist politics
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, but I think I understand them
Speaker 1: better than the average historian of Isabel ever Heart. And
Speaker 1: there's two ways that this could have happened. Him showing
Speaker 1: up at the household, and the way it's like normally written,
Speaker 1: he shows up, him and Natalie get close, then biblically close,
Speaker 1: and then she converts to anarchism or nihilism or you know,
Speaker 1: very few people actually talk about her mom and her
Speaker 1: political leanings and beliefs. Oh yeah, that that tracks yeah
Speaker 1: like this lady. Yeah. And and a lot of historians
Speaker 1: are trying to take agency away from her and are
Speaker 1: just like, I guess she got swept up by this
Speaker 1: charming priest turn nihilist or whatever her And it's like,
Speaker 1: I think it is just as likely that she's married
Speaker 1: to a monster who is ruling Russia and shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: And so she's like, yo, check it out, come over here,
Speaker 1: let's steal his kids and murder him and take all
Speaker 1: his money and give all the money to the movement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she intimately saw the fucking sausage being made. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So, whether or not she converted ahead of time
Speaker 1: and invited him, or whether she converted later, she stays
Speaker 1: the entire rest of her life. UM, not necessarily specifically
Speaker 1: ideologically annihilist or an anarchist, but not specifically not that
Speaker 1: either actually um, And she's very committed revolution whole time,
Speaker 1: so they're like, we can't stay here. This is not
Speaker 1: a good idea where we will eventually get caught because
Speaker 1: he is this anarchist with this background, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of amazing that he got himself in as a tutor. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it helps that he's like smart as hell and speak
Speaker 1: seven languages or whatever. So they funk off, and in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one they go to Geneva in Switzerland, which
Speaker 1: is the cool anarchy place to be in one because
Speaker 1: all the the Paris Commune ours cr episode about Paris Commune,
Speaker 1: thank you. They're all taking refuge there and all the
Speaker 1: cool lefties are there, and Natalie's like, oh, darling senator General,
Speaker 1: who I'm totally not plotting to kill. I'd love to
Speaker 1: stay around and like watch you get old and die
Speaker 1: while oppressing everyone in the country. But I need gentler
Speaker 1: climbs for my soft womanly immune system, so I have
Speaker 1: to go to Geneva and bring the kids and the
Speaker 1: hot tutor. That's what she does. I'm paraphrasing heavily here,
Speaker 1: but she did say it was for her health that
Speaker 1: she needed warmer climbs. She actually her whole family is
Speaker 1: kind of sickly the entire time, including her Isabelle and
Speaker 1: Natalie and her father and anyway, we'll get to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how how many kids does she have at this point?
Speaker 1: So she's starting off with three, right, She has a
Speaker 1: young Nicholas Natalie Jr. I don't think they used junior,
Speaker 1: but that's how I'm going to distinguish Natalie Jr. From
Speaker 1: Natalie Sr. And Vladimir, So of course, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: totally yeah. So they get on some trains and they
Speaker 1: get the funk out of the country, which is good
Speaker 1: because this is our secret police were like probably just
Speaker 1: about to be like, wait a second, this tutor is
Speaker 1: an anarchist. And then nine months later, after she leaves,
Speaker 1: Natalie has another kid. His name is Augustus Augustine. The
Speaker 1: General comes down to Geneva and is like trying to
Speaker 1: beg her back. It's like, babe, please come home, and
Speaker 1: she's like no, but do you wanna do you wanna
Speaker 1: accept this kid as as your kid and not your bastard?
Speaker 1: And the General is like yeah, sure, fine, whatever, And
Speaker 1: I think the General knows the Senator General knows that
Speaker 1: Augustine is not his, but he's like willing to give
Speaker 1: him the murderer name. So his name is Augustine de murder. Wow.
Speaker 1: And so two years later her aged husband eyed seventy
Speaker 1: eight years old and she inherits all his money. And
Speaker 1: it's possible that Alexander had him poisoned. It has been alleged,
Speaker 1: and I see no particular reason to doubt it. But
Speaker 1: also he's seventy eight years old, it's the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So they're now in Geneva. They have
Speaker 1: plenty of money, and they've got all of the fucking
Speaker 1: nobilities kids with them. True to we don't believe in
Speaker 1: marriage form Alexander and Natalie. They stay lovers, but they
Speaker 1: get separate apartments and different parts of town, and they
Speaker 1: spend like all of their time together. But they don't
Speaker 1: like shack up, and they spend their time doing cool,
Speaker 1: weird secret anarchy ship. Anarchists at the time and place
Speaker 1: where obsessed with being in secret societies. So we really
Speaker 1: don't know what they did besides maybe kill Natalie's husband
Speaker 1: and the father of her children. Then eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: six years after they've moved, they have another kid, Isabelle,
Speaker 1: Natalie's in her late thirties. At this point, Alexander's in
Speaker 1: his early fifties. And they don't claim Isabelle as like
Speaker 1: Alexander Trofinowski never claims any of the kids as his.
Speaker 1: It's like not a good idea for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 1: But they also don't tell the kids their own parentage.
Speaker 1: But he is like not a fucking fly by night father.
Speaker 1: He is very actively involved in their entire life. They
Speaker 1: move out of the city out onto two different estates.
Speaker 1: Natalie's family money bought them both, so this is a
Speaker 1: continuing to like room of one's own vibe. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this such a weird childhood. You know, she was
Speaker 1: not going to grow up normal. That is, although some
Speaker 1: of her kids, some of the kids tried to end
Speaker 1: up normal. It kind of goes badly for everyone, honestly, right,
Speaker 1: That's there's the classic like if you're raised in a
Speaker 1: really wild scene, you you know, try to be really conservative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that happens to about half the kids. It's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So they get this a state. Alexander gets
Speaker 1: really into gardening, and he just wants to spend the
Speaker 1: rest of his life setting up an anarchy commune. But
Speaker 1: no one is like into setting up an anarchy commune
Speaker 1: with him, so he just doesn't help by himself and
Speaker 1: like makes his kids help, and he's really into orchids
Speaker 1: and cactuses us. My dad, Yeah, it's actually literally everybody's dad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, he's like, why want Why doesn't everyone
Speaker 1: want to hang out and like work on cactuses with
Speaker 1: me all the time? An exact text message I've received
Speaker 1: from my dad. So he and he dotes on his kids,
Speaker 1: especially as young daughter Isabel, who didn't know that she
Speaker 1: was his daughter. I think I think that everyone suspected
Speaker 1: and it was like I was gonna say, like allegedly
Speaker 1: didn't know, but like, if somebody's taking that much of
Speaker 1: an interest in you, you have to be somewhat aware,
Speaker 1: and people have will make these alley Asians like directly,
Speaker 1: but it will be part of politicking to get the
Speaker 1: money back, because it turns out you actually can't rob
Speaker 1: one of the richest and most powerful people in Russia
Speaker 1: and steal three to four of his children and not
Speaker 1: have it not have like continuing effects. But he tried. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so so Alexander tried in his way to raise
Speaker 1: his daughter's genderless as part of a feminist current in
Speaker 1: anarchism at the time. Specifically, it wasn't about like keeping
Speaker 1: women safe, girls safe by dressing up as as boys,
Speaker 1: but instead about offering them the same opportunities that are
Speaker 1: available to boys in terms of education, in terms of
Speaker 1: like everything else. Is Basically it's a like this is
Speaker 1: the this is the like feminist thing we're all trying
Speaker 1: right now. So it meant cropping Isabelle's hair short and
Speaker 1: her dressing as a boy. And I want to really
Speaker 1: like this guy. He's complicated and will never exactly know
Speaker 1: in what ways he had the kids stayed in his
Speaker 1: walled villa wear their hair short, except the older daughter,
Speaker 1: Natalie jr. Um. She refused to wear her hair short,
Speaker 1: and he's like, that's fine. But it's funny because in
Speaker 1: the biography would be like this tyrants who made her
Speaker 1: cut her hair that she like was like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not going out, and he's like okay, um, so whatever,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to the complicated there in a second.
Speaker 1: And made them help in the gardens, the oldest to
Speaker 1: their closest to their dad and the Russian aristocratic life right,
Speaker 1: and they hated all of this, and they referred to
Speaker 1: it as slavery to be raised by this guy and
Speaker 1: be forced to work on cactuses and learn like six languages. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's on on one hand, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like growing up in a cult, So they might they
Speaker 1: might feel that way about it because it it definitely
Speaker 1: like isolates you from your peers. Yeah, And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because it's like, I don't quite know if they're being
Speaker 1: isolated from their peers. They might be. They're definitely being
Speaker 1: isolated from their original upbringing and what it two of
Speaker 1: them perceive as their heritage, which is to stomp the
Speaker 1: Russian peasants into the dust. Well, it definitely isolates you
Speaker 1: from mainstream culture totally, totally. But you know what else
Speaker 1: will isolate you from mainstream culture is not buying. If
Speaker 1: you want to be an occult, don't buy these products.
Speaker 1: If you're reverse psychology, Margaret, Is that what we're doing?
Speaker 1: I know, but I don't know whether my listeners actually
Speaker 1: want to be an a cult or not, so it's
Speaker 1: hard to know which way to go. It's really a
Speaker 1: toss up. I actually think it's possible that whether or
Speaker 1: not you support the people who support this podcast, I
Speaker 1: actually don't think it's going to make any difference into
Speaker 1: your called affiliation. So here's some advertisers and we're back. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's absolutely true that there's this like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: this absolute tension, right and and you we see it
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, you like raised by hippie parents,
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna reject it all, you know. Isabel
Speaker 1: and two of her siblings don't see it this way.
Speaker 1: Her two oldest siblings absolutely see it this way. And
Speaker 1: Trophomowski Alexander anarchy dad, he gets described as paranoid, and
Speaker 1: I wonder whether he was paranoid or if he was
Speaker 1: an anarchist conspiration in the nineteenth century he was trying
Speaker 1: to overthrow state power and oppression and closely tied with
Speaker 1: people were getting off for being that way, who had
Speaker 1: stolen three or four children from Russian noble But he's,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, he's he's in this like very complicated underworld.
Speaker 1: And I can see how that would just look paranoid
Speaker 1: to other people. And you know, maybe he was like
Speaker 1: protecting his family from the details and we'll never know, no,
Speaker 1: I know. And also I think a bunch of the
Speaker 1: families in on it. Isabel ever heart was absolutely in
Speaker 1: on it um and I reason to believe his wife
Speaker 1: was in on it, Natalie. But you know, to everyone
Speaker 1: in the outside, he's not going to be like, Well,
Speaker 1: the reason I'm so reclusive is because the police are
Speaker 1: after everyone I care about, you know, and they have
Speaker 1: a bunch of visitors like this, and so they get
Speaker 1: something of a worldly education. Most of the visitors are
Speaker 1: other exiles, in particular Russians and Turks, and I really
Speaker 1: want to know more, but don't about Turkish and Russian
Speaker 1: relations as relates to anarchism and nihilism at this at
Speaker 1: this point, because Russian means anywhere from the Empire, right,
Speaker 1: which absolutely includes large chunks of what would be considered
Speaker 1: Southwest Asia today, including Alexander's own background. Isabelle grew up
Speaker 1: loving her time on secret dad's anarchy villain and she
Speaker 1: grew up playing with animals and daydreaming and writing and
Speaker 1: learning and meeting people from around the world. We're too
Speaker 1: oldest siblings not so much. Their dad was the right
Speaker 1: hand man of the god damn Zar, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to get back at into well he means dead, but
Speaker 1: you know this is their heritage from their point of view, right,
Speaker 1: and I think I remember she rode a bunch of horses.
Speaker 1: Did you did you come across that? There's like people
Speaker 1: have talked about how she had the chance probably to
Speaker 1: ride horses, but we don't necessarily have like super crazy evidence,
Speaker 1: but yet almost certainly, and because horses are a huge
Speaker 1: part of her life, but I don't know whether she's specifically.
Speaker 1: I didn't find one of those storians I read talked
Speaker 1: about how like we don't know if she was a
Speaker 1: horse girl, but probably yeah, but we could. I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll just decide everyone else. I I don't know where
Speaker 1: I got that. I'm sorry, no, no, I mean like yeah, Also,
Speaker 1: like I still haven't read everything there is to know
Speaker 1: about There's been so much written about his Isabhaba from
Speaker 1: so many different positions, and it's always trying to pin
Speaker 1: her down because she's so many different people to depending
Speaker 1: on how you look at her. So older siblings, they're
Speaker 1: piste off because he makes them read banned books like
Speaker 1: a meal Zola. Older brother Nicholas, he fucks off back
Speaker 1: to Russia. He runs away, he makes it, and he
Speaker 1: returns to the a Murder family. The fifteen year old
Speaker 1: brother Vladimir he's torn between these two worlds. Anarchy Dad's like, hey, Bud,
Speaker 1: stay here, like grow some cactuses, and Nicholas is like, no,
Speaker 1: come home to your true heritage as a nobility. And
Speaker 1: so when he's fifteen, he tries to run away, and
Speaker 1: anarchy Dad tracks him down, is like, talks him into
Speaker 1: coming home, and then, un characteristically to a modern context,
Speaker 1: the second time that the kid runs away, anarchy Dad
Speaker 1: goes to the cops. It's like, my kid ran away,
Speaker 1: and the cops helped track him down the kid and
Speaker 1: they bring him back home. After that, Vladimir lives the
Speaker 1: rest of his life on his villain happily working with plants. Wow,
Speaker 1: sometimes unhappily. We'll talk about that in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But he just gave he gave up trying to go
Speaker 1: back to the von Murderers. Yeah, And I think it's
Speaker 1: the best I can tell based on actually the end
Speaker 1: of Vladimir's life is that it was like he was
Speaker 1: being really actively like Nicholas's older brother is like, fuck,
Speaker 1: you get the funk back here, right, And then anarchy
Speaker 1: Dad was maybe also being like funck you get the
Speaker 1: funk back here. I don't know, I don't know the
Speaker 1: tone of him. I know the tone of Nicholas, which
Speaker 1: was aggressive. Um, but so he was he was torn right.
Speaker 1: Older sister Natalie Jr. She runs away to marry someone
Speaker 1: who has close ties to Russia, also hates Alexander, and
Speaker 1: they all star at part of this like massive conspiracy,
Speaker 1: not even in like a negative way, right, Like there
Speaker 1: like Alexander and Natalie Sr. Like robbed the family of
Speaker 1: their inheritance and like pushed it into the anarchist movement instead, right,
Speaker 1: And so there becomes this like massive conspiracy to like
Speaker 1: get all of that money back and also like get
Speaker 1: and that's part of why they like want Vladimir back.
Speaker 1: I'm imagining this is like a really really beautiful period drama.
Speaker 1: This would be so incredible, Oh totally. The most complicated
Speaker 1: thing I know about anarchy Dad is that Natalie Jr.
Speaker 1: Said while she was making when she ran away and
Speaker 1: as she was making her way across, she said that
Speaker 1: m Alexandra Trofamoski propositioned her for sex and that she
Speaker 1: said no, And then also said that Alexandra Trofomoski had
Speaker 1: poisoned her dad or conspired to get her dad poisoned,
Speaker 1: and these things might be true. I have no I
Speaker 1: like hate to doubt that kind of claim. It's entirely
Speaker 1: possible that he did that. It's just as entirely possible
Speaker 1: that she's like doing what she can to get back
Speaker 1: to Russia. But he might But anarchy dad alexand Trofmouski
Speaker 1: might have been a fucking creep like I don't know
Speaker 1: that he might have been so like like um, sexually
Speaker 1: liberated in the you know, the creepy senses that people
Speaker 1: have had in the past. We really just don't know definitively.
Speaker 1: So we can't really make a definitive claim here. No. So,
Speaker 1: but Isabel elebr Heart grew up and she gets her
Speaker 1: mother's maiden name eber Heart instead of Murder like all
Speaker 1: of her siblings are de Murder. She grows up with
Speaker 1: a love of learning languages and Islam. Actually she was
Speaker 1: reading the Koran and Arabic with her dad, whose hatred
Speaker 1: of organized religion as a as an anarchist was way
Speaker 1: harder against Christianity than Islam by most accounts, and of
Speaker 1: course from his background what we would now call Swanna,
Speaker 1: Southwestern Asia and North Africa. Um, but they probably called
Speaker 1: the Orient at the time that area. Swanna was more
Speaker 1: familiar and more part of their world than Europe and
Speaker 1: the West had been when when at least Dad was
Speaker 1: growing up. And so the people who are coming and
Speaker 1: visiting and stuff, um are much more from Swanna or
Speaker 1: the Orient or whatever. An anarchy. Dad is rekindling his
Speaker 1: interest in his Muslim his own Muslim background to his
Speaker 1: atheism is tempered more and more with Islam. He starts
Speaker 1: signing his letters in traditional Muslim ways. I think that
Speaker 1: meaning peace be upon you. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: he wrote in Arabic or Russian or whatever. I did. Um,
Speaker 1: it just was like and signed it and you know,
Speaker 1: traditional Muslim wise or whatever, and tried to look do
Speaker 1: more work about that. He spends all of his time
Speaker 1: talking about Jesus Christ, which is also funny and not
Speaker 1: something that a devout Muslim wi necessarily do, but it
Speaker 1: is what a grouty x orthodox anarchist from a Muslim
Speaker 1: background would do. And and I just find this really
Speaker 1: interesting that he's slipping more and more spiritualist as as
Speaker 1: he gets older. Well, I mean, he was already a priest,
Speaker 1: so he he had that like significant religious background, and
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to get away from that language, even
Speaker 1: if you are a straight up atheist that's your background. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that actually there's this thing that we
Speaker 1: like talk about like the nineteenth century the left being
Speaker 1: very like explicitly materialist and always atheist and stuff. But
Speaker 1: even these people who are like calling themselves atheists are
Speaker 1: still actually doing religioship all of the time. And like
Speaker 1: we we always try to did not by it, but
Speaker 1: it especially I think as people get older, Um, I
Speaker 1: think that people tend to drop materialism and start engaging
Speaker 1: more with religion as a well. Religion is also just
Speaker 1: like such a powerful organizing tool and it's great if
Speaker 1: you can use that language to the advantage of your movement. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And and Islam at this point in the late nineteenth
Speaker 1: century is tending more radical radical in a positive way,
Speaker 1: as I would describe it, um, the more like roughly
Speaker 1: more socialist e direction. You've got this guy, his name
Speaker 1: is Jamala than al Afghani, and he's an Islamic thinker,
Speaker 1: and he's a leader who's trying to fight Western colonialism,
Speaker 1: and he's also trying to introduce reforms into Islam to
Speaker 1: make it more justin good he fights for Muslim Hindu
Speaker 1: solidarity and driving the Brits out of India. And he's
Speaker 1: just like extra cool and interesting because he wasn't drive
Speaker 1: out Western powers by becoming conservative as fuck like say
Speaker 1: Isis or the Taliban you know, largely try to do now,
Speaker 1: but instead to seek political reforms that would help Islam
Speaker 1: return to its as he would perceive it. It's real
Speaker 1: roots of carrying injustice, not orthodoxy in law. And it
Speaker 1: becomes super beautiful, I know, and he and he believed
Speaker 1: that this was the path to um help Islam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: drive out the colonists. And this guy keeps getting kicked
Speaker 1: out of everywhere and he keeps helping plant assassinations, and
Speaker 1: it's like, no wonder this Russian anarchist guy liked him
Speaker 1: because he sounds just like the Russian anarchist. He's not
Speaker 1: an anarchist, but he preaches love in resistance and he
Speaker 1: gets kicked out of everywhere and he like tries to
Speaker 1: murder people and he just keeps going. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like very familiar. I think I want to learn more
Speaker 1: about him one day. Unfortunately it was like outside aside
Speaker 1: thing as I worked through this in her adult life,
Speaker 1: Isabel is very much a Muslim. She holds that she
Speaker 1: never converted to Islam because she was. She says she
Speaker 1: was born a Muslim with muzz Russian father and a
Speaker 1: Christian Russian mother, which is okay, so she's lying, but
Speaker 1: she's she's also not about to say, like what what
Speaker 1: did I miss? What? I want to interject and say
Speaker 1: that the people who convert to Islam. I know of
Speaker 1: two people who just say that. They're like, I didn't becommon,
Speaker 1: I didn't become Muslim. I realized that I was interesting.
Speaker 1: And so that is that is. I don't know like
Speaker 1: how codified that is in terms of, you know, how
Speaker 1: everybody converts to Islam, but that is absolutely what Shad
Speaker 1: O'Connor said, and that's what another very dear friend of
Speaker 1: mine said when she converted, because that's not the language
Speaker 1: she uses when she recognized herself as a Muslim. So
Speaker 1: that is, that's that's important. That's a thing to understand
Speaker 1: coming from Christian culture, as we do know that that
Speaker 1: or Judeo Christian. Yeah, that's interesting and it makes some
Speaker 1: sense and I think that ties into it. But she's
Speaker 1: also like she's claiming a specific existence of a specific
Speaker 1: father who's a Turkish, sometimes a Muslim, Russian and sometimes
Speaker 1: Turkish Muslim, and she's making this this character up. But
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that she's like, because she doesn't officially
Speaker 1: know who her dad is, she invents this Muslim father
Speaker 1: in order to accept it. But her her father was
Speaker 1: an Armenian from a Turkish Muslim background, So it's like
Speaker 1: she's kind of claiming the truth by lying, and it's
Speaker 1: like really weird way. But she also is absolutely someone
Speaker 1: who's going to like take on identities and refused to
Speaker 1: be getting kept about them, like because some of the
Speaker 1: people who like her mother later is going to more
Speaker 1: properly like sort of convert to Islam. But uh, as
Speaker 1: she grows up, she's like, oh my god, I gotta
Speaker 1: go to Magreb, which is the word for the Muslim
Speaker 1: parts of North Africa. She starts fantasizing about it and
Speaker 1: kind of classic exoticization ways. She's like, Wow, that's where
Speaker 1: like the real stuff is happening, not like boring old Europe.
Speaker 1: And she's like always talking about being like the beauty
Speaker 1: of the wild Orient and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. In the meantime, she's eighteen nineteen years old.
Speaker 1: She's spending time in town dressed like a sailor boy.
Speaker 1: Books say her dad insisted she just like a man
Speaker 1: to go into town, but everything implies that she's a
Speaker 1: percent down with us. She dresses like a sailor, She
Speaker 1: goes around, she gets drunk. She hooks up with Mary,
Speaker 1: a married man who stoked about kissing a girl just
Speaker 1: like a boy, because she doesn't change. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: people that she tries to flirt with or like you,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're a boy or a girl,
Speaker 1: or what race or nationality you are. So no, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gross. Whenever I read about women in history present masculine,
Speaker 1: I always run across every guy observing them, like needing
Speaker 1: to make it real clear, either like wow, they're so hot,
Speaker 1: or like you, what an ugly bitch? Because nothing changes,
Speaker 1: everything is exactly. Yeah, we need to we need to know,
Speaker 1: you need to know what their dick thought about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wait till we get to the part where everyone conjectures
Speaker 1: about isabel ever Heart's interest in anal sex so way
Speaker 1: to not get pregnant. That is the conjecture that people
Speaker 1: are making, yes, um so during this time, she's nineteen
Speaker 1: years old, she's heavily involved in anarchism in the Russian
Speaker 1: exile community. She uses her youth and disguise skills and
Speaker 1: her family connections to move about. She referred to it
Speaker 1: later as she was the secretary to the Central Council
Speaker 1: of Russian Terrorists, And she might have been I know, right,
Speaker 1: she was like probably trying to impress people when she
Speaker 1: said that, but she also wasn't lying, you know what
Speaker 1: a life. I know her dad was this big deal
Speaker 1: and that like let's kill Russian autocrats movement. She doesn't
Speaker 1: last too long in the anarchist movement though. Overall. Basically
Speaker 1: she's like, it's too organized for me. She wants individual
Speaker 1: freedom to just do whatever she wants, not solemnly work
Speaker 1: in secret societies to make zars explode. And she wants
Speaker 1: a different sort of adventure. She wants less duty, more romance,
Speaker 1: less materialism, and more mysticism. So she starts writing at
Speaker 1: this point. I think she's been writing in her whole life,
Speaker 1: but she starts publishing at this point under the name
Speaker 1: Nicholas put Alinski, and her first part, which is interesting
Speaker 1: because it's her brother's name, Nicholas, the brother she doesn't like,
Speaker 1: but Yeah, it's like ha ha suka taking the name
Speaker 1: from you. Yeah, totally. Oh ship. There's that meme recently
Speaker 1: about like non binary people or like trans people, how
Speaker 1: they choose to name themselves and what d indie alignment
Speaker 1: it makes them and the chaotic evil one is steal
Speaker 1: someone else's name. M hm. So what is that coup
Speaker 1: song that's like I forget, It's like I want to
Speaker 1: drink a good looker and and fucking start a re Lucian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that is her and she's um. She's also
Speaker 1: wants to write edge Lord fiction about necrophilia, which is
Speaker 1: also a classic coup. No, probably not. Yeah, what is that?
Speaker 1: Is that like part of the like different ideas about
Speaker 1: like sexual liberation at the time. No, I think she's
Speaker 1: just a weird god who wants to funck corps. Isn't
Speaker 1: as obsessed with death. Her first published story, when she's eighteen,
Speaker 1: is under the name Nicholas potlin Ski and it's called Infernalia,
Speaker 1: and it's about a romantic and sexual attraction to the
Speaker 1: dead as a way of understanding the death or within us.
Speaker 1: All you know, you do, you do? You is able
Speaker 1: ever heart and if you want to do you express
Speaker 1: your individuality by buying lifestyle that's advertised to you by
Speaker 1: the advertisers to the show, by into the culture of death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this show is sponsored by the culture of death. Maybe, Sophie,
Speaker 1: just capital Isn't that just capitalism? Oh? That's true. But
Speaker 1: what if we like made it cool, like make death good? Oh?
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna I thought you're gonna say, what
Speaker 1: if we made capitalism cool? Like? It isn't that? It
Speaker 1: isn't not this podcast. I think that's I think that's
Speaker 1: what's happening. That's what the advertisers are trying to do.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, here's the people we're talking about, the advertisers,
Speaker 1: and we're back. Hi. Hello, how did you enjoy those
Speaker 1: products and or services? Usually when I listened to these podcasts,
Speaker 1: I usually just get podcasts. I get ads about other podcasts,
Speaker 1: which is pretty innocuous. What do you usually get? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I get podcasts and um, you know, people with extremely
Speaker 1: smartie voices selling things. It's just like it's all in
Speaker 1: the tone. Even if it's like people whose voices I
Speaker 1: like you, there's the smarminess. Yeah, I get complaints about
Speaker 1: smartiness about every ad Ever, thank you for thank you
Speaker 1: for taking all all that nonsense on. Even if they
Speaker 1: like the ad still reads as a complaint. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's like, man, you know it's really
Speaker 1: cool is the fact that in order to do this
Speaker 1: and spend the amount of hours it takes to research
Speaker 1: one of these episodes, I need to get paid for it,
Speaker 1: and therefore I need to get some capitalist institution to
Speaker 1: interact with me. Like, no one's like that. Rules, Like,
Speaker 1: of course the ads suck their ads, their ads, and
Speaker 1: we have they're mostly all programmatic and we have no
Speaker 1: idea what they are and have no saying and don't
Speaker 1: have any approval were action on them. Yeah, the good
Speaker 1: the goodness of potatoes is supporting us all. But we
Speaker 1: still need dollars. Yeah, yeah, I think we all have
Speaker 1: dogs mouths we need to feed. Okay, it's true that
Speaker 1: is something we determined ahead of time before and and
Speaker 1: dogs dogs dental bills. I've learned. I'm just brush my
Speaker 1: dog's teeth, Margaret, Margaret learned so many things today. We're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it at that and not tell anyone else
Speaker 1: what I've learned. So she's anyway, Like we were talking about,
Speaker 1: isabel Lebrhard she's not yet twenty and she's publishing fiction.
Speaker 1: I don't see if I can do this normally. And
Speaker 1: she's publishing translations of Russian No, I can't. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it's not that that was a cool little bit. Yeah, thanks,
Speaker 1: so totally okay. So she's publishing fiction, and she's publishing
Speaker 1: translations of Russian poets and ship. Meanwhile, her older probably
Speaker 1: full brother, Augustine, he's legally a de murder, probably Alexander's kid. Also,
Speaker 1: he's the black sheep, which is impressive. It's hard to
Speaker 1: be a black sheep and a family where one half
Speaker 1: of the family has fucked off to um crush Russian
Speaker 1: peasantry beneath their heels. And one of the other kids
Speaker 1: is abe lebber Heart, like one of the most famous
Speaker 1: drug ease in history. But the family funk up is Augustine.
Speaker 1: They're morederm. How did he earn this? He just kind
Speaker 1: of like he just got like drunk and hung out,
Speaker 1: but he didn't like do anything cool with it, Like
Speaker 1: if you're going to be like a drunk funk up
Speaker 1: like go adventure. I guess it's the lesson anarchy. Dad
Speaker 1: tries to get him into chemistry, school, but he was
Speaker 1: more into drugs and hanging out on the street and
Speaker 1: occasionally would come home to steal money. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think the family was like, not mad, just disappointed about
Speaker 1: all of this, like tried to help him out a lot,
Speaker 1: because when I imagine Alexander, um, I don't imagine him
Speaker 1: minding the stealing. He the villa was paid for by
Speaker 1: money that he stole, you know. But Augustine black sheep brother,
Speaker 1: her and Isabel were super close. It's possible that she
Speaker 1: was sleeping with him as a teenager. Historians liked conjecture.
Speaker 1: They corresponded a bunch and talked about remember those kisses
Speaker 1: as we stole when no one was watching. Is all
Speaker 1: very tragic and European nobility. I don't know. Yeah. At
Speaker 1: one point Augustin joined the French Foreign Legion. Isabel applied
Speaker 1: him for information about North Africa. Then he wanted to leave,
Speaker 1: and Alexander had to intercede on his behalf. Basically he
Speaker 1: was like, I'm such a funk up, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: join the French Foreign Legion. And then like the French
Speaker 1: Foreign Legion had like a sign on the wall in
Speaker 1: the recruitment office that was like, look, you're dead now,
Speaker 1: and we're just going to decide where you die, which
Speaker 1: is not a very positive thing for a recruitment office. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's terrifying. Yeah, So he's like, oh god, I think
Speaker 1: he likes Soper sup And he's like, oh god, what
Speaker 1: have I done? And Alexander Trofinovski anarchy Dad has to
Speaker 1: intercede on his behalf and kind have threatened to make
Speaker 1: it an international incident if the French Foreign Legion doesn't
Speaker 1: kick him out and he doesn't show up and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a super cool nihilist. I'll blow you up if
Speaker 1: you don't let him go. Instead, he's like, that's a
Speaker 1: day murder you got there. If you it's gonna get messy.
Speaker 1: If you just just let him go, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a good targeted message. So Isabel tries to get so
Speaker 1: Augustin gets out. Isabel tries to get him to move
Speaker 1: to Algiers or something so she can go hang out
Speaker 1: there because she really wants to go to North Africa.
Speaker 1: But instead he just like keeps doing drugs in Switzerland
Speaker 1: maybe France. At this point, he might have moved to
Speaker 1: Marseille at this point, I'm not sure. When he moves
Speaker 1: to Marseilles, So she's like kind of drugs as he doing.
Speaker 1: I don't know about him. I know there's alcohol. I
Speaker 1: think it's not hashish. That's more what Isabel Blaba Heart's
Speaker 1: getting really into. But I like don't know I would.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like drum up what I know about
Speaker 1: like Victorian European drugs and like probably like morphine and
Speaker 1: laudanum and right that stuff. Yeah, do you know, do
Speaker 1: you have a good sense of Victorian? I remember this
Speaker 1: little factoid that's just like so incredible to me, and
Speaker 1: I will probably get this wrong, but um, this is
Speaker 1: how I learned that the man who invented the syringe
Speaker 1: his wife was the first Haroin addict that trucks. Oh
Speaker 1: oh no, uh yeah, but that's yeah, for everything you named,
Speaker 1: that sounds super plausible. I can't think of anything else. Well,
Speaker 1: I do know that there was this like Victorian fat.
Speaker 1: This might have been more English. It's fat for o
Speaker 1: rangatang adrenaline. Good fucking god, I know. Which is just like,
Speaker 1: how can we make drugs even more orientalists and involve
Speaker 1: of oppressing various people in other countries? And the answer
Speaker 1: is a rangatang adrenaline. Um, yeah, that's terrifying. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: Isabel aber Heart, She's like, fuck it, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: I'll go myself to North Africa. And so she starts
Speaker 1: corresponding with a ton of people under a ton of
Speaker 1: different names and personas. She would have fucking loved the Internet.
Speaker 1: She's writing Islamic thinkers to ask questions about faith. She's
Speaker 1: writing French soldiers and algiers to learn about what their
Speaker 1: country is like. She's discussing like how to translate Russian
Speaker 1: poetry into Arabic with people like all over the world beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the family, like mom and sort of dad,
Speaker 1: they've pulled off the caper of a lifetime. They've you know,
Speaker 1: stolen the inheritance and the children. As they keep going
Speaker 1: on about twenty years later, it looks like they might
Speaker 1: be in trouble for that. Nicholas de Murder, the oldest son,
Speaker 1: the one who would run away back to Russia. It
Speaker 1: is his life's work to get revenge. Which fair They
Speaker 1: might have killed his dad and then stolen him and
Speaker 1: you know whatever, Like I'm on a side in this fight,
Speaker 1: but it's like fair that the other side is fighting yea.
Speaker 1: And the Vladimir, the middle brother, the one who would
Speaker 1: halfheartedly run away from home, He's back at the villa
Speaker 1: and Nicholas is pleading with him, like, hey, Bud runaway
Speaker 1: joined despot family with me in Russia. And Vladimir is
Speaker 1: not sure, and then Nicholas start sending him letters that
Speaker 1: are like, you better get out because we're gonna funk
Speaker 1: up the villa and everyone in it. And if you
Speaker 1: don't get out, you're fucked. So the whole family is like,
Speaker 1: maybe Switzerland isn't the place for us anymore, Maybe we
Speaker 1: should go somewhere else. And Isabelle she's like, Algeria, Algeria, Algeria.
Speaker 1: I'm totally obsessed with Algeria. We have to move to Algeria.
Speaker 1: So the family moved to Algeria, at least isabel and
Speaker 1: her mother, with one brother and dad remaining behind to
Speaker 1: try and sell the villa to various cact enthusiasts. Wow,
Speaker 1: they have trouble moving the cactus farm. People aren't people
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily excited about buying the weird cult anarchy cactus
Speaker 1: commune practuses are amazing. I mean, that's that's the Huntington's
Speaker 1: gardens here it's just like some crazy rich person's incredible
Speaker 1: cactus collection and that rules. It's so beautiful. I I
Speaker 1: really appreciate that this is just a man with a
Speaker 1: hobby and it matters to him as much as anything
Speaker 1: else that's going on in his life. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes those collections, it really preserves like the
Speaker 1: last of species. Yeah, yeah, I want to know more
Speaker 1: about his Like it keeps basically referring to it as
Speaker 1: like part of what's wrong with him, you know, is
Speaker 1: that he's like obsessed with this stuff. But he likes
Speaker 1: spent all of his days in his hot house with
Speaker 1: cactuses and orchids, And I'm like, so he's clearly trying
Speaker 1: to he's trying to do like hard gardening, you know,
Speaker 1: he's trying to do gardening on hard mode and super.
Speaker 1: It was like it was scientific at the time, but like,
Speaker 1: I mean, they were wrong about hot houses. You don't
Speaker 1: need a hot house for orchids. Oh interesting, Okay, yeah
Speaker 1: they used to think, Well it was right, that's part
Speaker 1: of it. Sophia is not an orchid? Is that an
Speaker 1: orchid from your dad behind me? There? Yeah, Well there
Speaker 1: aren't any orchids down here, but it is hard to
Speaker 1: tell what things are behind me, but there are some.
Speaker 1: I do have several Dad orchids upstairs. I'm I'm the
Speaker 1: I'm the person in my circle of friends who gets
Speaker 1: all the orchids that nobody wants to to funk with. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: that's my dad. That's like his main thing is like
Speaker 1: this orchid that hasn't been showing you anything for seven
Speaker 1: thousand years, look at the bloom and that's great for him.
Speaker 1: That's really really sweet. Yeah, I mean, I'm I only
Speaker 1: have one orchid right now, but it's uh it has
Speaker 1: three stocks instead of the two that it had last year,
Speaker 1: So I'm really excited. That's awesome and not easy to do.
Speaker 1: As I've been told by my dad. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy if you just know what to do. They
Speaker 1: just like to be I'm gonna be like, oh that
Speaker 1: thing you brag about heart, it was easy. Sorry, maybe
Speaker 1: get out of the hothouse. Uh they yeah, they like
Speaker 1: to be ignored. Yes, they just need the right kind
Speaker 1: of lighting. And while we're here, that myth that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to put an ice cube into orchids, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds I never did it because it just sounded
Speaker 1: kind of cruel, like I wouldn't want um like an
Speaker 1: ice cube on my feet, so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: stick ice cube in my orchid yair so Algeria. Um,
Speaker 1: it's in North Africa. The whole region is called mc
Speaker 1: grab a lot of the time at this point, which
Speaker 1: is means the West because it's the western part of
Speaker 1: the Islamic world. Sometimes the area is called its called
Speaker 1: the Barbary Coast in the nineteenth century because the Berbers
Speaker 1: and indigenous people that region. Wow, okay, I needed to
Speaker 1: know that. I've heard about the Barbary Coast and I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was. I know it sounds like
Speaker 1: really it sounds like even more racist of a name
Speaker 1: than like something else, because it sounds like a Barbarian
Speaker 1: I guess exactly. Well, now, I like wonder I wish
Speaker 1: I had looked up the etymology of Barbarian because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be shocked. Actually, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 1: look up the etymology, okay. So so I just looked
Speaker 1: it up, and Barbarian means people who are foreigners, basically
Speaker 1: from German and from Arabic. But it um, it's the
Speaker 1: admology goes the other way the Berbers got their name
Speaker 1: because of them being called Barbarians, so apparently, but at
Speaker 1: least that's as of a really quick Internet search. And
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, I'm terribly sorry. So does Barbary Coast
Speaker 1: mean like a Barbarian coast? But I think they get
Speaker 1: called the Barbary Coast because of the Berber people. I
Speaker 1: think it went. I think it went Barbarian means any
Speaker 1: foreigner because they sound funny, and then the Barbers, the
Speaker 1: Berbers got called that, and then the coast got called that,
Speaker 1: I think. But the whole history of this area is
Speaker 1: also a lot of crazy back and forth, because it's
Speaker 1: the history of various empires and colonial forces conquering it
Speaker 1: and trading it back and forth. In the period we're
Speaker 1: talking about, You've got Algeria, which is first taken by
Speaker 1: the French in eight but they didn't take it from
Speaker 1: the indigenous people of the region. They took it from
Speaker 1: the hi An Empire sort of, who since the hundreds
Speaker 1: had in various levels of control, and the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: took it from Spain again sort of. Spain kept trying
Speaker 1: to control Algae's to various degrees of success before thirteen
Speaker 1: O two was largely controlled by people were actually from there.
Speaker 1: But if you go even back further, the Romans had it,
Speaker 1: and honestly, just the history of the Mediterranean is a
Speaker 1: lot of people coming and fucking with it. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I have a really beautiful Tunisian rug here, this thing
Speaker 1: with the carball on it. Nice, it's it's a twenty
Speaker 1: years old and I got it off Craig's list. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: How do you know it was a hundred twenty years
Speaker 1: old because the dude was like a textiles collector that
Speaker 1: specialized in North African stuff. It was it was cheap. Yes,
Speaker 1: the light of my life at the time. It's so
Speaker 1: happy to get it. Yeah. So this is the area
Speaker 1: that this family wants to move is Algeria during French
Speaker 1: occupation and Isabelle and Mom moved there as the advance guard,
Speaker 1: and they're definitely doing an orientalism here. They're not moving
Speaker 1: there in a colonial context because they're on the run
Speaker 1: from the Empire. They're fighting the Empire, which is the
Speaker 1: reason one of them is quote Russian at all, because
Speaker 1: of you know, the Russian Empire stealing Armenia. But it's
Speaker 1: it's also worth noting at this point French Algeria is
Speaker 1: not just a colonial project but an orientalist romanticism. Napoleon
Speaker 1: the Third, who had recently been in charge, had been
Speaker 1: really into the idea of how like he was going
Speaker 1: to kindly rule and be a good emperor these super
Speaker 1: cool neat savages or whatever. And yeah, they're like frances
Speaker 1: on like a gentler kindler colonialism kick um. And it's
Speaker 1: specifically just ties into Orientalism in some ways, like makes
Speaker 1: I mean ori Analism is like pretty old. But it's
Speaker 1: like really big thing going on at this point. And
Speaker 1: after all, says Napoleon the Third, what is northern Africa
Speaker 1: but basically just France interrupted by a big and land sea.
Speaker 1: And so it's like it's a alonial project that's meant
Speaker 1: to be kinder as in like they're basically France as
Speaker 1: compared to like that's the place we're just going to
Speaker 1: go rob resources from it. Yeah, no, it's it's not
Speaker 1: in any way. Better family moves there to a city
Speaker 1: that was then called Bone and is now called Anaba,
Speaker 1: and it's the third biggest city. It's in the northeastern
Speaker 1: corner of the country. They issue the French areas. For
Speaker 1: the Arab areas um people they have more culturally and
Speaker 1: linguistically in common with, although I suspect they're still outsiders
Speaker 1: in these areas. Isabelle continues her pseudonyms and dressing like
Speaker 1: a man more and more. She s Mohmed Sadi, a
Speaker 1: name that she's been using for a while at this point,
Speaker 1: but it like stops being a penpell name and it
Speaker 1: starts being like her name. When she goes about her
Speaker 1: life and she refers to herself basically as a tomboy.
Speaker 1: She talks about her own gender in a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways at a lot of different times. It was
Speaker 1: less that she always wanted to pass as a man,
Speaker 1: but instead it was about being socially treated as a man,
Speaker 1: and for the most part it worked. She'd often be
Speaker 1: a mistaken for a man at first glance, but usually
Speaker 1: not for very long, and then she would reveal herself
Speaker 1: or be revealed as a woman and have the person
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, that's true. I'll still just keep treating
Speaker 1: like a man if that's what you want. And it
Speaker 1: sounds really nice, I know, I know. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a bit more about how all of that. How
Speaker 1: she gets away with that, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: has to do with a lot of it has to
Speaker 1: do with being in a Muslim country in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century versus being in Europe in the nineteenth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think so. I don't know a whole
Speaker 1: lot about that that sort of thing in Islamic culture,
Speaker 1: but I think about you know, as a musician, I
Speaker 1: know a little bit about um kal Sum's life, and
Speaker 1: I know that she dressed as a boy when she
Speaker 1: was out singing with her father when she was a kid.
Speaker 1: Who is this umkal Sum? She's like one of the
Speaker 1: greatest singers in in Arabic okay, Egyptian singer. Absolutely astounding,
Speaker 1: really really wonderful person. She she did a lot of
Speaker 1: fundraising to try to create the nation of the independent
Speaker 1: Nation of Egypt through her work as a as a singer,
Speaker 1: and she worked with all these amazing modern poets, and
Speaker 1: she's the first Egyptian composer to use electric guitar in
Speaker 1: her work. She's absolutely astounding. Please check Kelsom out. Yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I've I've learned mostly about nineteenth
Speaker 1: century conceptions of gender um in North Africa, and like
Speaker 1: it's interesting to know how it does and doesn't relate
Speaker 1: to more modern conceptions, you know. And and so basically
Speaker 1: she goes around the city. She's fucking and drink and
Speaker 1: smoking hashish, and she's just having a jolly good old
Speaker 1: time of being twenty years old in the big city.
Speaker 1: And she yeah, yeah, she's just sucking doing her life.
Speaker 1: She makes her money writing about her experiences in the
Speaker 1: life in Algeria and selling them in European magazines. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: her aging mother, Natalie de moder formally converts to Islam
Speaker 1: and changes her name to fat Minobia. She's sixty, is
Speaker 1: it Fatima? I believe it's Fatma, but I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely certain. She's sixty. Issue, she's ill health and not
Speaker 1: long after she dies, and she so right before she
Speaker 1: she dies. Basically, she converts to Islam. She cuts her
Speaker 1: trader kids, Natalie and Nicholas, the two had gone back
Speaker 1: to Russia, out of the will, and leaves the money
Speaker 1: to her boyfriend and the remaining radical kids, which is
Speaker 1: part of my whole Like she has agency and as
Speaker 1: part of this massive grift to rob the Russian aristocracy
Speaker 1: that she's from, you know, like on her deathbed, She's like,
Speaker 1: this is still what matters to me. Well, the I mean,
Speaker 1: the Russian aristocracy is it's just so shocking the kind
Speaker 1: of wealth that they amassed, and it was by slavery.
Speaker 1: It was completely horrific. I was over in Russia like
Speaker 1: I don't know, like two thousand four or something, um
Speaker 1: and just saw like all the some of the old
Speaker 1: palaces have been turned into museums, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: just completely obscene. Yeah, you don't become the the biggest
Speaker 1: empire one of the Yeah, did you went around robbing people? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And so Isabel's despondent after her mother dies and Alexander anarchy.
Speaker 1: Dad rushes over from Switzerland to Bone when his lifelong
Speaker 1: partner dies, and one older biographer, referencing a source that's
Speaker 1: now lost, says that Isabel told Alexander her I want
Speaker 1: to die with her, and Alexander very much the Russian
Speaker 1: nihilist in this version of the story pulls out a
Speaker 1: revolver and puts it on the table and says, go
Speaker 1: ahead and handed her the choice. Basically, and this makes
Speaker 1: a very dramatic statement and as very Russian nihilist, but
Speaker 1: don't do this and I have no idea whether he
Speaker 1: did this or not. Yeah, not a good idea, no,
Speaker 1: But she she doesn't do it. She doesn't kill herself.
Speaker 1: And you know it's good for getting you out of
Speaker 1: some despondency. This isn't an ad transition. This isn't This
Speaker 1: is a transition to what I actually wish I was advertising.
Speaker 1: In the show Revolution, Machman gets caught up in a revolution.
Speaker 1: Revolution is in the air. It's march. Muslim students are
Speaker 1: starting to get real fucking pissed at the colonial administration
Speaker 1: of their country. And Isabelle is like, damn, I hope
Speaker 1: it doesn't come to violence, but if it does, And now,
Speaker 1: instead of paraphrasing her, I'm gonna actually quote her. If
Speaker 1: the fight becomes inevitable, I won't hesitate for a single instant,
Speaker 1: because it would be cowardice. And that makes me smile.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I shall be fighting for the Muslim revolutionaries like
Speaker 1: I used to for the Russian anarchists, although with more
Speaker 1: conviction and more real hatred against depression. I feel now
Speaker 1: that I'm much more deeply a Muslim than I was
Speaker 1: an anarchist. And so She's goes out at a demonstration
Speaker 1: and the French police attack and the crowd fights back
Speaker 1: with daggers and revolvers, and she's in it, and there's
Speaker 1: some more quotes from her. My chest was pounding and
Speaker 1: my head spinning deliciously. I saw Blifia in front of
Speaker 1: me brandishing a truncheon. At every moment, it slashed into
Speaker 1: the surrounding police, cracking into skulls and arms raised in defense.
Speaker 1: Reba Bolifia seemed transfigured. He seemed to me to have
Speaker 1: an ineffable mystical beauty. And well, I know, I guess
Speaker 1: even better. I believe that this will mark the first
Speaker 1: person I featured on this show to fight cops by
Speaker 1: wielding a sword. Yeah, almost a year, but we got there.
Speaker 1: Did she did she learn Like did she learn sword
Speaker 1: in like a bougee context when she was like on
Speaker 1: the family estate back in back in Russia, or like
Speaker 1: do we know anything about that? I don't know about
Speaker 1: how much fighting she's learned in her life. Um this
Speaker 1: is There's going to be two moments in her life
Speaker 1: that I'm aware of where she like reaches for a
Speaker 1: sword and gets some sword involved in some fighting ship.
Speaker 1: But I straight up don't know. Um, she's spends all
Speaker 1: of her time, like drinking and hanging out with sailors,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't put it past her. And also she
Speaker 1: totally could have learned whatever the Russian air aristocratic fencing was.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. It's it's really great to hear
Speaker 1: a poet's voice from that moment, you know, yeah, totally, yeah,
Speaker 1: like talking about it, like my head was spinning deliciously,
Speaker 1: so yeah, and like she's like, oh, my comrade looks
Speaker 1: so beautiful right now. Right. So, her friend of a
Speaker 1: friend of hers is surrounded by cops and she's trying
Speaker 1: and he probably friends probably he is trying to hold
Speaker 1: them off with only a dagger. So she picks up
Speaker 1: a fucking sword and runs at the cops, saving her friend,
Speaker 1: and cut to black. I don't know what happened. I'm
Speaker 1: so annoyed. I don't know whether she fucked up a
Speaker 1: cop or she just scared the cops off. But by
Speaker 1: wielding a sword, she successfully defended her friend, who had
Speaker 1: only a dagger against forearm police officers and the students
Speaker 1: were outnumbered. They're driven back a ton or arrested. She
Speaker 1: flees through the alleys and the next day she flees
Speaker 1: the country on a steamer to France because the colonial
Speaker 1: police are extra alert for any foreigners helping the Muslim rebels.
Speaker 1: And that's where we're gonna leave it today. She's grown up,
Speaker 1: a radical, She's moved to Algeria, she stayed a radical,
Speaker 1: And when we come back, we'll get to see her
Speaker 1: more as history sees her as a vagabond, a mystic,
Speaker 1: a writer, and one complicated as fuck figure in the
Speaker 1: history of North Africa. Plus we get to meet her
Speaker 1: dog whoa Sophie smiled because I said dogs, I did.
Speaker 1: I smiled, really vague. That's exciting. Um do we do?
Speaker 1: We have anything we'd like to plug at the end
Speaker 1: here from either of you? Totally what you got going on?
Speaker 1: I have so many things going on. I'm doing a
Speaker 1: hilarious thing right now with my Patreon where I'm releasing
Speaker 1: a very sketchy recording of me playing Tom Waits covers
Speaker 1: every single Monday and then calling it the Waits Thon.
Speaker 1: But by the time this comes out, maybe The Waits
Speaker 1: Than will be all done. But anyway, my Patreon is cool,
Speaker 1: and um, I have a record coming out. I don't know,
Speaker 1: the summer, the fall. Who knows? It's hard to figure
Speaker 1: out with vinyl production, but that record will be called
Speaker 1: Haunted Mountain. And my wonderful friend Buck Meek, who is
Speaker 1: in the band Big Thief, is also releasing his solo record,
Speaker 1: also called Haunted Mountain because a bunch of songs together.
Speaker 1: Where can people follow you online so they can keep
Speaker 1: up with your music and other works? Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for asking. Uh Instagram, I'm Jolie Holland Music and uh,
Speaker 1: I think I'm the same on the Twitter, which I'm
Speaker 1: still at. Yeah, and Margaret, you have a book coming out,
Speaker 1: It's true you can still for another short moment of time,
Speaker 1: depending on when you're listening to this, pre order my
Speaker 1: upcoming book, Escape from Insul Island, which is published by
Speaker 1: Strangers and the Tangled Wilderness. And if you order it,
Speaker 1: it's a fun devella. If you have a short attention span,
Speaker 1: it's um you can read it in an afternoon. Novella
Speaker 1: means shortest book because I'm a writer who writes short things.
Speaker 1: And you can buy it and if you buy you
Speaker 1: get a poster and you can also follow me on
Speaker 1: the internet. I'm on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy and Twitter
Speaker 1: at Magpie Killjoy. What about you, Sophie. Oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know at cool Zone Media and all the things you
Speaker 1: can find out all the things from that, Margaret, Are
Speaker 1: you going to do an audiobook version of Escape from
Speaker 1: Insult Island? Yes, And I don't entirely know what the
Speaker 1: context will be of how it will be released, so
Speaker 1: I can't answer directly yet, but there will absolutely be
Speaker 1: an audio version of it. And I I consume most
Speaker 1: of my books by audio, like actually the history books
Speaker 1: I read for this book, I read well pacing around
Speaker 1: my living room when my dog paces with me. It's
Speaker 1: very nice. He started pacing with me recently. That's so nice.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. But fiction I tend to read by listening
Speaker 1: to at this point. Yeah, and so we'll be back Wednesday.
Speaker 1: We are two who cool people Who Did? Cool Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media, but more podcast
Speaker 1: the Cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone Media
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: H