Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan: Miracle is Right

Summary

---

Stuff You Should Know

Episode: Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan: Miracle is Right

Release Date: February 3, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant

Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Josh and Chuck dive deep into the extraordinary lives and partnership of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, exploring their backgrounds, the barriers they overcame, and the immense cultural legacy they left behind. The episode meticulously details how Sullivan’s teaching ingenuity and Keller’s formidable intellect rewrote global perceptions about disability, education, and persistence. The hosts maintain their signature tone—warm, witty, and reverent—while examining both the triumphs and complex realities of these historic figures.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Historical Context of Disability (00:45–04:12)

• Early Attitudes: At the time of Keller’s childhood, those who were both deaf and blind were often institutionalized with little hope or support.
• Life Before Sullivan: Helen became deafblind at 19 months, likely due to bacterial meningitis. Until age six, her inability to communicate resulted in severe isolation and frequent tantrums.
• Manual Alphabet: Inspired by Laura Bridgman’s earlier education, Anne Sullivan would use the “manual alphabet,” a tactile finger-spelling system, to break through to Helen.

“When you really start to put yourself in Helen Keller’s position—just totally cut off from the world—it’s just mind-boggling.” — Josh Clark (02:21)

---

2. Anne Sullivan’s Heroic Backstory (04:34–07:00)

• Trauma and Resilience: Sullivan, blind from an early age, endured a bleak childhood marked by the loss of her mother, abandonment by her father, and abuse in a poorhouse.
• Seizing Opportunity: Despite no formal education until age 14, Anne advocated for herself, got admitted to the Perkins School for the Blind, and eventually graduated valedictorian.

“This poor house was awful. There were rumors and reports of cannibalism at the shelter. It was filthy... Ann Sullivan actually convinced [an official] to send her via tax dollars to that Perkins School for the Blind in Boston...” — Chuck Bryant (05:39)

---

3. The Miracle at the Water Pump: Breaking Through to Helen (09:32–15:20)

• Initial Encounter: Anne’s first days with Helen were physically and emotionally grueling, but she quickly established trust and discipline.
• Breakthrough: Through persistent finger-spelling, the breakthrough moment came at a water pump when Helen made the connection between the sensation of water and the word for it.

“There was this enormous obstacle before Helen Keller could even begin to learn, which was to understand that she was being taught... that things had words associated with them.”—Josh Clark (12:37)

“This very famously happened at a water pump... That’s what finally Helen just put those things together. It just clicked.” — Josh Clark (14:23)

• Rapid Learning: By the end of that breakthrough day, Helen had learned 30 words; within months, she had hundreds.

---

4. Keller’s Education and the Birth of a Global Icon (17:53–24:43)

• Formal Training: Helen attended Perkins, then specialized schools to learn speech and lip-reading (by touch), eventually attending Radcliffe College and graduating cum laude—making her the first deafblind person to earn a college degree.
• Collaboration and Misconceptions: Throughout, Anne Sullivan was Helen’s bridge to the world, translating lectures into the palm of her hand.

“She wanted to go to Radcliffe... And again, translating all the curriculum, tapping out those lectures, tapping out the books... She’s there every step of the way...” — Chuck Bryant (20:36)

“...the amount of study and attention that was paid to these two—there’s just no way they could have kept up a fraud like this for 50 years.”—Josh Clark (21:15)

• Suspicion and Criticism: The pair faced skepticism and hostility—both from established institutions (like Perkins) and society at large, reflecting deeper issues of class and ableism.

---

5. Fame, Vaudeville, and Social Advocacy (24:43–29:13)

• Becoming Celebrities: Keller and Sullivan met with presidents, industrialists, and celebrities; Mark Twain dubbed Sullivan “the miracle worker.”
• Vaudeville Star Power: With the addition of Polly Thompson (“the Three Musketeers”), they took a popular vaudeville act across the country—demonstrating Keller’s abilities and answering audiences’ questions.
  • Wit on Display:

    Q: "What’s your definition of politics?"
    A: "The art of promising one thing and doing another." — Helen Keller [via Anne], (27:00)

  • Q: "Can you feel moonshine?"
    A: "No, but I can smell it." — Helen Keller [via Anne], (27:11)

---

6. The Deep and Complicated Partnership (29:34–36:22)

• Relationship Dynamics: The intense interdependence meant frustrations and disappointments. Anne and Helen were inseparable, yet Anne’s opposition contributed to Helen giving up on marrying her fiancé, Peter Fagan.

    > “Helen wanted to get married...Ann didn’t think she should, and so she got together with her parents...they kept her from getting married.” — Chuck Bryant (29:49)
  

• Financial Dynamics: Anne relied on Helen's income from books, lectures, and performances—a sign of both their closeness and vulnerability.

• Persistent Barriers: Both women were constantly scrutinized and sometimes smeared by elites and former mentors.

---

7. Loss, Transition, and Lasting Legacy (36:22–38:09)

• Anne’s Passing: Sullivan died in 1936; Helen was by her side. Polly Thompson continued as Helen’s companion and interpreter.
• Independence: Despite her disabilities, Helen was remarkably self-reliant, managing household tasks and travel, but unable to fully communicate without assistance due to the era’s biases against sign language.

---

8. Keller’s Activism and Final Years (39:30–43:14)

• Social Crusader: Keller was ahead of her time—a suffragist, founding member of the ACLU, NAACP collaborator, labor activist, and a proponent for disabled rights and accessibility.

    > “Women’s inferiority is a man-made issue.” — Helen Keller, as quoted by Josh Clark (41:35)
  

  -
  > “She was a member of the Socialist Party and... joined up with the Industrial Workers of the World...” — Josh Clark (40:05)

• International Influence: Her post-Sullivan travels, especially to Japan, influenced disability rights globally.

• Final Years & Death: Helen Keller lived until 1968, outliving both Anne and Polly, and is interred with both in Washington National Cathedral.

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “That didn’t extend to the idea that you could teach deafblind people anything generally.” — Josh Clark (04:12)
• On the breakthrough at the water pump:
  “It just clicked. Like you said. And there’s a statue...commemorating that incredibly, just moving moment, but also incredibly unlikely moment that she got it.” — Josh Clark (14:23)
• On overcoming skepticism:
  “Rather than shout back at their critics or whatever, they just did more and more and proved over and over again that this was all legitimate. That’s what makes this story so wonderful, is it actually happened.” — Josh Clark (32:53)
• Keller on women’s rights:
  “Women’s inferiority is a man-made issue.” — Helen Keller, quoted by Josh Clark (41:35)
• On her books being burned by the Nazis:
  “Her books were among some of the ones chosen to be burned at Nazi rallies.” — Josh Clark (42:42)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Deafblind education context: 00:45–04:12
• Anne Sullivan’s childhood: 04:34–07:00
• Helen’s breakthrough (water pump): 13:21–15:20
• Keller’s college years and skepticism: 20:36–22:43
• Vaudeville and wit: 24:43–28:41
• The complicated partnership: 29:34–36:22
• Anne’s death and Helen’s independence: 36:22–38:09
• Keller’s activism: 39:30–41:07
• Final reflections, legacy, and notable anecdotes: 42:15–43:57

---

Conclusion

Josh and Chuck’s exploration of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan’s story is equally moving and informative, reframing Keller as not only a symbol of perseverance but also a lifelong activist and advocate for justice—a “T-shirt factory” of bold, enduring quotations. The episode honors both Sullivan’s genius and resilience as Keller’s teacher, and Keller’s unyielding spirit, humor, and activism, confirming why their partnership is still celebrated as one of history’s greatest.

---

(All quotes are paraphrased for clarity; timestamps are in MM:SS format. This summary excludes all ads, intros, and outros.)

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human.

[Winter Olympics Promoter]

Friday. Kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy, featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold.

[Geico Commercial Voice]

Lipsy for sensational.

[Winter Olympics Promoter]

The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Ilia Malady, redefining the sport Friday at 8 Eastern, 7pm Central on NBC. And Peacock.

[Podcast Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you should know. I think this is a long time coming edition.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, how have we not covered Ann Sullivan and Helen Keller at this point? It's kind of weird.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know, but this is the kind of. That's like, yeah, we still got a few years left in this, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Totally. And we're not scraping the bottom of any barrels here.

[Josh Clark]

No, we're not even dipping into the top of the barrel yet, everybody. It's still full of pickles.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Or cream that has risen to the top.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's even better. Pickles and cream.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. But we're talking about Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan. You probably know who these people are, but if you don't, just very quickly, we should say that Ann Sullivan was a teacher of a young girl and others along the way, but mainly known for her work with a young girl starting from the age of six named Helen Keller, who lost her sight and hearing as a 19 month old from what is likely bacterial meningitis. Even though we don't know for sure. And it's one of the great inspiring stories of all time, and especially one that came early on to show to the rest of the world who at the time didn't think that people that had these kinds of afflictions like blindness and being deaf, like if you had both of those, they were basically like, we're gonna send you to an institution because we can't teach you anything. You know, you can't see, you can't hear. We're sorry.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And at those institutions, they likely died. A lot of them died just from neglect or abuse or all sorts of different reasons just because they were unable to see or hear. And by this time, there was education for deaf, there was education for the blind. But like you said, the deafblind were considered, like, there's just no way you can teach them. And the reason why is because the only senses they have are touch, smell and taste. That's about it. And they're just like, we don't know how to teach anybody by taste. Like, you just can't do anything with them. So when you really start to put yourself in Helen Keller's position, just totally cut off by the world or from the world, it's just mind boggling. And as inspiring as it gets to stop and think about what Anne Sullivan actually did and then what Helen Keller was able to do after Ann Sullivan did her thing initially.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. One of the great relationships and partnerships of history, world history, and certainly American history. There had been some schools in place, and there was one recorded deafblind person who had learned language. It was a woman named Laura Bridgman. In the 1830s, she worked with a guy named Samuel Gridley Howell and he founded what's known as the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, which will come into play in this story. But he taught her, and this is what Ann Sullivan would teach Helen Keller, something called the manual Alphabet, which is, as Lisa Simpson would say, tappa, tappa, tappa, where letters correspond to taps on a palm. And that is how you very sort of slowly teach somebody language with them not being able to see or hear.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they figured out how to teach somebody language just through touch, which is impressive in and of itself. But the fact that Laura Bridgman had learned that it was a. It was considered like a curiosity, an anomaly. Like this is not like. That didn't extend to the idea that you could teach deafblind people anything generally. Right. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And we should say that Ann Sullivan was vision impaired herself. And that's how she ended up knowing Laura Bridgman from that perk in School for the Blind.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And let's talk a little bit about Anne Sullivan. She had an extraordinarily rough life. Oh, man. Leading up to about age 14. She was born in 1866 to parents. Her mother was an invalid. Her father abandoned them right after her mother died when she was, I think, eight. By this time she had lost most of her vision. She had suffered an eye infection. And so she and her brother Jimmy, they have no, she's eight. And now she's in charge of her little brother. She's blind. And there's no one helping them any longer. There's no one looking out for them. It's up to her to look out for the both of them in any way she can. And so they had to move into a public poorhouse in Tewksbury.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And we should point out she's vision impaired. At this point, I think until she was an adult, she suffered full blindness.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

But, you know, rough life. This poor house was awful. There were rumors and reports of cannibalism at the shelter. It was filthy. They were constantly just threatened and in danger, health wise and otherwise. And there was an inspection at one point of a state board of charities. And a little teenage Ann Sullivan actually convinced them she had no formal education, convinced a government official who was on site there to send her via tax dollars to that Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, where she enrolled and would eventually graduate as valedictorian of her class.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, and just to get that point across, when she was 14 is when she was sent to Perkins School. She lived in a poor house for six years. Her brother died four months after they moved there when he contracted tuberculosis. She'd had an incredibly rough life. Her first formal education came at age 14 when she went to Perkins. And six years later, she was valedictorian again, despite being unsighted. Like, her story in and of itself is incredibly inspiring, but it just picks up from there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. And the reason we sort of mentioned the Perkins stuff, because, like I said, that's where she met Laura Bridgman. And notably, that's where she learned that manual Alphabet, because she wanted to converse with Laura Bridgman. So Keller, like I said, probably lost her, her sight and her hearing from bacterial meningitis is what they suspect. She was born in 1880. She was completely developmentally on track when this happened at 19 months old. So her life just took a really unfortunate turn. And so from the moment that she was 19 months old until she was 6, she was what some people might call in a trapped state. She was just living in her mind, unable to communicate. Her parents, you know, she reacted very frustratingly, probably not surprisingly, and got increasingly violent with her tantrums. And by the time she was six, her parents were like, I don't know that we can handle this safely anymore. We don't want to institutionalize her. So they reached out somehow. I think her mom had just remembered reading something about Laura Bridgman in that Perkins School. And I think this is before Helen was even born. And so they, I guess, hopefully put in a phone call to Alexander Graham Bell and said, first of all, thank you for this invention. This is pretty cool that we can call you the Inventor.

[Josh Clark]

He said, bully, Bully.

[Chuck Bryant]

He said, bully, Bully. And then they said, but I know you're active in deaf education and I know your son in law runs the Perkins School. What do you think about our daughter. It's a pretty tough case.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And he was like, this is. I think this is just the job for the Perkins school. So he pulled some strings. And that kind of makes it sound like the Perkins schools in Massachusetts. Helen Keller's family was from Alabama. It sounds like her family was wealthy. They were not. Her father was a captain in the Confederate army during the Civil War. After the Civil War, her family was left poor. So they were not wealthy. I think they had land and everything like that. But she was not nearly as destitute as Anne Sullivan. But I think it's worth the point that as she grew and started living her life, she supported herself. It was. She didn't come from a wealthy family.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. In the meantime, while, you know, when she gets sent to school there. Ann Sullivan had already gotten a job offer from Perkins. She was a great student there. She knew that manual sign language. And they said, well, you should just work here. And so on March 3, 1886, Helen Keller would meet Ann Sullivan and later call that her soul's birthday.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So Ann Sullivan was basically sent by Perkins to Tuscumbia, where the Kellers lived in Alabama. And when she got there, I mean, almost immediately, Helen threw a tantrum.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So Ann Sullivan got to see firsthand, right off the bat, like, this is going to be tough. This girl has learned, because her parents are letting her do this, she's learned to express herself through violence, through anger, through intimidation, through the threat of throwing another tantrum if she doesn't get her way or she can't. Someone's not listening to her or something. And Ann Sullivan was a scrappy Irish lass who identified very quickly. Like, if I'm going to get through this girl, that stuff has to end immediately.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And so they were like. She spent about the first week essentially physically overpowering Helen whenever she threw a tantrum, and by the end of the week, had lost a tooth. I think she'd been punched many times. She. They went through it, but apparently after just a week, Helen learned like, okay, this lady's not going to put up with that. I should probably try a different tack. And it seems like from that point, she had gained Helen's trust, and now they could start with Helen's education.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, you think about it. Helen Keller didn't. She couldn't even figure out who this person was. All of a sudden, this new person in her life who is now physically restraining her. I mean, that was sort of Sullivan's philosophy. She talked about the gateway was obedience Basically, eventually you'll get to love and knowledge. But at first, I have to sit on this girl, you know?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, she's like. She broke a tooth from me. Give me a break.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well, very encouragingly. And this is something. As someone who's always believed in the healing powers of the great outdoors, getting Helen outside was a very big deal and a very good sort of second step because they could explore nature. It calmed Helen down immediately, and that's where her senses of smell and touch could really be engaged.

[Josh Clark]

She later said, Helen did that if you were deaf and blind, then out in the sun is the best place to be because you can really feel it, you know? Yeah. So it didn't really occur to me, like, I knew that this is a really big deal that Ann Sullivan was able to teach Helen Keller, but it didn't occur to me until I was researching this that that wasn't even the first step. The first step, like, if you're teaching a kid something, they're in school, you're saying, okay, now we're going to learn the Alphabet. Here's the Alphabet. This is what you use the Alphabet for, to spell words. This is what this word means for this. Right. This is the word for this thing. They know that you're teaching them, so they're understanding that. They're accepting that information.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's still hard.

[Josh Clark]

It is. That's hard in and of itself.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There was no way for Anne Sullivan to explain to Helen Keller, I'm here to teach you language.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

She had to essentially figure out how to break through to Helen Keller so that Helen Keller realized what was going on now and could take it from there, could start to learn. So there was this enormous obstacle before Helen Keller could even begin to learn, which was to understand that she was being taught and to understand that what she was being taught was language, that things had words associated with them. This was brand new to her because, again, she was 19 months old when she lost her sight and hearing. So she hadn't learned this stuff yet.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, it's astounding that this worked, quite frankly. And it's due to hard work. And as we'll see, the fact that Helen Keller, it turns out, was brilliant. So she starts tappa, tappa, tappa into Helen's palm. Every chance she gets, she'd hand her a doll. Tappa, tappa, tappa, D, O, L, L. She gives her some water. Tappa, tappa, tappa, W, A, T, E, R. And like you said, for a while, Helen's probably Like, what is this person doing tapping on my hand all the time? Eventually she's doing it so much she learns to associate, like, oh, when I get water, I'm getting these same taps. And eventually there's like a literal aha moment where she gets it and she's like, wait a minute, I understand this person is, is representing a word for the thing that I'm experiencing by tapping into my palm. And she said it was. She said. Helen's face lit up like it was a complete revelation.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, this very famously happened at a water pump. They were on one of their outdoor walks or hikes, I guess, and they came upon the water pump and she said somebody was pumping water and Ann stuck Helen's hand into the stream of water coming out the spout and, and was tapping the same letters, W, A, T E, R. And just kept doing it over and over and over and over. And that's what finally Helen just put those things together. It just clicked, like you said. And that's. There's a statue of her that was unveiled in the capitol rotunda in 2009, and it is of her as an 8 year old girl standing at this water pump, basically commemorating that incredibly, just moving moment, but also incredibly unlikely moment that she got it. She just got it. And now she was able to start to learn from there.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's incredible. So it went really pretty quickly from that point. She learned 30 words by the end of that day, had vocabulary of a few hundred words within a few months. And by the time this started when she was 6 and into 7, by the time she was 8, she had taught her to read words by feel. She was writing. She was composing sentences and writing in block letters, which is an astounding rate of speed considering her scenario. And maybe that's a good time for a break.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we'll be right back. Things are off to a really quick start and we'll see what happens next with Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.

[Winter Olympics Promoter]

Friday, kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy, featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold. The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Ilia Malin redefining the Sport. Friday at 8 Eastern, 7 Central on NBC. And Peacock.

[Geico Commercial Voice]

Hello, I'm here during the lunch rush with Janice, who owns her own food truck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Best cheese steaks in town.

[Geico Commercial Voice]

Janice traded up to Geico Commercial Auto Insurance for a food truck. Business, business. We're here where she needs us most.

[Chuck Bryant]

They sure are.

[Geico Commercial Voice]

We make it so easy for her to save with customized coverage that grows with her business. Sorry, I just get so emotional talking about saving folks money.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not this onion I'm chopping.

[Geico Commercial Voice]

It's just so beautiful. Oh yeah, nice onion.

[Chuck Bryant]

Get a commercial auto insurance quote [e-mail] and see how much you could save. It feels good to Geico if the.

[Podcast Announcer]

Birth control pill isn't feeling like the right fit anymore, you've got options. Natural Cycles is the only FDA cleared birth control app that's 100% hormone free. It works by tracking your daily temperature to pinpoint your fertile days so you'll know which days you can and can't get pregnant. No hormones, no side effects, just science that works with your body. Millions have already made the switch and you can too save 15% when you sign up today with code [e-mail].

[Josh Clark]

Okay, Chuck, so like you said, Ann Sullivan quickly figured out that Helen Keller was a gifted child. She just had to learn how to learn. And once she learned that, she just took off. Like you said. By the time she was a teenager, she was reading, I think five different languages. She wrote poetry, and she was in public speaking. She did public speaking as a teenager on what's called the Chaudaqua Lecture circuit, which was a movement to essentially bring culture and interesting topics to people who lived in rural areas who otherwise might not be exposed to that kind of stuff to give them something to talk about. And she lectured on this circuit. She appeared on this circuit with Ann Sullivan as a teenager. I think before this though, she made her way to the Perkins School. Right. For her formal education.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there were three kind of big things that followed, education wise between, what is that, like eight years, between 88 and 1896. She went to that Perkins school like you talked about, got that formal education. She also went to a specialist at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf so she could learn to speak. And then the third one, they moved to New York City. So, and you know, Ann's along every step of the way, as we'll see, obviously. So Helen could go to the Right Humason School for the Deaf where it would continue to sort of improve her speaking and she could learn to lip read. And this is like Sullivan's there, tappa, tappa, tappa. Every step of the way. When she goes on the lecture circuit, she's tapping questions like during Q and A. And then Helen would tap the questions back to Sullivan and she would translate for the audience. As we'll see, this would lead to some Suspicion that it was all just an act, which is, you know, fairly upsetting because what they did was remarkable. But this would all end up with Helen Keller eventually wanting to go to college.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And just stepping back for just a second, you mentioned how she learned to lip read. And that doesn't make any sense because she was totally blind. She lip read by putting her thumb on, say, Ann Sullivan's voice box, around, like, under her chin. She put a finger on her lips and then put another finger on her sinus cavity. And through feeling what the lips were doing and the vibrations the vocal box was making, she could discern essentially what the person was saying. That's how she learned how to lip read. And eventually that's one of the ways that she learned to talk, although she found it a failing of her life that she was never able to speak clearly enough that just a stranger on the street could understand her.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So she, like I said, she wanted to go to college. She goes to. She wanted to go to Radcliffe. It's the Harvard sister school. And so Ann Sullivan arranges for her to go to a prep school to get her ready for this, for the entrance exams. And again, translating all the curriculum, tapping out those lectures, tapping out the books, like reading basically to her into her hand and then translating back to the teachers. She's there every step of the way when she gets into and attends Radcliffe College, where she eventually would graduate cum laude in 1904 as the very first person with deafblindness to earn a college degree.

[Josh Clark]

And like you said, there were scoffers who were like, what is this? There's this woman who's like, helping her. Is this. Is this really a thing? And like you said, it is upsetting, but the amount of study and attention that was paid to these two, there's just no way they could have kept up a fraud like this for 50 years. It's quite clearly settled that Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan really did all the stuff that they were thought to do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. And we don't want to get into this, but we just. So we don't get emails, we will mention that just like this week, there is a really idiotic TikTok trend that started among Generation Z where they have put forth that Helen Keller did not even exist. And it's idiotic and ableist. And so the only reason we mention is so we won't get emails about it, but we don't want to talk more about that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, good point. So we should say that the, that Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan by this time, they weren't. They weren't just famous among deafblind advocates or blind advocates or deaf advocates or anything like that. They were in that circle. They also were in academia because they were studied and. But by this time, she's a teenager still, I think, or early 20s after she graduates from Radcliffe. They're world famous. Like, everyone knows who Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan are.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, they knew the Rockefellers. They knew Henry Ford. They had met with US Presidents. They met Charlie Chaplin when they would eventually film starring themselves as themselves in the movie Deliverance in 1918. They knew Mark Twain. The book and eventually play title and movie titled the Miracle Worker came from Mark Twain. He's the one that coined that term when he wrote a letter to Ann Sullivan calling her that. But all this to say, I think that put a strain on Ann Sullivan's marriage. During this period, she got married to a guy named John Macy. He was a Harvard professor, and he actually helped Helen Keller write the Story of My Life, her autobiography. But they, you know, they were married for a little while. The marriage didn't work out. And I think a lot of it probably had to do with just their fame and their travels. And it was just a strain on the marriage, it seemed like.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, apparently. I saw a documentary called Becoming Helen Keller. It was really good. But it crushed Ann Sullivan when John Macy left. And, you know, Helen grieved along with her. She said it took a really long time. Helen, like, almost exclusively referred to Anne as Teacher. So she was like. It took. It took teacher a really long time to basically get over that. She may never. She may have never really gotten over it, but they. They were a pair again at this point. So they were in the movie, as you said, Helen learns very quickly. Like, I like being on stage. This is kind of fun. It's a rush. She apparently could feel the vibration in the floor and through the air when. And knew when the audience was clapping.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know, interestingly, we can sense through the vibrations and through the air when a Stuff youf Should Know tour show is 40% full.

[Josh Clark]

That's right, man. That's right. But she loved that. She thrived on that, and it energized her.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, she really liked it. She was also. One of her things was they would demonstrate, you know, how she learned and how she communicated through Anne. But she would deliver in, like, these. These demonstrations, like inspirational messages. This is the kind of message she's decided to take to the world rather than, like, get a Low to me, she's like, you're paying me all this attention. Why don't you pay attention to yourself and how great you can be, too. At the same time, she was shining a massive spotlight on how few opportunities the disabled community in the United States and around the world had at the time. And she was directly responsible for changing those attitudes.

[Chuck Bryant]

So by the time they hit the stage for real and go on the vaudeville circuit, which is not something I knew until we did this kind of research, it was pretty amazing. They had a third member of their group. You know, their star has risen so much. They were like, we need an assistant. And so they hired Polly Thompson in 1914, and they were known as the Three Musketeers. So now they were a trio traveling around on the vaudeville circuit. They had a three act act wherein they told their story. They did a 20 minute bit where Ann had a monologue, sort of giving you the background. It was almost like a live podcast looking at it. Keller would come in and demonstrate the process, like how she learned to speak. They would kind of show people how it happened, say some of those inspirational words like you were talking about. And then obviously, with Anne translating, she would do a little Q and A. This sounds a lot like our show, actually.

[Josh Clark]

It is. Yeah. We're using the Helen Keller model of live shows. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Except hers was sold out with roaring audiences.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They were performing in front of thousands and thousands of people.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's amazing.

[Josh Clark]

One of the things in that Q and A, there's a list that they compiled, and this list was compiled after they retired from vaudeville. So, like, these were. They documented questions and answers that they'd gotten. And one of the ones. So there's one. What's your definition of politics? Was the question one of the audience members asked. And Helen said, the art of promising one thing and doing another.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very famous saying.

[Josh Clark]

I saw another one, too. Can you feel moonshine? You know, like she could feel sunshine. And she says, no, but I can smell it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I saw that coming.

[Josh Clark]

So, I mean, like, she was a great wit. And like, Ann Sullivan was translating this. Remember, whenever we're talking about, like, Helen Keller saying something or doing something, Anne Sullivan is standing there, holding her hand, tapping into her hand. Like, even though she learned braille and how to write and block letters and all that, that was still the chief form of communication because Anne Sullivan was so good at essentially translating in real time what was going on.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just say it once.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

Tappa, tappa, tappa.

[Josh Clark]

I can't do it as good as you. It keeps Cracking me up every time you do.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they eventually get off the vaudeville circuit in 1922, so they had a good run of a handful of years. Anne was tired, basically. She was older than Helen, and so she kind of lost the pizzazz for it. So they went home for the rest of the 1920s. They still lectured, they still traveled, they still did lobbying and then fundraising and stuff like that. Obviously working with all the causes you might expect, like the American foundation for the Blind. Also became very socially active. And we'll talk at the end a little bit about Helen Keller's later work as a social activist, which was pretty vast, but they were traveling all over the world at this point, and everyone loved them. Maybe we should take a break, though, because like every story of every great partnership, it was a little more complicated than it might seem on the surface.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we'll be right back.

[Winter Olympics Promoter]

Friday, kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy, featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold.

[Geico Commercial Voice]

Lip Sensational.

[Winter Olympics Promoter]

The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Ilia Malin redefining the Sport. Friday at 8 Eastern, 7 Central on NBC. And Peacock.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so we promised talk. Nothing salacious or anything like that.

[Josh Clark]

No, thankfully.

[Chuck Bryant]

But, you know, anytime you're working that closely with someone over that many years, they're going to be some. You know, it can get complicated. And it was complicated for them.

[Josh Clark]

Except with us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, they were lifelong partners, but they were reliant on each other in a way that maybe wasn't always the healthiest for either of them. Like, Helen wanted to get married. When she was in her mid-30s, she was engaged to a journalist named Peter Fagan, but Ann didn't think she should, and so she got together with her parents, who also didn't think that she should, and they kept her from getting married.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, and there's a quote from Helen, who basically publicly embraced that decision and was like, yeah, it was the right decision. She said, love makes us blind, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

She was sharp.

[Josh Clark]

She was super sharp. I seriously go watch that for everybody. Go watch Becoming Helen Keller. I think it's about an hour and a half, and it is a really great documentary.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I mentioned not healthy for either of them. So Helen was dependent on Anne, obviously. Ann was also dependent on Helen because Helen was the one who had the benefactors, and they weren't cutting checks to Ann Sullivan. They were sort of helping to support Helen Keller because everybody loved her and everyone Wanted, you know, a little piece of her by helping, you know, out with finances. But Ann was basically dependent on Helen financially her entire life.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because, I mean, they both made their money on the vaudeville circuit and lectures. But Helen's books were pretty. Especially the Story of My Life, her first autobiography. She ended up writing 14 books, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's incredible.

[Josh Clark]

But it was a really widely read book, big best selling novel. So she definitely made money off of her books. And I mean, Anne was just part of it. So I don't think Helen ever held any of that over her head. But she couldn't just be like, all right, so long, Helen, good luck. I'm going to go enjoy the good life. Eating caviar.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, we did talk a little bit about the controversy of people poo pooing them at the time, but we should say kind of specifically that like, Radcliffe didn't. It seems like they begrudgingly let her into the school and there were some snobs there that, you know, one of the quotes was we should just say outright that Ms. Sullivan is entering Radcliffe instead of Helen Keller, a blind, deaf and dumb girl. So I just. We only mention that. Cause it happened. It's really awful. Cause what they did was nothing short of, well, miraculous.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And. And even earlier than that, Chuck, I saw that a lot of the people who were the heads of the Perkins School were essentially supported a smear campaign that they were frauds because they felt that Ann Sullivan's success overshadowed, you know, the work that the Perkins School had done in educating Helen Keller. They weren't getting enough credit, essentially.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And then also there was a lot of classism to it too, because these were wealthy benefactors who started the school and ran it. And Ann Sullivan was a poor Irish girl who came from the bottom rung of society at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So what could she do? So, yeah, they were smeared, like throughout their life. And they were both aware of this. Like, this wasn't like, kept from them. They were two sharp women. So they knew that this was. Everything that they did was questioned and they knew it. But rather than shout back at their critics or whatever, they just did more and more and proved over and over again that this was all legitimate. That's what makes this story so wonderful, is it actually happened. And when you stop and think about what's actually going on here, just past the narrative, I've become an enormous fan of Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan. Just FYI.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're a Stan.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love it. I am Too. I saw that miracle worker when I was a kid, so it had a big impact on me as a ute.

[Josh Clark]

I've got it coming up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's good. Patty Duke, fantastic. Ann Bancroft, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They walk alike and they talked alike.

[Chuck Bryant]

So in the 1930s, this is when Ann Sullivan's health takes a turn for the worst. She had a tough go of it. She never had the best of health. But in the 1930s, it really went downhill. She had completely lost her sight by 1935. And in 1936, she died from a coronary thrombosis. Helen Keller was right there holding her hand. I can't imagine what she was tapping. Hopefully that was between them. And she was. Ann Sullivan was the first woman to have her ashes interred at the Washington National Cathedral and was eventually laid to rest at the Chapel of St. Joseph.

[Josh Clark]

Of Arimathea in the National Cathedral.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

That's amazing. It gets even better. As you'll see. This was a huge, huge blow to Helen because she lost her best friend, she lost her teacher. Remember, she always referred to her as a teacher. And she lost her first and probably strongest bridge to the outside world. Fortunately, Polly had been around for more than 20 years now, so she was more than capable of stepping in and being the bridge between Helen and the rest of the world after Ann died. So it's not like Helen was, you know, just bereft. She was just grief stricken. Oh, and one other thing, too. There's a New Yorker article from 1930 called Helen Keller at 49. And it's just this profile on her while she's still living. And it's a really good, like, just. Just a peek into her regular life. But she fed herself, she did her own dishes, she dressed herself. She was very, very independent. But when she was trying to communicate with somebody, she. She had to have another person because other people couldn't understand her. And then one other thing, Chuck. I realize I'm on a tirade here, but the reason she couldn't express herself in other ways is because she didn't know sign language. Because there was a movement at the time that sign language was not a valid way of communicating, that everyone, including people who couldn't speak, needed to learn how to speak. That was the only way of communicating that was legitimate. So she needed somebody to translate for her because she could never get that down pat. And like I said, her inability to do that haunted her like a great life failing, essentially. Which is very sad.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, super sad. There is some kind of. Kind of light Here in the form of a trip that she took. Anne wanted Helen. There had been an invitation before Ann died from the Nippon Lighthouse in Japan to do a speaking tour there. And Helen didn't want to leave Ann behind because she was in poor health at the time. Apparently, in Japan then, about 1.5% of their deaf and or blind citizens were not able to be educated or didn't have access to that. And so after Ann died, Helen honored her by going to Japan and completing that trip with Polly as her companion. They went to 33 cities in 10 weeks, spoke in front of about a million people. And the next year, clearly, as a result of this, Japan started expanding their public services for education and their accessibility programs for people with all sorts of other abilities.

[Josh Clark]

You said that Helen Keller went to Japan in 1938. She went again in 1948, after World War II, and was essentially the first ambassador to begin healing between the United States and Japan after she toured Hiroshima and came back and told everybody what she saw.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice. So I think it was like, a few decades that Helen Keller went on after Ann Sullivan passed. She lived all the way till 1968, which I don't think I knew. She passed away on June 1, kind of in her sleep in 1968, and she was laid to rest with Anne and Polly, who died eight years previous at Washington National Cathedral. So that trio, the Three Musketeers, lived together in perpetuity, which is super sweet.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it is super sweet. And you mentioned the Miracle Worker with Patty Duke and Ann Bancroft. They both won Academy Awards for it. It's just a. Again, I haven't seen it, but it's just this beloved story.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's great.

[Josh Clark]

And it basically ends after she starts to learn. Right? Like, she's a young girl the whole time, Correct? Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, I was a kid, so I can't remember if there's, like, a coda or anything like that, but it's. Yeah, it's about their sort of early days together. And certainly, I mean, there's more movies to be made. If someone wanted to make a movie about her activism later in life, that would be really something, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we should talk about that, because there's a narrative that formed around her that everybody wanted, which was Helen Keller was this angelic, pure girl who overcame incredible odds and proves that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything. And she realized that that's what people wanted. So that's kind of the part that she acted publicly. But this was after she had tried to take the limelight that she was in and cast it on a bunch of different social movements that she was genuinely involved in and like genuinely cared about. There was a bunch of them, actually. So even after she kind of stopped talking about them publicly, she was still involved in this stuff for the rest of her life?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. I mean, she was involved in the civil rights movement 50 years before the civil rights era, during the Jim Crow era. And you know, as you pointed out, she was an Alabama kid whose dad was a Confederate officer. And they didn't like her doing this stuff. Not her parents necessarily, but just people and other family in Alabama. They didn't like it. They didn't like that she was working with the naacp. She was a founding member of the ACLU and also a staunch socialist and borderline communist at one point.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, she was a member of the socialist party and she appeared at rallies with Anne. And then she found that the socialists weren't effective enough in defending workers rights. So she joined up with the Industrial Workers of the World, which was more radical, contained lots of anarchists. And it was like if. If being a socialist was scandalous, like being a wobbly was like really scandalous. And she was, she was a card carrying member. She was also hugely into women's rights. She was a suffragist because, remember, she was very active before women even had the right to vote in the US and I believe the uk. And she also talked publicly about stuff that you weren't supposed to talk about, but for really important reasons.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right, Yeah. I mean, who's gonna tell Helen Keller to stifle?

[Josh Clark]

You know? That's exactly right. Like she got away with a lot of stuff that someone who wasn't deafblind would have not gotten away with.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, for sure. She would talk about birth control in public way before anyone would. Venereal diseases, for sure. Especially gonorrhea, because that at the time would cause blindness in infants when a mother would pass it along at birth. And so she was in like the pages of Ladies Home journal in the 40s and 50s talking about rates of blindness because of gonorrhea. And that's just not the kind of thing that appeared in those kind of magazines at the time.

[Josh Clark]

No. And there's one other thing. Being a women's rights advocate, she had a quote that I saw in that documentary. It was women's inferiority is a man made issue. Oh man, isn't that awesome?

[Chuck Bryant]

She's just like a T shirt factory.

[Josh Clark]

So let's. Yeah, nice. Yeah, let's make that a stuff you should know. T shirt, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but, you know, give her credit, of course.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Josh Clark.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So, I mean, Chuck, she couldn't possibly get any better than this, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, could she?

[Josh Clark]

She could.

[Chuck Bryant]

You have something else?

[Josh Clark]

I do. I have two things. Okay. One, she loved dogs. She always had a dog. In fact, when she was living in Queens later in life, she had eight of them. That's great in and of itself, but that's enough. In the lead up to World War II, her books have been translated into German, and they didn't like that. The Nazi party didn't like it. So her books were among some of the ones chosen to be burned at Nazi rallies.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a feather in your cap.

[Josh Clark]

Heck, yeah, it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like to think that we'd have our book burned.

[Josh Clark]

I would like to think so, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So she was this amazing person that all of this other stuff just gets overlooked because, again, her story typically stops at that water pump after she gets it. Right. And she just led this incredibly full, rich life. What? I guess she was like 80 years old when she died. And. Yeah, Susan, a genuinely amazing person.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think Josh Clark has a crush.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe you're a smitten kitten. I am. Tappa, tappa, tappa.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, there we go.

[Josh Clark]

You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, sir.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, that's it for Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan and Polly Thompson. And let me say one other thing, Chuck, because it's not talked about like is just a matter of course. She wrote her own stuff after, like, later in life using braille typewriters. So, I mean, she was just this fully competent person. I'm just going to keep adding facts until you start. Listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, guys. Love your show on data centers. I was giving you one more chance.

[Josh Clark]

Helen Keller was essentially a walking data center.

[Chuck Bryant]

People. But want to let you know, people working from remote locations using IBM terminals actually happened in the early 1980s, and I was one of them. I worked remotely from home writing my dissertation in 1983. My equipment was an IBM 3030 computer terminal, a 1200 baud phone modem, a mainframe housed at a remote location. In my case, at Phillips North America in New York City. The software I used was an IBM program called Script. I think I remember Script actually before.

[Josh Clark]

Programs, like, I do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's like pre. WordPerfect.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm floppy disks, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it had to be. It was before WordPerfect would come into common usage. But Script was basically using one step up from machine language. For example, if you wanted to indent for a new paragraph you would type in five to make it, you know, indent five spaces. Or for double space it was period. It looks like LL2 and so on for all formatting. If it sounds primitive and cumbersome, it was, but far better than an electric typewriter as you could correct anything without using whiteout. So it was progress in a sense and actually saved a huge amount of time for me. So it was long before 2008 that people got to work remotely, though it was rather primitive. Thanks for another great episode. That is from Danielle Greenberg.

[Josh Clark]

Very nice, Danielle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was pretty funny.

[Josh Clark]

It was funny. Antiquated, I guess, is what you call it today. Danielle, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks again, Danielle. And if you want to be like Danielle and send us a great email that takes us down memory lane in some ways, you. You can do that. Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Podcast Announcer]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Guaranteed Human.