Doomed to Fail - Re-Release - Ep 90 - Echoes of the Sky: Amelia Earhart's Enduring Influence

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

Let's end the year with a re-release of our girl Amelia! Be brave.  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 Hortlandthal 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. There we go. We are up and live in recording. Taylor, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm a little stinky. Just got back from yoga. And I want to apologize yet again for needing to move. the timing of this recording. I wish I had a really good reason other than the fact that I was

extremely tired and kind of lazy and wasn't feeling super productive. That's cool. I was like, I was like on Saturday night, I was like, oh, I could write, but then it was like, maybe I won't or whatever, but then the power went out for 12 hours because it was the windiest day of my entire life. So, like, seriously, actually insane. And so I just went to bed because what can you do? Yeah, yeah. I wish I had a better experience. excuse than that. So I really appreciate you being flexible. But on the plus side, I just ordered six boxes of cookies. I know you did. Thank you. Yeah, there you go. So I, I redeemed myself to whatever extent I am a redeemable, redeemable person. We did hopefully our last

two cookie booths this weekend. I think it might have one more next weekend, but man, I'm ready to have that be over. And then the next weekend, baseball game start on Saturday. So, you know, no rest. And then are you going to be hawking cookies for the baseball team? Or is there, are you with that uh no no cookies are with girl scouts those are almost done but i'm the i'm miles as baseball coach oh got it we have practiced twice a week and now then we'll have games on saturday and it's super fun i got 10 little cutie patooties on my team very very cute little patooties um cool well we'll go ahead and kick things off this is of course student afell joined here by farce and taylor we are going to be covering one story two stories this week one story by me one story by taylor they're going to be

fun. They're going to be exciting, I think, hopefully, presumably. And you are drinking some moscato, if I am seeing in that. Pino Gris. Pino Gris. Lovely. Lovely. I'm having a little bit of water. Good. Stay hydrated after your yoga. Okay. Fars, I have the best news to turn with you. I held it in all day, but I'm very excited. So last night, I was, wait, I go first, right? That's, you gave us over to me, right? I guess. go ahead. I think I go first today anyway, but I wanted to tell you this great news. So last night, I was like, oh my God.

So I watched the John Oliver about airplanes that just came out last night and freaking terrified. It was very terrifying. And then I looked up my trip to Japan. I am taking a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which is very scary. So I was like looking that up, but like feeling a little anxious. So I was like, I was going to do a puzzle. So I was doing a puzzle. And I was listening to you, this is stupid.

awesome. I was like, I'm anxious. What should I do? I was like, let me listen to the newest Dan Carlin about the Holocaust, because that'll calm me down, like, anything. Anyway, because Dan Carlin's amazing. But then I'm listening to it, and he has his ad for his show in three weeks. And I was like, what am I doing? I'm so stupid. I'm going to go. So I bought tickets. So me and Nicole are going to go see Dan Carlin on 21st. Wait, where? At L.A. No way. And we're both going to wear doomed to fail sweatshirts. And we're both going to wear doomed to fail sweatshirts. And we're. We're going to meet people. Wait, where in L.A. is it? At the Ace Theater, downtown L.A., which is gross, but whatever, we'll go anyway. So cool.

I didn't even know he toured. I think this might have been like one of his first tours. It's like a new thing. He's like, if you guys like it, I'll keep doing it. You know, you know, Dan. You know, he's like. Of course, everybody's going to like it. Dan Carlin tour.

That's so exciting. I didn't even know that was, I didn't even know that was a thing. I would never even, how did you, how did you, how did you Even, wait, so you started the Holocaust episode and like, what would you, like, how did you find out? He talks about it in the beginning and he talked about it before, but like many years ago when we worked in downtown L.A. together, Doris Kieran's Goodwin, who's my favorite historian was speaking at the Disney Center. and I like asked in Slack if anyone wanted to go with me and no one wanted to go so I didn't go and I was like I regret that every day so I was like I have to make take my butt out to LA it's a Thursday night I'm gonna go in the afternoon stay with Nicole and then come back really early Friday morning so I can go to work but like I'm like I'm regret it if I didn't go I'm really happy you're doing that I did that one time as well where it was right after Norm MacDonald died and I need to see the people that like I like I like before they die and it was like literally that day I booked a ticket to go and it was like literally that day I booked a ticket to go. go see a show in, I think it was Nashville or something. So, yeah, I love that.

And I just looked, and he is definitely not going to be in anywhere near Texas. He's doing California. He's doing L.A., Salt Lake City, Portland, and in New York. So you have four dates coming up. Man, if y'all are in those towns, go visit. Go check it out. Oh, my God. I can't wait.

I'm very, very excited. So I think you, thanks to Nicole, who's like, I will buy a deemed-deafel sweatshirt Immediately. So she's very excited, too. Thank you, Nicole. Awesome. Well, congratulations on that. That's really, very fun.

Thank you. Gosh, I should start buying a ticket and making a plan. Honestly, it's whole. Well, no, for even, like, having the insight to look into it and see it. And it's just, it's just so serendipitous. I was seeing that too recently where I, like, occasional lookup venues or favorite comedians or whatever. It's just, like, so serendipitous.

You caught the right day at the right time, and it wasn't sold out. Yeah, just got to go. I'd go. So, sweet. Cool. Well, I'm very excited about that. So I was super excited to tell you because I can't wait. And I will let everybody know how it goes.

I bet it's going to be great. I'm positive it will be great. All right, but I am ready to tell you a story for Mars. If you are ready. I am waiting with bated breath. So as promised, I'm super fucking stoked for Women's History Month. Okay. It is March.

It is Women's History Month. I did tease last episode that I will do a woman's history fire next week. And my friend Morgan got it right away. She texted me. She knows exactly what it is. If you know, you know, I'll tell you about it next week. But I wanted to take a break from fires and tell you about a woman who is one of the most famous women of the 20th century. And I'm going to list some of the things that she did as like jobs and have you guess who she is.

Okay. So super famous. Helen Keller No, but that would be interesting I'll put that on my list Okay She's actually wildly successful Which is like crazy because I would not

bother learning another language if I was Hellicolor. It's just very nice. Totally. No. So this woman was a college student studying medicine at Columbia. She was a nurse's aide

with the Canadian Red Cross during World War I. She owned a trucking business in California. She was a photographer, a social worker in Boston, an associate editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, a book author, she wrote two books, a fashion designer. Do you know who it is yet? Anna Wintour? No, here's the last thing she was.

She was a pilot. Oh, oh, God, they found her plane recently. I don't know if they did. I didn't even get that far, but yes. Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart, indeed. So I'm so excited to talk about it. Amelia Earhart. I saw an article about her plane, but I didn't even read it because I was busy reading a book about her and I'm like, I don't know if this is true. Like, will they find it? It's in the news now. I'll keep you guys posted. I'll read about that. But here are some of my sources. So yes, I'm talking about Amelia Earhart, who will never be 40. I read a book called East to the Dawn by Susan Butler. I read most of Amelia Earhart's book, The Fun of It, about flying. So,

I want to finish that. I will. I watched the 20009 film Amelia starring Hillary Swank, Ewan McGregor, and Richard Gear. I think it's the worst movie I've ever seen. Like, I feel like it might be

the worst. It has a 19 Oh my God. It has a 19% on rotten tomatoes. These are some of my, I have three reviews that I've pulled out of this, the reviews. One of them is a tinny and barnacled affair showcasing a peculiarly awful performance from Hillary Swank. Another one says these have to be some of the least exhilarating flight scenes ever committed

to film. As Swank looks as if she's been put in a box in a studio and told to imagine that she's up in the air, which reminds me of, I watched this thing on Instagram the other day. It was a clip of Sir Ian McKellen talking to Ricky Jervase about how he acts. Have you seen that? It is the funniest thing. I just imagine. He's like, I'm not a wizard.

I just, like, pretend to be a wizard. When the director says, action, I pretend that I embody a wizard. And then when he stops, I stop embodying that. It's so good. So funny. So that's what I was thinking about with that because it was like, she just was so bad. And then another one that was so good, another review said, Hillary Swank is forced to deliver dialogue that sounds as if it was written in Chinese

and then translated into English by a computer. It's so bad. There were like 70 notes on Amazon. You know, when you're watching a movie on Amazon, it has like, Fun facts and trivia on the side. So I clicked on that. Some of the things are like, Amelia Earhart had a gap between her teeth.

They only bothered to give Hillary Swank a gap between her teeth for the first scene, and then they didn't do it again. And even then, it's like, they very clearly just like drill a line between her teeth like a Sharpie, you know? It was like not. It's like the kind of movie I would make. And then, but like at least keep doing it. And then she was signing stuff in the movie and she was left-handed.

And I was like, that is super interesting. Because when you're left-handed, you have to learn things differently because things are built for right-handed people. And it's interesting that even let her be left-handed in the 1920s or when she was born, all these things. And then the note said, Amelia Earhart is not left-handed. Obviously, Hillary Swank is. Are you freaking kidding me, you guys? Like, I literally noticed that because it's a big deal. They used to not let people be left-handed.

I thought that was interesting. And, like, they just didn't even bother. She can't act with her right hand for two seconds, signing something? Yeah, they used to, like, beat that out of kids. kids if they were writing with their left hand because it was the hand of the devil or something? Yeah, well, Juan is left-handed and his mom is right-handed, but she was forced to be in like the 50s, yeah.

Yeah, so like there's like a thing where it's like, you know, there's a lot more left-handed people now than there were before because now they're allowed to be left-handed. Weird. They were always left-handed. There's like allowed to be now. But anyway, so I don't recommend it. All right.

Counter- Recommendation by Taylor. I do recommend that it's a museum Battle of the Smithsonian, which is the second. of the museum movie also from 2009 where Amy Adams does an incredible job. I remember that. 10 out of 10. I have a clip.

I'll put it in the notes. It's great. So watch that. Don't watch Amelia Ear. It's so bad. I feel like also like just because Hillary Swank was in one movie where she had short hair, it doesn't mean she should be in every movie with short hair. I agree.

That's why they picture. So anyway, let's talk about our girl, Amelia Earhart. Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24th, 1897, and Atchikinson, Etchinson, Kansas. She's born in Kansas. She was a goddamn cutie patootie. She was a cute little girl, rambunbuckious, you know, like as you expect. Her father, Edwin, was a little bit of a drunk. He worked on the railroads as a lawyer. Her mother was from a pretty well-to-do family. They were like an American family that were like, we were in the Revolutionary War. We know what boats we came over on, all of those things. And she had a sister Grace, also cute, who was born in 1890 and lived to be nine, lived until 1998, which is fun. I was just to live for a long time. Amelia spent time back and forth with her grandparents and her parents. They would play a game where they were like pretending to fly.

You know, just she was really adventurous and kind of like, she was a lot of things in her book that I was reading were like, girls should be able to play sports. There's no reason they shouldn't be, you know, like things like that. Like it's silly that you don't let a girl exercise because that was like not what you were supposed to do back then. So she was more rambuchess than the usual. Her dad would get good job and then lose them.

because of the drinking. At one point he had a good job on a railroad and they traveled around the country and they had a Japanese butler which was like exotic and cool and he would like bring them things on the train which sounds really fun. Her mom would not leave her dad

even where her dad was like, you should leave me. I'm a drunk. I'm like not good for you. Her mom refused to leave him and she like really wanted to stay with him. When Amelia's grandparents died, the money was put into a trust for her

because nobody trusted the men in her life both her father and her uncle were drunk's alcohol and they were not able to take care of themselves or their families. But they were kind of aristocratic. Yeah, because her dad wasn't, her dad came from like a poor family, but the mom came from a nice family. So they definitely weren't, like, she works really hard, but she was never like poor. Man, that's what you got to do.

Marry up. Always marry up. Honestly, that's the dream. She went to high school in Iowa and in Chicago. It was a phoed ageing school. She kind of hated it. Like, she didn't really like it there. In 1917, during World War I, she traveled.

to Toronto where her sister was in school, and she saw the devastation and she became a nurse's aide for the Canadian Red Cross. So there she learned a little bit about flying from the men that she was taken care of after they had been, you know, injured in the war. So also a note in her biography that I added to the thing is like, she's like very flirtatious. She likes, she likes dudes. She's like kind of dating people. She's like, you know, meeting these guys. And they take her to air shows. You know, she starts to get interested in flying and like seeing it for the first time. she's in Canada, going to air shows with the Red Cross people, and she's starting to get interested in it. She gets the Spanish flu in 1918, and she needs to take a few months to rest.

So she will have sinus problems, kind of her entire life, which must be annoying on a plane. But I have a question for you, Fars. Do you know anything? I don't know. This is my, like, I didn't look this up. I decided to ask you for no reason. But do you think it's worse or better to be in a pressurized or a non-pressurized plane when your sinus is hurt? worse, right? I feel like the pressurized plane is worse. Yeah,

the pressure, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying the pressure plane is worse, yeah. I think so, too. So I don't think any of her planes were really pressurized that she was in. They were all pretty, like, low-flying planes. So imagine it, like, loud and you could, like, have the windows open. Sounds, okay, well, if you're trying to ask which one's better, that's so much more terrifying. I'd rather have the pain- I'm saying for your sinuses. Okay. Surely, if it's the comfort of your sinuses, overpowering your will to live, then, yeah, that's better.

Yeah. So she spent some time resting. In 1919, she goes back to the U.S. and enrolls in Columbia University to study medicine, which is cool because she's a woman studying medicine in 1919. She only stays about a year. She was never pursuing a degree. She was just kind of like taking classes. And then I looked it up because I was like, oh, okay, that sounds very casual, be able to do it at Columbia. In 1919, the tuition for undergrad was $200. Guess how much that's equivalent to? in 2024 um 43,000 dollars now wait hold on I have to look up so no no $200 from 1919 is $3,718 in 2024 money gets how much tuition is at Columbia this is such horseshit this is absolute horseshit I literally hate everyone tuition at Columbia is $66,000 I just watched a video of a woman saying that she had $70,000 in student loans and she just pulled up her statement. She's been paying on it forever. And she realized that she's down to like $65,000, but overall paid $120,000 in student loans so far.

It is just. That's where I am. I am, I'm finally hit my middle where I'm finally under the half, but I've been paying for 20 years. You know, it's crazy. I got, yeah, it's, I mean, my law school student loans. I mean, they will outlive. whoever inherits what is what meager estate i have left absolutely it's insane so that sucks everyone

sucks um but so now that she is she like leaves school she's kind of cute there there's like pictures of her that she would like climb the tower and like be a little adventurous there but she starts to think about flying and flying is pretty new right now like planes are open you know like you have like your little shield but like you are are open in the air um i also read a book about the Wright brothers. That was pretty interesting. And all this happens like really fast after they figure it out. One of the Wright brothers dies pretty young, but the other one lives to see the atomic bomb dropped. You know, like there's a lot. It happens pretty fast once they figure it out. I also had an idea for a TV show, have I told you this, called the Right

stuff with like W-R-I-G-H-T. And it's the Wright brothers just bumbling around because her sister Catherine was actually smarter than both of them. That's a good. I like this idea. Yeah, I thought that'd be cute. I know. So you can fly low and very slow right now. So like low, slow, and a lot of people are dying because it is dangerous and it is brand new. The first thing they tried to do, obviously, is like, how can we commercialize this?

So they wanted to use it for the post office. The first of the first 40 postal service flights, only nine survived. Humans are insane. Did you say this is 1919? Yeah. Was it a car, like, invented like 20 years ago? Like, barely, yeah. People are insane. They're like, what's next? The air. Yeah. And it's just very, very dangerous. And also, like, there was no way out. Like, no one parachuted out of a plane into 1921. So, like, they didn't even have parachutes. So, like, if your plane was crashing, there's nothing to do.

You couldn't inject, you couldn't get out of it. so amelia is um at columbia but not really loving it i wrote like she's she's i don't know she's special i lean towards cute but i mean cute like she's a she's a gem you know like i don't know if i kind of feel about her that i feel about like tony roosevelt like i love their like excitement in like their thirst for adventure she sounds like what what you would consider a whippersnapper yeah it's a whippersnapper that's pretty good it's a good one um i love that She leaves New York, goes to California to be with her parents. She convinced her dad to take her to some more air shows that go to one in Long Beach on December 28th, 1920.

And she had her first flight the next day with a pilot named Frank Hawks, which is a dope name for a pilot. And she said, quote, by the time I had got two or 300 feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly. And that's like her thing. She just like had to do it in her heart. And sometimes I'm like, people who climb out Everest and they die. I'm like, you're dumb. Like, why did you do that? You're stupid.

But, like, this time I'm like, she, like, needed to do this. This was like, we needed Amelia Earhart. Yeah, I wouldn't say, like, Sir Francis Edmonds or whatever is dumb. I mean, I think if you're doing it now because you're worth $3 million and are like, this is how I can get away with my wife and kids for six months. That's a stupid way to die. I think that is exactly right. I think it's like going down to the Titanic, that's a stupid way to die.

Right. but like the first people to do these things that are like really exciting like someone has to do it like why not her you know right so in california she got lessons from a woman named neta snook and she got her license um another thing that i'm not going to get into the details about are like airplanes but there's so many different airplanes being made and it's like very specific like if you are like a couple pounds overweight then like it's not going to work um you usually need to have a navigator and a pilot so the navigator can be like looking at the map looking at the stars looking at the wind doing all the things and the pilot actually controlling the plane. And you also have to own a plane. So it's an expensive hobby to have because you have to have a plane. She has a small trucking company with her friend. She has some odd jobs. In 1921, she buys a kinder-airster biplane. It's bright yellow. She calls her the canary. And that's when she buys like an aviator coat, you know, like what you think a jacket wearing. Yeah. And hers was like obviously new when she was embarrassed. So she slept in it, like stepped on it a bunch to make it look dirty like you do to look cooler.

I do get that actually because I almost bought an aviator jacket like a really authentic like wool and leather one. And I was like I look like the biggest asshole in the world wearing this thing. You got it. You have to earn it, I think. Yeah. So in October 22nd, 1922, she sets the record for altitude of female pilots at 14,000 feet. And a lot of this is like men are saying that women cannot be pilots. And actually, um, Juan's cousin's husband was in the merchant marines and he was saying or the coast guard and he was saying that like he thinks women make better pilots than men because of attention to detail and whatever it is like this is one of those million things where men didn't want women to do it you know and of course

yeah and of course they didn't want it to do it because of their periods really that's what it rolled down to yeah and amelia was like you know there are if a woman really really feels so on her period. She knows it and wouldn't pursue this. But everyone else, you never know. Like, we are having our periods all around you all the time and everything's fine. So she was definitely like talking about that. There are some things that she does talk about in her book about like you have to obviously have good eyesight. You have to have really good depth perception. That's really important to know how far away from the ground you are and how far away things are. So you also need to be able to stay awake a long time because you didn't really like have a co-pilot to switch out with.

you would just have to stay awake for these like 20-hour flights. So in 1924, all of the money from her mom's family is gone. Like she spent it on her things. Her dad has spent it like she just doesn't have an independent income anymore. So she tries to be a photographer. She got a video of oil sprouting in California and sold it to a real estate agent. So she like does little things. Her parents finally get a divorce.

And she moves to Boston and becomes a social worker at a place called Denison House. And she lives there with like, it's like, immigrant women and she loves it. She's learning a lot about different cultures. She's helping people. She really likes living there. In 1927, the Nazi Charles Limburg flew across the Atlantic. He was like the first person to do it. And other women wanted to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Not even like pilot, but like go across the Atlantic at all. Right. And one woman who really wanted to do it was a rich woman who had been born in the UK named Amy Guest. She lived in America now, was born in the UK and her kids were like you can't do it like she was a little bit older they were like no but so she

financed it and bought the plane and that plane was the friendship which is a dumb name for a plane it meant to symbolize a friendship between America and the UK sweet um but whatever so they wanted a cute girl to go on the trip to make it more like it's palatable yeah exactly about people will be able to see it so they found amelia because she was still joining flying organizations and Um, she people like knew who she was. She would fly out on the weekends. And so she was just a passenger on the friendship. She wasn't, she didn't fly at all. She really just like sat in the back. Like that's it. But, um, but she went. And the guy who got her to go was a publicist and book publisher named George Putnam. He was a person who like asked her to go and got her on the flight. The pilot was a man named Wilmer Stultz who would die the next year because he was flying drunk. And he, he killed himself in his two passengers, which is bad. She didn't recreationally fly. There was also a band named Lewis Gordon, who was like the navigator on the plane as well.

Before we left, she didn't really tell her parents that she was doing this, but she wrote them letters, and the letters, in the letters she assumed that she was going to die. And the letter showed her mother, it's intense, the letter short of her mother starts with, I'm sorry I had to pass out of the picture in such a way. But her mom was dead already. No, no, her mom wasn't dead. Oh, I thought there was an inheritance. Okay, no mind.

It was from her grandparents. Oh, got it. Okay, yeah, yeah. She wrote to her mom and her sister, and she was like, the letters were to be delivered if she didn't make it, kind of letters. But the flight left on June 17th, 1928. There were a few tries. One pilot had to leave because of the weights.

There was, like, one last person. The door opened in the beginning. People, like, almost fell out. Then they closed it, and everything was fine. It took 20 hours and 40 minutes, and they landed in Wales, which was fun because they were. we're kind of aiming for whatever. There was aiming for Europe.

And they landed in Wales and people are like kind of waiting for them. Like they could come out of the clouds at any time. And when they got back to the United States, there was a ticker tape parade. She was now fully a celebrity. Oh, good for her. Yeah. So in her book, she talks about air sickness and turbulence and people like being afraid of like being on planes and being afraid they're going to get sick. And something that she explains that makes sense is like, you know, if you are in a

boat and you're going slowly on the water, you feel this like drifting moving that might make you sick. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I'm doing this dance for you. It's like drifting moving. But when you're going fast on a boat, you're hitting the waves and the boat's going like boom, boom, boom, boom, you know? Right. And that's what a plane is doing. So when you are going slowly over the air, people get sick because it's going like, do, do, do, do. But when you're going fast, you get that really bumpy turbulence because you're going fast. I mean, how fast could a plane go back then? I have no idea. I can't look it up, but not as fast thing now. Probably not that fast. Yeah, of course.

But, you know, she's also, she talks about how it's almost, it's safer when you go faster. It's like when you are on a freeway, it's like harder to merge in, but once you're on the freeway, you know, it's like easier. So she kind of talks about flying like that. During this time, she's also BTW engaged to a nice young man named Samuel Chapman. He's a chemical engineer that she met when she was in Boston and he waited for her for a long-ass time, like, several years. She's now, but she's not a celebrity. She kind of pretended that she was still going to be a social worker. She moved to New York. She lived in a settlement house there where she would have met Francis Perkins, who we're going to talk about next week in regards to this her we're talking about next week, but Francis Perkins is the first woman cabinet member. She was

FDR, a secretary of labor. So we'll talk about her in a little bit. So she is working a lot with George Putnam, the publicist from before. He got her to endorse cigarettes, start her own casual fashion line. She always, like, looked really casual, but she worked really hard to look casual. She, like, curls her hair and, like, you know, it's a casual, but, like, hard, you know. It's like hips or chic now, well, I guess, like, 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, like, you know, wearing cool, casual clothes and being like, oh, she's so effortless,

but, like, it takes her a really fucking long time to get ready. Right. Right. She wrote her book. She wrote for Cosmopolitan Magazine. She was everywhere. And it was all because of George. So George got her all of these deals because she needed money to be able to actually to do the flying. So she would do like really fun things like fly across the country. And you hear like, Billy Earhart's flying across the country. And she would just like landed in people's farms and be like, where am I? And they'd be like Kentucky. And she'd be like, all right. See you later. And then like take off. Which is so fun. That's awesome. I love that. She invested in an airline that went between DC and New York. She was a vice president of National Airways, so she was, like, working in these, like, big organizations. Incidentally, the first commercial flights were between San Diego and Los Angeles, and they were, like, couches and non-pressurized planes, so probably really scary. So a big thing that is, like, her big thing, and maybe her entire thing, it's about flying, but it's also that women can do anything that men can do. And she showed that through flying.

She was in a bunch of races across the country. There was a woman's Air Derby in 1929. She got together with some other women pilots and said, should we start an organization? And 99 women signed up. So they called themselves the 99s. And Amelia was the president from 1931 to 1933. The 99s still exist in our female pilot organization.

Right now, there are about 6,000 members of the 99s. It's fun. Yeah, which is fun. She's in a lot of derbies. She's setting records on April 8, 1931. It's a world altitude record of 18,415 feet. That's a world record, not a woman record. She also doesn't mind if she loses.

She's just in it for the thing. She's excited for everyone. So she doesn't really show any, like, upset if she loses any of these things. Eventually, Amelia breaks up with Sam Chapman, who had been waiting for her to come back and settle down. He never got married. He just never loved anybody else. Do we know why? No.

He disappears into history. But Amelia is spending a lot of time with George Putnam, who we talked about earlier. He's a publicist. He's 10 years older than her. In the movie, he is Richard Gehr, which is actually pretty good, a pretty good likeness. And they don't mention this in the movie, but he's married when they meet. So George Putnam is married to a woman named Dorothy Binney. She seems super fun.

Dorothy is the daughter of the guy who invented Crayola crayons. she's rich and, like, can do whatever she wants. She's an ex- She's amazing. This is, yeah, he married her. She's the rich one. She lived exploring. She was a second woman in Oregon to vote.

They lived in Bend, Oregon, where our friend Christine lives. And they had two sons. Dorothy was, like, having an affair for, like, a long time. And something happened, and she left George in the middle of a party. She said, I'm leaving. And she flew to Reno to live. there for like six weeks and get a divorce, which is hilarious. So, and then she was married four times at her life. Her last husband died in 1951 and she lived until 1982. So she seems super

fun. She's got to like be a rich old lady exploring. But the three of them spent a lot of time together, Dorothy, George and Amelia. So when George and Dorothy divorced, it was like to no one's surprise that George wanted to marry Amelia, like immediately. Yes, for six times until she finally said yes. And it was clear that she wanted to be. equal partners and so at their wedding she sent him wrote him a letter that said like I don't want to be bound by medieval fidelity so she was basically like I need to live my life and like hopefully that's cool with you but she told them like on their wedding day and um it's oddly not on her wikipedia page

but it's like the main thing in the movie is that while amelia is married she does have an affair with a man named jean vidal who was played by you and mcgregor who is not british would they just let you and McGregor use his regular voice? It feels like they didn't really try that hard, so I'm going to forgive this. This one is probably more forgivable than having a gap in the teeth and then not having a gap in the teeth. Like, why don't you even bother with like getting them, like, why do they just wear their 2009 clothes, you know? And like, who cares? Why don't they just have cell phones if you're just going to like not care about anything?

Just flying like an airbus. Yeah, exactly. So she, I mean, my note was they spent a smidge too much time together and everybody kind of knew. Gene Vidal was a, he was a sports superstar in the 1920s. He played football for the Army at West Point. He was in the 1920 Olympics for track. It was in Antwerp, Belgium. So he seems like, you know, super cool.

She really liked him. She would, this is actually, this is weird. She would, like women's undergarments were uncomfortable on the plane. So she would wear his, his underwear. So, like, they're definitely having an affair because you don't do that with people. You're not having a fair way. And that's the point. But also, incidentally, she probably just peed her pants when she was lying.

Because being women is hard, and that's probably what she had to do. Lindberg peed in a can that he would throw out the window. And she probably just, like, beat her pants. But, so Gene Vidal's son, Gore Vidal, is an author who's pretty famous. I haven't read any of his books, but I do have a book that he wrote on President Lincoln that I'll read someday. But he always said that he wanted his dad to marry Amelia. He knew that they really loved each other. They became, you know, they were friends and Amelia got him a job at the, he was the director of aeronautics for the government.

He got that because Amelia asked Eleanor Roosevelt to give him that job. And whatever you're bored, you should YouTube Norman Mailer and Gorvindal. because they get into an outright fight on the Dick Cavett show in like the 1980s and it's really fun. It does sound fun. Because they're like intellectuals, but they're just like freaking staunch, stubborn old men. And so it's just fun.

Amazing. Anyway, she's definitely like having this fair. George probably knows. A lot of people probably know. And it's an exciting time to be, you know, later is the Bureau of Air Commerce that he is the director of. he was the first person to organize air traffic controllers and he had an idea that he was like everyone will get everyone will have a plane you know we'll have like a 700 plane everyone will fly everywhere people kind of made fun of him like that will never happen and also I want to mention that I'm glad that we didn't pick flying cars I just feel like that's I just I don't want that yeah no yeah I don't want that either you know um at some point FDR wanted to restructure the department and he was going to fire jean and amelia wrote a letter to eleanor that said I will stop publicly supporting FDR if you fire Jean from his job.

And in the book, the rumor is that Eleanor brought the letter to FDR and he laughed for like five minutes and then said, fine. Because if anyone understands trying to get your lover a job, it's FDR. Right. It's the Roosevelt's, you know? Right. So he was like, he was like fine. And she actually knows Eleanor pretty well. And I told the story, I think, in the Eleanor Hick episode, but they were at a party on April 20th, 1933.

and Eleanor was like, I've always wanted to fly. So in their evening gowns, with everyone was on the plane, George was there, Eleanor's brother, Hall was there. She took them out. She took them up in the air in the flew to Baltimore and back to D.C. And Eleanor got to sit in the cockpit with Amelia. And that is super fun. She tried to get her license, but FDR said no, because she couldn't have a plane. It reminds me a lot of the aviator where Hugh, what's his name?

Howard Hughes. he takes up Audrey Hepburn or something and that it is like private plane right Catherine Hepburn sounds kind of like that yeah totally yeah super fun and it's like again brand new which is I don't know crazy and fun Eleanor had an idea that maybe her and Amelia could travel around the country to go to Arthurdale which is where Eleanor had her like little village

to get people in Appalachia to get you know job training and all of that she wanted to go around with her which would have been super fun but that ended up not happening but that would have been real fun to see that happen the little tour but they stayed friends so here we have amelia airhart she's super famous it's the 1930s she wants to fly to paris she's done the trip across the atlantic with other people but now she wants to do it by herself she flies totally solo from the u.s she lands in londonderry north ireland which if you know is where the show dairy girls is located and that show is incredible. I've never seen that.

It's so cute. It's so good. So it has two seasons and Netflix. It's great. So she landed in London Derry, which again, so funny. She lands in a field and there's like these like Irish sheep herders being like, hello. It's so fun. She's like pop out of the clouds.

In 1935, she flew solo from Hawaii to Oakland. And Hawaii paid her to do this for like tourism and to get like on the map because Hawaii was not a state yet. they just wanted like so and people kind of criticize her for taking their money but she was like I need to fly and I can't do it for free you know like yeah I need to continue to do this and I continue to innovate and to these records so between 1930 and 1935 she set seven women's speed and distance records so she's like they're getting broken all the time kind of going back and forth and there are a lot of other women pilots but that she's breaking records which is magazines she's all over the place and 1935 the Purdue Purdue University

offers her a job as a technical advisor to a department of aeronautics because that was like a thing you could study at school you could take like flying lessons at school so with that she got funding for a new plane and she really wanted to work with only women and when they talked to her about like the grants that she'd been given she announced that she would quote she would now give neither time and nor funds to aid even deserving men unquote which I love and reminds me personally offended by this. It reminds me of when I told my last job in like in front of execs that I am

actively not quoting men in my presentations but I would work on finding a quote from a woman that would work for a presentation. Taylor, we got to stop being so honest. I was riled up. But she had a little dorm room at Purdue and the girls would like come over and like sit on the floor and they should talk about flying, which was like,

that's so fun. Yeah. I can't imagine how fun that would be. So she was doing that. She moved to California, her and George. She started a flying school with a friend of hers that lived in Toluca Lake, so like around that area. So now Amelia is about to turn 40. Not a lot of people know this because she keeps lying about her age. So they think she's like in her like early 30s, but she's 39. And the big thing

next is a trip around the world. So the first person to go around the world was reporter Nellie Bly, who is awesome. I read a book about her a while ago. She, um, there's also a really good drunk history about her because she like exposed all these things of the oil industry was doing in like the 1920s and then at the end they're like and then everything was fine and the oil industry was perfect and then they're like it's like trash and laughing because obviously everything's still terrible obviously not yeah but um she went by boat and steamship and train and all the things but now people want to fly and I think other people have done it like like men have done it but now she wants to to pilot around around the world so it takes an insane amount of planning you need

people at each stop to like be ready to have the right parts to have the right radio to have all these things you really need like the best of the best and it's really expensive um she ended up with a navigator named fred noonan he was great at his job he was one of the best navigators out there he had just divorced and remarried he was a merchant marine in world war one he was a navigator for pan am he was 44 years old so he was you know really like the best that navigator that she could get the flight is going to have stops there is an option to mid-air refuel but amelia hadn't really done that so they didn't want to count on that they wanted to be able to like stop at different islands in different places and um and refuel and get repairs and like whatever they needed but fred would be in the back of the plane and he would use the stars and like the wind and his maps and all this stuff to figure out exactly where they were because there's something that you have to do with like latitude and longitude and figuring out to help figure out like where you are in the sky he would sit all the way in the back and she was sitting in the front and they had like a like a string between them and they were just like put messages through it to talk to each other why do you have to be all the way in the back because he had like a little desk back there he needed a lot of room because he had like charts and maps and stuff so all right yeah um so on march 17th 1937 they flew from oakland to honolulu they had another another person on the plane with him a technical person um and they landed in hattalulu the plane took three days to be serviced, and then they were taking off from Honolulu to go west across

the world, and the takeoff failed, the crashed. So they say the landing gear went bad, maybe a tire blue, but it kind of landed nose first and skid it on the runway. In the movie, they say that she saved the day, that it was like her decision, which makes me feel like it's not true because that movie is so terrible, that it might have been her fault. Does anything that is in the movie is not believable this point? But the fact, I'm like, eh, I'm thinking it was also like, they were also saying during this time, like, she had fully broken up with, with Jean and was just with George. I don't think she ever really broke up with Jean. I think they were both still, like, pretty committed to her.

And they both still loved her. But so now it's going to take a couple months to fix this plane that just got, that just got kind of messed up on the runway. So due to weather, because like monsoon season is starting around the world, to talk about, like, the weather everywhere, they decided to go east. so instead of going west around the world they're going to go east around the world they kind of stuck from oakland to miami and they left miami on june 1st 1937 this time it's just fred and amelia and they're in her electro plane they fly over like down over south america over africa and india which is really cool like they are in these places that they never would have gone to you know they're landing like the middle of the of the desert in africa and there's people there you know and they're like excited and they're like excited and they're like they're get for gifts and like it's cool for everyone involved to be like oh my god there's a plane i don't know what this is you know they're flying everywhere um they um so i think that is i think that's super fun and also like you know she's just reporting back and at different places and like telling people where she is so they're kind of just waiting and waiting for her to check in so they do

22,000 miles together and they are 28 days in to their trip around the world they're in lay new guinea and on june 29th they are to set off the last leg of the trip they only have 7000 miles left just to go over the pacific and land in california so there's something that's like the hardest part though isn't it it's a big part and there's nowhere to stop there's like very few islands on the way like you that's why they were thinking of doing the mid-air refuel but like they decided not to do that because she didn't know how so they were like there's it's risky but it's like the end she had like speaking engagements on july 4th like she was like i'll be there soon like i'm this is my last leg so some other things some things are happening that like aren't 100% clear

and are all speculation but like she's always been willing to take risks with the weather so she'll take off and other fires won't because of like fog and rain and stuff so she's willing to take a little bit of risk that way the radio that they have isn't perfect there's something that is like new about it is like a circular radio that you can see on top of her plane in photos and it only like broadcasts on two different waves and they don't have a way to receive Morse code they like had the Morse code radio but then she was like we're not very good at it it's just extra weight let's get rid of it so she they got rid of that so they didn't have that um also there's something that she might have been upset about but no one knows what it is so she allegedly called George and said that like

she was having a personnel problem and she didn't give details but the they that people think it means that fred was drinking and that she was worried about his ability to navigate them home but she was like i can take care of it it's fine and so then they also like maybe it was a personal problem maybe like they just heard it wrong or whatever but um we'll never know what happened but she might have been a little bit nervous but like no one is no one will ever know so they should have taken them 20 hours to get from New Guinea to California. The wind, the headwind coming towards them was worse than they thought, so they were to need more gas than they had.

But they weren't able to tell them that because the radios were kind of messed up. So they tried to land at the Howland Islands, which are kind of like a tiny, tiny island in between. And there was a Taska, which was like a ship that was near there. She would, her radio really wasn't working, but she kind of kind of got through a couple times. And some of the last things that she said at 7.30 a.m. state time, she said, Earhart on Northwest says running out of gas, only half hour left, can't hear us at all.

We hear her. And we're sending, this is what they said. They said, she can't hear us. We hear her. We're sending on 3105 and 500 same time constantly. So they're constantly trying to radio her to tell her where to go. And they know that he's running out of gas because they heard her say that. But they can't hear her because of something wrong with the radio.

video. The last thing they hear from her is she says, K-H-A-Q-Q, that's her plane. Ateska, we must be on you, but we cannot see you. Gas is running low, but unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet. So they couldn't, she, they couldn't find the island there was supposed to be to land on, you know? They crossed the international date line so that might have made friends navigation wrong because you had to like, your clock had to be perfect based on the stars, like based on all these things. And like, so maybe, that was why, but they were lost. They couldn't find this island

they were supposed to stop on. Her last transmission was at 843am Pacific time. She said, we are on the line 157-337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat on 6-210 kiloticles. Wait, and that was it. They never heard from her or fred

again. People say that they heard her hit the button a little bit, because of an emergency just like hit the button a bunch. if you can't get through some people say they heard that they did have a boat they did not have parachutes i don't think um and they had joked about like landing on desert island or landing in the jungle and like being able to take care of themselves so there is an island called the phoenix islands that people say was uninhabited and then there was like evidence that maybe someone had been there

and like maybe they had landed there but there's no one's ever found this plane i'll check the news and other ones, but, you know, people haven't found the plane at least like 100 in the last 100 years. Some people say that, so it was the most expensive search ever put on by the U.S. government. It cost $4 million in that time. The search was over by July 19th, and she was declared dead on January 5th, 1939, so two years later, so that Putton could manage her money and, like, settle all of her affairs. So what happened is they probably just ran out of gas and sending to the ocean. That's like a probably what happened. People have ideas and like conspiracy theories. Like maybe the Japanese took her and shot her down. A woman said that she saw them get executed in Japan, but like that's probably not true. No one else saw that. Someone said they heard a radio transmission and they heard the words California and closet. And the they think that that means because she had said to someone, I think her sister that, if she died, her sister needed to burn all of the letters in her closet, which is so hilarious

because that would be like me calling you and being like, farce. You have to delete my browser history if I die. It's already written in stone, Taylor. You don't have to call me. Thank you. So that's fun. People think that they were spies. Maybe they had a new identity, like all those quite silly things. But really, they probably just crashed and it was dangerous, you know. And they were always, you know, it was dangerous. That's all. One thing I heard was that they, on some weird remote island, it's uninhabited, they found, I'm like piecing together a very distant memory, so I'm probably wrong about all that. But apparently, she had freckles and having freckles was sort of bad back then, and so she used like vanishing cream on freckles. And apparently some country was going to build an air strip on this island that was uninhabited.

and they found this like 1930s whatever vanishing cream on there and they found like something that could have resembled human remains on it was like very very ancient and old and what they also found was that the island was inhabited by like legions of stone crab or coconut crabs which are land dwelling crabs that are huge

like they're like the size of like a large dog and they're incredibly vicious and powerful and they are known to rip mammal to shreds when they catch them and consume them. And so there was a theory that maybe she landed on this island and when she was asleep, that's when the stone crabs come out or coconut crabs come out and might just destroyed her and killed her that way. Not on that.

Whoa. I mean, that's crazy. But I love the vanishing cream thing. That's fun. Is that true? I have no idea. I look at it.

Let me look out. I could, again, like I'm pulling a very disdemeanor out. Yeah. Huh? Amelia Earhart's anti-frecko cream jar possibly found. Okay. There you go. Yeah. It, oh, that's cool. Wait, what is this from? NBC News 2012. I'll put it in the notes. Cool.

I mean, I think it's so, it's so fun. It's such an adventure story, you know. And then like, you know, every little girl wants to be, who wants to be an adventure. You know, you imagine yourself like Amelia Earhart. She wanted to fly and she wanted to show the world that she could and that women could and she did she made it happen she knew the risks she knew that what she was doing was dangerous but she knew that she had to do it um and i think she'd be happy with the way that you know she went out she lived like a gangster she went out like a gangster like i look at that life i'm like nothing about that appeals to me i am a coward i know i'm a coward i want to stay a coward i

will never risk my life needlessly and i'm totally fine with that but god bless people that will Oh my gosh, it's so funny. Yeah, I love it. It's so fun. I love her. I'm so happy that she, you know, is this fun. It's a fun mystery for everyone. It's a fun idol to have being like, have a dream and do it, even though people tell you you can't, you know, work really hard.

And do you think someone's done before. Freaking cool. Yeah, I love it. Love it. I love it. Also, I misspoke. It's Sir Edmund Hillary was the Mount Everest guy. And the Tensig Norgay.

was the poor Sherpa that schlepped all his shit up to the top of Everest on his spot who have to do all of the work and I'm rich people follow them

yes totally that's awesome thank you I was excited it was very fun to learn about to learn about her it was fun to read her book

and hear from her and like hear her path and just all the cool the cool shit that she did yeah she was always like in the periphery of like you know people in history that I looked at and was like you gotta be nuts like you gotta be kind of nuts like Taylor like I thought about it recently because I went back

and started looking at that Malaysian airline 370 or whatever and like what happened to it or who knows what happened to it but um flying across Atlantic today is scary to me no I know me too. And we have like, and it's like very nice. Like I have, I literally got two Xanax pills for my doctor who'd only give me two. So I could take one on the way to Japan and on the way back from Japan. And they serve you wine and meals. And like, yeah, but even now I get because I'm like, we're like a self-contained city. Like these are the people that I could die with tonight. Like you don't know. I was looking at them. I'm like, before on the island, are we going to be friends or not? Are you going to be partners? Or are you going to be partners? Or are

are you going to be a problem. Right. Right. Got to deal with the problem. It's like I'm your flight attendant. Please stop talking like that. Um, very cool. Taylor. Thank you so much for sharing. Very fun. I'm sure Mid Journey is going to come up with some really interesting AI art around this, which is I got some cute ones, but I will do, I'll do maybe be eating by crabs on an island. I mean, look that up. Like I swear I remember that. I see it. Yeah. Because again, because nobody actually knows what happened we just like kind of hold on to whatever evidence we can get and I heard that was like

that's as plausible as anything else yeah it looks like they might have boiled water and jars and I don't know we just won't know there you go cool well thanks far as I think it's everyone for listening if you have I have some more women's history month

stories coming but if you have anything that you any ideas or thoughts please let us know at doom to philpod at gmail.com if you're going to Dan Carlin's show on the 21st in LA tell me um i'm super excited about that and we're on the socials at doom to fill a pod lovely well said um cool so i'll go ahead and cut this off and