99% Invisible Remember when we could fly? Remember the safety card in the pocket of the seat in front? My daughter-in-law must not listen to In the Unlikely Event, which looks at the design of the Safety Card on airlines. The first safety cards were completely prose, without diagrams, lest the passengers should be deterred from flying. The reality is that most people do not read the card, and that in any crash, many passengers are frozen with fear into immobility. Many design considerations go into the Safety Car (pictures only; highlighting colours that are significant; making them specific that that particular aircraft; depicting effort required e.g. opening the emergency door). So, if I ever get to fly again, I’ll look at it with new eyes.
Rough Translation (NPR) There’s a language warning at the start of Radical Rudeness and yes, it sure is offensive. Really offensive. Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan poet, sacked from her university job, took on the President Yoweri Museveni with very offensive poetry, and ended up in jail. She has since served her sentence, but is a damaged, dangerous woman. Very confronting.
Hay Literary Festival. This podcast, (well actually it’s a YouTube video) from 2014, is of Tom Holland talking about his (then) recent translation of Herodotus’ Histories. He’s an engaging, fluent speaker and he’ll make you want to race straight to your nearest library or bookshop to buy a copy.
West Midlands History. I did quite a bit of local research on the 1919 Spanish flu epidemic here in my local suburb in Melbourne, and it was interesting to hear the experience in UK with Spanish Flu Comes To Birmingham. In UK, the first wave occurred in 1918 while the war was still under way, with food shortages and all medical resources directed towards the war.
My Marvellous Melbourne. I really do enjoy these podcasts produced by Andy May at Uni of Melbourne with members of the Melbourne History Workshop. Episode 3 of My Marvellous Melbourne looks at the history of bells in the Melbourne soundscape, an oral history recorded in the 1980s where an old Preston resident Evan Luly remembers back to post WWI. He and his daughter Lexie were keen photographers. Their photos between 1950 and 1970 have been digitized and are available as the Luly collection at https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/melbourne-history/collections/show/3 The program finishes with the case of Ivy Cogden who was found not guilty of murder when she attacked her 19 year old daughter with an axe in Oakleigh in 1950. The jury found that she killed her daughter while she was sleepwalking, and committed her to Mont Park where she died in 1952.
The Last Archive. Episode 2: Detection of Deception will take you on a wild ride. It starts off with the inventor of the lie detector William Moulton Marston, who hoped to have his invention accepted by a court of law in 1920 in the case of James Frye, a young African-American man accused of murder. But this is not just a podcast about a courtcase. It turns the lens back onto William Moulton Marston, with lots of surprises!
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 