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Speaker 1: Are you ready to rumble? Coming in from location?

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Speaker 2: We have our hosts, the one and only Margaret kid Joe.

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Speaker 1: I've always wanted to do that. I'm Mac.

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Speaker 2: But that's amazing.

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Speaker 3: That was better than my introduction I had planned, so

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Speaker 3: we'll go with that.

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Speaker 2: I loved it. It was such a broadcasting voice too.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 2: I don't know if I've ever heard you do that before.

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Speaker 2: I've never done it before.

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Speaker 3: This is just for the two of you, well, for

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Speaker 3: everyone else who's listening besides the two of us. This

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Speaker 3: is a show called Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which

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Speaker 3: is a history podcast. It's the only history podcast that

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Speaker 3: I believe. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy with me today.

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Speaker 3: I'm very excited about. This is Samantha McVay. Ye are

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Speaker 3: you doing yay?

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Speaker 2: I'm so excited to be on with you again.

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Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, for anyone who Sophie likes that, I turn

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Speaker 3: everything into an ad for my other episodes. We had

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Speaker 3: Sophie on when we talked about the Jane Collective performing.

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Speaker 1: Samantha, you said, so, we also had Sophie. I was

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Speaker 1: technically there.

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Speaker 2: You were there.

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Speaker 3: It was There's one thing I know about you, you

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Speaker 3: are not.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I was on I think was it your inaugural show.

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Speaker 3: It was one of the first episode, first ones.

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Speaker 2: Okay, I know it was, right after all the debacle

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Speaker 2: with turning over Robie Wade.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, but well the news cycles moved on, so

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Speaker 3: fortunately everyone still has full bodily a ton Oh right,

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Speaker 3: well no, never mind. Okay, So Samantha other people might

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Speaker 3: know as the host of the podcast Stuff Mom Never

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Speaker 3: Told You, which is probably not a history podcast because

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Speaker 3: this is the only history podcast ever, right, yeah, I

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Speaker 3: think so. Yeah, I think we like claimed that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you should. We pepper in some history.

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Speaker 2: But typically we are a current affairs type of thing.

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Speaker 2: We stretch from everything anything that has to do with

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Speaker 2: intersectional feminism.

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Speaker 3: We we do it awesome. And our radio announcer is Sophie. Hi, Sophie,

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Speaker 3: how are you doing?

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Speaker 1: I like, I don't like that title.

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Speaker 3: It was so good. Your radio voice was like shocking

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Speaker 3: because it was that.

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Speaker 1: Good, like a boxing match thing announcer.

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Speaker 2: I think it's close to announcers.

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Speaker 1: My sports announcer boys.

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Speaker 3: I mean, okay, it was good, Okay, fair enough. Next time,

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Speaker 3: when I get an even larger truck and put even

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Speaker 3: larger wheels on it, I will have you with a

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Speaker 3: megaphone announce every time that I arrive.

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Speaker 1: I mean I would enjoy nothing more than that.

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Speaker 2: To it and actually would be amazing.

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Speaker 3: Comes from Georgia, I think, I think that's the only

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Speaker 3: place you're allowed to be with that.

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Speaker 2: It's true.

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Speaker 3: We in it Ian edits are audio on woman wrote

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Speaker 3: her theme song. So today I really love not telling

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Speaker 3: my guests who we're going to talk about before they

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Speaker 3: show up.

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Speaker 2: Blind let's go.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Today we're going to talk about an American icon,

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Speaker 3: one of the most famous women in US history. We're

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Speaker 3: going to talk about how complicated her legacy is, how

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Speaker 3: badly her story is told. Today I'm going to be

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Speaker 3: curious when you figure out who're talking about. Today, we're

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Speaker 3: going to talk about probably the most famous person in

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Speaker 3: the history of the US Socialist Party, although no one

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Speaker 3: knows she was a socialist. How even more than that,

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Speaker 3: she's probably the most famous Wobbly. A member of the

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Speaker 3: Syndicalist Union, Friend of the pod Industrial Workers of the World,

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Speaker 3: she was one of the founders of the ACOU. She

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Speaker 3: was a white Southerner who was an early member and

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Speaker 3: supporter of the NAACP and was an outspoken proponent of

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Speaker 3: civil rights. That's right. Today we're talking about Helen Keller.

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Speaker 2: Oh that he threw me for a loop. Yeah, that

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Speaker 2: is the plant that you did agree to.

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Speaker 3: Thanks, I guess to get it out of the bag.

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Speaker 3: The reason that people are is complicated is that there's

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Speaker 3: some eugenics in her. But yeah, and we're going to

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Speaker 3: talk about how odd it is. And I think that

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Speaker 3: actually it ended up a more useful way of exploring

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Speaker 3: some of these concepts than I originally expected. I thought

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Speaker 3: originally I was going to be like, we're going to

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Speaker 3: talk about the fact that everyone ignores that Helen Keller

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Speaker 3: was a socialist, And then I was like, we're gonna

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Speaker 3: talk about that, but we're going to talk about so

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Speaker 3: much more too.

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Speaker 2: Oh have you ever seen The Miracle Worker?

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Speaker 3: No? But I read so much about the Miracle Worker

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Speaker 3: during this I've like, I've read so many takes on

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Speaker 3: the Miracle Worker. I don't want to watch it at

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Speaker 3: the end of this.

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Speaker 2: Ah, you shouldn't. We actually performed that as a high

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Speaker 2: school play. I was in it.

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Speaker 3: I won't tell you the character I was in because

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Speaker 3: it's so degraded. Not degrade, yes, degrading and racist. But

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Speaker 3: I was in it. Wait, who would be the degrading

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Speaker 3: racist character for you to have been stuck? Oh?

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Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So I am the in my high school,

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Speaker 2: I'm the only pretty much only minority outside of one

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Speaker 2: other Asian girl and maybe a few Latino students. So

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Speaker 2: I was the only non white person in the drama

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Speaker 2: and in Helen Keller or in the Miracle Worker, there

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Speaker 2: is a servant but is obviously of black descent. Guess

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Speaker 2: who played that really problematic role. And they would not

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Speaker 2: let me not do an accent?

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Speaker 3: Cool?

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Speaker 2: It is horrifying, and I because of who she was.

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Speaker 2: She also had children, so I have had to pretend

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Speaker 2: these little kids were Mike. It was bad and they

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Speaker 2: were both.

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Speaker 3: I think that that is actually a very fitting way

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Speaker 3: to understand the ongoing harm caused not by Helen Keller,

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Speaker 3: but by the way people tell her fucking story.

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Speaker 2: Oh let's start, Oh god, all right.

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Speaker 3: All right. Helen Keller, of course, is famous for what

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Speaker 3: she believed and not anything else. I'm not trying to

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Speaker 3: downplay what else she did. She was one of the

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Speaker 3: first deaf blind people in Western society to be given

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Speaker 3: the chance to learn to read and write, and was

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Speaker 3: the first to get a bachelor's degree. We're gonna call

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Speaker 3: this episode Helen Keller was a Socialist and also complicated.

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Speaker 3: Because Helen Keller was a socialist and complicated, her legacy

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Speaker 3: is a disability rights icon is a lot more popular

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Speaker 3: in abled society than in disability justice communities, who are

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Speaker 3: critical not only of what gets called inspiration porn, but

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Speaker 3: also of assimilation as politics more broadly. So we're going

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Speaker 3: to talk about all that. We're going to talk to

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Speaker 3: the story of Helen's life, what she did that was

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Speaker 3: super cool, what she did that was super not cool,

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Speaker 3: And we're going to talk about the social model of disability,

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Speaker 3: and in classic form, we're going to start decades before

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Speaker 3: she was even born. Oh yes, because we're going to

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Speaker 3: start with another woman whose name is Laura Dewey Bridgeman.

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Speaker 3: I'm just curious. I had never heard of Laura. Had

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Speaker 3: you heard of Laura before this?

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Speaker 2: I have not.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I Laura Dewey Bridgeman was born in New Hampshire

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Speaker 3: on December twenty first, eighteen twenty nine, to a farming family.

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Speaker 3: She's white. I think they're more farm owners than like homesteaders,

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Speaker 3: because there's references to her her parents' employees at various points.

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Speaker 3: When she was twenty four months old, she was sick,

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Speaker 3: she got scarlet fever, and when she recovered, she'd lost

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Speaker 3: her sense of hearing, sight, and smell, and with smell

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Speaker 3: goes most of taste, so she was deaf blind, a

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Speaker 3: specific impairment that it was more common in the nineteenth

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Speaker 3: century than the twenty first, but still exists. It was

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Speaker 3: more common back then because it was often caused by

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Speaker 3: various infections that we have way better ways of treating now.

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Speaker 3: And when she first lost these senses, she would sit

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Speaker 3: around and whisper dark dark for a while, because she

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Speaker 3: knew some words already because she was two years old.

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Speaker 3: I worry about the way that she was represented as

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Speaker 3: a youth because I have less information about her, or

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Speaker 3: I looked up less information about her than I do

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Speaker 3: about Helen. But I know how Helen Keller is misrepresented,

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Speaker 3: and actually I believe by the Miracle Worker. Probably as

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Speaker 3: the story goes, Laura had a really hard time communicating

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Speaker 3: with her family and was therefore unruly. Was completely unruly.

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Speaker 3: Only her father could get her to do anything, and

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Speaker 3: that was by physically restraining her. Basically, a lot of

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Speaker 3: media will refer to deaf blind children as basically wild animals.

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Speaker 3: This is not true. This is not true of Helen

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Speaker 3: Keller's youth, and I'm inferring that it is not true

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Speaker 3: about Laura's youth. I'm sure it was hard. Don't get

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Speaker 3: me wrong. Deaf blind folks were at the time usually

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Speaker 3: treated as essentially hopeless cases. And again I'm saying in

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Speaker 3: Western society, because that's what I have information about, no

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Speaker 3: one was known to have learned a consistent way to

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Speaker 3: communicate it across that barrier, besides some of what are

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Speaker 3: called home signs, which are basically DIY sign languages that

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Speaker 3: people develop themselves with their loved ones. But when she

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Speaker 3: was a kid, Laura was not fully communicative. But when

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Speaker 3: she was seven, there was a school vaguely nearby called

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Speaker 3: the Perkins School for the Blind, which I have seen

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Speaker 3: as being originally in New Hampshire, or maybe it's in Boston.

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Speaker 3: I'm kind of confused because it's still around, and you

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Speaker 3: feel like I feel like I should have been able

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Speaker 3: to find a more concise answer, But it's in New

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Speaker 3: England alongside of her. The Perkin School of the Blind

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Speaker 3: is like, hey, let's try to teach her, and specifically

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Speaker 3: the director of the school who gets held up as

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Speaker 3: a hero, and we're gonna talk about that, doctor Samuel

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Speaker 3: Gridley Howe. He taught her and I'm going to quote

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Speaker 3: from the Perkins School for the Blind's website about this.

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Speaker 3: He gave her familiar objects such as forks and keys,

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Speaker 3: with name labels made of raised letters pasted upon them.

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Speaker 3: When he gave her detached labels with the same words,

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Speaker 3: she matched them to their objects. How next cut up

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Speaker 3: the label so each later letter was separate. He spelled

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Speaker 3: the now familiar words, showed them to Bridgeman, then jumbled

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Speaker 3: the letters. She was able to rearrange them so they

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Speaker 3: once again spelled the words. And so this is how

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Speaker 3: the Sally taught Laura English and how to communicate. She

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Speaker 3: learned English, she was off. She studied at the school

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Speaker 3: like the other students, and this accomplishment got written about

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Speaker 3: all over the world. It's funny because she's not remembered

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Speaker 3: now because Helen Keller is now the famous first quote unquote,

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Speaker 3: I'm making air quotes, but no one in the audience

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Speaker 3: can see that the first stef blind person to you know,

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Speaker 3: learn how to communicate or whatever, right Charles Dickens met

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Speaker 3: her and wrote about her, and this increased her fame substantially.

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Speaker 3: One article I read about her refers to her as

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Speaker 3: the second most famous woman in the world, after only

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Speaker 3: Queen Victoria during much of her early life. But this

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Speaker 3: is kind of it's that media cycle thing, right. We

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Speaker 3: tend to think of it as like a Twitter brain

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Speaker 3: thing that people have an attention span of fifteen minutes.

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Speaker 3: You know, the attention span might have been slower back then,

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Speaker 3: but it's still ebbs and flows, right, Thousands of people

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Speaker 3: come to visit her, like literally, at one point there

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Speaker 3: was more than a thousand people there's here on one day.

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Speaker 3: Newspapers around the world are covering her story. According to

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Speaker 3: the author Rosemary Mahoney from her book For the Benefit

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Speaker 3: of Those who see quote, all over America, little girls

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Speaker 3: began poking their dolls eyes out, tying green ribbons across them,

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Speaker 3: and renaming them Laura.

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Speaker 2: I don't know what. I don't want to say. Okay,

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Speaker 2: I feel like I can't give them proper reaction because

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Speaker 2: I'm like confused. Well, yeah, okay, this is.

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Speaker 3: This is why I'm gonna talk about what inspiration porn is.

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Speaker 3: I'm like wait is it No, it's it's it's weird.

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Speaker 3: How do I react? Yeah, no, keep going. Yeah, I

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Speaker 3: think this is an example of the long and the

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Speaker 3: long history of problematic ways that people have of you

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Speaker 3: and people with disabilities. Yeah, this is one of those

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Speaker 3: things that I'm like, I'm glad they didn't hate her.

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Speaker 1: Like, what is that equating poking dolls out of somebody's.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of thing. I'm going to say. It's

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Speaker 2: kind of like cultural appropriation, when you love something a

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Speaker 2: little too much and then you take it on and

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Speaker 2: it becomes like problematic and offensive. Oh yeah, maybe it's

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Speaker 2: along those lines.

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Speaker 3: No, you're right, there's almost certainly. Probably I don't know

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Speaker 3: the history of Halloween well, and I you'd think I would,

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Speaker 3: but like, yeah, like there's almost certainly people dressing up.

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Speaker 2: Yeah you think I would. That was so funny.

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Speaker 3: I know more about the history of Christmas than Halloween.

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Speaker 3: And I feel guilty. My goth card is melting.

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Speaker 2: You're failing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you're failing in this. Let me go get my

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Speaker 3: goth card out of the coffin in the other room.

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Speaker 3: Inspiration porn. This is a particular phrase that was coined

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Speaker 3: by comedians Stella young. I thought I wrote the year

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Speaker 3: in the script, but I didn't. I think it was

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Speaker 3: twenty twelve that this particular phrase was coined. She defined

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Speaker 3: it as quote an image of a person with a disability,

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Speaker 3: often a kid doing something completely ordinary, like playing or

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Speaker 3: talking or running, or drawing a picture or hitting a

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Speaker 3: tennis ball, carrying a caption like your excuse is invalid

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Speaker 3: or before you quit, try what's wrong with this? The

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Speaker 3: author Stella continues to say, quote, these modified images exceptionalize

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Speaker 3: and objectify those of us they claim to represent. It

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Speaker 3: is no coincidence that these genuinely adorable disabled kids and

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Speaker 3: these images are never named. It doesn't matter what their

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Speaker 3: names are. They're just there as objects of inspiration. Our

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Speaker 3: later subject, Helen Keller, is probably the single most used

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Speaker 3: in space spiration used as inspiration porn person in the

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Speaker 3: history of the world. Laura's life was not immune to

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Speaker 3: it either. And I think the thing that irritates a

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Speaker 3: lot of people in the disability community is like, Okay,

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Speaker 3: this idea that the great accomplishment is being normal, right, right,

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Speaker 3: and it's assimilation specifically, that like all people want to

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Speaker 3: do is you know, live like everyone else or whatever,

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Speaker 3: And this is going to be a recurring theme this week.

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Speaker 3: Back to Laura. As much as she was a student,

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Speaker 3: she was a test subject. How he wasn't just teaching

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Speaker 3: her because he was cool and nice. He was using

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Speaker 3: it as a science experiment.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, I was going to ask when you said

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Speaker 2: thousands of people were visiting her, why so were they

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Speaker 2: getting knowledge from her? Or were they watching her like.

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Speaker 3: A sideshow side show? Okay, yeah, no, they would like

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Speaker 3: leave with like a piece of her hair, or like

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Speaker 3: something she had sown, or like and she would buy

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Speaker 3: I mean she would they would buy the stuff she sewed.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, no, it's they were like, come see this

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Speaker 3: wonder of the world.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's exactly. It literally is like again one

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Speaker 2: of those side shows, old school circus traveling shows that

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Speaker 2: I'm like, why would they visiting? Were they trying to

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Speaker 2: get knowledge? Okay, that's that's cool.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, no, okay, they were watching her, and I'm

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Speaker 3: sure some people were coming and studying this, and we'll

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Speaker 3: talk about how. I mean it was other students at

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Speaker 3: the School for the Blind who went on to like

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Speaker 3: further this style of education and teach teach Helling Keller

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Speaker 3: later to spoil some of it, you know. But but yeah,

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Speaker 3: this guy, how he he wanted to know what was

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Speaker 3: in and what was learned? Right, right, Like what are

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Speaker 3: we born with? What do we what do we learn

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Speaker 3: through society? It's this, you know, big question that's been

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Speaker 3: with Western world ever since the Enlightenment or whatever. So,

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Speaker 3: for example, when she was eleven, he decided he wanted

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Speaker 3: to find out if religion is in it or if

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Speaker 3: it's learned. So he told her teachers to not answer

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Speaker 3: any questions about God, just to find out if she

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Speaker 3: would end up religious if she was never taught about God.

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Speaker 3: But then he skipped down for honeymoon for a year

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Speaker 3: and some of the evangelical teachers just like taught her evangelicalism.

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Speaker 3: So he comes back and she's evangelical, and he's like, no,

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Speaker 3: my science experiment, it's been ruined, you know, poor guy.

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Speaker 2: Poor guy.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And so at least according to one narrative, and

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Speaker 3: I have no reason to doubt it. He kind of

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Speaker 3: turned on her a little bit at this point. He

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Speaker 3: started talking about her. He started referring to her as defective.

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Speaker 3: At one point, apparently he said that the reason she

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Speaker 3: got scarlet fever is that her parents weren't smart. Not

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Speaker 3: that her not smart parents had done something not smart

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Speaker 3: by exposing her to the illness, but literally that they're

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Speaker 3: not smart brains had created a not smart brain child,

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Speaker 3: and people with not smart brains were more likely to

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Speaker 3: be susceptible to illness. Yeah, you know, it's so wow

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Speaker 3: wow wow.

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Speaker 2: So wait, so he turned on her because she became

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Speaker 2: religious or because that she wasn't exactly what he wanted

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Speaker 2: her to be the Peatrie dish that he wanted to create.

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Speaker 3: I believe it's that I've read a couple different ways

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Speaker 3: of describing their relationship. This is the most negative way

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Speaker 3: I've seen, but it's also the one I've read with

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Speaker 3: the most detail, and it comes from Rosemary Mahoney, who

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Speaker 3: I'm going to quote again quote how had stated firmly

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Speaker 3: at the start of his career that the blind were

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Speaker 3: no different from the sighted, and that blindness was a

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Speaker 3: superficial handicap, But after ten years of work at the

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Speaker 3: Perkins Institution, he radically reversed his position. In his sixteenth

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Speaker 3: annual report, he claimed that his views had been modified

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Speaker 3: by experience. He stated, this is going to be able us.

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Speaker 3: This thing that I'm about to read he stated in

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Speaker 3: emphatic uppercase letters, the blind as a class or inferior

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Speaker 3: to other persons in mental power and ability. So he sucks.

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Speaker 3: And this is the guy who found the school for

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Speaker 3: the blind, and they still credit him as like an icon. Yes,

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Speaker 3: oh my god. And it's interesting because he's like, he

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Speaker 3: is the first person that we know of to teach

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Speaker 3: this style of language to a deaf blind person. There

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Speaker 3: was actually a deaf blind woman before them, who I

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Speaker 3: can't remember. Her name is later in the script, who

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Speaker 3: learned tactile sign language rather than written word.

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Speaker 2: Right, So was he using brail? Is that what he's

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Speaker 2: using or is he using his own system?

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Speaker 3: They're using a different system. This is a little bit okay,

347
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Speaker 3: it's like around this is the middle of nineteenth century.

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Speaker 3: I don't remember what year brail started getting standardized.

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Speaker 2: I think it's like early eighteen, eighteen hundreds, eighteen twenty something, okay.

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Speaker 3: I think that, Oh, okay, No, that's good to know.

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Speaker 3: And I think that they're also she does learn braille, right, okay,

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Speaker 3: But the initial stuff that she's handed are this other

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Speaker 3: alphabet that I can't remember the name of, that's like

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Speaker 3: a tactile alphabet. Okay, so now I'm going to talk

355
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Speaker 3: about all the cool shit how did but for a reason.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so I want to pretend like he's cool for a second.

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Speaker 3: I got it because it's worth highlighting the way that

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Speaker 3: people who are otherwise so fucking cool can be ablest

359
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Speaker 3: as fuck. Right, So, How's grandfather was at the Boston

360
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Speaker 3: Tea Party. I'm famously neutral on the American Revolution as

361
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Speaker 3: a later removed from the position of the indigenous and

362
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Speaker 3: enslaved people in North America.

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Speaker 2: So I just that's fair.

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Speaker 3: Whatever. However, how himself, he went and fought in the

365
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Speaker 3: Greek Revolution in the nineteen twenties. He brought back Greek

366
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Speaker 3: refugee children to personally teach in America. Then he went

367
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Speaker 3: to France and fought in the eighteen thirty second French Revolution.

368
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Speaker 3: Back in the US, he started an abolitionist newspaper, and

369
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Speaker 3: he did not just leave it at starting an abolitionist newspaper,

370
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Speaker 3: A lot of people get ridden about in history. It's

371
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Speaker 3: like pretty cool because they were abolitionists and they wrote words.

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Speaker 3: He funded John Brown. He had to flee the country

373
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Speaker 3: over fleeing John Brown. His house was a stop on

374
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Speaker 3: the underground railroad At one point, him and a couple

375
00:20:07,560 --> 00:20:10,280
Speaker 3: of his friends stormed a building, breaking down the door

376
00:20:10,320 --> 00:20:12,560
Speaker 3: of the battering Ram, shooting a cop in the face

377
00:20:13,040 --> 00:20:16,080
Speaker 3: to rescue a fugitive from slavery named Anthony Burns. This

378
00:20:16,160 --> 00:20:19,040
Speaker 3: is part of how the Fugitive Slave Act was passed,

379
00:20:19,359 --> 00:20:21,480
Speaker 3: is because of how and his friends shooting a cop

380
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Speaker 3: to try and free amn. Okay, this is why it's

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Speaker 3: so heartbreaking, right they were repelled. He did not successfully

382
00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:32,240
Speaker 3: free Anthony Burns, so they raised up the funds to

383
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Speaker 3: buy Anthony his freedom. He helped it. He directly helped

384
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Speaker 3: at least one other person escape slavery. He probably helped

385
00:20:38,119 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 3: uncountable others. But there was one other name I found.

386
00:20:41,400 --> 00:20:43,159
Speaker 3: During the Civil War, he was a bit older at

387
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Speaker 3: this point. He worked to keep disease outbreaks in Union

388
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Speaker 3: camps at a minimum. After the Civil War, he worked

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Speaker 3: with the Freedmen's Bureau to make sure that people had

390
00:20:50,320 --> 00:20:53,160
Speaker 3: food and clothes and everything they needed, helping reunite families

391
00:20:53,160 --> 00:20:56,840
Speaker 3: and shit. He's like, and then he goes on and

392
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Speaker 3: if you read the Wikipedia level of him or whatever,

393
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Speaker 3: he's like, he did all this amazing shit, and then

394
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Speaker 3: he goes on, goes on to like found the school

395
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Speaker 3: for the blind and dedicate his life to teaching people

396
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Speaker 3: how to read and like all the shit, and you're like,

397
00:21:11,080 --> 00:21:14,800
Speaker 3: it's so but he's so ablest and we're gonna this

398
00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:16,560
Speaker 3: is not the only time this is going to happen

399
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Speaker 3: in this story.

400
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Speaker 2: So when he because he sounds really cool and did

401
00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:23,800
Speaker 2: a lot of cool things in that era. But we

402
00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:29,159
Speaker 2: also know a lot of abolitionists, especially white abolitionists, still

403
00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:33,119
Speaker 2: did not believe necessarily that the enslaved people were equal.

404
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Speaker 2: Was he one of those?

405
00:21:35,119 --> 00:21:38,520
Speaker 3: I found no specific sign one way or the other,

406
00:21:39,960 --> 00:21:46,119
Speaker 3: which I don't know my instinct. You know, it's funny,

407
00:21:46,119 --> 00:21:47,480
Speaker 3: it is like my instinct would have been like, no,

408
00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:48,800
Speaker 3: I don't think he's one of those. But the way

409
00:21:48,840 --> 00:21:50,760
Speaker 3: he talks about like and wants to help blind people

410
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Speaker 3: and then like fuck them over, Like, yeah, I don't know.

411
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Speaker 2: I'm starting to wonder, you know, what those heroes who

412
00:21:56,640 --> 00:21:59,040
Speaker 2: are not real heroes, but because they did a few

413
00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:02,359
Speaker 2: good things, right, don't get me wrong. Yeah, love that

414
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Speaker 2: he was a part of that.

415
00:22:03,280 --> 00:22:03,639
Speaker 1: Thank you.

416
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Speaker 2: I'm sure you know. There's a lot of good things.

417
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Speaker 3: Obviously, there's a lot of good things that happened out

418
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:11,480
Speaker 3: of that but still yeah a question. Yeah, no, totally.

419
00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:14,000
Speaker 3: And then also to just show how like messy the

420
00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:18,359
Speaker 3: like white abolitionist culture is. The Perkins Institute that he

421
00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:21,720
Speaker 3: founded was named after its benefactor, a rich guy who

422
00:22:21,760 --> 00:22:24,760
Speaker 3: donated Thomas Perkins, who donated his mansion to the school.

423
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:29,960
Speaker 3: Thomas Perkins was rich because he bought and sold people. Yeah,

424
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Speaker 3: I knew you were going to go there. Yeah, a

425
00:22:36,119 --> 00:22:37,280
Speaker 3: wonderful Yeah.

426
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Speaker 2: I hope that building's haunted. Keep going.

427
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:45,359
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it's almost certainly haunted. His wife was

428
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:49,960
Speaker 3: Julia Ward, who composed the Battle Hymn for the Republic

429
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:52,359
Speaker 3: aka that song Might eyes have seen the glory of

430
00:22:52,400 --> 00:22:56,399
Speaker 3: the Coming of the Lord, which was the Union Army's anthem,

431
00:22:56,920 --> 00:22:59,800
Speaker 3: which had banger lines like as he Christ died to

432
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Speaker 3: make men holy, let us die to make men free.

433
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:07,160
Speaker 3: I don't know, but do you know what Samantha will

434
00:23:07,320 --> 00:23:12,840
Speaker 3: set you free? Tell me it's products and services ad.

435
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:14,800
Speaker 2: I'm so excited. I'm going to buy it right now.

436
00:23:14,960 --> 00:23:16,040
Speaker 3: Whatever it is we're.

437
00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:17,760
Speaker 2: Buying it, tell me I'm doing it right now.

438
00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:18,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

439
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:23,800
Speaker 4: That's unless it's a car, then I'm screwed. I hope

440
00:23:23,840 --> 00:23:26,359
Speaker 4: it's not another ad for joining the Irish Police Force.

441
00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:30,399
Speaker 4: I'm there, all right, I got just kidding.

442
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,680
Speaker 3: We're doing so, we're doing, We're committed. Here's the ads

443
00:23:39,119 --> 00:23:40,720
Speaker 3: and we're back. And I'm not sure what I'm gonna

444
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:44,440
Speaker 3: do with all this Reagan gold, but you know whatever,

445
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:46,160
Speaker 3: bury it.

446
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:50,000
Speaker 2: It's fine. Good, We're good. Bury it. It's gonna it'll

447
00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:50,800
Speaker 2: be better that way.

448
00:23:50,880 --> 00:23:52,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like ten of us are going to go out

449
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:53,760
Speaker 3: to the woods of the shovel bury it, and then

450
00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:55,720
Speaker 3: like shoot each other and then bury the bodies with

451
00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:57,119
Speaker 3: the things so that a few of us know, a

452
00:23:57,119 --> 00:23:58,199
Speaker 3: few of us know who it is.

453
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,840
Speaker 2: Oh, that's escalated very quickly.

454
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:07,440
Speaker 3: I did an episode about pirates recently. Sorry, I like

455
00:24:07,520 --> 00:24:09,440
Speaker 3: coming on not knowing where it came from.

456
00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:12,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that just got dark. Okay.

457
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:16,960
Speaker 3: So anyway, we're talking about how we're talking about the

458
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:21,879
Speaker 3: Perkins School for the Blind, and he's remembered in history

459
00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:24,280
Speaker 3: as being this lifelong advocate for the blind. He's not

460
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 3: the only disability advocate who is abless as fuck with

461
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 3: otherwise progressive politics. Who's going to come up in this

462
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 3: episode spoiler alert, the next one who's like this invented

463
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:36,760
Speaker 3: the telephone. Laura, for her part, refused to play nice

464
00:24:36,760 --> 00:24:39,680
Speaker 3: with people mistreating her. She was told not to talk,

465
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 3: for example, because her voice wasn't pleasant or whatever the fuck,

466
00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 3: and her response was to yell, God gave me much voice.

467
00:24:46,800 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 2: Yes, amen, yeah, but yeah.

468
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,240
Speaker 3: Soon the social media circus moved on from her, and

469
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:56,639
Speaker 3: she lived out her life at the school in quiet obscurity.

470
00:24:57,520 --> 00:25:00,480
Speaker 3: She became a sewing teacher, She went on summer occasions

471
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:02,560
Speaker 3: with their family. She read Christian books and made her

472
00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:06,600
Speaker 3: money selling needlework and teaching at the school. And she

473
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 3: died when she was fifty nine. Actually, I don't know

474
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:10,679
Speaker 3: if she got paid to teach at the school now

475
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 3: that I'm thinking about it. There might have been a

476
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 3: room in the board situation. Yeah, people were not treated well.

477
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 1: Yeah.

478
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 3: In history, it's one of the weird things about no

479
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 3: one else runs a history podcast on the only one

480
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:23,920
Speaker 3: who runs into this stuff.

481
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:29,120
Speaker 1: Right, But yeah, say history bad.

482
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:33,680
Speaker 3: Hmm. No, I'm gonna give it a complicated because there's

483
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 3: so much. There's a lot of cool people in history.

484
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:37,879
Speaker 1: Did they do cool stuff?

485
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:39,000
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, totally.

486
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that title. I'm gonna start a podcast

487
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:43,040
Speaker 2: with that.

488
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 3: Damn, you got to it first.

489
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 1: But I produce that.

490
00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:53,639
Speaker 3: Sometimes I just yeah, I'm excited. I've already got ideas.

491
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 3: Let's go. No problem here, I'm sending you the script.

492
00:25:55,520 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 3: You can finish that really funny. Just do a reverse

493
00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 3: episode where I just give the script to someone who has.

494
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 2: Just start trying to explain it, not knowing anything about it.

495
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 2: You ask, and then that's just start. I just start

496
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:11,880
Speaker 2: making sure. That was kind of like we just talked

497
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 2: about chat GPT. Yeah, and you they when they don't know,

498
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 2: they just make up shit. So I'm like, yeah, okay,

499
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:19,119
Speaker 2: let's do that.

500
00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:21,880
Speaker 3: That's how you know a man made the chap GPT

501
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 3: exactly all right? Anyway, living on so she she lived

502
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 3: out her life. She died when she was fifty nine.

503
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:33,719
Speaker 3: She wasn't the first deaf blind person to learn language

504
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:36,879
Speaker 3: in Western society. Julia Brace was the woman I mentioned

505
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:40,600
Speaker 3: earlier who is a generation older, communicated by tactile sign language,

506
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:44,160
Speaker 3: preferring it to Braille and written language. She actually went

507
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 3: to the Perkin School for Blind for a moment and

508
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 3: how tried to teach her and she was like, fuck this,

509
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:50,880
Speaker 3: I'm going back to the School for the death and

510
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 3: like I'm I'm in a sign language. I don't want

511
00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:57,679
Speaker 3: to learn how to read. And I always say in

512
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:01,280
Speaker 3: Western society, because if if you google who was the

513
00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 3: first deaf blind person to learn language, you get pages

514
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:07,440
Speaker 3: and pages about Hell and Keller, which is not true, right,

515
00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 3: no one's even no anyway whatever, And so it's like

516
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 3: I couldn't even find non Western examples. If I had

517
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:19,399
Speaker 3: more time, I hope I would have been able to

518
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:22,600
Speaker 3: because I'm very curious after doing this because it's presented

519
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:24,639
Speaker 3: as this like no one had ever done this in history,

520
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:25,919
Speaker 3: and I just don't believe it. Right.

521
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:28,880
Speaker 2: Well, we know with a history, a lot of things

522
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:32,400
Speaker 2: are still undiscovered, and especially if they're in the marginalized community,

523
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 2: they're going to be less likely known or even talked

524
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:38,439
Speaker 2: about or recorded. So hopefully someone will find out that

525
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:40,880
Speaker 2: there are more. But yeah, you never you can never

526
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:43,440
Speaker 2: absolutely say something when it comes to.

527
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 3: History totally, especially the first one I gave that.

528
00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:48,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, when it comes to for sure.

529
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Laura had a friend in a roommate who

530
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 3: was in that who is probably a character in that play.

531
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 3: I believe it was a main character in your play.

532
00:27:57,680 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 3: Laura's friend and roommate was named Anne Sullivan.

533
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,240
Speaker 2: And Sullivan Okay, yeah, she's.

534
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:03,639
Speaker 3: Going to go on to be very important in this story.

535
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:07,400
Speaker 3: She's Helen Keller's teacher and lifelong friend. She had a

536
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 3: fucking rough childhood. Have you heard this? Yeah?

537
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 1: She was.

538
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:17,399
Speaker 3: She was a blind, first generation, first generation Irish American

539
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:21,639
Speaker 3: woman who had lost her mother and brother to tuberculosis.

540
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 3: Her background includes such notes as after her mother's death,

541
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 3: her dad abandoned her at a boarding house. The boarding

542
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:35,880
Speaker 3: house was subsequently investigated for quote sexually perverted practices and cannibalism. Well, cannibalism.

543
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:38,200
Speaker 3: I don't know if I knew that part. Yeah, that's

544
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 3: the part where you just like hit a light, like

545
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 3: did they eat? I don't know. Maybe they weren't Catholic

546
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 3: and it was just the body of Christ. So Anne

547
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 3: Sullivan did not have an easy childhood. She ended up

548
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 3: going to the Perkins School blind and had a as

549
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 3: far as I can tell, much better life thereafter. I

550
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:06,920
Speaker 3: actually have compared to some of these other places. Whatever. Anyway, Okay,

551
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 3: so which sort of brings us to Helen. We're starting

552
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 3: to transition to talking about Helen. I was planning on

553
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:18,320
Speaker 3: kind of speed running through Helen Keller's learning to communicate,

554
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 3: because while it's fucking cool, it's also something that's been

555
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:24,480
Speaker 3: told a million times and gets twisted for weird propagandistic

556
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:27,880
Speaker 3: and ablest ends, like wow, what a miracle do you know?

557
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 3: Deafblind people are cable of communicating, whereas this actually like

558
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:33,760
Speaker 3: society has figured out how to communicate with me. You know,

559
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:38,200
Speaker 3: it's it's anyway whatever. But the annoying thing is that

560
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 3: I was going to speed run it, and then I

561
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 3: discovered have you heard the conspiracy that Helen Keller didn't exist?

562
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 2: Yes? Actually I have running No we did not, but yeah,

563
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 2: but I just remember, just because there was that little

564
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 2: bit of like interest from high school about her, I like,

565
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 2: and then not, I feel like someone brought it up

566
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 2: not too long ago.

567
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: Conspiracy theory.

568
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it is. I was like, what's happening? Yeah,

569
00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 2: but explain because I did not dig too deep in.

570
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 1: That was it was TikTok. And then I think, you

571
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:16,320
Speaker 1: guys spread back to Reddit and then it then it

572
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 1: just spread spreads, Yeah.

573
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:20,240
Speaker 2: As it does.

574
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 3: It's awful. It's one of the worst. There's a lot

575
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:32,280
Speaker 3: of bad conspiracy theories. This one is just unabashed. Okay,

576
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:35,480
Speaker 3: So it's like the basic idea of this conspiracy is

577
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 3: that there's no way for deafblind people to communicate. So

578
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 3: clearly Helen Keller is a fraud. And this is kind

579
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 3: of like to me, it's like that flatter a thing

580
00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 3: where like I feel bad. I've like mentioned this on

581
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:48,080
Speaker 3: the podcast before. I think I had a friend who,

582
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 3: like one winter in like the midst of depression and whatever,

583
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 3: he like messaged me at three in the morning and

584
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 3: he was like, the Earth is round, right, And I'm

585
00:30:58,080 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 3: like yeah, and He's like, I've been following down some

586
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 3: dark rabbit holes. How do you know the Earth is round?

587
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 3: And I'm like, because I've seen it, because I've been

588
00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 3: in an airplane, you know, And because there's people, Yeah,

589
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:12,400
Speaker 3: there's like people who fly round. You could talk to

590
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:13,960
Speaker 3: someone who's flown around the world.

591
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 2: No one's no, one's gone off the edge of the world.

592
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 2: They've tried.

593
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, but conspiracy culture could be so convincing and as spread.

594
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: And I mean, like, you know, not everyone has like

595
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: like I've worked on scientology and I've worked on QAnon shit,

596
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: so it's like it's like nobody and and and like

597
00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: the number one thing that I learned from working on

598
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:45,520
Speaker 1: those topics is like it just gets people like yeah,

599
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: there isn't like even even people that it's just it it's.

600
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 3: Like a virus.

601
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it makes it validate something for them, whether

602
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 2: it's uh, and it's going to be really awful, so

603
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 2: I can prepare this way, I can act this way,

604
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 2: or this is why this makes sense because my life

605
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 2: has makes sense and correlates with that for sure.

606
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but yeah.

607
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 2: I think I didn't dig do too deep on the

608
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 2: hell in keller bit because I like, that doesn't what

609
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 2: purpose does to serve? Moving on?

610
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, and it's it must have I mean

611
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it because I think it

612
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:24,800
Speaker 3: was I think it was people who just like they

613
00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:28,959
Speaker 3: couldn't imagine how they would communicate, so therefore it's impossible,

614
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 3: right and if they say things enough, they say things

615
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 3: like no other how come no other death blind person

616
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 3: has ever been able to communicate or whatever, which is

617
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 3: like easily disproven because we live in a society, right

618
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 3: they do.

619
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 1: Wait, bagfie, that's their argument.

620
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like that is one of their arguments.

621
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: I have never.

622
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, a deaf blind person who can communicate, right, like

623
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:56,959
Speaker 2: I have shut up, like they don't exist?

624
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, what like literally what.

625
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: Yeh?

626
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 3: Be fucking for real people and then and so the

627
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 3: conspiracy is either some some go so far say she

628
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 3: literally didn't exist, like there was no woman named Helen

629
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 3: Keller in history, which is like one of those things

630
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 3: where it's like she lived until the sixties. You see

631
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 3: video of her, like.

632
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 2: It wasn't like it wasn't that long ago, wasn'teen hundreds.

633
00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 3: And other people say that she existed but wasn't actually

634
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 3: deaf blind. She was like one or the other or something,

635
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 3: and she was faking the other one for fame. Yeah.

636
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 3: Another one was that she was deaf blind, but she

637
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 3: wasn't actually communicating and she was being treated like a

638
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 3: ventriloquist dummy by her handlers. And a lot of those

639
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 3: ones are like, see, because there's no way she could

640
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 3: possibly know about socialism because she's never seen anything, or

641
00:33:54,800 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 3: it was just it's just fucking ableism, right, and I

642
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 3: don't even know how to like like mostly my way

643
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 3: of debunking as being like, you're wrong, that's wrong, you're incorrect,

644
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:06,720
Speaker 3: like but.

645
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 2: It here's a picture of her, here's her accomplishments, here's

646
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 2: who testifies to what she had. Don't understand what just

647
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 2: because she's able to function and live happily does not

648
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 2: discredit her existence.

649
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 3: I know, I know it. It it's so awful, and.

650
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 1: And like.

651
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:30,840
Speaker 3: I think that's okay. So that's part of why I

652
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 3: don't speed run it. And that's part of why I

653
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:35,160
Speaker 3: actually used the specific example of how Laura learned how

654
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 3: to read is because I feel like, well, I can't

655
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:40,799
Speaker 3: imagine how you could do that and be like okay,

656
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 3: well here's how it happened. And you're like, oh okay,

657
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:45,520
Speaker 3: because like I didn't, you know before I started doing

658
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:47,439
Speaker 3: the researchers, like, well, I don't know the means by which,

659
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 3: right this happened, right, And then I like read about

660
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 3: and it's like, yeah, that makes sense, Like that that's cool,

661
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 3: you know, And so I'm not going to speed run it.

662
00:34:56,560 --> 00:34:58,920
Speaker 3: I thought we could skip to the Helen Keller as

663
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 3: revolutionary socialist who didn't believe in party politics but instead

664
00:35:02,120 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 3: revolutionary socialism, followed by here's a complicated legacy. But first

665
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:09,880
Speaker 3: we're gonna talk whow she learned to communicate? Yes, because

666
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 3: the miracle I'm going to try to perform here is

667
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:14,279
Speaker 3: to get it through people's thick skulls that people with

668
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 3: disabilities are people capable of learning what the fuck? So

669
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:24,520
Speaker 3: Helen Keller on June twenty seventh, eighteen eighty. Helen Keller

670
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 3: was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, to a slaver family. Her

671
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 3: family was like Slaver Royalty. Her father, Arthur H. Heller,

672
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 3: was a captain in the Confederate Army, related to Robert E. Lee,

673
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:43,040
Speaker 3: the Confederate general she was. But that's just one side

674
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:46,400
Speaker 3: of her family. On her mother's side, her grandfather was

675
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 3: another Confederate general, this time in acting brigadier general named

676
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:55,000
Speaker 3: Charles Adams. Who's this part is kind of fun. His

677
00:35:55,200 --> 00:36:01,759
Speaker 3: entire command, Okay, it's whatever. His entire command was conscripts

678
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 3: who wish they weren't out there fighting for slavery. So

679
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 3: during one battle, this general her grandfather lost his entire

680
00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:14,600
Speaker 3: command because they all fucked off. They're like yeah, they

681
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:16,279
Speaker 3: were like he was like, go fill in the hole

682
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:18,920
Speaker 3: in the Confederate line, and they were like, we we

683
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 3: don't want to. Like that seems like a good way

684
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 3: to dive for rich people.

685
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 2: Like You're like, they're like sure, sure, sure, sure, sure

686
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:29,399
Speaker 2: be wipe back. Yeah, I can go get something first. Yeah,

687
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 2: I hear my mom call it.

688
00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 3: Hold on.

689
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 2: The shovels are way over there, so let let us

690
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:38,399
Speaker 2: go Google grab those stay.

691
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:43,360
Speaker 3: Here, let my mus get at home. Yeah, that's amazing,

692
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 3: I know. And so there's some cool people in this

693
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 3: history is the Confederate soldiers who did not want to

694
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:51,520
Speaker 3: be because it is worth under noting that they're conscripts

695
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 3: right like they're literally whatever. Anyway, the whole episode about that.

696
00:36:55,680 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 3: So Helen's granddad, Charles Adams, was also related to John Adams,

697
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 3: the second President of the United States. To his credit

698
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 3: where it is due, John Adams was one of the

699
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 3: only presidents back then who wasn't a slaver. I think

700
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:10,839
Speaker 3: it was literally just John Adams and his son were

701
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 3: the only pre Civil War presidents I could. Someone's going

702
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 3: to be mad at me about saying that. I don't

703
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 3: actually pay much attention to electoral politics until I started

704
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 3: doing this show. Helen was born on what gets called

705
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 3: euphemistically a homestead when people want a whitewash history. It

706
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 3: was a cotton plantation worked by enslave people until a

707
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:37,240
Speaker 3: combination of the Union army and slave people striking and deserting,

708
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:39,359
Speaker 3: and a civil war within the Civil War all worked

709
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:43,839
Speaker 3: together to destroy fucking shadow slavery. Right, that's her lineage.

710
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:46,879
Speaker 3: Helen is born fifteen years after the Civil War ended,

711
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:50,000
Speaker 3: mind you, and she's rad. On the balance, I actually

712
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 3: think that her break from all of this makes her

713
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:57,320
Speaker 3: more rad and probably had at least her fucking granddad

714
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:02,000
Speaker 3: rolling over in his grave. Here's my impression of granddad

715
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:03,920
Speaker 3: rolling over in his grave. I wrote into the script,

716
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:05,719
Speaker 3: and so now I'm stuck reading it. I wrote it

717
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 3: probably two in the morning, but here I am No,

718
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,239
Speaker 3: my troops deserted me. No, my most famous descendant found

719
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 3: an organization called the ACOU to help black people's That's

720
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 3: what he's said. Yeah, thanks, I loved it. So right now,

721
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 3: she's a baby. She hasn't started the ACU yet. She's

722
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:30,000
Speaker 3: nineteen months old. She gets really sick. This is probably meningitis,

723
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 3: but that's people's just best guess right now. At the time,

724
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 3: it was probably called oh fuck, our baby is sick

725
00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:38,920
Speaker 3: and no one has invented antibiotics yet. She recovers, except

726
00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 3: she lost her vision and her hearing and was deaf blind,

727
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:46,399
Speaker 3: and really quickly the historical fog sets in because there's

728
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,440
Speaker 3: two stories here. There's the story that's really good for fundraising,

729
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:51,960
Speaker 3: which is the story of the film The Miracle Worker

730
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 3: about how she was basically a wild animal. There's like,

731
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:58,720
Speaker 3: I think there's like a scene where she's like chasing

732
00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 3: someone with scissors and and like, yeah, a.

733
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:04,800
Speaker 2: Whole like dining room scene where they fling food about

734
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:08,120
Speaker 2: and she gets into everybody's plates and she gets ignored,

735
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:13,759
Speaker 2: but she's like yeah, yeah, literally just being on top

736
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:16,800
Speaker 2: of the table, Yeah, eating off of people's plates and

737
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 2: no one's stopping her.

738
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's for dramatic effect, as far as I can tell,

739
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 3: with roughly no basis in reality. I'm certain that every

740
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:28,880
Speaker 3: child is tantrums, and I'm certain that someone who has

741
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:31,799
Speaker 3: trouble that people don't know how to communicate with has

742
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:36,640
Speaker 3: more tantrums. I am not. But the actual thing that

743
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 3: happened is that little Helen started figuring out how to

744
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:41,400
Speaker 3: communicate with home signs. She had more than sixty of

745
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 3: these because she taught herself how to communicate on some level,

746
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 3: because people do that. She could experience the world through taste,

747
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:52,840
Speaker 3: touch and smell. She knew who was coming because she

748
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 3: could tell the different gates of the different people in

749
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,600
Speaker 3: her household based on the vibration and the floor caused

750
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 3: by their footsteps, and to her family's credit, they took

751
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 3: her her condition seriously. Her mother read Charles Dickinson's book

752
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:18,840
Speaker 3: Dickens Is Dickens, Yeah, where he talked about the plural

753
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 3: is Dickey.

754
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anyone is wrong.

755
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:32,840
Speaker 2: You do you what you need if you have multiple

756
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:33,440
Speaker 2: let's go.

757
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 3: Well, he's going to show up later in this episode.

758
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 3: But Mark Twain has that quote about anyone who can

759
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:40,760
Speaker 3: only think of one way to spell a word clearly

760
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 3: suffers from lack of imagination.

761
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 1: I Mark Twin.

762
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 3: But yes, so Charles Diggens talks about Laura Bridgman. Mom

763
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 3: reads the book and is like, oh shit, someone else

764
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:57,359
Speaker 3: has dealt with this, Maybe we can do this. So

765
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:00,120
Speaker 3: she talks to a doctor I think like travels to

766
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 3: the mid Atlantic to talk to a doctor, to a

767
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:06,399
Speaker 3: specialist who put her in touch with the anti hero

768
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:10,440
Speaker 3: of today's story. I'm gonna go with anti hero Alexander

769
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:10,960
Speaker 3: Graham Bell.

770
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:15,879
Speaker 2: Oh okay, did we already do a second ad break?

771
00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 3: Well? Guess what everyone, before you get to hear about telephones,

772
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:22,760
Speaker 3: you get to hear about what happened with his invention,

773
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,160
Speaker 3: which is that eventually you all are going to get

774
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:28,920
Speaker 3: listening to ads in the middle of hearing about history

775
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 3: about the guy that's true. Yeah, yeah, it's the very

776
00:41:34,040 --> 00:41:36,839
Speaker 3: handy button. Yeah. I hate what I'm like working on

777
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:38,880
Speaker 3: something though, and like I like, my phone's like across

778
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 3: the room and I'm like, I have to listen to anyway.

779
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 2: But these are amazing personally, These are these are the

780
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:49,959
Speaker 2: best ones.

781
00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: Personally. I thoroughly enjoy hearing about Hello Fresh.

782
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:57,040
Speaker 3: I like the ones that are about other podcasts I

783
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 3: have listened to. Yes, I really like the Alphabet Boys.

784
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:03,200
Speaker 3: I listened to that because I heard an advertised on

785
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 3: the Coolstone podcast. Nice.

786
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 2: I have no idea what that is, but right on,

787
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 2: I don't need it.

788
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:16,360
Speaker 3: It's a podcast about the FBI's infiltration of by the way, Margaret,

789
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 3: actually yeah, this is actually yeah, this is just genuinely

790
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:21,839
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I have some quibbles about the way

791
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:23,879
Speaker 3: it represents some stuff, but I got a lot out

792
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 3: of that. So here's some other some actual ads. And

793
00:42:33,120 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 3: we're back and we're talking about Alexander Graham Bell or

794
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:41,600
Speaker 3: Alec to his friends. For some reason, shut up, no,

795
00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 3: it really is. He really was. He was Alec. He

796
00:42:45,520 --> 00:42:48,200
Speaker 3: also didn't have a middle name. In his younger life,

797
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:50,799
Speaker 3: he like, but his brothers all had middle names. So

798
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 3: he was like, Dad, how come I don't have a

799
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 3: middle name. So for his like eighth birthday or something,

800
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,959
Speaker 3: his dad was like, fine, Graham, you have a middle name. Now,

801
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:01,319
Speaker 3: why didn't I give him a middle name? Did they

802
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:03,239
Speaker 3: just not like him? I feel like you just gave

803
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:04,120
Speaker 3: up on the names.

804
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:05,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, like he was a.

805
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:06,880
Speaker 3: Third or fourth or something.

806
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 1: Can I can I just say I thought the Gwyneth

807
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: Pautrick skiing trial was the whitest shit I've heard recently.

808
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 1: But being like, you don't have a middle name, fine,

809
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 1: your Graham?

810
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 3: Yes, totally, all right, Alec.

811
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:25,839
Speaker 1: And named himself Alec right.

812
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 3: And then also, and this is none of this is

813
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:30,799
Speaker 3: in the script because it doesn't actually matter. Uh, he

814
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:33,280
Speaker 3: spelled it with a K. And then later his wife

815
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 3: was like, you gotta change. It's gotta beat with a

816
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 3: C instead of a C K. And so he dropped

817
00:43:39,200 --> 00:43:42,759
Speaker 3: the K at his wife's behest And I haven't no idea.

818
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 2: Why So it was a L E C K.

819
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:51,759
Speaker 3: Yeah. Originally his nickname, Yeah.

820
00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 2: Alex so l A A A oh that's the nickname because.

821
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 3: It's Alexander name. And it's funny because history remembers him

822
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:00,200
Speaker 3: as like he is not an alex he has an

823
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:03,759
Speaker 3: Alexander Graham Bell, like he is full three names, you know.

824
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: Right, that reality he was Alec Bell.

825
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you can't. You can't repeat the kickers too

826
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 3: much though, because he wasn't a racist.

827
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: Fair enough. I think that.

828
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:22,040
Speaker 2: Because I'm gonna.

829
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 3: Yell at oh, he participated in some ship that did

830
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 3: some racism. He advocated against racism. All right, we'll get

831
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 3: to it. We'll get to it.

832
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, let's go.

833
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 3: Actually it's in like two paragraphs, it's two sentences, okay.

834
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 3: So Alexander Grambell, our man, Alec he's not really our

835
00:44:40,160 --> 00:44:43,279
Speaker 3: man because he's he's obsessed with deafness and trying to

836
00:44:43,320 --> 00:44:45,840
Speaker 3: cure it, and he's trying to better the lives of

837
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:50,879
Speaker 3: deaf people. And he's also obsessed with the eugenics. That's

838
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 3: always a thing, that thing that poisons the legacy of

839
00:44:53,800 --> 00:44:58,400
Speaker 3: like half the Victorian eras interesting people is back. So

840
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:02,399
Speaker 3: Alexander gram Bell. He's famous for inventing the telephone, which

841
00:45:02,600 --> 00:45:06,120
Speaker 3: the acoustic telegraph. All his money came from the telephone,

842
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:08,319
Speaker 3: but he barely liked telephones, he wouldn't keep one in

843
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:11,360
Speaker 3: his office. He invented a bunch of other shit, like

844
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 3: an old timey air conditioner that he used to cool

845
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:16,400
Speaker 3: his house, which was like a fan over ice cubes,

846
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:20,919
Speaker 3: or some shit. Worked on composting toilets. He was one

847
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:24,040
Speaker 3: of the inventors of the metal detector. Supposedly he invented

848
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:26,280
Speaker 3: this while trying to find the bullet in President James

849
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 3: Garfield so doctors could pull it out. There's like a

850
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:31,760
Speaker 3: whole he's an inventor. People like fucking talking about him.

851
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:34,879
Speaker 3: But his main love was human speech, the advocating for it,

852
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 3: the working with the deaf community and pressuring them into

853
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 3: relying on speech instead of sign language. Yeah, it's not

854
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 3: a visual medium. But Samantha's currently side eyeing me.

855
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 2: Yes, I am sidey.

856
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:52,359
Speaker 3: So he came from a long line of elocutionists, people

857
00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:55,720
Speaker 3: who study speech, the like mechanics and the sounds of speech.

858
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 3: His dad wrote a language designed to describe the mechanics

859
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:01,640
Speaker 3: of articulation, like what sounds are coming out of a

860
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 3: mouth is a language that his dad wrote. His mom

861
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 3: started going deaf when he was twelve, so he became

862
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 3: and he he was always like with her and interpreting

863
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 3: for her and stuff. He became a tutor for deaf people.

864
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 3: He married one of his deaf students, which I think

865
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:23,520
Speaker 3: he was actually uncreepy about.

866
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 2: Okay, I was gonna say a student, Like, what what

867
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:27,880
Speaker 2: do we say when we say student?

868
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:30,839
Speaker 3: She was an adult? I believe I didn't actually look

869
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 3: she's younger than him.

870
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 2: You know, sometimes they consider fourteen year olds adults.

871
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 3: I know I need to Actually I should have written

872
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:39,880
Speaker 3: how old she was. They had a long courtship, and

873
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:43,320
Speaker 3: his courtship was primarily him writing feminist and anti racist

874
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 3: letters to her. She was white, okay, and but one

875
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:53,880
Speaker 3: of the letters he wrote was sarcastic, and everyone hates him.

876
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:57,239
Speaker 3: So they took his sarcastic letter and claimed that he

877
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 3: was against women's suffrage and that women were more free

878
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 3: than men because they didn't have to do any thinking,

879
00:47:03,600 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 3: and like all of this stuff. And so I went

880
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:09,279
Speaker 3: into it. I was like really ready to be like

881
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 3: man and he's wrong about fucking everything. And I'm like reading,

882
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:14,080
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, fuck this, why is he saying the shit?

883
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:15,040
Speaker 3: And you get to the end of the letter and

884
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:19,360
Speaker 3: you're like, this is sarcasm, like, and he's not subtle

885
00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 3: about it. By the end of the letter, like it's

886
00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:25,839
Speaker 3: actually decently executed sarcasm. It's two pages long. It talks

887
00:47:25,880 --> 00:47:28,280
Speaker 3: about how ridiculous it is that women could be equal

888
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 3: to men and invade men's sacred spaces like astronomy, all

889
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:37,279
Speaker 3: the while referencing women after women after women who were

890
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 3: in these spaces being very good and successful and we're

891
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:46,839
Speaker 3: at least as smart as men and how whatever, and

892
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 3: he like goes on and he's like, look, eventually, there's

893
00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:51,839
Speaker 3: gonna be a woman president. And he's Scottish. He listen

894
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:54,800
Speaker 3: to America at this point, but he's Scottish and he's like, whatever,

895
00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 3: I'm a subject of the queen and she's a decent queen,

896
00:47:57,280 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 3: so like, why the fuck would I be against women rulers?

897
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:03,400
Speaker 3: Like this is when he like drops the sarcasm and like,

898
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 3: how before him, you've got someone who has had fairly

899
00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 3: good politics for it. For his era, he actively believed

900
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:13,960
Speaker 3: in universal suffrage regardless of race and gender and religion

901
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:17,440
Speaker 3: and property ownership, and he treated the disabled people that

902
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:20,759
Speaker 3: he dedicated his life to in bad ways, or rather,

903
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 3: he advocated things that aren't good He was a huge

904
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 3: proponent of what gets called oralism, and this is an

905
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:35,520
Speaker 3: assimilationist approach to disability, specifically to deafness. He argued that

906
00:48:35,560 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 3: deaf people would be happier if they integrate into hearing society,

907
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:41,760
Speaker 3: which means no more teaching sign language and instead everyone

908
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 3: should just read lips and learn to speak, and he

909
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 3: used his father's alphabet to teach deaf people to speak.

910
00:48:48,560 --> 00:48:50,879
Speaker 3: He also said shit like deaf people should avoid hanging

911
00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 3: out with mostly deaf people because it slows assimilation. This

912
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 3: does not look kindly upon by history because it's bad.

913
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:03,480
Speaker 3: Correct with the New York Times, the oralism Bell Champion

914
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,279
Speaker 3: was a disaster for the deaf. Well examples, a bound

915
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 3: of deaf people have mastered speech, they do not represent

916
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:12,360
Speaker 3: the larger deaf community. Oralism implicitly teaches a kind of

917
00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 3: self abnegation that deaf people are of value only in

918
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:20,280
Speaker 3: so far as they can approximate another kind of person. Okay,

919
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:23,799
Speaker 3: so that's one of his big bad things. I'll talk

920
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 3: by the other one. He's really influential, and Helen Collor

921
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 3: is a reason he's like a long side quest for this,

922
00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:31,560
Speaker 3: because I think he's actually almost a He's really important

923
00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:33,800
Speaker 3: to understanding Helen Color's position on these things.

924
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:39,360
Speaker 1: Oh man, I read ahead. This is this is bad.

925
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:42,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, this's gonna be on a different show.

926
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:46,439
Speaker 1: Oh no, I was like, oh, the Margaret Show.

927
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:47,360
Speaker 2: I've been tricked.

928
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:53,040
Speaker 1: I know, yay. Working title Helen Color was a socialist,

929
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:54,880
Speaker 1: gonna be a bye.

930
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:56,520
Speaker 3: All right, Margaret.

931
00:49:56,640 --> 00:49:58,520
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's.

932
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:01,319
Speaker 3: Rip the band in anti Helen on the whole to

933
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:05,439
Speaker 3: be clear, fair enough, rip off the band aid. Yeah,

934
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:09,160
Speaker 3: all right. So Alexander Graham Bell alex was a eugenicist,

935
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 3: not in the way you'd immediately assume when you hear

936
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:15,359
Speaker 3: that word. Now, I've talked about this in a couple

937
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:17,239
Speaker 3: times on the show, and I fucking hate that. I

938
00:50:17,280 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 3: have to because I hate that so many people are

939
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:21,400
Speaker 3: into eugenics that it keeps cropping up all the time.

940
00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:26,160
Speaker 3: But there are two things that prove that eugenics was

941
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:29,680
Speaker 3: one of the worst ideas humanity ever had. The first

942
00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:33,080
Speaker 3: one was the Nazis. Most people hear eugenics and they

943
00:50:33,080 --> 00:50:35,479
Speaker 3: think of the Nazis improve the human race by killing

944
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:39,399
Speaker 3: everyone who's inferior. Then there's the other terrible thing, which

945
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:43,320
Speaker 3: is the non Nazi, non consensual eugenics, like the US practiced,

946
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 3: the US sterilized so many fucking people, non consensually all

947
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:54,520
Speaker 3: throughout the twentieth century and still frankly, mostly people of color,

948
00:50:54,560 --> 00:50:57,680
Speaker 3: people with disabilities, poor people, lots and lots of people,

949
00:50:57,800 --> 00:50:59,520
Speaker 3: especially people who are more than one of these things,

950
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:04,439
Speaker 3: but especially people of color. And this is really fucking bad.

951
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:06,520
Speaker 3: And this is why fights for birth control and abortion

952
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:09,600
Speaker 3: were actually really complicated in a lot of communities of color,

953
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 3: and why it's very important that our fight isn't just

954
00:51:13,040 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 3: for abortion, it's for control over one's body, the right

955
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 3: to have kids, the right to not have kids. We

956
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:20,360
Speaker 3: talked about this last time you were on.

957
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:21,839
Speaker 2: Yes, we did.

958
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:25,520
Speaker 3: But the thing that I think that people don't because

959
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 3: you can look back and you can see these things

960
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:29,759
Speaker 3: and it's very fucking clear. But the thing that people

961
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:32,320
Speaker 3: don't necessarily understand is that eugenics was a widespread belief

962
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:36,840
Speaker 3: and I think every corner of society. Yeah, yeah, it

963
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:38,520
Speaker 3: was on the left as well as the right. It

964
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:41,840
Speaker 3: was among working class people as well. People discovered evolution

965
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 3: and hereditary heredity and we're like, sick, let's take an

966
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 3: active hand in it by like fucking with everything you

967
00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:52,279
Speaker 3: know in ways that were bad and went bad. The

968
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:56,680
Speaker 3: leftist eugenics was focused on choice, like let's not sterilize everyone,

969
00:51:56,719 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 3: but instead it was shit like let's have fewer children

970
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:01,760
Speaker 3: as working class people so that the laborpool is smaller

971
00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 3: and we're more in demand and can leverage our power better,

972
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 3: which is a framework that now would fit more under

973
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:12,000
Speaker 3: family planning, right, because it's about the family making plans,

974
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:15,440
Speaker 3: it's about the people who have wombs making decisions. This

975
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:17,759
Speaker 3: still led to bad shit because it was tied into

976
00:52:17,760 --> 00:52:18,640
Speaker 3: fucking eugenics.

977
00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:19,480
Speaker 1: Right.

978
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 3: When we talk about planned parenthood as great it is today,

979
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:24,840
Speaker 3: we know the bases and we know why it is

980
00:52:24,960 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 3: complicated and Sayinger did good things in bad things, Yep, exactly.

981
00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:32,400
Speaker 3: I like the first time I had to break Sanger

982
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:34,840
Speaker 3: up on this show, I like almost changed topics. I

983
00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:36,359
Speaker 3: was like, I don't want to have to talk about this.

984
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:39,759
Speaker 3: I don't want to talk about Margaret Sanger's it's I

985
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:41,880
Speaker 3: don't want to And then I'm like, all right, this

986
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 3: is cowardice. I will do it. So Alexander Graham Bell

987
00:52:48,719 --> 00:52:52,360
Speaker 3: or Alec who is friends. He's into studying heredity and

988
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 3: he learns that deafness is indeed, sometimes congenital can be hereditary.

989
00:52:56,800 --> 00:52:58,799
Speaker 3: He writes a whole paper about this, worrying about how

990
00:52:58,840 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 3: if deaf people marry one and it might make a

991
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:05,720
Speaker 3: race that gets scare quotes of deaf people that said,

992
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:09,680
Speaker 3: and I hate saying that said. People say that he

993
00:53:09,719 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 3: advocated for bands on marriage between deaf people, which he

994
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:14,399
Speaker 3: never did, and he actually spent decades of his life

995
00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:18,200
Speaker 3: trying to prove to people that he never did, because

996
00:53:18,239 --> 00:53:20,719
Speaker 3: this also came up while he was alive, and he

997
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 3: spent a lot of his time in communication with the

998
00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:24,839
Speaker 3: deaf community, I think the National Association for the Deaf

999
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:29,320
Speaker 3: and about how he was opposed to bands on marriage.

1000
00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:35,000
Speaker 3: He never advocated for sterility for deaf people. He did

1001
00:53:35,120 --> 00:53:38,239
Speaker 3: argue for similations politics for deaf people, and like did

1002
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:44,839
Speaker 3: his fucking maybe people should. So this is contentious even

1003
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:47,080
Speaker 3: within the deaf community at the time. In the nineteen

1004
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:49,320
Speaker 3: twenty or so, the National Association that Deaf was concerned

1005
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:53,200
Speaker 3: about people marrying one another because everyone was obsessed with eugenics,

1006
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:56,400
Speaker 3: and because a lot of the people, not all of

1007
00:53:56,400 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 3: the people, a lot of the people in the disability

1008
00:53:58,040 --> 00:54:01,120
Speaker 3: community at the time, becaus was how do we stop

1009
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:03,439
Speaker 3: people from being disabled, rather than how do we deal

1010
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:08,239
Speaker 3: with the social effects of this, which brings us to

1011
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:13,680
Speaker 3: the social construction of disability that we now have the

1012
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 3: framework that far more people are working under now versus

1013
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:19,319
Speaker 3: the medical model of disability that Bell and others were

1014
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 3: working under, which we'll talk about on Wednesday. This is

1015
00:54:24,200 --> 00:54:29,080
Speaker 3: the worst cliffhanger I've ever done. It's a theory cliffhanger.

1016
00:54:29,800 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 2: I'm hanging on.

1017
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:33,960
Speaker 3: Okay, I appreciate it. It's a really interesting theory. When

1018
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:36,560
Speaker 3: I first had this explained to me at a feminist

1019
00:54:36,560 --> 00:54:39,160
Speaker 3: science fiction convention called wiz Con, it was a mind

1020
00:54:39,160 --> 00:54:42,920
Speaker 3: blow moment. I was like, oh, that makes sense. You know,

1021
00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:45,000
Speaker 3: I kind of cut you off.

1022
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:47,480
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm coming into a good lecture, so

1023
00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:47,920
Speaker 2: I'm excited.

1024
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:55,680
Speaker 3: All right, great, yeah, yeah, that's totally the Oh anyway,

1025
00:54:56,520 --> 00:55:00,640
Speaker 3: thank you, thank you. But what else is amazing? It's

1026
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:04,320
Speaker 3: not these deals, It's Samantha. It's you and the stuff.

1027
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:05,920
Speaker 1: That you do. Is it me? Oh?

1028
00:55:06,400 --> 00:55:09,520
Speaker 2: Thank you, I love it. Well, thank you for letting

1029
00:55:09,520 --> 00:55:11,920
Speaker 2: me be on. But yes, I am on a podcast

1030
00:55:11,960 --> 00:55:14,359
Speaker 2: called stuff Mom Never Told You. You can find us

1031
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:22,000
Speaker 2: on Twitter, Instagram's YouTube, and TikTok if you want to

1032
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 2: watch my co host cry about the Last of Us

1033
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:29,920
Speaker 2: or Star Wars. That's what we post there.

1034
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:30,440
Speaker 3: You right.

1035
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:32,840
Speaker 2: We also have a book coming out in August.

1036
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:34,719
Speaker 1: You have a book coming out.

1037
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:37,840
Speaker 2: We have a book coming out. Yes, you can go

1038
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 2: pre order it. It's it's stuff mom never you, Past, Present.

1039
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:44,799
Speaker 3: And Future, and it's got some cool things. We've got

1040
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:48,160
Speaker 3: a lot of great illustrations and like graphic novel portions

1041
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 3: to it.

1042
00:55:51,080 --> 00:55:55,640
Speaker 2: Gods, thank you. You want to pre order it, you

1043
00:55:55,680 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 2: can pre order it at stuff you should Read dot com.

1044
00:55:59,120 --> 00:56:01,719
Speaker 2: There's like a whole little section and yeah, it's coming

1045
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:02,280
Speaker 2: out in August.

1046
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:02,680
Speaker 1: Yay.

1047
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 3: Fuck yeah, that's exciting. I'm excited. So ifhi, do you

1048
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:08,000
Speaker 3: have anything you want to plug?

1049
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:16,000
Speaker 1: Uh buy Samantha's book by Margaret's many books. Uh pre

1050
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:19,120
Speaker 1: ordered Jamie Loftus's Raw Dog, which is about hot dogs,

1051
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:22,160
Speaker 1: which Margaret play last we record was like maybe you

1052
00:56:22,160 --> 00:56:29,120
Speaker 1: should give that contexts sure that when you don't bet

1053
00:56:29,239 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 1: if you don't.

1054
00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:33,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, Well that's some stuff and we'll

1055
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:36,719
Speaker 3: come back on Wednesday and we'll actually start talking about

1056
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:37,440
Speaker 3: Helen Keller.

1057
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1058
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:45,320
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media for more podcasts from cool Zone Media,

1059
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:48,480
Speaker 1: Visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us

1060
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:51,960
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1061
00:56:52,000 --> 00:57:00,400
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.