Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Eleanor Roosevelt: Best First Lady

Transcript

Eleanor Roosevelt: Best First Lady · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Should Know, the Great Women in History edition.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: That's right, one of the greatest.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Sure she's up there. Francis Perkins still gets my vote, though,
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. Eleanor Roosevelt is amazing. It's just that
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: learning about her makes your head spin, like you could
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: do a ten part series on her.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Easy.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, at some point you just gotta, you know, do
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: the stuff you should know.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Thn right, and condense ten parts into forty five minutes.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: So I think I just let the cat out of
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: the bag, Chuck. We're talking today about Eleanor Roosevelt, and
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: she is the longest serving first Lady. She was called
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: the first Lady of the world as a matter of
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: fact by Harry Truman. Mayor La Guardia in New York
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: called her America's number one volunteer. And she was almost
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: universally liked, even if you couldn't stand her politics. She
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: was just so eloquent and graceful and kind and generous
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: and all the great things that you like you couldn't help,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: but like her pretty much. It seems like only a
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: few members of her family are the ones that she
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: ever had a real beef with.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And you know, family's got a family, right.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Never trust family, that's right. So let's talk about her
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: family to start. She was born in eighteen eighty four.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: I believe her full name was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, but
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: everybody calls her Eleanor, and her father was Elliott Roosevelt,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: who's Teddy Roosevelt's younger brother. And so, yes, she wasn't
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: just married as a Roosevelt. She was born a Roosevelt too.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Isn't that surprising that she married her cousin? That is
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: surprising to probably a lot of people.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fifth cousin. Not a lot of genetic issues there,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean I thought she became a Roosevelt
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: after Emerchan she was born of Roosevelt. Buddy, there's your
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: trivia question for this one.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. She didn't have her parents around for long,
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: and while she did, it was not the best scene.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Apparently her mother was a pretty distant person, not the
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: greatest mom, and her dad was a pretty tough alcoholic.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: But they died not too you know, they died when
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: she was a child. Basically, her mom Anna died in
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: eighteen ninety two of diphtheria, and her father, Eliot died
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: after he jumped out of a window because of alcoholic
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: trimmers basically delirium trim and so it was a pretty
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: rough go for her until she went to live with
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: her grandmother, where she had lived with her brothers Elliott Junior,
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: who actually he didn't live that long either, but her
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: brother Hall did and apparently she doted on him quite
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: a bit.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what a great sister.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Like.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: They're both orphans, and so she's going to take on
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: the role of like being his mother figure essentially and
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: taking good care of him. So I think that's pretty
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: neat and that shows a lot about who she was,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: because this is starting about age ten. And when she
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: went and lived with her grandmother, she was educated at home,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: as very very wealthy people did at the time. And
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: when she was fifteen, she was sent to England and
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that's where she her first brush, maybe even really her
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: only brush with education went. She was there for like
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: three years before her grandmother called her back and said
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: that's enough, let's do some debutante stuff, come back and
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: get fitted for a big frilly.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Dress, that's right. And that was in nineteen oh two,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: and she wasn't you know, she didn't take to even
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: though she was born into in wealth and kind of
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: into that scene obviously as a Roosevelt, she didn't feel
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: like she really fit in in that elite sort of
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: sort of scene there. So early on she started volunteering,
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: and she thought, well, a good way to sort of
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: rid myself, or at least distance myself a bit from
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: that life would be to kind of, you know, see
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: what the common folks are up to and help them out.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: And she started out doing that at a pretty young age,
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: initially at the Rivington Street Settlement House there on the
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Lower East Side, where she was a dance teacher and
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: she taught classes to young immigrants, and then also finally
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: joining the National Consumers League, which was basically an organization
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: that tried to improve, you know, down in the garment
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: district what the workers were dealing with.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Right, trying to get worker's death from one hundred percent
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: down to something like eighty percent.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: So she met her cousin, her fifth cousin, who she
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: married Franklin Delano Roosevelt when they were both very young.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: I think they were at like a family gathering or
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: something like that, and he was giving her piggyback rides,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: not teenage piggyback rides, like these were little kid piggyback rides.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: And then they I guess, didn't keep in touch much.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: But then when she was eighteen and got called back
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: for the whole debutante thing, they met again and they
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: were just like, I like you. I like you too.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should get married, Maybe we should we're fifth cousins.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: I think that's okay, let's do it. That was the conversation.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: Let's a teenage piggyback.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: It's a piggyback ride given by teenagers. It's much different
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: than like a little kid piggyback ride.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: Can you explain the difference. I've never heard of this.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: I think the guy giving the girl usually is how
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: it goes piggyback ride. The piggyback ride is hoping that
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: that will somehow turn into something much more than just
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: a piggyback ride, even if it's just someday.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Oh wow, all right, I never heard of that's.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: A teenage piggyback ride.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: Wow, I missed out.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I grew up a Baptist kid though, so I wasn't anoyed.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean all of this was just completely me
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: making this up as I went along.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's an actual thing.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: I gotcha, all right. So they decided to get married.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: That happened in nineteen oh five. They had kind of
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: a long, dish engagement for the time and apparently Sarah
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: Roosevelt Franklin's mom kind of didn't insist on that, but
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: she didn't love eleanor so I think it kind of
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: dragged out a bit. Yeah, but they did get married,
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: and boy was Sarah a part of their life. Like
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: talk about an intrusive mother in law, Sarah and her
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: son were very very tight. She did not want to
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: kind of completely give him up, so she accomplished this
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: by gifting them a brownstone that she had built for them,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: and she had a matching brownstone built that were connected
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: by sliding doors, so essentially, you know, it was on
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: like one big place when she wanted it.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: To be right.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: And she kept this control not just by adoring her son,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: which she genuinely did, or being adored by him, which
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: he genuinely did. She also kept everybody in the family
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: on a pretty short leash by controlling the family's finances.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: She was the one who was in charge of the
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: family money, so she could threaten to cut you off
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: if you didn't do what she wanted, she could reward
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: you for doing what she wanted, and then she I
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: just can't really wrap my head around how overbearing Sarah
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: FDR's mom was. It's just mind boggling to me, because
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: not just controlling the finances and building a brownstone, it
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: gets worse as a matter of fact. And yet Eleanor
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: really wanted her approval. She loved FDR. She wanted FDR
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: to be happy, and at the same time, she was like,
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: you have to be kidding me about this. Still, she
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: managed to become pretty close with her mother in law.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Again all odds, yeah, for sure, Colin.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Said, that's right. So there was another pretty rough situation
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: not too long into their marriage. About nine years in,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Eleanor found out that her husband had been having a
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: fair like a year's long affair with her secretary, Lucy Mercer,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: And this all came out, and you know, there were
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: love letters found, and they thought about getting divorced, but
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: you know, depending on who you read, they stayed together,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: probably because he wanted to continue his career in politics
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: and that would not look very good. Other people say
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: that his mom, Sarah, had a threat to stop the
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: plow of money, kind of Arthur's style, so that might
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: be a reason too, But at any rate, they decided
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: to stay together to fight despite this infidelity, which I'm
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: sure was a huge disappointment for.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Sure, I think that hit her hard and if FDR
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: had any you know, second thoughts about staying together. Three
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: years later, he was stricken with polio which he probably
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: contracted as a younger child, but caught up with them
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: at age thirty nine, and he was partially paralyzed and
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: had had to recover and he never fully recovered full
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: range of motion and power. And he just happened to
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: be married to the perfect person to help him through that.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: So I think that that really kind of helped reinforce
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: the bonds that they had and also helped reinforce the
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: character of the relationship. Where he had one mom, he
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: got another one. He also had a wife. He also
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: had a very smart, savvy adviser, so he had like
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: everything except maybe the love of his life in Eleanor,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: and he was like, this is good, I can deal
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: with this.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean she definitely stepped in and not only
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: cared for him but acted almost as a co president
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: like certainly more so than any other first lady that
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: we had ever seen. And we're going to go through,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: you know, a lot of her first Lady first but
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: you know, when he couldn't get out there for any reason,
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: she was out there for him and would report back
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: to him. And I think everyone kind of understood and
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: you know, viewed her with a lot of respect. It
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: seems like for the most part.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of people were also like,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: especially when she was first Lady, hey, overstep your bounds much,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: but she just plugged on. One thing that you'll see
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: about her is that she was a very self conscious person.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: She had kind of low self esteem in a lot
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: of ways, and yet she was willing to plow through it.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: And she was also willing to plow through the disapproval
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: of her social peers, her friends sometimes the general public,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: and just kind of follow her moral compass essentially, where
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: it led her to great effect. I mean, when you
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: put all of it together, she's one of the most
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: revered women in American history.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, she had a lot of kids. She
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: gave her to six kids, but in a ten year
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: period between nineteen oh six and nineteen sixteen with Anna Eleanor,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: James Frank Junior sadly passed away. But they would get
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: another shot at another Frank Junior, as we'll see, because
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: she'd then had Elliott, then another Frank Junior, and then John.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: And you know, she was a mom who wasn't like
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: as close to her kids as she wanted to be
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: or thought she wanted to be. Sarah again, was sort
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: of always there and always stepping in as grandmother, plus
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: to the point where she would say things to the
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: kids like I'm your real mother. She just bore you
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: your mom Eleanor. So you know, again, Sarah's kind of there,
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: throwing a wrench into things, including like not separating, but
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: at least creating some sort of a divide between Eleanor
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: and her children.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think her children kind of didn't feel
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: very close to her and maybe even disliked her for
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: their childhood years. And it wasn't until they got older
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: before they started to get close with their mother. And
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: I'm imagining that that probably coincided with Sarah's death when
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: she was finally out of the picture.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a pretty good bed.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: But it was during I guess, sort of the beginning
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: of the child bearing decade when she became a political
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: wife for the first time, when Franklin was elected to
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: New York State Senate, and that's when she really kind of,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: you know, jumped in there. She got really active and
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: acted as you know, a host, you know, to dinners
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: and of course stuff like that. She would sit in
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: on meetings when she was allowed to. When FDR when
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: they had to move to DC, when she was appointed
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: or I guess he was appointed Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: of the Navy. That's when she found herself in the
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: middle of the like sort of the DC politics for
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: the first time, and she really took to it. It seems
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: like she did.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: At first she was basically following like the traditional political
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: wife handbook, right, But then as FDR's political career kind
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: of rose and rose and rose, she started to become
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: more and more involved in a much less traditional sense,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: like much more pioneering sense. For example, she helped him
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: write speeches, she helped him strategize, especially when he ran
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: for vice president in nineteen twenty and she became much
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: more of a collaborator than the average political wife at
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: the time. Like this is when it became clear to
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: FDR if it wasn't already that she was invaluable in
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: the same way that inflammable still means flammable, right, this
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: means that she was super valuable.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And they kind of lived all over
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: depending on what his job was politically, because he was
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: governor of New York for a while in nineteen twenty eight,
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: and so you know, they certainly their home was in
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: New York. When in New York, I think they lived
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: on the Upper East Side, and she also, as we'll see,
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: would later have a place in like near Washington Square Park.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: But they also obviously lived in DC when they need
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: to and Hyde Park, New York. But you know, she
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: liked she liked New York City.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, who doesn't, especially now the next one. God,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: we're gonna just dated this episode. Huh.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: So something I didn't know about Eleanor that is at
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: first tough to swallow until you stop and kind of
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: think about how much that means she changed her views
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: early on. Again, she was just kind of following the
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: standard handbook of her social class or social circle to
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: the people around her, including her mother in law. So
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: she from her early letter she was a prolific letter
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: writer throughout her life. From her early letters, like she
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: didn't know anything about politics. She wasn't paying attention to
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. She didn't care about it. She
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: was just doing the society thing. Apparently she adopted her
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: mother in law, her mother in law's anti semitism, She
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: didn't think very highly of her black servants, Like she
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: was not a great person at that point, and a
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: lot of it from everything I've seen, people are like
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: she was straight up a product of her culture, right.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Seems to be.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: And so the idea that she went from anti semitism
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: to lobbying for America opening its stors to Jewish people
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: who were fleeing the Holocaust, from disparaging her black servants
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: to tirelessly working for civil rights for Black Americans, and
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: also just kind of showing disdain for the suffrage movement
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: becoming a champion for women's rights, It really kind of
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: shows like she didn't go from a neutral place to
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: these amazing heights. She came from the bottom and then
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: got to neutral and then got to those heights. And
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: it's pretty impressive how much she changed, and I mean
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: just how willing she was to change her views because
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of people aren't.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: Oh for sure, absolutely. Is that a good time for
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: a break?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I think so? Sure.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: All right, we're gonna come back and continue with I
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: bet you're never gonna guess eleanor Roosevelt learn and stuff
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: with Joshua John stuff. You shut up, all right, so
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: we're back. We talked a little bit about her early
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: volunteer that kind of stopped for a while when she
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: became a political wife, but she always had that volunteer Jones.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: I guess, so once she had more opportunity, she turned
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: that into more volunteerism. She was a volunteer for the
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Red Cross in DC during World War One. In nineteen eighteen,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: when she went to Europe with her husband, she toured
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: war hospitals in the battlefield And it feels like all
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: this sort of inspired her to really kind of get
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: busy and put her her time where her heart was.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Because she volunteered as a translator, she spoke French as
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: well as English. So she was volunteered as a translator
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: at a lot of different events, one of which was
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: the International Conference of Working Women at the Paris Peace Conference.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: In addition to volunteering, she also became an activist. She
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: was very, very active with organizations that promoted women's right. Now,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: she finally kind of got on board with the suffrage movement.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: She became a part of the League of Women Voters.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: And one of the things about her that you'll notice
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: is she'll join an organization and then you like blink
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: a couple times and now she's like vice president of
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: it or something like that. She was a really great
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: asset to your organization if she showed up, because that
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: meant she really believed in what you were doing and
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: she wanted to help.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Like if my read from all of this is like,
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: you know, certainly being a prominent political wife had something
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: to do with it, But it wasn't just that, because
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: that didn't happen to everybody's wife at the time in politics.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: So she clearly just showed the stuff you know that
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: people you know had clear leadership qualities for sure.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Definitely. Oh, she was also asked too by the DNC
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: the Democratic National Convention to basically chair a committee on
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: women's issues to help them come up with whatever plank
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: in their platform they were going to have for women's suffrage.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And they were like, great, thanks Dahl and took her
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: ideas and shut the door and the all male committee
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: deliberated on it without her in the room.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So she definitely faced stuff like that obviously at
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: the time, which really stinks because she had a lot
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: of great ideas for sure.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Another great idea too, I thought this was super cool.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: She co founded a furniture factory that was a nonprofit
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: furniture factory. I have the impression that was a collective
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: chuck which we've talked about before. They called vow Kill
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Industries and they made colonial furniture reproductions impewter.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of nice.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Sure, what else did she do?
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: She joined the Women's Trade Union League. This is kind
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: of part of her advocating for labor. That's when that
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: came into the picture, you know, working conditions for women
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: and children at the time, of course, because kids were
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: working and you know capacity that they don't work now,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: if at all. It's always fun to talk to kids
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: who have teenagers about you know, them getting jobs and stuff.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I feel like that's happening a lot here and there,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: but not like when we were kids, which was basically
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: still child favor for sure.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: It really was.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: Whenever I tell like my teenage my friend's teenage kids
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: that I was like a bus boy when I was thirteen,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: They're all just like, are you serious? Yeah, it's like, yeah,
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: like every one of my friends worked as well. It
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: was weird.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of is weird in retrospect. I had
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: like a paper route when I was ten or something
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Never had a paper out. I was always jealous of
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: this man.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: The smell of a stack of newspapers at like four
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: in the morning.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: It's a specific experience, and it can be really great
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: or it can be like, what am I doing with
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: my life?
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: What?
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Uh?
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Do you get paid per paper? Is that the deal?
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: I don't remember I was ten. I'm not even sure
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: I was directly paid. I don't remember. I don't remember
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: being thirty something.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: With your dad just funneling, funneling money.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: I'm like, damn, when did you start smoking cigars?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: Exactly? These look like good ones too.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: So all the stuff we've been talking about this is
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: just the nineteen twenties. She hadn't even become first Lady yet.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And when FDR was elected in nineteen thirty two, like
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: we said, she became a first Lady of a lot
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: of different first some of which have never been replicated since.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean she's definitely I think not many
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: people would argue that she wasn't the most active first
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Lady of all time. Probably she was the first first
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: lady to hold a press conference or multiple press conferences
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: and apparently only allowed women reporters to attend her press conferences. Yeah,
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: it's kind of cool. She is the first to write
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: a daily newspaper column and a host a radio show.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: She's the first lady to travel to an active war
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: zone and just really sort of open the door on
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: what the whole title of first Lady could be, not
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: necessarily had to be, because as we've seen over the years,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: there's been just so say, lots of different kinds of
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: first ladies for sure.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, some more active than others, having different interests when
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: they were active. She just basically did it all. And
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: again this was the kind of thing that made her
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: a target, like what are you doing? You're a first lady,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: you're not supposed to be this active. I mean, one
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: of the things that she did that really made her
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: a target, Chuck, was she was she became assistant director
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: of Civilian Defense in World War Two.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they later direct her even.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, and that's a public office, right, She's the
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: first first lady ever. She's the only first lady to
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: have held public office while her husband was in office
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: as president. Right, And people were like, what is this? Like,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: I don't know how I feel about this, and some
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: people were like this is They accused her of cronyism,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: they accused her of frivolous spending. And it actually was
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: so bad that she stepped down after a year because
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: she didn't want to keep drawing like negative attention to
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: the work the Civilian Defense Agency was doing.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: Totally, man, I mean, that's the worst. She's trying to
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: do good work. She's getting disparaged and she has to
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: quit making a difference in doing the thing she loves
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: to make that thing better.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, just because her husband had political enemies,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: you know, I mean, that's and that's just politics, I guess,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, she her code name for secret service
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: was Rover and the you know, everyone's best guess is
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: because she was always all over the place she was traveling.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: I think there was another nickname that she had, which
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: was eleanor Everywhere, because starting very early in her career,
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: she would hit the road. She was very famous for
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: driving a blue roadster saying secret Service, I'll smell you later,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: and hit the road. And I think between nineteen twenty
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: three in nineteen forty she traveled over three hundred thousand
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: miles yeah, and visited in person every state except South Dakota.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: Just traveling all over the place, like checking on projects
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: that were going on, talking to everyday Americans, just you know,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: kind of hitting the beat as as someone checking on
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: the health of America.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and reporting back to FDR like you couldn't keep
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: it a secret. No, it wasn't like a media blitzer,
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: like a charm charm offensive. That's what I'm thinking of,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: like shit, oh yeah, definitely taking this information back to
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: use for strategizing, for adjusting policy, all that stuff, like
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: it was really important. The first year she was First
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Lady alone, she traveled forty thousand miles in her Buick.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: And she also little known fact was the first person
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: to popularize those mudflaps with Yosemite Sam on them.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: That's back off, back off. Yeah, I think she created
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: Yosemite Sam.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: In fact, probably I hadn't read that, but you're probably right.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: It was also in one of these road trips that
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: she well, we can't say with absolute one percent certainty,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: but it's pretty well known that she had a love
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: affair with a woman. It was a road trip in
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: nineteen thirty three to New England and Quebec, shortly after
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: FDR was inaugurated the first time. And there was an
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: AP journalist named Lorena Hiccock or Hicck, who was a
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: very you know, just sort of a woman doing her
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: own thing at the time. She would like chomp on cigars,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: and she was kind of kind of tough talking, and
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: she wore bright scarves and loved like big dinners and
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: rich foods. And it was a very kind of well known,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: high paid AP reporter. And they met when hick was
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: covering FDR's gubernatorial campaign in nineteen twenty eight, and then
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: she was assigned to cover Eleanor and it sounds like
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: she covered Eleanor for sure.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: They went everywhere together as a matter of fact, and
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: historians at first were like no, no, and then they're
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: now kind of like, well maybe, and most of them
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: are like, yes, they probably did become lovers. And that's
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: just kind of supported by some of the stuff that
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: they wrote to one another in letters. And again, like
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: you said, they were never caught in flagorante delecado, and
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: you know, Danny DeVito didn't snap a picture with one
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: of those big flash bulbs or anything like that. But
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: you know, if you interpret some of the stuff like
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: any sensible person, it definitely does seem like their letters
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: do suggest that, yes, they definitely had a romantic relationship.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, I mean, should we read a selection.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I think that that.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think that will help everybody make up their
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: own mind.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's not salacious or anything.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: It's like, no, no, no, they were having an affair.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Good for them, except for you know, the cheating part.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: But you know FDR did the same thing, so we're
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: not going to hold her to a different standard than
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: her husband.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, well, put, I was gonna say, even Stephen.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Here's the selection from Hick to Eleanor. I've been trying
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: today to bring back your face and the feeling of
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: mouth against my lips. So, I mean, come on, they
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: were having an affair right exactly.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Even if they discovered or Hick discovered that that soft
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: spot on the northeast corner, well they were both eating
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: a shared piece of spaghetti, that still suggests that they
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: had a romantic relationship.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we know it was going on the
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: lady in the tramp right.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Right, So none of this matters, if anything, to me,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: This says like, oh, she's kind of open minded because
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: she does not seem to have been a straight up lesbian.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: She is, we'll see, considered to have probably had an
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: affair with a very close male companion too at some point.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: So I think she was just like, I'm into you,
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: I love you, I don't care who you are. Let's
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: get it on.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like Marvin Kay said, Yeah, I mean, you know
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: her husband had an affair kind of what seven eight
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: years after they got married, for at least four years,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: and the only reason it stopped is because he got caught.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: So it seem his mother told him to study.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: Yes, my im told him to stop. So it seems
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: like it may have been one of those marriages where
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: they had a lot of love for each other but
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: probably stayed together because of his role and all the
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: good that she was able to do. So, you know,
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: it was at a time where people just didn't get
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: divorced over that stuff. They had affairs, you know.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Right, right, So back to those road trips, right, Remember
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: she's like doing recon as well as having trysts with Hick.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: One of the places that she went was through Scott's Run,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: West Virginia on one of these trips, I think it
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: was actually that New England trip, which it's news to
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: me that West Virginia's New England, but hey, who's to judge.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: And she came across the basically these coal miners. The
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: whole town of Scott's Run, West Virginia was coal miners,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: and they were all out of work. This is the Depression.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: And she was so moved by just how impoverished and
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: how hard their life was that she came up with
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: this idea to basically have the federal government foot the
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: bill for building towns that were out of the box great,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: and you would move imps, impoverished coal miners into them
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: and basically give them a head start at a really
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: great good life that they could take over and make
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: for themselves in a close knit community that they built together.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was supposed to be like a hundred of
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: these planned communities all across the United States, but the
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: first one was that one in West Virginia, arthur Dale,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: about twenty five miles south of Scott's Run. It was
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: called Eleanor's Little Villa times. But she was really active
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: in this building of the first one, Like every home
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: had to have which was a big luxury at the time,
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: like modern appliances and electricity, especially in rural West Virginia
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: at the time. Yeah, and the rent was based on
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: what people could afford, which was about twenty bucks a month.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: And like people made fun of these projects sometimes that
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: she was involved in this one in particular, but you know,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: it worked out pretty well. Like arthur Dale became a
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: very kind of thriving community and there are still people
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: like from that first community that live there today.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: And the US government was like, Okay, we're not going
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: to oversee arthur Dale anymore in nineteen forty seven, but
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Eleanor kept visiting until nineteen sixty. I think was her
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: last visit two years before her death, and all told,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: she visited arthur Dale thirty three different times, long after
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: she was no longer First Lady. From nineteen thirty five
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: to nineteen forty four, she attended every single high school
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: graduation of arthur Dale's well high school.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think FDR went to one and is
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: still the only president to actually give actually give a
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: commencement speech at a high school graduation.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty cool.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she helped those graduates like find jobs, like she
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: really took an interest. She apparently used to buy Christmas
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: presents and bring them to the kids at arthur Dale
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: like it was a she was really involved in this.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: It wasn't like a good idea. She helped to get
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: going and then forgot about it and moved on to
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: something else, Like she really cared.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah for sure.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Uh what do you say about a break?
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: All right?
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: I mean we never need them, We just have to
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: do it. But we're going to do it now because
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: we're supposed to.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: They make us.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, well we're going to do that then with
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Josh job stuff.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Should okay, Chuck, we're back.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that you may know about
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Eleanor Roosevelt if you're you know, somewhat familiar with her.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: In her life's work, she became virulantly anti racist. She
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: was a champion of the civil rights movement long before
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: there was a civil rights movement, decades before it. She
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: helped kind of get civil rights recognized, I think among
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: white America and in a lot of quarters.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: That meant that.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: People started to hate her, especially in the South. And
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: like I said before, like she didn't let that slow
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: her down. She just kind of kept at it.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she joined THEACP in nineteen thirty four. She was
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: very much a lobbyist for anti lynching legislation. She was
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: a very early proponent kind of sounding the horn against segregation.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: She quit in nineteen thirty nine and the Daughters of
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: the American Revolution because they said, We're not going to
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: let this black performer or Marian Anderson perform at Constitution
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Hall in Washington, DC. So she was like, all right,
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: so longsuckers, I'm out of here. And then later helped
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: organize a concert for her on the steps of the
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Lincoln Memorial.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a free public concert on Easter Sunday
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty nine and seventy five thousand people showed up.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: It's considered one of the key moments in the early
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: civil rights struggle.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: She also this is such a great anecdote about her.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: She attended a meeting, this Southern Conference for Human Welfare
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: in Birmingham, Alabama, with Mary McLeod Batun, who was a
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: famous black educator, And because this was in Birmingham, they
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: weren't allowed to sit together. It was like local law
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: that black people had to sit on one side of
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: the main aisle, white people had to sit on the
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: other side of the main aisle. This does not sit
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: very well with missus Roosevelt.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: No, so she as very much like like she probably
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: could have insisted she sit on the other side, but
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: I think it made even more of a statement that
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: she said, you know what, then put my chair right
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: in the middle of the aisle and that's where I'm
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: going to sit.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Pretty cool. Oh and then one other thing that she
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: did in World War Two, too, Chuck, was that she
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: visited a Japanese American internment camp. Remember I think we
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: did an episode on that alone.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and a long time ago.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And she came out of this internment camp and
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: was like, we should not be doing this. We need
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: to shut these down, which is ironic or heurageous something,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: because the internment camps existed by executive order that her
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: husband had issued.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we did shut him down, And some people
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: credit her lobbying for it for helping get that started
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: sooner than later.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she was like, but you know what, he cheated
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: on me early on in our marriage, so I don't
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: owe him anything, right, I don't have to do anything,
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: he said me. Right. She was a prolific writer, you said,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: A prolific letter writer, but kind of just write a writer.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: She was writing a newspaper column beginning in nineteen thirty
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: five called My Day, and she did that five days
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: a week. In nineteen forty one, she did a monthly
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: advice column for Ladies Home Journal called If You Ask Me.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: And then she also just wrote all kinds of op eds.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: And she wrote memoirs, She wrote an autobiography, she wrote
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: nonfiction books. Like she just wrote and wrote and wrote.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: It was one of her great passions and she was
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: good at Yeah.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: She also wrote a treatment for what eventually became the
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: script for Pulp Fiction that Tarantino made in nineteen ninety four.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: It's fantastic, isn't that something? Yeah?
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: She was also not shy of going on to TV
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: appearing on the radio. I think, like you said, she
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: hosted radio programs with one with her one of her daughters,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: one with a son.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so cute.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is super cute, especially considering that they weren't
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: close when those the kids were younger. I think that's
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: just heartwarming. She had a couple of shows on NBC.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: These are like public information or public what's the word
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: I'm looking for, for.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: The good of the public, that kind of Yeah.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: We'll just call it that.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, she had a couple of those shows on NBC.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: She had another one I think it was on PBS
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Prospects of Mankind, where she interviewed like activists, intellectuals. She
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: basically shone a light on these, you know, things that
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: were going on in the US and around the world
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: that people weren't really paying attention to. And again, just
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: remind yourself when she's doing all this stuff, she she
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: is pretty self conscious. She didn't consider herself photogenic, she
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: didn't like her own voice, and yet she'll go on
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: any media op that you can offer her with a
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: big enough audience to basically tell people about the stuff
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: that she feels passionate about. That's really that's dedication.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: Boy, could you imagine if she was around during the
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: podcast era, she would have been on everything for sure.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Look Out who's number one right now? Look out Kelsey Brothers,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: eleanor Roosevelt.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: Here the Travis kelcey. Okay, good for those guys. Sure,
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: I don't even know. I don't. I used to look
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: at the podcast rankings a lot early on, and then
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: I stopped at a certain point, many many many years ago,
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: and I don't think I've looked one time since then.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: So I have no idea who's out there in crushing it.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: I used to look at them so much, Chuck, that
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: I would go change countries for the iTunes things and
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: see where we were in other countries as well.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: Ay, Australia has always been our guys. We were number
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: one in Australia for a while.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: And Canada has always loved us.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why we toured Australia in Canada.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, step it up. Rest of the world.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: We don't go to where people don't like us. Why
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: would you do that?
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Why would everybody come just to boo.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: So while she was doing all this you know, volunteerism
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: and like lending her time to every body under the sun,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: she also made some very good friends with women who
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: were probably in the gay community, would be my guest,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: and I think this is where her sort of her
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: advocacy for gender rights and stuff like that would come
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: into play, is just her exposure to these people. So
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: through the League of Women Voters, she met a co founder,
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: a woman named Esther Everett late and her partner Elizabeth
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: Fisher Reid, who would be her financial adviser later on.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: But they were like a great trio and they were
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: really really close, really good friends. Eventually they would rent
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: that when I said she lived near Washington Square Park,
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: they would rent apartments right on top of one another,
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: and you know a lot of other women. She became
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: partners with Mary and Dickerman and Nancy Cook, and that's
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: who she founded that vow Kill Industries with the furniture business.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: She became friends with them and they were partners. Yeah,
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, I guess she became partners with them too. Yeah,
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: she became partners with those partners.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: That's right. And I think like after like one of
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: the cottages that val Kill built that she I think
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: she ended up even moving into one of those as
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: a residence.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Eventually she did, but first Maryan Dickerman and Nancy Cook did.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: I think they lived there for like three decades too. Yeah,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: and then finally she was like, I need.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: The place, beat it right, yeah, scram so.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these, I mean, it's just a plain fact that.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: Another expression of how open her mind was is that
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of her friends were gay women. Again, this
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: is the thirties, forties families at most the early sixties
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: people did not talk about this kind of stuff, and
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of people avoided gay people and
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: she just was it was Again, I think she judged
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: people on generally a case by case basis.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. You know you mentioned early on she
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: probably had other affairs. I know that her bodyguard, Earl Miller,
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: is someone that they everyone is a historians kind of
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: suspect that she had an affair with, including her son.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: One of her sons. Was pretty much like, yeah, I
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: think Earl Miller had an affair with her. They were
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: super tight, and I think he was the one that
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: gave her the I don't think we mentioned insisted that
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: she carry a pistol with her on these car road
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: trips since she issued secret service.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she used.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: It's a great effect too, Like if you were doing
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: what she wanted you to, you know, like passing an
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: anti lynching law, she would just pull her gun out
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: and just set it on the desk, just let it
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: sit there and make its own statement.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Well, she was not popular with racist because she received
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: death threats a lot because of her promotion of racial
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: equality in the nineteen fifties. Apparently the Klan had a
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: twenty five thousand dollars bounty on her head for sure.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: One other thing too about Earl Miller is that he
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: was actually credited as the one who gave her her
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: self esteem and her courage to face the media and
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: just basically be a public figure despite how you know,
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: debilitating her fear of that.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Stuff was Yeah, pretty cool.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So FDR passed away, let's see, seventeen years before
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: she did. He died in nineteen forty five. This is
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: when she moved to Valkill call Cottage. Yeah, and she
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: was like, I'm done with politics. And everybody's like, no,
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: come back being politics. She said, no, I'm done. I'm
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: just going to go be a private citizen. And it
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: turns out that President Harry Truman, a few months after
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: FDR died and Eleanor said she was just becoming a
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: civilian again, said no, I need you to go to
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: the UN. They're doing some pretty neat stuff there. Go
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: see what's going on and just become part of the
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: American delegation to the United Nations.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So she answered the call, and from nineteen forty
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: five to nineteen fifty two she held that position at
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: the UN. All of her colleagues were men, obviously at
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: the time, and they were dismissive of her, and they said,
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: you know, let's put her on Committee three, like they
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: don't do much, it's like humanitarian issues. But how wrong
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: they were, because Committee three turned out to be pretty
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: important and somewhat controversial when they were tasked with determining
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: whether post war refugees had to go back home they
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: had to be like made to be go back home,
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: And she said no, She was like, I'm going to
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: take this up with the General Assembly, and she convinced
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: them to vote against forced repatriation.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Those male colleagues who forced her onto Committee three
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: because they thought it wasn't going to amount too much.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: They kept the Committee for Planning the Future for men
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: wearing hats everywhere for themselves.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: That's right, Like this this has got legs. Yeah, even more.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: To the point, aside from getting repatriation off the table,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: she helped author the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Yeah,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: one of the most important documents, even though toothless, but
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: still one of the most important documents humanity has ever
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: come together and created, which is pretty great.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, you said toothless. That was the
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: one things that really upset her was that they did
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: this great thing, and then she was upset that there
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: was there were no teeth, and that they didn't do
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: anything to really make sure it was enforced.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Right, And I'm not sure what they could do. I
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: think now the International Criminal Court is capable of doing stuff,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: but I think even their STEMI toothless, depending on how
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: big and tough the country is, you.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: Know, Yeah, good point.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: So, Yes, she passed away in nineteen sixty two. She
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: was in the hospital. She was not feeling very well,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: and she checked herself out and said, I want to
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: dine at home, and she went and died in I
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: think Greenwich village, is that correct?
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Upper East side by that point, same thing. She was
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: seventy eight, she had you know, it was heart failure,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: it was tuberculosis, it was a plastic innemia. She was
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: in rough shape at that point. But you know she
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: got to dining her home like she wished, and she
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: left a legacy behind that. I mean, good luck who
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: came right after her, like good luck filling those shoes
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: as a first lady.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Mamie Truman, Yeah, I know, Mamie Eisenhower.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: Maybe as an hour I think some maymi.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: One other thing, chuck that she was the first at
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: and technically she made FDR the first. She lobbied for
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: him to include a woman in his cabinet, specifically our
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: beloved Francis Perkins, who was made Secretary of Labor under FDR,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: the first woman cabinet member ever.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: That's right, and we talked about that in our Francis
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: Perkins episode and I highly recommend that, And that was
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: a good one. That's Josh's I think favorite modern woman.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean you mean's my favorite modern woman, but
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: you I get your point. Yeah, and Mary Tyler Moore
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: don't forget her.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: Oh sure, we need to do an episode on her.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: And let's do one on you me too.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Not all right, I'm sure you We would love that.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: We'll sit down an interviewer for twenty thirty hours.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: And so that'd be fun.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, while we.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Go interview you me for twenty to thirty hours, I
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: think we should insert listener mail here first.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: That's right. This is from Alex. Hey, guys, this is
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: from a Selects episode about the fairness doctrine. During the episode,
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: you mentioned that the owner of WJIMTV built a TV
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: studio with a pool in case he needed to convert
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: it to a motel as a fallback business. And guys,
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: that building is still a TV studio under the call
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: signs WNS, a local CBS affiliate, and they kept that pool.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: He sent a video in fact, of meteorologists Katie Nikolau
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: giving a weather report from the pool. I guess semi recently,
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: and he said, I passed this TV station countless times,
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: always wonder why it looks so swanky, and now it
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: makes total sense that I know it was built like
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: a nineteen fifties motel. Thanks for the show, guys. Always
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: fun when an episode hits close to home.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, who is that?
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: That's Alex?
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Alex, that was a great one.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: I've always been fascinated by that TV station with the
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: pool too, So yep, thanks for calling it out. If
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: you want to be like Alex and say, hey, I
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: know just what you guys are talking about because I
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: live by this thing, let me tell you about it. Well,
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: you can tell us about it via email. Send it
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.