Noble Blood - "The Apple is Ripe; Pick It Now Or It Will Rot"
Episode Date: September 1, 2026Leopoldina married into the royal family of Portugal, which meant moving to Brazil with her husband. But civil war was bubbling on both sides of the Atlantic, and while her husband was out of town and... Leopoldina was serving as Princess Regent, she would be faced with making a fateful decision that would define the future of her country. Support Noble Blood:—ORDER 'THE ARCANE ARTS'— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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This is an I-heart podcast.
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What up, y'all?
This your main man, Memphis Bleak right here,
host of that rock solid podcast.
And each week, we bring in you exclusive looks inside music.
Everything happening inside the culture.
Some of the best conversations were the biggest names in the game.
You had a little bit more pressure to be good.
And they didn't care if you was a girl.
Like, you wasn't getting no points.
If you're not trash, you better be not just good.
You better be great.
Listen to Rock Solid on Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you streamed podcasts.
In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Patra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide.
Dear honies, this is goodbye.
By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead.
Next stop, Wonderland.
Why did they do it?
And what did it do to the people they left behind?
Listen to Death of an Artist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky.
Listener discretion advised.
Call it coincidence.
Call it destiny.
Call it the inevitable escalation of transatlantic colonization.
but to Princess Leopoldina, the whole predicament was a royal pain.
On the morning of September 2, 1822, as she marched through her palace in Brazil,
in order to meet with her top advisor and Council of State,
the cruel irony of her situation was surely not lost on her.
The decree that she had just received from Portugal pitted Leopoldina's
past against her present. Her innermost desires against the strictures of her station,
because she was a princess caught between worlds. Leopoldina had grown up in a sprawling
imperial palace in Vienna, Austria, but the hall in which she was hunkering down to strategize
with that September was in the relatively quaint royal residence known as Kinta de
La Boa Vista in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Leopoldina lived there with her husband, Dom Pedro I,
who was Prince Regent of Brazil and heir to the Portuguese throne. Except his family's status
had been getting increasingly shaky on both sides of the Atlantic, with a potential revolution
brewing back in Portugal. At this point, Leopoldina's husband wasn't even,
with her in the palace in Rio de Janeiro. He was off in Sao Paulo, since there were also
civil war tensions for him to try and quell throughout Brazil. Although Dom Pedro was reportedly not
a particularly skilled ruler, he had at least had the sense to name his insightful wife as acting
princess regent while he was out of town, meaning she was temporarily in charge. She was temporarily in
of the entire kingdom of Brazil.
But if she had any grand plans
for overhauling flawed judicial systems,
enacting sweeping public measures,
or even sprucing up her beloved stables,
she would hardly get the chance.
Because a little over two weeks into her regency,
the Portuguese Parliament sent a decree,
and they demanded that Dom Pedro immediately return
to Portugal. What would Leopoldina do? On the one hand, she yearned to go back to Europe and be closer
to home. On the other hand, agreeing to leave Brazil carried immense risk. Because this was no
cordial request for a family reunion. The aggressive message represented the culmination of years
of fierce tension between liberal-leaning political factions,
conniving parliamentary representatives and Don Pedro's royal family.
And in a frantic window that encapsulated Leopoldina's fraught life,
it was up to her to find a favorable path forward
between adopted cultures and warring empires.
Leopoldina called her emergency morning meeting,
knowing that an entire country's sovereignty, along with major dynastic implications and countless
lives, all hung in the balance. Ratcheting up the pressure even further was the fact that she had
only mere hours to make her momentous decision. As Leopoldina had found countless times before
in her life, life as a princess was no fairy tale. I'm Dana Schwed.
and this is noble blood.
Leopoldina had not met her husband prior to their marriage.
Don Pedro I was a pretty big deal, and he had to be,
because Maria Leopoldina, as she would later be called in Brazil,
came from an exceedingly noble line herself,
the famed Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty.
Leopoldina's father was the last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
Her mother had the distinction of being the,
the first empress of Austria. Leopoldina's many siblings had numerous titles and crowns,
and her sister Maria Louise had even married Napoleon Bonaparte. In short, Leopoldina's family
ran a large amount of Europe, and in the Portuguese house of Braganza, they had seemingly selected
a worthy groom. Prince Pedro, later known as Dom Pedro I, was
heir to the throne that ruled Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. However, in the years leading up
to marriage negotiations, his family had become heavily reliant on the British, having sought
their protection when the French army had invaded Portugal back in 1807. The perceived danger back
then was so extreme that the royal family had fully fled to go live in Brazil. But even from across
the Atlantic, like so many other powerful houses at that time, Don Pedro's family looked to
solidify their sovereign position through strategic marriages. Per many sources, Leopoldina had received
a stellar education while growing up in Shonbrun Palace, and she no doubt would have been
aware of the typical marital trajectories of princesses. That said, according to many of her
surviving letters, the marriage that her parents arranged for her was especially daunting,
because, again, the Portuguese royal family was living in Brazil at this time. So marrying
Prince Pedro meant moving to an entirely new continent. Not only did Leopoldina, the 20-year-old
bride, never meet the 19-year-old Don Pedro before the wedding, she didn't even meet him at
the wedding. He remained in Rio de Janeiro and sent an emissary to Vienna, the Marquis of
Marialva. The arrival of the Marquis was reportedly met with great fanfare. Leopoldina's written
recollections suggest a much more wary, personal attitude, but the Marquis apparently charmed her
with charisma and several lavish gifts. These included a glitzy diamond-stil.
studded necklace that contained a small painted portrait of Dom Pedro.
Thankfully, he seemed handsome enough.
More importantly, the Marquis reportedly assured Leopoldina that Dom Pedro was intelligent,
thoughtful, and cultured.
This seemed to boost her optimism prior to the wedding, and on May 13, 1817,
she participated in a marriage by proxy,
in which her uncle acted as a stand-in for the groom.
With the formalities completed,
Leopoldina prepared for her voyage overseas
with apparent enthusiasm.
She assembled a large entourage, invited scientists,
started learning Portuguese,
and even packed up a sizable amount of botanical specimens.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian court prepared to greet
their new princess. According to several accounts, news of her arrival spawned a wide range of reactions,
both among the nobility and the larger populace. While there was a general curiosity about the
powerful princess sailing their way, there was also trepidation. This was largely due to the fact
that, like in other South American countries at this time, there were steady rumbling,
of dissatisfaction with the overall monarchical system.
Even so, the possibility that Leopoldina might provide an heir to the throne
also did purportedly help ease widespread worries about a future succession crisis.
Leopoldina finally arrived in Rio in November of 1817,
and after all the buildup, things actually seemed to go.
fairly well. Multiple historians mention that for both newlyweds, their partner didn't exactly
meet initial expectations. To Leopoldina, Dom Pedro wasn't as cultured or intellectually curious as
she'd been told, but at least he shared her passions for horseback riding and hunting,
and the two spent many a morning out exploring together. Likewise, to Dom Pedro, his court and
the Brazilian public, Leopoldina supposedly wasn't as beautiful a princess as they had hoped,
but many were impressed by her intelligence, outdoorsiness, and interest in the people and natural wonders
of her new home. Leopoldina's correspondence with her sister at this time suggested a desire to
make the best of her match and to grow to love Dom Pedro, whether she ever truly,
truly felt such a level of affection is debatable, but evidently the royal couple did diligently
start trying to have children. Sadly, the good times, or at least the relatively better times,
couldn't last. After giving birth to a daughter in 1819, Leopoldina suffered through two tragic
miscarriages. Per many scholarly sources, her grief over her pregnancy losses was dramatic.
dramatically compounded by all of the familial and societal pressure placed on her to produce a male heir.
To further magnify Leopoldina's stress, she discovered Dom Pedro to be something of an insatiable philanderer,
even by exceedingly powerful prince standards. The degree to which he attempted to hide his extramarital
affairs from his wife seems a bit murky, but judging by her surviving writings, it didn't take
long for her to catch on and find out that his near-constant acts of infidelity had produced
and would continue to produce many children outside of wedlock. Leopoldina reportedly withdrew
from public appearances, feeling depressed and isolated so far from her.
Austrian friends, family, and culture. At this point, few to none would have probably guessed
she would ever have an outsized impact on world history. But while Leopoldina's personal life
spiraled, tensions between Brazil and Portugal escalated, putting her on a collision course with a
life-defining dilemma. As Leopoldina would have likely known from her years of thorough schooling,
the last few centuries of Brazilian history had been tumultuous. In very brief terms, the Portuguese
had arrived in the 16th century and rapidly realized the value of the land's natural resources.
They sought to seize as much territory as possible through negotiations and outright
violence against native tribes, and, similar to tragic cases in other parts of the Americas,
European diseases they carried wiped out vast numbers of the local populations.
The most profitable export at the time was refined sugar, and the Portuguese fought off
corresponding French and Spanish colonizing forces to gain control over both the sugar trade
and Brazil.
This ultimately allowed Dom Pedro's family to reign over Portugal and its forcibly taken colony
of Brazil.
However, things got dicey in 1807 when Napoleon's army invaded Portugal for refusing to join
a large-scale embargo of the United Kingdom, which must have made certain family discussions
awkward later on, since Leopoldina's sister, Marie-Louise, had become Napoleon's second wife
a few years after that invasion. Dom Pedro's father, King John VI of Portugal, negotiated with the
British to provide naval protection, and he fled to Brazil with his family and a good portion of his
court. Napoleon was defeated in 1815, but by then, he, he was defeated.
King John the 6th still viewed it as safer to maintain his capital in Rio de Janeiro,
so he upgraded Brazil from a colony to a full kingdom.
Did this sudden promotion of a country sit well with political elites back in Portugal?
It did not.
A liberal revolution kicked off in 1820,
The Portuguese Parliament, known as the Cortez,
demanded that Dom Pedro's father come back
to basically agree to the constitution that they were creating.
King John acquiesced and returned to Portugal,
leaving Dom Pedro behind in Brazil as Prince Regent in 1821.
While this increased Dom Pedro and Leopoldina's clout to a degree,
she was no dummy. She knew King John leaving Brazil was all around bad news for her. On a personal level,
she had reportedly formed a close, trusting bond with her father-in-law, so his departure was an
emotional blow. Furthermore, some biographers have suggested that after King John left,
Dom Pedro had even more leeway to get into his various womanizing escapade.
On a political level, Leopoldina also knew that the king returning to Portugal was only the start of more trouble.
After all, she had grown up learning about the French Revolution, and several modern scholars point out that she had something of a morbid fascination with her great aunt Marie Antoinette and her public execution.
In other words, Leopoldina was well aware that once a...
a revolution got going, royal heads might roll. Her husband, Dom Pedro, didn't seem to have the same
historical acumen and sense of foreboding. He sent his father a letter, basically begging to be able to
also return to Portugal. King John the 6th was apparently strongly against that because he wanted
their family's control of Brazil to continue to appear solid. This turn to
turned out to be a tall task, especially since the influential members of the Cortez in Portugal
allegedly openly mocked Dom Pedro and started issuing numerous decrees aimed at
re-subordinating Brazil by weakening its provinces and new leader.
The general consensus among historians seems to be that Leopoldina had by then shown a fair
amount of support toward the Brazilian side of the standoff. She publicly backed the growing group
of Brazilian-born and Portuguese-born residents in Brazil, who were furious about Portugal's intention
to demote them from a kingdom back into a colony. But it wasn't as simple as just ignoring all
the Portuguese posturing. The Portuguese Cortez still controlled a sizable,
military force in Brazil. Leopoldina supposedly witnessed skirmishes between these soldiers and her
subjects and urged Don Pedro to prevent the conflict from igniting a full-blown civil war.
In 1822, fearing exactly that, Don Pedro traveled to San Paulo to try to block the province from
separating from the kingdom. Before leaving Rio, he put Leopoldina in charge.
charge as Princess Regents. And now we're catching up to the introduction of today's episode.
Less than three weeks after Leopoldina was made Princess Regent, the Cortez sent their decree
demanding Dom Pedro's return to Portugal. And in doing so, they saddled Leopoldina with an awful
choice. Because as much as the message was essentially an ultimatum from the leaders of the revolution
saying, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, it also offered the homesick Princess Regent
which she'd been so desperately desiring. This was Leopoldina's chance to finally return to her family
and friends, to reconnect with her studious peers, to get more support and feel less
isolated and lonely with only her philandering husband.
And yet, on that fateful morning in 1822,
Leopoldina met with the Council of State at her Quinta de Boa Vista Palace
and made her position clear.
She insisted that she and Don Pedro must stay in Brazil.
Sources disagree about the specifics of her subsequent actions.
Some claim that to rapidly marshal support, given the threat of Portugal's military,
Leopoldina signed an initial decree, stating that Brazil was separate from Portugal.
Others emphasized that she announced this plan and then sent a passionate message to Dom Pedro,
detailing how he should enact it.
This message included the memorable line,
The Apple is ripe.
Pick it now, or it's.
will rot. Most chronicles then seemed to be in agreement that Leopoldina worked closely with the top
advisor and compiled a convincing collection of materials to send along to Dom Pedro. It contained letters
from both of them, the communication from the Cortez, and papers outlining the latest criticisms of her
husband echoing throughout Lisbon, such as politicians snide references to the prince as an adolescent.
These documents reached Don Pedro on September 7th, while he and his party camped at the Iparanga
Brook near San Paulo, and the documents achieved their desired effect. Don Pedro allegedly
brandished his sword and delivered what would become known as the cry of Iperanga, an emphatic
proclamation in which he shouted,
Independence or death.
There were still plenty of official documents and ceremonies to sort out following that
verbal declaration.
But in the context of our story, perhaps the most intriguing question is, what pushed
Leopoldina to choose that path?
Once again, historians disagree.
Some argue that she'd become fully emotional.
invested in the struggles of her adopted homeland and its people. Others are wary of ascribing
too much broad altruism to Leopoldina's decision-making, commenting that such an inclination
might be more a reflection of modern values and societal tendencies to retroactively reframe events,
rather than it being a sufficiently nuanced explanation for what Leopoldina was experiencing at the
time. Many of those researchers also suggest that Leopoldina's choice to stay in Brazil and declare
independence could just as well have stemmed from more opportunistic or fear-based motivations.
She was reportedly certain that agreeing to the latest Cortez decree and returning to Europe
would erode her husband's power. Such a submissive move would put him, and by extension,
her in danger of losing their status, if not their lives,
because again Leopoldina was apparently fixated on avoiding the revolution-fueled fate of Marie Antoinette.
Signs also point toward Leopoldina having had a grasp of the massive economic implications
of the Kingdom of Brazil being downgraded to a colony,
since that would have likely upended the country's tax policies and trade agreements.
It would have had drastic effects on Brazilian's lives,
and especially given that anti-monarchy sentiments were rippling throughout other parts of South America,
such a downturn could tank her solid levels of recent popularity,
which, once again, might have made it harder to keep her royal head,
firmly attached to her royal neck.
So ultimately, whether it came down to benevolence,
newfound patriotism, or practical self-preservation,
or possibly all of the above,
Leopoldina's decision proved to be a savvy one.
Her husband officially declared independence
in a letter to his father on September 22, 1822,
and he gave himself the new title of Emperor,
which made Leopoldina an empress.
Bloody battles commenced between Portuguese and Brazilian forces,
but ultimately, Portugal could not sustain a costly war from across the Atlantic.
The last Portuguese troops left in 1824,
and by 1825, Portugal signed the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro to recognize Brazil as independent.
Leopoldina had obviously played a vital part in this massive paradigm shift,
but it came at quite a personal cost.
As if missing out on reuniting with her family wasn't punishment enough,
her relationship with Dom Pedro continued to deteriorate.
Rather than being thankful to his astute wife for her perceptive actions during her time in charge,
Don Pedro instead became increasingly infatuated with one of his mistresses.
Sources show that he bestowed various titles on her and her family and gifted them valuable possessions and land.
At one point in a move that was either wildly naive or cruelly aggravating,
Dumpedro even tried to make his mistress one of his wives' ladies-in-waiting.
This sort of treatment prompted Leopoldina to run.
to her sister that,
The seductive monster is the cause of all my misfortunes.
Even so, Leopoldina went on to have more children,
including a son and heir to Dom Pedro's throne.
Don Pedro would actually inherit the kingdom of Portugal
from his father in March of 1826,
but because he couldn't hold both the Brazilian and Portuguese thrones,
he abdicated Portugal in May in favor of his eldest daughter.
daughter. Leopoldina, ever so briefly Queen of Portugal, would not survive the year.
She suffered grave complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, and in 1826, reportedly died
in feverish agony after a bout of sepsis. She was only 29 years old.
It's worth noting that Brazilian independence was not necessarily an immediate win for
for the common people.
As several historians and writers are careful to underline,
many influential and wealthy individuals in Brazil
were tired of European oversight,
but did not want the national power structure
to change so dramatically that it upended their favorable place within society.
Brazil's agricultural economy was a particular focal point.
Fundamentally, those who profited from the sugar,
trade, which was heavily reliant on slavery, didn't want monarchs or emerging governing bodies
controlling their fortunes from a different continent. Yet they were evidently fine with more
locally based rulers like Dompadro and Leopoldina, who would let them continue on with, quote-unquote,
business as usual. That's not to say that Leopoldina wholeheartedly condoned the overall status
quo in Brazil. In fact, some of her correspondence signals the opposite. Nevertheless, it's hard to
deny that whether it was luck or conscious planning, she clearly took advantage of common
Brazilian's anti-authoritarian anger being mostly projected towards elites back in Portugal.
Relatedly, there is something of a debate between historians over whether Leopoldina's excellent
reputation received the biggest boost from her contributions as a ruler, her adept political moves,
an inherent level of likability, or her proximity to other monarchs who made her look better by
comparison. In the end, regardless of whether Leopoldina was truly a champion of the masses
or a pragmatist who knew how to align herself, she left behind a fascinating legacy.
For one thing, thanks to her keen interest in science and avid support of several scientific missions throughout Brazil,
she helped spark enlightening research in multiple fields there, especially botany and geology.
Leopoldina's children also continued her family's long-standing tradition of sitting in the highest seats of power.
Her daughter eventually became Maria the second queen of Portugal.
and her son, Don Pedro II, ruled Brazil as emperor for nearly 58 years,
and was given the epithet, the magnanimous, in recognition of his stable, prosperous, and diplomatic reign.
Interestingly, Leopoldina's role in Brazilian independence has seemingly gone through quite the evolution.
Many 19th century historians treated Leopoldina as something of a footnote.
or passive character in Don Pedro's story.
However, over time, histories have increasingly featured her as more of a protagonist,
whose proactivity had an immense influence on her adopted country.
Leopoldina's letters to family back in Europe, particularly to her sister and father,
have been the key in the endeavor to better understand Leopoldina and her short but eventful reign.
as the letters reveal both a tragic emotional journey and a brilliant political mind.
Leopoldina's death was mourned by millions, many of whom refer to her as the mother of Brazil.
Though she is perhaps not quite as widely known in modern Brazil, her name still carries lasting popularity.
Leopoldina has served as inspiration for plays, musicals, TV shows, and movies.
according to one research professor,
the prominent role of Leopoldina
in the wildly popular soap opera,
Novo Mundo,
is actually a telling symbol
of shifting cultural perspectives,
as well as an intriguing lens
of contemporary feminism.
Sadly for Leopoldina,
she had never been able to return
to her family in Austria.
She died as a unique leader
to the Brazilian people,
but one who suffered an exceedingly painful end.
Still, in terms of the ratio between a ruler's time-wielding absolute power
and their impact on a country's history,
it's hard to argue that there have been many more influential individuals
than Empress Leopoldina.
Although in a fascinating historical parallel,
another Princess Regent of Brazil
might give Leopoldina a run for her money
when calculating a monarch's momentous achievements per days in charge.
Because while Leopoldina's son, Emperor Dom Pedro II,
was a longtime supporter of abolishing slavery throughout the country,
it was actually his daughter, Donya Isabel,
who signed the abolition of slavery into law
while her father was away in Europe and she was acting as regent,
meaning that Leopoldina and her granddaughter presided over
two of the biggest inflection points in Brazilian history.
That is the striking story of Empress Leopoldina,
but stick around after a brief sponsor break
to hear about a decades-long controversy
regarding the real cause of her death.
Dear honies, this is goodbye.
In February of 2024,
celebrated illustrator and children's book author,
Patramathers, and her husband Michael,
mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members
to let them know that they had taken.
died by suicide.
By the time you get to Schleaderbo, Petra and I will be dead.
Next stop, Wonderland.
Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love.
Why did they do it?
And what did it do to the people they left behind?
I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known.
I keep coming back to I truly hope that Petra was 1,000% on board with the plan.
Do you think of him as having killed her?
Yes, I do.
I hold Michael responsible for my mother's staff.
I'm Leon Nafak.
And I'm Alice Gregory.
Together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patriot and Michael's letters,
as one married couple trying to understand another.
Listen to Death of an Artist on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
What up, y'all, this your main man, Memphis Bleak right here,
host of that rock solid podcast.
And each week, we bring in you exclusive looks.
It's inside music.
Everything happening inside the culture.
Some of the best conversations were the biggest names in the game.
You had a little bit more pressure to be good.
And they didn't care if you was a girl.
Like, you wasn't getting no points because you was a girl.
If you're not trash, you better be, not just good, you better be great.
On rock silent, we talk in the rap legends, hit making producers, rising stars from the golden era
to the future of this hip-hop game, where we keep it 100% unfiltered and keep it nothing but
Rock Solid, yeah.
The thing about Jay, my opinion, is he's been so great at being seen but mysterious.
You know what I'm saying?
He don't got to come talk about anything.
Nothing.
You figure it out.
So it's always a mystique and mysteriousness behind them, but it ain't like you don't see him.
Listen to Rock Solid on Black Effect Podcast Network, I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you streamed podcast.
Leopoldina reportedly died in 1826 due to her declining health while she had been pregnant
and then further side effects from an ensuing miscarriage.
However, there is a theory within some corners of the scholarly community that the Empress
was in fact murdered.
Several prominent historians of both South American and European backgrounds have argued
that Leopoldina died after her.
her husband, Don Pedro, physically assaulted her. Proponents of this theory point to a reception he
held on November 20, 1826. The celebration was supposed to involve a hand-kissing ceremony,
in which Don Pedro expected both Leopoldina and his favorite mistress to accompany him,
as this would essentially amount to Leopoldina formally recognizing her husband's lover,
she purportedly refused to participate.
As the story goes, Don Pedro then flew into a rage
and attacked her while they were alone,
causing injuries that ultimately killed her.
Scientists actually exhumed Leopoldina's remains in 2012
and didn't seem to find conclusive evidence
to support the murder hypothesis,
at least not in terms of detectable damage to her skeleton.
That said, a copy of a last letter that Leopoldina supposedly wrote to her sister did surface about eight years after her death.
In it, she detailed the alleged attack by Don Pedro.
In the nearly two centuries since, though, many scholars have either declared the letter to be an outright fake
or a real work that was nevertheless of questionable credibility
since it was dictated to a select few individuals
who were indebted or extremely loyal to Leopoldina.
All in all, the current sentiment among researchers
seems to still mostly be that she died
from pregnancy-related complications.
But the ongoing quest for answers
speaks to the lasting impact of the brief but compelling life of one of history's most impactful princesses.
Noble Blood is a production of I-Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manke.
Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz.
Writers for Noble Blood are Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Paul Jaffe, Natasha Lasky, and me, Dana Schwartz.
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk and
Noam's Gripen with supervising producer Rima Il Kali and executive producers Aaron Manky, Trevor
Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
What up y'all, y'all, Memphis Bleak right here, host of that rock solid podcast. And each week,
we bring in you exclusive looks inside music, everything happening inside the culture. Some of the
best conversations were the biggest names in the game.
You had a little bit more pressure to be good.
And they didn't care if you was a girl.
Like, you wasn't getting points.
If you're not trash, you better be, not just good.
You better be great.
Listen to Rock Solid on Black Effect Podcast Network,
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you string podcasts.
In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author,
Patra Mathers, and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family
members to let them know they had died by suicide.
Dear honies, this is goodbye.
By the time you get the Shletter, both Petra and I will be dead.
Next stop, Wonderland.
Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind?
Listen to Death of an Artist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts.
This is an IHeart podcast.
Guaranteed Human.
