Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, Welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy and welcome Holly. Thanks. So a few of
Speaker 1: you probably remember Holly from her most recent visit to
Speaker 1: the podcast where we talked about underwear that was super fun,
Speaker 1: all sorts of things, Queen Victoria, your favorite course, it's um.
Speaker 1: But Holly also hosts Pop Stuff, so a lot of
Speaker 1: y'all probably know her from there already, and she's going
Speaker 1: to be stepping up to fill Doblina's spot as podcast
Speaker 1: co host. Yes, indeed, so that's very exciting. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: I feel like I should get it out of the way,
Speaker 1: so I'm not stringing you guys along for a few episodes,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to be leading the podcast too in
Speaker 1: a few more episodes Sadness and Art, and Holly is
Speaker 1: going to be joined by our manager, the site director
Speaker 1: of How Stuff Works, and her Pop Stuff co host,
Speaker 1: Tracy Wilson. Yes, so that's lots of transitions, big excitement,
Speaker 1: but you guys can get ready for it. And Holly
Speaker 1: and I are going to have some fun and I'm
Speaker 1: excited I get time with Sarah before she vanishes, vanished,
Speaker 1: vanishes into the editing world of stuff work. So today's topic,
Speaker 1: I wanted to pick something that was fun, something that's
Speaker 1: been requested by listeners a lot, but also something that
Speaker 1: people have been talking about in the entertainment world a
Speaker 1: lot lately thanks to a new movie coming out. Yes,
Speaker 1: bos Lurman's Gatsby is going to be out in May
Speaker 1: of this year, so just a few months out, and
Speaker 1: it will, as many of his movies are, probably be
Speaker 1: a little controversial because he takes a very unique approach
Speaker 1: to telling historical story. But it looks beautiful. It does
Speaker 1: look beautiful. I saw the preview for it. It starts
Speaker 1: with a group of people riding in an open car.
Speaker 1: It looks all very roaring twenties, very exciting, gorgeous. It
Speaker 1: looks super gorgeous. I'm really excited because I am a
Speaker 1: big Boss Lerman fan. And there are lots of people
Speaker 1: in the cast that I really like, Like I really
Speaker 1: like Joel Edgerton cast as Tom Um, and I think
Speaker 1: Carrie Mulligan is going to be a really interesting Daisy Um.
Speaker 1: We have Leo, Yeah, who I've told you very recently.
Speaker 1: I feel bad he's been much maligned as an actor
Speaker 1: through the years. I think because Titanic kind of he
Speaker 1: got a syrup, a kind of coated in some glory syrup.
Speaker 1: People don't always love that, and it caused negative connotation.
Speaker 1: But I really think he is quite a good actor
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm interested to see where his career goes
Speaker 1: in the next I think this might be a good
Speaker 1: role for him too. But this movie has been in
Speaker 1: the works for so long now at James because it
Speaker 1: was originally supposed to come out Holiday and I got
Speaker 1: bumped in speculation for Ages, I mean a long time
Speaker 1: back who would be cast in it? So I think
Speaker 1: partly because of that and partly just because of a
Speaker 1: general fascination with the FitzGeralds. Like I mentioned, listeners have
Speaker 1: been requesting f Scott his wife Zelda for Ages now
Speaker 1: because they have really fascinating, really troubling lives in addition
Speaker 1: to uh impressive bio work. Yeah, and the twenties are
Speaker 1: just they're kind of in the spotlight right now. I
Speaker 1: think the artists helped do that. And then leading into
Speaker 1: gats Be, Zelda n f Scott are on everybody's mind
Speaker 1: and there's such a stylish, romantic but kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: tragic story, we kind of can't help but get attached
Speaker 1: to it. We're going to get into some of the
Speaker 1: tragic aspects of this, but we're gonna start at the
Speaker 1: beginning like normal. F Scott Fitzgerald was born September in St. Paul, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and his father was apparently a failed Wicker furniture salesman,
Speaker 1: which I think is a least strange way to define somebody.
Speaker 1: That's about the only definition I saw of him too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of And then he went on
Speaker 1: to that's pretty much what he got saddled with as
Speaker 1: a yeah, and and of course to f Scott Fitzgerald
Speaker 1: was named for his distant relative, Francis Scott Key, who
Speaker 1: we've done. I think Katie and I did a podcast
Speaker 1: on Francis Scott Key years and years ago. He grew
Speaker 1: up comfortable. He grew up in a middle class Catholic family,
Speaker 1: although he did point out later I think because his
Speaker 1: parents pursued such a good education for him, he always
Speaker 1: felt like he was the least well off in a
Speaker 1: group of rich kids, and I think that plays out
Speaker 1: in his work. It does. She's always extremely class conscious.
Speaker 1: He had two older sisters who died before he was born.
Speaker 1: One little sister, Annabelle, who also didn't see a whole
Speaker 1: lot on except for these terrible letters he wrote to
Speaker 1: her when she was a teenage girl, offering good brotherly advice,
Speaker 1: except they were just like the last things you would
Speaker 1: want to hear, probably if you were a teenage girl, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, you have a little hair on your face
Speaker 1: problem and maybe you should see a doctor about that,
Speaker 1: or you know, you should be more socially outgoing. And
Speaker 1: a really good opening line is to compliment someone on, oh,
Speaker 1: your eyelashes are so incredibly long. So these were the
Speaker 1: sorts of things he was writing to little Annabelle. Um.
Speaker 1: So we know what she was when she was getting
Speaker 1: fourteen or so. So again just the worst age possible.
Speaker 1: Um something though, that I think makes her worth mentioning
Speaker 1: in our story. So he ended up Um attending New
Speaker 1: Jersey's Newman School, and he wrote detective stories there and
Speaker 1: then even though he wasn't the greatest student, he got
Speaker 1: into Princeton he did. He charmed his way in, and
Speaker 1: UM was obviously not going there for Uh to pursue
Speaker 1: a great academic career, since that was not his interest.
Speaker 1: He wanted to play football, but he did not have
Speaker 1: the build for that, and so he decided he would
Speaker 1: keep writing. In this case, right musical comedies, right operettas
Speaker 1: not the most natural transition. I should all didn't work out,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go into a life of theater in
Speaker 1: Just a year later, his sophomore year, he played a
Speaker 1: chorus girl in one of his own plays. And I
Speaker 1: knew I didn't even have to send this picture to you, Holly,
Speaker 1: because you would have seen it already. It's pretty well
Speaker 1: known Scott Fitzgerald in costume as lady. It's quite pretty.
Speaker 1: He is quite pretty, at least at that time. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you didn't know it was a man in drag,
Speaker 1: and you just saw it as a historical photograph, I
Speaker 1: think you'd be like, well, that's a handsome woman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you maybe wouldn't even question whether it was a
Speaker 1: man or a woman in the outfit. I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: recognize it as him either, unless I saw a direct
Speaker 1: side to side comparison. Um. But you know, dressing up
Speaker 1: as a chorus girl writing his own plays didn't stop
Speaker 1: him from being a really popular student too. He joined
Speaker 1: an eating club he took up with an Illinois debutante
Speaker 1: who may have been the inspiration at least in part
Speaker 1: for Daisy Great Gatsby. And unfortunately he started drinking in college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but who's became a little bit of a problem, a
Speaker 1: lifetime problem, and uh certainly didn't help with his grades
Speaker 1: at Princeton either. Not really the fast track for achievement
Speaker 1: to develop a drinking problem in college now, But I
Speaker 1: guess fortunately for of Scott, he had kind of lost
Speaker 1: interest in college. By that point, he had gotten to
Speaker 1: the age where he could join the army. Of course,
Speaker 1: world War One was on, so he signed up, hoping
Speaker 1: to see action, hoping to be deployed to Europe for
Speaker 1: World War One. But the war ended before he could
Speaker 1: be deployed, and so uh, instead he ended up spending
Speaker 1: a lot of his free time sitting around and writing.
Speaker 1: There is a certain comedy the fact that his fallback saying,
Speaker 1: which is like, well, that's not going to work out.
Speaker 1: I'll just write that's not working out either, I'm going
Speaker 1: to write. And that's really what he's lauded for historically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and retrospectively, you know, with these detective stories and
Speaker 1: at his at his high school and the comedies in college.
Speaker 1: It seems like he was working on that all along,
Speaker 1: but um, I guess he wasn't really aware of that
Speaker 1: trajectory first. So he put together his first novel, which
Speaker 1: he called The Romantic Egotist, in only three months. And
Speaker 1: he wrote that just on the weekend too, So consecutive
Speaker 1: weekends for three months wrote a novel. We're going to
Speaker 1: come back to schedule. It is intense, But he was
Speaker 1: not so focused on the book as it may seem,
Speaker 1: because he was spending a lot of his free time courting.
Speaker 1: He met a Montgomery, Alabama debutante while he was serving
Speaker 1: in the army, which is probably the most memorable aspect
Speaker 1: of his service, right is it. While at Camp Sheridan,
Speaker 1: I met a young lady named Zelda. Zelda indeed, she
Speaker 1: was kind of miss thing. I mean, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, she seemed like an it girl before
Speaker 1: they were really girls. Just about every southern college boy
Speaker 1: seemed to be in love with her. Every army man
Speaker 1: stationed in the area seemed to be in love with her.
Speaker 1: And she, you know, she fit the profile. She was
Speaker 1: very pretty, she was well off, she was a judge's daughter,
Speaker 1: but she was fun too. She was flirty, she would drink.
Speaker 1: She was not a prim and proper goal no, not
Speaker 1: at all. So she kind of had that zest for
Speaker 1: life that is often very magnetic, which is probably why
Speaker 1: every man that came in contact with her was like,
Speaker 1: I really like Zelda. And she would just do these
Speaker 1: crazy things too. I mean, the one of my favorite
Speaker 1: examples I found came from biography and article by Dorothy Rompolsk.
Speaker 1: She apparently once called the fire department to report a
Speaker 1: poor child stuck on the roof. When the fireman arrived,
Speaker 1: it was Zelda up on the roof. She had climbed
Speaker 1: the roof of her own family's home and had this
Speaker 1: dramatic rescue, probably playing out in front of admirers. So
Speaker 1: she just did sort of off the wall things which
Speaker 1: must have really stood out in that time in that place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does sort of um smack a little bit of
Speaker 1: the privileged kid that doesn't know what to do with
Speaker 1: their spare time, stirruple trouble and drama for fun. You guys,
Speaker 1: this will be a lark, exactly, it does. And and
Speaker 1: I mean you'd think that maybe that might be off putting,
Speaker 1: but she certainly managed to keep it on the charming side,
Speaker 1: so much so that a group of Auburn men were
Speaker 1: so devoted to her they started a secret society to
Speaker 1: worship her, called it Zeta Sigma. That's a little freaky deeky, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a little like if you found out there
Speaker 1: was like this secret meetings going on to talk about Sarah,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you be a little weird? I gonna hear about
Speaker 1: any of that. But it's beyond flattery. And then you're like,
Speaker 1: I think Zelda. Zelda would expect it, though I think
Speaker 1: it it seems just trying to guess her personality. It
Speaker 1: seems like something that she would have encouraged. But when
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald popped up on the scene, they took to each
Speaker 1: other immediately, and um, he started courting her. And then
Speaker 1: after the war ended, he moved to New York City
Speaker 1: and they started this passionate correspondence. But it's not You
Speaker 1: can find a lot of their a lot of their
Speaker 1: letters have been published now. Um, but it's not all
Speaker 1: lovey dervy. I mean, you wouldn't expect them to know.
Speaker 1: It's not all like the gushy mooney stuff that we
Speaker 1: often equate with, Like early twentieth century love letters. It's
Speaker 1: there's a sass pants vibe to it, she calls him out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes do you want to read the one singer? She
Speaker 1: throws out to Um, she gets tired of him comparing
Speaker 1: her to a princess in a tower, apparently, and so
Speaker 1: at one point she says, Scott, You've been so sweet
Speaker 1: about writing, but I'm so damn tired of being told
Speaker 1: that you used to wonder why they kept princesses and towers.
Speaker 1: You've written that verbatim in your last six letters, so basically, like,
Speaker 1: step it up, be a more original writer. It was
Speaker 1: a new words champ, and this is like the most
Speaker 1: ridiculous detail in their correspondence. Though he proposes, he sends
Speaker 1: her an engagement ring. She accepts, and in a letter
Speaker 1: she thanks him for sending along the engagement ring and
Speaker 1: then informs him that sixty Auburn r OTC cadets just
Speaker 1: came to town, so have fun and this iss of
Speaker 1: I love my ring. I can't wait to her to
Speaker 1: this party with sixty boys exactly. Um and and f
Speaker 1: Scott Fitzgerald had a good reason to be a little
Speaker 1: concerned about the state of their relationship because Ultimately, Zelda
Speaker 1: did break off their engagement, and she refused to marry
Speaker 1: him until he was earning enough to be able to
Speaker 1: support her in style, although you'll see different accounts of
Speaker 1: the reasons behind that, ones that don't make it seem
Speaker 1: quite as money focused. Um more fitz Gerald being a
Speaker 1: little too obsessive and and telling her that, So I
Speaker 1: don't buy that one. By the way, this you know,
Speaker 1: from a girl who has a secret club that's about
Speaker 1: devoting their devotion to her. You think I don't buy
Speaker 1: that she would be put off by someone being too
Speaker 1: into her. I mean, apparently he told her he couldn't
Speaker 1: succeed if he didn't have her by by his side,
Speaker 1: and she insisted, okay, now you got to figure out
Speaker 1: your own deal before I'm going to marry you. Either way, though, um,
Speaker 1: Zelda set off on this busy schedule after they broke
Speaker 1: off the engagement, busy schedule of attend in college football
Speaker 1: games all over the South. Um actually complaining that it
Speaker 1: was kind of exhausting to do that. Does this do
Speaker 1: you when you research? Just because I definitely, in reading
Speaker 1: about them, had that moment where I don't think about
Speaker 1: so much of that period of their lives. They're associated
Speaker 1: so much with what came later that it's like when
Speaker 1: you think of them as you know her as a
Speaker 1: college girl, it's just very busy with her college and
Speaker 1: social activities. It's like, wait, wait, did I turn the
Speaker 1: wrong page in mind? And am I onto somebody else's biography?
Speaker 1: I know, it does make you think about also the
Speaker 1: different lives they could have potentially come down. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's clear she saw him as as a
Speaker 1: ticket out of that world, but it is strange to
Speaker 1: see her in a time when she so clearly relish
Speaker 1: as being in it too. Um. But Fitzgerald, meanwhile, he's
Speaker 1: up in New York. He knows he's got to win
Speaker 1: this lady quickly because she's not going to be on
Speaker 1: the market for very long. And so he decides that
Speaker 1: he is going to get into advertising. And he does
Speaker 1: that because he gets rejected for writing for seven New
Speaker 1: York City newspapers, um, and thinks that advertising is going
Speaker 1: to be a faster way to make money than writing
Speaker 1: a novel. But that doesn't work out for him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the advertising game has never been known for its ease.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Bless your heart of Scott, you
Speaker 1: meant well, uh yeah. And then he after he had
Speaker 1: been in New York for a while and he nothing
Speaker 1: was working out, he decided that he would move back
Speaker 1: to St. Paul, to his parents house, and he started
Speaker 1: rewriting his novel, The Romantic Elitist, which he had subsequently
Speaker 1: retitled This Side of paradise Um. And then he delivered
Speaker 1: that manuscript to Scribner. It got rejected again. However, there
Speaker 1: was a ray of light Maxwell Perkins. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: an editor that read the manuscript and he had already
Speaker 1: incurred dged Scott Fitzgerald when he saw the original draft,
Speaker 1: and he threatened to resign if the firm didn't reconsider
Speaker 1: taking on that writer. And that worked and the manuscript
Speaker 1: was accepted just days before at Scott Fitzgerald turned twenty four.
Speaker 1: He apparently, and this is just a charming moment before
Speaker 1: things get really good and then really bad. He has
Speaker 1: his acceptance letter, he runs out of his parents house
Speaker 1: into the street waving it around. It's just like a
Speaker 1: nice little prefame moment for him. Yeah, it's like you
Speaker 1: can picture it in any like rags to Richest story
Speaker 1: in a film. Yeah, like this is the magic moment
Speaker 1: where the music swells and it's like it's gonna be okay,
Speaker 1: but there's him. It all looks rosy at that point.
Speaker 1: This Side of Paradise incinantally is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald books. Um, I feel like it kind of it
Speaker 1: starts off perfectly, and I wonder now knowing how many
Speaker 1: times he rewrote it and how many times he reworked
Speaker 1: the story, Like the first two thirds of the book
Speaker 1: are just almost perfect, and then I almost feel like
Speaker 1: he loses the story a little bit. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to do somewhere reading on the different drafts
Speaker 1: of that now. But it's an interesting story and it
Speaker 1: really did kick off his career too. It's sold out
Speaker 1: within days of publication in nineteen twenty, and it defined
Speaker 1: the jazz age. It defined the type of man who
Speaker 1: had lived through the war and who was ready to
Speaker 1: embrace the nineteen twenties. Yeah, I mean, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of historians will actually cite that publication and it's immediate,
Speaker 1: really unusual level of success as this is the start
Speaker 1: of the jazz age, Like that's kind of the book
Speaker 1: end that starts it out. Yeah, new people, new generation.
Speaker 1: And it also really conveniently for biographers, marks the start
Speaker 1: of f Scott and Zelda because Zelda a greased to marry,
Speaker 1: tied right up to that publication. Eight days after a publication,
Speaker 1: they get married and they kick off this whirlwind honeymoon
Speaker 1: phase in New York City which is also really memorable
Speaker 1: to to anybody who saw it at the time, party
Speaker 1: and drinking, playing in fountains. Uh. Dorothy Parker witnessed them
Speaker 1: riding down Fifth Avenue on the top of a cab
Speaker 1: and wrote, quote, they did both look as though they
Speaker 1: had just stepped out of the sun, their youth with striking.
Speaker 1: Everyone wanted to meet them. So just pure bliss at
Speaker 1: this point, although not a whole lot of money initially
Speaker 1: that was a bit of a surprise to learn about.
Speaker 1: It took a while for the money to start rolling in.
Speaker 1: They started spending it right away. They were excited. They
Speaker 1: just knew there was more coming and they knew they
Speaker 1: knew they had arrived, and they started a family quickly
Speaker 1: to their first and only child, Francis Scott or Scottie.
Speaker 1: A daughter was born in nine and quickly enough it
Speaker 1: was apparent that Fitzgerald was going to have to keep
Speaker 1: on writing and writing and writing and not stop in
Speaker 1: order to maintain this lifestyle that they had set up
Speaker 1: and the celebrity they had built for themselves. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: I mean wife and daughter to support and a family too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in grand style. I can't imagine the pressure that must
Speaker 1: have been the moment he realized, like, my career is
Speaker 1: not really my own anymore. I just have to keep going.
Speaker 1: And especially since he had spent several years on his
Speaker 1: first book, honing it and and perfecting it. Um. It
Speaker 1: worked for a while, though. He was able to turn
Speaker 1: things out pretty quickly. Um. He wrote too, short story collections,
Speaker 1: he wrote a satirical play, and he wrote the novel
Speaker 1: The Beautiful and the Damned in the three years after
Speaker 1: the Side of Paradise published. That's a lot to turn study,
Speaker 1: that's a whole lot. It's really study. And the short
Speaker 1: story collections. Um. He was apparently really good at just
Speaker 1: whipping out short stories, and since he had that fame
Speaker 1: from the Side of Paradise, he could command a pretty
Speaker 1: high fee for their publication. Zelda did her part to
Speaker 1: to stir up fitzgerald enthusiasm, even if she was kind
Speaker 1: of um. She materialist. Her review of the book the
Speaker 1: Beautiful um. She wrote, quote, everyone must buy this book
Speaker 1: for the following aesthetic reasons. First because I know where
Speaker 1: there is the cutest cloth of gold dress for only
Speaker 1: three dollars in a store on street. And also, if
Speaker 1: enough people buy it, I know where there is a
Speaker 1: platinum ring with a complete circlet. And also if loads
Speaker 1: of people buy it, my husband needs a new winter overcoat,
Speaker 1: although the one he has has done well enough for
Speaker 1: the last three years, so we need the money. Folks
Speaker 1: go by the book. I need pretty stuff exactly. It's
Speaker 1: so forward and it just it cracks me up. The
Speaker 1: rest of the reviews pretty saffy to again going back
Speaker 1: to Zelda's sass but um So. That went on for
Speaker 1: three but by nineteen twenty four things started to go
Speaker 1: a little bit sour. Fitzgerald's drinking habit had gotten to
Speaker 1: be able, and Zelda was starting to exhibit signs of
Speaker 1: mental illness. We're gonna talk about that more later. But
Speaker 1: things were not going that well between them, so they
Speaker 1: took off to Europe too, because Fitzgerald was thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: enough with all these short stories, I want to focus
Speaker 1: on another novel, and the result of leaving for Europe
Speaker 1: which was also cheaper. By the way, was The Great
Speaker 1: Gas Fee, which drew on Fitzgerald's experience earlier living on
Speaker 1: Long Island and and some of the things he witnessed there.
Speaker 1: It's actually the least autobiographical of his books, though, if
Speaker 1: you if you think about it, Um, even though he's
Speaker 1: often considered to be Gatsby, almost I could see him
Speaker 1: in either of the two main roles. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, if you know anything about their biography, it's
Speaker 1: very easy to see a bit of Zelda and Daisy.
Speaker 1: Although I think I've talked about you with this before,
Speaker 1: particularly in film adaptations, that sometimes Daisy comes off as
Speaker 1: a little bit dippy to me, um, and I think
Speaker 1: probably Zelda was not like that at all. She may
Speaker 1: have been loopy, but as a little bit like, almost childlike.
Speaker 1: She doesn't really have command of the way the world works,
Speaker 1: which I don't think was necessarily the case with Zelda. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think you see shades of impressions of
Speaker 1: people and things in his life without it being autobiographical.
Speaker 1: So Gatsby, that's a pretty impressive product of this Abroad.
Speaker 1: But they also fell in with the famous rivera expat scene, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is just I mean, historically, I can't imagine they
Speaker 1: really realized what they were. No, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things we're looking back on. It. You it's a central
Speaker 1: part of your twenty century American novel class. But but
Speaker 1: I can't imagine they realize, Yeah, they probably weren't sitting
Speaker 1: around and going like, you know, in another forty years,
Speaker 1: everybody's going to be talking about this party and these
Speaker 1: people in this room. With this crowd though, I mean
Speaker 1: we're talking of course Hemingway, cosso Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter.
Speaker 1: You would have to realize you were among an immensely
Speaker 1: talented group of people, and they all gravitated around this couple,
Speaker 1: Gerald and Sarah Murphy, who were wealthy, artistic Americans, and
Speaker 1: they were the ones who sort of brought these people
Speaker 1: kind of proasted the whole scene. So they must have
Speaker 1: seen what was what was happening, even if they Hemingway didn't. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and incidentally too, they are partly the basis for
Speaker 1: Dick Nicole, Diver and Tender as the Night Um. But
Speaker 1: Europe was not kind to the Fitzgerald marriage. It began
Speaker 1: about further collapse. Selda had a fling with a French aviator.
Speaker 1: While Fitzgerald was very absorbed in writing The Great Gatsby,
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald had drunken rages. According to a PBS article by
Speaker 1: Ben Felon, at least one of those may have resulted
Speaker 1: in physical abuse too, when Fitzgerald struck Zelda after she
Speaker 1: criticized him for smashing a vase. So things were not
Speaker 1: things were getting really bad between them and she her
Speaker 1: behavior was getting pretty erratic as well. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny because they went to Europe kind of to
Speaker 1: get away from things. But when you look at it,
Speaker 1: perhaps through our modern lens, it's ago. The marriage is
Speaker 1: in some trouble. You have some drinking problems. I might
Speaker 1: to be going, you know what, let's pack up and
Speaker 1: make a really stressful move across the ocean, and then
Speaker 1: moved to a country where we don't speak the language.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the perfect storm of bad ideas
Speaker 1: and bad stimulus for a marriage at that point. It
Speaker 1: seems that way, I mean, and and some of Zelda's
Speaker 1: behavior really got scary to Um. She was clearly Um
Speaker 1: experiencing some pretty serious emotions. She tried to throw herself
Speaker 1: or if she did throw herself over the edge of
Speaker 1: a hillside restaurants patio in after she thought Fitzgerald had
Speaker 1: been flirting with Isadora Duncan. Uh Fortunately she landed on
Speaker 1: a lower terrace. Another time, he was driving in a
Speaker 1: cliff filled area and she grabbed the wheel and tried
Speaker 1: to drive them off the cliff. So yeah, bad, bad stuff.
Speaker 1: And and Zelda was really maybe five years out at
Speaker 1: this point from having married him, having left Alabama, and
Speaker 1: having been like a celebrated debutante, and just being the
Speaker 1: shining star of everyone's world, trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: she was going to do. And she knew that she
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be a flapper a girl anymore. She
Speaker 1: wrote in n uh quote the flapper, she's getting old.
Speaker 1: She's come to none of the predicted bad ends, but
Speaker 1: has gone at last where all good flappers go into
Speaker 1: the young marrieds that into boredom and gathering conventions and
Speaker 1: the pleasure of having children, having lent a while a
Speaker 1: splendor and courageousness and brightness to life as all good
Speaker 1: flappers should. Uh so were almost obituary to her five
Speaker 1: years in the limelight and then wondering what she was
Speaker 1: going to do. And she really was struggling to define
Speaker 1: her own creative or express her own creative impulses. Um
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, the two hobbies she's settled on were ones
Speaker 1: that I don't want to make too many assumptions about them,
Speaker 1: but the freest and breeziest of paths. Yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: writing and ballet. The ballet one freaks me out because
Speaker 1: you're a dancer. Well I'm not really now, but I
Speaker 1: did study dance growing up, and there was a time
Speaker 1: in my life where I thought I wanted to pursue
Speaker 1: dance as a career. And it's grueling and it's kind
Speaker 1: of like that thing where you don't go. I decided
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a dancer, like at you train when
Speaker 1: you're a youth, in the hopes that you get to
Speaker 1: be But it's kind of it's kind of both charming
Speaker 1: and sad that she just decided she was a dancer
Speaker 1: and decided not that it would be a form for
Speaker 1: her to express herself, something fun to occupy her time with,
Speaker 1: but she was going to be a professional dancer. We're
Speaker 1: not talking. Oh yeah. She started taking adult dance lessons,
Speaker 1: which sounds fantastic. To stay fit and not at all
Speaker 1: like that. She was in her late twenties decide I did.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be a professional ballet dancer, and so
Speaker 1: started taking really serious ballet lessons in Paris and Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: constant all day, every day training, which just exhausted her,
Speaker 1: ruined her health, even though she did become talented. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just sad because yeah, clearly at that point she
Speaker 1: was not going to be able to attain that. She's
Speaker 1: not going to become a prima ballerina. No at thirty. Um.
Speaker 1: She also, as a mentioned, started writing too, and again
Speaker 1: just sort of a difficult career to pursue while you
Speaker 1: are married to one of the most famous writers of
Speaker 1: the day. And in in part that's because of fitz
Speaker 1: year Old's own roadblocks he threw up. Um. She did
Speaker 1: publish some stories, she published some essays. Sometimes they were
Speaker 1: published under a shared byline. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: debate over who wrote what in this family. And and
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald certainly uh gave her credit as a great letter
Speaker 1: writer and certainly just drew directly quoted her letters for
Speaker 1: some of his work. Um, because she she did turn
Speaker 1: quite a phrase in her letters, but was fairly dismissive
Speaker 1: of her as a professional writer and claimed, you know,
Speaker 1: because he was trying to earn the money, he didn't
Speaker 1: want her sort of interfering with his career. But that's
Speaker 1: not going to stress your already fragile marriage either. Lots
Speaker 1: of lots of debate over those two and how exactly
Speaker 1: we didn't one and how their writings played out, um,
Speaker 1: but all the same trouble for Zelda Well, and I
Speaker 1: think it was a troubled time to to think about. That's,
Speaker 1: you know, when the stock market crash is happening and
Speaker 1: all of that sort of effervescent joy that we often
Speaker 1: associate with pre crash twenties, everybody was kind to at
Speaker 1: a point where they were feeling lost and scared, and
Speaker 1: I think the people that had had their moorings in
Speaker 1: like this wealthy, opulent lifestyle. In addition to whatever mental
Speaker 1: issues she already had going on, it was like and
Speaker 1: the sea was just moving under her. She couldn't get footing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in nineteen thirty she had her first major mental
Speaker 1: health breakdown. It was called nervous exhaustion at the time,
Speaker 1: and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, probably incorrectly, was a
Speaker 1: term thrown around a lot at the time and underwent
Speaker 1: some treatment and seemed to be better after a few months,
Speaker 1: enough so to return to her day to day life.
Speaker 1: She and f Scott Fitzgerald came back to the States
Speaker 1: for good in September nineteen thirty one, first Alabama, then
Speaker 1: to Hollywood. He was trying to dabble in screenwriting, something
Speaker 1: that as many writers of the day, we're doing that
Speaker 1: was really popular in the Hollywood visit. They would kind
Speaker 1: of plumb pick established writers, be like, do you want
Speaker 1: to work on a screenplay? And it didn't always translate.
Speaker 1: It was really stressful for most of them. Uh, and
Speaker 1: Zelda's stresses seemed to continue to especially when she was
Speaker 1: back living with Scott. Her second breakdown came in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, and that point really marks the beginning of
Speaker 1: a life in and out of asylums, in and out
Speaker 1: of hospitals. Um and what a terrible time to be
Speaker 1: in that system too. She underwent electric shock treatment, insulin
Speaker 1: shock treatment, which apparently is an insulin mega dose that
Speaker 1: forces you into a coma. She received tranquilizers. So it's
Speaker 1: so heartbreaking, upsetting treatment and um uh, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of debate consequently too, over what exactly was Zelda experiencing,
Speaker 1: you know, did she have a mental illness um? Or
Speaker 1: was something you know, was it just brought about from
Speaker 1: her life with Fitzgerald. Uh. The common consensus today seems
Speaker 1: to be that she did have some sort of mental
Speaker 1: She may have had bipolar disorder, and I would even
Speaker 1: say was aggravated by living with this controlling, alcoholic husband. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would even say, looking back now with
Speaker 1: the knowledge of modern psychology at hand, if you even
Speaker 1: look at kind of her antics as a youth, they're
Speaker 1: very charming and fun, but they suggest some extreme personality behavior,
Speaker 1: and so it's easy to see how that very quickly
Speaker 1: went down a very negative path with all of the
Speaker 1: stressors we've been talking when things stopped being fun, when
Speaker 1: things stopping charming, and cross the cross a point to
Speaker 1: just being disturbing. Um. But she did keep up treatment,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, through until the end of her life,
Speaker 1: and she kept on writing too. She wrote her first novel,
Speaker 1: called Save Me the Waltz, while she was at Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins Hospital in eighteen thirty two, and that was a
Speaker 1: sore point between the couple too. Fitzgerald really did not
Speaker 1: want the book to be published and had it majorly edited,
Speaker 1: and there's again some debate over whether that was just
Speaker 1: kind of ironically being concerned about his own privacy, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't write about our lives, or whether it was
Speaker 1: I want to use some of these incidents in my
Speaker 1: next book. Well, we also don't know how much of
Speaker 1: that psychology of like, no, this is my thing, you know,
Speaker 1: like his territory was being tread upon. So the book
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen thirty two, and it also had
Speaker 1: a very strange royalties arrangement with the publisher, um A
Speaker 1: Scott Fisherald was in debt to his publisher by this point,
Speaker 1: and the deal was half of the royalties for her
Speaker 1: book would go towards paying down his debt, which is
Speaker 1: pretty unfair. Um. I mean maybe the couple could have
Speaker 1: worked that out on themselves. Um it didn't really matter.
Speaker 1: The book didn't make money, so it was a non issue,
Speaker 1: but still a strange side note there. Zelda's other big
Speaker 1: hobby at this point was painting, and she has a
Speaker 1: lot of her paintings are still visible today. She's inspired
Speaker 1: by Picasso and to lose Litruck and Georgia O'Keefe. They're
Speaker 1: very colorful, very modern looking. Um, that seems like maybe
Speaker 1: I've ever seen any and I don't want to run
Speaker 1: out kill image a few of them. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't judge what somebody should have pursued, which career
Speaker 1: they should have pursued in life, but it seems like
Speaker 1: maybe something that brought her more happiness. Well, she clearly
Speaker 1: had artistic and I mean she went through one creative
Speaker 1: endeavor after another, even if none of them really stuck.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, she was a pretty accomplished answer
Speaker 1: even though it was kind of too late in life
Speaker 1: to do that. She clearly did some okay writing. And
Speaker 1: I haven't seen her paintings, but they sound really interesting there.
Speaker 1: And she clearly has this expressive nature. She just never
Speaker 1: kind of stuck with one thing. Maybe that's the problem there.
Speaker 1: But Fitzgerald, I mean, he certainly was focused on one thing,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately he couldn't do it anymore. He felt like
Speaker 1: he couldn't write. He had a serious case of writer's block.
Speaker 1: And that was bad because he was deeply in debt,
Speaker 1: as we just said, um, because of his own lavish lifestyle,
Speaker 1: because of Zelda's medical bills, and because of their daughter's
Speaker 1: expensive schooling. So he spent this period trying to right.
Speaker 1: Finally he came out with his next novel, Tender As
Speaker 1: the Night, which was published in nineteen thirty four. And
Speaker 1: that's the book I remember my professor in college, really,
Speaker 1: I clearly remember his description of that book coming out
Speaker 1: just the worst time possible for it, because it's still
Speaker 1: this Fitzgerald world, even though it's it's sad the couple,
Speaker 1: and it is sad things are deteriorating, but they live
Speaker 1: this life of glamour and excess still, and this is
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Great Depression. No one could
Speaker 1: identify with those people, know, it seemed maybe kind of
Speaker 1: repulsive almost to some people. He followed that by another
Speaker 1: novel in nineteen thirty five, and at that point he
Speaker 1: really considered himself a failure as a writer, somebody who
Speaker 1: had not lived up to the promise of his youth,
Speaker 1: which is shot. I mean, tenders the Night is a
Speaker 1: fantastic book. It's strange that he would have evaluated himself
Speaker 1: in that way, but at this point things just seemed
Speaker 1: so so bad, and so he wrote this series of
Speaker 1: three essays which are called the Crack Up Essays for
Speaker 1: Esquire in nineteen thirty six and elaborated on that, elaborated
Speaker 1: on feeling like an artistic failure, Um, somebody who just
Speaker 1: was nobody at this point, which is so I mean again,
Speaker 1: it's so funny because we see it through the lens
Speaker 1: of history, but you can imagine being in it, being
Speaker 1: someone who is very devoted to and involved in your
Speaker 1: writing at that point with the wife that's got a
Speaker 1: ton of problems. You kind of can't keep the sobriety
Speaker 1: angle together. And who had the success that he did
Speaker 1: when he did so. The crack of essays take their
Speaker 1: name from this extended passage where he compares himself to
Speaker 1: a cracked plate. It's a little melodramatic. Do you want
Speaker 1: to read the crash? It's so sad. Sometimes, though, the
Speaker 1: cracked plate has to be retained in the pantry, has
Speaker 1: to be kept in service as a household necessity. It
Speaker 1: can never be warmed on the stove or shuffled with
Speaker 1: the other plates in the dishpan. It will not be
Speaker 1: brought out for company, but it will do to hold
Speaker 1: crackers late at night, or to go into the ice
Speaker 1: box with the leftovers. That is the saddest. It is bad,
Speaker 1: and I just think to himself as the thing that
Speaker 1: should be thrown away, but you can't because you still
Speaker 1: need to use it. I looked at I looked at
Speaker 1: a crack plate, cracked plate that I keep around, and
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh, it's general, it's you. Uh. The publication
Speaker 1: of these essays that just created this gossip storm. People
Speaker 1: were so fascinated by their confessional nature. Critics did not
Speaker 1: like them. Friends were angry about him writing so candidly
Speaker 1: about himself. Um, and a lot of the issues people
Speaker 1: had with it, or critics and friends was that it
Speaker 1: was again kind of like Tender as the Night, just
Speaker 1: published in the wrong time. Don't be so obsessed with yourself.
Speaker 1: If things in the world are are so scary, when
Speaker 1: everyone else is suffering, we kind of don't have time
Speaker 1: for your depression cracked play analogy exactly. One of his
Speaker 1: friends and critics, John just Passos, wrote quote, We're living
Speaker 1: in one of the damnedest tragic moments in history. If
Speaker 1: you want to go to pieces, I think it's absolutely okay.
Speaker 1: But I think you ought to write a first rate
Speaker 1: novel about it, and you probably will instead of spilling
Speaker 1: it in little pieces. For Arnold Gingrich, who is the
Speaker 1: editor of Esquire Hemingway, who always has a singer like
Speaker 1: the He shared an editor with Fitzgerald and wrote to
Speaker 1: the editor complaining about Fitzgerald whining in public. So people
Speaker 1: were turned off by this confessional style. But according to
Speaker 1: Patricia Hampel and American scholar, the essays kind of marked
Speaker 1: the start of two important things, and one was personal.
Speaker 1: One was for Fitzgerald's career. It sort of signaled the
Speaker 1: beginning of him at least becoming a respected great American author.
Speaker 1: It's like he had done the whole cycle of like
Speaker 1: great fame as a youth, and then kind he had
Speaker 1: the stalling off and coming back up to a certain
Speaker 1: plateau level and then just kind of being a miss Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, the classic story, really classic American writer's story.
Speaker 1: Part of this comes after the fact, though, I mean,
Speaker 1: the essays were pretty popular, even though critics weren't fans.
Speaker 1: The essays were popular with the public because he was
Speaker 1: so candid in them. But after his death they were
Speaker 1: collected into a book and they just created a stir.
Speaker 1: People were obsessed with with the crack up essays, and
Speaker 1: it did sort of help shift Fitzgerald's reputation, even though
Speaker 1: he was immensely successful during his lifetime, he kind of
Speaker 1: a reputation of somebody who was just writing what he
Speaker 1: saw a voice of his of his generation, like a
Speaker 1: chronicler um, instead of becoming a serious author. And they
Speaker 1: also sort of helped shift the perception of him as
Speaker 1: somebody who was self absorbed into somebody who was just
Speaker 1: self aware. He could he could reflect on all that
Speaker 1: he saw around him, he could engage in it, but
Speaker 1: he could observe it from afar too. They started that
Speaker 1: shift in his reputation. The other thing that apparently these
Speaker 1: these essays helped start was the great age of autobiographical writing.
Speaker 1: These essays don't seem strange today, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: Kind of tame actually, I mean, he doesn't go into
Speaker 1: all of he doesn't talk about his marriage, drinking money,
Speaker 1: none of this kind of his feelings in this sensation
Speaker 1: of emptiness that he was experiencing this before that, or
Speaker 1: if they did, it was not you know, widely publicized
Speaker 1: and widely read, and certainly did not create like big
Speaker 1: waves of excitement and discussion amongst readers and critics. So
Speaker 1: it's it really is interesting that he ushered in this
Speaker 1: whole new sort of genre of writing, confessional writing, autobiographical essays. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean some of the stuff that makes up the
Speaker 1: great literary magazines of today still. Um. So that's sort
Speaker 1: of a sad last few years for Fitzgerald. But the
Speaker 1: very last few years didn't seem like things were maybe
Speaker 1: looking up a little bit. Um. He went back to
Speaker 1: Hollywood and had another go at screenwriting, and he got
Speaker 1: over that writer's block. He started churning out short stories again.
Speaker 1: He had the first draft of a novel, The Last Tycoon,
Speaker 1: which I love. I have not read the Last Take.
Speaker 1: I love that book and he talks a lot about
Speaker 1: Hollywood in it, and there are some moments of imagery
Speaker 1: where he kind of draws back the curtain from the
Speaker 1: perfection that we see in film and what's really going
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes. And there's one thing where he's
Speaker 1: talking about the makeup artist covering the actress's eggs. Amon.
Speaker 1: It just stuck with me because the imagery of it
Speaker 1: is so strong and so striking. I really want a
Speaker 1: really good film adaptation of it at some point. Well,
Speaker 1: and I know it is considered I mean most people
Speaker 1: think had he lived to see it published, it would
Speaker 1: have revitalized his career in a huge way and certainly
Speaker 1: would have placed him as a modern man again, not
Speaker 1: a sort of relic of the twenties. Um. But he
Speaker 1: also started a new romance too, with a gossip columnist,
Speaker 1: Sheila Graham. He had gotten his drinking together for long
Speaker 1: enough to to charm her. They kept the romance secret
Speaker 1: from Valda, who was still in hospitals at this point.
Speaker 1: Um and lived together, but in November of nineteen forty
Speaker 1: he had a heart attack. In three weeks after that,
Speaker 1: he had a second fatal heart attack, dying at only
Speaker 1: age forty four. Can you imagine what else we would
Speaker 1: have had if he had lived another twenty I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that we have Keats at twenty five, all
Speaker 1: sorts of writers like that. But yeah, I mean, especially
Speaker 1: with such a new, such a different work on the
Speaker 1: horizon for him, and what um renewed respect and interest
Speaker 1: in his writing would have wrought in his life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's certainly interesting to think about. UM. Zelda lived on
Speaker 1: for a few more years, and apparently it was pretty quiet, yeah,
Speaker 1: considering considering the rest of her life, I mean, interspersed
Speaker 1: with relapses, but she kept up her her artistic pursuits too.
Speaker 1: She wrote an incomplete second novel, choreographed ballets, she kept painting,
Speaker 1: and she became devoutly religious too. Um and claimed that
Speaker 1: she could not remember most of the twenties thanks to
Speaker 1: her electric shock therapy. Um, which may be a blessing
Speaker 1: or occurred. I don't know. I guess at least she
Speaker 1: would have known her life ends truly tragically though. In
Speaker 1: late nineteen she returned to Highland Hospital, which is in Asheville,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. And uh, just a few months after that,
Speaker 1: a kitchen fire tour through the building. Nine women had
Speaker 1: been locked inside and died, including Zelda. She was identified
Speaker 1: by a slipper that was under her body. Um. I've
Speaker 1: actually seen the historic marker for this hospital in Asheville. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just driving along the road and then there's the
Speaker 1: Highland Hospital marker. Um, so does the marker mentioned Zelda. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's She's the the reason for the marker. But again
Speaker 1: a sad, sad end for both members of this relationship.
Speaker 1: They were buried together, as it seems fitting St. Patrick's
Speaker 1: Day nineteen Zelda was buried next to Scott in Maryland,
Speaker 1: and I got a good way to sort of wrap
Speaker 1: things up, since that is going on the sad train.
Speaker 1: Here at the end um is a quote from their
Speaker 1: granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan, and she wrote, quote, they symbolize zestful youth,
Speaker 1: and the country has daified youth ever since. And they
Speaker 1: made celebrity in our fascination with it stylish. So it's
Speaker 1: not a happy, happy quote or something. But I think
Speaker 1: it is so true and that is what people take
Speaker 1: away from their lives. And I think why so many
Speaker 1: listeners have requested them and um, that's that's the lens
Speaker 1: through which we remember them. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they represent an iconic and important shift in public consciousness
Speaker 1: and how we consume the arts. Uh you know, I
Speaker 1: mean on the negative angle of that, you could say
Speaker 1: without them, we might not be where we're at with
Speaker 1: reality TV. Um, But you know, it was one of
Speaker 1: the first times where the creators were just as important
Speaker 1: as the stories they were telling, because their life stories
Speaker 1: seem just as exciting and the stories reflected their lives
Speaker 1: so clearly. So, Oh, I've gotten Zelda Zelda interesting to
Speaker 1: read about, interesting, so fascinating pictures of them too, And
Speaker 1: and since we don't do too many twentieth century topics,
Speaker 1: or at least haven't in the past, don't usually have
Speaker 1: that opportunity. But there's so many pictures of them and uh,
Speaker 1: everything from the f Scott in drag Priston. But I
Speaker 1: find of Zelda pictures really interesting, going from these little
Speaker 1: like that Ms Zelda say or the sponsor of the
Speaker 1: rotc at Auburn or something of nice little oval shaped
Speaker 1: portrait with her bob to the later pictures where she's
Speaker 1: in her ballet flipping yeah, ready to go. Very it
Speaker 1: is a very strange. It tells a very strange story,
Speaker 1: and it it feels almost like someone that's in a
Speaker 1: costume all the time. Um. And I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I in the public consciousness, we do think of
Speaker 1: them in terms of the Roaring twenties, and you know,
Speaker 1: that sort of magical golden time of their lives where
Speaker 1: it was parties, parties, parties and fabulousness. We don't really
Speaker 1: hear so much about like her start as a Southern
Speaker 1: belle debutante and their unfortunate ends. We kind of just
Speaker 1: cut out that decade where the success was happening. Really
Speaker 1: not even though it's like yeah, and it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating. So I think it's it really sort of
Speaker 1: does them as service to give them a fuller picture,
Speaker 1: even if it's not all exactly sunshine and rainbows. Hey, Sarah,
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Speaker 1: on the plate for listener meal today? So first of all,
Speaker 1: we have a beautiful drawing. It's done by listener Gracie.
Speaker 1: She's age nine and her dad John send us the
Speaker 1: picture from Victoria, Canada. And it's a picture of Amelia Earhart.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. It's awesome. Holly is duly impressed. Uh. There
Speaker 1: is Amelia Earhart, there's her plane, there's some flowers and
Speaker 1: airport sign, the sun and Fred Noonan who is holding
Speaker 1: a model of alcohol, the good one. It's quite charming.
Speaker 1: Thank you Gracie. It's a lovely portrait. I'll have to
Speaker 1: take a picture of it to put on our social
Speaker 1: media and thank John for sending it along to um.
Speaker 1: We also got a cool picture of Impress Cecy. I
Speaker 1: think you love her, don't you, Hollie Holly. As you
Speaker 1: guys who listened to the the Underwear episode, people just
Speaker 1: think of the underwear lady. You know that she's she's
Speaker 1: very interested in historic costume and um costume design and
Speaker 1: Empress CC does have a lovely gown. This postcard is
Speaker 1: from listener Natalie and Honolulu. She had gone on vacation
Speaker 1: with her husband and stopped by the Empress CC museum.
Speaker 1: And that's always really cool when we hear from listeners
Speaker 1: who have been inspired to go to a museum, check
Speaker 1: out a historic site for themselves. Dress is pretty. And
Speaker 1: then finally, I wanted to inaugurate Holly and this listener meal,
Speaker 1: so listen. While Devilina and I haven't done it for
Speaker 1: a really long time, I'm gonna have one to get
Speaker 1: you ready. And then how a big list that I've
Speaker 1: been storing up so we can do that. We can
Speaker 1: do that maybe next week. UM. One of the coolest
Speaker 1: listener mail segments is when listeners tell us what they're
Speaker 1: doing while they're listening to the podcast, and people have
Speaker 1: all sorts of amazing jobs, or they are traveling in
Speaker 1: cool places. Listener Amanda wrote in to say that while
Speaker 1: she's listening, she's analyzing surface fronts and pressure every three
Speaker 1: hours for all of North America because she's a meteorologist.
Speaker 1: That's super cool, really cool, so thank you. She especially
Speaker 1: liked the five Historical Storms episode Core obvious reasons. Um,
Speaker 1: that will be a fun segment to kick off again.
Speaker 1: And whenever we do one, people start writing in with
Speaker 1: new interesting examples. So thank you everybody for sending mail.
Speaker 1: If you want to check us out on Twitter, we're
Speaker 1: still at Missed in History. Were also on Facebook and
Speaker 1: I guess Polly will be joining me there, yes, indeed
Speaker 1: soon and then uh Tracy'll be taken over with posts
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Speaker 1: you guys know by now, is my seat mate here
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