Doomed to Fail - Ep 178: The Miracle Worker & The Miracle - The Helen Keller story

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Today starts our Women's History Month coverage! We remind you that nobody is perfect, women, like all genders, contain mulititudes. Taylor starts off with the story of Helen Keller - from the disease that took her sight and hearing at 19 months - to an international superstar and advocate for disabled people, Socialism, and women. How did she go from her silent dark world to a graduate of Radcliffe and a prolific writer? She couldn't have done it without her Teacher, Anne Sullivan, who dedicated her life to working with Helen, even when her own eye issues eventually led to blindness. We recommend checking out the sources in our show notes - Helen played herself in a film in 1954 & we got to read our dear Lorena Hickock's book!  SourcesHelen Keller Speaks out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ch_H8pt9M8Helen Keller - Her Story, 1954 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QODz_xciKYThe Story of Hellen Keller by Lorena Hickock - https://www.ebay.com/itm/185903962397  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we are back online and we are ready to give you people some precious, precious banter. Hi, Taylor. Hello. Welcome to Duneville. Oh, you do it.

You go. No, I was welcoming you to your pont. podcast. Oh, I thought you were doing our thing. Oh, thank you. No, no. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, you, welcome to you as well. And everyone else, welcome to doomed to fail. We bring you history's most notorious disasters, epic failures, etc. Twice a week. And I'm Taylor joined by Fars. And we are here talking and sharing stories about our weekend and we're up to. And, yeah, mostly busy but good, I think, is the way I'd wrap up the details. there everything yeah yeah this is my last i've by some miracle have no activities today besides

this i don't have any cookie booths i don't have any softball games all of that will change soon enjoy it just enjoy the downtime i will i will um cool well we'll go ahead and what i just forgot did you already induce us i just did thank you okay man i'm like really distracted i think it's a number of screens I have and a number of tabs open on these screens like my brain's just kind of like it's playing ping pong I'm like still frantically typing and I'm thinking like maybe I should just dictate this to my my outline instead of typing it because my typing also is so bad because of my nails

that like every other word is spelled wrong but I'm like going to try my best I um can I see your nails again okay those aren't that bad like I've I mean that I've seen other women who have like ones that are like an inch or two off their fingers. You know, mine are supposed to be. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's hard. Okay.

They're kind of long. They're pretty long. It seems like a hard thing to type with that. I know, but I love having them do this. Can't see it, but Taylor's doing a little finger. They can hear it. They can hear it. Well, if you're still typing, do you want me to go first today?

No, I'm fine. You're fine? Okay. I'm done. We'll go with Taylor's story. Good enough. Good enough. Good enough.

That's our motto in here, Dubuffel. Good enough. So, it's officially Women's History Month. Happy March 1st. I hung up my women's suffrage flag outside. It's huge. And I'm very excited. And I know that you started your women's history stuff earlier this week, last week.

Taylor, can I tell you something that just dawned on me? when you started talking. What? That I said I was going to do a series of three, and I totally researched something different. Okay, well, never mind for Paris as Women's History. I will do mine. I will do four.

I'll do four, maybe five. But last year, as a reminder, I did Coco Chanel, who was a Nazi, Amelia Earhart, Henry Adelax, the Triangle Shirtways Factory Fire, and Agatha Christie. So I did five last year. And this year, I'm going to start. start out with two classic women in women's history that I know you know and have heard of.

And I'm not even going to make you guess because I don't really know how I, whatever. I'm going to talk about Helen Keller and her teacher, Ann Sullivan. Oh, very cool. Yeah. So my children did not know who Helen Keller was, which if the Department of Education still exists, I'm going to write them a letter. I think it'll get return to sender. They're going to be like, you're typing is terrible also.

We don't exist. So I read them a book about Helen Keller and guess who wrote that book? I feel like I've told you this, but you're never going to guess. Never going to guess. Lorena Hickok, who is Eleanor Roosevelt's girlfriend, wrote a book about Helen Keller. We're a young adult. So I read that book to the children. I started to read a book about Ann Sullivan to the children, and Miles started to cry because her life was very sad, so I stopped reading that.

Man, your kids are going to be so interesting when they're adults. They are. They definitely are. so Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27th, 1880. She lived in Tuscumbia, Alabama, and that was the South. It is the South, but it was the South in the 1880s, so just FYI. Her parents, Heleney is her dad. Catherine, Kate, is her mom.

The family home was called Ivy Green. It was a house that they've had for a long time, and it was probably, we could describe it as a plantation because they definitely had enslaved people. and her dad was a captain in the Confederate Army and her grandpa was a general in the Confederate Army. Can we just name our houses? Is that like there's a thing that you can just choose to do? Yeah, my house is named Rancho O'Rowlaxo.

You know that. I guess you do name your house. I mean, my brother-in-law and his wife named their, they moved with their first house they named Hembroke Manor for no reason. It was just great. Okay, I'm going to upload a picture of my house to chat GPT and see if income with the name. Oh, it's a good idea. It's a good idea.

Yeah, you should definitely. I'll share with the audience at the end of this. Yeah, everyone name your house. That's a good idea. So she had four siblings, two half-brothers from her dad's first marriage and then two siblings from her parents. They were part of the, quote, slave-holding elite, but things were rough post-war. So they did not have a lot of money after the war was over because they could no longer, you know, enslaved people to make money. The, in her book, which she wrote many, many books.

But in Helen's book, when she talked about this, this part of her history, she said, quote, there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors and no slave who has not had a king among his. So I'm talking about history and all that. She is so smart. I'm going to get to that. So that's her past. She lives in the American South post the Civil War. When she was 19 months old, she contracted probably meningitis or maybe scarlet fever.

and that left her both deaf and blind, which is the main thing that you might know about Helen Keller. It's the only thing I know about Helen Keller. Right. The other thing, I saw something, you know, with like that poor child this week who died of the measles in Texas and those measles outbreaks. Yeah, yeah.

So it's going to be like not just death for those kids. Some of those kids are going to end up like severely disabled like this, you know? Yeah. it's like that we're talking about that guy who lived at the iron lung one of those deals right so it's not it's not just death it's other things as well so she obviously that's terrible having a two-year-old who can no longer hear or a sea like it's really really difficult to communicate with that child and her family kept good care of her obviously they kept kept her learning the best that she could they would do like tactile games with her where she could like you know put different things in different holes and like touch things and like understand space and like under so you could tell who was coming by their footsteps but she didn't really know who they were but she could tell that it was like different people by their footsteps she had about 60 homemade signs so like things that she could do to be like I want water or I want to eat or whatever she would like make a movement and her family could understand her she was able to communicate with their maid's daughter which was a young a young girl who was only like two years older than Helen her name was Martha Washington and they were able they were able to like communicate like the way kids figured it out with like a little bit of like touching and moving and like trying to figure out how to do things

but nothing like formal if that makes sense like however you'd figure it out sure so it's kind of like you know when you're a baby and you don't remember being a baby I totally remember yeah yeah you don't and the reason you don't one of the reasons you don't remember being a baby

is because you didn't know what you were doing because you were a baby so you didn't have words for things so any memory you have of then is like would be oh i have this like feeling i can see this like other thing that kind of looks like me coming towards me and giving me food but you don't know the word for food you don't know the word for mom you don't understand like you don't know what those things are you're kind of like in your brain figuring it out you know and that happens to everybody it's like if you're born deaf like you don't know what white is or blue is or right blind but yeah yeah exactly exactly what i say

Deaf? Death. Yeah. I did in this. I was, I thought something else, I don't know if it was while I was researching this, but someone who was blind, they asked them what colors were, and they had, like, gone outside, and someone was like, that heat that you feel, that is red, you know? And then, like, feel the grass and, like, the dew on the grass,

and the, you know, when you feel a plant that's green. And, like, you know, just to kind of get an idea of it, but you don't ever have the full idea of, like, what people see or hear, you know? So Helen's life, until she was, like, seven, was in that space that you're in when you're a baby when you're like I don't know what things are you know like I know that there's people who take care of me I know there's like stuff I like to eat

but I don't know what the word eat means you know just so many she doesn't have the concept of what those things are it's all in her head and it's like feelings but a lot of the time she's really frustrated too because she can't communicate with anyone and they can't communicate with her obviously it has to be tremendously frustrating to be in a situation where like literally nothing understands you yeah and like you don't even understand

what's going on you're sort of like just with this consciousness and like this is silent darkness you know god so terrifying that's so scary i know i know so helen is obviously not the first person in the world to be both deaf and blind there are plenty of other people before um in the united states a famous woman who was born um in 1829 was named laura bridgman and she was a similar case she had she learned to communicate doing using sign language and braille and she created a beautiful art she was a beautiful like lace maker which is really cool And Helen's mother, Kate, learned about Laura Bridgman from a book called American Notes by Charles Dickens. So Charles Dickens came to the United States and wrote some stories about the people here that he met. And one of those people was Laura Bridgman.

So Kate read the story and she went to Baltimore to the hospital where Laura Bridgman had been evaluated. And she met a doctor named J. Julie and Crissom. and that factor was working with Alexander Graham Bell and they had Alexander Graham Bell meet Helen he's working with deaf children again nobody existed in the world back in the old days it was like every but did you say Martha Washington was her like friend well not the real Martha Washington

Oh yeah it would have been like a hundred years after this Martha Washington was the name of the formerly enslaved daughter of the person that she worked Okay got it got it that makes sense yeah yeah um So she learned about this stuff. She met Alexander Graham Bell. And Alexander Graham Bell sent them to the Perkins School for the Blind. And that's where they met Anne Sullivan. So Anne Sullivan is the teacher.

A lot of times in books he's just called Teacher. And she's also The Miracle Worker. So all the movies about her are called The Miracle Worker, like the one with Patty Duke. Do you know who Patty Duke is? Nope. So she, just to tell you and everyone else who Patty Duke is, she's an actress. She played a psychologist in the Baby Jessica movie that I watched on TV. More importantly, she had a TV show when she was like a young teen called the Patty Duke show

where she played herself and her cousin. And it was like about being identical cousins and like the stuff that could happen. She played both parts and it was really cute. And then she played Helen Keller in the first Miracle Worker movie. And then later she played Anne Sullivan in the next one. So she played both parts. How did you know all that? you know also she's the mother of the guy who plays sam and lord of the rings

and she dies so anyway you have so much stuff crammed in your brain it's like good for you i guess yeah so far so useful having an empty brain i will i will confess having an empty brain is kind of nice because there's a lot of peace in there there's no peace in my brain that's fairly yeah so anyway there's a lot of ways i about it there called The Miracle Worker. That's Anne Sullivan. She was born in 1866 in Feeding Hells, Massachusetts. When Anne Sullivan was young, she was really, really, really poor. And she got a disease called trachoma, which is a disease of your eyes that has to do with bad sanitary conditions. And essentially, it created these hard modules on the inside of her eyelid. And her eyelids would scratch her eyes.

that is nightmare fuel it's horrible so in the book that I got one chapter in before my son started to cry because it was too terrible they were very clear that like the doctor didn't want to help her because she was poor and he was like oh these poor immigrants like they can't take care of their kids because her family was from Ireland and all this stuff so she never got the treatment that she could have gotten and so for the rest of her life she's going to be have very very poor eyesight and eventually she will be blind as well why would you read this to miles like what it's a good it's a it was a kid's book it was like this weird class social structure mixed with like torture like we're learning history in this house did you not think that we were i know i know it's just like not everything has to be like no no we're separating it but anyway because she had a hard life her parents died young and then her brother went to an institution and then to like foster care but she ended up at the perkins school for the blind because they were able to help her um she she's able to read braille and and do things even though her eyes would kind of go back and forth,

and it would always hurt her. Got it. She worked there. So, and, so, yeah, so it was like scarring her eyelids, scarring her corneas, super terrible.

She would get actually a ton of surgeries on her eyes, which is terrifying to think of, like, late 1800s eye surgery. I'd rather, just leave it alone. Just leave it alone. I mean, you know how,

you've heard how, like, Lasix can be turned out so terrible. Dude, I want to do it today. I want to, like, I've been in a situation where somebody who's recommended back surgery. I'm not going to do it. No. Like my back, my eyes, like, I'm not doing any of that.

Like, just live through it. Yeah. So she went through several surgeries. And at age 15, they were actually able to improve her visions if she could read books. She would later get more surgeries. And at some point toward like the end of her life, she would beg for more surgeries. She just wanted to see. She ended up losing one of her eyes.

So it was bad for Anne. But she. worked so well with Helen because she understood what it was like to not be able to see in at least some capacity and she really wanted to prove that she was more than her disability and she wanted Helen to be able to prove that as well.

Wait, hold on one second, Taylor. What year, when was this again? The late 1880s. Okay, so they recently discovered probably anesthesia 30 year earlier. I was imagining this woman being strapped down

and then cutting into her eye eyeballs. I don't think, like I feel like when you get Lasix, dude, they don't numb your eyes, do they? Oh, God. So, well, well, I think what they do is their eyedrops around there. They put eye drops in there. Oh, yeah, probably. Yeah, and anesthetize your eyes, your eyes.

I mean, it's a miracle that they got her eyesight better at one point in her life, you know? She's probably lying. They probably stuffed the rock in her eye and said, this is a replacement for your lens. No way it works. it worked it worked so she worked at the park in school for the blind and she got assigned to work with helen keller so on march 5th 1887 and came to helen's house to stay and to like meet with them so she was paid by the kellers but they often didn't have enough money to pay her so she would do her work for free and they would eventually have like some benefactors and sponsors that would give them money so that they could continue continue their work together but when she got there it was like really difficult you have this child who's like a essentially like partly feral like they the family you know they took good care of her but they were like you know helen would have a dinner table she would like walk around just like grab food off

people's plates like she didn't really she didn't know what was going on you know she just knew that she needed food she knew that she like needed to go the bathroom but she didn't really understand like what that was and so and like even in like the kids books about her and was rough with her she would like slap her and be like you have to sit and do this and she would make her like sit in a chair it wouldn't let her get up until she folded her napkin and they would do that for like hours and her parents would be like I don't know if I can do this so here's a part of Taylor, that I, that always interested me about the Helen Keller story, but that I never understood. How do you teach somebody that is blind and deaf anything?

How has it been impossible? Well, so a lot of it is- You've been pulling a napkin. Yeah, no, a lot of it is like repetitive things and like just movements that she can do like with her hands so she can like learn how to do it. So she does learn during this time. She learns like to crochet because she can like do that over and over again and like make a long chain with yarn. She learns how to like, you know, clean things up and move things

different parts of the room because her spatial awareness is a lot better than everybody else is because she needs that, you know, from like sound and touch and all the things. So she's able to do that. She also learns the manual alphabet, which is probably officially later turn into American Sign language, but she doesn't know what it means. So she can make the, you know, the alphabet, I can do my name. She can make the alphabet with her hands, but she doesn't know what it means. but she can repeat it you know so if teacher like puts in her hand like this is a doll d-o-l-l-l she can repeat that back to her oh that's how they do it you can put your you put your hand on the hand of the person you're teaching and then they see how your fingers move and then they repeat that but then

how do you how do they know what that thing is well i'm going to tell you in a second okay sorry i'm going ahead go ahead no you're not like that's a good that's the question you know like that's the thing like she can continue to repeat it she can do it and like when you watch there's some movies that you can watch of Helen Keller when she's older doing it and you know they do it very fast they spell into her hand but like that's the most the best way for her to get information so they're doing that so like Anne bought her a doll so she's like doll in her hand and Helen can do it back but she's like I don't know what you want for me like later when she can express herself she'll say like I didn't know what she wanted I could spell the word doll but I didn't know what it was you know like jump me to just repeat what you're doing like I'll do that but like I don't understand what we're doing just so you were saying like I don't understand what we're doing just so you were saying like Like, how do you, what do you do? And so, oh, this is, this is actually a quote from Helen Keller. She said, I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed. I was simply making my fingers go in a monkey-like imitation.

So that's what she's doing to start. Wait, so how old was she again? Seven. It's kind of like us, isn't it? Like, it's kind of like every other, like, when your parents are speaking, I mean, we're too young to know anything, but when your parents were speaking to you, like, you don't know anything. It's not that different.

Okay, well, you put it in that context, or I did, but, like, still, I get it now. No, yeah, that's what, yeah, that, exactly. Like, you need to learn what words are. Everyone needs to learn what words are one way or another, you know? So, eventually, it clicks with one word, and you know what that word is? Water? It's water, correct. Correct.

So they went out to the pump, which is like a water pump, old-timey water pump, and she's got a cup, and she has her hand, she has a cup and she's a bun cup in her hand. It's a cup in her hand. And Helen drops the cup. She's so mad. They're trying to figure it out. And then, quote from Helen, I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions in her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought. And somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant the wonderful, cool something that was flowing over my hand.

the living word awakened my soul give it light hope set it free so i also think that like she did the fact that she was able to see in here for the first 19 months of her life probably helped as well can you hear the barking no okay yes i'm sure it helped um but so that that was the word that made that connection so she was super excited wanted to spell everything then she had to like learn sentences and like you know learn to express herself but she did eventually learn of those things. So that was super exciting. Her parents learned how to write in Braille to write her letters. They learned how to do the manual alphabet, the sign language, to be able to talk to her. So she was able to start to learn things and actually, like, actually,

you know, communicate and learn. But Anne had to be with her the whole time. And so for the next few years, they would spend time at the Perkins School for the Blind, which is right outside of Boston. It still exists today. And they spent summers back. home and Helen wanted to go to school she wanted to learn more than just like basic communication skills and so when she was in school it was hard because there were not there weren't schools for both deaf and blind like that there were schools for blind kids schools for deaf kids but not both and so that was like what what challenge are they going to are they going to do um a lot of the books some are written in braille but not all of them

So when she went to school, Anne would, I mean, and this would hurt her eyes the entire time, but she would read books and spell them word for word into Helen's hand. And then Helen would, that's how then she would, like, write reports on a typewriter. Wait, so what would happen if you were deaf planning and had no hands? I don't, no. Feet? You could probably figure that out. Sorry, continue.

No, that's a good question. I don't know. It's not a good question, but thank you for trying. I hope, I don't know. That sounds terrible. Even worse, even worse than this. So, Helen learned braille. She could type on a regular typewriter.

She could also type on, like, a braille typewriter. She learns at some point to read lips by touching them. So she could just put your hand in your mouth and know what you were saying. She would say that she could, like, feel music by touching a piano. And, like, you know, she could feel the vibrations and, like, try to understand those things from that. She is, by the way, super famous during this time. She doesn't really know it. They didn't really tell her that she's super famous.

People all over the world know her story and are really inspired by the fact that she was able to learn to communicate after all those hardship. People who sent her letters. And eventually she moves to New York to go to a school for the deaf and then a finishing school in Massachusetts. And in 1900, she goes to Radcliffe, which is the Ladies Harvard. because she wasn't allowed to Harvard because she was a lady but she goes to Radcliffe and she also during this time is very determined to speak she does learn to speak but it's very hard I was like maybe I could do it and you can see her speak on YouTube and it's hard um yeah but she's never heard the words but she speaks and then her however her companion is with her will kind of translate after she speaks but it's super cool you know to see her see her trying um she graduated in 1904 from Radcliffe and you know she did things like her final exams she would like sit alone in her room with a typewriter and like type out the answers you know so that she would be able to um like write her like final reports in like a way that was showing that she was doing it you know right right um her

college was paid for by the standard oil um family they heard about her from their friend mark twain and he asked them to pay for her college there's literally nobody in the world It's just all the famous one. She knows everyone. Yeah. So then her question was like, what to do next? So she did write a book, kind of right away. Her first book was called The Story of My Life.

And that was like a bestseller. It's in a million languages all over the world. She had trouble, though, making money. And at first she turned down, but then later accepted a pension from Andrew Carnegie. So Andrew Carnegie paid her some money for the rest of her life. It's got to be a good hookup. Yeah. So some of the things that happened to her,

At one point, there's a story where, like, she, her house catches on fire and she escapes because her dog warns her, which is really sweet. He, like, starts looking her like crazy and she's like, what's going on? She can't hear anything or see anything, and she eventually smells the fire and gets out, but her dog saved her life. Dogs are amazing. Very cute. In the 1910s, she traveled all around the U.S. and she didn't just talk about disability advocacy. she also talked about women's right to vote, workers' right, and socialism. So she was a socialist, and would talk about equality and things like that all the time. Her eyes started to get actually infected because her eyes like still existed. And her left eye started to get very swollen. So in 1911, her eyes were replaced by glass eyes. So both of her eyes were taken out. She also did. Her and Anne would do vaudeville acts, which people were like feeling that that was like beneath her. But she was like, have to make.

money somehow. She would travel around the country and get introduced as Helen Keller and the audience would ask her questions and then Anne Sullivan would spell them into her hand and she would answer them and people loved it. They loved seeing her. They were really inspired that she was out there out there working and having a job. She spoke all over the U.S. and in over 25 countries by the end of her life. She traveled all over the world. At one point, Anne married a dude named John Macy. He kind of disappears. I don't really know what happens to him. They don't get divorced, but he disappears at some point. And they find another person to join them. a woman named Polly Thompson in 1914.

So Polly was from Scotland, and she was an immigrant, and she was just excited to help. She didn't have any experience working with the deaf or the blind or both, but she joined them and would stay with them for the rest of her life. In 1914, Ann got sick, and they sent her to Puerto Rico to help her feel better, which sounds great, but it did not work. And she would go blind as well, and she died in 1936. So she was sick for, like, the last bit of her life. with Helen by her side. There's one mention about Helen being secretly engaged to a reporter,

but it didn't end in marriage. So she might have, like, had someone who cared about her that way at one point in her life, but we don't know any details. So while Polly was there, who's the second girl, came to take care of her, they traveled all over the world. In 1916, she spoke against war. She had a speech called Strike Against War that condemned World War I. She hated Wilson, which is fair. She had an FBI file because of that, because of her, like, anti-war advocacy. She would travel around and give speeches about how a lot of people who became blind, became blind because of, like, circumstances, like, you know, living in a place where you could get a disease, like Ann did, or a lot of women in, you know, some places were, and men were blind because of syphilis, you know?

So it's like these things that happened and made you blind, but it had to do with your status and, like, living in poverty. So she would talk about how to, like, help those people as well. She did a speech at a place called the Lions Club International, and she urged them to take up the case of blindness prevention, and they still do that today. They are one of the leading organizations in the world that helps screenings and help people with eye health, which is cool. Eventually, she would travel post-World War II to Japan and work with the blind in Nagasaki and Hiroshima because a lot of people were blinded by the bombs.

So she would talk about how the government can help them and that kind of thing forward. It's terrible. I know. She was, there's one. kind of not there's one not good thing that she supported eugenics basically like kids who were disabled

and she thought we shouldn't waste our time spending helping them kids were like very disabled from birth she was disabled but not from birth and like as a whole different oh come on you're you're splitting hairs now no I'm not defending her I'm just telling you I'm telling you that's what she

that's one of the things that she that she had said and that she also talked about overpopulation, you know, and wanted people to have less kids. I don't know why that was something that she cared about. There was like 17 people in the United States at that time. So there's that. And she also, like, became religious, you know, at some point. It was kind of her own.

She was Baptist eventually. She called herself like a world citizen, like traveling around the world. When she was 75 in 1955, she did a 40,000 mile five-month tour of Asia, so all around, like, the Asian countries to talk to people there. She knew several languages, so she could read in, like, German and French as well as English. She wrote about 14 books, some of them about her life. And she played herself in a movie that you can watch on YouTube that is really cool. It's like just her showing you what she does, like throughout the day. like living with Polly and like she'll get up and she'll make the

coffee and she'll bring a tray up to Polly's room and like hand it to her and they'll do it together and then they're like at one point like Helen is like like polishing the silver at the table and Polly is doing the dishes and then Polly knocks on the table and Helen gets up and starts drying the dishes so they had like a way to like live together and be able to like do those things together um both the book by Lerina Hickok and the movie about her in that she plays herself they both end with her reading the Bible in bed like in braille which is like weird but okay that that's like a big thing that they had at the end of that and helen would have a couple strokes in her in her later life in the 1960s and she as she got older you know she didn't

travel anymore she got the presidential middle of freedom from linden johnson and she's in the National Women's Hall of Fame, and she died in her sleep on June 1st, 1968 in Connecticut. Her home was called Arcann Ridge, if you want to know the name of her house. That was the name of it. She was 87. It was a long life. Her ashes are buried in Washington National Cathedral next to Ann Sullivan and Polly Thompson. So the three of them are together in D.C.

very interesting yeah that's a very I'm glad to tell that story because I should know her story and I did not so that's cool it's really interesting it's interesting that she you know did more than most people do in her life she's definitely accomplished more than I ever full

you know and like even with with all of that I think you know she's there was some other um a young man who had the same condition that she had raised money for at some point when she was younger she was like let's give this guy money and they helped him but like he was able to get a job at a cardboard box factory and like live his life like very simply and I'm like that seems like most people it's like the best case scenario you know yeah there's under any circumstance yeah it's a bell curve yeah so yeah yeah Helen Keller was on one side box man was on the

other side yeah I feel like he's like even in the middle and then actually he's in the middle you're Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she definitely, you know, went above and beyond for everything that had happened to her. And it's, it's cool. I recommend looking up her movies on YouTube because it's cool to see her, like, move around. And she's always smiling and she's, you know, she looks like an old lady in the 50s and 60s. But she's Helen Keller, which is cool. She lived later than I thought she lived. I would have assumed Helen Keller died in the 1800s. But yeah. You said 1968, I think. Yeah, 1960s. so yeah I I it's super interesting it's interesting to hear how she even did anything you know and then like had opinions that were like you know political and traveled around and did all those things and like I think it's fun to think of her like in Japan trying sushi you know I like that she's like anti-war but then also pro eugenics because like oh so she probably didn't want to go to war with Hitler we contain multitudes um no she didn't she did want to go to war with Hitler but she you know but i think that there's like she was like a spectrum because she also like donated money to the nbacp and you know helps to found to found the american civil liberties union you know so like it's all sorts of stuff like we've always discussed like there's no

such thing as like pure good pure evil like there's exactly it's all a spectrum yeah it's a spectrum so yeah she like you know i'm just like kind of reading my notes and like you know her and Mark Twain were both considered to be like leftist radicals because they were socialists and things like that. So all sorts of interesting, complex things when you live a whole life and when you write it all down. Also I wonder, yeah, I guess at that point, I guess in their timeline, they never saw socialism.

So it's just like a thought experiment for them. Right? I don't know. I don't know. Either way, very cool, very fun. Thanks for sharing that. And are you going to tell us who the rest of your stories are going to be about, or not quite yet. Okay.

Not yet, not yet. But I will, I will get to them in the following weeks. Any predictions for the Oscars? Are we watching it? I'm not watching. Why would you watch it? You just did a whole episode. I know, I know.

The second I said that, I was like, ugh. No, but do you remember Sally who we used to work with? Oh, yeah. So she every year does an Oscars contest And I do it every year So I never watch the movies But you just like rank choice The ones that you like

And then you might win But you don't win anything It's just like whatever So it's like her at all for friends And so I did fill out her email form And I just put like You know I want this person to win Because of cute

Stuff like that Speaking of movies I saw the monkey Oh Did you tell me? Did you text me about that today? I texted you about it today Got it.

It is so fun Taylor it's fun it's funny it's like final destination or saw in terms of like graphic violence but like in a comedic way it's executed very funnily it's i've read oh my god i don't know that os perkins did i love him um yeah he did he did long legs too i know i know i know he did my favorite movie i am the pretty thing that lives in this house um i love him i i mean i've read the the the obviously i've read the story of the monkey by stephen king Yeah, yeah. This was, I'm absolutely going to go see it again.

Oh my God, Elijah Wood is in it? That's cool. He is a very, very brief cameo. Yeah, look at that way. Cool, I definitely want to see it. Sweet. All righty, cool. Anything to read out from the audience?

Yes. We got someone who asked us, about our stickers why is that a big deal we get asked that 17 times a day oh my gosh bless your heart um it's Rebecca is that right yes Rebecca thank you so much this email was so sweet she was like if they're all gone it's totally fine and I was like girl you are the first and only person to take us up on this free sticker offer stop that's what stopping people if people are like, no, I'm nervous because I don't, because I'm afraid that you've run out of them. We have not.

We have not run out. If you'd like some doomed to fill stickers, send us your address. Doom tofell pod at gmail.com. We have a lot of them. You also get a personalized note. Yeah. By Taylor. I was getting, I messaged Taylor and was like, oh, I have some stickers.

I'll mail one out to you. Like, how do you mail things? You were like, do I use a stamp? I'm like, oh, my God. I was like, do I need to weigh the envelope and then then someone. tells you how many stamps I put on the envelope I'm not a mail thing's oh my god you're like the weasleys do that when the weasleys do that no and in harry potter the in harry potter and they they don't know they don't know how you stamps because they don't know how you stamps yeah

it's like really funny and I think whenever I don't know what to do I feel like a weasley I'm like I don't know I'll just put them to stamps on those um which is stupid but um thank you rebecca I appreciate you very much and I have anyone else with a sticker send us me mom I'll mail it to you. Sweet. Got nothing but time. Yes. Anything, anything else, Taylor?

No. All the social is doomed to fell pod. Thank you, everyone. We appreciate you. Sweet. We appreciate you. See you in a few days. Bye.