One of the famous Felix Nadar portraits taken shortly after she joined the Conservatoire. Circa 1864
Sarah Bernhardt was an actress, sculptress, writer, mother, celebrity…legendary global phenomenon. She was also a courtesan, a master self-promoter, and an all-around unique individual who lived her life on her terms and in her own way. (more…)
We left Lady mary rolling her eyes as people found reason after reason to not immunize against smallpox. While she cared about people not contracting a deadly disease, what Mary really want to be was a writer. Those letters she wrote from the road? She edited them into a book that was the first to capture a woman’s perspective of the Ottoman Empire. It would not be published in her lifetime, she had other things to do…like garden, socialize, write more biting commentaries on political and court life, raise two kids, ditch her husband and run off with a n’er do well Count to Italy, tour Europe, then entwine her life with another unscrupulous noble.
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For a woman who is not well known these days and who lived way back in the 1700s, it’s surprising that there’s enough of a story to fill two episodes…Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is such a woman!
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There are quite a few parallels between Mary Mallon’s story (a series of typhoid outbreaks) and our present-day pandemic, and so there are things we can learn from it.
But was Mary a villain?
Or simply a victim of circumstances?
This episode also serves as a little hint for the one we’re working on right now for next time!
For photos, things we discuss, and our media recommendations click on over to Mary’s ORIGINAL SHOWNOTES.
This image, from an ancient coin, is believed to be Olympias and the only known image of her still in existence…but even this has been disputed.
She had several names: Polyxena, Myrtale, Stratonice, and the one she is best known by, Olympias. People often get hung up on the snakes she had around her and the faith by which she lived her life– but we focused on the power she had as not only a wife of a king but the mother of a great one: Alexander the Great. We had to go in the Way…Way Back Machine for the story of this woman who was descended from Achilles (or so family lore claimed) and managed to survive a cut-throat court life at a very turbulent time and place in history. (more…)
