2021-06

Nellie Bly

In an age where female reporters were few and far between, and wrote on little more than fashion and gardening - Nellie Bly got locked up in a ‘madhouse’ to expose the horrors of such an institution. In this 10 minute episode Simone discusses her 10 days in a madhouse.  Check back in in a week’s time for a Patreon bonus episode - am playing catch up with those this week.    You can read the blog post of the episode here.    Please leave a like. Follow the show. Share the channel – it helps Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.   Follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and weekly Wordpress Blog. Support the show on Patreon for exclusive, extra content.        Music, writing, narration, mixing usually all yours truly. This episode uses an arrangement of Steven Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer under the Asylum scene, played by me. Main texts: Of course Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Madhouse. and articles on The Womans’ History Museum  And Encyclopedia Britannica    About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. She is currently on a multi-year mission infiltrating a giant corporation, probably no less insane than Blackwood Island Asylum.  Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.     

Lord Lucan

Content warning, this Tale deals with a murder. Richard John Bingham, John to his friends, ‘Lucky' to others – officially titled the 7th Earl of Lucan, entered the history books on November 7th 1974 for the worst kind of reasons. He then captured the imagination of much of the English speaking world when he vanished without a trace. This week, a You Choose topic chosen by the show's listeners and readers, Simone discusses the case. I’ll get the first Patreon only release, a companion piece on John Stonehouse, up in the coming days. You can read the blog post of this episode here.     Please leave a like. Follow the show. Share the channel – it helps Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time. My Patreon, soon to be active can be found here You can follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Bloghttp://www.historyandimagination.com.   Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. Except the music under Lucan's time in America, I borrowed and rearranged Art Noel and Don Pelosi's ‘Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major', a popular drinking song amongst the British soldiers during World War Two.   Main texts: I referenced a load of online articles , but my main book was A Different Class of Murder by Laura Thompson – whose facts were solid, but whose opinions (she is something of a Lucan apologist) are often utterly repugnant to me. Still a recommended read.   About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. Simone, like his Lordship, fled the United Kingdom – though admittedly I never murdered a nanny first. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.     

Jack Parsons - Babalon‘s Rocketeer (Part Two)

I may as well leave the content warning up from last fortnight... I don’t  know, if you’re prudish I mention sex magick several times in this Tale – though hardly go into detail.. When John Whiteside Parsons – Jack to his friends – died suddenly in an explosion, one may have expected platitudes to the man. As a pioneering rocket scientist, the world -  and the future would owe much to his innovations. Instead, all anyone could talk about was the gossip about his lifestyle – and membership to a cult which worshipped a man known as ‘The Great Beast'. This is part two of the two parter. You can read the prelude here. Part one here. This episode here. I also loaded Franklin D Roosevelt’s date which will live in infamy speech, and Aleister Crowley’s Hymn to Pan onto a blog post here.     Please leave a like. Follow the show. Share the channel – it helps Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time. My Patreon, soon to be active can be found here You can follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog.     Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. Main texts Strange Angel by George Pendle, Sex and Rockets, the Occult World of Jack Parsons by John Carter and Robert Anton Wilson. I watched several YouTube videos on Crowley's Gnostic Mass (Liber XV) – which was so far from what I expected it to be... referred to a couple of LA Times articles (Paywalled) about Clifford Clinton, his Clifton's Cafes, Frank Lloyd, and the LA Mafia in the 1920s and 30s, over a year ago. The info on Pearl Harbour was sealed into my brain from high school.   About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. Meh, I’ve got no personal anecdote for this one...  Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.