Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Criminalia, where we explore the lives
Speaker 2: and motivations of some of the most notorious criminals in history.
Speaker 2: In this special episode, we're returning to our season one
Speaker 2: roots to talk about Lady Poisoners with author and illustrator
Speaker 2: Lisa Parrin.
Speaker 1: I'm Marian Marky and I'm Holly Frye. Welcome, Lisa. It
Speaker 1: is so delightful to have you here.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm tickled to be here.
Speaker 1: So for our listeners, Lisa is, as Maria said, the
Speaker 1: author and illustrator of the League of Lady Poisoners, illustrated
Speaker 1: true stories of dangerous women, and she is with us
Speaker 1: today to talk about the stories of women who deliberately
Speaker 1: poisoned everyone from strangers to family members. Okay, so right
Speaker 1: out of the gate, Lisa, it's not just us. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of other people who love this topic.
Speaker 1: So why do you think we're all so obsessed specifically
Speaker 1: with women poisoners?
Speaker 3: Yes, I love that question. I'm so glad to be
Speaker 3: amongst my people here. I was actually really surprised when
Speaker 3: I thought of this idea that there wasn't more about
Speaker 3: women poisoners as a genre or as a concept. There's
Speaker 3: certainly a lot of true crime books, and there's even
Speaker 3: increasingly more books and stories about women criminals. But I
Speaker 3: had always heard, and I imagine you have too, this
Speaker 3: old adage that poison is a woman's weapon, and that
Speaker 3: there is this cultural connection between women in this particular
Speaker 3: vehicle for murder. But I was surprised that there weren't
Speaker 3: more podcasts and books and movies on this subject. As
Speaker 3: to why, I think there's a lot of reasons. I
Speaker 3: think it's a bigger interest in true crime and in history,
Speaker 3: and I love the kind of historical true crimes and
Speaker 3: how weird they can be. I have a few theories
Speaker 3: on what keeps people coming back to true crime tales,
Speaker 3: and I think a few of them are us that
Speaker 3: they're great examples of storytelling. I think we have heroes
Speaker 3: and villains, and we have dramatic action and a climax,
Speaker 3: and then hopefully sometimes we get resolution and justice. So
Speaker 3: I think just they're compelling for that reason. I've noticed
Speaker 3: specifically that women are interested in true crime. I think
Speaker 3: that's a fair thing to assert, again with everyone in
Speaker 3: the room. It's a safe way to engage with the
Speaker 3: thing we're the most afraid of, listening to podcasts about
Speaker 3: it and reading books about it. It's like we can
Speaker 3: finally let ourselves think about that most scary thing with
Speaker 3: enough distance that it's not happening to us or someone
Speaker 3: we know personally. Then I think, finally we feel like
Speaker 3: we're doing research on some level, like we're going to
Speaker 3: protect ourselves because we know what happened to them and
Speaker 3: we're not going to do that thing. So that was
Speaker 3: like why I think we're all maybe on the true
Speaker 3: crime bus. But as for poison specifically, there is this
Speaker 3: long historical connotation that women were the ones who were
Speaker 3: making tinctures and solved like these wise women and witches
Speaker 3: and had access to different materials or ingredients that could
Speaker 3: cause harm. And because they had access, and in theory
Speaker 3: that women are more duplicitous or more likely to harm
Speaker 3: by more secretive means that there is this connection. The
Speaker 3: whole impetus for the book. What for me was is
Speaker 3: this true? And is it you know? And if not,
Speaker 3: why has it endured?
Speaker 2: When Holly and I worked on the first season, we
Speaker 2: sympathized with a lot of the women that we covered,
Speaker 2: and it was surprising. Did it surprise you in that
Speaker 2: way too? Did you become more or less distasteful or
Speaker 2: tasteful towards your subjects as you were researching and writing
Speaker 2: about them.
Speaker 3: Most of my response I've gotten to the book so
Speaker 3: far has been generally like really positive. The only critical
Speaker 3: comments I've gotten, and I think you might appreciate this,
Speaker 3: is that I have read in a few places that
Speaker 3: they find my take on this a little too sympathetic
Speaker 3: to the murders. I think a valid and I think
Speaker 3: is interesting. I understand, but I think you too will
Speaker 3: understand more than anyone else that these stories are not straightforward.
Speaker 3: There's so much more nuance, and usually there's so much
Speaker 3: more context, and once you have more of that story
Speaker 3: in that background, and you understand more of the motivation,
Speaker 3: which of course is hard to completely know or understand
Speaker 3: and to get into someone else's mind. But when you
Speaker 3: have more of that story fleshed out, you see their
Speaker 3: situation differently, and you understand that most often these were
Speaker 3: acts of desperation. This was like a last ditch resort.
Speaker 3: The themes that I kept coming up against were women
Speaker 3: who were using poison as a way to escape abuse
Speaker 3: or situation that they had no agency in. And I
Speaker 3: think many modern women today would have a lot of
Speaker 3: sympathy for that because we do have so much more,
Speaker 3: not in all places, certainly, but ideally hopefully some more
Speaker 3: control over our lives and our futures and our own
Speaker 3: money and finances. And this was something that interested me
Speaker 3: because it wasn't just in one place. This is a
Speaker 3: global study throughout the world, and of these same themes
Speaker 3: kept coming up. This is not in all cases too.
Speaker 3: There are definitely women in this book where were like
Speaker 3: that is absolutely it is not across the board, like, oh,
Speaker 3: you cannot sympathize for this woman. She is killing just unabashedly,
Speaker 3: with no fear or sadness or guilt.
Speaker 2: You think of that quote where people say there are
Speaker 2: no female serial pillars and you're in the middle of
Speaker 2: this kind of research, and you're like, I think there.
Speaker 3: Might be, Like I beg to differ you me names
Speaker 3: I can share.
Speaker 1: You mentioned motivation, and I want to talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit because that's how you organize the book,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating. Your poisoners in each chapter are grouped
Speaker 1: by the motivation whether that's that it was their profession
Speaker 1: or greed or love, et cetera. What led you to
Speaker 1: that structure versus doing something like in chronological timeline or geographical,
Speaker 1: Like why was that the way you wanted to do it?
Speaker 3: To be honest, at first, my plan was chronological and
Speaker 3: I'm lucky to have a really thoughtful editor for the
Speaker 3: book at Chronicle Books, and she was like, you could
Speaker 3: do that, that would be fine. She just left us
Speaker 3: up to me, and she gave me the question, is
Speaker 3: there a more interesting way to organize these chapters? And
Speaker 3: I thought, I didn't even think about that. There were
Speaker 3: a couple of options, like geographical, but I think when
Speaker 3: I thought about motive, I was like, that's so much
Speaker 3: more interesting to me because it brings together women from
Speaker 3: throughout the world and history in the same chapter. And
Speaker 3: you see how much in common these women that you
Speaker 3: think would have absolutely you know, no overlap. For me,
Speaker 3: it made those connections richer and more interesting, and I
Speaker 3: loved getting to see the parallels of two stories that
Speaker 3: have never been compared or related to each other now juxtaposed,
Speaker 3: but like being in the same exact world and again
Speaker 3: people from different classes like queens and people from really
Speaker 3: a lot of poverty in their socioeconomic backgrounds ended up
Speaker 3: becoming more of a sociological examination that I think I
Speaker 3: realized or prepared was prepared for, but it was. It
Speaker 3: was interesting.
Speaker 2: I actually think that a lot of what you're talking
Speaker 2: about is also some of the reason why I still
Speaker 2: find our first season to be one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: It's so layered and thick and so many stories that
Speaker 2: you're never going to get the entire story, but how
Speaker 2: much can you get? And it was just really a
Speaker 2: very interesting season, not just to talk about the stories,
Speaker 2: but to find them and put them together as well.
Speaker 2: Did you find that when you were doing your research
Speaker 2: that sometimes you had to piece together a lot of
Speaker 2: the history that was happening in that moment because you
Speaker 2: didn't have enough of that one woman's actual life story
Speaker 2: because they didn't really have them written down and it
Speaker 2: didn't get passed along.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tricky, but I think you did it.
Speaker 1: I think you did it so well.
Speaker 2: How did you find a balance between how you portrayed
Speaker 2: the dark side of these lady poisoners and their actions
Speaker 2: while maintaining respect for them as well, or at least
Speaker 2: a respectful tone.
Speaker 3: That was really hard. I knew that I didn't want
Speaker 3: to write a textbook. I don't feel qualified to write
Speaker 3: a textbook. I actually wanted to write something that would
Speaker 3: be in a more conversational tone. Actually, I think I
Speaker 3: was really inspired by all the true crime podcasts I
Speaker 3: personally listened to, including your own, which is more conversational.
Speaker 3: I find it's just so much easier to understand and
Speaker 3: engage with the stories. I have a dark sense of humor.
Speaker 3: I'm a silly person, so I wanted to bring part
Speaker 3: of myself to it. But I knew that there would
Speaker 3: have to be a balance, that there would be times
Speaker 3: where would be appropriate for a little snarky aside and
Speaker 3: times when it wasn't. And there are certainly lines that
Speaker 3: we removed because that's a little too dark and that's fair.
Speaker 3: So trying to strike that balance that took many revisions.
Speaker 3: But I wanted it to be engaging to read and
Speaker 3: fun to read too, And I think one of the
Speaker 3: reasons the things that helps with that is I only
Speaker 3: chose historical stories when I was doing my research, and
Speaker 3: when I came across modern stories or anything that's happening
Speaker 3: now in the contemporary world. It was not fun. It
Speaker 3: was like you could not make jokes about it. The
Speaker 3: history gave it a distance that allowed me to make
Speaker 3: little cheeky comments. But something that just happened, I didn't
Speaker 3: feel it was appropriate to make that kind of commentary.
Speaker 3: So I felt making it all historical gave me a
Speaker 3: little permission to be cheekier with it. That was part
Speaker 3: of the decision making that when.
Speaker 1: We understand that concept intimately, absolutely, as we mentioned at
Speaker 1: the top of this chat, you didn't just write this book,
Speaker 1: you also illustrated it and beautifully so, and that brings
Speaker 1: up a raft of questions. Was that always your plan,
Speaker 1: where you like, I can write and I also can
Speaker 1: sure make art, so let's do that together. Or did
Speaker 1: this come up a little more organically.
Speaker 3: The way I sort of described this project to people
Speaker 3: is that this was an art project for me that
Speaker 3: got out of control. Like that's sort of that. I
Speaker 3: don't think I set out to write a book when
Speaker 3: this started, I saw it as an illustration series. I'm
Speaker 3: an illustrator myself, that's my profession. I am but a
Speaker 3: humble picture maker. That is most of what I do.
Speaker 3: I mostly do freelance illustrations for other author's book covers,
Speaker 3: So this was my first time kind of having control
Speaker 3: over the whole process. It wasn't just the cover. And
Speaker 3: I'm a professor of illustration, so my perspective is definitely
Speaker 3: that from the visual art. That being said, when I
Speaker 3: was young and in college, I double majored in painting
Speaker 3: at the time in English, and I always liked words
Speaker 3: and pictures and putting them together, but I professionally had
Speaker 3: only gotten the illustration route. But I think it has
Speaker 3: always been my dream to be an author illustrator. But
Speaker 3: I got really put off because I thought, I don't
Speaker 3: want to write a children's book, and that's the only
Speaker 3: way to be an author illustrator. And I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't think my interest is in creating content for kids.
Speaker 3: Maybe an older kid, maybe maybe not the wei ones
Speaker 3: or so impressionable.
Speaker 1: Here's the bottle of arsenic, kiddo, this is what it
Speaker 1: looks like. A is for arsenic.
Speaker 3: It's a little flush poisoned boy to play with. Le
Speaker 3: me read our bedtime story and I've been dressing up
Speaker 3: like a Victorian widow to read amazing. But yeah, but
Speaker 3: like I said, I think it was always my secret
Speaker 3: dream to write and illustrate together. When I proposed the book,
Speaker 3: I originally thought I would work with an author, I
Speaker 3: would illustrate it, and we would find someone who had
Speaker 3: more experience with writing to write it. And I spoke
Speaker 3: with some of my colleagues and they said, you have
Speaker 3: a background in English, you like to write, this might
Speaker 3: be the chance to try it. I think the book
Speaker 3: has so much more of my voice because I'm doing
Speaker 3: both ends of it, with the pictures and the words,
Speaker 3: and I got to live a dream. I think with
Speaker 3: this for sure.
Speaker 1: Now that you've done the book and you've done both
Speaker 1: the illustration and the writing, if you came up as
Speaker 1: an illustrator, the presumption would be that that was the
Speaker 1: more enjoyable part of it. But I'm wondering if the
Speaker 1: writing proved to be a surprise dark horse that emerged
Speaker 1: as your favorite part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love a good dark horse. I enjoyed illustrating
Speaker 3: it a lot, for sure, and I think that came
Speaker 3: to me more easily. But I actually was surprised by
Speaker 3: how much I enjoyed the research and the writing. It
Speaker 3: was hard. I want to like caveat with that. It
Speaker 3: was it was so challenging.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, but these stories. Uncovering these stories is so challenging
Speaker 2: yet so cool. I understand what you're saying, Like you
Speaker 2: come up with stuff and you're like, wow, I wonder
Speaker 2: if I can get a second source on.
Speaker 3: That, right, But I made a credible exactly. I found
Speaker 3: so much good stuff that didn't make it into the
Speaker 3: book because the source was not credible. I could not
Speaker 3: validate that state.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I knew I.
Speaker 3: Wanted to include all the resources in the back, and
Speaker 3: I was like, I cannot listen to not to be legit.
Speaker 3: I also felt a lot of duty that I was
Speaker 3: like the steward. I don't know if you felt like that.
Speaker 3: I did some of these byes who do not always
Speaker 3: get told or don't always get hurt, especially some of
Speaker 3: the less known ones, and I felt a lot of
Speaker 3: obligation to like do right by them. Again, maybe that's
Speaker 3: too much sympathy for the murderers again, but I did
Speaker 3: feel like I wanted to do it as well as
Speaker 3: I could to represent their story for an audience who
Speaker 3: had maybe never heard before.
Speaker 2: If you could think of one woman that you wrote
Speaker 2: about who could be tried today, do you have someone
Speaker 2: who you think that would have a better chance of
Speaker 2: being acquitted or somehow rehabbing their image. You know, Holly
Speaker 2: and I always talk about how surprised we were when
Speaker 2: we did Lucretia Borgia, and we were like, Wow, her
Speaker 2: her image out there is so completely different than who
Speaker 2: she actually was as a person that I wonder if
Speaker 2: you came across someone like that too.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, And I think I Lucretia Borgia was also
Speaker 3: one of the first ones I thought of when you
Speaker 3: started mentioning enough to talk about just a reputation, Oh
Speaker 3: mishap that just this completely. We have no evidence to
Speaker 3: back up that she was this scandalous, fem fatal poisoner,
Speaker 3: but that has endured through centraal.
Speaker 2: She's got the wrong family name, is what she's got.
Speaker 3: I read like a six hundred page biography on Lucretia Borgia,
Speaker 3: and I was like, give me a little poison. Fingers
Speaker 3: crossed I because when I was researching the book, I
Speaker 3: was like, who are the most famous women poisoners? Who
Speaker 3: are the names that have come to mind first? And
Speaker 3: I asked folks on social media and I can't tell
Speaker 3: you how many people responded Lucretia Borgia and Catherine de Medici.
Speaker 3: When I was researching this book, I think the biggest
Speaker 3: let down for me was finding that both of them
Speaker 3: there was no proof for evidence that the head ever
Speaker 3: poisoned anyone, although Catherine de Medici was certainly involved in
Speaker 3: other problematic and violent things. The poison specific rumor, which
Speaker 3: again I think is often tied to women, true or
Speaker 3: not true, I think, is something like to make a
Speaker 3: woman seem evil in history. Maybe to call her a
Speaker 3: poisoner is something I have found to tarnish their reputation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Lucretia Borgia definitely comes to mind. It seems like the
Speaker 3: whole Borgia family. When I was doing more research, they
Speaker 3: were saying was not different from other powerful families, are
Speaker 3: influential families of the time. It's just one of the
Speaker 3: more famous ones. But not that their behavior was so
Speaker 3: outlandish in comparison to what other similar families with similar
Speaker 3: statuses were doing. And that Lucrezia Borgia had a tough
Speaker 3: life like her father controlled so much of everything she did,
Speaker 3: and she passed away quite young in childbirth and was
Speaker 3: put in a position of leadership in her life. I
Speaker 3: don't think people knew that story, but the one that
Speaker 3: came to mind and when you asked that question. And
Speaker 3: actually the one that the story that helped me find
Speaker 3: your podcast was when I was researching Sally Bassett and
Speaker 3: so I was researching and that's when I found your
Speaker 3: first season of women Poisoners. And I was, like, they
Speaker 3: talked about her, No one's talked about she was a
Speaker 3: hard one to research. Yeah, there's not a lot a
Speaker 3: lot of the.
Speaker 2: Women who come up in the historical record for poisonings.
Speaker 2: I think we found were, you know, socioeconomical levels different,
Speaker 2: but white women.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I found the same thing. The women who
Speaker 3: had long newspaper articles about them and whole books devoted
Speaker 3: to them were almost exclusively white and of the Western world. Yes,
Speaker 3: And I knew I didn't just want it personally as
Speaker 3: an illustrator. I didn't want to draw thirty white men.
Speaker 3: I just thought that wasn't interesting to me. I knew
Speaker 3: I wanted the book to be more diverse than that,
Speaker 3: because I felt the themes being explored here are more
Speaker 3: universal than that. But it was much more challenging to
Speaker 3: find the stories of women of color who were involved
Speaker 3: in poison and women outside of the Western world. So
Speaker 3: Sally was such a powerful story, and I think she's
Speaker 3: one that talk about empathy. I think, like when I
Speaker 3: talk to people who've read the book since they say
Speaker 3: she is a favorite character and one that people see
Speaker 3: is more as a hero and not as a murderess
Speaker 3: or a villain, so she stands out. I think in
Speaker 3: the Cannon from the other Lady Poisoners.
Speaker 1: You've named her as a bit of a favorite. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious, and also this will give our listeners a
Speaker 1: glimpse into some of the stories that you have done
Speaker 1: in addition to those we've talked about before. I was
Speaker 1: want to ask which one of your subjects is your favorite,
Speaker 1: but I think it's probably kinder to say what's your
Speaker 1: top three or top five?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Oh, that is so much kinder. It is people always
Speaker 3: ask the favorite, and then I always lawful and there's
Speaker 3: a couple. Right, Yes, that's such a good question. And
Speaker 3: I think I have favorites for different reasons. Sometimes their
Speaker 3: favorite because like Sally Bassett, I think she was more
Speaker 3: of a freedom fighter in a society that completely oppressed
Speaker 3: her and used Poisonous this agent of defiance. But then
Speaker 3: you get the other ones that are just so silly
Speaker 3: or so weird. I think one that I came across
Speaker 3: that I didn't know until actually on my Instagram, a
Speaker 3: follower from Argentina said, Oh, my gosh, do you know
Speaker 3: about this? We have a famous woman poisoner in our
Speaker 3: history named Yyamrano and she became this big TV personality afterwards,
Speaker 3: and they made a musical about her. And I was like, ah,
Speaker 3: that is gold. Thank you so.
Speaker 1: Much for that.
Speaker 2: I have to have this story because there's so.
Speaker 1: You couldn't dream the way I now want to write
Speaker 1: ar Snake the musical, even though musical theater is not
Speaker 1: my jam, but no.
Speaker 3: It is my dream and I have not been gy
Speaker 3: about this is Poison the Musical. I don't know what
Speaker 3: it looks like. I know we have lost my beloved
Speaker 3: Stephen Sondheim. I don't know who else could do it,
Speaker 3: but I can picture it.
Speaker 2: I think we could do this together.
Speaker 3: I feel ste yes. I think the stories are so fascinating.
Speaker 3: Oh and speaking about someone whose reputation like Cleopatra, who
Speaker 3: had this famous legend of dying via the poisonous or
Speaker 3: venomous fight, Nowadays scientists conclude it was probably that she
Speaker 3: drank a cocktail of poison. It would have been much
Speaker 3: more effective.
Speaker 1: But less dramatic.
Speaker 3: And artistic and creative. I don't know if they would
Speaker 3: make us so many paintings or plays about the death
Speaker 3: of Cleopatra just drinking out of a cup. It's just
Speaker 3: not and I know it as an artist. But the snake
Speaker 3: image is it's hard to like go.
Speaker 1: That goblet has to be beautiful to compete with a snake.
Speaker 3: Yes, I agree, and I tried to make it in
Speaker 3: my illustration. I tried to make it a decorative goblet,
Speaker 3: but I gave her like the snake in one hand
Speaker 3: in the goblet and the other to show that the duality.
Speaker 3: This is just a small segment of all the women
Speaker 3: I found. Everyone who made it into the book was
Speaker 3: because I felt they had some really fascinating quality or
Speaker 3: some part of their story that I felt needed to
Speaker 3: be told. So they're all my favorites for different reasons.
Speaker 2: How do you decide how you're going to visually represent
Speaker 2: the Lady Poisoners and her story separate from the actual
Speaker 2: writing of the story.
Speaker 3: The format early on that I used for sort of
Speaker 3: this portrait that was in a border and woven into
Speaker 3: the border was images or icons from her story and
Speaker 3: I had her name sort of hand lettered above her,
Speaker 3: and then I left room on the bottom for a
Speaker 3: brief summary or synopsis of the story. So I think
Speaker 3: it's a book where you could even just flip through
Speaker 3: it and you were in the mood, you could reread
Speaker 3: the whole chapter segment, or you could just read the
Speaker 3: little synopsis.
Speaker 2: I do think it's very strong on both imbalanced on
Speaker 2: both ways, which is why I was curious. It's not
Speaker 2: always good lear thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew I wanted it to be richly illustrated,
Speaker 3: because I believe in picture books for adults. I think
Speaker 3: is like another thing that underlies this. I don't know
Speaker 3: why we decided everything with illustrations and it has to
Speaker 3: be for children. Not that I don't love and adore
Speaker 3: children's picture books. I just think we're such visual creatures
Speaker 3: and that doesn't go away. So I also think we
Speaker 3: like to look at images of these people. I think
Speaker 3: we get really curious about what they looked like. So
Speaker 3: I started with a few illustrations, and then I pitched
Speaker 3: the book, and then I had to stop illustrating, and
Speaker 3: they wanted chapters, and then I went ooh, so I
Speaker 3: had to pause in the illustrating, and then I did
Speaker 3: a lot of research and writing. But while I was
Speaker 3: researching and writing, I would take notes of physical descriptions
Speaker 3: or collect reference images. Some of the women are in
Speaker 3: the era where there were photographs or painted portraits of them,
Speaker 3: and whenever I found that that was great, some of
Speaker 3: them were not. Some of them were from antiquity or
Speaker 3: from a place in time when they did not have
Speaker 3: any representational image of them. Sometimes I'd try to find
Speaker 3: written descriptions, and I definitely sketched while I was still researching,
Speaker 3: knowing that I would come back I need these later.
Speaker 3: In my dream world, I would have loved to have
Speaker 3: researched that one woman, written about her, and then illustrated
Speaker 3: her in the same chunk while I was in that
Speaker 3: brain space of like just thinking about her. That's not
Speaker 3: how publishing works. Unfortunately, for me, they needed the text
Speaker 3: much sooner than they needed the images. The images were
Speaker 3: something they could get dropped in last. The text had
Speaker 3: to go through many rounds of revisions and edits, so
Speaker 3: I had to prioritize that, and then once the bulk
Speaker 3: of the writing was in, I could return to the pictures,
Speaker 3: and that was just more fun. For me, like a
Speaker 3: just kind of Oh right, I remember her. Oh she's
Speaker 3: the one who poisoned him with the enema.
Speaker 1: Oh, of course.
Speaker 2: You do.
Speaker 3: That's also a funny one.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 3: Great.
Speaker 1: This seems like it was such a I know it
Speaker 1: was arduous work, because it just is, but it also
Speaker 1: seems like it was such a joyous journey for you
Speaker 1: in some ways that I'm wondering if you have any
Speaker 1: thoughts or designs on potentially doing other historical figures or
Speaker 1: true crime history stories that are of interest to you,
Speaker 1: whether those involve more lady poisoners or something entirely different.
Speaker 1: What's what do you have in mind or what's the dream?
Speaker 3: I don't know yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, historical Bananas and the people, cause.
Speaker 3: I see historical, goofy comedy, historical.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you the book I want you to
Speaker 1: illustrate and write please, fifty amazing Vaudevillians.
Speaker 3: I love Vaudeville me too, and I'm such a Vaudevillian
Speaker 3: character in life.
Speaker 1: I can't wait for it coming out six.
Speaker 2: Twenty six, seven twenty seven.
Speaker 3: Give me a little more time. But yeah, I loved Honestly,
Speaker 3: I have loved the history angle. I've loved the true
Speaker 3: crime angle. I'm open minded if your followers have ideas
Speaker 3: something that they haven't seen that they want to see
Speaker 3: and specifically that they'd like to see illustrated. I'm so
Speaker 3: curious what the response to this book is going to be.
Speaker 3: At the time that we're recording this, it's not out
Speaker 3: in the world yet. I'm still at three order time,
Speaker 3: so I'm really excited to see how people are going
Speaker 3: to respond to it, and if there becomes this sort
Speaker 3: of natural next step, like maybe it'll be like, oh,
Speaker 3: now you got to do blah blah, and I'll say
Speaker 3: thank you for solving it. But right now, I'm open minded,
Speaker 3: like I would love to do another book that's maybe
Speaker 3: related or adjacent in some way, but totally different topic.
Speaker 1: I'm going to send you my wish lists, just definite eyes.
Speaker 3: I love theod Are there bond billions of committed crimes? Like?
Speaker 2: Sure, maybe not fifty of them, but I'm sure we
Speaker 2: could come up with a good list.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Ten, not enough.
Speaker 1: I feel like you could pick one good one right
Speaker 1: because they all interconnected ways. Oh, I have ideas for you,
Speaker 1: but we'll move on and not just make this a
Speaker 1: list of things I would like you to illustrate for
Speaker 1: me personally, I think.
Speaker 2: We have time for probably one more so. There is
Speaker 2: one thing that would come up when we were doing
Speaker 2: our season, which was the story of the woman. It
Speaker 2: was the story of the poison We found it was
Speaker 2: more arsenic than anything else do. We just kept seeing
Speaker 2: some of these trends and trends. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that we really started focusing on more was how
Speaker 2: the legal system was at the time and in the
Speaker 2: time period of the woman who we were telling the
Speaker 2: story of, and whether or not it was or was
Speaker 2: not similar between female and male poisoners, and how is
Speaker 2: it different if it was. Did you run into that too.
Speaker 3: A few things I didn't expect we're going to play
Speaker 3: such large roles in all of these stories was the
Speaker 3: role of the media, Oh yes, and the role of
Speaker 3: the legal system in all of them. And both had
Speaker 3: huge implications on what happened to this woman and what
Speaker 3: happened to her case and the way it was perceived
Speaker 3: by the people of her time, perceived by people for
Speaker 3: many years after.
Speaker 2: Right now in the record, this is how she is.
Speaker 2: And I was surprised by the role of the sometimes
Speaker 2: the hysterical role of the media in how they covered
Speaker 2: these stories and the particular woman and had the size
Speaker 2: of her skirt.
Speaker 1: And I always love the ones where they're like, she's ugly,
Speaker 1: she must have done it, So those are always.
Speaker 2: Right, bad hair, right, Yes, I know, are you thinking?
Speaker 3: Is that? Are you thinking of Tilly Climax?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Tilly in particular. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a quote about her in the newspaper
Speaker 3: from the time if only she had gone to the
Speaker 3: beauty parlor, she might not have gone to the penitentiary.
Speaker 2: I think we've read the same work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all right. Yeah, similar to our reaction, Jim, excuse,
Speaker 1: I was so very angry about the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we would, but we didn't necessarily fixate on
Speaker 2: it because you got to just tell the story.
Speaker 3: There's so much. Yeah, yeah, there's so much to those stories.
Speaker 3: But yeah, their appearance and the way they acted in court,
Speaker 3: what they wore, Did they cry enough? Did they seem
Speaker 3: feminine enough? That was a big one.
Speaker 1: They crying, right, I mean that still exists, right.
Speaker 3: And that's the other thing. We think this is specific
Speaker 3: to these time periods, and a lot of it is
Speaker 3: still talking about the media and the perception and to
Speaker 3: be a woman and to be a criminal, and how
Speaker 3: we see these two things linked together. And often it's
Speaker 3: that if she's a woman criminal, she can't just be
Speaker 3: a regular woman. She's got to be crazy, or she's
Speaker 3: got to be a monster or masculine in some way,
Speaker 3: which I found so strange, and that it can't just
Speaker 3: be Yes, women also commit crimes because women are also
Speaker 3: human beings.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think of Bell Gunnis, who was a monster,
Speaker 1: but people always really focused on her. She was very
Speaker 1: tall and heavy, and it's like that's not part of
Speaker 1: the issue at all.
Speaker 2: Any of it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, she was a monster, but we don't like
Speaker 3: because of her actions, not because of her appearance.
Speaker 1: Lisa, you are an absolute delight. I feel like we
Speaker 1: can start. I want to start designing shirts for our
Speaker 1: Lady Poisoners Club. I know we're a kindred little herd.
Speaker 2: For our soul.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about poisons and poisoners and we can get
Speaker 1: a little strych nine involved. But Arsenic is a star
Speaker 1: star anytime.
Speaker 2: It really was the star for us.
Speaker 1: Yes, I want to make sure that we give you
Speaker 1: a chance to tell us when and where people can
Speaker 1: get your book and where they can find you. On
Speaker 1: social media if you so.
Speaker 3: Desire wonderful thank you, and please can we start like
Speaker 3: the League of Lady Poisoners Little Love.
Speaker 1: You think I'm saying idle words, but I am not.
Speaker 3: We are in but of course just enthusiasts. We're not
Speaker 3: encouraging any actual poisonings. I know to be careful of it.
Speaker 2: We're just looking into the phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Yes, the phenomenon people who are interested in the stories.
Speaker 3: But yes, thank you so much. The book will be
Speaker 3: out in the world this September nineteenth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: wherever books are sold. I would love to encourage folks
Speaker 3: to support their local independent bookstores and not to forget
Speaker 3: the libraries are also going to be an option. Is
Speaker 3: another way to access the book. And please do find
Speaker 3: me on social media, especially if you take pictures of
Speaker 3: the book dress up like a Lady poisoner for Halloween.
Speaker 3: I'll lose my mind. Please find me. I'm At. I
Speaker 3: use my last name mostly online, which is paren p
Speaker 3: E ri N so it's made by paren It's the
Speaker 3: handle that you'll find me on everything for and I'm
Speaker 3: really looking forward to seeing how folks interact with it
Speaker 3: and engage with it.
Speaker 1: Once that's true. Thank you again for spending this time
Speaker 1: with us.
Speaker 3: Oh this was a pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2: This is a beautiful book inside and out. The illustrations
Speaker 2: are with lovely, the cover is lovely. I encourage everyone
Speaker 2: to take a book at it.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful all right. For our listeners, we will see
Speaker 1: right back here as usual on Tuesday with the regular programming.
Speaker 1: Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.