Part Two: Helen Keller Was a Socialist But Also Complicated

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Samantha McVey about the deafblind socialist revolutionary Helen Keller and her complicated legacy as a disability icon.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff or
cpw DCS. If you're feeling an acronymy, which I said
just to bring out the pedants who want to correct
me to say that it's not an acronym unless it
spells a word. But let me tell you, pedance language
is socially constructed. That's what we're gonna talk about. Anyway.

(00:21):
I'm your host, Margaret Kildrey, and with me this week
it's Samanth McVay. Samantha, how you ry?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
I'm great. I'm so excited to be on talking about
Helen Keller.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yay, yay. Sophie's our producer.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Wait did I just spoil that?

Speaker 1 (00:35):
No? No, this is part two. Everyone who doesn't okay, okay.
Also it's in the title. Now you are the only
way who came into it not knowing last time everyone
else was talking about.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, I'm always the last one. Why it's just you?

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Actually, I tell all the other guests, rude, that's.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
What I feel like, this conspiracy conspiracy theory. I'm like,
you're setting me up. I know you're setting me up,
aren't you?

Speaker 1 (00:56):
But I'm ling, how you doing? Sophie? You know, let's
do it Okay, okay, our audio engineers ian our theme
music was written for us by unwomen. And this week
we are talking about Helen Keller, about deaf blindness, about
how history discusses her all wrong, and we're talking about
social construction of disability. So if you've paid attention to

(01:18):
theory in the twenty first century, you'll realize we're talking
about more and more things is being socially constructed rather
than like objective facts, it's scare quotes. The one that
gets talked about the most is gender. What is a
woman is socially constructed and therefore mutable, and therefore can
be understood to include, for example, a trans woman like myself,

(01:39):
as well as this woman like you all. And I
don't really want to get into the gender thing too
much right now, but one of my favorite examples of
social construction, maybe this is a weird one. Okay. If
you gave a map of the world to a kid
and ask them how many continents there were, they're not
going to say seven. They're going to say six if

(02:01):
they get convinced that Australia is big enough to count, right,
because you've just taught the kid that the continent is
a land mass right, and so then they'll say six
not seven. Because it is social construction that gives us
Asia and Europe. This is my theory. Someone might tell
me I'm wrong at some point.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Now, somebody will definitely tell you you're wrong at some point,
but that's just because that person's an asshole.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, yeah, fair enough, that's true. So in general, the
social construction of disability seeks to remove barriers for participation
in society versus the medical model, which seeks to medically
solve disability. In the social model, the impairment is the
medical condition that sets someone up for disability, whereas disability
itself is the result of the interaction between people living

(02:47):
with impairments and the barriers in the physical, attitudinal, communication,
and social environment. Shout outs to the group people with
Disability Australia for that definition. In the social constructive disability,
it's not a disability until barriers are put up by society.
And this model has been in people's minds one way

(03:08):
or another for a very long time, but it was
in the seventies and eighties that it kicked in more
and got its name and stuff, at least as I've
been able to find in nineteen seventy five, a UK
organization called the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation said,
in our view, it is society which disables physically impaired people.
Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments. By

(03:29):
the way, we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full
participation in society. In nineteen eighty three, a disabled academic
named Mike Oliver gave this name, gave this the name
the Social Model of Disability. And to me, it's not
a coincidence that this movement started around nineteen seventy when
just about everything in American society was changing, well, Western society.

(03:54):
A lot of this comes from the UK as well.
The more I read about late sixties and early seventies
in the US, the more it feels like we actually
kind of did have a revolution, not as complete as
one of we would have liked, but modern feminism, anti racism,
bodily autonomy, decolonization, queer liberation, disability rights, just fucking all
of it and pouring in because of people fighting really
really hard with everything from sit ins to rifles. And

(04:17):
I bring this up because I think we owe everything
to the prisoners who are still in fucking prison from
that time, because there are still people in prison from
these struggles. The other thing about that model is it's
a really good lens with which to understand some of
the problems in capitalist society, or really productivity is the
end goal society. Author Susan Wendell, in an essay called

(04:38):
the Social Construction of Disability, said, when the pace of
life in a society increases, there is a tendency for
more people to become disabled, not only because of physically
damaging consequences of efforts to go faster, but also because
fewer people can meet the expectations of quote normal performance.
The physical and mental limitations of those who cannot meet

(04:58):
the new pace become concer aspicuous and disabling, even though
the same limitations were inconspicuous and irrelevant to full participation
in a slower paced society. That one kind of like,
mind blew me a little bit when I like, just
like this idea that it's like, yeah, you can see
that we are suddenly disabled because more is expected of us, right,

(05:21):
so fewer people are meeting that bar. The other thing
that she said in there that I think is worth
pointing out, quote two things are important to remember about
the help that people with disabilities may need. One is
that most industrialized societies give non disabled people, in different
degrees and kinds, depending on class, race, gender, and other factors,
a lot of help in the form of education, training,

(05:43):
social support, public communication and transportation facilities, public recreation, and
other services. The help that non disabled people received tends
to be taken for granted. It is not considered help
but entitlement because it has offered to citizens who fit
the social paradigms, who definition are not considered dependent on
social help. And so just pointing out that like literally

(06:05):
everyone gets help from society, you know, and that absolutely
able body people or not disabled people get more help
in a lot of ways, you know. And Mora Lee way, yeah, totally.
So almost on talking about the social conceptions of disability.
But because being me, I spent a while reading about
medieval conceptions of disability, because I like that branding, and

(06:27):
because anything that might have a sword in it is
just like cooler, right, you.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Could go for it.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, I think seeing how social constructs change over time
is incredibly useful to our modern conceptions. Medieval conceptions of
disability were radically different from our own, and they weren't
the medical model. They weren't good, but they weren't They're
just different, right, I'm still learning about this. Medieval studies

(06:52):
is very complicated because medieval studies is like millions of
different cultures over like a thousand years, all like cramped together,
is like you know, and usually it means like the
Christian West, but even then there's like all of these things. Anyway,
the medieval Christian world was a world full of where
where things were judged by morality first and foremost, as

(07:12):
compared to currently where we're judged by like productivity. Right,
So in the current world, you're not disabled until you
can't be productive to society. In the medieval world, at
least in some places, and in some societies, you weren't
disabled except by moral failing. Physical impairment wasn't always enough
to count. That said, there were complicated prejudices against impairment.

(07:34):
It seems like some people were like, Oh, you're judged
by God as a sinner and that's why you look
like that. And other people were like, no, you're living
closer to God, living out purgatory in this life. You'll
get to heaven sooner. Neither one of these is good.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Right, but you know you're made to suffer. Yeah, you
can get the rewards when you die.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
I like the current method, the social construction model, that
the one that.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
But so can we add the somehow add a saying
about swords to help out that other one to make
you like it better somehow?

Speaker 4 (08:12):
Well?

Speaker 1 (08:14):
I really like the Tarot card the Nine of Swords
where it's like the woman sitting in bed with nine
swords on the wall, and I just it's like, it
couldn't be me. Could you imagine waking up and having
nine swords and being sad? I can't?

Speaker 2 (08:26):
I could?

Speaker 1 (08:27):
I could?

Speaker 2 (08:28):
I think they're yeah, because like what if there's there's
why why does she have the swords? What are the
swords for? Is it for her? Or is it like
against her? Like? What? What?

Speaker 4 (08:38):
Right?

Speaker 5 (08:38):
Right?

Speaker 1 (08:39):
I get? Okay, Okay, I see what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
I'm a sad sag. You can't ask me questions like that.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
I'll find sad anywhere.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
I got this. Let me bestimistic.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
I really fixed my last name too soon. By like
mid twenties, I was like, I kill Joyce. Who I am?
I'm like literally professional optimist at this point basically try
and telling.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
To be constantly smiling, and they're talking about happy people.
I'm like, this doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
I try to be really outgoing in my twenties, and
that's why I was a kilt choice. My social battery
was constantly drained, so I was always fair crouchy. All right,
that's fair. So back to Alec briefly, we're almost done
with Alex.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Oh my god, we're still talking about Alex LESCo.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Okay. He left a legacy that people argue about to
this day. Why is this important? Because he was close
friends with Helen Keller and her entire life her over
her entire life. It was a huge inspiration for her
positions on many things, including almost certainly her position on eugenics,
which we will get to. She dedicated her first book
to him, and both of his brothers died of tuberculosis,

(09:51):
which has nothing to do with this episode. I just
tracked TV's body count in all my episodes because there's
something wrong with me, and we're up to four at
this point.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Wait, only four?

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, I mean that I found in that.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah, you've done so many episodes.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
This episode only in this episode, that's okay, It's like, yeah, yeah, well,
that's you've only.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Found four the entire time you've been on for over
a year.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
No, it's just the fact that someone dies of TB
in every episode I do. In this episode, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Do you for the entirety of the seasons?

Speaker 1 (10:29):
No, because some of them are you need to, Although
I keep bringing this up because I'm just really excited
about it. The first a Manda get the first trans
man to get gender firming surgery in the United States,
and like at all that we know of, went on
to save millions of people from TB by revolutionizing the
way that we screened for TV. Name was Alan Hart,

(10:51):
cool with fewer caveats. Alan Hart was just great, all right,
so I like it. Alec Bell he starts hanging out
with young Helen Keller and she's like seven something. Sorry,
not even seven yet, I think at this point, and
he's like, Hey, go talk to the Perkins Institute for
the Blind. That's where you're going to find your answers.
So Bridgman, Laura Bridgeman is still there, she lives there,

(11:12):
she's hanging out and the school Perkins was like, oh,
we have this twenty year old student who just graduated.
Anne Sullivan she could go help you, and this started
a fifty year friendship between Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.
Anne considered not taking the job because of Helen's family's
connections to, you know, treating humans like chattel, but she

(11:35):
ends up taking the job and the world is probably
better off for that. Helen refers to March fifth, eighteen
eighty seven as her soul's birthday. When Anne showed up,
immediately she started teaching Helen words by writing them in
her hand, and the first thing she handed Helen was
a doll and then spelled out the word doll in

(11:55):
her hand. This didn't work right, the first attempt, of
course didn't work. But a thing that makes me happy
about this is that I know at some point Helen
wound up with a doll from Laura Bridgeman, with clothes
that Laura herself had hands sewn for the doll. And
so I really like the idea that seven year old

(12:16):
Helen's first words that she was shown was the representation
of this gift of love from someone who had been
through it before her, right, And it just like makes
me happy.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
It does. But you know what I keep thinking about
is the people who would gouge out the eyes.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, of their dolls. I'm sorry, no, no, it's a
really striking image. I'm sorry, No, it's it's.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
I'm never gonna be invited. Whoa. Yeah, Like that's so sweet.
But I keep thinking about the bad people.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean the children right here, and you're just
me that.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
I just go real dark. Anyway, keep it alight, let's go,
let's go.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
So it took her about a month for this to
for her to get it to go from like mimicry
to understanding. And this breakthrough event has been made famous
everywhere in the world. And which is that she spelled
out the word water while running water from a fountain
over Helen's hand, and basically, you know, Helen Keller's like,
oh shit, this is a thing that represents this other thing.

(13:30):
Fuck yeah, teach me all the things that represent other things.
And she just hits the ground running. There's a there's
a statue at the US Capital of Helen at the
water fountain, and I don't know, it's like, it's funny
to me because she's this revolutionary socialist and there's a
statue of her at the Capitol that said she did
meet every US president She's just actually that fucking famous, right,

(13:53):
And this is how people ignore her life is that
she is immortalized in bronze in the US capital when
she's seven years old, when she first learns how to speak,
not what she learned how to say to most of
the world. Her story stops as soon as she can
read and write and communicate. The cool thing is done.
Story over. Little girl overcomes adversity through hard work and friendship.

(14:15):
National hero No notes, what people don't like talking about
is what she actually said. And there's another problem with
stopping the story of Helen Keller when she was a child.
People in fantilize people with disabilities fucking constantly. I want
to quote a black disability, writes lawyer named Haben Germa
from an interview that she did with Time magazine. Quote.

(14:35):
Since society only portrays Helen Keller as a little girl,
a lot of people subconsciously learn to infantilize disabled adults.
And I've been treated like a child. Many disabled adults
have been treated like children. That makes it difficult to
get a job, to be treated with respect, to get
good quality education and healthcare as an adult. So yeah,
the story does not stop when she's seven or eight years.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Old, and that story that we know really just kind
of highlights and Sullivan more than Helen Keller's achievements, as
well as the fact that thinking about the fact that
she learned a language like that in a month, Yeah,
that's incredible. Yeah, I'm trying to relearn a language now
and it's not working well.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
She she learned that language was what was happening in
a month, right, But the.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Fact she could really get into it, the fact that
there's like this correlation that it actually happened, and of
course she builds up, but this whole level is like, yeah,
as a child, I remember trying to learn English and
it took me six months, and I you know, with
all of the different things, like she had an incredible
achievement and she was they do they make it. They
set it up to be as if she was incapable

(15:47):
to begin with, and that whole level again they being
the story right right, the story. Yeah, but then you
look at the levels like, wow, this is more than
just your typical of like I taught something to this
and this person was so great that they were able
to teach them. It was her abilities to do that.
It's like that that takes away from her story a

(16:07):
little bit.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
I feel like, no, that makes a lot of sense,
and it also weirdly also leads out leaves out the
larger context of because when it gets presented as like
the first deaf blind person to learn to communicate, which
is a lie, one of the things that gets left
out is literally this lineage where Laura like lived with Anne,

(16:28):
you know, and like it's like we stand on the
shoulders of giants, like we create things because we as
a society learn things. And and I don't mean to
take away from Helen's achievements by saying this, you know,
it's like it's all of this stuff. And so yeah,
when she was seven or eight, not long after Anne
showed up, the two moved up north and Helen attended

(16:50):
the Perkins Institute for the Blind, then bounced around to
a couple of schools for the deaf. She went to
New York for a minute for a school to the deaf,
Then she went to a regular high school for a while,
as I can tell, And then she did the this
was when I was speed running a little bit this part.
Then she did the thing that she's famous for, which
is go to Harvard. Well, I mean, I don't of

(17:12):
you knew this, but you can't have girls studying at
Harvards shes a Radcliffe, the women's annex of Harvard.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Okay, I'm trying to, like because the storylines and what
I know versus what like they don't match. I'm like, oh, oh.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
No, tell me, tell me. I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
No no, no no no, meaning like because of the way
that it's framed, you think it's so far back past,
but it really and then at the same time, like
it my timeline is off, is what I'm.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Like, Oh I see yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. She goes.
She goes to Radcliffe, which is the women's annex of
Harvard where they quarantine all the cooties. And the rich
philanthropist guy who paid for her education was someone that
she met through her good pal Mark Twain. I can't
remember what episode we talked about Mark Twain on. He

(18:03):
is complicated. She's very good at being friends with complicated folks.
The rich guy, his name is Henry Huddleston Rogers. He's
an oil magnate who invented the oil pipeline. Thanks Henry
Huddleston Rogers. He was half evil capitalist and half progressive reformer,
and not just with having paid for Helen. He like

(18:24):
did a lot of work of I can't remember where
they funded. I can't remember what he funded. He funded
a bunch of stuff. I don't know they were good stuff.
Now he's fucking he invented the oil pipeline. Was a millionaire,
cool people he is not.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
So Yeah, did Helen not come from a rich family.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Oh, she came from a rich family, but I think
that there's probably like rich family money. Like Also, some
of the ways it's described is that her family wealth
was like kind of shot by the fact that they
got their asses kicked by trying to have an unjust war,
you know.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Okay, so I know they didn't lose a lot, but
apparently it wasn't enough to get not a lot lot okay, okay,
yeah a lot, not a lot lot, and I feel
not enough. Yeah, they still had money, yeah, instead.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Of like giving it all to the people who had
literally built all.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Of their wealth, right, I mean, they didn't get in prison,
they still had their land.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
I know exactly. They did fucking fine. They did a
little too fine. They were fine. Yeah, so yeah, no,
so so Helen Keller goes to college, becomes the first
deaf blind person to get a bachelor's degree, and her
time at Harvard in like one version of the story.
There's so many versions of the story and a lot
of At this point you get into multiple versions of

(19:42):
the story that are all kind of true. Although before
we get into those stories, I want to tell the
story about the person who didn't have any goods or
services and was very sad.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
And then I need these goods and service like.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
A yeah, like a shiny city on the hill. There
were goods and there were services, and they were offered
at competitive prices. God, all right, there's some advertisement. Yes, thanks,
and we're back. And Margaret is dealing with the complexity

(20:22):
of having to come up with some other clever way
to point out the complexity of pointing out ads. Oh yeah,
four times a week.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Perfect, So we just ignore them.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
No, that's completely fair. I kind of like, like, I
just think it's like funny to be like, eh, you know, yeah,
roun here come the ads. I don't know whatever.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
I feel like y'all have a lot more space, I guess,
freedom to do with the ads than we do, because
I don't know if I've ever told you this, Sophie.
After I got done with Behind the Bastards, and we
know how Robert likes to introduce the ads, and he
got an email from a listener who came to listen

(21:02):
to our show was criticizing her for not doing the
same thing as a Robert for the ad breaks. And
she was like, what he hell, I wasn't even on
that show.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
God, get fucking life that you track down a host
of a podcast to complain that they're not doing ad
transitions in the same way as a as a comedic
history podcast like come the Rock on.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Or like we have a whole different standard when it
comes to our podcast.

Speaker 5 (21:33):
Yeah, that's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
But yes, Margaret, you're doing a great job. And I
joined every single one of them.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Thank you. Yeah, why I get paid the big bucks.
I don't actually write the scripts. All I do is
the ad transitions.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Ye that would be easy, man, I have such an
easy life anyway.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
So coming back.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
To yeah, her time at Harvard, her time at Cooties,
Harvard gets presented at as this like great accomplishment, this
huge place of learning and wonder of fucking Hogwarts or whatever,
And this is not how Helen Keller what Helen Keller
had to say about it. In nineteen sixteen, in an
article in the New York Tribune, she talks about how
she learned how society creates disability, how reading HG. Wells

(22:20):
and Karl Marx opened her up to understanding how human
suffering and often disability, was created by capitalism. The interviewer
asked her, and all of this had to come after
you left college. Did you get none of this knowledge
of life at college? Her answer is no. Like the
interviewer goes on at length about how emphatic this no is,

(22:41):
college isn't the place to go for any ideas, She
said about her teachers, they did not teach me about
things as they are today, or about the vital problems
of the people. They taught me Greek drama and Roman history.
They celebrated the achievements of war rather than those of
the heroes of peace. For instance, there were a dozen
chapters on war where there were a few paragraphs about

(23:04):
the inventors. And it is this over emphasis on the
cruelties of life that breeds the wrong ideal. Education taught
me that it was a finer thing to be a
Napoleon than to create a new potato. This is where
I should have done the ad break with potato. I know,
really fucked that one up. Yeah, golden potato.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Golden potatoes. Wait, the school zone people have an obsession
with potatoes.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, that was a thing for a while.

Speaker 5 (23:31):
Just me and MagPi.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, potatoes, I just think they're neat.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
I mean, I agree with you. Potatoes are delicious.

Speaker 5 (23:39):
Yeah, gold gold potatoes are great.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeahm hmm yeah. Fan of the fan of the potato.
Helen Keller also said quote in the same interview, it
is my nature to fight as soon as I see
wrongs to be made right. So after I reld Red
Wells and Marks and learned what I did, I joined
a socialist brand. I made up my mind to do something,

(24:02):
and the best thing seemed to be joining to join
a fighting party and help their propaganda. That was four
years ago. I have become an industrialist. Since the interview
is shocked by this. They're like, quote, an industrialist, I asked,
surprised out of composure. You don't mean an IWW A syndicalist,
she said. I became an IWW, an industrial worker of

(24:25):
the world. I became an IWW because I found out
the Socialist Party was too slow. It is sinking into
the political bog. It is almost, if not quite impossible
for the party to keep its revolutionary character so long
as it occupies a place under the government and seeks
office under it. The government does not stand for the
interests of the Socialist Party is supposed to represent. The

(24:46):
true task is to unite and organize all workers on
an economic basis. And it is the workers themselves who
must secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong. Nothing
can be gained by political action. This is why I
became and IWW so, yeah, this is not That's not
the Hell and Keller that they like talking about.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
No again though, I think, as you said, as many
people said, they kept her as a child, so you like,
really really that's where you think the story ends and
realizing ah, yeah, she has some thoughts, Yeah, great thoughts.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
She has twelve books, something like four hundred essays and
like wow, lectures and stuff that she wrote because after
college she started looking around and seeing what was wrong
with society, and she wrote. She also wrote openly about
the fact that she owed her success to class privilege.
Because there is something that you're reading all of this
and you're always like, yeah, of course it's not. She

(25:41):
accomplished an amazing thing, a lot of amazing things, but
a lot of them were accomplished because her family came
from money, right, and they came from fucking dirty money,
and she just wrote openly about that. She joined the
Wobblies in nineteen twelve and she wrote the IWW and
she wrote for the newspaper for years discussing, among other things,
the fact that disability was caused by social conditions. She

(26:03):
meant that in a fairly literal way as compared to
more of the modern social construction, although people also sometimes
refer to some of her writing as a precursor to
the social construction model. To quote her, I was appointed
on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind
for the first time. I, who had thought blindness and
misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it

(26:25):
was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the
selfishness and greed of employers, and the social evil contributed
its share. I found that poverty drove women to a
life of shame that ended in blindness. And this is
her talking about sex work and syphilis causing blindness. Speaking
of complicated politics. So Helen Keller she just kind of

(26:49):
did everything. She walked picket lines, She toured around the
world talking about socialism and disability. She joined vaudeville for
five years. And this is kind of interesting. It's like
what we were talking about with Laura, where people would
come and see her as this entertainment thing. But Helen
chose this like this is the read that I've gotten
from the people I've read talking about this is that

(27:12):
this was like kind of more of a reclaiming of
her stories again in the way I've seen it presented,
where her act on vaudeville was her and Anne would
go up and she'd take about twenty minutes to like
describe her condition and stuff right and what had happened,
and it's sort of side showy, and then answer questions
from the audience. But I really should have written some
of them down. When she answers questions for the audience,
it's just full of snark and she's kind of a

(27:34):
stand up comic really like, yeah, she's funny as hell,
and she's just like, I don't know, I really should
have written them down, and now I feel guilty that
I didn't. And so she did vaudeville and liked it
a lot. And really I think she liked playing the
crowds and stuff like that. And they only stopped when Anne,

(27:55):
basically Anne's health like kind of stopped making that easy.
She traveled to dozens of countries. She learned five languages,
far more than I've ever learned. Frankly, she tried to
overthrow capitalism. She flew a plane once. This is one
of the things that gets used as an example of,
like clearly Helen Keller's fake is that she claims to

(28:16):
have flown a plane. It was a pr stunt. They
went up into an aircraft with her in the co
pilot's seat, and then she took the controls for a
little while once the flight was stabilized. Yeah, that's more
flying than I've ever fucking done.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Absolutely, I would never.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, she got into Christian mysticism. I wanted to learn
more about this. I always wish I had twice as
much time for every subject. She wrote twelve books. She
also her first like published or the first short story
stuff that she wrote with science fiction. That's when she
was little, but it ended up getting published because who
she is.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
I think she wrote this when she was little. Yeah,
she wrote a science so it was good enough. They
wanted to publish it later. But I think I think
they wanted to publish it later once she was famous.
That's that's my best Okay, so using her name, it's.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
My read but I don't know. I didn't read it.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Go read it right now, Okay, go do it.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Okay, we'll come back, and we're back and I haven't
read it, and no time has passed, all right. And
then here's the most complicated thing that I'm like confused
as shit by, that no one talks about in her
like list of things. Is this song that she wrote
the lyrics for in nineteen seventeen called Uncle Sam is Calling.
It's a patriotic song about how everyone should join the

(29:30):
army to fight in World War One. What this does
not map to anything I know about her and what
she's actively doing as activism in this time period. I
don't know what's up with this. I wrote it, No,
I am not sure. I am sure it is attributed

(29:51):
to her. It is attributed to her and not some
other Helen Keller. I think it is possible, and I
am not saying this is a truthful thing because I
don't know. I think it's possible that they slapped her
name on it because she's right right.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Was she somewhere near a vicinity of someone saying something
and said one word and then they were like, she
wrote a song?

Speaker 1 (30:13):
You know. I don't know, but it's a uncle Sam's
calling is a jingoistic like, let's all go fight.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Did she get royalties? I don't know, like they're going
to attribute that to her. Shouldn't she get some money?

Speaker 1 (30:27):
I yeah, maybe she just did it as a like
blatant I need some money, or like there's another I
have another theory. I'll get to you in a second
about it, but okay, okay. Other stuff she did, she
spoke out about against racism, like regularly. She donated a
ton of money to the NAACP, and in nineteen twenty
she helped found the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union,

(30:49):
alongside future friends of the pod who I have not
gotten to talk about yet but I want to, the
social worker Jane Adams and the Wobbly and birth control
activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. The ACO was formed in response
to the Palmer raids, which were we've mentioned a couple
times on the show. It's the kind of first red scare,
the little red scare before the bigger one. Wasn't little

(31:10):
to the people who lives were ruined by it, which
is when anarchists and communists were swept up and deported
for protesting against the war, which she'd written a patriotic
song for. I don't know. Here's what she said about
war and revolution. Quote, I am not for peace at
all hazards. I regret this war, but I never regretted

(31:32):
the blood of the thousands spilled during the French Revolution.
Generals testify to the splendid initiative the workers and the
trenches take. If they can do that for their masters,
you can be sure they will do it for themselves
when they've taken matters into their own hands. My cause
will emerge from the trenches stronger than it ever was.
Under the obvious battle waging there. There's an invisible battle

(31:53):
for the freedom of man. So here's my other theory
that I am not convinced by. Maybe she wrote that
song to be like, everyone go fight in World War
One so that you all learn how to fight, so
you can come back and like have a revolution.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
I would, I mean, that's an interesting. I get the
idea that we all need to be prepared things go down,
and for those who are not high on the social
economic status level and need to protect, especially against those
who have too much power, too much money.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, like I'm.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Guessing that's where she was coming. But then like to
turn that into World War Yeah, confusion about uncle especially
loving Uncle Sam when she's actively not loving.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
I know, Uncle Sam, I know, I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
So many so many does she ever claim it or
the name was just on it.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
I don't know if she claimed it. There is so
much written about her, and I read a lot about her,
but this was like a last minute I'm like looking
through her like works attributed to her, I'm like, Uncle
Sam is calling. And I fell into a rabbit hole
looking it up. And then I was just like does
this line up?

Speaker 2 (33:06):
I'm there right now, I'm like what.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yeah, And you find the sheet music? I didn't. I
almost was like, I'm going to put it in a
Midian play it for the audience. I'm like, I'm not
going to do this to anyone.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
I kind of wished you would sing a stanza.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Oh I can't. It's funny. I'm like, actually terrible at
I see the guitar in the back notation. No, I'm
bad at taking notation and like singing it right. No,
I yeah, I got you, I got you. I consider
myself a competent but not amazing musician.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
I think you're great. It works.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Thanks you.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Well, yeah, you were in a band, a bunch of bands.
I just remember. Yeah, hell, you're a musician, come on.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah. Yeah, but I just I would have to very
slowly take the notation and like look at it and
be like, okay, face facee okay, so this one's between
this one and this one. That's how I I So
that's the work here.

Speaker 5 (34:02):
That you tricked me into singing on the show.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, how did that go?

Speaker 5 (34:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Okay, I thought it was amazing.

Speaker 5 (34:13):
It wasn't.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Okay. Well, I'm Margaret, I know, I just myself right now.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
I need ear.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
We're just mixing everybody.

Speaker 5 (34:28):
Else anyone's name wrong.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
It's true, it's true.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Are you true?

Speaker 2 (34:33):
You're the best, Margaret. I'm gonna need that to come
back if I come next year, you le learn what I'm.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Going to learn. I have to learn. Uncle Sam, Yeah, yeah,
that's clearly I'll learn. Battle him in the Republic. I
kind of let's go die to free people. It's like,
that's that's my vibe. No, I mean, you know, lots
of complications there, but whatever, all right, Oh, and then
speaking of complix she ends the interview when she's talking
about the war and stuff. She ends this interview by

(35:02):
comparing herself to future friend of the podcast, Joan of
Arc And for most people, I'd be like less a
little much, but this is Helen Keller, right, it's fine, Like,
it's fine.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Maybe she thought she was going down that path being
a socialist and like the red scared.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
It's really true, honestly, she like, I mean everyone during
this time was like, we're gonna have a revolution. This isn't. Yeah,
capitalism is gonna fall under the weight of its own contradictions. Like,
so back to the ACLU. The other big issue right
off the bat for the ACOU, besides the Palmer raids,
was defending the NAACP. And so that is like what

(35:43):
she's up to with her time, right, the ACOU has
gone on to fight for basically everything good. Now, let's
talk about the fact that she also worked with her
dear friend Alexander Graham Bell in advance of some of
his theories like around oralism and eugenics. Those talk about
Alan Caller's eugenics.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
So wait, she actually worked in agreement with oralism.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
Okay, so people, the way that I've read about it
is that she like more or less agreed with Alexander
Graham Bell's general camp around this stuff. And people claim
that she has some like she talks sometimes about how like,

(36:26):
blindness is fine, but deafness is what sucks. And I
am not in a position to you know, but like
it's it's a thing that has been very frustrating to
lots of people, and so like, overall, she seems to
be very heavily influenced by Alexander Graham Bell and continues
to be friends with him his entire life. And the

(36:47):
thing that we know about her in eugenics is in
nineteen fifteen, there was a eugenesis doctor I can't remember
his name, fuck him. He left an infant to die
because of its disabilities. This spark controversy. Helen Keller wrote
in his defense. She wrote an article in The New
Republic in nineteen fifteen that included support for an infanticide

(37:10):
in the case of a quote poor Misshape and paralyzed
unthinking creature and that it quote seems to me that
the simplest, wisest thing to do would be to submit
cases like that of the malformed idiot baby to a
jury of expert physicians. They would only act in case
of true idiocy, where there could be no hope of
mental development. Yes, bad.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
There's so much outdated language in that, and I know
it was used at that point. Everything makes me cringed.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Though I know, I know, Yeah, it's not good, it's
actively bad. This is the only specific pro eugenic statement
she's ever been on record saying that anyone comes up
with when people talk about this, right, but it is
a big one. It is not subtle. Later in her life,

(38:01):
people sort of claim she walked it back, and I'm
going to push back against that. Later in life, in
nineteen thirty eight, she made several statements that on some
level contradict her nineteen fifteen statement, talking very explicitly she
did not believe that people should kill babies for being
blind or whatever. People use this later statement to say
that she'd walk back to the eugenics. But to my understanding,

(38:23):
the thing that she seems focused on is mental development.
She seems to think that mental impairment is like actually
bad as compared to her physical impairments, which are not
actually bad. So I have no way of knowing or
conceiving of whether in nineteen thirty eight she had actually

(38:43):
changed her position on this or not. I do know
that this is the only work she ever did in
favor of eugenics, and she did multiple pieces of work
against it, although those pieces of work against it were
in the context of physical impairments.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
That's interesting. Yeah, the fact that it's also in defense
of an act is kind of double waomy. I know,
I'm not that anything is good, but you're like, oh,
you're taking this example of a horrific act and saying, yeah,
this is okay, Yes we can and justify it for
later times. It's kind of like ah burns.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, and this is a period during which, like I mean,
I think it was a couple of decades earlier, but
it was like Alexander Graham Bell was like literally on
a eugenicist board, like because every area had their eugenicist board,
because the actual dark ages with the Victorian era. And
I don't know, it's possible that this was a way
that she felt in nineteen fifteen and not later. It's

(39:42):
possible that she felt this way her entire life. I've
run across a lot of seemingly contradiction positions in her
writing in life, and I think that I think she's
a person of great contradictions. Yeah, she's a socialist who
backs Eugene Debs, the socialist candidate for president, but meets
with every president during her life, you know. And she

(40:06):
also so she lived her life in the limelight, and
she fundraised constantly for people with disabilities, especially the American
Foundation for the Blind. And one take I've heard is
that the sanitized version of her life, the sort of
miracle worker version of her life, was something that she
also pushed later in her life because it was a

(40:28):
really good fundraising method. Yeah, the like, oh, I'm just
a simple girl, learned to read, isn't that great, played
well with crowds, and brought in the dough to help
disabled people.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
You work with what you got, Yep.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Fucking complicated And speaking of complicated interactions of money, do
I have to do the thing again? Here's the thing
where we here's some advertisers, and we're back and we're
talking about how complicated it was. She met with every president,

(41:05):
even though she supported you know, the overthrow, the violent
overthrow of the United States government, of which she wanted
to be a joan of ARC figure leading.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
So did she just meet them because they asked her
to meet them, or was she advocating for something? Or
is she just like I'm just going to the White
House because I'm cool.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
I'm actually not sure. I would guess that it was
probably part of her activism and like maintaining a high
profile in order to be more effective, But I don't know.
And one thing that happened to her a whole bunch, though,
is whenever she would like, whenever she was like doing
the good disabled person thing, the newspapers would be like,
Helen Keller are the wonderful world. And then whenever she

(41:45):
would say some like socialist shit, they would stop saying like, Wow,
she's so brave and smart to have overcome so much,
and instead all the newspapers would like, for a while,
be like, she's clearly mentally impaired by her disabilities, that
she's saying these things.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
You know, she's not all She's not competition.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
She became friends with the complicated alumni of the Pod
Charlie Chaplin.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
Yep, A, sorry, yeah, that's the reaction. I'm sorry, fair, okay,
keep going respectfully understood.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
To say he is not a good feminist would be
a minor hyperbole understatement. Yeah, the FBI tracked her every
move because of course they did, because she's of course
they did.

Speaker 5 (42:34):
Those fucking piece of ship ghouls Jesus.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
But she wrote the song Uncles. I know, that's not
that's not gonna leave my head. I'm like, if I
write a song like that, will everyone like, well the
FED stop? Well no, now we know we know the answers. Yeah,
unless they credit her after her death, which would have
been sixty.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
I don't think it is because the PDF music, you know,
World War One. Yeah, yeah, it's like old timey sheet music.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
And yeah, yeah, of course they of course they fucking
tracked her, right, yeah, god damn it.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Okay, yeah, I know. It's like it would have been
so interesting what if she had been alive, like ten
years longer. Yeah, Like how she would have interacted with
the seventies. You know, although it does seem like in
a lot of ways, her like social her like she

(43:32):
she did step back from a lot of the radical
politics and just moved towards fundraising and a more sanitized
version of her own image as she aged. She fell
in love once when she was thirty six years old,
with a socialist who knew how to fingerspell. Yeah, yeah
he did. And his name was Peter Fagan.

Speaker 5 (43:55):
Yeah it was.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
He showed up to transcribe for her when Anne was
sick one time.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
And want to put quotes on transcribe fling.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
It's kind of sad they made plans to Elope, but
to quote author Kim Nielsen, Kelly's family quote vigorously squashed
the relationship with forced midnight train trips out of town,
an angry and gun waving brother, and drama worthy of
a bad novel.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
These people, man, what the I mean that kind of
that tracks? I feel on that track. I mean, that's
what Brian Kibb does for his ads. So of course, yeah,
slave owners would do that, yeah, slave people, yes, which
would Yeah. But I do wonder so if if she
was doing all these things about socialism and conversations about that,

(44:44):
I'm assuming her parents really hated that.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
I wish I knew. It's like again, it's like there's
like annoyed that. I Like, there's so many versions of
her story, and that's that there's so much that people
do and don't talk about. Yeah, and people do know
this when I'm a I wish I knew. It doesn't
mean like it's unknown to history. It means that like
I don't know, right, you know. Yeah, Yeah, she gave

(45:10):
into her family's disapproval of the wedding in a heartbreaking
way where she basically was like, oh, yeah, they're right,
no man will ever love me or whatever she wrote once,
I can't imagine a man wanting to marry me. I
should think it would seem like Mary in a statue.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Ah, just bad parents. We know this in general.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
But yeah, and it's.

Speaker 5 (45:38):
That's genuinely soul crushing.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
I'm surprised, like she didn't have friends or people will
be like, yeah you should, they're great unless he was
a bad guy. You never you never know, but like, yeah,
it seems like as many friends as she had, that's
on the outlier you would think that someone.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
So I think Ann Selvan also didn't approve of the match,
and I don't know like why, and I I mean
they were, I mean Ann Sullivan and Helen Collor were
very close. I'm actually I'm usually always trying to be
like historically close friends. I'm actually not trying to historically

(46:20):
close friends Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan.

Speaker 5 (46:22):
I was gonna say, that's a first for you.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
I know what. My Google search historate does have some
phrases and questions about whether or not this is a thing.
But it actually seems like they were historically close friends.
But not in a euphemistic way. But I suspect that,
like I suspect that their their relationship there was felt threatened,

(46:46):
you know, hmmmm mm hmm. But and there were other
there were other caretakers and other companions in Helen's life.
Anne Sullivan, her lifelong companion, died in nineteen thirty six
at the age of seventy while Helen held her hand,

(47:08):
and then she herself lived till June first, nineteen sixty eight.
She died in her sleep at home. She was eighty
seven years old, and her ashes were placed next to
Anne Sullivan's and next to one of her other companions
who didn't end up enough in the script for me
to add another name to try and remember.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Awful there, Oh that's so sad, and yeah, and she
never like she wanted.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
To be fucking eighty seven and did like amazing shit.
She went to more countries but more languages, did more
shit than like. And it's like the thing that I
really like when I was trying to decide, when I
was like, am I gonna do a Helen Keller episode? As
I was like, would I do a Helen Keller episode anyway?
Just based on like being a badass socialist and shit,
and like I might, I would have all been framed
very differently. And I don't mean to erase the fact

(47:54):
that she was disabled, right right, but I she did
amazing shit and not just like on its own face.
I don't know I'm trying to say here, but I
don't think the story of Helen Keller ends with her death.
I've read several accounts from folks deaf blind or deaf
blind to talk about living in her shadow, about resenting

(48:15):
her and then grappling with her legacy because of the
way that her story has been told. And I know
I keep bringing this up, but this is like a
thing that has been really messy and a thing that
is people have done with her legacy her whole life.
Her story was larger than life, and her death did
nothing to diminish that. But the story about disability too

(48:36):
often starts and ends with her, So I want to
point some other stuff out too. In nineteen ninety, the
Americans with Disabilities Act the ADA was passed. This bill
basically says you can't discriminate against people with disabilities and
employers have to make reasonable accommodations for people. This didn't
come out of nowhere. The government wasn't just like, man,
let's be good today. I feel like we've been doing

(48:58):
a bunch of bad. Why don't we just like do
some good?

Speaker 5 (49:00):
Right?

Speaker 1 (49:00):
It's like not how governments work. I'm hoping I'll come
back to this topic with more info and details. But
some of the people who fought this in the nineteen seventies,
a group called ADAPT started. This is me come in
full circle back to acronyms. Yeah, this because it actually
is a word. This is an actual acronym.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
This is an actual acronym.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
On like c PW.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Just make it a word?

Speaker 4 (49:24):
What is it?

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Because? All right? Originally ADAPT stood for Americans Disabled for
Accessible Public Transit. They're a non violent direct action organization.
They're still around. On July fifth, nineteen seventy eight, in Denver,
they blocked public buses with their wheelchairs and spent all
night in the streets in front of these buses, preventing

(49:48):
them from moving. And they started doing this all over
the place, blocking public buses because of their inaccessibility, and
sometimes they would crawl up into the bus for dramatic effect.
On March twelfth, the most famous of their actions took place.
There was a protest called the Capital Crawl, organized by Adapt.

(50:08):
The ADA was being stalled. Business lobbyists were like, we
don't want to pay money to help people, and the
evangelical right was like, we don't want anyone to help
those ichy homos who are dying of AIDS. So out
of a crowd of thousand people or so in front
of the Capital, sixty protesters abandoned their mobility aids and

(50:29):
climbed and crawled their way up the eighty three stone
steps to the Capitol. The youngest of these protesters was
an eight year old named Jennifer Keelan Chaffins. She later
went on to write a children's book about it all
called All the Way Up to the Top. And there
were other actions too. I think more than one hundred
activists were arrested after chaining themselves together in the rotunda
in the big central room of the Capitol, and it

(50:53):
gets presented, and I don't have a counter argument that
this kind of drawing, this attention shamed people into action,
right and actually getting their shit together to get the
eighty eight passed. So on July twenty sixth, nineteen ninety
the bill was signed into law. And these days ADAPT
seems to be focused more on medicaid and pushing for
people that have access to personal care attendants rather than

(51:14):
nursing homes. And I guess, like everything we talk about
on the show, the shit isn't over. We want to
keep the moving come. We want to keep the conversation
moving forward, but sometimes we get stuck and having to
say really simple things like yes, deafblind people can communicate
with the world. Helen Keller was a real person. What
the fuck is wrong with you all? And that's Helen Keller,

(51:37):
a badass socialist who should never be simplified one dimensionally.
Who's complicated?

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Oh complicated, Helen?

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Yeah, what do you got? You got takeaways?

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Or me? Yeah, Sophie, no, until who you're looking at?
Oh me? Yeah, there's so many takeaways. I definitely didn't
know her history in socialism. I definitely stopped with the
young age story again. Yeah, really problematic, really problematic play
that we did. But yeah, that's really fascinating. But then, yeah,

(52:13):
her her friends, her crew of friends also interesting. I'm very,
very very confused about the song.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
I am too, really confused. Someone is going to message
me three years from now on Instagram in my DMS
and explain the song and they're not going to tell
me what they're talking about, and I won't remember because
they won't say anything about what episode it was. That's
how it goes, right, Yeah, we did it yesterday when
when they explained the context, I will then be happy

(52:43):
because I want to know what the fuck was going
on with the song.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Right, there's so many things. I'm really sad that she
didn't have that. I wonder if that dude was bad though.
Maybe that dude was bad, maybe just trying to riot
on her hotels and try to come in on her
fame or something good. Suffinitely, I hate that she fell away. Yeah,
I hate that she felt that way though. That really
my feelings.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah, and he does seem to like disappear from her
life after that.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Yeah, that's too compact.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
I hope he doesn't just like bury in a shallow
grave by some fucking you.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Took it dark this time, I didn't say that that's true.

Speaker 5 (53:20):
This is cool people who did cool stuff. As a
reminder to myself, I.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Know, I think sometimes this show is Margaret explores people
who are presented as cool, proposed.

Speaker 5 (53:36):
To be in the podcast. That makes me feel better
about the world back bye.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
But like that, here's the thing in everything with good intentions,
they're still like they're human. So you never know because
as a child, I definitely as a younger person in
my younger in my youth, in my youth, I definitely
have made problematic comments, not understanding and not growing. So

(54:00):
when you have moments like that, and if you become
famous and then you start getting really really studied and
like people start digging ship up, yeah it gets it's gross.
So you can never and there's never anyone who is perfect.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Sophie.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Of course Sophie, but that's yeah, that's why we're from.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, no one's actually perfect. No one can see Sophie.
But Sophie is actually one of those biblical representations of angels,
just like the like lots of eyes on floating rings.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
You know, you're you're you're going real. Okay, you're going
real in this frightening angel. I was like, oh she's
got a halo. Oh no, no, okay, we're.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Not afraid kind of angel.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Yeah, thou not afraid with a bunch of eyes. Come
on now.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Yeah, yeah, that's Sophie. But that's separate then, like people,
that's the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Yeah, yes, but yes, I thank you so much for
bringing this because I did not know half this information.
I was very fascinated with her in my high school days,
and now to know all of this, she does seem cooler. Yeah, complicated,
but cooler.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah. Yeah, And I I feel like usually I end
these research this research period with like I've cracked it.
I think I understand this person, you know, love that
there's just still mysteries here for me.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Yeah, there's a lot of mysteries.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
And I think that in some ways that's like kind
of cool, like people just like actually contain multitudes and
people do a lot of different things and fuck yeah,
like the different things that you do. Mean you like
that transition.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Yeah, you know what's complicated is because we are on zoom,
I can't tell if you're talking to me or Sophie.
So I'm like, for me, who's the cool person because
I would not say that was me. But I am
on a podcast called Stuff Mom Never Told You, which
we do talk about intersectional feminism. We have a whole
conversation about so many different things that apply to that.

(56:04):
We are on all of the social media's other either
under stuff Mom Never Told You or mom Stuff because
we had to pick something and it sounds like we're
a mom podcast. We are not sorry. We also have
a book coming out in August. You can pre order
it on stuff you Should Read dot com and it's
called Stuff Mom Never Told You, The Feminist Past, Present,

(56:26):
and Future, where we talk about different things that happened
in history, not all the things because there's too many things,
with some cute illustrations and such. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Yeah, I'm excited to see that book. I the mine
it for podcast topics.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
I mean, well, what's so funny. It's the first podcast
I did with you, episode about the Jaine Collective. I
had just finished writing that chapter for that book, which
is why I was so like, ah, this is amazing.
I couldn't say it at that point because we were
just starting the project, but I had finished that chapter
and then you brought it to me and it was like,
oh my god, here we go. Yeah, very fitting you.

(57:05):
You You predicted so many things, right, Sophie.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
What do you got? Plug?

Speaker 5 (57:12):
Just follow at cool Zone Media and Instagram and Twitter.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Yeah, and you can follow me on the internet at
Twitter for now, at Magpie Killjoy on Instagram where I
post pictures of my dog at Margaret Kiljoy. And the
bands that were referenced is I'm in a feminist black
metal band called Femina's School, just my token reference for

(57:37):
the day. And I'm also in a bunch of other bands,
but I'll pick another one as I'm an electro pop
duo called The Lave. We put out a three song
demo and I really like it.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
Hellow yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
And that's They're on band camp and you can. They're
also on like Spotify and stuff, which is cool. I
like when people like my music. But if you go
to band camp, there's like ways to give me money
instead of Spotify's like point zero zero four cents or whatever.
And we will be back next week with more. Let's

(58:10):
get ready to cool people who did it's a did it?

Speaker 5 (58:17):
Oh oh oh? We gotta do it again, my boxing
and announcement One more time.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Before I go Yeah, one more time before I go Sophie,
Please please for.

Speaker 5 (58:26):
You, Samantha.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
And next week we'll be back with another episode of
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.

Speaker 5 (58:37):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website

Speaker 3 (58:43):
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.