Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff? Your
Speaker 1: podcast about Stuff Today? Obviously we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about the nineteen ninety five film Hackers, starring Angeline and Jolie.
Speaker 1: There might be other characters, but I don't see why
Speaker 1: anyone would notice or care. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 1: Actually I'm not your host. I'm my host. I'm my
Speaker 1: own host. I'm Margaret Kiljoy and with me today is
Speaker 1: my guest Lori Penny Laurie, how are you?
Speaker 2: Hellom? All right, pretty late here in London, but it's
Speaker 2: nice to be in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, Laurie, how would you describe yourself if I
Speaker 1: was too lazy to have written a bio?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a writer and I'm a screenwriter, a journalist
Speaker 2: and an essays and various other things that all mean
Speaker 2: I'm a writer, who have it? Who has the Can
Speaker 2: I do that again? Sorry? I'm sorry, Ian. So I'm
Speaker 2: a writer, I'm a journalist, a screenwriter and author and
Speaker 2: essayist and various other things that just mean I know
Speaker 2: a lot of different words from writer, but it sounds
Speaker 2: professional if you listen them that way. And I've been
Speaker 2: writing on writing on TV shows most recently. But I've
Speaker 2: also done a lot of column and journalist work in
Speaker 2: the US and the UK, and I write a lot
Speaker 2: about protest and about politics and philosophy and gender and
Speaker 2: but my my fiction work tends to be that plus
Speaker 2: a whole lot of spoopy, nerdy, intricate, haunty stuff general
Speaker 2: goblin logic. There's a general goblin logic underlying most of
Speaker 2: my professional work.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, Now, since you've said that you write for television,
Speaker 3: I am assuming that you are friends with George Clooney.
Speaker 3: That's that's just my head canon, now, definitely, that's how
Speaker 3: it works. Who I call cluone peg.
Speaker 1: And I sort of know who is. He's the guy
Speaker 1: from r oh great m hm, that's the place that
Speaker 1: you go and give a fake name and social Security
Speaker 1: number two.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, that's right. You also.
Speaker 1: Cool? Well, you know who else had pet pigs?
Speaker 3: That's exactly why I brought it up, all right, Baker
Speaker 3: might have gotten along. Ah, So Margaret, hi h. I
Speaker 3: have I have carried out a vicious coup against Sophie Lichterman,
Speaker 3: your normal producer. My my troops are inside the palace.
Speaker 3: We have taken the major railway stations. Uh, and and
Speaker 3: the broadcasting towers and so you know, I I wanted
Speaker 3: to suggest a new name for your podcast. Uh huh
Speaker 3: who did coup stuff? It's interesting get the joke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you you did a coup. I actually just
Speaker 1: thought you were Sophie the Cold.
Speaker 3: No. No, A lot of people say that, and it.
Speaker 2: Makes much more sense when it's written down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was my entire preparation for today, Laurie was
Speaker 3: writing two people who did coop stuff, nodding and satisfaction
Speaker 3: and then going to play video games.
Speaker 2: That's that is That is very cue.
Speaker 1: And that is actually all that anyone needs to do
Speaker 1: to make it on this show is make one clever
Speaker 1: joke like the guest today who No, they actually did
Speaker 1: more than Okay, So I will continue as if nothing
Speaker 1: had happened and Sophie was still our producer, because clearly
Speaker 1: Sophie will return and free us from this tyrannical Okay,
Speaker 1: So Ian is our audio engineer. I like saying hi, Ian,
Speaker 1: even though Ian can't say back. So yeah, hi Ian.
Speaker 1: Our theme music was written for usd by unwoman, So Laurie, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I'm I quite like it, Laura. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of World War Two?
Speaker 2: Yes, slightly. I think I saw a film about it once.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in America we call it dub Dub dose. But
Speaker 3: but similar.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to I'm trying to translate things into
Speaker 1: British question.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like we got the British Office in
Speaker 3: the US Office. There's some differences, but you know, similar basis.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well it's more optimistic, but I don't
Speaker 2: know not actually, you know what, I objected that comparison
Speaker 2: because that's probably the one show where the American version
Speaker 2: is better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In the American version of World War Two, only
Speaker 3: Tom Hanks dies, if I'm remembering correctly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and the regular version a lot more people died,
Speaker 1: that's true.
Speaker 3: The regular version was nasty.
Speaker 1: So there's this war. It's called World War Two. It's
Speaker 1: the lesser than sequel of the Great War. And one
Speaker 1: thing that happened in this war is that France got
Speaker 1: got by Germany and some sort of takeover, much like
Speaker 1: what Robert has done to us here. This is a
Speaker 1: good comparison, like problems, no problem.
Speaker 2: I can see nothing that could possibly go wrong.
Speaker 1: Now tell me some people tried to stop that takeover
Speaker 1: and then helped retake Europe. That's true. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, Robert,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to say this. Some people tried to retake
Speaker 1: it successfully retook Europe from fascism. Some of those people
Speaker 1: were spies. Have you ever heard of Josephine Baker.
Speaker 2: Yes, she was a dancer and she was in Paris
Speaker 2: in the twenties and thirties, was it Yep? I feel
Speaker 2: like I could know more about Josephine Baker. I've got
Speaker 2: a friendly meant a daughter after Josephine Baker.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome, which.
Speaker 2: Is why I mugged up on it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Well, good for you. You're going to learn more about Josephine
Speaker 1: Baker today.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited.
Speaker 1: And Robert will hear about Justphine Baker. Actually, yeah, we'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll see. This week, we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: bisexual black woman from Missouri who got the fuck out
Speaker 1: of the US, became one of the most famous people
Speaker 1: in the world, then burned her entire fortune to become
Speaker 1: one of the most effective spies the world has ever seen.
Speaker 1: And that's Justphine Baker.
Speaker 3: So pretty good person to name your kid after But
Speaker 3: I guess that's one of the conclusions we have today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty cool kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah her one. The one weird spot is her kids,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that the way she chose to
Speaker 1: raise her kids. M On June, I like to judge
Speaker 1: people based on people who probably like it's possible that
Speaker 1: if Josephine Baker didn't exist, like not, the Nazis would
Speaker 1: have won the war. That's like not outside the realm
Speaker 1: of possibility. I'm going to ask y'all's opinion about that
Speaker 1: when we get to some of the crucial rights, correct,
Speaker 1: because I feel like y'all's combination of knowledge, Robert knowing
Speaker 1: an ungodly amount about World War Two and you Laurie
Speaker 1: knowing about being from England, these all related.
Speaker 2: Well. Actually, the thing about World War two and being
Speaker 2: British is that I don't know how much World War
Speaker 2: two history you all learn in school, but we I
Speaker 2: think I look World War two history every single year
Speaker 2: in my education, I think, And it's funny British history education.
Speaker 2: There's quite a lot of it. Most of it is
Speaker 2: just about British history, but for some reason, they teach
Speaker 2: us World War two history every single year. But the
Speaker 2: other history teaching mysteriously stops sometime in the mid sixteen
Speaker 2: hundreds and just picks up again in World War One. Honestly, seriously,
Speaker 2: ask any British person who has studied the history at
Speaker 2: school if they learned a line of imperial history. And
Speaker 2: I remember being taught like in the kind of post
Speaker 2: war period that we somehow lost the empire, you know, and.
Speaker 1: It was you'll find it just like if it was like.
Speaker 2: You know, just down in the back of the sofa
Speaker 2: or something. It was never quite it was never explained
Speaker 2: how we came to have this empire, and losing it
Speaker 2: was just from like, oh you know, oh terribly sorry,
Speaker 2: oh Chap, was this yours? So here have it back,
Speaker 2: if it was meant at all, But really it's very conspicuous,
Speaker 2: like several century gap, then just World War two again
Speaker 2: and again and again. The last time that we can
Speaker 2: be reasonably sure and maybe the only time we could
Speaker 2: be reasonably sure we were the good guys.
Speaker 3: Kind of yeah, I mean the US, I think we're
Speaker 3: a little less extreme than that, but like there's definitely
Speaker 3: huge amount of history, everything up to the Revolution and
Speaker 3: then more or less blow over everything until we get
Speaker 3: to the Civil War, right.
Speaker 1: Because we have two moments of good. The US can
Speaker 1: be like, well, we defeat did the Confederacy and we
Speaker 1: defeated the Nazis. Those are the only things that we
Speaker 1: can say positively in US history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, isn't defeating like my lot kind of
Speaker 2: up there with those tourises not count Okay, So from
Speaker 2: from the US, then I've seen Hamilton. It may be
Speaker 2: very proud to be an American city. I'm not which
Speaker 2: I'm not.
Speaker 1: My opinions about the American Revolutionary War is that it's
Speaker 1: a lateral move from one imperial power to another. But
Speaker 1: that's not a popular take. And yes, it's true that
Speaker 1: the US educational system believes that it was positive.
Speaker 2: All right, off topic already, that.
Speaker 3: Is that is not how mel Gibson described it in
Speaker 3: the movie The Patriot Margaret.
Speaker 1: But oh interesting, interesting, Yeah, that's the one where he
Speaker 1: paints himself blue and grabs a broadsword.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's what that's what women want, okay.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So speaking of anti Semitism, that'll come up later in
Speaker 1: the thing. Not actually not our protagonist. Okay. So on
Speaker 1: June third, nineteen oh six, FRIEDA Josephine McDonald was born
Speaker 1: in a real poor part of Saint Louis, Missouri, like
Speaker 1: a no running water part of town, where half the
Speaker 1: businesses were crime businesses, brothels and other people doing various crime.
Speaker 1: The other half were factories whose primary production seems to
Speaker 1: be pollution. And her and her three siblings, they're all younger.
Speaker 1: They all slept on one mattress on the floor in
Speaker 1: her parents' bedroom. One of her sisters, one of her
Speaker 1: younger sisters, was graced with the single best name that
Speaker 1: anyone can have, which I'm sure you all already know
Speaker 1: what is.
Speaker 3: Here's we are you Harry?
Speaker 1: No Margaret?
Speaker 2: Oh right right? Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's just really important that everyone knows that just
Speaker 1: fantas sister named Margaret and her mother, her mother used
Speaker 1: to say things to her like I wish she'd never
Speaker 1: been born.
Speaker 3: Oh that's no good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she didn't have a good childhood, like an awful
Speaker 1: lot of self made folks and folks for marginalized communities,
Speaker 1: et cetera. She played real fast and loose with details
Speaker 1: about her early life, and a lot is clouded in
Speaker 1: mystery of her early life because she hated her early life,
Speaker 1: and then a lot is clouded in history of her
Speaker 1: war years because she was a spy. And she didn't
Speaker 1: talk about this until like, she never talked about it.
Speaker 1: Really she died in seventy five or something. She survives
Speaker 1: the war spoiler and yeah, and this the details about
Speaker 1: her her spying and stuff didn't come out until a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. One time, an interviewer was like,
Speaker 1: every time you write a memoir, do an interview, you
Speaker 1: change your story about your family background. So what is
Speaker 1: your family background? And her defense of her actions, as
Speaker 1: she said, I don't lie. I improve on life.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, love it. Yeah, that's exactly
Speaker 3: what I say every time I get pulled over by
Speaker 3: the police. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, that and it probably works for you, right, that's
Speaker 1: where you don't have a driver's license.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't need a driver's license because I'm a
Speaker 3: sovereign citizen traveling on the land. Margaret.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Constitution is your driver's license.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're going to do our best with putting together
Speaker 1: her young history. And by our best, I mean I
Speaker 1: will include the stories that I find the most interesting.
Speaker 2: Which is probably what she would have wanted. It's funny
Speaker 2: isn't it trying to Like, you're trying to put together
Speaker 2: a history of somebody who probably didn't want her history
Speaker 2: put together. So it's a little pressure.
Speaker 1: I know. Well, the worst is when they're alive. I yeah.
Speaker 1: Her mother was a black woman who washed clothes for
Speaker 1: a living, who was who had been adopted into a
Speaker 1: black and indigenous family, or was indigenous herself. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of uncertainty about that lineage. Her father was probably
Speaker 1: a random white guy, but she has claimed to have
Speaker 1: a ton of different fathers, like this fancy guy from
Speaker 1: Spain or this other black man or you know, just
Speaker 1: like lots of different people.
Speaker 3: She's claimed it.
Speaker 1: Her childhood nickname was Humpty Dumpty, yeah, which got shortened
Speaker 1: to tumpty I don't know how. And she worked since
Speaker 1: she was young as hell in all kinds of different fields.
Speaker 1: For example, when she was eight, she cleaned and babysat
Speaker 1: for this rich fuck named missus Kaiser. There's no and
Speaker 1: his naming here. One time she put too much soap
Speaker 1: in her boss's laundry, so her white boss burned her hands.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she's not very nice. She got mad at
Speaker 1: one at Josephine at one point and started keeping Josephine
Speaker 1: in the basement with the family dog, who Josephine loved
Speaker 1: and called three legs for reasons that are probably self evident.
Speaker 1: Has to do with the number of legs that the
Speaker 1: dog had.
Speaker 3: Oh fascinating, Yeah, a.
Speaker 1: Little bit more self evident than Humpty dumpty. She shared
Speaker 1: her little bits of food with that dog. She grew
Speaker 1: very close. She loved animals, This is a lifelong thing
Speaker 1: for her. Missus Kaiser had a white rooster whom Josephine
Speaker 1: named Tiny Tim, and once Tiny Tim was big enough,
Speaker 1: missus Kaiser made Josephine kill it with scissors. Josephine's like eight,
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, well, so Josephine the whole time, and
Speaker 1: then ran away and never went back to missus Kaiser.
Speaker 1: The first time she ever made money dancing, she was
Speaker 1: about eight or so also, and this snake oil salesman
Speaker 1: came through town selling fake medicine and he'd use theater
Speaker 1: to attract a crowd on the street. This culminated in
Speaker 1: a dance competition in which young Josephine won, and the
Speaker 1: prize was a dollar, which is about twenty five dollars today.
Speaker 1: So this was like a fairly big deal. She styled
Speaker 1: her dancing based on the animals that she loved, like
Speaker 1: she would like consciously mimic the dancing the movements of
Speaker 1: different animals, which later led to really weird shit because
Speaker 1: she's this black woman dancing for mostly a white audience
Speaker 1: and people keep referring to her dances as like animalistic
Speaker 1: in this like very fetishizing, shitty way. But it's like that, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's also awkward because she is also consciously styling
Speaker 1: her dancing on animals.
Speaker 2: Her favorite animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so she loves theaters since she's really small.
Speaker 1: Theaters were around even in her neighborhood, including one that
Speaker 1: would have different like ethnicity nights, like there was like
Speaker 1: an Egypt thing, an Egypt themed night and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and Josephine wasn't going to those, but they influenced the
Speaker 1: culture of the part of town she lived in. So
Speaker 1: one of her friend's older brothers set up a basement
Speaker 1: theater and charged a penny for attendance, and so she
Speaker 1: danced in the chorus line and later set up a
Speaker 1: similar club in her own basement. And then in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: when she was eleven, she saw some white people burning
Speaker 1: a whole lot of black people's stuff in the East
Speaker 1: Saint Lewis massacre, when white pieces of shit murdered between
Speaker 1: thirty nine and one hundred and fifty black people and
Speaker 1: burned a fuck ton of the houses and left six
Speaker 1: thousand people homeless. And this is out of a fairly
Speaker 1: small black population at the time. White cops in the
Speaker 1: National Guard just let it happen. They got told not
Speaker 1: to shoot the white rioters and so they just like
Speaker 1: stepped back, and I suspect a lot of them were
Speaker 1: joining in, and maybe a third of the black people
Speaker 1: left Saint Louis after that. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: to bring it up is because it's a dark period
Speaker 1: of labor history, because unions have never done anything wrong right.
Speaker 1: Unions in the US were often white only, and so
Speaker 1: owners used that to break the working class. They would
Speaker 1: import black strike breakers who were desperate for work. So
Speaker 1: the strikers just decided to attack all the black people
Speaker 1: moving to the city. So it is actually a union
Speaker 1: thing that caused all of this. And this is one
Speaker 1: of Josephine's earliest memories. She said about it later, I
Speaker 1: can still see myself standing on the west bank of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi, looking over into East Saint Louis and watching
Speaker 1: the glow of the burning Negro homes lighting the sky.
Speaker 1: We children stood huddled together in bewilderment, rightened to death
Speaker 1: with the screams of the Negro families running across this
Speaker 1: bridge with nothing but what they had on their backs
Speaker 1: as their worldly belongings. She worked other jobs in addition
Speaker 1: to watching horrible things happen and dancing. The coolest job,
Speaker 1: from my point of view, is that she was a
Speaker 1: coal thief. I don't know if you've either of you
Speaker 1: have ever had this job.
Speaker 2: But she ran so the job a person can have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, and certainly in Saint Louis at the time.
Speaker 1: She ran with a gang of street kids in Saint Louis,
Speaker 1: and so they'd steal from the coal trains. Josephine would
Speaker 1: climb up on the trains while they were moving slow
Speaker 1: and just like climb up to the top of the
Speaker 1: cars and just start tossing hunks of coal down for
Speaker 1: them to sell. Yeah, And she would do that until
Speaker 1: the train started picking up too much speed and she'd
Speaker 1: jump off. And there's all these like dramatic tellings of
Speaker 1: this where yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Like what that is. That's like an orange story job.
Speaker 3: That's like at the start of her Jones movie, Like
Speaker 3: that's the first scene is her like hopping on a
Speaker 3: train to Jack Cole, and then we like cut to
Speaker 3: her in World War.
Speaker 2: Some other sort of train which she's having a fight
Speaker 2: in the root of the train with somebody with really
Speaker 2: improbable parkourse skills who happens to be a Nazi, and
Speaker 2: the music's kind of like yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's fistfighting a guy with the kind
Speaker 3: of abs you only get when you're you're putting seven
Speaker 3: thousand dollars a trend into your butt every month.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And what's so great about that is that
Speaker 1: that's actually literally what I said to someone who was
Speaker 1: reading this is I was like, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is the first scene if I filmed, if I filmed this,
Speaker 1: this is the first scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is the kinds of jobs that she has.
Speaker 1: Right when she's thirteen, she was a waitress and a
Speaker 1: street kid. She got I've heard different versions of this,
Speaker 1: of course, she told different versions. She might have gotten
Speaker 1: kicked out of her house by her parents for having
Speaker 1: too many pets, like filling family's house with like all
Speaker 1: of the strays and stuff. So she was living in
Speaker 1: cardboard boxes and picking food from trash cans, and she
Speaker 1: would make her money busking by dancing on street corners.
Speaker 1: Soon she joined a busking crew called the Jones Family
Speaker 1: Band that traveled around the US. And she got married
Speaker 1: at the time. And I cannot find how old this
Speaker 1: person was, so I'm just out of the goodness of
Speaker 1: my heart guessing it's another thirteen year old. That is
Speaker 1: what I wish to believe. Because when she's thirteen, she
Speaker 1: gets married for the first time to someone named Willie Wells.
Speaker 2: But is that legal?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's legal still in some states with
Speaker 3: your parents' approval. Maybe it's Dane now, but yeah, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's the new right wing thing as well.
Speaker 1: They're busy calling us groomers. They're actually literally working.
Speaker 2: To get rid of let's sell off children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're trying to lower the age of marriage or whatever.
Speaker 1: So she marries Willy Wells. It's an unhappy marriage, as
Speaker 1: probably any two thirteen years all time. Again, benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt here, assuming it was a thirteen year old.
Speaker 3: When you're like slightly young to really handle the moral
Speaker 3: complexities of the original Pokemon games, you probably shouldn't be
Speaker 3: navigating marriage.
Speaker 1: That is a controversial take to Christian nationalists. They might
Speaker 1: not like you anymore, Robert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna lose like thirty percent of our audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, don't worry, because when she's fifteen, she finds
Speaker 1: another Willi.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: She divorces this guy right and doesn't last a year.
Speaker 1: But when she's fifteen, she finds another Willy Willie Baker,
Speaker 1: and she's like, look, I've got this thing where I
Speaker 1: marry people named Willi. So she marries him. This marriage
Speaker 1: doesn't last either, but she keeps his name, and it's
Speaker 1: possible that she's never legally divorced. In everything she's doing
Speaker 1: after this is like various forms of bigamy.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but I don't care.
Speaker 2: So, like double double divorce at fifteen is kind of
Speaker 2: a flex in a weird way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. This was a lot more common back
Speaker 3: then too, the whole like people being technically big and
Speaker 3: miskally married, because the way that like different states handled
Speaker 3: the sharing of information meant that it was really a
Speaker 3: lot of shit just out like lost in the male
Speaker 3: effectively totally. I've been dealing with this talking reading about
Speaker 3: like Vince McMahon's family, but this is like around the
Speaker 3: same period of time, and his mom had another thing
Speaker 3: where like she was, she had tried to get divorced,
Speaker 3: but like it didn't go through for years. Not an
Speaker 3: uncommon story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And yeah, she doesn't want to.
Speaker 1: She actually gets big fights, big fights with her mom,
Speaker 1: her mom, who's again not the hero of this story,
Speaker 1: because her mom is like, why don't you just go
Speaker 1: be good to Willie Baker? Why do you keep running
Speaker 1: around doing vaudeville and making something of yourself or whatever.
Speaker 1: But if you want to make something for yourself, probably
Speaker 1: the way to do it is to buy objects.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, that's the only way.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so this podcast is proudly brought to you
Speaker 1: by objects, the only thing that is real according to materialists.
Speaker 2: How do I obtain these objects? They sound great? I
Speaker 2: must bring more of them to my house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the it's the new trend that's sweeping the
Speaker 3: world using wow presentations of time and effort, generally in
Speaker 3: the form of paper or increasingly numbers on a computer
Speaker 3: that you can then trade for physical objects.
Speaker 2: But I feel like that would like that decrease my
Speaker 2: overall feeling of alienation in the world, and let's send
Speaker 2: me up for objects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what That's what everyone says about currency. It's
Speaker 3: the cure for alienation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wait, will this convict? Will this convict with the items?
Speaker 1: Oh? Interesting? Are you saying that it should be objects
Speaker 1: and items?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I'm doing Can I have objects and items? Is
Speaker 2: what I'm asking.
Speaker 3: That really depends on the amount of currency you have, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: and the.
Speaker 2: Law and.
Speaker 1: Mhm yeah, well if you what you really want to
Speaker 1: do is you want to exploit other people's labor.
Speaker 3: That's where the real current is, right Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Or just buy this stuff objects, items and stuff. Here's
Speaker 1: some uds and we're back. So the ages that Justphine
Speaker 1: Baker does things don't line up because she's re rewriting
Speaker 1: her life story. So I'm just going to go ahead
Speaker 1: and use her numbers and things, even though they don't work.
Speaker 1: When she was fifteen or so, she joined the Saint
Speaker 1: Louis Chorus, maybe the Saint Louis Chorus to her, I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely certain, joined a vaudevilsham and she was off.
Speaker 1: Soon she makes her way up to Harlem and starts
Speaker 1: working in musicals. She has aforementioned ditched her husband at
Speaker 1: this point, and sometimes she's presented as being the Harlem Renaissance,
Speaker 1: which is worth it's a black led revival of black
Speaker 1: culture as compared to like just black culture being promoted
Speaker 1: for a white audience, which is we'll get to that later.
Speaker 1: And it was created by a ton of black folks
Speaker 1: who are fleeing Jim Crow and the Red Summer in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, when race riots spread across the country. A
Speaker 1: bunch of people come up and wind up in Harlem,
Speaker 1: and they're pushing for civil rights and they're doing awesome
Speaker 1: cultural stuff. There's a lot of it starts and centers
Speaker 1: around theater and music. No more blackface and minstrel shows,
Speaker 1: but shows that were earnest expressions done by black artists.
Speaker 1: And there's a there's a poem that I'm not going
Speaker 1: to read, but I will suggest to people to read
Speaker 1: called if We Must Die by Claude McKay that was
Speaker 1: part of inspiring all of this. And I'm really just
Speaker 1: mad that this wasn't part of my public school education,
Speaker 1: and that when people talk about Harlem Renaissance, they just
Speaker 1: talk about it culturally, at least white public education or whatever, so.
Speaker 2: You don't actually look at the culture know that it happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's like, oh, it's about plays without the
Speaker 1: fact that the plays are about like, hey, we should
Speaker 1: fucking fight for what's ours, you know, right, And this
Speaker 1: poem is basically like, look, if we're going to die anyway,
Speaker 1: we should fucking fight back.
Speaker 2: I'm looking it up right now.
Speaker 1: And so, so this is the Harlem that Josephine Baker
Speaker 1: shows up into, or she was never really part of
Speaker 1: the Harlem Renaissance and went immediately to Broadway. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Her goal is Broadway. The only way to break into
Speaker 1: show business from her point of view is Broadway. And
Speaker 1: since she's fourteen, I know, I just said she's fifteen,
Speaker 1: But now she's fourteen. She's in New York and she's
Speaker 1: too young to apply to be a chorus girl. You
Speaker 1: have to be sixteen to be a chorus girl. But
Speaker 1: she doesn't know that. She just knows she's probably too young.
Speaker 1: And the show is called Shuffle Along, so she lies
Speaker 1: and she says she's fifteen, and they're like, no, sorry,
Speaker 1: you have to be sixteen, and they kick her out.
Speaker 1: So she comes back and she lies again and she says,
Speaker 1: I'm seven, and so they put her in. When she's fourteen,
Speaker 1: probably she becomes a chorus girl. She gets the job
Speaker 1: of being on the end of the line, which is
Speaker 1: like the comedy dancer role who intentionally stumbles and such
Speaker 1: for comedic effect. So it's kind of like the it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good position in the chorus line, you know,
Speaker 1: And she tours with it around the country, and she's
Speaker 1: a chorus girl for years. She can't move up beyond
Speaker 1: that because of racism, but it's still enough that she
Speaker 1: starts sending money home to her family constantly, And this
Speaker 1: is going to be a big part of Josephine Baker.
Speaker 1: Does not remember, does not forget where she comes from.
Speaker 2: Even though her family has been terrible to her, she
Speaker 2: still sends all this money back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And like it's possible that her relationship with
Speaker 1: her mother gets better at some point. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know. So France gets really excited about her La
Speaker 1: Revue Negre, an all black club in Paris, was like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: we want you. I don't think it's black owned to
Speaker 1: be clear, but we want you. Everyone here in France
Speaker 1: is obsessed with jazz and black culture, and we'll pay
Speaker 1: you seriously good money. They pay her one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a month, which is about seventeen thousand dollars a month today,
Speaker 1: which is wow, seriously good money.
Speaker 3: Good money.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the like, it's like kind of messy,
Speaker 1: right because she leaves segregated us to go to France
Speaker 1: that claims to be anti racist, where they put her
Speaker 1: in racist tropes constantly, right, but she is in Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's also like they're putting her in racist tropes, but
Speaker 3: everyone else doing those tropes is like having white people
Speaker 3: do them in black face. So totally you have to
Speaker 3: go her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, an attempt, An attempt was made.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's they're not having a Humphrey Bogert do it.
Speaker 3: So Cas is a win.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again it possibly saves the world. So when
Speaker 1: she's nineteen, in nineteen twenty five, she moves to Paris
Speaker 1: and being celebrated by a racist culture can be good money.
Speaker 1: France was having a craze. White people were all about
Speaker 1: jazz and dancing. The Charleston Modern Black author Morgan Jerkins
Speaker 1: put it like this. When she swung on stage in
Speaker 1: that fiercely swinging banana skirt in nineteen twenty six, Baker
Speaker 1: brilliantly manipulated the white male imagination, crossing her eyes, waving
Speaker 1: her arms, swaying her hips, poking out her backside. She
Speaker 1: clowned and seduced and subverted stereotypes by reclaiming her image,
Speaker 1: she advanced her career in ways unprecedented for a woman
Speaker 1: of that time. Yeah, because her iconic outfit as soon
Speaker 1: as she got there was a skirt made out of
Speaker 1: bananas and a tiny brawl if any braw at all,
Speaker 1: and a large pearl necklace. Hang on, not real banas, No,
Speaker 1: they were fake bananas. Yeah if that sounds really hard
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. Maybe she was just an amazing dancer.
Speaker 2: I love the idea that she was. She was clowning still,
Speaker 2: that she'd taken that being on the end of the
Speaker 2: chorus line and made it part of the thing.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely Yeah, that is absolutely what's happening. And
Speaker 1: her dance savage as I can't pronounce French is at
Speaker 1: Le Revie Negra, was a huge hit. She's an overnight sensation.
Speaker 1: This causes thousands of banana skirt dolls to be sold
Speaker 1: around Europe. Magazines advised white ladies to rub walnut oil
Speaker 1: onto their skin to darken it.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, okay, there we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Baker herself cashed in on it, selling Baker's Skin. Okay,
Speaker 1: a skin darkening lotion.
Speaker 3: When life gives you weird racists, sell wallet. What are
Speaker 3: you going to do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like at a time when everyone else,
Speaker 1: you know, Pe, we're trying to sell the opposite people
Speaker 1: trying to sell skin lightning.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: She also sells Baker Fix, which is a hair palmade.
Speaker 1: She had that signature twenty slick down hair, look like.
Speaker 2: Betty Boop, the liddle wave at the front.
Speaker 1: She would do the little curl.
Speaker 3: You weren't hot back then unless your hair could ignite
Speaker 3: your entire body like a candle with a single spark
Speaker 3: got on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: If you coven in woolnut, yeah, how burnable, it'll go
Speaker 2: in something very very deliciously smell.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: This is why this is why we don't really talk
Speaker 3: about spontaneous human combustion when it was like a huge,
Speaker 3: you know, conspiracy theory back then. It's because everyone was
Speaker 3: drenched in oil and shade, smoking at all times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder what it must be, Witch Crumb.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go pour gasoline on my head and fall
Speaker 3: asleep with three cigars.
Speaker 1: It's part of the selling point is that everyone hated
Speaker 1: their lives anyway. She also sold banana things like shoes
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 2: Banana shoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I know she sold banana things
Speaker 1: and shoes. It might be that she sold these might
Speaker 1: be separate objects. I'm not entirely certain. And so she
Speaker 1: becomes fuck off famous and rich and kind of an
Speaker 1: inverse Coco Chanel. I'm just gonna say, who became fuck
Speaker 1: off rich and picked the opposite side of the upcoming war.
Speaker 1: She becomes fuck off famous, She buys a fucking mansion, sorry,
Speaker 1: a chateau. This is friends. It has twenty four rooms,
Speaker 1: and she does classic rich bit shit like she gets
Speaker 1: a cheetah, which she names Chiquita.
Speaker 3: Oh that's that's awesome.
Speaker 1: That who has a diamond collar.
Speaker 3: I hear. They're the best big cats to have as
Speaker 3: I mean, you shouldn't have any big cats as but
Speaker 3: if you a pet, but if you are going to,
Speaker 3: they're like the most anxious and the most receptive to
Speaker 3: human affection.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, noted for future self.
Speaker 2: I mean, hm, the most anxious, possibly illegal exubit pet
Speaker 2: you can buy. I'm really glad that I know this now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2: She's she's she's she's filling her house with too many
Speaker 2: animals and now nobody can stop it.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's going to get just wait, No, it's good.
Speaker 2: There's more of them.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's more animals. So I think she basically invents
Speaker 1: the like rich motherfucker gets a cheetah trope. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure.
Speaker 3: Mike Tyson like just just walking in her shadow exactly
Speaker 3: like all of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to hear the other animals.
Speaker 1: We'll get to them because I don't have their names
Speaker 1: in front of me at this point in the script.
Speaker 1: They're further in the script, so that's why we're going
Speaker 1: to get to them. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: On into its time. I'm just envisioning a version of
Speaker 2: Homeward Bound. Now, this is this is, this is the
Speaker 2: movie I want to write where Jospey and Bakers off
Speaker 2: being a spy or whatever, and then Tiki to the
Speaker 2: Cheetah and various other of Jodophine Baker's amazing animals have
Speaker 2: to go on some kind of homeward bound trip across
Speaker 2: Nazi Germany. I think this could work.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty into this, Robert, do you think we can
Speaker 1: get greenlit Netflix?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll work on that. In the background, we'll hollered,
Speaker 3: which I mean, I'm going to email my guy in
Speaker 3: Central Africa and see if I can smuggle some cheetahs
Speaker 3: in this fucking country. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I actually wasn't thinking live action, but but
Speaker 2: this is a strong, strong pitch. I love it.
Speaker 3: DHL is delivering my cheetah tomorrow, and.
Speaker 1: We got you a couple too, louring mhm.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you can't get them because the Brexit you.
Speaker 3: Get a shipping break. You order at six pack. I'll
Speaker 3: check one when I fly to the UK next. You
Speaker 3: don't worry.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she gets Chakdah nineteen thirty from an exotic animal breeder,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of on the advice of her pr folks.
Speaker 1: I think this is her idea, but they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do it because this puts her in the medium even more.
Speaker 1: She goes to the opera and brings her cheetah and
Speaker 1: he gets loose and he gets into the orchestra pit
Speaker 1: and he causes havoc. He doesn't eat anybody, and this
Speaker 1: causes international headlines as she disrupts the orchestra at the opera.
Speaker 1: And this is good for her because it's international headlines.
Speaker 1: It's just more fame. Soon she has her own club. Say, Josephine,
Speaker 1: I really can't pronounce French. It's really bad house of Josephine's. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sound like a giant asshole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I'll just I'll just highlight the stuff I
Speaker 1: need written read out in French in the script for you.
Speaker 1: She is the store attraction at her own club. This
Speaker 1: makes sense some of the other pets that were there
Speaker 1: and included in the acts, And don't worry, this is
Speaker 1: not all of her pets, but some of them are
Speaker 1: the goat, Oh yes, great goat name. And Albert the pig,
Speaker 1: or possibly Albert the pig, depending on how French the
Speaker 1: pig is.
Speaker 3: I would say Albert's a good pig name, but Albert not.
Speaker 2: So let's go with Albert.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Albert the bear would be Yeah.
Speaker 3: Albert is a great name for a bear. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: it reminds me of owl Bears, one of my favorite
Speaker 3: D and D monsters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. She actually has a pet, Albert.
Speaker 3: Oh awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she stole it from a Nazi breeding program.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, brave to keep a CR three pet in
Speaker 3: your in your in your house.
Speaker 1: Oh she's she can handle up to see R twelve
Speaker 1: at least at this point.
Speaker 3: Wow. Oh wow. Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: So she wasn't the most famous Black American woman in France,
Speaker 1: she's the most famous American in France and one of
Speaker 1: the most famous Americans in Europe at this point. She's
Speaker 1: also like, she's at least called the most photographed woman
Speaker 1: in the world, and she becomes the first black woman
Speaker 1: to star in a movie. In nineteen twenty seven, she
Speaker 1: stars in Siren of the Tropics, which.
Speaker 2: Is that sounds super unproblematic.
Speaker 1: It's completely unproblematic. It's let me let me just put
Speaker 1: this past you. This is actually I think this would
Speaker 1: fly really well today. It's about a fictional colony that's
Speaker 1: vaguely Polynesian. She's cast as an indigenous woman who falls
Speaker 1: in love with a Frenchman moves to France, only to
Speaker 1: be heartbroken by the fact that he's already engaged so
Speaker 1: she goes out and is happier as a music hall performer.
Speaker 4: Anyway, that's not as bad as a really expecting ID,
Speaker 4: but the one where it's where the teacher and the
Speaker 4: goat in the peg go on a journey across Europe
Speaker 4: and like discover the treating the friendship.
Speaker 1: But no, no, I agree the positive reviews of it
Speaker 1: will all include the racist things like wow, she moves
Speaker 1: like a wild animal or whatever. This increases her fame.
Speaker 1: She goes on to star in Zazao in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: four as an and then I think, once again she
Speaker 1: isn't allowed to love the white guy she's in love
Speaker 1: with as like the central part of it. Then she's
Speaker 1: Princess Tam Tam, in which she's a Tunisian woman who
Speaker 1: winds up in Paris. Basically there is a trope named
Speaker 1: after her of primitive to Parisian. However, this last one,
Speaker 1: Hollywood sensors refuse to show it in the US, so
Speaker 1: it only plays in select black theaters in the US
Speaker 1: that are ignoring the Hollywood Code or whatever the fuck
Speaker 1: that thing is called. She's an astoundingly good performer. She
Speaker 1: sings opera, she spends a ton of her time driving
Speaker 1: a fancy car into slums with prepared packages for folks,
Speaker 1: like food, blankets, closed, that kind of shit. She just
Speaker 1: like piles high her car with all this stuff and
Speaker 1: shows up and passes it out to everyone because she
Speaker 1: never forgets where she's from. She's also a terrible driver,
Speaker 1: just absolutely awful driver. The driving school passed her because
Speaker 1: they wanted to be able to claim that they were
Speaker 1: the school who taught her, not because they had actually
Speaker 1: successfully taught her. And so at one point she crashes
Speaker 1: her car into a light post and gets out dazed
Speaker 1: and signs autographs and then walks away and takes a
Speaker 1: cab home.
Speaker 2: Where any of the animals in the car.
Speaker 1: I hope not none seemed to be harmed. They are
Speaker 1: no animals harmed in the making of this script. She
Speaker 1: was probably bisexual. She's like famously, she was bisexual. She
Speaker 1: was sleeping like famously with other chorus girls and also
Speaker 1: the other famous you know, performers and stuff. At her time.
Speaker 1: She also had a lover who was a gay man,
Speaker 1: and it's very likely that she was doing high end
Speaker 1: sex work, but not everywhere, and everyone loved her in Paris,
Speaker 1: the reigning star now in her fifties was a white
Speaker 1: woman named misting Get, whose name I can't pronounce, whose
Speaker 1: real name was Gian bourgeoisie or bourgeois gian bourgeois. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: Josephine was starting to replace this lady. This lady was
Speaker 1: also a racist. She'd say things like, how is I
Speaker 1: forget her name? That colored girl my substitute. That was
Speaker 1: like basically how she constantly referred to to Josephine. One time,
Speaker 1: at a fancy movie premiere, misting Get called Josephine an
Speaker 1: old timey racist word, a pickaninny. So Josephine walked over,
Speaker 1: dug her nails into the woman's arm and spat in
Speaker 1: her face. Huh yeah, that's good, legit. Yeah. And she
Speaker 1: also like is like literally this this older lady now
Speaker 1: is like just literally being replaced.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like she'll be the star of something and they'll
Speaker 1: be like never mind and just phenill come in, right,
Speaker 1: And that's good because fuck that lady because she's old
Speaker 1: and racist. But you know what is never racist? Capitalism?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Is its items? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Capitalism is not racist as long as you have enough
Speaker 3: money to make not being racist worthwhile.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, And so it makes total sense.
Speaker 1: We would like you, the listener, to peruse this fine
Speaker 1: collection of what is it? Items, objects and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so what not tossed in there? Probably that's a
Speaker 1: little bit far. I guess we would take we would
Speaker 1: take what not Okay money, I think, I know, I
Speaker 1: think we could take what not money?
Speaker 3: That's okay, stuff things, whatnot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here you go and we're back. So there's two more.
Speaker 1: There's two places that she runs into trouble besides random
Speaker 1: movie premieres with random racists. Didn't. I don't know if
Speaker 1: y'all knew this, but there are a couple places in
Speaker 1: time and geography where instead of individual racists, there's entirely
Speaker 1: large systems of racism. One of those was Germany.
Speaker 2: I think we learned this in school. Yeah, the thing
Speaker 2: gets personally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Germany the only racist country in history.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty six, she showed up and she was like, whoa,
Speaker 1: it rules here because it is bymar Germany, and it rules.
Speaker 1: And she plays a bunch of cabarets or whatever, has
Speaker 1: a good time. Two years later, she's planning six months
Speaker 1: in Berlin and doing shows the whole time, and first
Speaker 1: she shows up in Austria, which is undergrowing Nazi influence,
Speaker 1: and was met with angry mobs and had to be
Speaker 1: escorted around by armed guards because she is the fucking
Speaker 1: living embodiment of not Nazi. She is a slightly black,
Speaker 1: she is unashamedly sexual and bisexual. So basically they're like
Speaker 1: this is yeah, this I mean, and that's actually like
Speaker 1: literally part of it. It's funny because it's like you
Speaker 1: look at this, like, Okay, she's playing up to these
Speaker 1: like kind of racist tropes, you know this, like dulcavage
Speaker 1: or whatever. But literally the fact that the French were
Speaker 1: okay with that was part of why Germany was like
Speaker 1: we fucking hate the degenerate French because they're okay with
Speaker 1: a black woman. So yeah, there's a.
Speaker 3: Really funny story from kind of the early era of
Speaker 3: the Third Reich when they held Gebels. I think is
Speaker 3: going to put it together this big exhibition that was
Speaker 3: the degenerate art Exhibition. I actually know the German but
Speaker 3: I know I'll pronounce it wrong if I say it,
Speaker 3: but it's like they did this big exhibition that was
Speaker 3: supposed to be I think it was contrast with like,
Speaker 3: you know, decent you know, Arian art.
Speaker 2: Roper German arts proper Arean art which which all looks
Speaker 2: like Tom of Finland.
Speaker 3: People kept hanging out listening to the jazz and looking
Speaker 3: at like the degenerate art because it was good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, actually, and gebels Uh definitely know Josephine Baker
Speaker 1: by name, and multiple times was specifically like Josephine Baker
Speaker 1: is the enemy. That's which is a yeah, it speaks
Speaker 1: well of you.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: There's actually a part I didn't put it in a script.
Speaker 1: At one point, Hitler goes to ah fuck, he goes
Speaker 1: to some country and he goes to like the fanciest hotel,
Speaker 1: and they put him in the fanciest room in the
Speaker 1: fanciest hotel and there's a giant portrait of Josephine Baker
Speaker 1: above the bed, and he's angry. He's so angry.
Speaker 2: Was it there before her?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? Yeah, And I hope whoever did that
Speaker 1: to him survives. Yeah, So there's angry mobs. She has
Speaker 1: to be escorted around. She goes to Berlin planning the
Speaker 1: six month run of a show. She's stalked and harassed
Speaker 1: and jeered people yell, go back to Africa and a
Speaker 1: lot of other less nice things. Nazi papers are mad
Speaker 1: that she was like ruining her co star this like
Speaker 1: nice blonde lady. After three weeks she leaves, she flees,
Speaker 1: She's like, I can't fucking do this, and she goes
Speaker 1: back to Paris. But so the Nazis didn't like her.
Speaker 1: Do you know where else struggled with racism only for
Speaker 1: a brief moment, obviously, it's never had racism before after
Speaker 1: this place?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Canada?
Speaker 1: Similar the United States in the nineteen twenties thirties.
Speaker 3: Really Mexico's Canada.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mexico's Canada.
Speaker 2: So I'm trying really hard to do this. U isn't here, Yeah, practicing, No,
Speaker 2: I appreciate. How's it doing? Thank you?
Speaker 1: It's great because actually what you're doing is you're changing
Speaker 1: the tone of your sarcasm to go from British sarcasm
Speaker 1: which goes above the heads of all Americans and instead
Speaker 1: trying to do amza.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's because you think that, because that's just
Speaker 2: because I'm never doing it.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay, okay, good to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it's not. I've let you were in a
Speaker 2: little secret there, which is sometimes like it's British people
Speaker 2: are not. We just sound like if it doesn't actually
Speaker 2: mean we're clever. And you have to know British people
Speaker 2: for a little bit before you realize this, and then
Speaker 2: it's just slightly worse for us. And then we go
Speaker 2: home and come back and try to find some new
Speaker 2: Americans who haven't yet been nam on this trick that.
Speaker 1: Makes a lot of sense and explains a lot of
Speaker 1: things so great. In nineteen thirty six, she goes back
Speaker 1: to Broadway and she's hoping for this whole I mean,
Speaker 1: she's like one of the most famous people in the
Speaker 1: fucking world, right, She's a millionaire, she owns goddamn mansion, sorry,
Speaker 1: a chateau, like most photographed woman in the world. Like,
Speaker 1: clearly the US's racism will like make some exceptions for
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker. She can't find a hotel to let her
Speaker 1: stay in New York City. Whoa her Japanese friends, chauffeur
Speaker 1: from the from the Japanese embassy. He's afraid of being
Speaker 1: seen driving around a black woman. The New York Times
Speaker 1: calls her a negro wench Oh boy, yeah, she opens up.
Speaker 1: She opens up her own club, also called Josephine. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I should have highlighted that for you, Robert, thank you,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't really working the same way to a
Speaker 1: US audience. It's just like, didn't the US audience was
Speaker 1: segregated essentially, you know, And.
Speaker 2: This is really sad. It's just really sad, like you're
Speaker 2: suddenly facing all this stuff like Germany, and then you
Speaker 2: come home and it's even worse. I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: something that sorry, I'm not being very clever. No, no,
Speaker 2: I mean it's like the the having like I don't know,
Speaker 2: you must she must have felt like, you know, having
Speaker 2: been in France for that time, that she finally got
Speaker 2: away from some stuff well, that things could be all right,
Speaker 2: but then it was just this one place that was
Speaker 2: just a little bit better, even though she had to
Speaker 2: make those but it kind of sounds like in France
Speaker 2: she got to she got to choose which compromises.
Speaker 1: To make, yeah, totally totally, and the US won't let
Speaker 1: her make those decisions, and then Germany wants to just
Speaker 1: murder her. Right, so she's like, all right, fuck you.
Speaker 1: She leaves, she goes and she becomes a French citizen.
Speaker 1: She goes back to France, she becomes a French citizen
Speaker 1: maybe depending on the specifics of some bigamy stuff. But
Speaker 1: she marries this Jewish sugar magnate whose name is Jean
Speaker 1: Lyon or Jean Lyon or something.
Speaker 2: Oh like from like, yeah, yeah, that's the brand of
Speaker 2: sugar that like we have in the oh really yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Lions Sugar.
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny. Yeah, that's that's what family she marries into.
Speaker 1: And she doesn't take the name Lion, even though everything
Speaker 1: she does is animal themed, which is like kind of
Speaker 1: good on her, you know. And apparently he proposed while
Speaker 1: the two of them were flying in a plane, sorry,
Speaker 1: he was flying a plane that she was in, because
Speaker 1: he's a bored rich guy and so he wanted to
Speaker 1: learn how to fly, so he went again. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he teaches her how to fly, and this is going
Speaker 1: to come up in really cool ways in World War Two.
Speaker 1: The marriage was always a bit rocky because they're both
Speaker 1: uncompromising about their own careers, his business and politics, hers
Speaker 1: his show business. But he teaches her how to fly,
Speaker 1: and it's possible. She never technically divorced Willie Baker, but
Speaker 1: it's a different country. Who fucking cares. Everyone is obsessed
Speaker 1: with her. Hemingway spends hours chatting her up and right
Speaker 1: her about her. Picasso paints her.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Yeah, yeah, that must have been so crazy.
Speaker 2: I can just imagine it being naked constantly and it's
Speaker 2: aving away. See.
Speaker 1: I like to imagine that it's while Picasso's painting her,
Speaker 1: and they're both just like sort of taking turns trying
Speaker 1: to hit on her.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's like the Battle of the Problematic Kings. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the two most problematic men in our history both hitding
Speaker 3: on you at once.
Speaker 1: Oh Dolly, isn't there Oh yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3: They are all retroactively canceled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is her life. She now lives in,
Speaker 1: I think, still the same chateau with the Lion family,
Speaker 1: all of the ship rules. She's amazing, she's doing cool stuff.
Speaker 1: But that's not what we're here to talk about with her.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about how she was a badass,
Speaker 1: fucking spy, crucial part of the machine that ripped apart
Speaker 1: fascism limb by limb, but one messy part. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, she vocally supported Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia because
Speaker 1: that's because he said he was going in there to
Speaker 1: end slavery, and she was like, sick, I hate slavery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well grandparents I think maybe great maybe great grandparents. I
Speaker 1: don't remember which, but don't worry. Not only is she
Speaker 1: more than make up for this mistake. Oddly it works
Speaker 1: out against Mussolini that she did so that she like
Speaker 1: supported him to begin with. And we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. That's my cliffhanger.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, exciting man, old purbageous.
Speaker 1: All right, Laurie, do you have any plugs you want
Speaker 1: to plug here at the end of the first episode.
Speaker 2: Well, you could good buy any of my more recent books.
Speaker 2: Got a bit doctrine. I've got Sexual Revolution, and they're
Speaker 2: available from lots of different bookshops. And although I don't
Speaker 2: mind if you steal one, that's that's fair, I think
Speaker 2: for this podcast, and honestly I don't mind. It's you
Speaker 2: don't write books to make money? Come on, we'll not No,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't say that you should write books to make money,
Speaker 2: but just in case, I think people should read them anyway.
Speaker 2: And if you want to read my work entirely for
Speaker 2: free above board and the distimately, just like search them
Speaker 2: my articles and wired.
Speaker 1: Or go to a library, and don't steal it from
Speaker 1: the library.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, we don't really have those anymore in
Speaker 2: the UK for thirteen years of conservative all over here.
Speaker 2: So you forgetting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I guess, yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2: The nurses are on strike today.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's also a bit dangerous, but you know
Speaker 2: they should be on strike.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sophie, do you have anything you want to plug?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know the get a pig. Get a pet, pig,
Speaker 3: steal it from one of those horrible places where they
Speaker 3: keep thousands of pigs pinned together above rivers of shit,
Speaker 3: and then take it home and make it your friend.
Speaker 1: That's what just bad would I think that is what
Speaker 1: it would do. Yeah, and I want to plug that.
Speaker 1: People should plant trees. No, actually, the way that people
Speaker 1: go out and randomly plant trees and large numbers doesn't
Speaker 1: always actually work. Do good things instead of bad things.
Speaker 1: That's my search. How to plant trees in a way
Speaker 1: that helps and then do that? Yeah, do that and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you all on Wednesday. Cool People
Speaker 1: Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
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