katyderby

November 14, 2024November 29, 2024

Podcast #77: Anna Göldi

In this episode we hear a story that feels sadly relevant—a miscarriage of justice. Anna Göldi was the last woman to be legally executed after being accused of witchcraft in Switzerland, in 1782; just seven years before the French Revolution, and a century after witch trials were rampant in Europe (as well as infamously in Salem, Massachusetts). Anna came from a poor family, and worked as a maid in various households, but she was also an independent and freethinking woman. In 1781 she was looking after a young girl who allegedly began spitting up pins and nails.

Her wealthy employers accused her of witchcraft, and she was tortured until she admitted being in league with the devil. Anna Göldi was sentenced to death by decapitation for poisoning, even though the girl had not died. Not until 2007 was her case reevaluated and her name cleared. There’s now a museum, several podcasts, films and books that cover Anna’s life and story. DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire tells it for us, and host/producer Susan Stone and our other co-founder Florian Duijsens come along to set things up.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can find the transcript, created by Susan, here.

Show notes:

Wedding party looks like fun; the subsequent trial and penalty less so.

A woman operating a mechanical loom, in development during 1780s

Dr Tschudi’s house in Glarus, now the Anna Göldi Museum

The pins as illustrated in the new media

Cornelia Kempers in Gertrud Pinkus’s Anna Göldi feature film

Two German books about Anna: the novel (left) by Eveline Hasler and one of several excellent non-fiction books by Walter Hauser, who campaigned for her rehabilitation.

Our theme music is “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon. Thanks for listening! We’ll be back with a new episode next month.

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The Dead Ladies Show is a series of entertaining and inspiring talks about women who achieved amazing things against all odds, presented live in Berlin and beyond. This podcast is based on that series. Because women’s history is everyone’s history.

The Dead Ladies Show was founded by Florian Duijsens and Katy Derbyshire.

The podcast is created, produced, edited, and presented by Susan Stone.

September 19, 2024November 7, 2024

Podcast #75: Shirley Chisholm

In this episode, we’re live at PodFest Berlin! DLS co-founders Katy Derbyshire and Florian Duijsens do the introducing, while DLSP Producer Susan Stone tells us about the amazing life of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress (in 1968). Four years later, Shirley was the first Black person and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. She was known for her hard work on behalf of equal rights, introducing legislation that helped women and children, workers and the poor. Additionally, she was called the “best dressed woman on Capitol Hill” for her sharp style. Shirley’s legendary campaign slogan was “Unbought and unbossed,” and she kept the philosophy throughout her long political career. Shirley never wanted to be remembered as the “first” this or that, but as someone who fought for change and blazed a path for those like her in politics. Her legacy is undeniable.

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

August 16, 2024August 22, 2024

Podcast #74: Wilma Rudolph

In this episode we run off to New York to get a post-Olympic sports fix! Writer and editor Sheila Enright who is both a former track and field runner and co-host of Dead Ladies NYC brings us the story of American gold medallist Wilma Rudolph.

Born into a family of 22 children in segregated Tennessee, Wilma Rudolph was diagnosed with polio at a young age and told she would never walk again. But her mother told her she would, and young Wilma decided not only would she walk, she would run! A skilled sprinter, she qualified for her first Olympics at the age of 16, bringing home a bronze medal as part of the relay team. She decided to go further, faster, and at the 1960 Olympics she set records and won 3 gold medals, being dubbed “The Fastest Woman on Earth.”

During and after her athletic career, Wilma Rudolph used her celebrity to further important causes, from desegregation to sports education for children.

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

May 16, 2024August 22, 2024

Podcast #71: Patricia Highsmith

In this episode, we take a jaunt to New York to find out about the talented and difficult Patricia Highsmith. You might know one of her most notorious characters, Tom Ripley, from your Netflix queue (the new series Ripley) or via one of the many films based on what might be Highsmith’s best-known novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Highsmith wrote several books that redefined the concept of the thriller, as well as one of the few stories to give a lesbian couple a happy ending.

That novel, The Price of Salt, was adapted into the 2015 film Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. It was inspired by one of Highsmith’s many obsessive relationships (or in this case, just an obsession) with women. Long a closeted lesbian, Highsmith was engaged to a man (as required by 1950s societal mores) yet aggressively seduced lady after lady.

She also wrote obsessively, was highly ambitious, and kept thousands of pages of diaries written in various languages to avoid spilling her secrets (they have been translated since her death in 1995). She was misanthropic and bigoted, and even her friends considered her unpleasant to be around, but her psychological thrillers have remained classics, partly for how they provide insight into the mind of the criminal.

The talk by writer and educator Hannah Meyer comes courtesy of our friends at Dead Ladies Show NYC. DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens was there for the event in NYC, and he joins producer/host Susan Stone to help introduce the episode.

Find Dead Ladies NYC on Instagram: @deadladiesnyc and follow Hannah Meyer @hannahrenee_m

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

Show notes:

March 8, 2024August 22, 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, and Pocket Casts.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, 2023August 22, 2024

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

Show notes:

August 17, 2023August 22, 2024

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, and Pocket Casts. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

July 15, 2023August 22, 2024

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, and Pocket Casts. You can download the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.
Show notes:

June 15, 2023August 22, 2024

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, and Pocket Casts. You can find the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

March 16, 2023August 22, 2024

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, and Pocket Casts. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

Show notes: