Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Down and I'm Debla to Charker, Bording and Delin. Know,
Speaker 1: we've really been on a roll of the past few
Speaker 1: weeks discussing daring women in history. Well, it is March,
Speaker 1: after all, it is March. It might be April by
Speaker 1: the time it's comes out. But you know, we've been
Speaker 1: keeping up the tradition of covering women's History Month with
Speaker 1: Bell Starr, Bessie Coleman, the Brontes, who are daring in
Speaker 1: their own way free to callo. But we haven't really
Speaker 1: ventured into one of our favorite topics of discussion yet,
Speaker 1: which is, of course exploration. We love to talk about explorers,
Speaker 1: whether male or female, we do, and that's why today
Speaker 1: we're going to cover polar explorer Louise arn Our Boyd,
Speaker 1: who took adventurous trips to the North, made real scientific
Speaker 1: and geographical contributions in the form of thousands of photos
Speaker 1: and films, and performed under of her wartime work for
Speaker 1: the US government. No less, Boyd commissioned and organized a
Speaker 1: whopping seven Arctic expeditions. Was the first person to charter
Speaker 1: a plane over the North Pole, and earned herself numerous
Speaker 1: international honors and medals. But what's maybe most surprising about
Speaker 1: Boyd is the very same reason that she was able
Speaker 1: to become an explorer in the first place. She was
Speaker 1: a San Francisco socialite and incredibly wealthy eRASS, and that
Speaker 1: station in life really allowed her a lot more freedom
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties and thirties than most women had.
Speaker 1: She had the ability to go out and explore the
Speaker 1: Arctic because she had the money to do so. But
Speaker 1: when she wasn't busy scaling glacier, she was patronizing the
Speaker 1: symphony back at home, patronizing the ballet, hosting these grand
Speaker 1: parties at her estate, tending to her famous Camelia collection,
Speaker 1: doing the sort of things that are maybe considered more
Speaker 1: traditional for a socialite of her era. It's unlikely, however,
Speaker 1: that Boyd would have had so much freedom and so
Speaker 1: much money if her youth had been less marked by tragedy.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna start off by telling you a little
Speaker 1: bit about that. She was born September six, eighteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Her father had made a fortune in the body gold mine,
Speaker 1: Banansa of eighteen seventy seven and later on and investing.
Speaker 1: Her mother was also a bodie heiress, and the couple
Speaker 1: raised their family in her San Raphael mansion Maple Lawn,
Speaker 1: and also a ranch east of the San Francisco Bay Now.
Speaker 1: Louise grew up horseback riding with her two brothers. They
Speaker 1: would pack supplies and spend entire days on the trail,
Speaker 1: so kind of a tomboy. But in nineteen o one,
Speaker 1: her seventeen year old brother Seth died suddenly of heart disease.
Speaker 1: Only eight months after that, her sixteen year old brother
Speaker 1: John died to also of heart disease, leaving Louise and
Speaker 1: her parents, who were kind of in poor health themselves
Speaker 1: almost inseparable, and the three of them would travel across
Speaker 1: the US. They'd visit Europe from time to time, and
Speaker 1: Louise was brought into her father's business to picking up skills,
Speaker 1: perhaps made her later such the confident expedition leader she became.
Speaker 1: She also got into photography and one of those European trips,
Speaker 1: which was the hobby of her parents really supported. They
Speaker 1: hired a professional tutor for her, got her the equipment
Speaker 1: she needed really embraced the new interest of their daughters.
Speaker 1: Soon she kind of lost that parental support though. In
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, Boyd's mother died. When year later her father
Speaker 1: died too, leaving her millions of dollars and making her
Speaker 1: president of the Boyd Investment Company. She was only thirty
Speaker 1: two at the time. According to Elizabeth Olds and Women
Speaker 1: of the Four Winds, Boyd's huge inheritance allowed her to
Speaker 1: choose anything quote from a morbid retreat to an unbridled
Speaker 1: plunge into the reckless self indulgence and profligacy of the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. Instead, though, she chose something very different. She
Speaker 1: chose travel. Yeah, and at first her trips were semi
Speaker 1: conventional for a well off woman. She took a friend,
Speaker 1: Sadie Pratt, who was the widow of General conger Rat,
Speaker 1: and together they visited war torn France and Belgium. She
Speaker 1: took a lot of pictures documenting the ruins, and then
Speaker 1: the next year they did a second European trip, this
Speaker 1: time to Scandinavia and Italy, Portugal in Spain. Kind of
Speaker 1: the things you might expect, but in Boyd branched out
Speaker 1: a little bit and booked a cruise to Iceland, Greenland
Speaker 1: and lapland definitely spots that are kind of outside of
Speaker 1: the Grand tour territory. I'd say the cruise that really
Speaker 1: turned out to be a life changing experience. Boyd was
Speaker 1: just enchanted by the Arctic and quickly started planning a
Speaker 1: return trip, although this time she really wanted to go
Speaker 1: on her own terms, you know, be in charge of
Speaker 1: what she got to see after a year off during
Speaker 1: what she was presented at the British court, Boyd hired
Speaker 1: Arctic expert Francis di Guibert to advise her planning. She
Speaker 1: then charted a ship which was appropriately named Hobby and
Speaker 1: which also, according to Jocelyn Moss for the Murn County
Speaker 1: Historical Society magazine, had been rolled amindson supply ship when
Speaker 1: he flew over the North Pole in a dirigible, so
Speaker 1: it had a little bit of a pedigree to it.
Speaker 1: It did, and she hired a crew of fourteen. But
Speaker 1: ever the lady, she also brought along her maid and
Speaker 1: a few friends, including a Spanish count and countess. We
Speaker 1: were going to have a good time, so they set
Speaker 1: out in summer nineteen to Franz Joseph Land and um,
Speaker 1: even though the captain had described her as quote some
Speaker 1: American woman who wants to see ice, kind of dismiss
Speaker 1: at the trip was essentially an opportunity to hunt polar bears,
Speaker 1: and newspapers were really smitten by the entire concept that, uh,
Speaker 1: this woman would charter the trip in the first place,
Speaker 1: taking account and count as along with her, and go
Speaker 1: to hunt polar bears of all things. So the New
Speaker 1: York Times it ran headlines like American girl shot eleven
Speaker 1: bears in the Arctic. And one of the most famous
Speaker 1: photos of Boyd actually has her wrapped up in a
Speaker 1: dead bear hanging from a hook. If your animal lover,
Speaker 1: it's kind of of a horrifying picture. It does sound
Speaker 1: very comfortable either, I mean, even if you know the
Speaker 1: animals did, I mean, it just sounds kind of alarming
Speaker 1: to be wrapped up in a dead bear. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: a skin either, the whole dead bear. But it's actually
Speaker 1: interesting to note that after such big game hunting trips
Speaker 1: kind of became unpopular, you know, a few decades later
Speaker 1: in the century, Boyd claimed that the numbers had been
Speaker 1: really exaggerated by the press. You know, she was credited
Speaker 1: with shooting about I think eleven bears personally, um, but
Speaker 1: she kind of revised that and said they really only
Speaker 1: shot a few bears. The bears they did hunt were
Speaker 1: just for food, trying to make everybody calm down a
Speaker 1: little bit. Also reported were the quantities of film shot
Speaker 1: of twenty one feet plus seven hundred still photos. Boyd
Speaker 1: would document far off landscape studies of cliffs, glaciers, inlets, animals, plants,
Speaker 1: and of course the ice. Though she wasn't into scientific work,
Speaker 1: Boyd's early photography skills were still good enough to make
Speaker 1: these photos really useful, so provided new information about different
Speaker 1: types of Arctic ice. For example, yea, she had the
Speaker 1: scientific eye even though she didn't have the scientific intentions yet,
Speaker 1: And sure enough she caught that polar bug that's so
Speaker 1: common in many of these exploration episodes that we do.
Speaker 1: She wrote, quote, I understand for the first time what
Speaker 1: an old seaman meant when he told me that once
Speaker 1: you had been in the Arctic and in the ice,
Speaker 1: you could never forget it and always wanted to go back.
Speaker 1: Fortunately she had the resources to do that, so in
Speaker 1: n Boyd rebooked the hobby and made plans to take
Speaker 1: a second big game hunting trip combined with a little
Speaker 1: botanical research this time. But just as she got to Norway,
Speaker 1: which was going to be her Arctic departure point, she
Speaker 1: learned that Roald Almondson had gone missing while searching for
Speaker 1: the dar Digibil pilot amberto Nobili and his crew, who
Speaker 1: had crashed themselves somewhere in the Arctic. So Boyd immediately
Speaker 1: turned over her ship to the Norwegian and French search effort, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: how could I go on a pleasure trip when those
Speaker 1: twenty two lives were at stake? But she also kind
Speaker 1: of contributed extra to the effort. She hired pilots to
Speaker 1: aid the hunt for the missing men, and she joined
Speaker 1: in herself. She wasn't going to loan her ship and
Speaker 1: its crew, which she had all paid for and everything,
Speaker 1: and just sit back in Norway and watch the whole
Speaker 1: thing happened. She was on the Hobby as it conducted
Speaker 1: a ten week, ten thousand mile thirch for the missing men,
Speaker 1: taking thousands of photos along the way and twenty thousand
Speaker 1: feet of film too. Perhaps because the situation was so serious,
Speaker 1: this also seemed to have been Boyd's first taste of
Speaker 1: the madness inducing side of the Arctic. She wrote about
Speaker 1: how the landscape could play tricks with your head, how
Speaker 1: they constantly spot tents that actually turned out to just
Speaker 1: be ice formations, and though Almondson was never located, no
Speaker 1: Balay and his men were ultimately found alive by another crew.
Speaker 1: According to Women in World History Encyclopedia, Boyd was honored
Speaker 1: for her efforts by being awarded the Order of St
Speaker 1: Law first Class and becoming a Chevalier of the French
Speaker 1: Legion of Honor. And when she learned that she'd be
Speaker 1: receiving that sat a lawf award and she was going
Speaker 1: to only be the third woman to have earned this,
Speaker 1: she dashed off to Paris first to buy an appropriately
Speaker 1: grand outfit for the audience before the King, having nothing
Speaker 1: else but her stealskin and boots with her to wear.
Speaker 1: So I think it's worth noting here that Boyd always
Speaker 1: really carefully emphasized her femininity, and perhaps it was because
Speaker 1: at the time the very fact that she wore pants,
Speaker 1: you know, sealskin pants, that sort of thing on her
Speaker 1: expeditions was newsworthy. But she often had to justify doing
Speaker 1: things that were considered masculine, like exploring, and she basically
Speaker 1: respond to these questions. But I think she saw no
Speaker 1: problem between being a feminine woman and doing adventurous things.
Speaker 1: She reportedly said that quote at see I didn't bother
Speaker 1: with my hands except to keep them from being frozen,
Speaker 1: but I powdered my nose before going on deck. No
Speaker 1: matter how rough the sea was, there's no reason why
Speaker 1: a woman can't rough it and still remain feminine. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious to know how much of this was her
Speaker 1: personality and how much was just trying to represent herself
Speaker 1: correctly in the news. Almost either way, that trip was
Speaker 1: important for one other major reason though. During the search
Speaker 1: she met countless polar scientists and experts who were also
Speaker 1: looking for Noble and Almondson. Nearly all of them stressed
Speaker 1: the importance of a good photographer on research missions. So
Speaker 1: this kind of got her to thinking a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So for Boyd's next trip, which was conducted during the
Speaker 1: summer of nine, she decided to get into real geographic
Speaker 1: research and survey the Fiords on Greenland's east coast before
Speaker 1: between the seventieth and seventy four parallels. I should say,
Speaker 1: and this trip really seemed like a bridge, a real
Speaker 1: bridge between earlier and later missions in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she chartered a different ship this time. She outfitted it
Speaker 1: again with a hand picked crew, but she still brought
Speaker 1: along her maid, her secretary, some and so it had
Speaker 1: a pleasurable aspect to it aside from the scientific one. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, she branched out too. She turned a
Speaker 1: stop at a recently settled Inuit settlement into an anthropological
Speaker 1: and social opportunity. She was a real social woman. She
Speaker 1: made friends with the local people who lived in turf
Speaker 1: and wood houses. She hosted a party for them on
Speaker 1: board the ship. We're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about her her parties later on, but she she
Speaker 1: went out of her way to be the social person
Speaker 1: she seemed to be even in the Arctic. She also
Speaker 1: took thousands of photos because that's what she was so
Speaker 1: good at, and because she used high tech equipment and
Speaker 1: had become really a depth at something called photography tree,
Speaker 1: which is um taking photos which can in turn be
Speaker 1: studied and you can draw like really precise measurements and
Speaker 1: maps from them. Um. Because she became so good at
Speaker 1: this type of photography. Dr Walter A. Wood, who was
Speaker 1: a surveyor for the American Geographical Society was later able
Speaker 1: to use only two hundred of these photos and put
Speaker 1: together a whole new map illustrating this area, and it
Speaker 1: turned out the party had discovered a new glacier and
Speaker 1: a new valley. She also had another lucky meeting on
Speaker 1: the trip home from Norway. She met a g S
Speaker 1: director Isaiah Bowman. Both parties realized a partnership would be beneficial.
Speaker 1: With the American Geographical Society as a sponsor, on one hand,
Speaker 1: Boyd would have access to top scientists in different fields
Speaker 1: and some credibility. On the other hand, with Boyd's money
Speaker 1: and organizational experience, she had, after all, planned three of
Speaker 1: these trips by now, so she she did have a
Speaker 1: lot under her belt. The American Geographical Society would be
Speaker 1: able to launch missions that they wouldn't have otherwise been
Speaker 1: able to, so it was a win win, definitely. So
Speaker 1: the first a GS sponsored Boyd expedition a launst June
Speaker 1: ninety three, and Boyd was again the leader of the
Speaker 1: expedition and its chief photographer, but this time there was
Speaker 1: also a geologist and a physiographer and two surveyors. I
Speaker 1: think there was going to be a botanist but he
Speaker 1: came down with appendicitis right before, so I guess Louise
Speaker 1: again had to fulfill that job. But there was also
Speaker 1: really high tech equipment this time too, that Boyd had
Speaker 1: picked out herself, like ultrasonic depth measuring equipment for um map,
Speaker 1: mapping out the sea floor and figuring out all its
Speaker 1: contours and everything. And the plan this time was to
Speaker 1: study glaciers in the Franz Joseph and King Oscar Fiords
Speaker 1: and chart the northeast coast of Greenland, which we've talked
Speaker 1: about the eastern coast of Greenland a little bit before
Speaker 1: in our Nonsen episode, and we know that that is
Speaker 1: the very remote side, the side that has all of
Speaker 1: the inlets and the rugged terrain and it is really
Speaker 1: hard to land on and to survive on, but they
Speaker 1: traversed it anyway. According to Jacqueline McLean and Women and Adventure,
Speaker 1: the party spent most of August exploring on foot, carrying
Speaker 1: all of their gear on their backs and working almost
Speaker 1: constantly to take advantage of the light. So does sound
Speaker 1: very socialite right there. But they even had a close
Speaker 1: call on the way home when the ship ran aground
Speaker 1: with no one else around to help and the Arctic
Speaker 1: winner approaching. The captain had to have a cable throne
Speaker 1: around an iceberg to give the ship enough leverage to
Speaker 1: get out of that situation and tow it out of
Speaker 1: the up almost exactly. And by the time they left,
Speaker 1: a fifty five mile per hour snowstorm had come, so
Speaker 1: they kind of left justice in the end of time.
Speaker 1: And really Boyd noted that too. She wrote that quote
Speaker 1: nature was closing her doors on us, which I really
Speaker 1: like that quote. She she leaves behind some interesting quotes,
Speaker 1: but I like that one because it is so hostess,
Speaker 1: like the Arctic is saying goodbye. Time to go home.
Speaker 1: There is the snowstorm and the fifty per hour win,
Speaker 1: and they took the hint they did. They got out
Speaker 1: of there just in time. The result of the and
Speaker 1: thirty three missions was a book called the Fiord Region
Speaker 1: of East Greenland, and it included maps and three d
Speaker 1: and fifty of Boyd's photos and parts of the sea floor.
Speaker 1: She also had a few word named after her, Louise
Speaker 1: Boyd Land appropriately enough. So over the next few years,
Speaker 1: Boyd made two more trips with the American Geographical Society,
Speaker 1: taking photos, collecting data and spending much of her time
Speaker 1: at home analyzing at all. She always said that that
Speaker 1: was a really major part of the job. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just the trips that was the easy part, almost it
Speaker 1: was looking at all the work they had they had
Speaker 1: brought home. But she'd also returned to her life as
Speaker 1: a social grandam too. She served on the boards of
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Symphony. She worked with the Garden Club
Speaker 1: in the California Botanical Society. She managed a staff of
Speaker 1: nine at her estate, Maple Lawn. By all accounts though,
Speaker 1: she was considered to be a fantastic hostess, and she
Speaker 1: would stage these elaborate parties at Maple Lawn, which was
Speaker 1: decorated with items from her travels and antique Swedish murals,
Speaker 1: but the grounds there were especially famous, featuring many Japanese maples,
Speaker 1: but other also other exotic plants. Boyd herself gardened in
Speaker 1: a special wool suit with matching hat, occasionally having full
Speaker 1: grown trees, moved about the property to complement new construction projects,
Speaker 1: and tending to her hothouse chamelea collection which I can't
Speaker 1: even imagine how you do that move the entire fully
Speaker 1: grown trees. She would apparently build some new feature of
Speaker 1: the garden or an outbuilding or something, and not want
Speaker 1: to have that tacky, you know, just built kind of look,
Speaker 1: and so she'd move full grown trees to make it
Speaker 1: look like it had been there for a while. What
Speaker 1: I really can't imagine is gardening in a wool suit.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's because we live in Georgia and if
Speaker 1: you if you tried doing that, you'd probably die within
Speaker 1: about thirty minutes. Yeah, there weren'to many occasions around here
Speaker 1: to wear a wool suit. She almost always along with
Speaker 1: her suits or whatever she was wearing, were a camelia too,
Speaker 1: or at least some kind of flower, even when in
Speaker 1: the Arctic. According to Women World History, she said quote,
Speaker 1: I don't feel dressed unless I'm wearing hours. Even in Greenland,
Speaker 1: i'd find something and were it with a safety pin.
Speaker 1: She was also a little bit of a foodie too,
Speaker 1: which I think is interesting because I don't when I
Speaker 1: think of Arctic explorers, I think of some of the
Speaker 1: worst food imagine and lawfish well in in cans that
Speaker 1: have botuli is um and all sorts of bad things.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure she wasn't eating that well on her troops.
Speaker 1: But back at home she was quite a foodie and
Speaker 1: she had a very extensive, very international cookbook collection. From
Speaker 1: all of her travels, she'd try to bring home recipes,
Speaker 1: although her favorite cuisine was apparently Southern cuisine. Boyd's last
Speaker 1: a g S sponsored expedition was in ninety eight, and
Speaker 1: the next year World War Two began, which made the
Speaker 1: Arctic pretty much a Noga region of the world as
Speaker 1: far as exploration was concerned. Yeah, especially hobbyist explorer. So
Speaker 1: Greenland was a particular point of concern though for the
Speaker 1: United States, and there are a few reasons for that. One,
Speaker 1: Greenland was a colony of Denmark, which Germany of occupied
Speaker 1: during the war. Geographically, it was right below where American
Speaker 1: pilots would be flying to Great Britain. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've ever flown there, you usually do fly over Greenland
Speaker 1: you can kind of see it on a clear flight.
Speaker 1: And also for meteorological reasons, it's a really great place
Speaker 1: to gather information that's really useful for forecasting the weather
Speaker 1: in Western Europe. It would be a powerful place to control.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for the US government, though most of the experts
Speaker 1: on Greenland, you know, people who could kind of give
Speaker 1: them a leg up on that part of the world
Speaker 1: were behind lines. Louise Boyd, however, was safe at home,
Speaker 1: so in the summer of nineteen forty the State Department
Speaker 1: contacted her about helping out, and so the first thing
Speaker 1: she did was canceled the publication of her book on Greenland,
Speaker 1: her latest book on Greenland, which would contain all of
Speaker 1: these brand new maps and photos and all sorts of
Speaker 1: information that she and the government didn't want falling into
Speaker 1: enemy hands. And then in nineteen forty one she went
Speaker 1: a step further and can organizing a trip to western
Speaker 1: Greenland and eastern Arctic Canada for the National Bureau of Standards.
Speaker 1: So this trip wasn't top secret, but it wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: public either. According to the National Archives, a confidential document
Speaker 1: explained that the goal of the trip was to quote
Speaker 1: elucidate the anomalies of radio communication on the US europe
Speaker 1: transmission path, which was quote worthwhile from the National Defense viewpoint.
Speaker 1: Only the Captain Bob Bartlett knew the true nature of
Speaker 1: this mission. The crew, which Boyd had again hired herself,
Speaker 1: just thought that she was some lady on a photography trip,
Speaker 1: and for some strange reason she was the boss of
Speaker 1: the captain, and that her history doing these missions in
Speaker 1: the first place did give them a little bit of cover.
Speaker 1: It was entirely plausible that Louise Boyd would go on
Speaker 1: another Arctic trip, even in the middle of a war
Speaker 1: to crazy she was interested in, you know, And so
Speaker 1: they had that cover for actual government work that was
Speaker 1: being done. But Boyd also had her own super top
Speaker 1: secret mission from the War Department, and that was to
Speaker 1: investigate possible landing sites for US planes. And she in
Speaker 1: the area she was looking at, she documented the food
Speaker 1: and water conditions, you know, if people had to be
Speaker 1: there for a while, calculated wind speeds, calculated longitude and latitude,
Speaker 1: and of course she took her her classic complete photo
Speaker 1: sets to let people know what the area really looked like.
Speaker 1: And the wartime trip ultimately ended up being Boyd's last
Speaker 1: expedition to the Arctic, even though she did, at the
Speaker 1: age of sixty seven and nine, charter a plane to
Speaker 1: fly over the North Pole, which she had of course,
Speaker 1: as any polar explorer probably wants to see the North
Speaker 1: Pole over her whole life. And when she made that flight,
Speaker 1: she was carrying the flag of the Society of women
Speaker 1: geographers and wrote about it pretty poignantly. She said, as
Speaker 1: I saw the ocean change to massive fields of solid white,
Speaker 1: my leaped up. Then, in a moment of happiness which
Speaker 1: I shall never forget, our instruments told me we were there,
Speaker 1: for directly below us, nine thousand feet down lay the
Speaker 1: North Pole. We crossed the pole, then circled it, flying
Speaker 1: around the world in a matter of minutes. And as
Speaker 1: we already mentioned, she was the first person to charter
Speaker 1: such a flight, and I think she also made comments
Speaker 1: realizing how how much flight was going to change the
Speaker 1: world of polar exploration and make it so much easier
Speaker 1: to get to some of these places. Um. She didn't
Speaker 1: stop traveling though, just because she didn't make further Arctic expedition.
Speaker 1: She traveled throughout Asia, throughout the Middle East, well into
Speaker 1: her seventies, well still maintaining this vigorous schedule of charity work,
Speaker 1: society work, all of that type of thing, until late
Speaker 1: in life her money ran out and friends ended up
Speaker 1: supporting her on a nursing home until her death in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. I think she asked for her ashes
Speaker 1: to be scattered over Louise Boyd land that proved logistically difficult,
Speaker 1: so instead they were scattered over Arctic Alaska, which was
Speaker 1: the last place she had really been in the Arctic.
Speaker 1: We want to be sure to give a special thanks
Speaker 1: to the Marine History Museum for directing us towards some
Speaker 1: accounts and really fantastic photos of Boyd to use to
Speaker 1: research this podcast. The museum is actually in the Boyd
Speaker 1: gate House, a guesthouse of Maple Lawn, which was donated
Speaker 1: to the city along with a park by Mr and
Speaker 1: Mrs Boyd after their son's deaths. Also, one final note
Speaker 1: for any of you research enthusiasts out there. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, the Center for Polar Archives at the National
Speaker 1: Archives got one hundred and fifty reels of Louise Boyd's
Speaker 1: film from the Elks Lodge in San Rafael and by
Speaker 1: eighty you know, these were all on those nitrate reels
Speaker 1: which can ignite very easily. Um, they had all been
Speaker 1: copied to say, for stock And according to Audrey Amadon,
Speaker 1: who wrote about the films for the National Archives, it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to watch the progression, but that shows Boyd's
Speaker 1: transformation from a hobbyist to an actual geographer. As she
Speaker 1: starts to focus less on this almost contrived story of adventure,
Speaker 1: you know, pasting together the the best, most exciting high
Speaker 1: points of the trip, to recording things in a true
Speaker 1: to life, scientific sort of way, taking a little of
Speaker 1: the drama out of it, but focusing more on things
Speaker 1: that could help people better understand the Arctic. I think
Speaker 1: that's really neat. You can actually see a few of
Speaker 1: her clips too. I watched a few minutes on YouTube,
Speaker 1: so you can see the ship and the Greenland coast
Speaker 1: and how it all looked really interesting again, with so many,
Speaker 1: like so many of these subjects to see someone who
Speaker 1: turned a passion into I don't want to say a
Speaker 1: career because it's not like she really made a living
Speaker 1: at it, I guess, but spend her money. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: spent her money actually, but but a lifetime's work. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So I think on that note, we'd like to leave
Speaker 1: with a with a quote from Boyd that kind of
Speaker 1: expresses her love for the Arctic, and she said it
Speaker 1: goes quote cold, yes, of course, but there's an unearthly
Speaker 1: grander about it all and I love it. So that's
Speaker 1: pretty perfect. You're right to blena a good time to
Speaker 1: transition to listener mail. So this email is from Megan
Speaker 1: and she wrote in to say that she loves the podcast,
Speaker 1: but yesterday was the online qualifying test to get a
Speaker 1: tryout for Jeopardy. I was killing time waiting for the
Speaker 1: test by catching up on Stufhi Misston History Class podcast.
Speaker 1: I listened to the one about the Lone Ranger and
Speaker 1: then finished the one about Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
Speaker 1: just a minute or two before the test started. Part
Speaker 1: of the way through the Jeopardy test, there was a
Speaker 1: question asking quote what poet wrote sonnets from the Portuguese
Speaker 1: for her boyfriend Robert or something like that. Uh, and
Speaker 1: she goes on to write, whoa Elizabeth Barrett on the
Speaker 1: Jeopardy test? I never would have known the answer to
Speaker 1: that question if I hadn't just listened to your pie cast.
Speaker 1: If I get on Jeopardy, I'll have you guys and
Speaker 1: You're awesome podcast to thank for it. So cool, yeah,
Speaker 1: very cool? And how she makes it how lucky too?
Speaker 1: I know. I mean, Megan, maybe if maybe you could
Speaker 1: get on Jeopardy, you can say hi to us but
Speaker 1: love a shout out. Yeah, definitely, So thank you Megan
Speaker 1: and um we do really like hearing about you know,
Speaker 1: times when the podcast is debut from a a close
Speaker 1: scrape for something, whether that's your AP test or something
Speaker 1: like a Jeopardy test, So it's always fend to hear
Speaker 1: from you guys. We are at History Podcast at Discovery
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Speaker 1: a little bit more about some of the stuff we
Speaker 1: mentioned on this podcast, we have an awesome article called
Speaker 1: how polar Bears Work on our website. You can look
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Speaker 1: Stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our
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