Transcript – The Dead Ladies Show

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.

July 19, 2024August 22, 2024

Podcast #73: Therese Giehse

In this episode of our podcast, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire brings us the story of Therese Giehse, a German actor, pacifist and exile known for founding an anti-Nazi cabaret (which, really, we could all get behind these days). Therese had artistic and other adventures with her lover Erika Mann (daughter of Thomas Mann), was photographed by Annemarie Schwarzenbach, and embodied several of Bertolt Brecht’s best-known characters on stage. She also acted in movies with Vivien Leigh and previous DLS star Romy Schneider.

Born in Munich in 1898, she went against her liberal Jewish family’s expectations to train as an actor, cast as older characters even as a young woman. The Pfeffermühle cabaret started up in 1933, swiftly moving to Zürich to escape the Nazis. With Erika and Klaus Mann, Giehse toured the political show around Europe, never mentioning any names but using parables and storytelling to rip the piss out of Hitler and his henchmen.

Therese returned to Zürich in 1937, where she joined the outstanding cast at the Schauspielhaus theatre, many of them also emigrants like her. During the war, she performed in the premiere staging of Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage, defining the title role in what some directors have called the greatest play of the 20th century.

She went on working with Brecht and other key playwrights and directors after 1945, in Munich, Zürich and East Berlin. Therese Giehse maintained her pacifist stance throughout her life, criticizing the Vietnam War at public events. She died in 1975 and is buried with her sister in Zürich.

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

Show notes:

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:

April 11, 2024August 22, 2024

Podcast #70: Phoolan Devi

*** NOTE: This episode’s Dead Lady had a very challenging existence, particularly when she was younger, and her story is marked by multiple incidents of violence and sexual abuse. Please use caution when listening ***

In this episode, we join forces with the Ms Informed podcast to bring you the story of Phoolan Devi.

Known as India’s “Bandit Queen,” Phoolan Devi overcame a life of poverty, illiteracy, and abuse, first as a child bride, and later enduring after being kidnapped by bandits and rising to lead the gang. She eventually became a politician, campaigning for women’s causes and the poor. Even today, Phoolan is a symbol for the anger, vengeance and injustice against women in India, as well as an inspiration for the lower classes.

Madhvi Ramani and Rina Grob told her story at a recent live DLS show in Berlin. You can read the transcript here.

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

Discover the Ms Informed podcast wherever you like to listen, and here. As mentioned, Katy and Susan have done an interview with them which will appear on Ms Informed Episode 165. You can also follow them on Instagram.

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

Show notes:

October 22, 2023August 22, 2024

Podcast #68: June Tarpé Mills

In this episode, the last of Season Six, we bring you a show live from PodFest Berlin! DLS-ers Susan Stone and Katy Derbyshire joined the city’s fine and friendly podcasters at the yearly event in front of a small but perfectly formed audience.

From that event, producer Susan brings us the fascinating story of June Tarpé Mills, a comics pioneer and the first woman to create a female superhero, Miss Fury. The alter ego of socialite Marla Drake, Miss Fury wore a cursed black leopard skin and travelled the world fighting evil (mostly Nazis). She was sexy and smart, and a global hit from 1941–1951, during which she appeared in 100 newspapers, millions of comic books, and on the side of several US bombers. Then she, like her creator, largely disappeared. Decades after her death in obscurity, Mills is finally getting the recognition she deserves, from a headstone for her unmarked grave to induction into the Comic Industry Hall of Fame.

We mentioned our wonderful friend Andy Horn, who introduced us to Tarpé Mills. Read more about Andy here.

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

May 11, 2023August 22, 2024

Podcast #63: Djuna Barnes

In this episode, translator Laura Radosh introduces us to the fascinating and troubled writer Djuna Barnes. The journalist, novelist, and artist mixed with everyone from James Joyce to Peggy Guggenheim, and was at the center of Bohemian life in 1920s New York and Paris, though perhaps not quite as much as she would like. Best known (if at all) for her modernist novel Nightwood, Djuna once called herself ”the most famous unknown in the world.”

DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens joins producer/host Susan Stone to muse on Djuna and her circle of modernist Dead Ladies.

If you’d like to get advance tickets for our May show in Berlin they are here. DLS NYC tickets can be purchased here.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can download a transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

Show notes:

April 13, 2023August 22, 2024

Podcast #62: Leonor Fini

Our story for this episode comes from our friends at the Dead Ladies Show NYC, which is organized and hosted by Molly O’Laughlin Kemper with Sheila Enright. Photographer, professional eccentric, and guinea-pig lover JR Pepper (previously on the pod with Mae West) tells the tale of artist Leonor Fini, a glamorous, passionate iconoclast (and cat lover) with a brilliant creative mind who was fiercely independent — at a time when women were allowed to be muses, not painters.

Like her friend Leonora Carrington, Fini is often called a Surrealist, but she didn’t consider herself one of their group due to their misogynistic views, which included viewing women as either childlike muse or femme fatale. Her paintings utilized the female gaze, and often featured catlike and other creatures inspired by Fini’s own striking appearance, accompanied by languid men. Leonor Fini’s life was as rule-breaking as her art; she had many lovers, and spent much of her life living in a happy throuple — along with about 20 cats.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce this episode’s featured Dead Lady.

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

Show notes: