Latest / Ridiculous History / The Unsung Bravery of Martha Gellhorn

Transcript

The Unsung Bravery of Martha Gellhorn · Ridiculous History

0:20
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:48
Speaker 1: the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you, as always, so
0:51
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer, Mr.
0:55
Speaker 1: Max Williams.
0:57
Speaker 2: Locked in.
0:58
Speaker 1: Locked in. Sitting down.
0:59
Speaker 2: Locked in. Sitting down.
1:04
Speaker 1: Noel, that's Noel Brown.
1:05
Speaker 2: I've been bullied. A stand-up guy. There we go.
1:10
Speaker 1: Noel, you know... I've been trying to convince a number
1:16
Speaker 1: of our colleagues to do improv for a few years now.
1:20
Speaker 1: And I think you raised an excellent point not too
1:26
Speaker 1: long ago where you said, Ben, don't we already kind
1:30
Speaker 1: of do improv?
1:31
Speaker 2: I was just about to say I improv like forever.
1:34
Speaker 2: seven times a week, baby.
1:37
Speaker 1: Yes, yes. And we are also, we are also people
1:42
Speaker 1: of varied interest. We do a lot of stuff together
1:48
Speaker 1: and apart outside of this show, but neither of us
1:52
Speaker 1: Or Martha Gellhorn?
1:54
Speaker 2: No, none of us have been decorated journalists or war
1:58
Speaker 2: correspondents with careers spanning more than 60 years. We're a
2:02
Speaker 2: bit relative babies compared to that. I think we've been
2:04
Speaker 2: in this podcast game for maybe 13. We're getting there.
2:08
Speaker 2: But still, no, not only Martha Gellhorn was Martha Gellhorn,
2:13
Speaker 2: a total badass, the only woman to report from the
2:16
Speaker 2: ground during D-Day after sneaking onto a hospital boat in
2:20
Speaker 2: order to do that thing. Yeah, yeah.
2:24
Speaker 1: And this is weird. We can't thank our research associate
2:28
Speaker 1: Ames enough for this one. This is weird that Martha Gellhorn,
2:33
Speaker 1: whom we're going to learn a lot about today, is
2:37
Speaker 1: only broadly known for a brief marriage to a writer
2:44
Speaker 1: that I love and think is woefully overrated.
2:49
Speaker 2: Well, and also he was a bit of a notorious lech.
2:52
Speaker 2: And alcoholic, but a fine writer indeed, but perhaps overrated, Mr.
2:57
Speaker 2: Ernest Hemingway. And he was also, to the point about
3:02
Speaker 2: being a lech and maybe not the best of dudes,
3:04
Speaker 2: he used his considerable influence in the literary world and
3:09
Speaker 2: circles of power to keep Martha down.
3:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Folks, spoiler, Ernest is kind of the bad guy.
3:18
Speaker 1: In this story. So let's learn about Martha Gellhorn. All right.
3:31
Speaker 1: So a lot of people arrive into activism or politics
3:37
Speaker 1: when they get older, when they grow up. But as
3:41
Speaker 1: we learned here, Martha was sort of born into it.
3:46
Speaker 2: She was nurtured in the bosom of politics from a
3:50
Speaker 2: very young age. Her mother, Edna Fiscal Gellhorn, was a
3:55
Speaker 2: big deal in the world of suffragists. She helped found
3:59
Speaker 2: the League of Women Voters, very important organization, and often
4:03
Speaker 2: brought her daughter along to suffragist events, which included a
4:08
Speaker 2: protest for women's rights called the Golden Lane.
4:11
Speaker 1: Cool, cool stuff, right? And so young Martha is seven
4:16
Speaker 1: years old when she is positioned in front of a
4:19
Speaker 1: line of women who are wearing yellow sashes, to your
4:22
Speaker 1: point about the Golden Lane, and carrying yellow parasols outside
4:27
Speaker 1: of the Democratic National Convention in 1916 in St. Louis.
4:32
Speaker 2: Yep. And Washington University has a fantastic page on their
4:38
Speaker 2: site about this exact era where It had this to say,
4:42
Speaker 2: women representing states which had women's suffrage were draped in white.
4:47
Speaker 2: Those from states with partial suffrage were in gray. And
4:50
Speaker 2: those from states with no votes for women, including Missouri,
4:53
Speaker 2: were draped in black. At the top was Mrs. David O'Neill,
4:59
Speaker 2: resplendent as Miss Liberty. In the front row, you would
5:03
Speaker 2: see two young girls, Mary Taussig and Martha Gellhorn. And
5:09
Speaker 2: WUSTL.edu very accurately characterizes them as representing future voters.
5:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this experience of having a mom who is
5:18
Speaker 1: plugged in to social equality and to activism pervades her
5:24
Speaker 1: daughter Martha's writing later in life. And Edna is a
5:29
Speaker 1: highly educated person. She attended Bryn Mawr College, and then
5:34
Speaker 1: later her daughter Martha graduated. also goes to the same institution.
5:41
Speaker 1: But guys, Martha leaves after her first year. She says,
5:47
Speaker 1: the ivory towers of academia may not be for me.
5:51
Speaker 1: I want to be a journalist.
5:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. Not only a journalist, the most treacherous of journalistic pursuits,
5:59
Speaker 2: a war correspondent. She was feeling the pull of that career,
6:03
Speaker 2: and she published early work in The New Republic, which
6:06
Speaker 2: is a magazine that was– I didn't realize this– conceived
6:10
Speaker 2: by Theodore Roosevelt in his living room and was known for–
6:14
Speaker 2: and continues to be known to this day for its
6:17
Speaker 2: intellectual rigor and left-leaning political views. Yep. Ben did the
6:23
Speaker 2: whoosh-whoosh quote fingers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:26
Speaker 1: Left-leaning.
6:27
Speaker 2: All right. Fine.
6:28
Speaker 1: It was at the time, as you said, Noel, a
6:31
Speaker 1: publication that was the new shiny thing, right?
6:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it served as like an incubator for young
6:38
Speaker 2: writers coming up, as well as editors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:42
Speaker 1: It gave a lot of people a shot. And this
6:45
Speaker 1: is the era of what we call the lost generation.
6:49
Speaker 1: Martha Gellhorn is one of those creative forces born and
6:54
Speaker 1: living during that time. She moves to Paris. From earlier, Paris, France.
7:02
Speaker 2: Excuse me.
7:04
Speaker 1: We in 1930, she goes there. And like you said,
7:09
Speaker 1: she's she's chasing the smoke, dude. She's becoming a war correspondent.
7:14
Speaker 1: She gets a job at a place called United Press.
7:18
Speaker 1: But pretty soon after she gets hired, she gets fired.
7:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, for the abominable crime of reporting sexual harassment by
7:29
Speaker 2: a male colleague. Yeah, yeah.
7:32
Speaker 1: And she takes jobs writing for different newspapers. She travels
7:37
Speaker 1: across Europe. She covers fashion for Vogue magazine. You know,
7:42
Speaker 1: when you're a freelance writer, you get the gigs while
7:45
Speaker 1: you can. But then as now, she is aware of
7:50
Speaker 1: a fell wind. Something is up. In Europe, fascism is
7:56
Speaker 1: rising around her.
7:57
Speaker 2: Yep, from fashion to fascism. It was coming up in Germany,
8:01
Speaker 2: and as a pacifist and left person of, once again, whoosh, whoosh,
8:05
Speaker 2: quotation fingers, left-leaning political views, she was concerned for the
8:09
Speaker 2: state of her own country and decided to leave Europe
8:14
Speaker 2: and lend her services to the United States.
8:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, or to just get out while you can. Jordan
8:21
Speaker 1: Peele was right.
8:23
Speaker 2: No, sometimes you just, yeah, you got to get out.
8:26
Speaker 2: In 1934, she moved back to the U.S. and took
8:28
Speaker 2: a job at the Federal Emergency Relief Administration as a
8:30
Speaker 2: field investigator. So she really did put her money where
8:32
Speaker 2: her mouth was. Like she was trying to, you know,
8:34
Speaker 2: help on the ground.
8:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, a correspondent to another type of war. This one economic, right?
8:41
Speaker 1: She is someone who does the grunt work. She is
8:45
Speaker 1: in the trenches interviewing families. She is reporting on horrendous,
8:50
Speaker 1: horrific working conditions. in the worst parts of the country,
8:55
Speaker 1: and she is not shy about speaking up, or as
8:59
Speaker 1: we say it today, speaking from her chest to the
9:03
Speaker 1: people in power. She says, I'm interviewing five families a day.
9:07
Speaker 1: I'm growing ever more troubled about the widespread destitution. She
9:12
Speaker 1: calls on Roosevelt himself to do something about things like
9:18
Speaker 1: a lack of birth control and, of course... The syphilis epidemic.
9:23
Speaker 2: Yeesh. Yeah, indeed.
9:24
Speaker 1: I'm so happy we avoided that one.
9:27
Speaker 2: We did. We did dodge a bullet there, Ben. Her
9:30
Speaker 2: vocal criticism of all of this caught the eye of
9:32
Speaker 2: another outspoken lady and the wife of the president, Eleanor Roosevelt.
9:40
Speaker 2: They became friends and actually eventually became roommates. Yeah. Yep.
9:46
Speaker 1: And Gellhorn was fired from her field investigator position in
9:51
Speaker 1: for being, and this is a quote, a dangerous communist.
9:56
Speaker 1: And that's when she ended up living at the White
10:00
Speaker 1: House with Eleanor Roosevelt.
10:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, roommates.
10:04
Speaker 1: I know, man. You said it.
10:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple. For sure. There, Gellhorn began to help
10:12
Speaker 2: Roosevelt with her column, The Women's Home Companion.
10:16
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. And During this time, Gellhorn is working on the
10:24
Speaker 1: ideas of her first book. This will ultimately be published
10:30
Speaker 1: as The Trouble I've Seen, Four Stories from the Great Depression,
10:34
Speaker 1: and it is a harrowing read. It's a collection of
10:39
Speaker 1: Martha Gellhorn's firsthand experiences in these just benighted of the
10:46
Speaker 1: United States, right?
10:47
Speaker 2: Right. She captured the emotional, financial, and spiritual devastation. that
10:56
Speaker 2: was brought on by the collapse of the American economic
10:59
Speaker 2: system in the 1930s. That is a quote from the
11:01
Speaker 2: Literary Lady's Guide. Many versions of her book featured a
11:07
Speaker 2: very well-known photo from the Great Depression, Migrant Mother, by
11:10
Speaker 2: photographer Dorothea Lange, who Gellhorn worked with closely while documenting
11:16
Speaker 2: all of the devastation that was plaguing America.
11:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was a book that was painful to write,
11:23
Speaker 1: painful to read, but needed to be created. So the
11:27
Speaker 1: world responded. The United States responded. The book is a
11:31
Speaker 1: huge success. And of course, a lot of Europeans are
11:34
Speaker 1: reading it as well. It's in the wake of this
11:39
Speaker 1: book's splash debut that Martha meets a man she will
11:45
Speaker 1: marry for a time. His name is Ernest Hemingway. And again,
11:49
Speaker 1: I think he's an overrated writer.
11:58
Speaker 2: Ernest Hemingway was in Key West, Florida, which I think
12:02
Speaker 2: was a place he was quite fond of where he
12:04
Speaker 2: enjoyed drinking his daiquiris. And that is where they met
12:08
Speaker 2: on a Christmas trip. So the couple immediately kind of
12:12
Speaker 2: hit it off and traveled together to Spain where Gellhorn
12:15
Speaker 2: had a job covering the Spanish Civil War for a
12:18
Speaker 2: publication called Collier's Weekly. Then they started traveling together and
12:22
Speaker 2: lived all over the place, Barcelona, Germany, Czechoslovakia. In 1940,
12:27
Speaker 2: they got married. She was, at the time, his third wife. Yeah, yeah.
12:33
Speaker 1: And they had, you know, that new car smell for
12:36
Speaker 1: a moment, but their honeymoon didn't last long. They had
12:40
Speaker 1: this on-again, off-again living situation because Martha Gilhorn would not
12:46
Speaker 1: sacrifice her own career, right? To just follow some guy around.
12:53
Speaker 1: So she is continuing to work as a war correspondent.
12:56
Speaker 1: And our buddy Ernest didn't like it. He would he
13:01
Speaker 1: would write to her really just like pillish things.
13:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't good. Are you a war correspondent, he asked,
13:09
Speaker 2: or wife in my bed? I mean, the in my
13:11
Speaker 2: bed thing is just like adding insult to injury. You know,
13:14
Speaker 2: it's like that's all she's good for is being his
13:16
Speaker 2: like snuggle buddy or, you know, sex object.
13:19
Speaker 1: And if you're married, isn't it our bed?
13:22
Speaker 2: Exactly.
13:23
Speaker 1: Yeah.
13:25
Speaker 2: Never seen a shorter sentence that expresses one's misogyny quite
13:29
Speaker 2: so clearly. Bernice Kurt, author of The Hemingway Women, had
13:35
Speaker 2: this to say about the relationship. Hemingway would never sustain
13:38
Speaker 2: a long-lived, wholly satisfying relationship with any one of his
13:41
Speaker 2: four wives. Married domesticity may have seemed to him the
13:44
Speaker 2: desirable culmination of romantic love, but sooner or later, he
13:47
Speaker 2: became bored and restless, critical, and bullying. Boo.
13:53
Speaker 1: And this is very astute from Bernice Kurt, because that
13:59
Speaker 1: is exactly what happened in Martha and Ernest's marriage during
14:05
Speaker 1: World War II. Gellhorn is a journalist. She's working with
14:09
Speaker 1: Collier's at the moment. And she says, look, I will
14:13
Speaker 1: go on the ground in France. I will report from
14:18
Speaker 1: the front lines to you, Collier's. But, Noel, as we learned,
14:22
Speaker 1: there were a couple of problems.
14:24
Speaker 2: With this plan. A couple of wrinkles. The military at
14:27
Speaker 2: the time did not allow women journalists to cover the
14:31
Speaker 2: Allied landings. And Hemingway... essentially, like, kind of scooped her
14:38
Speaker 2: on the assignment, stole it right out from under her,
14:42
Speaker 2: and then tried to block her from traveling at all. Yeah.
14:47
Speaker 1: It's a real jerk move. Even to a, like, to
14:51
Speaker 1: a stranger, it's a jerk move to your spouse.
14:54
Speaker 2: Even for a seasoned jerk. This is, like, extra jerky.
14:58
Speaker 2: So she was not dissuaded, however, and she boarded a
15:01
Speaker 2: Norwegian freighter that was carrying dynamite? For two weeks to
15:06
Speaker 2: get that? That's bold. Yes.
15:10
Speaker 1: Yes, it is. We also know that on June 7th,
15:16
Speaker 1: which is the day after D-Day, Martha Gellhorn and Ernest
15:21
Speaker 1: Hemingway are boarding separate ships heading to Omaha Beach. Martha
15:26
Speaker 1: is not able to just walk aboard like her estranged husband.
15:31
Speaker 1: She has to lie her way onto a hospital ship.
15:35
Speaker 1: And Hemingway is traveling, you know, the wartime version of
15:40
Speaker 1: the red carpet.
15:41
Speaker 2: I was about to say, yeah, I mean, it's not
15:42
Speaker 2: like it's, you know, super posh, but certainly more posh
15:46
Speaker 2: than her, you know, having to more or less stow
15:48
Speaker 2: away on a hospital ship, not traveling in style at all.
15:53
Speaker 2: He was on this cushy government approved, you know, ride
15:57
Speaker 2: to Normandy, Gellhorn. on the other hand, was slumming it
16:00
Speaker 2: in the hospital ship. On the way, a police officer
16:04
Speaker 2: stopped her, and she had to, you know, spin a yarn, again,
16:09
Speaker 2: think on her feet, Yeah, this.
16:12
Speaker 1: Is a crazy quotation, and we hope everybody hears it verbatim.
16:18
Speaker 1: When she gets jammed up by the cops, she tells
16:22
Speaker 1: the authorities that she's going to report on the, quote,
16:26
Speaker 1: women's angle for Collier's magazine. In a later interview, she says, quote,
16:33
Speaker 1: no one gave a hoot about the women's angle. It
16:36
Speaker 1: served like the perfect forged passport.
16:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, allowed her to just kind of drift through without
16:43
Speaker 2: being noticed because people didn't take her or her beat seriously.
16:47
Speaker 2: So Gellhorn, because of her, I don't know, like pluckiness
16:52
Speaker 2: and resourcefulness, actually got to the scene before Hemingway because
16:57
Speaker 2: he's just cruising along, you know? Yeah, yeah. And she
17:01
Speaker 2: was with the front line, you know, what would you
17:03
Speaker 2: call it? First responders. So it would make sense that
17:06
Speaker 2: she would get there first.
17:07
Speaker 1: And when we said, that she lied her way onto
17:10
Speaker 1: a hospital ship guys. She was pretending to be a nurse,
17:15
Speaker 1: but I love the point you're making there, Noel, because
17:17
Speaker 1: once she gets to the conflict area, she acts as
17:23
Speaker 1: a nurse. She's helping the medical staff. She's bringing food
17:27
Speaker 1: and water to soldiers. And she's a polyglot. She speaks
17:31
Speaker 1: multiple languages that like, Is it lying at that point?
17:37
Speaker 1: Because she kind of did these amazing things.
17:40
Speaker 2: She stepped right into the role. Yeah, no question about it.
17:43
Speaker 1: Oh, she's like a Gary Oldman method actor.
17:45
Speaker 2: That's very true. Well, I mean, at the very least,
17:47
Speaker 2: it showed that she wasn't just there to get the scoop.
17:49
Speaker 2: She really wanted to help. Like, she was a journalist
17:52
Speaker 2: that was out to do good and not just, like,
17:55
Speaker 2: be first to the scene to get a big story
17:58
Speaker 2: and a big byline. Yeah, yeah.
18:01
Speaker 1: And lo and behold... Collier's does publish some stuff about
18:06
Speaker 1: the war. If you look at the cover story of
18:10
Speaker 1: one of the Collier's publications, you will see a guy
18:14
Speaker 1: named Ernest Hemingway, who wrote a big piece about it.
18:18
Speaker 1: You will also see his spouse, Martha Gellhorn, whose excellent
18:24
Speaker 1: writing is relegated to the back. There's no fanfare. There's
18:29
Speaker 1: no mention of her doing this awesome Gary Oldman-style method acting.
18:37
Speaker 1: There's a bit of a conspiracy at play here because
18:40
Speaker 1: a lot of people with knowledge of the situation are
18:45
Speaker 1: telling us that Ernest Hemingway never actually stepped foot on
18:50
Speaker 1: the beach.
18:51
Speaker 2: He stayed on the cushy boat. He stayed on the boat.
18:54
Speaker 2: No one saw him. No one saw him get off. Mm-hmm.
18:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like, let me write my thing about the
18:59
Speaker 1: old man.
19:00
Speaker 2: Whatever. But he did get all the fanfare and, you know,
19:06
Speaker 2: Gellhorn got shorted. Afterwards, Smithsonian Magazine put it this way.
19:10
Speaker 2: Upon her return to London, Gellhorn was arrested by military
19:14
Speaker 2: police for essentially everything that she had done to get
19:18
Speaker 2: to Normandy for traveling without permission. She was sent to
19:22
Speaker 2: a training camp for American nurses and and told that
19:26
Speaker 2: she could go back to France when the nurses did.
19:30
Speaker 1: That's a very strange punishment. That's very strange and probably illegal.
19:38
Speaker 2: But she got her story published, and she was the
19:41
Speaker 2: only woman to have been on the ground, actually, at
19:45
Speaker 2: the D-Day landings.
19:47
Speaker 1: And as you may imagine, folks... Martha and Ernest are
19:52
Speaker 1: no longer in their honeymoon period. Things are getting tense,
19:57
Speaker 1: and anybody who has been in a long-time relationship knows
20:03
Speaker 1: you have these ups and downs. But folks, this couple
20:07
Speaker 1: was no longer friendly.
20:10
Speaker 2: Right. Well, no, I mean, I can't imagine they would be.
20:12
Speaker 2: I mean, not only was it a contentious relationship and
20:15
Speaker 2: dude kind of trying to lord over her. I mean,
20:17
Speaker 2: he literally tried to screw her career.
20:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. And steal her story. It was her idea. All
20:31
Speaker 1: to say of Ernest Hemingway's four wives, Martha Gellhorn, is
20:37
Speaker 1: the only one who left him proactively, as far as
20:41
Speaker 1: we can tell. The couple officially gets divorced in 1945.
20:47
Speaker 1: And here's a baller move. One of Martha Gellhorn's stipulations
20:53
Speaker 1: in every interview after that was that you could never
20:57
Speaker 1: say the name Ernest Hemingway around her. She hated the guy.
21:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, if that came up, she'd probably do a walkout.
21:07
Speaker 2: Gellhorn continued to cover different conflicts and made a name
21:11
Speaker 2: for herself with her particularly human-focused reporting. I mean, it
21:16
Speaker 2: makes sense given the way she covered the Great Depression
21:18
Speaker 2: and her kind of on-the-ground philosophy. It was not, I
21:22
Speaker 2: don't know, style over substance kind of writing. It was
21:25
Speaker 2: really getting to the heart of what was going on
21:27
Speaker 2: with people. Smithsonian puts it, where Gellhorn distinguished herself from
21:31
Speaker 2: other reporters was the focus of her articles rather than
21:33
Speaker 2: writing about generals or details of the fighting. She chronicled
21:37
Speaker 2: the stories of civilians unable to escape the violence of war, children, women,
21:41
Speaker 2: the elderly, and others threatened by flying bullets and exploding shrapnel.
21:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this kind of reporting is something we need
21:50
Speaker 1: more of in the modern day. Noel, you and I
21:54
Speaker 1: travel pretty widely, and I think we can agree that
21:59
Speaker 1: most people kind of want the same things, right? You
22:03
Speaker 1: want food, shelter, You want your kids to have a
22:07
Speaker 1: better life than you did. You want a day off,
22:12
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff.
22:13
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's so important to look at what's
22:15
Speaker 2: going on with people because they're so easily made into
22:19
Speaker 2: this monolith that's associated with an enemy, you know, or,
22:25
Speaker 2: you know, like some sort of ideological stand-in, you know?
22:29
Speaker 2: I mean, at the end of the day, yeah, you're right.
22:31
Speaker 2: People are people and we are all the same in
22:34
Speaker 2: that respect. And we all deserve to be treated like humans.
22:37
Speaker 2: And she understood that and knew that that was not
22:40
Speaker 2: happening and wanted to shed light on that fact. It's
22:43
Speaker 2: the only way, you know, I think we can do better.
22:46
Speaker 2: Not that we've figured it out. There we go. Yeah, yeah.
22:53
Speaker 1: What I think you and I are saying is go team.
22:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just mean figure it out in terms of
22:57
Speaker 2: like as a species. We're still pretty awful to ourselves.
23:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. But we're in the early days in
23:05
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of.
23:06
Speaker 2: Things, right?
23:07
Speaker 1: I guess so.
23:08
Speaker 2: That's one way of looking at it.
23:09
Speaker 1: There's always an opportunity to improve. And Martha Gellhorn saw this.
23:14
Speaker 1: She was present. in the Vietnam War. Reporting from there,
23:18
Speaker 1: she traveled to Panama after the United States invasion. She
23:23
Speaker 1: also wrote more books. She is a better writer than
23:29
Speaker 1: Ernest Hemingway. Fine. Don't email us about it.
23:33
Speaker 2: It's correct. I mean, Ben, as much as I was
23:36
Speaker 2: down on the lesser... Thomas Carnegie. Carnegie in the last episode.
23:41
Speaker 2: You really got to beef with this Hemingway cat.
23:44
Speaker 1: I got to stop negative. You're right.
23:45
Speaker 2: It's deserved. The guy was a bit of a blowhard.
23:47
Speaker 1: He liked cats. He did like cast.
23:50
Speaker 2: And I'm really looking forward to whoever I'm going to
23:52
Speaker 2: be super down on in the next episode, because that's
23:54
Speaker 2: just seems like what what we're on. Let's do it.
23:57
Speaker 1: It's a thing.
23:58
Speaker 2: Now it's Ben. That's going to be me next. And
23:59
Speaker 2: then I don't know. Yeah, I like it. We love it.
24:03
Speaker 1: We also are fans of Martha Gellhorn's books. We said
24:08
Speaker 1: her we talked about her first book briefly. She published anthologies, right?
24:14
Speaker 2: She sure did. A collection of wartime articles that she'd
24:17
Speaker 2: written called The Face of War. And then she wrote
24:20
Speaker 2: a fictional novel, an account of McCarthyism called The Lowest
24:24
Speaker 2: Trees Have Tops, which I think is such an interesting
24:27
Speaker 2: image that I think I fully understand what she means
24:29
Speaker 2: by that.
24:30
Speaker 1: That is interesting. That's one I haven't read. But McCarthyism
24:37
Speaker 1: was a very odd social phenomenon, right? Would we call
24:41
Speaker 1: it a moral panic?
24:42
Speaker 2: Oh, big time. Yeah, and it seems like we're seeing
24:44
Speaker 2: it rear its head a bit right now with all
24:47
Speaker 2: of the talk of commies, you know? That language, that
24:50
Speaker 2: rhetoric seems to be back in a big way.
24:53
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. How dare people have health care? So anyway,
24:58
Speaker 1: this absolute legend, Martha Gellhorn, has passed away. She was
25:04
Speaker 1: diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her sight was failing her. She
25:09
Speaker 1: was nearly totally blind. When she was 89 years old.
25:15
Speaker 2: That's a long life for back then, man. Right.
25:17
Speaker 1: It's a long life. It is 1998. It is February
25:23
Speaker 1: 15th when she passes away.
25:25
Speaker 2: Oof. And a little trigger warning just about ending one's
25:29
Speaker 2: own life. She did do that. She had ovarian cancer.
25:33
Speaker 2: All of the things that you mentioned, Ben, the maladies
25:35
Speaker 2: that were just making her quality of life very poor.
25:38
Speaker 2: And she took matters into her own hands and swallowed
25:41
Speaker 2: a cyanide pill, passing away, as he said, at the
25:44
Speaker 2: age of 89.
25:45
Speaker 1: Yet she is not gone. Her legacy remains. We have something.
25:53
Speaker 1: I say we. Civilization has something called the Martha Gellhorn
25:58
Speaker 1: Prize for Journalism. And we've got a great quote from
26:02
Speaker 1: The Independent, which we believe sums up this story and
26:08
Speaker 1: this episode perfectly.
26:10
Speaker 2: Yep they said the award will be for the kind
26:13
Speaker 2: of reporting that distinguished Martha in her own words the
26:16
Speaker 2: view from the ground.
26:18
Speaker 1: This is essentially a human story that penetrates the established
26:22
Speaker 1: version of events and illuminates an urgent issue buried by
26:27
Speaker 1: prevailing fashions of what makes news.
26:30
Speaker 2: We would expect the winner to tell an unpalatable truth
26:35
Speaker 2: validated by powerful facts that exposes establishment conduct and its propaganda. Or,
26:42
Speaker 2: as Martha put it, official drivel.
26:45
Speaker 1: Ah, so cool, man. Dude, that's good.
26:47
Speaker 2: Official drivel. I'm going to use that. That's so good.
26:49
Speaker 1: Official drivel. We can't thank you enough for joining us today, folks.
26:55
Speaker 1: We hope you ride along with us when we figure
26:57
Speaker 1: out who Max Williams is going to nag in a
27:01
Speaker 1: future episode. And shout out to our super producer.
27:05
Speaker 2: For sure. And what better way to end the episode
27:07
Speaker 2: than with a quote from Martha herself that I think
27:10
Speaker 2: is pretty, pretty powerful. There has to be a better
27:14
Speaker 2: way to run the world. And we had better see
27:17
Speaker 2: that we get it. There we are. Truth.
27:20
Speaker 1: Truer words. Big, big thanks, of course, as well to A.J.
27:25
Speaker 1: Bahamas Jacobs, a.k.a. The Puzzler. I was just watching a
27:30
Speaker 1: TED Talk that he did.
27:32
Speaker 2: What a sharp fella that puzzler is. Ben, didn't you
27:36
Speaker 2: say he invented a new form of crossword?
27:38
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. It's one cell.
27:42
Speaker 2: I don't know how I feel about that. I know.
27:45
Speaker 1: I think he's trolling us.
27:46
Speaker 2: We'll have to ask him about it. We should. We should.
27:49
Speaker 1: Also, the opposite of thanks to Jonathan Strickland, a.k.a. The Quister,
27:54
Speaker 1: who will be returning with us for an episode about
27:58
Speaker 1: the Mechanical Turk.
28:00
Speaker 2: Oh, the Mechanical Turk. Clockwork man. Indeed. A huge thanks
28:04
Speaker 2: to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Eve Jeffcoats and
28:08
Speaker 2: Christopher Haciotis here in spirit. Research Associate Extraordinaire Ames. And you, Ben.
28:13
Speaker 1: Ah, and also to you.
28:15
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
28:24
Speaker 2: iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
28:27
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.