# Eleanor Roosevelt: Best First Lady

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 9 Jul 2026, 47 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/39426ab0-9468-48ea-b149-b482000f6aa1/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Eleanor Roosevelt was something else. We can't get into it here, but just wait until you listen to this episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
[0:13] Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
[0:16] Speaker 2: Should Know, the Great Women in History edition.
[0:21] Speaker 3: That's right, one of the greatest.
[0:25] Speaker 2: Sure she's up there. Francis Perkins still gets my vote, though,
[0:28] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. Eleanor Roosevelt is amazing. It's just that
[0:34] Speaker 2: learning about her makes your head spin, like you could
[0:37] Speaker 2: do a ten part series on her.
[0:39] Speaker 1: Easy.
[0:40] Speaker 3: Yeah, at some point you just gotta, you know, do
[0:43] Speaker 3: the stuff you should know.
[0:44] Speaker 2: Thn right, and condense ten parts into forty five minutes.
[0:49] Speaker 3: That's right.
[0:51] Speaker 2: So I think I just let the cat out of
[0:53] Speaker 2: the bag, Chuck. We're talking today about Eleanor Roosevelt, and
[0:57] Speaker 2: she is the longest serving first Lady. She was called
[1:01] Speaker 2: the first Lady of the world as a matter of
[1:03] Speaker 2: fact by Harry Truman. Mayor La Guardia in New York
[1:07] Speaker 2: called her America's number one volunteer. And she was almost
[1:12] Speaker 2: universally liked, even if you couldn't stand her politics. She
[1:15] Speaker 2: was just so eloquent and graceful and kind and generous
[1:19] Speaker 2: and all the great things that you like you couldn't help,
[1:23] Speaker 2: but like her pretty much. It seems like only a
[1:26] Speaker 2: few members of her family are the ones that she
[1:28] Speaker 2: ever had a real beef with.
[1:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And you know, family's got a family, right.
[1:34] Speaker 2: Never trust family, that's right. So let's talk about her
[1:38] Speaker 2: family to start. She was born in eighteen eighty four.
[1:41] Speaker 2: I believe her full name was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, but
[1:44] Speaker 2: everybody calls her Eleanor, and her father was Elliott Roosevelt,
[1:48] Speaker 2: who's Teddy Roosevelt's younger brother. And so, yes, she wasn't
[1:52] Speaker 2: just married as a Roosevelt. She was born a Roosevelt too.
[1:57] Speaker 3: Isn't that surprising that she married her cousin? That is
[2:01] Speaker 3: surprising to probably a lot of people.
[2:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, fifth cousin. Not a lot of genetic issues there,
[2:08] Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean I thought she became a Roosevelt
[2:11] Speaker 2: after Emerchan she was born of Roosevelt. Buddy, there's your
[2:14] Speaker 2: trivia question for this one.
[2:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. She didn't have her parents around for long,
[2:19] Speaker 3: and while she did, it was not the best scene.
[2:22] Speaker 3: Apparently her mother was a pretty distant person, not the
[2:26] Speaker 3: greatest mom, and her dad was a pretty tough alcoholic.
[2:30] Speaker 3: But they died not too you know, they died when
[2:34] Speaker 3: she was a child. Basically, her mom Anna died in
[2:36] Speaker 3: eighteen ninety two of diphtheria, and her father, Eliot died
[2:41] Speaker 3: after he jumped out of a window because of alcoholic
[2:47] Speaker 3: trimmers basically delirium trim and so it was a pretty
[2:51] Speaker 3: rough go for her until she went to live with
[2:53] Speaker 3: her grandmother, where she had lived with her brothers Elliott Junior,
[2:59] Speaker 3: who actually he didn't live that long either, but her
[3:02] Speaker 3: brother Hall did and apparently she doted on him quite
[3:06] Speaker 3: a bit.
[3:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what a great sister.
[3:09] Speaker 1: Like.
[3:10] Speaker 2: They're both orphans, and so she's going to take on
[3:12] Speaker 2: the role of like being his mother figure essentially and
[3:16] Speaker 2: taking good care of him. So I think that's pretty
[3:18] Speaker 2: neat and that shows a lot about who she was,
[3:21] Speaker 2: because this is starting about age ten. And when she
[3:24] Speaker 2: went and lived with her grandmother, she was educated at home,
[3:27] Speaker 2: as very very wealthy people did at the time. And
[3:32] Speaker 2: when she was fifteen, she was sent to England and
[3:35] Speaker 2: that's where she her first brush, maybe even really her
[3:39] Speaker 2: only brush with education went. She was there for like
[3:43] Speaker 2: three years before her grandmother called her back and said
[3:45] Speaker 2: that's enough, let's do some debutante stuff, come back and
[3:49] Speaker 2: get fitted for a big frilly.
[3:51] Speaker 3: Dress, that's right. And that was in nineteen oh two,
[3:54] Speaker 3: and she wasn't you know, she didn't take to even
[3:57] Speaker 3: though she was born into in wealth and kind of
[4:00] Speaker 3: into that scene obviously as a Roosevelt, she didn't feel
[4:03] Speaker 3: like she really fit in in that elite sort of
[4:07] Speaker 3: sort of scene there. So early on she started volunteering,
[4:10] Speaker 3: and she thought, well, a good way to sort of
[4:12] Speaker 3: rid myself, or at least distance myself a bit from
[4:14] Speaker 3: that life would be to kind of, you know, see
[4:18] Speaker 3: what the common folks are up to and help them out.
[4:21] Speaker 3: And she started out doing that at a pretty young age,
[4:24] Speaker 3: initially at the Rivington Street Settlement House there on the
[4:28] Speaker 3: Lower East Side, where she was a dance teacher and
[4:31] Speaker 3: she taught classes to young immigrants, and then also finally
[4:35] Speaker 3: joining the National Consumers League, which was basically an organization
[4:40] Speaker 3: that tried to improve, you know, down in the garment
[4:42] Speaker 3: district what the workers were dealing with.
[4:45] Speaker 2: Right, trying to get worker's death from one hundred percent
[4:49] Speaker 2: down to something like eighty percent.
[4:50] Speaker 1: You know.
[4:52] Speaker 2: So she met her cousin, her fifth cousin, who she
[4:55] Speaker 2: married Franklin Delano Roosevelt when they were both very young.
[4:59] Speaker 2: I think they were at like a family gathering or
[5:02] Speaker 2: something like that, and he was giving her piggyback rides,
[5:05] Speaker 2: not teenage piggyback rides, like these were little kid piggyback rides.
[5:09] Speaker 2: And then they I guess, didn't keep in touch much.
[5:12] Speaker 2: But then when she was eighteen and got called back
[5:15] Speaker 2: for the whole debutante thing, they met again and they
[5:19] Speaker 2: were just like, I like you. I like you too.
[5:22] Speaker 2: Maybe we should get married, Maybe we should we're fifth cousins.
[5:26] Speaker 2: I think that's okay, let's do it. That was the conversation.
[5:30] Speaker 3: Let's a teenage piggyback.
[5:33] Speaker 2: It's a piggyback ride given by teenagers. It's much different
[5:36] Speaker 2: than like a little kid piggyback ride.
[5:39] Speaker 3: Can you explain the difference. I've never heard of this.
[5:43] Speaker 2: I think the guy giving the girl usually is how
[5:47] Speaker 2: it goes piggyback ride. The piggyback ride is hoping that
[5:51] Speaker 2: that will somehow turn into something much more than just
[5:54] Speaker 2: a piggyback ride, even if it's just someday.
[5:57] Speaker 3: Oh wow, all right, I never heard of that's.
[6:01] Speaker 2: A teenage piggyback ride.
[6:02] Speaker 3: Wow, I missed out.
[6:03] Speaker 1: I was.
[6:03] Speaker 3: I grew up a Baptist kid though, so I wasn't anoyed.
[6:05] Speaker 2: Well, I mean all of this was just completely me
[6:08] Speaker 2: making this up as I went along.
[6:09] Speaker 1: I don't think it's an actual thing.
[6:11] Speaker 3: I gotcha, all right. So they decided to get married.
[6:14] Speaker 3: That happened in nineteen oh five. They had kind of
[6:17] Speaker 3: a long, dish engagement for the time and apparently Sarah
[6:22] Speaker 3: Roosevelt Franklin's mom kind of didn't insist on that, but
[6:26] Speaker 3: she didn't love eleanor so I think it kind of
[6:28] Speaker 3: dragged out a bit. Yeah, but they did get married,
[6:32] Speaker 3: and boy was Sarah a part of their life. Like
[6:35] Speaker 3: talk about an intrusive mother in law, Sarah and her
[6:38] Speaker 3: son were very very tight. She did not want to
[6:42] Speaker 3: kind of completely give him up, so she accomplished this
[6:46] Speaker 3: by gifting them a brownstone that she had built for them,
[6:51] Speaker 3: and she had a matching brownstone built that were connected
[6:55] Speaker 3: by sliding doors, so essentially, you know, it was on
[7:00] Speaker 3: like one big place when she wanted it.
[7:02] Speaker 1: To be right.
[7:03] Speaker 2: And she kept this control not just by adoring her son,
[7:06] Speaker 2: which she genuinely did, or being adored by him, which
[7:10] Speaker 2: he genuinely did. She also kept everybody in the family
[7:14] Speaker 2: on a pretty short leash by controlling the family's finances.
[7:18] Speaker 2: She was the one who was in charge of the
[7:20] Speaker 2: family money, so she could threaten to cut you off
[7:23] Speaker 2: if you didn't do what she wanted, she could reward
[7:26] Speaker 2: you for doing what she wanted, and then she I
[7:32] Speaker 2: just can't really wrap my head around how overbearing Sarah
[7:36] Speaker 2: FDR's mom was. It's just mind boggling to me, because
[7:41] Speaker 2: not just controlling the finances and building a brownstone, it
[7:43] Speaker 2: gets worse as a matter of fact. And yet Eleanor
[7:47] Speaker 2: really wanted her approval. She loved FDR. She wanted FDR
[7:51] Speaker 2: to be happy, and at the same time, she was like,
[7:53] Speaker 2: you have to be kidding me about this. Still, she
[7:56] Speaker 2: managed to become pretty close with her mother in law.
[7:59] Speaker 2: Again all odds, yeah, for sure, Colin.
[8:02] Speaker 3: Said, that's right. So there was another pretty rough situation
[8:07] Speaker 3: not too long into their marriage. About nine years in,
[8:09] Speaker 3: Eleanor found out that her husband had been having a
[8:14] Speaker 3: fair like a year's long affair with her secretary, Lucy Mercer,
[8:19] Speaker 3: And this all came out, and you know, there were
[8:21] Speaker 3: love letters found, and they thought about getting divorced, but
[8:26] Speaker 3: you know, depending on who you read, they stayed together,
[8:31] Speaker 3: probably because he wanted to continue his career in politics
[8:35] Speaker 3: and that would not look very good. Other people say
[8:39] Speaker 3: that his mom, Sarah, had a threat to stop the
[8:41] Speaker 3: plow of money, kind of Arthur's style, so that might
[8:45] Speaker 3: be a reason too, But at any rate, they decided
[8:48] Speaker 3: to stay together to fight despite this infidelity, which I'm
[8:51] Speaker 3: sure was a huge disappointment for.
[8:53] Speaker 2: Sure, I think that hit her hard and if FDR
[8:56] Speaker 2: had any you know, second thoughts about staying together. Three
[9:00] Speaker 2: years later, he was stricken with polio which he probably
[9:04] Speaker 2: contracted as a younger child, but caught up with them
[9:07] Speaker 2: at age thirty nine, and he was partially paralyzed and
[9:11] Speaker 2: had had to recover and he never fully recovered full
[9:15] Speaker 2: range of motion and power. And he just happened to
[9:19] Speaker 2: be married to the perfect person to help him through that.
[9:24] Speaker 2: So I think that that really kind of helped reinforce
[9:27] Speaker 2: the bonds that they had and also helped reinforce the
[9:30] Speaker 2: character of the relationship. Where he had one mom, he
[9:34] Speaker 2: got another one. He also had a wife. He also
[9:36] Speaker 2: had a very smart, savvy adviser, so he had like
[9:40] Speaker 2: everything except maybe the love of his life in Eleanor,
[9:45] Speaker 2: and he was like, this is good, I can deal
[9:48] Speaker 2: with this.
[9:48] Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean she definitely stepped in and not only
[9:51] Speaker 3: cared for him but acted almost as a co president
[9:55] Speaker 3: like certainly more so than any other first lady that
[9:59] Speaker 3: we had ever seen. And we're going to go through,
[10:01] Speaker 3: you know, a lot of her first Lady first but
[10:03] Speaker 3: you know, when he couldn't get out there for any reason,
[10:05] Speaker 3: she was out there for him and would report back
[10:08] Speaker 3: to him. And I think everyone kind of understood and
[10:12] Speaker 3: you know, viewed her with a lot of respect. It
[10:14] Speaker 3: seems like for the most part.
[10:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of people were also like,
[10:19] Speaker 2: especially when she was first Lady, hey, overstep your bounds much,
[10:23] Speaker 2: but she just plugged on. One thing that you'll see
[10:26] Speaker 2: about her is that she was a very self conscious person.
[10:31] Speaker 2: She had kind of low self esteem in a lot
[10:34] Speaker 2: of ways, and yet she was willing to plow through it.
[10:37] Speaker 2: And she was also willing to plow through the disapproval
[10:40] Speaker 2: of her social peers, her friends sometimes the general public,
[10:47] Speaker 2: and just kind of follow her moral compass essentially, where
[10:50] Speaker 2: it led her to great effect. I mean, when you
[10:53] Speaker 2: put all of it together, she's one of the most
[10:54] Speaker 2: revered women in American history.
[10:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, she had a lot of kids. She
[10:59] Speaker 3: gave her to six kids, but in a ten year
[11:02] Speaker 3: period between nineteen oh six and nineteen sixteen with Anna Eleanor,
[11:06] Speaker 3: James Frank Junior sadly passed away. But they would get
[11:11] Speaker 3: another shot at another Frank Junior, as we'll see, because
[11:15] Speaker 3: she'd then had Elliott, then another Frank Junior, and then John.
[11:19] Speaker 3: And you know, she was a mom who wasn't like
[11:22] Speaker 3: as close to her kids as she wanted to be
[11:25] Speaker 3: or thought she wanted to be. Sarah again, was sort
[11:29] Speaker 3: of always there and always stepping in as grandmother, plus
[11:34] Speaker 3: to the point where she would say things to the
[11:36] Speaker 3: kids like I'm your real mother. She just bore you
[11:40] Speaker 3: your mom Eleanor. So you know, again, Sarah's kind of there,
[11:43] Speaker 3: throwing a wrench into things, including like not separating, but
[11:48] Speaker 3: at least creating some sort of a divide between Eleanor
[11:51] Speaker 3: and her children.
[11:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think her children kind of didn't feel
[11:56] Speaker 2: very close to her and maybe even disliked her for
[11:58] Speaker 2: their childhood years. And it wasn't until they got older
[12:03] Speaker 2: before they started to get close with their mother. And
[12:07] Speaker 2: I'm imagining that that probably coincided with Sarah's death when
[12:12] Speaker 2: she was finally out of the picture.
[12:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a pretty good bed.
[12:17] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[12:17] Speaker 3: But it was during I guess, sort of the beginning
[12:21] Speaker 3: of the child bearing decade when she became a political
[12:25] Speaker 3: wife for the first time, when Franklin was elected to
[12:28] Speaker 3: New York State Senate, and that's when she really kind of,
[12:31] Speaker 3: you know, jumped in there. She got really active and
[12:34] Speaker 3: acted as you know, a host, you know, to dinners
[12:38] Speaker 3: and of course stuff like that. She would sit in
[12:41] Speaker 3: on meetings when she was allowed to. When FDR when
[12:46] Speaker 3: they had to move to DC, when she was appointed
[12:48] Speaker 3: or I guess he was appointed Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary
[12:51] Speaker 3: of the Navy. That's when she found herself in the
[12:53] Speaker 3: middle of the like sort of the DC politics for
[12:55] Speaker 3: the first time, and she really took to it. It seems
[12:58] Speaker 3: like she did.
[12:59] Speaker 2: At first she was basically following like the traditional political
[13:02] Speaker 2: wife handbook, right, But then as FDR's political career kind
[13:09] Speaker 2: of rose and rose and rose, she started to become
[13:12] Speaker 2: more and more involved in a much less traditional sense,
[13:15] Speaker 2: like much more pioneering sense. For example, she helped him
[13:20] Speaker 2: write speeches, she helped him strategize, especially when he ran
[13:24] Speaker 2: for vice president in nineteen twenty and she became much
[13:29] Speaker 2: more of a collaborator than the average political wife at
[13:33] Speaker 2: the time. Like this is when it became clear to
[13:36] Speaker 2: FDR if it wasn't already that she was invaluable in
[13:42] Speaker 2: the same way that inflammable still means flammable, right, this
[13:46] Speaker 2: means that she was super valuable.
[13:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And they kind of lived all over
[13:50] Speaker 3: depending on what his job was politically, because he was
[13:53] Speaker 3: governor of New York for a while in nineteen twenty eight,
[13:57] Speaker 3: and so you know, they certainly their home was in
[13:59] Speaker 3: New York. When in New York, I think they lived
[14:02] Speaker 3: on the Upper East Side, and she also, as we'll see,
[14:04] Speaker 3: would later have a place in like near Washington Square Park.
[14:08] Speaker 3: But they also obviously lived in DC when they need
[14:10] Speaker 3: to and Hyde Park, New York. But you know, she
[14:15] Speaker 3: liked she liked New York City.
[14:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, who doesn't, especially now the next one. God,
[14:23] Speaker 2: we're gonna just dated this episode. Huh.
[14:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
[14:27] Speaker 2: So something I didn't know about Eleanor that is at
[14:31] Speaker 2: first tough to swallow until you stop and kind of
[14:34] Speaker 2: think about how much that means she changed her views
[14:38] Speaker 2: early on. Again, she was just kind of following the
[14:40] Speaker 2: standard handbook of her social class or social circle to
[14:45] Speaker 2: the people around her, including her mother in law. So
[14:48] Speaker 2: she from her early letter she was a prolific letter
[14:51] Speaker 2: writer throughout her life. From her early letters, like she
[14:55] Speaker 2: didn't know anything about politics. She wasn't paying attention to
[14:57] Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. She didn't care about it. She
[15:00] Speaker 2: was just doing the society thing. Apparently she adopted her
[15:04] Speaker 2: mother in law, her mother in law's anti semitism, She
[15:08] Speaker 2: didn't think very highly of her black servants, Like she
[15:14] Speaker 2: was not a great person at that point, and a
[15:19] Speaker 2: lot of it from everything I've seen, people are like
[15:21] Speaker 2: she was straight up a product of her culture, right.
[15:26] Speaker 3: Seems to be.
[15:27] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[15:28] Speaker 2: And so the idea that she went from anti semitism
[15:31] Speaker 2: to lobbying for America opening its stors to Jewish people
[15:38] Speaker 2: who were fleeing the Holocaust, from disparaging her black servants
[15:43] Speaker 2: to tirelessly working for civil rights for Black Americans, and
[15:50] Speaker 2: also just kind of showing disdain for the suffrage movement
[15:54] Speaker 2: becoming a champion for women's rights, It really kind of
[15:57] Speaker 2: shows like she didn't go from a neutral place to
[15:59] Speaker 2: these amazing heights. She came from the bottom and then
[16:04] Speaker 2: got to neutral and then got to those heights. And
[16:06] Speaker 2: it's pretty impressive how much she changed, and I mean
[16:09] Speaker 2: just how willing she was to change her views because
[16:11] Speaker 2: a lot of people aren't.
[16:13] Speaker 3: Oh for sure, absolutely. Is that a good time for
[16:17] Speaker 3: a break?
[16:18] Speaker 1: I think so? Sure.
[16:19] Speaker 3: All right, we're gonna come back and continue with I
[16:22] Speaker 3: bet you're never gonna guess eleanor Roosevelt learn and stuff
[16:36] Speaker 3: with Joshua John stuff. You shut up, all right, so
[16:56] Speaker 3: we're back. We talked a little bit about her early
[16:59] Speaker 3: volunteer that kind of stopped for a while when she
[17:03] Speaker 3: became a political wife, but she always had that volunteer Jones.
[17:09] Speaker 3: I guess, so once she had more opportunity, she turned
[17:13] Speaker 3: that into more volunteerism. She was a volunteer for the
[17:16] Speaker 3: Red Cross in DC during World War One. In nineteen eighteen,
[17:21] Speaker 3: when she went to Europe with her husband, she toured
[17:24] Speaker 3: war hospitals in the battlefield And it feels like all
[17:27] Speaker 3: this sort of inspired her to really kind of get
[17:30] Speaker 3: busy and put her her time where her heart was.
[17:35] Speaker 3: Because she volunteered as a translator, she spoke French as
[17:39] Speaker 3: well as English. So she was volunteered as a translator
[17:42] Speaker 3: at a lot of different events, one of which was
[17:44] Speaker 3: the International Conference of Working Women at the Paris Peace Conference.
[17:49] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[17:50] Speaker 2: In addition to volunteering, she also became an activist. She
[17:54] Speaker 2: was very, very active with organizations that promoted women's right. Now,
[18:00] Speaker 2: she finally kind of got on board with the suffrage movement.
[18:04] Speaker 2: She became a part of the League of Women Voters.
[18:07] Speaker 2: And one of the things about her that you'll notice
[18:10] Speaker 2: is she'll join an organization and then you like blink
[18:13] Speaker 2: a couple times and now she's like vice president of
[18:15] Speaker 2: it or something like that. She was a really great
[18:18] Speaker 2: asset to your organization if she showed up, because that
[18:21] Speaker 2: meant she really believed in what you were doing and
[18:23] Speaker 2: she wanted to help.
[18:24] Speaker 3: Yeah. Like if my read from all of this is like,
[18:27] Speaker 3: you know, certainly being a prominent political wife had something
[18:32] Speaker 3: to do with it, But it wasn't just that, because
[18:34] Speaker 3: that didn't happen to everybody's wife at the time in politics.
[18:39] Speaker 3: So she clearly just showed the stuff you know that
[18:42] Speaker 3: people you know had clear leadership qualities for sure.
[18:47] Speaker 2: Definitely. Oh, she was also asked too by the DNC
[18:50] Speaker 2: the Democratic National Convention to basically chair a committee on
[18:55] Speaker 2: women's issues to help them come up with whatever plank
[18:58] Speaker 2: in their platform they were going to have for women's suffrage.
[19:01] Speaker 2: And they were like, great, thanks Dahl and took her
[19:04] Speaker 2: ideas and shut the door and the all male committee
[19:09] Speaker 2: deliberated on it without her in the room.
[19:11] Speaker 3: Yeah. So she definitely faced stuff like that obviously at
[19:15] Speaker 3: the time, which really stinks because she had a lot
[19:17] Speaker 3: of great ideas for sure.
[19:20] Speaker 2: Another great idea too, I thought this was super cool.
[19:23] Speaker 2: She co founded a furniture factory that was a nonprofit
[19:27] Speaker 2: furniture factory. I have the impression that was a collective
[19:30] Speaker 2: chuck which we've talked about before. They called vow Kill
[19:33] Speaker 2: Industries and they made colonial furniture reproductions impewter.
[19:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of nice.
[19:41] Speaker 1: Sure, what else did she do?
[19:44] Speaker 3: She joined the Women's Trade Union League. This is kind
[19:48] Speaker 3: of part of her advocating for labor. That's when that
[19:52] Speaker 3: came into the picture, you know, working conditions for women
[19:55] Speaker 3: and children at the time, of course, because kids were
[19:57] Speaker 3: working and you know capacity that they don't work now,
[20:01] Speaker 3: if at all. It's always fun to talk to kids
[20:04] Speaker 3: who have teenagers about you know, them getting jobs and stuff.
[20:07] Speaker 3: I feel like that's happening a lot here and there,
[20:10] Speaker 3: but not like when we were kids, which was basically
[20:12] Speaker 3: still child favor for sure.
[20:14] Speaker 1: It really was.
[20:15] Speaker 3: Whenever I tell like my teenage my friend's teenage kids
[20:19] Speaker 3: that I was like a bus boy when I was thirteen,
[20:21] Speaker 3: They're all just like, are you serious? Yeah, it's like, yeah,
[20:25] Speaker 3: like every one of my friends worked as well. It
[20:27] Speaker 3: was weird.
[20:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of is weird in retrospect. I had
[20:30] Speaker 2: like a paper route when I was ten or something
[20:32] Speaker 2: like that.
[20:33] Speaker 3: Never had a paper out. I was always jealous of
[20:35] Speaker 3: this man.
[20:36] Speaker 2: The smell of a stack of newspapers at like four
[20:40] Speaker 2: in the morning.
[20:41] Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
[20:43] Speaker 2: It's a specific experience, and it can be really great
[20:46] Speaker 2: or it can be like, what am I doing with
[20:47] Speaker 2: my life?
[20:48] Speaker 3: What?
[20:48] Speaker 1: Uh?
[20:48] Speaker 3: Do you get paid per paper? Is that the deal?
[20:51] Speaker 2: I don't remember I was ten. I'm not even sure
[20:53] Speaker 2: I was directly paid. I don't remember. I don't remember
[20:58] Speaker 2: being thirty something.
[20:59] Speaker 3: With your dad just funneling, funneling money.
[21:03] Speaker 2: I'm like, damn, when did you start smoking cigars?
[21:06] Speaker 3: Exactly? These look like good ones too.
[21:09] Speaker 2: So all the stuff we've been talking about this is
[21:12] Speaker 2: just the nineteen twenties. She hadn't even become first Lady yet.
[21:15] Speaker 2: And when FDR was elected in nineteen thirty two, like
[21:19] Speaker 2: we said, she became a first Lady of a lot
[21:22] Speaker 2: of different first some of which have never been replicated since.
[21:26] Speaker 1: You know.
[21:26] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean she's definitely I think not many
[21:29] Speaker 3: people would argue that she wasn't the most active first
[21:32] Speaker 3: Lady of all time. Probably she was the first first
[21:36] Speaker 3: lady to hold a press conference or multiple press conferences
[21:40] Speaker 3: and apparently only allowed women reporters to attend her press conferences. Yeah,
[21:45] Speaker 3: it's kind of cool. She is the first to write
[21:47] Speaker 3: a daily newspaper column and a host a radio show.
[21:52] Speaker 3: She's the first lady to travel to an active war
[21:54] Speaker 3: zone and just really sort of open the door on
[21:59] Speaker 3: what the whole title of first Lady could be, not
[22:02] Speaker 3: necessarily had to be, because as we've seen over the years,
[22:04] Speaker 3: there's been just so say, lots of different kinds of
[22:08] Speaker 3: first ladies for sure.
[22:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, some more active than others, having different interests when
[22:15] Speaker 2: they were active. She just basically did it all. And
[22:18] Speaker 2: again this was the kind of thing that made her
[22:20] Speaker 2: a target, like what are you doing? You're a first lady,
[22:23] Speaker 2: you're not supposed to be this active. I mean, one
[22:25] Speaker 2: of the things that she did that really made her
[22:27] Speaker 2: a target, Chuck, was she was she became assistant director
[22:32] Speaker 2: of Civilian Defense in World War Two.
[22:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, and they later direct her even.
[22:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, and that's a public office, right, She's the
[22:42] Speaker 2: first first lady ever. She's the only first lady to
[22:46] Speaker 2: have held public office while her husband was in office
[22:50] Speaker 2: as president. Right, And people were like, what is this? Like,
[22:53] Speaker 2: I don't know how I feel about this, and some
[22:56] Speaker 2: people were like this is They accused her of cronyism,
[22:59] Speaker 2: they accused her of frivolous spending. And it actually was
[23:02] Speaker 2: so bad that she stepped down after a year because
[23:05] Speaker 2: she didn't want to keep drawing like negative attention to
[23:08] Speaker 2: the work the Civilian Defense Agency was doing.
[23:11] Speaker 3: Totally, man, I mean, that's the worst. She's trying to
[23:15] Speaker 3: do good work. She's getting disparaged and she has to
[23:17] Speaker 3: quit making a difference in doing the thing she loves
[23:20] Speaker 3: to make that thing better.
[23:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, just because her husband had political enemies,
[23:27] Speaker 2: you know, I mean, that's and that's just politics, I guess,
[23:30] Speaker 2: you know.
[23:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, she her code name for secret service
[23:34] Speaker 3: was Rover and the you know, everyone's best guess is
[23:38] Speaker 3: because she was always all over the place she was traveling.
[23:41] Speaker 3: I think there was another nickname that she had, which
[23:44] Speaker 3: was eleanor Everywhere, because starting very early in her career,
[23:49] Speaker 3: she would hit the road. She was very famous for
[23:52] Speaker 3: driving a blue roadster saying secret Service, I'll smell you later,
[23:57] Speaker 3: and hit the road. And I think between nineteen twenty
[23:59] Speaker 3: three in nineteen forty she traveled over three hundred thousand
[24:02] Speaker 3: miles yeah, and visited in person every state except South Dakota.
[24:08] Speaker 3: Just traveling all over the place, like checking on projects
[24:11] Speaker 3: that were going on, talking to everyday Americans, just you know,
[24:16] Speaker 3: kind of hitting the beat as as someone checking on
[24:19] Speaker 3: the health of America.
[24:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, and reporting back to FDR like you couldn't keep
[24:24] Speaker 2: it a secret. No, it wasn't like a media blitzer,
[24:27] Speaker 2: like a charm charm offensive. That's what I'm thinking of,
[24:30] Speaker 2: like shit, oh yeah, definitely taking this information back to
[24:34] Speaker 2: use for strategizing, for adjusting policy, all that stuff, like
[24:37] Speaker 2: it was really important. The first year she was First
[24:39] Speaker 2: Lady alone, she traveled forty thousand miles in her Buick.
[24:45] Speaker 2: And she also little known fact was the first person
[24:49] Speaker 2: to popularize those mudflaps with Yosemite Sam on them.
[24:52] Speaker 3: That's back off, back off. Yeah, I think she created
[24:55] Speaker 3: Yosemite Sam.
[24:56] Speaker 2: In fact, probably I hadn't read that, but you're probably right.
[25:00] Speaker 3: It was also in one of these road trips that
[25:02] Speaker 3: she well, we can't say with absolute one percent certainty,
[25:08] Speaker 3: but it's pretty well known that she had a love
[25:11] Speaker 3: affair with a woman. It was a road trip in
[25:14] Speaker 3: nineteen thirty three to New England and Quebec, shortly after
[25:18] Speaker 3: FDR was inaugurated the first time. And there was an
[25:21] Speaker 3: AP journalist named Lorena Hiccock or Hicck, who was a
[25:26] Speaker 3: very you know, just sort of a woman doing her
[25:29] Speaker 3: own thing at the time. She would like chomp on cigars,
[25:33] Speaker 3: and she was kind of kind of tough talking, and
[25:36] Speaker 3: she wore bright scarves and loved like big dinners and
[25:39] Speaker 3: rich foods. And it was a very kind of well known,
[25:42] Speaker 3: high paid AP reporter. And they met when hick was
[25:47] Speaker 3: covering FDR's gubernatorial campaign in nineteen twenty eight, and then
[25:51] Speaker 3: she was assigned to cover Eleanor and it sounds like
[25:53] Speaker 3: she covered Eleanor for sure.
[25:57] Speaker 2: They went everywhere together as a matter of fact, and
[26:01] Speaker 2: historians at first were like no, no, and then they're
[26:07] Speaker 2: now kind of like, well maybe, and most of them
[26:10] Speaker 2: are like, yes, they probably did become lovers. And that's
[26:14] Speaker 2: just kind of supported by some of the stuff that
[26:17] Speaker 2: they wrote to one another in letters. And again, like
[26:20] Speaker 2: you said, they were never caught in flagorante delecado, and
[26:25] Speaker 2: you know, Danny DeVito didn't snap a picture with one
[26:28] Speaker 2: of those big flash bulbs or anything like that. But
[26:32] Speaker 2: you know, if you interpret some of the stuff like
[26:35] Speaker 2: any sensible person, it definitely does seem like their letters
[26:39] Speaker 2: do suggest that, yes, they definitely had a romantic relationship.
[26:43] Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, I mean, should we read a selection.
[26:49] Speaker 1: I think that that.
[26:50] Speaker 2: Yes, I think that will help everybody make up their
[26:53] Speaker 2: own mind.
[26:53] Speaker 3: Yeah. It's not salacious or anything.
[26:55] Speaker 2: It's like, no, no, no, they were having an affair.
[26:57] Speaker 3: Good for them, except for you know, the cheating part.
[27:00] Speaker 3: But you know FDR did the same thing, so we're
[27:05] Speaker 3: not going to hold her to a different standard than
[27:06] Speaker 3: her husband.
[27:07] Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, well, put, I was gonna say, even Stephen.
[27:12] Speaker 3: Here's the selection from Hick to Eleanor. I've been trying
[27:15] Speaker 3: today to bring back your face and the feeling of
[27:18] Speaker 3: that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your
[27:21] Speaker 3: mouth against my lips. So, I mean, come on, they
[27:24] Speaker 3: were having an affair right exactly.
[27:27] Speaker 2: Even if they discovered or Hick discovered that that soft
[27:31] Speaker 2: spot on the northeast corner, well they were both eating
[27:34] Speaker 2: a shared piece of spaghetti, that still suggests that they
[27:38] Speaker 2: had a romantic relationship.
[27:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we know it was going on the
[27:41] Speaker 3: lady in the tramp right.
[27:42] Speaker 2: Right, So none of this matters, if anything, to me,
[27:47] Speaker 2: This says like, oh, she's kind of open minded because
[27:49] Speaker 2: she does not seem to have been a straight up lesbian.
[27:52] Speaker 2: She is, we'll see, considered to have probably had an
[27:57] Speaker 2: affair with a very close male companion too at some point.
[28:00] Speaker 2: So I think she was just like, I'm into you,
[28:03] Speaker 2: I love you, I don't care who you are. Let's
[28:07] Speaker 2: get it on.
[28:08] Speaker 3: Yeah, like Marvin Kay said, Yeah, I mean, you know
[28:14] Speaker 3: her husband had an affair kind of what seven eight
[28:17] Speaker 3: years after they got married, for at least four years,
[28:21] Speaker 3: and the only reason it stopped is because he got caught.
[28:24] Speaker 1: So it seem his mother told him to study.
[28:26] Speaker 3: Yes, my im told him to stop. So it seems
[28:28] Speaker 3: like it may have been one of those marriages where
[28:30] Speaker 3: they had a lot of love for each other but
[28:32] Speaker 3: probably stayed together because of his role and all the
[28:37] Speaker 3: good that she was able to do. So, you know,
[28:39] Speaker 3: it was at a time where people just didn't get
[28:41] Speaker 3: divorced over that stuff. They had affairs, you know.
[28:44] Speaker 2: Right, right, So back to those road trips, right, Remember
[28:48] Speaker 2: she's like doing recon as well as having trysts with Hick.
[28:53] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[28:55] Speaker 2: One of the places that she went was through Scott's Run,
[28:58] Speaker 2: West Virginia on one of these trips, I think it
[29:00] Speaker 2: was actually that New England trip, which it's news to
[29:03] Speaker 2: me that West Virginia's New England, but hey, who's to judge.
[29:07] Speaker 2: And she came across the basically these coal miners. The
[29:11] Speaker 2: whole town of Scott's Run, West Virginia was coal miners,
[29:13] Speaker 2: and they were all out of work. This is the Depression.
[29:17] Speaker 2: And she was so moved by just how impoverished and
[29:19] Speaker 2: how hard their life was that she came up with
[29:22] Speaker 2: this idea to basically have the federal government foot the
[29:25] Speaker 2: bill for building towns that were out of the box great,
[29:31] Speaker 2: and you would move imps, impoverished coal miners into them
[29:35] Speaker 2: and basically give them a head start at a really
[29:38] Speaker 2: great good life that they could take over and make
[29:40] Speaker 2: for themselves in a close knit community that they built together.
[29:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, there was supposed to be like a hundred of
[29:47] Speaker 3: these planned communities all across the United States, but the
[29:51] Speaker 3: first one was that one in West Virginia, arthur Dale,
[29:55] Speaker 3: about twenty five miles south of Scott's Run. It was
[29:58] Speaker 3: called Eleanor's Little Villa times. But she was really active
[30:02] Speaker 3: in this building of the first one, Like every home
[30:05] Speaker 3: had to have which was a big luxury at the time,
[30:07] Speaker 3: like modern appliances and electricity, especially in rural West Virginia
[30:11] Speaker 3: at the time. Yeah, and the rent was based on
[30:14] Speaker 3: what people could afford, which was about twenty bucks a month.
[30:17] Speaker 3: And like people made fun of these projects sometimes that
[30:21] Speaker 3: she was involved in this one in particular, but you know,
[30:25] Speaker 3: it worked out pretty well. Like arthur Dale became a
[30:29] Speaker 3: very kind of thriving community and there are still people
[30:33] Speaker 3: like from that first community that live there today.
[30:36] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
[30:37] Speaker 2: And the US government was like, Okay, we're not going
[30:40] Speaker 2: to oversee arthur Dale anymore in nineteen forty seven, but
[30:43] Speaker 2: Eleanor kept visiting until nineteen sixty. I think was her
[30:47] Speaker 2: last visit two years before her death, and all told,
[30:50] Speaker 2: she visited arthur Dale thirty three different times, long after
[30:53] Speaker 2: she was no longer First Lady. From nineteen thirty five
[30:57] Speaker 2: to nineteen forty four, she attended every single high school
[31:00] Speaker 2: graduation of arthur Dale's well high school.
[31:04] Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think FDR went to one and is
[31:08] Speaker 3: still the only president to actually give actually give a
[31:11] Speaker 3: commencement speech at a high school graduation.
[31:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty cool.
[31:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, she helped those graduates like find jobs, like she
[31:19] Speaker 2: really took an interest. She apparently used to buy Christmas
[31:22] Speaker 2: presents and bring them to the kids at arthur Dale
[31:25] Speaker 2: like it was a she was really involved in this.
[31:27] Speaker 2: It wasn't like a good idea. She helped to get
[31:29] Speaker 2: going and then forgot about it and moved on to
[31:31] Speaker 2: something else, Like she really cared.
[31:33] Speaker 3: Yeah for sure.
[31:34] Speaker 2: Uh what do you say about a break?
[31:37] Speaker 1: All right?
[31:37] Speaker 3: I mean we never need them, We just have to
[31:39] Speaker 3: do it. But we're going to do it now because
[31:41] Speaker 3: we're supposed to.
[31:42] Speaker 1: They make us.
[31:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, well we're going to do that then with
[31:58] Speaker 2: Josh job stuff.
[32:01] Speaker 1: Should okay, Chuck, we're back.
[32:19] Speaker 2: And one of the things that you may know about
[32:22] Speaker 2: Eleanor Roosevelt if you're you know, somewhat familiar with her.
[32:26] Speaker 2: In her life's work, she became virulantly anti racist. She
[32:33] Speaker 2: was a champion of the civil rights movement long before
[32:38] Speaker 2: there was a civil rights movement, decades before it. She
[32:42] Speaker 2: helped kind of get civil rights recognized, I think among
[32:48] Speaker 2: white America and in a lot of quarters.
[32:51] Speaker 1: That meant that.
[32:52] Speaker 2: People started to hate her, especially in the South. And
[32:55] Speaker 2: like I said before, like she didn't let that slow
[32:57] Speaker 2: her down. She just kind of kept at it.
[32:59] Speaker 3: Yeah, she joined THEACP in nineteen thirty four. She was
[33:04] Speaker 3: very much a lobbyist for anti lynching legislation. She was
[33:09] Speaker 3: a very early proponent kind of sounding the horn against segregation.
[33:15] Speaker 3: She quit in nineteen thirty nine and the Daughters of
[33:17] Speaker 3: the American Revolution because they said, We're not going to
[33:21] Speaker 3: let this black performer or Marian Anderson perform at Constitution
[33:25] Speaker 3: Hall in Washington, DC. So she was like, all right,
[33:28] Speaker 3: so longsuckers, I'm out of here. And then later helped
[33:31] Speaker 3: organize a concert for her on the steps of the
[33:34] Speaker 3: Lincoln Memorial.
[33:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a free public concert on Easter Sunday
[33:39] Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty nine and seventy five thousand people showed up.
[33:43] Speaker 2: It's considered one of the key moments in the early
[33:46] Speaker 2: civil rights struggle.
[33:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
[33:50] Speaker 2: She also this is such a great anecdote about her.
[33:54] Speaker 2: She attended a meeting, this Southern Conference for Human Welfare
[33:58] Speaker 2: in Birmingham, Alabama, with Mary McLeod Batun, who was a
[34:02] Speaker 2: famous black educator, And because this was in Birmingham, they
[34:06] Speaker 2: weren't allowed to sit together. It was like local law
[34:10] Speaker 2: that black people had to sit on one side of
[34:12] Speaker 2: the main aisle, white people had to sit on the
[34:14] Speaker 2: other side of the main aisle. This does not sit
[34:16] Speaker 2: very well with missus Roosevelt.
[34:18] Speaker 3: No, so she as very much like like she probably
[34:22] Speaker 3: could have insisted she sit on the other side, but
[34:24] Speaker 3: I think it made even more of a statement that
[34:27] Speaker 3: she said, you know what, then put my chair right
[34:29] Speaker 3: in the middle of the aisle and that's where I'm
[34:30] Speaker 3: going to sit.
[34:31] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[34:31] Speaker 2: Pretty cool. Oh and then one other thing that she
[34:35] Speaker 2: did in World War Two, too, Chuck, was that she
[34:38] Speaker 2: visited a Japanese American internment camp. Remember I think we
[34:41] Speaker 2: did an episode on that alone.
[34:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, and a long time ago.
[34:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, And she came out of this internment camp and
[34:49] Speaker 2: was like, we should not be doing this. We need
[34:51] Speaker 2: to shut these down, which is ironic or heurageous something,
[34:57] Speaker 2: because the internment camps existed by executive order that her
[35:01] Speaker 2: husband had issued.
[35:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
[35:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, and we did shut him down, And some people
[35:06] Speaker 2: credit her lobbying for it for helping get that started
[35:09] Speaker 2: sooner than later.
[35:11] Speaker 3: Yeah, she was like, but you know what, he cheated
[35:13] Speaker 3: on me early on in our marriage, so I don't
[35:15] Speaker 3: owe him anything, right, I don't have to do anything,
[35:17] Speaker 3: he said me. Right. She was a prolific writer, you said,
[35:22] Speaker 3: A prolific letter writer, but kind of just write a writer.
[35:27] Speaker 3: She was writing a newspaper column beginning in nineteen thirty
[35:30] Speaker 3: five called My Day, and she did that five days
[35:32] Speaker 3: a week. In nineteen forty one, she did a monthly
[35:37] Speaker 3: advice column for Ladies Home Journal called If You Ask Me.
[35:41] Speaker 3: And then she also just wrote all kinds of op eds.
[35:44] Speaker 3: And she wrote memoirs, She wrote an autobiography, she wrote
[35:48] Speaker 3: nonfiction books. Like she just wrote and wrote and wrote.
[35:52] Speaker 3: It was one of her great passions and she was
[35:54] Speaker 3: good at Yeah.
[35:55] Speaker 2: She also wrote a treatment for what eventually became the
[35:58] Speaker 2: script for Pulp Fiction that Tarantino made in nineteen ninety four.
[36:02] Speaker 3: It's fantastic, isn't that something? Yeah?
[36:04] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[36:05] Speaker 2: She was also not shy of going on to TV
[36:09] Speaker 2: appearing on the radio. I think, like you said, she
[36:11] Speaker 2: hosted radio programs with one with her one of her daughters,
[36:16] Speaker 2: one with a son.
[36:17] Speaker 3: Yeah, so cute.
[36:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, it is super cute, especially considering that they weren't
[36:21] Speaker 2: close when those the kids were younger. I think that's
[36:23] Speaker 2: just heartwarming. She had a couple of shows on NBC.
[36:27] Speaker 2: These are like public information or public what's the word
[36:31] Speaker 2: I'm looking for, for.
[36:35] Speaker 3: The good of the public, that kind of Yeah.
[36:36] Speaker 1: We'll just call it that.
[36:37] Speaker 2: Yes, she had a couple of those shows on NBC.
[36:41] Speaker 2: She had another one I think it was on PBS
[36:44] Speaker 2: Prospects of Mankind, where she interviewed like activists, intellectuals. She
[36:47] Speaker 2: basically shone a light on these, you know, things that
[36:52] Speaker 2: were going on in the US and around the world
[36:54] Speaker 2: that people weren't really paying attention to. And again, just
[36:57] Speaker 2: remind yourself when she's doing all this stuff, she she
[37:00] Speaker 2: is pretty self conscious. She didn't consider herself photogenic, she
[37:04] Speaker 2: didn't like her own voice, and yet she'll go on
[37:08] Speaker 2: any media op that you can offer her with a
[37:11] Speaker 2: big enough audience to basically tell people about the stuff
[37:17] Speaker 2: that she feels passionate about. That's really that's dedication.
[37:21] Speaker 3: Boy, could you imagine if she was around during the
[37:24] Speaker 3: podcast era, she would have been on everything for sure.
[37:29] Speaker 2: Look Out who's number one right now? Look out Kelsey Brothers,
[37:33] Speaker 2: eleanor Roosevelt.
[37:34] Speaker 3: Here the Travis kelcey. Okay, good for those guys. Sure,
[37:41] Speaker 3: I don't even know. I don't. I used to look
[37:42] Speaker 3: at the podcast rankings a lot early on, and then
[37:46] Speaker 3: I stopped at a certain point, many many many years ago,
[37:49] Speaker 3: and I don't think I've looked one time since then.
[37:51] Speaker 3: So I have no idea who's out there in crushing it.
[37:55] Speaker 2: I used to look at them so much, Chuck, that
[37:57] Speaker 2: I would go change countries for the iTunes things and
[38:01] Speaker 2: see where we were in other countries as well.
[38:04] Speaker 3: Ay, Australia has always been our guys. We were number
[38:07] Speaker 3: one in Australia for a while.
[38:10] Speaker 1: And Canada has always loved us.
[38:11] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why we toured Australia in Canada.
[38:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, step it up. Rest of the world.
[38:17] Speaker 3: We don't go to where people don't like us. Why
[38:18] Speaker 3: would you do that?
[38:20] Speaker 1: Why would everybody come just to boo.
[38:24] Speaker 3: So while she was doing all this you know, volunteerism
[38:27] Speaker 3: and like lending her time to every body under the sun,
[38:31] Speaker 3: she also made some very good friends with women who
[38:36] Speaker 3: were probably in the gay community, would be my guest,
[38:40] Speaker 3: and I think this is where her sort of her
[38:42] Speaker 3: advocacy for gender rights and stuff like that would come
[38:46] Speaker 3: into play, is just her exposure to these people. So
[38:50] Speaker 3: through the League of Women Voters, she met a co founder,
[38:53] Speaker 3: a woman named Esther Everett late and her partner Elizabeth
[38:57] Speaker 3: Fisher Reid, who would be her financial adviser later on.
[39:01] Speaker 3: But they were like a great trio and they were
[39:04] Speaker 3: really really close, really good friends. Eventually they would rent
[39:10] Speaker 3: that when I said she lived near Washington Square Park,
[39:13] Speaker 3: they would rent apartments right on top of one another,
[39:17] Speaker 3: and you know a lot of other women. She became
[39:20] Speaker 3: partners with Mary and Dickerman and Nancy Cook, and that's
[39:23] Speaker 3: who she founded that vow Kill Industries with the furniture business.
[39:27] Speaker 2: She became friends with them and they were partners. Yeah,
[39:29] Speaker 2: oh yeah, I guess she became partners with them too. Yeah,
[39:32] Speaker 2: she became partners with those partners.
[39:35] Speaker 3: That's right. And I think like after like one of
[39:39] Speaker 3: the cottages that val Kill built that she I think
[39:42] Speaker 3: she ended up even moving into one of those as
[39:44] Speaker 3: a residence.
[39:46] Speaker 2: Eventually she did, but first Maryan Dickerman and Nancy Cook did.
[39:50] Speaker 2: I think they lived there for like three decades too. Yeah,
[39:53] Speaker 2: and then finally she was like, I need.
[39:54] Speaker 3: The place, beat it right, yeah, scram so.
[39:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, these, I mean, it's just a plain fact that.
[40:02] Speaker 2: Another expression of how open her mind was is that
[40:06] Speaker 2: a lot of her friends were gay women. Again, this
[40:09] Speaker 2: is the thirties, forties families at most the early sixties
[40:15] Speaker 2: people did not talk about this kind of stuff, and
[40:19] Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of people avoided gay people and
[40:22] Speaker 2: she just was it was Again, I think she judged
[40:25] Speaker 2: people on generally a case by case basis.
[40:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. You know you mentioned early on she
[40:30] Speaker 3: probably had other affairs. I know that her bodyguard, Earl Miller,
[40:34] Speaker 3: is someone that they everyone is a historians kind of
[40:37] Speaker 3: suspect that she had an affair with, including her son.
[40:40] Speaker 3: One of her sons. Was pretty much like, yeah, I
[40:44] Speaker 3: think Earl Miller had an affair with her. They were
[40:47] Speaker 3: super tight, and I think he was the one that
[40:48] Speaker 3: gave her the I don't think we mentioned insisted that
[40:51] Speaker 3: she carry a pistol with her on these car road
[40:54] Speaker 3: trips since she issued secret service.
[40:57] Speaker 1: Yeah, and she used.
[40:58] Speaker 2: It's a great effect too, Like if you were doing
[41:00] Speaker 2: what she wanted you to, you know, like passing an
[41:04] Speaker 2: anti lynching law, she would just pull her gun out
[41:07] Speaker 2: and just set it on the desk, just let it
[41:09] Speaker 2: sit there and make its own statement.
[41:11] Speaker 3: Well, she was not popular with racist because she received
[41:14] Speaker 3: death threats a lot because of her promotion of racial
[41:17] Speaker 3: equality in the nineteen fifties. Apparently the Klan had a
[41:21] Speaker 3: twenty five thousand dollars bounty on her head for sure.
[41:25] Speaker 2: One other thing too about Earl Miller is that he
[41:29] Speaker 2: was actually credited as the one who gave her her
[41:32] Speaker 2: self esteem and her courage to face the media and
[41:37] Speaker 2: just basically be a public figure despite how you know,
[41:40] Speaker 2: debilitating her fear of that.
[41:42] Speaker 3: Stuff was Yeah, pretty cool.
[41:44] Speaker 2: Yeah, So FDR passed away, let's see, seventeen years before
[41:50] Speaker 2: she did. He died in nineteen forty five. This is
[41:54] Speaker 2: when she moved to Valkill call Cottage. Yeah, and she
[41:59] Speaker 2: was like, I'm done with politics. And everybody's like, no,
[42:02] Speaker 2: come back being politics. She said, no, I'm done. I'm
[42:05] Speaker 2: just going to go be a private citizen. And it
[42:07] Speaker 2: turns out that President Harry Truman, a few months after
[42:11] Speaker 2: FDR died and Eleanor said she was just becoming a
[42:14] Speaker 2: civilian again, said no, I need you to go to
[42:17] Speaker 2: the UN. They're doing some pretty neat stuff there. Go
[42:20] Speaker 2: see what's going on and just become part of the
[42:24] Speaker 2: American delegation to the United Nations.
[42:27] Speaker 3: Yeah. So she answered the call, and from nineteen forty
[42:30] Speaker 3: five to nineteen fifty two she held that position at
[42:32] Speaker 3: the UN. All of her colleagues were men, obviously at
[42:37] Speaker 3: the time, and they were dismissive of her, and they said,
[42:41] Speaker 3: you know, let's put her on Committee three, like they
[42:43] Speaker 3: don't do much, it's like humanitarian issues. But how wrong
[42:48] Speaker 3: they were, because Committee three turned out to be pretty
[42:50] Speaker 3: important and somewhat controversial when they were tasked with determining
[42:57] Speaker 3: whether post war refugees had to go back home they
[43:01] Speaker 3: had to be like made to be go back home,
[43:04] Speaker 3: And she said no, She was like, I'm going to
[43:07] Speaker 3: take this up with the General Assembly, and she convinced
[43:09] Speaker 3: them to vote against forced repatriation.
[43:13] Speaker 2: Yeah. Those male colleagues who forced her onto Committee three
[43:18] Speaker 2: because they thought it wasn't going to amount too much.
[43:20] Speaker 2: They kept the Committee for Planning the Future for men
[43:23] Speaker 2: wearing hats everywhere for themselves.
[43:26] Speaker 1: That's right, Like this this has got legs. Yeah, even more.
[43:29] Speaker 2: To the point, aside from getting repatriation off the table,
[43:34] Speaker 2: she helped author the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Yeah,
[43:39] Speaker 2: one of the most important documents, even though toothless, but
[43:42] Speaker 2: still one of the most important documents humanity has ever
[43:45] Speaker 2: come together and created, which is pretty great.
[43:47] Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, you said toothless. That was the
[43:49] Speaker 3: one things that really upset her was that they did
[43:51] Speaker 3: this great thing, and then she was upset that there
[43:54] Speaker 3: was there were no teeth, and that they didn't do
[43:57] Speaker 3: anything to really make sure it was enforced.
[44:00] Speaker 2: Right, And I'm not sure what they could do. I
[44:02] Speaker 2: think now the International Criminal Court is capable of doing stuff,
[44:09] Speaker 2: but I think even their STEMI toothless, depending on how
[44:13] Speaker 2: big and tough the country is, you.
[44:14] Speaker 3: Know, Yeah, good point.
[44:17] Speaker 2: So, Yes, she passed away in nineteen sixty two. She
[44:20] Speaker 2: was in the hospital. She was not feeling very well,
[44:23] Speaker 2: and she checked herself out and said, I want to
[44:24] Speaker 2: dine at home, and she went and died in I
[44:28] Speaker 2: think Greenwich village, is that correct?
[44:31] Speaker 3: Upper East side by that point, same thing. She was
[44:34] Speaker 3: seventy eight, she had you know, it was heart failure,
[44:38] Speaker 3: it was tuberculosis, it was a plastic innemia. She was
[44:41] Speaker 3: in rough shape at that point. But you know she
[44:44] Speaker 3: got to dining her home like she wished, and she
[44:47] Speaker 3: left a legacy behind that. I mean, good luck who
[44:51] Speaker 3: came right after her, like good luck filling those shoes
[44:53] Speaker 3: as a first lady.
[44:55] Speaker 2: Mamie Truman, Yeah, I know, Mamie Eisenhower.
[45:00] Speaker 3: Maybe as an hour I think some maymi.
[45:03] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[45:05] Speaker 2: One other thing, chuck that she was the first at
[45:08] Speaker 2: and technically she made FDR the first. She lobbied for
[45:12] Speaker 2: him to include a woman in his cabinet, specifically our
[45:17] Speaker 2: beloved Francis Perkins, who was made Secretary of Labor under FDR,
[45:21] Speaker 2: the first woman cabinet member ever.
[45:24] Speaker 3: That's right, and we talked about that in our Francis
[45:26] Speaker 3: Perkins episode and I highly recommend that, And that was
[45:29] Speaker 3: a good one. That's Josh's I think favorite modern woman.
[45:34] Speaker 2: Well, I mean you mean's my favorite modern woman, but
[45:36] Speaker 2: you I get your point. Yeah, and Mary Tyler Moore
[45:41] Speaker 2: don't forget her.
[45:41] Speaker 3: Oh sure, we need to do an episode on her.
[45:43] Speaker 3: And let's do one on you me too.
[45:45] Speaker 2: Not all right, I'm sure you We would love that.
[45:48] Speaker 2: We'll sit down an interviewer for twenty thirty hours.
[45:50] Speaker 3: And so that'd be fun.
[45:52] Speaker 1: Okay, Well, while we.
[45:53] Speaker 2: Go interview you me for twenty to thirty hours, I
[45:56] Speaker 2: think we should insert listener mail here first.
[46:02] Speaker 3: That's right. This is from Alex. Hey, guys, this is
[46:05] Speaker 3: from a Selects episode about the fairness doctrine. During the episode,
[46:09] Speaker 3: you mentioned that the owner of WJIMTV built a TV
[46:13] Speaker 3: studio with a pool in case he needed to convert
[46:16] Speaker 3: it to a motel as a fallback business. And guys,
[46:19] Speaker 3: that building is still a TV studio under the call
[46:21] Speaker 3: signs WNS, a local CBS affiliate, and they kept that pool.
[46:26] Speaker 3: He sent a video in fact, of meteorologists Katie Nikolau
[46:30] Speaker 3: giving a weather report from the pool. I guess semi recently,
[46:34] Speaker 3: and he said, I passed this TV station countless times,
[46:36] Speaker 3: always wonder why it looks so swanky, and now it
[46:38] Speaker 3: makes total sense that I know it was built like
[46:40] Speaker 3: a nineteen fifties motel. Thanks for the show, guys. Always
[46:43] Speaker 3: fun when an episode hits close to home.
[46:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, who is that?
[46:47] Speaker 3: That's Alex?
[46:48] Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Alex, that was a great one.
[46:50] Speaker 2: I've always been fascinated by that TV station with the
[46:52] Speaker 2: pool too, So yep, thanks for calling it out. If
[46:56] Speaker 2: you want to be like Alex and say, hey, I
[46:58] Speaker 2: know just what you guys are talking about because I
[47:00] Speaker 2: live by this thing, let me tell you about it. Well,
[47:03] Speaker 2: you can tell us about it via email. Send it
[47:06] Speaker 2: off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
[47:12] Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
[47:15] Speaker 3: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[47:20] Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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