Podcast
Family Plot
Hosted by Family Plot Podcast · EN
An odd dad and his 11 year old daughter exploring the strange and unusual in a peculiar world. Discussions will be kept PG-13. Hosted by Dean Boese and Krysta Williams.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
16episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Episode 302 It's Mostly Fiction - The Mythology of the Odyssey
1w ago01:20:35Tap to summarizeWe have a heck of an episode for you. Arthur is turning 17 and our episode is inspired by the right wing pushback against Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'. We dig into the origin of the work, what we know of it's 'author' Homer, the real, the mythical, the things that are somewhere in between. We say goodbye to a family friend and gget downright hostile about people judging movies based on trailers in this deep dive into the origins of the Odyssey and all it's attendant mythology in this little bit of history, whole lotta weird imagined horrors episode of the Family Plot Podcast!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 301 Jane Stanford - Polished, Poised and Poisoned - The Death of a Child and the Birth of a University
2w ago01:17:20Tap to summarizeSuch An Episode! On Deck we have Jane Stanford, born Jane Lathrop out of Albany New York, she married her lawyer husband who lost everything in a fire, went west to seek his fortune in the Gold Rush and found it selling supplies to miners and settlers. When his wife joined him in San Francisco, he had become a railroad baron. Eventually they had a child and Jane doted on the boy. We won't tell you more here, but there's a death, a poisoning, a university being founded and not necessarily in that order in this powerful episode of the Family Plot Podcast!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 300 - Audie Murphy - An American Tale
3w ago01:16:50Tap to summarizeThis episode, we go deep into the life, heroism and spectacle that was Audie Murphy. Audie Murphy was a sharecropper's son from Hunt County Texas, small, skinny, barely fed and full of work. When his dad would disappear, he worked, when his mom died, he worked. When his family came apart, he tried military service. He was rejected by the marines, the paratroopers, only the Army would eventually accept the skinny kid from Texas because in the 1940's they needed manpower. We discuss Audie's training and how he went from being an unlikely soldier to the most decorated Combat Infantryman of World War II. He had over twenty medals and barely enough chest to pin them on. He would come home suffering from what we would today call PTSD and tried to build a life. He was invited to LA by actor James Cagney where he worked Westerns and military pictures before being chosen to play himself in the movie To Hell And Back.based on Audie's memoirs. He would marry twice, and become a songwriter with hits like Shutters and Boards. All this and more in this special, All American Episode of the Family Plot Podcast.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 299 Bird Lives - The Musical Life of Charlie 'Bird' Parker
4w ago01:16:54Tap to summarizeWell, in this episode we dig into our Kansas City Roots. We go to Kansas City in the 1920's where under 'Boss' Pendergast the city was a machine that kept clubs open all night and the liquor flowing. It was a town famous for being a little naive, jazz, good barbecue and something called the Kansas City Stomp. Kansas City had heard rumors of Prohibition and wanted no truck with it. It was into this world that a young man named Charlie Parker, a man who would be nicknamed 'Bird' began to play an alto sax and he would get humiliated and come back stronger. He became a good musician, and then he was in a car accident that broke his ribs and twisted his spine. He was given morphine for the pain and this would start a second addiction, the first was to music. He studied and practiced all he could in recovery and when he emerged he was a different player, he took the town by storm and he would go on to become one of the greats of Jazz and he'd become a big part of a muisc called bebop. So come listen to a local tale of Kansas City and learn how a man became a myth and musical legend in this magical, mythical and musical episode of the Family Plot PodcastBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 298 - The Jewel Box Revue and Club 82 - Drag takes Center Stage
Apr 3001:25:08Tap to summarizeThis episode has so much. We cover the Jewel Box Revue, the drag show that originated in the thirties and toured through the seventies creating a space for drag, female impersonators and gender bent comics in a show that advertised itself as 25 men and 1 girl. We also cover anti-crossdressing laws, the police's informal three article rule and how newspapers at the time published the names of those arrested for cross dressing, performing drag, or even just being openly gay. We talk about how drag shows came up from French cabarets like the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergere and morphed into something different and special in America. We also discuss Club 82, the New York nightspot run by the Gallo crime family that made a safe place in New York for drag long before Pride Marches and rainbow flags. We even discuss how movies like La Cage Au Folles, The Rocky Horror Picture Show,,The Birdcage, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar owe a lot of their DNA to these early expressions of queer joy and drag glamour. These were some of the earliest safe spaces in America and we owe them a lot. So come along on this celebration of LGBTQ history and found family! It's fun and we guarantee you will learn something! And in case you aare curious, the person bringing us back from commercial is part of an old song by gender bent comedian Rae Bourbon.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 297 Executive Order 9066 - Creating American Internment Camps
Apr 2301:08:43Tap to summarizeHere we go! Another little bit of history that really matters. In 1942, following Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt signed executive order 9066 which allowed the military designated Military zones and control who lived in them in the United States. The order did not mention Japanese American citizens or concentration camps by name, but effectively that'w who was targeted and what was created in this executive order. Japanese Citizens were rounded up, sent to camps and forced to live in old horse stalls or worse before being transferred to some of the worst hellholes in the country. This is after many were blocked from citizenship or owning land. We go into the why's and howfores in this special Abolish ICE we've seen this crap before episode of the Family Plot Podcast!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 296 - The Lead Masks Case with Brenda of Horrifying History
Apr 1601:33:54Tap to summarizeWe do a deep dive into the Brazilian Lead Masks Case, a Case that takes us back to 1966 where two dead men are found laying down wearing suits on a hill in Niteroi, they appear to have laid down, put on homemade masks made of lead and simply...died. We look into Brazil at that time, a nation only recently taken over by a brutal military regime,and where burgeoning scientific beliefs intersected with spiritual and metaphyisical ideas leaving a Fortean mystery that echose to this day. They're instructions were simple:1) 16:30 be at the agreed place.2) 18:30 swallow capsules,3) After effect protect metals wait for the signalBut we have no idea what they mean or why? So come dig into this fascinating mystery in this yes-Virginia-sometimes-Histroy-is-fun episode of the Family Plot Podcast.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 295 Anne Frank, Her Life, Her Times and Her Words
Apr 901:08:37Tap to summarizeWe have quite the episode for you here. This time we head back to 1942 to meet a small Jewish family, the Frank family. They are a mom a dad and two daughters living in Germany watching the country become a nightmare for Jews like themselves. Otto, the father, led them over to the Netherlands where he had business contacts. However, soon the Nazis occupied and controlled the Netherlands and the Franks were facing the same persecution they had before. So with great reluctance, they and another Jewish family went into hiding in a secret annex hidden behind a bookcase in Otto's business. Within a few months they were joined by a single dentist. For over a year they hid in the Secret Annex, staying quiet while employees did their thing, only running heat when the employees were gone and terrified at the sounds of frequent break-ins. However, it all came to an end when someone (history has no solid answers for who) reported them, the business was searched, the Annex found,and those hiding were taken away to labor resettlement camps, and from there to concentration camps where all but one were eventually killed. Otto Frank survivved and when he came into possession of his daughter's diary he published it. This is the best record we have for the atmosphere in Germany and Netherlands in 1942 and '43. So join us for a sad yet powerful tale of resistance in this abolish ICE expisode of the Family Plot Podcast!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 294 - The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 - How the New York Sun Flummoxed the Public
Apr 200:49:05Tap to summarizeIn this episode we set the Elevator of History back to 1835 where we witness the ;'penny paperss' papers sold for one cent instead of six that featured stories people WANTED to read, rather than news by and for a political party. These papers brought us separate sections on news, finance, sports and featured on the scene reporting and lurid true crime details. But it was the New York Sun that launched into a six day report of what a famous mathematician, chemist and learned individual was looking at the moon through a legendary telescope and reporting the discovery of the most amazing things including: albino moon-bison, miniature zebras, one horned goats, unicorns and the fascinating bat people of the moon who dwelt in massive temples carved from giant rubies. The public was fascinated by this series of articles until the report, six days later that the telescope had caught a stray sunbeam, magnified it's intensity and set the observatory alight causing it to burn to the ground. In the days and weeks that followed it slowly came out that none of this was true, however, the Sun never printed a retraction and their readership had grown significantly despite the scandal, most new readers stayed. We discuss all this, the Blue Fugates, touch on Orson Welles War of the Worlds and discuss Terry Gilliam's the Adventures of Baron Munchausen in this it can't get weirder than this episode of the Family Plot Podcast!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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Episode 293 The Great Stork Derby - Charles Vance Millar's Most Outrageous Practical Joke
Mar 2600:50:21Tap to summarizeThis episode is so full of weird tasty historical goodness you'll want a second course. Arthur talks an afternoon with Dean and a vist from his girlfriend and we discuss Toronto and Canada in the 20's and 30's and the introduction of a millionaire with no heirs and a wicked sense of humor who died on October 31st 1936 and for the next ten years set off a fertility contest that became talked about all over the world. All while Toronto desperately tried to hold onto it's Toronto the Good identity in this too much money, a will can be binding and a joke, more fun in Canada than you thought you could have episode of the Family Plot Podcast.(Slight correction, Dean at one point claims the original Forever Knight was set in New York and filmed in Toronto. What was the blueprint for Forever Knight, starring Rick Springfield was actually called Nick Knight and was set in LA but was still filmed in Toronto.)Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support.
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