Dead Ladies Show Podcast

In this episode, we encounter the show's very first featured geographer.   UK-born Doreen Massey was a pioneer in her field. She challenged existing ideas about space, place and power, was compassionate, politically active, and hopeful.   She worked in academia and as a public intellectual, including at British early-morning TV fans' beloved Open University – teaching students who didn't have acce...

In this episode, we bring you the story of an actress whose off-screen life was as dramatic and tragic as many of the characters she portrayed. Born in Vienna in 1938, Romy Schneider was said to have the star power of Greta Garbo or Marilyn Monroe.   She is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Sissi, aka Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who she embodied in four films (some of which are still shown...

  In this episode, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire has the story of a deutsche Diva — an iconic German actress and singer and best-selling author known for her glamour and scandal, her smoky voice and sweeping false eyelashes. Hildegard Knef was also an unreliable narrator and a serial fabulator who was alternately loved and hated in her homeland.   Producer/host Susan Stone is joined by other DLS...

In this episode, translator Laura Radosh introduces us to the fascinating and troubled writer Djuna Barnes.   The journalist, novelist, and artist mixed with everyone from James Joyce to Peggy Guggenheim, and was at the center of Bohemian life in 1920s New York and Paris, though perhaps not quite as much as she would like. Best known (if at all) for her modernist novel "Nightwood," Djuna once call...

Our story for this episode comes from our friends at the Dead Ladies Show NYC, which is organized and hosted by Molly O'Laughlin Kemper with Sheila Enright.   Photographer, professional eccentric and guinea pig lover JR Pepper tells the tale of artist Leonor Fini, a glamorous, passionate iconoclast (and cat lover) with a brilliant creative mind who was fiercely independent — at a time when women w...

Dead Ladies Show Podcast   Episode 61 - Emmy Noether   For this episode, we bring back the presenter who appeared in our very first podcast episode, writer and translator Karen Margolis. Drawing from her own history in higher mathematics, Karen ably tells the tale of Germany's Emmy Noether, who developed key theorems in theoretical physics and made important contributions to abstract algebra. Excl...

In this episode, we're going to hear about woman who is sometimes called a sculptress of sound —   "the unsung heroine of British electronic music" —   Delia Derbyshire, ably presented by our very own DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire.     A working-class girl from Coventry, England, Delia studied music and mathematics, and went on to work at the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. If you're a SciFi fan, you...

Dead Ladies Show Podcast - Berenice Abbott   Welcome to our first podcast of 2023! In this episode, we zoom in on photographer Berenice Abbott. This American artist has a bit of a six-degrees-of separation going on with a number of our previous Dead Ladies, including Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven and Emma Goldman. As told by DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens, Berenice's story includes stints in P...

Episode 58 — Ruth Asawa  It's our final podcast of 2022! DLS co-founders Florian Duijsens and Katy Derbyshire join producer Susan Stone to toast the holiday season, chat about this year's good news in Dead Ladies, and to introduce our featured Dead Lady, artist Ruth Asawa.  Born to Japanese parents on a farm in California, Ruth Asawa first developed her artistic tendencies tracing shapes in the di...

To kick off Season 6 of the Dead Ladies Show Podcast, writer Leon Craig brings us the story of award-winning English author Angela Carter. Known for her feminist, gothic and erotic sensibilities and re-inventing folk and fairy tales for her now seminal collection The Bloody Chamber , Carter's life had quite a few plot twists of its own. In her 51 years she wrote nine novels, five short story colle...

Episode 56 - Mae West   Courtesy of our pals at DLS NYC, we meet the first meta sex symbol: Mae West. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY   Mae was brazen, buxom, bawdy, sensational and sexy. She was known for her husky voice, risqué performances, and double entendres that slipped past the film censors. With over 70 years in show business on both the stage and screen, she scandalized the world of ente...

This episode was recorded at the second-ever PodFest Berlin , a local two-day event full of workshops, networking, free ice cream, and live tapings from podcasts in various languages, including one from us.     Dead Ladies Show co-founder Katy Derbyshire and podcast producer/host Susan Stone were there for a mini DLS, and took turns hosting and presenting bilingually in German and English in front...

Episode 54 - Memphis Minnie   In this episode, we drop in on our New York-based sister spinoff show, DLS NYC, which returned to the KGB Bar's Red Room after a long hiatus. DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens happened to be visiting from Berlin, and took to the stage to introduce the fabulous Memphis Minnie.    Tobacco-chewing blues singer MEMPHIS MINNIE (1897–1973) ran away from home at the age of 13...

Episode 53 - Eva Crane   In this buzz-worthy episode, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire (and translator) brings us the story of leading bee scientist Eva Crane. Born to humble beginnings, Eva obtained a PhD in nuclear physics but quickly shifted her attention from atoms to apiculture. She travelled the world to document all things bees, and was particularly interested in the relationship between bees...

Episode 52 - Katherine Mansfield   In this episode we'll be hearing from the multi-talented Hinemoana Baker. Hinemoana hails from New Zealand, she is a writer and musician of Māori and Pākehā heritage; she will be presenting her reflections on the life of another New Zealand writer — Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield was a very influential modernist writer, who left New Zealand for Europe at the age...

Episode 51 - Rosa Luxemburg     The world is a troubling place, but we hope you can still find some inspiration out there, and in honor of International Women's Day, we wanted to bring you the story of a woman who fought, loved, and sacrificed, in troubling times of her own — the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa was a Polish-born Jewish intellectual, socialist, Marxist philosopher, and anti-war...

Episode 50 - Adelaide Herrmann In this episode, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire conjures up a Victorian-era Dead Lady magician who dazzled audiences and broke boundaries. Starting from her childhood in England, Adelaide Herrmann (née Scarcez) was a born performer, first notable for dance, acrobatics, and trick cycling. She met and married magician Alexander Herrmann, and became his on-stage assista...

We kick off 2022 with an episode devoted to a woman famed for her wit and beauty, and later for her status as a sort of early inoculation influencer. Her tale is told by DLS co-founder and devoted traveler, Florian Duijsens.   English aristocrat Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was raised to keep her opinions to herself, be it at home or in the King's court, but she travelled widely, published secretly,...

Episode 48 - Zaha Hadid     In our last episode of 2021, The DLS team of Susan Stone, Katy Derbyshire, and Florian Duijsens all come together to clink glasses of bubbly, and discuss our favorite Dead Lady news of the year.     Plus, DLS Producer and journalist Susan Stone presents our featured Dead Lady, architect Zaha Hadid.   Born in Baghdad, Zaha started her creative life early, designing her o...

Episode 47 - Milena Jesenská   In this edition of the Dead Ladies Show Podcast, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire brings you the story of Milena Jesenská live from the stage of the Berlin translation festival Translationale, held at the Collegium Hungaricum.     A journalist, writer, editor and translator, Milena Jesenská is often simply called "Kafka's Milena" for her connection to the famous writer...

**This episode contains brief mentions of suicide and suicide attempts, as well as some humorous profanity**   In this edition of the Dead Ladies Show Podcast, DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens introduces us to the eccentric Dada artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.   An eternally eclectic, German-born New Yorker, the Baroness was known for living life as a work of art, wearing a collage of...

Episode 45: Nana Yaa Asantewaa We're back with Season 5 of the Dead Ladies Show Podcast! And we kick things off with a fierce leader, the legendary Nana Yaa Asantewaa, a West African queen who led a war against the British in pre-colonial times. The also impressive writer and activist Sharon Dodua Otoo presents her story from the courtyard stage at Berlin's ACUD as we celebrated an open-air return...

In this episode of the podcast, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire introduces us to daring German writer Irmgard Keun. As an ingenue, Irmgard's writing debut was much more consequent than her acting debut, and she garnered praise and a film adaptation. Her books explored women's lives in Weimar-era Berlin with a humor all her own, which of course meant the Nazis banned them. There's dark wit, wild par...

This episode the introducing duties go to DLS co-founders Katy Derbyshire and Florian Duijsens as they hand off to podcast producer and host Susan Stone to present the featured Dead Lady -- Bebe Barron. Known as the "First lady of Electronic Music," Bebe was a classically trained musician who found her joy with husband Louis in the eerie tones made by dying circuits. Their tape loops and new techn...

This episode we meet the intrepid Emily Hahn, an American writer and passionate traveller who wrote 54 books while reporting for the New Yorker.  As a young woman, she was the first woman to graduate in mining engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then donned men's clothes to travel across the US with friends. Wanderlust took her to the Belgian Congo, where she worked for the Red C...