Category: Transcript

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Podcast 59: 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:

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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:

Continue reading “Podcast 58: Ruth Asawa”
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Podcast 57: Angela Carter

To kick off Season 6 of our podcast, writer Leon Craig brings us the story of award-winning English author Angela Carter. Known for her feminist, gothic, and erotic sensibilities and for re-inventing folk and fairy tales with her now seminal collection The Bloody Chamber, Carter’s life had quite a few plot twists of its own. In her 51 years she wrote nine novels, five short story collections, several children’s books, and countless essays and articles. She also collected quite a few lovers after awakening from a stifling marriage, harvesting them first from her social circle and friends’ husbands, then later more randomly during her two years living in Japan. Shortly after her death from cancer, Angela Carter received a strong wave of recognition, and her writing is now taught to generations of British school kids.

Our presenter Leon Craig has received more than a few comparisons to Carter for her own debut story collection, Parallel Hells, which is now out in paperback from Sceptre Books. At the White Review, you can read that collection’s “Lick the Dust,” which was selected for Best British Short Stories 2022 . Leon can be found at www.leoncraigwriter.com and on Twitter @Leon_c_c.

This episode, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce the episode and talk more about writers Carter and Craig.

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

Show notes:

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Podcast 56: Mae West

Courtesy of our pals at DLS NYC, we meet the first meta sex symbol: Mae West. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Mae was brazen, buxom, bawdy, sensational, and sexy. She was known for her husky voice, risqué performances, and double entendres that slipped past the film censors. With over 70 years in show business on both stage and screen, she scandalized the world of entertainment in a time when women were expected to sit on the sidelines. But, as Mae West would tell you, “goodness had nothing to do with it.”

DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens joins producer Susan Stone to introduce our featured Dead Lady.

Artist, lecturer, researcher, and self-described ‘professional eccentric’ JR Pepper tells Mae’s story; you can find out more about JR here.

DLS NYC is curated and hosted by Molly O’Laughlin Kemper, and was recorded by Jennifer Nulsen, all under the auspices of the KGB Bar’s Lori Schwarz.

If you’re in the NY area, why not sign up for their newsletter so you can find out when the next show will be? Find it here.

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

Show notes:

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Podcast #53: Eva Crane

In this buzz-worthy episode, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire (and translator) brings us the story of leading bee scientist Eva Crane. Born to humble beginnings, Eva obtained a PhD in nuclear physics but quickly shifted her attention from atoms to apiculture. She travelled the world to document all things bees, and was particularly interested in the relationship between bees and humans, including the long history of human honey cultivation.

Amateur bee enthusiast (and producer/host) Susan Stone is joined by other DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens for the introducing honors.

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

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

Show notes:

Read more: Podcast #53: Eva Crane
The Crane family vehicle, with Eva chilling in the back
Eva smiling mischievously at the front right
A shiny Morris 8
Apicultural delights from the 1940s (for Susan and all other bee enthusiasts)
Eva’s HQ in Hull, note the blue plaque!
Bee World! Find more on this publication’s history at IBRA’s website
Eva in a special Georgian beekeeping hat! Check out many more pictures of here travels at the Eva Crane Trust.
Aboriginal figures made of stingless bees’ wax
Bavarian beeswax candle
Some of her over 370 (!) publications
The Crane sisters (in the middle) dressed to the nines
Eva, aged 74, casually abseiling for science

Katy recommends these two books if you want to learn more about Eva Crane: Eva Crane: Bee Scientist, edited by her colleagues, Penelope Walker and Richard Jones, and of course, Crane’s own Making a Bee-line. The Eva Crane Trust’s site is also indispensable for information about Crane and bees.

As promised, here’s one of Susan’s videos of some Bee-rliner bees.

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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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.

Continue reading “Podcast #52: Katherine Mansfield”
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Podcast #50: Adelaide Herrmann

In this episode, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire conjures up a Victorian-era Dead Lady magician who dazzled audiences and broke boundaries. Starting from her childhood in England, Adelaide Herrmann (née Scarcez) was a born performer, first notable for dance, acrobatics, and trick cycling. She met and married magician Alexander Herrmann, and became his on-stage assistant and the star of many of his illusions, first dressed as his double and later in many guises. Following his death, she eventually took over the act, becoming the Queen of Magic, and collecting a menagerie of animals for her show. Highly successful, she toured for 25 years, performing up to the age of 74. She was buried next to her husband. His headstone reads: HERRMANN THE GREAT. Adelaide’s states more simply, WIFE.    

DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens joins producer Susan Stone for the introducing duties.

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

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Podcast #48: Zaha Hadid

In our last episode of 2021, The DLS team of Susan Stone, Katy Derbyshire, and Florian Duijsens all come together to clink glasses of bubbly, and discuss our favorite Dead Lady news of the year.

Plus, DLS Producer and journalist Susan Stone presents our featured Dead Lady, architect Zaha Hadid.  Born in Baghdad, Zaha started her creative life early, designing her own clothes and furniture at the age of 7 or 8.  She studied at, then taught at, the Architectural Association School in London, where she honed her boundary-breaking skills and unmatchable style.

Both life and her designs threw a series of curves her way, but she excelled and inspired, becoming the first woman to with the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the Nobel Prize for architecture, as well as many more accolades and contracts, eventually designing everything from schools to shoes. Along the way she faced notable sexism and racism as one of few women and Arabs in the field. But she wowed critics, and created some of the most incredible buildings the world has ever seen before her death at the age of 65 in 2016.

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

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

Show notes:

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Podcast #47: Milena Jesenská

In this edition of the Dead Ladies Show Podcast, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire brings you the story of Milena Jesenská live from the stage of the Berlin translation festival Translationale, held at the Collegium Hungaricum. 

A journalist, writer, editor and translator, Milena Jesenská is often simply called “Kafka’s Milena” for her connection to the famous writer. But her life and work deserve far more attention. 

Born in Prague in the former Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic, Milena Jesenská straddled cultures and languages, politics and ideologies. As part of an underground resistance, she helped many refugees to escape the dangers of National Socialism, but was captured by the Gestapo and died in a concentration camp in Germany. 

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

Show Notes:

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Podcast #43: Bebe Barron

This episode presents a first: our presenter (our very own Susan Stone!) actually met the lady in question. Bebe Barron was a bohemian, composer, and electronic music pioneer. She and her husband Louis worked avant-garde art-makers like John Cage and Maya Deren, and hung out with Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Joseph Campbell, and more. The pair is credited with inventing the tape loop, and possibly the audio book. It’s certainly the case that they composed and created the first electronic music — or electro-acoustic — feature film soundtrack. Electronic music as we know it would not exist without Bebe, nor would the sounds we associate with outer space.

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

Notes:

Read more: Podcast #43: Bebe Barron
A real reel-to-reel recorder
Anaïs Nin, and you can find out more about their friendship in this interview.
An excerpt from Anaïs Nin’s House of Incest audiobook as produced and recorded by the Barrons. You can order a CD copy here.
Tubular!
Louis & Bebe, bohemians
Louis & Bebe, professionals
The sole surviving copy of Bells of Atlantis
Kirk Douglas, Vincente Minnelli, Lana Turner, and Dore Schary, on the set of The Bad and the Beautiful
An excerpt from Forbidden Planet, with gloriously bleepy sound effects from the Barrons
If you try this out, let us know if it works!
Bebe in later years
Bebe and her husband Leonard Neubauer in 2005, picture by Susan Stone
And you can watch the new doc on Bebe and the other electronic pioneers, Sisters With Transistors, here.

You can still hear Susan’s NPR story on Bebe from 2005 here. Our theme music is not by Bebe, but “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon. Thanks for listening!