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- [00:00]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [00:08]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [00:12]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [00:21]
Stephen
That's right.
- [00:21]
Katie Charlwood
Hey.
- [00:21]
Stephen
Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [00:26]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. So, spoiler alert, he'll be wrong.
- [00:33]
Stephen
News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:40]
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- [01:13]
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- [01:57]
Katie Charlwood
Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to who did what now, the history podcast. That is not your history class with me, your host, Katie Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books. So I fainted in work today. I know, I know. I just threw that in there. Just started off strong with fainting at my place of employment, which was a wee bit embarrassing and like, a tiny bit concerning because, like, for. Why, for why did I faint? That was very unpleasant. I didn't appreciate that at all. 0 out of 5 stars. Like, I'm like, why am I deficient in something? Like, what is going on? Because I know I'm getting enough iron between, you know, the meat I eat and the cereals so there should be that. That and the supplements. Right. I mean I take my vitamins so one would assume that they do, you know, get absorbed. I mean, I hope they get absorbed. Very expensive. So like I should be fine. So that leaves some kind of illness. And I thought, oh, maybe that's, you know, connected to the excruciating pain that I've been in the last couple of days. And I've been in quite a lot of back pain. More than usual. More. More. Which is a little bit, again, concerning. And I thought maybe they're connected. And then I was telling a co worker about my weekend and I was saying, oh, I was in the pool with the kids and then the swimming lesson started so they cordoned off part of the pool and so it's quite deep. So my daughter was on my back and like I was giving her piggybacks in the water and she was like, hey, hey, maybe you were giving piggybacks in the water, maybe that's what hurt your back. And I'm like, oh, yeah, perhaps that could be what that is. Perhaps that could be the issue. Yeah. Doesn't explain the fainting but you know, that is, that is something. But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Katie, quit your jibber jabber and fact me, in fact you. I will. But first we've got to get our source on. Our sources are 10 days in a madhouse by Nellie Bly 80 days Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History Making Race around the World by Matthew Goodman Nellie Bly by Arthur Fritz Sensational the Hidden History of America's Girl Stunt Reporters by Kim Todd Nellie Bly, girl reporter, Daredevil Journalist by Jane Garrison and of course we have our old favourites, biography.com and history.com. i also didn't comfortably. Good. Then let's begin. Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochrane on 5 May 1864 in the Borough Township which is a suburb of Pittsburgh that is in Pennsylvania, United States of America for those of you who do not know. So this area which is now like Burrow Township, it used to be known as Cochrane Mills. Now if you may notice that her original born name was Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, that is not a coincidence because Cochrane Mills is named after her father, Michael Cochrane, who started off as a millworker who worked his way up and eventually ended up buying a local mill and the surrounding lands. So the lands around the mill and and his family farmhouse. Now he is very important. Some might even go as far as to call him a high value Male. So anyway, Michael Cochran, he is. He's. He's kind of a big deal, you know what I mean? And he also, you know, clearly was a very virile fellow, right? Because the man clearly was. Was getting some because he had buckets and buckets of kids, okay? So Michael was married twice with his first wife, Catherine Murphy. He had 10 children. 10, right? Now, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I think any more than three is quite a lot of children to deal with. So Catherine Murphy gives birth 10 whole times. Now, eventually, after she has 10 children, she dies. Now, Michael is a man with 10 children. This very important man is quite Busy and has 10 children. So he is the local postmaster as well. Like, he's kind of got his fingers in many pies and more than one woman, apparently, because the postmaster needs a wife. And so he marries Mary Jane Kennedy, with whom he had five more children. Now, this is clearly. I'm gonna say it, an Irish town, because the name Corcoran, first of all. Then we have Murphy. Now we've got Kennedy. Oh, come on. This is an Irish settler town. So Nellie here, young Elizabeth, as she was then known, is from the second marriage, and she is his 13th daughter. He has 15 children. Michael here seemed to be producing a lot of girls, right? So he's got 13 daughters and two boys. Now, here's. Here's where the issue is, because Michael, what happens is he dies when Elizabeth is only six years old, which is obviously sad, okay? But also, in addition, furthermore, it is a bit of a problem because when he kicks the bucket, he does so without leaving a well. Now, I don't know who needs to hear this, so sidebar, but if you don't have a will, and you have the means in which to have a will, get a will drawn up, right? Because you need legal documents, because otherwise it can lead to just hassle after you die. Now you're dead, then it won't matter to you. So you can just do whatever you want with your will and have it sealed until your death, and then you can do whatever you want. People just have to deal with the consequences of that as long as you're of, like, sound mind and stuff, which means you need to do it, like, sooner rather than later. So, yeah, you need to sort out your will, lads, because I know people who don't have wills because they think it's tempting fate, which is stupid. Two reasons I'm gonna go into it. I wasn't, but I am. You cannot tempt fate, okay? Because even if Fate were real, right? Then you believe that everything is preordained and destined and is going to happen no matter what. Things will happen for a reason. They are going to happen. Which means fate is locked in. You cannot tempt it. Okay, just get a well done arseholes, right? Because people fight over money. People kill over money and land and. And honestly, ugh, it's such a hassle. So get your well drawn up. So Mary Jane Kennedy, she is the second wife, right? So she. And unlike, you know, his sons, she has no legal claim to his estate. And so Nelly starts life in a very privileged place. But after the death of her father, it's not exactly the easiest of situations. Like they can't even afford to keep their home or maintain the lands, right? So they move away. Now, Mary Jane. Mary Jane Kennedy Cochrane remarries, but the guy she marries is a dick. And before you say to me, Katie, you think every man is a dick. First of all, no, I do not. Some of my best friends are men. Second of all, you know, he was a dick. He was abusive to the point that she divorces him. Do you know how difficult it was to obtain a divorce in the 1800s? Like, it's not an easy task to do. And they really needs to be like a pure, solid, like 100% justification that this guy is an absolute dick in a legal sense that you have to be separated from him. And so they split. When Nellie is like 14, 15, she enrolls in the Indiana Normal School, which is now the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. So if you don't know, the Indiana Normal School was an institution created to train teachers, right? So it was to train teachers to work in the Commonwealth schools. Okay? So Nellie's plan here was to become a teacher. Like that was her goal. Now she only lasts one term because the family simply cannot afford it, right? They just can't afford for her to go to like this higher level of education now. Nelly. So as she's growing up, right, she has this nickname like Pinky. The reason she's called Pinky. Wait for it. Wait for it. She wears a lot of pink, right? So like her lord and savior, Miss Piggy, she likes pink. And so she gets called this growing up, and she doesn't want this childish nickname anymore. And so when she actually attends the Indiana Teachers College, right, she stops being called Pinky and adds an E onto the end of Cochrane to sound more sophisticated by adding an E. Sidebar. I know I'm doing it again. So the thing about nicknames is, is I've Been called Katie most of my life. It's not my legal name. It's just what everybody called me. Now, here's a fun thing is at one point, I think I was in college and I had an auntie who was like, I'm gonna call you Kate from now on because I think Katie is such a, you know, childish name. And I was like, no, I like it. It's like everyone's called me it. I like it as a name. Now I've. I will basically answer to most variations of it. Like, you'd be surprised what I would respond to, by the way. But, yeah, they were like, it's really childish. I want to change it. And I'm just like, no, thank you. So the year after Nelly dropped out, the family upsticks and moves to Allegheny City, which is now part of Pittsburgh. So Mary Jane and Nelly, they run a boarding house because it is one of the few career options available for women in this era. Which leads me to a newspaper, the Pittsburgh Dispatch, which has a column called what Girls Are Good For? It basically reads like a tradwife mission statement. Women girls are only good for keeping house and birthing them babies. Nelly, as one can imagine, is less than impressed by this column. And so she writes a response under a pseudonym, of course. The pseudonym Lonely Orphan Girl. Nelly, you spooky little bitch. What are you doing? Lonely Orphan Girl. I would like to remind everyone that the initials to that are log. That was a choice. That was a choice that was made. So Nelly, as Lonely Orphan Girl absolutely destroys the column. And the editor, George Madden, is so impressed by this that he wants the author to come forward. Like, he publishes an ad in his paper offering the writer a job. You know what? No, I'm turning two pages at once with that one. Basically, he puts out this ad, and he's like, who are you? Who is she? Who's writing this? Identify yourself. And so she does. And when she does introduce herself to him, he's just like, would you like to write a piece from my newspaper? Of course, under your pseudonym, Lonely Orphan Girl. Nellie takes him up on his offer because clearly she's got the smarts, but also because this is a paid opportunity and you have bills to pay. You know, they're running a boarding house. They don't have a lot of other opportunities because it's the 1870s or 1880s at this point. Like, she needs. She needs the money. You know what I mean? And so for the Dispatch, she writes under the pseudonym Log, Lonely Orphan Girl, and writes the girl puzzle. And in this, she argues that not all women should marry or would marry, and that women. Women don't need marriage opportunities necessarily. What they do need are better jobs. There needs to be more employment opportunities for women because there basically aren't any. After this. Like, she changes her pseudonym from, like, Lonely Orphan Girl to Nellie Bly. And the reason she chooses Nellie Bly is probably because Nellie is one of those names that's short for Elizabeth, like Ellie and Nelly and Betty and Lisbet and Lilibet and Beth and probably more that I didn't have there. So she changed it to that. Not only because that. But there is a song, right? There's a song by Stephen Foster and the. Well, the main character in that song is called Nellie Bly. And so she's like, let's use this. It's, you know, it's common, it's contemporary. It's like, pretty good. Okay, now, Nelly and Nellie Bly, the song is spelled with a Y, but Nelly, her name is spelled with an ie because the editor made a mistake and they're like, that's fine, it'll do. And I think it's also, by giving her, like, a full name, pseudonym, it's sort of moving up, because Lonely Orphan Girl, apart from the fact that it's very vague, it's also could be misconstrued as sort of young and childish, whereas having a name name kind of gives a wee bit more authority behind it. So her second article was about how divorce affects women, right? It was called Mad Marriages. She argued about how women were disadvantaged upon divorce because men could just turn a woman out, keep her dowry if they had one, and they had custody for the kids or, like, all the kids. And so she's, like, fighting for divorce reform here. Like, that's not something you did. And Nelly, she is. She's writing for the Dispatch, and she is earning $5 a week, which in today's money is $164.84. So she's writing for them full time by the time she's 21. And a lot of her work focused on working class women. And this is when she starts investigating.
- [18:48]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [18:56]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [19:00]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [19:09]
Stephen
That's right.
- [19:09]
Katie Charlwood
Hey.
- [19:10]
Stephen
Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw re to every single chapter.
- [19:14]
Hayden
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [19:21]
Stephen
News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:28]
MeUndies Advertiser
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- [20:07]
Katie Charlwood
Nellie starts doing these investigative articles. She goes undercover as an impoverished lady to get a job as a factory girl at a copper cable factory. So she goes in to get the job and she writes an expose on the absolutely terrible working conditions that women and children faced. And this is not the kind of stuff that men would write about because it didn't affect them. It sort of reminds me of Kate Warne, the Pinkerton detective. I think she was the first detective in or female detective in the usa. And so she would get into places that other people couldn't because she was a woman. She could investigate what others couldn't because she was a woman. And Nellie is doing that as well. So she's doing these expose, she's writing these pieces. And factory workers loved her pieces. But you know who didn't? Factory owners, the big bosses sent complaints to the newspaper so that Nelly gets reassigned because they were very unhappy that she was exposing the terrible working conditions for women and children. So she gets moved elsewhere. She gets moved to like, I don't want to call it like the ladies pages. So she's writing about flower arranging and fashion, etc, lady topics for ladies, the society papers, who is who? Who is in, who is out? Ooh, like Lady Whistledown. Except not that arsed about it, to be honest, because she, right, cannot stand it. And so she ends up moving to Mexico, right? She's just like, I'm done. I can't be dealing with this. She moves to Mexico for six months to write a report that will become a book called six Months in Mexico. So she's sending these dispatches, like, to the Dispatch, and they are all about Mexican people, their lives and customs, and also reporting stuff like the imprisonment of a local journalist who was put in the clink for criticizing the Mexican government, which was a dictatorship at the time. So these dispatches are being sent back to Pittsburgh. And when the Mexican government discovers these reports, well, they threatened to arrest Nelly. And so she has to straight up flee back into the US right. In 1887, she moves back to the United States of America. But she's feeling disheartened at this point, right? Because the work she's doing at the Dispatch, you know, it's not what she wants to do. Like, I mean, she went to Mexico and was like, oh, great culture. Oh, they have this delicious tamal. And oh, the government is corrupt and is locking up journalists. And have you heard them play the bandol? It's amazing. But, yeah, she's doing, like, real journalism. This stuff that they thought ladies were just too soft for. But she is, again, really disheartened by the work at the Pittsburgh Dispatch because she doesn't want to do, you know, the society peoples. And so she decides that she's going to move to the Big Apple, New York City. So she moves to New York. But she struggles to get a job because journalism at this point is a boys club, I mean, male dominated fueled. So with no money and no prospects and no more fucks left to give, Nellie manages to talk her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer's paper, the New York World. So she manages to get in because she's just got, I'm gonna say, tenacity. And they're like, okay, fine. We've heard whispers that something is afoot. Tales of brutality and neglect at the women's lunatic asylum on Blackwell's island, which, just so you know, now Roosevelt Island. So she is assigned an undercover assignment, and she spends a surprisingly short while trying to get herself admitted to the women's lunatic asylum, Right? So how she does this is she checks herself into this lodging house, a temporary home for fear females. She stays up all night to make herself look tired, I guess. Like, it actually comes up quite a lot. Like when they're writing about her, they go. Her eyes were so wide. Her widened eyes. Oh, dear, the wide eyes. It's like, okay, John. Okay. Like, it wasn't exactly difficult to get committed to an asylum if you're a woman. I do actually have, like, a big, long list of the ways in which you can be admitted to an asylum. I'm gonna share with you my favourites because some of these are beyond ridiculous. The reasons women were institutionalized. I'm gonna give you my top five, actually. Laziness, snuff, novel reading, Marriage of Sun, politics. Like, one of my favourite things to do is at a live show is I will just go through there's, like, 30, 40 things on this list, and I go through all of them just to see how the audience reacts to it. Because it's really fun when you play a game and everyone puts up their hand for which one that they would be sent to the asylum for, and it's okay, and everyone can play, even the men, and it's a good fun for everybody to play together. So Nellie is trying to get committed to this institution. She's staying up all night. She's accusing other boarders of doing weird stuff. She's loud and annoying. Like, she scares the other lodgers so much that they call the cops, right? They take her to the courthouse, right? So you've got a police officer, a judge, and a doctor all examine her. The first place she's sent is Bellevue Hospital, which is, I'm fairly certain, the oldest public hospital in the whole country. Like, in the whole United States. Like, it's the oldest one. And, like, this place was constructed in, like, the early 1800s because of yellow fever outbreaks. And they were like, we need somewhere to do this. So it started off there and eventually became like the hospital it is today. So she is in Bellevue Hospital before being sent to the women's lunatic asylum on Blackwell's island. So after 10 days, the new York world had Nellie released from the asylum. Like, they had to go and request it. They were like, no, no, we actually need to take her. She's one of ours. Please. Thank you so much. And so after she comes out, they publish 10 days in a madhouse. So, like, before actually going in, before she even got to Bellevue, like, the police officer, the doctor, the judge, they're all like, she's positively demented. And when she gets there, doctors called her undoubtedly insane. And one said that she had a wild, haunted look in her eyes. So when questioned, like, she initially acted like she had amnesia. She was like, what? Who am I, the drama? I don't think I'm the drama. Now, once she actually lands on Blackwell island, she just stops. And I'm gonna use this phrase because it's a direct quote. Acting crazy. And so nurses and other staff members just put it down to other symptoms of her illness. She tried to talk rationally and calmly to be released, but they were having none of it. And she's conversing with fellow patients, and it's clear that many of them did not belong there. Right, so this staff, this is going to shock you. I know we're both verbally and physically abusive, right? She notices that, especially immigrants with poor English. Those are the ones that are mistreated the most. And she, like, tries several times to be like, okay, I'm done now I want to leave. Like. And, like, the patients, they weren't supposed to talk to each other, and they were just. I'm gonna just go with. Horribly abused patients were fed meat that was off bread that was stale and a gruel broth. And the water. The water that they. They consumed, well, how would I put this gently? That's how you get dysentery. Okay? It's history. All roads lead to dysentery. So dangerous patients were bound together with ropes. Others were left in those, like, very fine, very poor gowns on hard floors and benches. It was, to put plainly, unsanitary. There was waste everywhere. And, of course, there were rats and bugs. Now, if you've ever seen the beginning of Bram Stoker's Dracula, like, there's a scene in an asylum and there was a guy, like, in, like, a stone building eating bugs. Now, that is the image I specifically have in my brain regarding this. So the baths, well, when it came to bathing, they would just chuck buckets of freezing cold, dirty water over the heads of the patients and scrubbed them roughly. So in the baths, it was basically a human soup. They shelled towels like, there was no. Like, germ theory had been about at this point. This wasn't like, it was new. But also, sharing dirty towels is something that I feel like you would know about. Like, that's very basic because you can see dirt on the towels. You know what I mean? So because they're sharing towels, and obviously there are skin conditions in this environment that it leads to other issues. Like scabies, right? People got scabies. Like, of course things are rife. You're getting lice, you're getting scabies, you're getting all of these horrible. Just. I don't want to say infection. I feel like infection is the wrong word for scabies because it's just little bugs that spread. So she's, like, very aware that, you know, the people who really need help are being incredibly mistreated. And there are a lot of people there in the asylum who should not be there and who are being treated worse because you know they're not falling into the cultural standards of contemporary society, Right? And so she is very calmly, very rationally, she's like, trying to leave. She's trying to be like, hey, this was an expose. I'm cool. I'm done now, thanks. Can I go? And the Narciss are just like, no, this is just, you know, a point in the madness. The lucidity is just one of the symptoms. And she's like, what? No, please let me out. And so there are many requests to get her out, and they're refusing up until the point that they get a lawyer involved. So an attorney for the New York World newspaper has to come in and go, I'm going to sue you if you do not let her out. And they go, okay, we can't afford that. And so, yes, out she goes. And Nellie says, I left the insane ward with pleasure and regret. Pleasure. I was once more able to enjoy the free breath of heaven. Regret that I could not have brought with me some of the unfortunate women who lived and suffered with me and who I am convinced are just as sane as I was and am now myself. So this 10 Days in a Madhouse is a six part series of articles. And it later becomes a book because it is so successful. Like, people weren't really doing a lot of investigative journalism back in the 1880s. And this series highlighted the terrible conditions at the asylum, which spurs this nationwide investigation, leading to changes in New York City's Department of Public Charities and Corrections. Now, I'm just going to say it out loud. That is a weird mix. That is a weird mix. So changes include basics, money, a larger appropriation of funds for the care of mentally ill patients, better supervision of health care workers, and regulations regarding overcrowding. Nellie Bly is 23 years old at this point. She's 23. And she has had this massive impact on American culture and is showing. Highlighting the experience of marginalized women, like, beyond this. And it just goes further now. She keeps doing this. She's reporting on jails, sweatshops, factories and the like, calling for reform and exposes bribery in the lobbyist system now. And this is the start of what they call stunt girl journalism, which feels like they're trying to discredit it a little bit. But this is very much sort of undercover and immersive journalistic work.
- [35:42]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fan Girls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [35:50]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the smash Daddy.
- [35:54]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [36:02]
Stephen
That's right.
- [36:03]
Katie Charlwood
Hey.
- [36:03]
Stephen
Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [36:08]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers. Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [36:15]
Stephen
Newsflash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [36:22]
MeUndies Advertiser
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- [37:00]
Katie Charlwood
Nellie Bly is part of this whole wave of journalism, stunt girl journalism. Then in 1888, she decides to do something. So there's this book, you may have heard of it, called around The World in 80 Days. It's written by Jules Verne, who wrote other classics such as 20,000 leagues under the Sea. So he writes this book, and it's about Phineas Fogg and how he travels around the world and 80 days with his assistant or his valet, Passepartout. Right? And so there's this whole thing about it being sort of detective in stunt girl journalism. It's like new journalism in, like, the 1880s, 1890s, and it's really where Joseph Pulitzer, like, really gets it out the bag. And so when this book comes out, like, people go, oh. She goes, I want to do that. And. And that's not what happens here. It wasn't like she read the book and was like, I can do that. No, what happened is the newspaper looked at it and went, oh, actually, let's get Nelly to do it. Because, I mean, we could get a guy to do it, but she's, like, really famous and it's very good promotion for us. And she's a woman. What if she dies on the journey? It's fine. And so they're like, hey, you want to go around the world in 80 days. And she goes, I can do that. And so on the 14th of November, 1889, right? So it's a year after, right? So it's a year after they suggest she does it. And she's like, sure, because, you know, it's logistics. They gotta get stuff figured out. So she says she's gonna do it. And so she does. She gets ready to go around the world in 80 days. She starts her journey in Hoboken, New Jersey. She boards the Hamburg America Line steamer, the Augusta Victoria, which, I don't know if you know, this is actually the birth name of Queen Victoria. Augusta Victoria. So she brings with her a dress, a sturdy overcoat, several changes of underwear, a small travel bag of toiletry essentials, and a bag tied around her neck containing dollars, pounds, and gold. So, dollars, American dollars. She's got pounds, sterling, and she also has gold, because these are things you can use. So because Nellie is doing this, the Cosmopolitan decides to send their own reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, as well. However, Elizabeth is traveling in the opposite direction to Nelly. And so it becomes the Phineas Fogg Challenge between the stunt girl reporters. Now, Nellie had no idea that the Phineas Fogg Challenge was happening until well into her journey. The New York World organizes a guessing game where readers would guess when she would arrive in New Jersey, like, down to the second. And it was like the Grand Tour prize. So the grand tour, by the way, was very much. I'm gonna. Typically. It was typically European, right? So what people of a certain class would do is before, sometimes before they got married, sometimes after, they would either be a companion or they would just travel with family. They would go on a grand tour. So they would travel around all of Europe, and they would go to the events and go dwine and dine and all that jazz. So the winner of this Nellie Bly guessing match, right, they would win the grand prize, right? This Grand Tour prize, which was a trip to Europe, which was like, at first it was just a trip to Europe, and then as the popularity grew, it also added spending money for the trip. And so Nelly, she is going, right? She goes through England, France, like, where she actually meets Jules Verne, right? She meets Jules Verne. She travels through Brindisi in Southern Italy. She gets through the Suez Canal. She passes through Colombo and Sri Lanka, and she's traveling through, like, British colonies effectively. So she goes through the Straits Settlements. Now, this is like a crown colony at this point. And initially it was, you know, colonized by the British East India Company, who we will be discussing at a later Date again. I know you're shocked. Why are you? So, yeah, it starts off as like the British East India Company, and then it comes under the British Raj and then it becomes like a crown colony. And so this is all sort of, I want to say, like, it's a south, southeast, it's Southeast Asia. So she is going through Malaysia, so part of like the Malay Peninsula, and then she goes through Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. And she is like basically taking every mode of transport she can. She travels by boat, train, horse car, rickshaw, basically any mode of transport she can get her derriere on, she's using it. And as she's traveling, she is sending reports back to the New York World. And like, she is like stopping all over, right? So like, she is not going through this at a pace, you know, that one would expect if you're racing around the world. You know, I mean, you've got typical logistical issues, railways, bad weather, and a bunch of other travel issues. Like at one point she just stops off in a leper colony in Singapore and buys a monkey, as one does. So she is traveling around the world. She's circumventing it. Is she circumventing it? Eh? Is she? Anyway, she travels around the world. She starts off in Hoboken, New Jersey. She goes through Europe and Asia and then just continues like onto the American continent. She gets back to the US on January 21st via the White Star Liner, the RMS Oceanic. She's traveling across the Pacific and the seas are pretty rough. Like it, it's not a good time. And she's actually behind schedule. So she gets on a train to complete the journey to New Jersey. Now this isn't any train. Like, this is. Listen, I don't want to call it cheating because technically it's not cheating. So the New York World made sure that this train was running and it made sure that she was on it so that it could get across. Now she's. She gets on this train to get her all the way to New Jersey. And on the 25th of January, 1890 at 3:51pm, Nellie Bly made it around the world. And 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds, she sets a world record, right? So now she is well famous, and she says, fuck this for Game of Soldiers, quits reporting and starts writing books instead. And so she writes novels. And so she's writing between like 1889 and 1895. So for like six years she writes 11 novels. And you'd think she was happy continuing to write novels. However, in 1893, she returned to journalism, right? Back working for the world. And you're thinking, what could lure her back? Like, she's having a great life, things are going well for her. Why is she lured back to journalism? Well, see, here's the thing. The Catskills killer, the serial killer, Lizzie Halliday wants to be interviewed by Nellie Bly exclusively, right? She wants her specifically to interview her. She's like, I only want Nellie Bly. And so Nellie Bly's like, I guess. And this becomes a two part piece. Like Halliday was considered the most dangerous woman in all of New York at the time. Like, she gets interviewed by Nellie Bly and a year later, like she's sentenced to the electric chair. Now, fun fact didn't die. Whole thing, whole episode on it. You should go listen to it. It's great fun, she says, talking about a serial killer. In 1895, when she stops writing novels and doing journalism, Nellie marries a millionaire. Why not, right? She marries Robert Seaman, a manufacturer and industrialist. He owned the Ironclad Manufacturing company. So they make like milk cans and whatnot. Like just iron, right? Steel containers. Is it iron? It's made steel containers. You've got boilers, you've got milk cans, steel barrel drum, like all that jazz. So they get married. She was 31, he was 73. So they get married, she leaves journalism again and then she works at his company instead. When he dies in 1904, she takes over the business, like, and she's not just like some absent board member, like stamping their signature onto stuff. Like she's involved, right? Nellie Bly. I just think she's naturally busy. She can't help herself. So like she's running the company, she's putting in all these reforms and she has patents for this, a novel milk can and a stacking garbage can. And like they're registered under her like full legal married name, Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman. So like she is really, really investing and really caring about employees and the life of employees, families. So she's instituting all of these like, reforms for all the employees at the Ironclad manufacturing company. They're fitness centers, libraries, healthcare, and like at one point she was one of the leading women, like leading women industrialists in the United States. Now eventually the company goes like bankrupt because, you know, she's implementing all these reforms and she's funding this and also because one of the men involved, one of the managers is embezzling. And so it goes bust. She returns to journalism in 1913, writing for the New York Evening Journal. She Ends up, like, writing for Women's Suffrage, right? She's covering the women's suffrage movement. And so she. She writes an article saying that suffragists are men superiors. And so. And she's like, by the way, women are going to get the right to vote in 1920. And everyone's like, no way, Nelly. Not on your Nelly. I regret nothing. And so she writes this article. She's very like, pro suffrage movement. And she ends up World War I hits. So 1913, she writes this article. 1914, she's in the war, right? So in the First World War over in the Eastern Front, Nellie Bly was one of the first foreigners to, like, actually visit the war zone between Serbia and Austria. And she was the first woman, right? She was also, fun fact. Arrested, right? So she gets arrested because they think she's a British spy. And then she has to go, I'm not a British spy. I'm American. And they go, oh, dear. Anyway, they release her. She's fine. Everything is fine. Unknown furnace. She probably just went morti pass. Basically, she was accredited by the War Press Office. Throughout the war, Nellie Bly stayed in Vienna and worked to support widows and orphans affected by the conflict. When the war ended, however, Nellie returned to New York and continued working for the New York Journal. She wrote an advice column which basically focused on charitable work and supported her work with unwed mothers and their children, people who tend to get forgotten about throughout history. And she continues doing this up until her death in 1922. On the 27th of January, 1922, Nellie Bly, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane seaman, died from pneumonia at St. Mary's Hospital in New York. She was 57 years old. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Nellie Bly has a great legacy because, like, historically, she's someone who's believed, you know, I mean, obviously there'll be naysayers from, like, the time she was alive, but there is a lot of respect and admiration, like, for Nellie Bly nowadays, for doing something that was so unexpected, something that was not of women of the era who started off life, you know, fairly privileged to having nothing, to having to run a boarding house, to quit school, and having an opportunity where she just got angry and was like, no, you're wrong. I need to correct this. How dare you? And that led to a lifelong career and for her name being in the history books. And I think out of all the people, like, I'm sorry. Also, she married a millionaire. And she was like, listen, no babies. Let's get married. Fabulous. 10 out of 10. And she lived her life and it was great for her. Obviously, pneumonia is not a great way to go, but it was prevalent in the 1920s. But she made her mark on history and she opened a lot of people's eyes to the injustices that were happening. She told the truth. And I think with a lot of history and a lot of even journalism cough. She says journalism nowadays that. That's often hidden and often misrepresented, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally, because, listen, it's easy to fall for the lie, you know, but with that, that is the story of Nellie Bly. Now, I originally did this as part of a live show in Pittsburgh. Like, it was a little fun thing I did. Pittsburgh, so many bridges, like. And also very proud of their bridges, by the way. Super proud of their bridges. Like the hotel. I say hotel. I don't know if it was a hotel or a motel. It was not. I like to say it's not a great establishment. I couldn't really tell you because it had no electricity or running water thanks to an unprecedented storm. So there was that. But also throughout the hotel, so many pictures of bridges, paintings, photos, so many bridges, really into their bridges. But of course, that is the story of Nellie Blythe. I would love for you to like, follow on the socials comment, share. Oh, my God, no, I have to tell you this story real quick before I go, because I didn't put it at the beginning, so I'm gonna put it at the end. So I got an anonymous message. Sorry, this reminded me, I got an anonymous message. They went through like the contact form on my website. And I'm really, really good at figuring out from like the first line or the first few words of whether I should care about something anybody says or not. And this person, as it turns out, had created like a whole anonymous account. Like, they'd set up an anonymous email, like untrackable nonsense, right? Because I was curious and I looked it up. So they set up this untrackable email, this anonymous thing, so that they could insult me. And I was like, you went through all that effort to make this big anonymous thing so you could facelessly attempt to insult a woman? Is that. Is that what you did? Like, how sad empathetic is your life that clearly if you've gone to the effort to make this whole thing, that I'm not the first person you've done this to. Like, how sad is your life? Like, what lack of everything are you having that you're just doing this? Like, this is where your enjoyment is? Like, you have nothing going on in your life that the only thing you can do is to, like, secretly say mean things to people. Like, like, that's really, really pathetic. It's like the most pathetic thing because I'm just like, I think if you want to say something, you should say it with your whole chest. Like, you should be able to sign your name underneath it. Like, if you're gonna say something, stand by it. Like, defend it, argue it. Like, show your face if you don't. Like, like, what is so wrong with you? Like, why are you so. Be like. Anyway, I saw the word like. Like, I think it started off with like, your podcast is shit. And then I think I saw the word communism and I was like, oh, well, delete. Because especially when people write me really long paragraphs and like, really long emails and really long messages again, I can tell from the first few words, like, how bad it's gonna be. And so they've put all this effort into writing this big long diatribe for nothing because I didn't even read it. And that's what happens, like, see, when people try and like, just espouse, like, I don't know, just their word vomit at me and they do it in my comment sections. Like, if you've got a super long paragraph there, I'm not reading that. That's getting deleted. I don't care. I'm not doing that. Because if it's that important, you'd email me. And you're tone, you know what? I'm at a point in my life where I don't have to be nice to anyone. I choose to be nice. I choose to be kind. I'm not a nice person. I choose to be kind because it's ingrained in me and I think it's better to be kind. Anyway, with that, I think it's recommendation time for reading. You know what? I'm gonna do it. For reading, you should read Eva the Adventurous, which is one of the lost novels by Nellie Bly. Like, they discovered it. I don't know, I think, was it, I want to say like 1998 or something? It was discovered. But yeah, you should read it because why not? Let's read her fiction. Although it was technically based on a real life person, but that's neither here nor there for listening. You know what I finally started listening to actually was Someone knows Something. Now I. I think that I tried to listen to this many, many years ago when I was struggling with the bad feelings, or as we like to call them in this house, the Doomies. And I think there was like a whole issue with the dummies and I, I don't think I was even paying attention to it. So I've started re listening from season one and I'm like, I don't remember any of this. Clearly was not absorbing that information. But so far very good, very interesting, very into this for watching. I started watching his and hers which I just love how uncomfortable I am cuz I don't trust anything I see. I'm like, I don't like this perspective. I don't like that perspective stuff's going on here. I'm just not into any of it. There's like a lot of stuff. I'm into it, but also I'm very cautious. I don't trust any of it. So yes, that's your recommendations because I'm also watching, doing that. And with that, I'm gonna bid you good day. Adios. Au revoir. Au revoir, my friends. Bye bye.
- [60:05]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [60:13]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [60:17]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [60:26]
Stephen
That's right.
- [60:26]
Katie Charlwood
Hey Hei.
- [60:27]
Stephen
So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [60:31]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [60:38]
Stephen
Newsflash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [60:45]
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