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March 8, 2024March 18, 2024

Podcast #69: Sister Mary Ignatius Davies

In this episode, we bring you…the woman known as the “Mother Theresa of Reggae!

Sister Mary Ignatius, a white Jamaican Catholic nun dedicated her life to the Alpha Boys’ School in Kingston, where she taught football, cricket, boxing, table tennis and dominoes – but most importantly, music. A lover of jazz and blues, she inspired hundreds of “wayward boys” to become professional musicians, including future Skatalites Tommy McCook and Don Drummond, trombonist Rico Rodriguez and the conductor Leslie Thompson. Without Sister Mary Ignatius, who died at the age of 81 in 2003, we might never have had reggae.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire tells the story of the woman known to her young charges as “Sister Iggy.” And she joins host/producer Susan Stone to introduce this episode, the first of Season Seven of the Dead Ladies Show Podcast, and to wish you all a happy International Women’s Day on March 8th!

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast.

And you can download our transcript, prepared by Susan Stone, here.

If you’re in New York by any chance, put Tuesday, March 19 in your diary for Dead Ladies Show NYC. More details here!

Show notes:

September 14, 2023November 8, 2023

Podcast #67: Amrita Sher-Gil

In this episode, we hear once again from our friends at Dead Ladies NYC. Nafisa Ferdous presents Amrita Sher-Gil, a queer, feminist, Hungarian-Indian artist, writer, and art critic who left a profound impact on art despite her untimely death. Sher-Gil was an incredibly charismatic non-conformist whose work reframed discussions on art and feminism, orientalism, and colonialism, while merging European technique and classical Indian aesthetics into something new. DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce the story.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Susan Stone, here.

Show notes:

August 17, 2023October 30, 2023

Podcast #66: Doreen Massey

In this episode, we encounter the show’s very first featured geographer. Doreen Massey was a pioneer in her field. She challenged existing ideas about space, place and power, was compassionate, politically active, and hopeful.

She worked mainly at the Centre for Environmental Studies think tank, and at British early-morning TV fans’ beloved Open University – teaching students who didn’t have access to a traditional university education – and also in Nicaragua, Venezuela and South Africa. That work focused on economic geography and the geography of gender, and she spoke eloquently about place or space as “a pincushion of a million stories”. Her list of publications vies in length with her honors and awards – including a pretty impressive total of six honorary degrees.

Our talk is presented by Agata Lisiak, a professor of Migration Studies at Bard College Berlin, and a DLS regular, who has previously talked about Marie Curie and Rosa Luxemburg.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce the episode, and talk a bit about the Open University, an important place for Doreen Massey and many others.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

July 15, 2023December 8, 2023

Podcast #65: Romy Schneider

In this episode, we bring you the story of an actress whose off-screen life was as dramatic and tragic as many of the characters she portrayed. Romy Schneider was said to have the star power of Greta Garbo or Marilyn Monroe.

She is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Sissi, aka Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who she embodied in four films (some of which are still shown at holiday time every year in countries from the Netherlands to China). But though she strove to move past this very nationalistic role to play more realistic and naturalistic characters, to her chagrin she was remembered by some her whole life as “Sissi.”

A great beauty and talent, Romy was much beloved by the public for her performances, yet hounded by the press over her personal life. Our story comes from DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens, a writer, translator and educator, and devotee of tragic glamour.

Our other DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce things, and comment on the crossover with our last episode, which featured another German-speaking screen icon, Hildegard Knef.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.
Continue reading “Podcast #65: Romy Schneider”

June 15, 2023November 3, 2023

Podcast #64: Hildegard Knef

In this episode, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire has the story of a deutsche Diva — an iconic German actress and singer and best-selling author known for her glamour and scandal, her smoky voice and sweeping false eyelashes. Hildegard Knef was also an unreliable narrator and a serial fabulator who was alternately loved and hated in her homeland.

Producer/host Susan Stone is joined by other DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens to introduce our featured Dead Lady.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can find the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

March 16, 2023October 29, 2023

Podcast #61: Emmy Noether

For our 61st episode, we bring back the presenter who appeared in our very first podcast episode, writer and translator Karen Margolis. Drawing from her own history in higher mathematics, Karen ably tells the tale of Germany’s Emmy Noether, who developed key theorems in theoretical physics and made important contributions to abstract algebra. Excluded from academic positions in Germany as a woman, she worked unpaid and under other lecturers’ names. Once she was finally allowed to teach in 1919, she had only 14 years until the Nazis banned her from universities, as a Jew. In American exile, she taught at the women’s college Bryn Mawr and occasionally at Princeton, though she felt she was not welcome at “the men’s university, where nothing female is admitted.” Nowadays, everything from fellowships to a crater on the moon has honored Emmy, so it was clearly our turn to do so.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce things.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

Show notes:

February 16, 2023May 10, 2023

Podcast #60: Delia Derbyshire

In this episode, we’re going to hear about a woman sometimes called a sculptress of sound — “the unsung heroine of British electronic music” — Delia Derbyshire, ably presented by our very own DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire.

A working-class girl from Coventry, England, Delia studied music and mathematics, and went on to work at the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop. If you’re a SciFi fan, you’ve probably heard one of her best known works — the otherworldly theme tune to the TV show Doctor Who. A true pioneer of pre-synthesizer electronic sounds, Delia created music for more than 200 projects, but remained anonymous due to the BBC’s bureaucratic structures. She also set up studios making electronic music for soundtracks, festivals and theatre productions, until she left the public eye in 1975.

DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens joins producer Susan to set things up.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

Show notes:

December 14, 2022January 23, 2023

Podcast 58: Ruth Asawa

It’s our final podcast of 2022!

DLS co-founders Florian Duijsens and Katy Derbyshire join producer Susan Stone to toast the holiday season, chat about this year’s good news in Dead Ladies, and to introduce our featured Dead Lady, artist Ruth Asawa.

Born to Japanese parents on a farm in California, Ruth Asawa first developed her artistic tendencies tracing shapes in the dirt. When her family was interned during World War II by the US government (along with thousands of US citizens with Japanese heritage, following the bombing of US military base Pearl Harbor by the Japanese) her life was put on hold, but she made opportunity where she could find it. When she was prevented from becoming a teacher by anti-Japanese prejudice and laws, she studied art and became a sculptor, often weaving cheap found material and wire. Her public artworks and her art education advocacy made her chosen home city, San Francisco, a more beautiful place, and her sculptures are now auctioned for millions, and exhibited around the world.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

Show notes:

July 23, 2022May 10, 2023

Podcast #55: Virginia Andrews

This episode was recorded at the second-ever PodFest Berlin, a local two-day event full of workshops, networking, free ice cream, and live tapings from podcasts in various languages, including one from us.

Dead Ladies Show co-founder Katy Derbyshire and podcast producer/host Susan Stone were there for a mini DLS, and took turns hosting and presenting bilingually in German and English in front of a small but perfectly formed audience.

In this episode, we hear Susan tell the story of Virginia Andrews. Better known as V.C. Andrews, this blockbusting American author probably launched the sexual curiosities of generations of teens and pre-teens — for better or worse. Her psychological horror/romance books, starting with 1979’s bestselling Flowers in the Attic, were banned in school districts and libraries, but earned millions internationally. The tale of children held captive by an evil grandmother was sadly somewhat mirrored in Virginia’s own reclusive, highly controlled life.

Though she was disabled by a medical condition from her teen years on, Virginia supported her family through her artwork and writing. After her death, a prolific ghostwriter was appointed to continue books under her name, but her legacy really endures on the strength of her original seven bestsellers, which merged classic fairy tale themes with contemporary issues of trauma and abuse.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast.

You can download the transcript, created by Susan Stone, here.

Show notes:

April 13, 2022May 12, 2022

Podcast #52: Katherine Mansfield

In this episode we’ll be hearing from the multi-talented Hinemoana Baker. Hinemoana hails from New Zealand, she is a writer and musician of Māori and Pākehā heritage; here, she presents her reflections on the life of another New Zealand writer — Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield was a very influential modernist writer, who left New Zealand for Europe at the age of 19, and hung out with Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and the Bloomsbury Group gang, including her “wife,” writer Ida Baker. Mansfield is called by some the Godmother of the Short Story in the English language, and she wrote a great many in her tragically short life.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce an episode full of personal reflections, music, and poetry.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast.

You can download the transcript, created by Annie Musgrove, here.