Bittersweet Infamy - #68 - The Cult of the Clitoris

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

Guest host Lucia Misch tells Josie and Taylor about dancer Maud Allan, the fantastical allegations against her, and the spectacular trial that ensued. Plus: a governor steps out with The Nanny, and a beloved band unloads a septic surprise on some unsuspecting tourists—but which one is the truth?

Welcome to Bitter Sweden. I'm Taylor Basso and I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and indeed. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Today I am extremely extremely excited because not only do I get to hang out with Taylor Basso. I also get to hang out with a Vancouver bestie, Lucia Mish. Hi, yay. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I've been waiting. Oh, you've been waiting for your invite? Is that? No, that's a little thirsty. I've been living a full and satisfied life. This is just a cherry on top. This is just one blemish on your otherwise

perfect existence. Yes, my otherwise flawless life resume. Speaking of life resume, I can read the bio from the back of your book. The problem was Solitaire published by Right Bloody North, which is a fantastic read. You can hear it here. Very sensory. Lucia Mish, she they is a writer, performer and facilitator from the Bay Area. Her work has been published in journals such as Arc Poetry Magazine and Room. And she has toured across North America as a spoken word artist. She currently lives on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Slewa Tooth Territory in Vancouver, BC, Canada. 604. True fact. And Luke and I were roommates. Yeah, a long time. A long, wonderful time.

Josie was the person who brought into my life the so far favorite part of my life, which was chicken, the cat that Josie founded an alley who we both lived with for many years and then who lived with me until he died and to whom the book is dedicated. So really, in a roundabout way, it's also dedicated to you. Chicken was chill as hell. He was like a big orange cat and he didn't give any shits. He was great. Slugs in his fur. That's right, the dedication for chicken comma. Of course. Everything good that I know, I learned from chicken, every single thing. An angel. And as you might be able to hear right now, I have another friend with me, Bonnie, the foster dog, aka Bonbons, bonkers, piglets, John Bon Jovi. When she's farty, I call her Bon with the wind.

Got a lot of puppy anxiety. So we spent the first like month together in dog prison, me crocheting an Afghan and her losing her tiny puppy beans anytime anything happened. Got a lot of time to come up with nicknames. Yeah. Anyhow, so hopefully Bonnie will be a supportive and mostly silent presence in this endeavor. But we'll see. If we hear puppy noises, then then we'll blame Bonnie. Yes, it won't be me. Sweet. Uh-uh. Batman, who's also joining us? I'm alone, just me and my thoughts. Hey, she's up for adoption. Oh, baby. Let's see how this recording goes before I commit. Sounds good. That's fair.

Can I ask you for like a spoiler specifically for fans of Bitter Sweden for me? What is the problem with Solitaire? The problem with Solitaire is that it can be hard to tell if you're playing yourself. And if you want to know what that means, then you'll have to buy the book, I'm afraid. And it's a poetry book. So even then it's kind of just up to you. So let me tell you something, Lucia. We haven't been entirely honest to you. What? The anxiety you must have felt when I said that. Because typically we start off with what we call the Minfamous, which is like a little small mini infamous story. But because it's April,

we don't do that. We do the April Fools Fact or Fiction Minfamous. That's two stories. One of them is real. One of them is fake. And Lucia, it's up to you to figure out which one is real. Oh, God. I'm not ready, but I'm committed. Dude, you don't know what ever is. No one ever is. It's a feeling out process. We're all brand new to it. It's true. So how it's going to work specifically this time is a way that we haven't ever done it before. Because there's two of us and one of you, we're both going to give you a story. The way that I put it in our last episode was it may be helpful to think of us as a two-headed

serpent and one of us speaks only in truths and one of us speaks only in lies. And it's up to you to figure out which is which. That's a really excellent and not at all intimidating visualization I will hold. We can be like a fuzzy two-headed friend who's still partially lying to you, but maybe a little bit more where the wild things are. Right. Okay. I will think of you as a two-headed wild thing. There we go. That's a dream.

So Josie, you kick us off. Tell Lucia's story. Is it fact or is it fiction? Lucia to decide. I figured I would start us out with a little story that takes place in our home state, Lucia, the Golden State, California. All right. Thank you. This is a story of one of our long-term, more famous state governors, Governor Jerry Brown. Oh, Jerry. My mom likes to call Governor Moonbeam.

Skiing. Was that ever something that came? Skiing. Skiing. Jerry Brown, he was born 1938 in San Francisco, California. Gopads. Gopads. His father was the district attorney of San Francisco and then went on to be

a two-term governor of California. Apparently it runs in the family. Nepotism. It runs in the family. He, I guess he was really trying to fight against the nepotism because he had a brief moment where he thought he would inter seminary and become a Catholic priest. That was a hope. That was a goal that quickly faded away. He went to UC Berkeley and then to Yale Law School and he came back to California. He has a long and illustrious political career, including two very separate terms as the governor of California and separate by about like 15 years.

So Governor Moonbeam happened in the 70s. Deadly diss. And his most recent term ended, gosh, I think 2016. Governor Moonbeam sounds like a disco album. Yeah. Ooh, it does. So, so far this story checks out. Yeah.

70s. Okay. For Governor Moonbeam. For our rock group. All right, you're doing good so far. Yeah. But I do feel like you're trying to fleece me with like Googleable facts. Oh, well, Google away, my dear.

No, no, that's cheating. Your theory right now is she's giving me a bunch of real stuff about Jerry Brown that's just going to set up some bullshit in order to lull me into a false sense of security. Yeah. I've played two truths in a lie. Okay. Okay. This isn't my first deception rodeo.

There's our new title for the bit, Taylor. The deception rodeo. I'll take that's a great one. The April Fools Factor Fiction Deception Rodeo Minfamous. It rolls off the tongue. Covered in glitter. Jerry Brown. Well known California politician, but in kind of maybe true California style.

He was also known to be a bit of a bachelor and to be a bit of like a Hollywood rock star detour. Sure. In 1971, he started a long term, almost a decade long relationship with Linda Ronstadt. Ooh. Pretty excited. Yeah. Yeah, bonita.

There was actually a lot when he did his presidential bid for 1980, I think it was. There was a lot of a fanfare of Governor Brown as the president and Linda Ronstadt as the first lady and like their pictures appeared on little buttons. Oh, I bet that sold well. Evidently not well enough. Her career was kind of launching into superstardom and his political career was launching in its own political superstardom and they just never could seem to get it down. But throughout his political career, Jerry Brown was a bachelor.

He did eventually marry his longtime girlfriend. This was in 2005. Ann Gust, the former chief administrator officer for the Gap. He stepped into the Gap. Their ceremony was officiated by Senator Diane Feinstein in the Rotunda building in downtown Oakland. You bring Di-Fi in. It's like, can we check the Di-Fi signal in here?

What's your Di-Fi password? Former with a zero instead of an O. And he is a three. Yeah, exactly. This whole show is going to be a fucking mess because you all two are my favorite people in the world. That's so sweet. There's a dog.

You have a good sense of humor. That means because you hang out with funny people. There we go. Yeah, yeah. So marriage wasn't for them though. Apparently three years later, they divorced in 2008. And so Jerry Brown has been known to reside mostly as a bachelor in his tenure as a politician. Except in 2009, in the middle of his third term as the 39th governor of California,

he met the next love of his life, another woman of the Hollywood spotlight. But she is also of a political spotlight. On a flight from DC back to Los Angeles, Jerry Brown met Fran Drescher. Wow, the nanny. All right. The nanny. Yeah. So if you don't know Fran Drescher, she was born in New York City, 1957.

And she's famous for her role as Fran Fine in a TV sitcom called The Nanny. Do you guys, did you guys ever watch that? Do you currently watch the, what's your? Love The Nanny. Mr. Sheffield. That's that's what I got. Fran Fine was the shit. Fran Fine was always turning up in the Gucci with like a banging body that she must have

been doing like seven hours of Pilates a day or some shit to get that body. Oh my gosh. Because she was, she was limber and toned and she always looked like a million bucks she had. So the set up for the nanny, may I? You bank please. Thank you. It's a mind out. Taylor, take it away.

That's what it's at. Perfect. Fran Fine gets dumped by her fiance who is Jonathan Penner from Survivor. And she shows up at like the wrong place at the right time and ends up getting a nanny and gig for Mr. Sheffield, this stuffy British man. And Fran is like Jewish chick from Queens. So there's a little bit of like a culture clash between this stuffy British family and this working class chick with all these funny lines.

And has one of my favorite qualities in a show, which is that the theme song explains the premise of the show. I do like that. Here's how she became the nanny. She was working at a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens when her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes. What was she to do? Where was she to go?

She was out on her fanny. Then she showed up at the Sheffield's door. She was there to sell makeup, but the father saw more. She had style. She had flair. She was there. That's how she became the nanny. Boom.

God, they really. Oh, they make you wait for that resolution of that rhyme. I respect it. Yeah. Out on our fanny. Give me 10 minutes and then you'll get the nanny. And you're like, oh, oh, oh, I know it's coming. She's about to become the nanny.

They get off on with holding. Yeah. This is a whole genre, though, of because the only one I can think of is Fresh Prince, but there must be a wholistical somewhere of shows. Yeah. Gilligan's Island. What the fuck is happening to Jerry Brown? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'm going to give you a little bit about Fran Drescher because at this point too, it probably seems like they're very opposite. Fran Drescher, New York, opposite coast, TV star, very distinct, measly voice. She has her niche in a sitcom and Jerry Brown is governor of California running for president. After the show had ended, she had a hard fought battle with uterine cancer, of which she. I remember that.

Still kicking. Good for her. And in response, she created a nonprofit organization called Cancer Schmancer. Yeah, I knew that too. In the back of my mind, I knew that too. Yeah, I knew his name. Fran Drescher's Cancer Schmancer. Yeah, for Andrew Schmancer.

Exactly, yeah. You're basically talking it ish at that point. Yeah, yeah. And this nonprofit got Congress to pass the Gynecological Cancer Education and Awareness Act that became law in 2007. By this time, she had kind of stepped in into a political realm. And now you're saying she's going to give Jerry Brown some kind of ecological awareness. That was good.

In 2008, she was appointed by then president George W. Bush to the U.S. public diplomacy envoy for women's health, where she traveled the world advocating for women's health and cancer prevention. During that tenure that she had, she was traveling a lot between D.C. and her home in Malibu and on a flight that is where her and Jerry Brown initially met. Their relationship, it's kind of taken similar to maybe Linda Ronstadt, where they were together for a short amount of time, but they've been seen together infrequently up until about 2020.

Apparently, like long walks on the beach in Malibu and certain LA restaurants, they've been seen in San Francisco together. But it hasn't, of course, been any type of official nothing, no engagement has come out, none of that. And apparently in 2020, things have stopped. In 2021, Fran Drescher was elected as the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists President. I don't know if you guys knew that.

SAG AFGEN I guess her time with Jerry Brown kind of rubbed off on her so that she felt compelled to continue a political career, but a political career that was a little closer to her home turf of television and screen acting. And that is the story of Governor Moonbean and the nanny. Thank you. Lucia, what do you make of it? It's hard to say before hearing your story, Taylor.

I like to do a comparative sort of analysis. I respect the approach. Yeah. But I mean, I know Josie to be a liar. Oh, a bullshit artist. I lie to the time. Yeah, absolutely. You know, honestly, it was a good story, but on the infamy thermometer, we're like,

you know, we're barely in late spring, which could be a ploy. You could be trying to, you know, fact me. And there were lots of dates. There were lots of organizations. That's what facts are made of, Lucia. Dates and organizations. But you know that, and I know that, and you could be using this against me. This is going to turn into a real, like, where's the Iocane powder situation.

Never going against a Sicilian when death is on the line, et cetera. Yeah. So yeah, Taylor, I don't know. Let's hear what you got, and then I will make my choice. I need to get into my April Fool's. They're coming back. The sunnies are back. Oh, because your eyes are.

I'm emotive. I'm too emotive for my own good. So, oh my God. Okay, let's go. For our second infamous, it is August 8th, 2004. And we joined a boat tour already underway. An open deck tour boat called Chicago's Little Lady is taking in the murky green beauty of the Chicago River.

Its passengers are enjoying a tour provided by the Chicago Architecture Center, a completely real organization at the beginning of the cruise. Captain Sonya Lund warns passengers not to look up with their mouths open while passing under the city's graded bridges, unless they want a true taste of Chicago. And everyone laughs. And they're still laughing, taking in the summer breeze off the Fragrant River, chatting about Millennium Park and Wrigley Field

and all the great Chicago sites and institutions we're going to take in after this. Let's go take our picture in the bean, you know. And we pass under the Kinsey Street Bridge, which is a graded bridge of the type Captain Lund described earlier, and true to her word, something falls to the grade. And it's not small, not at all. A gigantic cascade of liquid matter plummets through the Kinsey Street Bridge and collides with our open-top boat with a thunderous splash.

About two-thirds of the people on the upper passenger deck are soaked down to the bone with this mysterious brown and yellow sludge. A voice will come on the announcement urging people not to be alarmed and that the substance is merely water. But time and the passengers' noses give lie to this assurance. This does not smell like water. In fact, according to passenger Steedman Bass, who'd managed to avoid the torrent, quote,

it was horrific. And indeed, the merry passengers of Chicago's Little Lady have been doused with 800 pounds of human waste. 800 pounds? Naturally, the passengers demand that the boat returns to the dock. It turns around immediately and speeds back toward the point of departure. Meanwhile, the passengers, including disabled and elderly customers, a pregnant woman, a small child and an infant,

are wretching, storming to the lower deck, to the bathrooms to vomit. It's not hard to imagine people puking over the side of the boat or onto themselves. It's like drop dead gorgeous when the beauty queens are puking over the hotel backlinies because of the bad shellfish. Yes. A cascade of human excrement, basically. At the dock, 120 stunt passengers disembarked and were all given refunds, with some giving cab fare, dry cleaning, and other niceties.

Chicago's Little Lady was swabbed and ready to go for her 3pm tour. Unfortunately, the Little Lady and her passengers weren't the only collateral damage to this shitty stunt. It turns out releasing an 800 pound thunder of feces and urine through a grate into a river from street level results in some atmospheric effects around the site of the dumping. I mean, actually, like, atmospheric effects being like lights. Like a light show. It's an alien light show.

Yeah, it's a northern lights. It changes the mood. The atmosphere has been affected. Absolutely. That goes without saying. Nobody is in a good mood anymore, anywhere near this. It's kind of created a chunky brown fog of like particulate poo poo and pee pee. Wow, gross.

What? Let's hear from driver Lynn LaPlante-Alway. So on this day in 2004, the notorious LLA, Lynn LaPlante-Alway, is driving out of the city with her husband and her son via the Kinsey Street Bridge. So two important notes here. Lynn is leaving Chicago to play the violin at a wedding. So her hair and dress and makeup are all very lovingly and intentionally crafted. She looks great.

And then number two, Lynn is very heavily pregnant. And one of her symptoms is that every little thing makes her throw up. She gets very easily nauseated, especially in the car. That's why she's driving with the windows rolled down. Lynn, with your violin. No. Here's Lynn looking fly. She's got her husband riding passenger and a toddler in the back.

Quote, it was just one of those beautiful days with the windows down. I just remember feeling like, oh, wow, my hair just looks amazing. You know, long and curly. Sorry, this is a direct quote. Put your glasses, Taylor. Do you want your glasses? Yeah, you didn't want to put your glasses back on, Taylor. Oh, wow, my hair looks amazing.

Just, you know, long and curly. I was just full of self admiration in the rear view mirror and bragging to my husband about my hair. And then there's a big bus. And then it was like instant horror. The Mercedes SUV passes through the brown mist and Lynn. Well, she reacts as you might expect. Quote, it was like a physical punch to the face. It wasn't even, oh, I'm going to be sick.

I just started immediately vomiting. So, so I'm trying to leave my head out the window. So I'm not throwing up all over the car while I'm driving. And of course, the wind just blew it all right back to me. And my husband is yelling, pull over, exit, exit. Lynn and her fam end up pulling into a car wash to clean the vehicle in themselves as best they could, crying and retching all the while. Unfortunately, no word if they made it to the wedding.

Um, I would forgive her for missing that engagement. So obviously people don't like this shit, but intended and the police are called. One witness is able to take down the license plate of the bus that they claim dumped the waste, which is very fortunate. And a nearby gym is able to offer confirmation via security cam footage. And even Poirot himself would be startled when the culprits are revealed to be none other than one of the most beloved and influential rock bands of the 1990s, Dave Matthews Band.

I knew the whole time. Yeah, you were like, our scene opens in 2004 on a boat cruise that already has already started. I was like, Dave Matthews Band. Everyone jump right to it. Jump right to it. Yeah. Initially, DMB deny all knowledge and stand behind their people, but they are forced to fess up when Chicago Mayor Richard Daly

reveals the security footage at a press conference in which he calls the dumping, quote, absolutely unacceptable, but also concedes that DMB is, quote, a very good band. Absolutely. Chicago mayoral behavior, I'm sure. Yes. Listen, it's nothing against Dave Matthews Band. I love them, but. But they dropped their shit.

The culprit was a bus driver named Stephen Wall. It turns out the band toured in five separate tour buses, which was kind of a bad look. They were, I guess, trying to cultivate an ego image at the time. Oh, yeah, the carbon footprint. Yeah, not great before you start polluting the Chicago River with human feces and hit like a bunch of babies and elderly people, bad optics all around. This particular bus belonged to the band's violinist, Boyd Tinsley, quoting, pregnant poo victim, Lynn LaPlante Allway.

It was a violinist dumping on another violinist. Lateral violinist, violinist. Yeah, they're perfect. Yeah, that was nice. Thank you. But more accurately, it was the bus driver while doing an illegal dump over the Chicago River with disastrous consequences. He apparently did not know that the boat was under him, so this wasn't a targeted bombing.

Thankfully, none of the passengers suffered long lasting health damages from their impromptu deconstructed mud rap. Yeah, that was for you, Josie. Lichia, you were collateral damage, sorry. You were under the bridge on that. Yeah, exactly. In March 2005, Walpleth guilty to misdemeanor charges of reckless conduct and water pollution, he was sentenced to 18 months probation, 150 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine

to be donated to a river advocacy group. River Schmiffer? Yes, they had to donate. I think it was called Friends of the Chicago River or something, which is not as spicy. Dave Matthews Band donated $100,000 to Chicago Parks and Shmarks to begin the healing process, and they also settle in court civilly for $200,000. This $200,000 settlement was the final piece of closure in one of the most embarrassing incidents in the history of open-air Chicago riverboat touring.

It was paid right around the time Ben and Jerry's released its latest flavor in honor of the beloved rockers, Dave Matthews Band Magic Brownies. A pretty shitty situation, but Lichia, there's nothing worse than the stench of an April Fool. That's my story. Oh man, pressure is on. I'm confused now. Do I vote for the reality I think I live in or the one I want to live in? Do I live in a reality where two people can meet on a plane and have a pretty quiet affair,

or do I live in the Poo Bus reality? Well, okay, so my question, I mean, my first of many questions about Poo Bus reality is, this violinist has created 800 pounds of waste since the last time the bus drained the tank. Evidently. How do you do that? I don't know. It's like the Chicago River won't notice.

If anything, it'll be polluting the human waste. Poor Chicago. Poor Chicago. We love you. Get well soon. Don't come for me. There's so much dazzling intrigue in both your stories. Josie has a governor.

Taylor has several violinists. At least two. There could have been more. At least two. The two possibilities are that Josie told a like 97% true story and then like snuck in a made up detail, which is a, you know, that is one, not very noble, but like legitimate two truths and a lie strategy. So that could be happening.

I like the take there. Yeah. Or, you know, that Josie was given the assignment of telling a true story and just was like, ah, y'all just Wikipedia some shit and write down notes and tell them, which also works. On the other hand, a story as blatantly absurd as the shit river Dave Matthews bus caper feels leading in a way that is equally suspicious. Yeah. You really hit the two ends of the believability spectrum here and it's fucking with me.

Good job, Josie. Well played. We hit both ends. Yeah. Yeah, I got to go on my gut and it was the moment with the hair for me. The reporting of gosh, I was driving along thinking my hair looks fabulous. And so I am going to have to go with my gut and say that Josie's story is the true story and Taylor's is mine.

And I really hope I'm wrong. Lucie is going with the mind hunter approach of like analyzing body language, which is a new one. No, we haven't done that. I have not seen that strategy used on this show before. So you're like innovating the metagame of the April Fools fact or fiction deception, rodeo, minfamous. Man, I don't know.

It feels like the safe choice and that makes me feel unsafe. Well, it should because Lucia April Fools. You got got it. It was. Fuck yeah. Josie's ignoble. We compete. Josie's ignoble lie.

And I'm so glad you called her out on that because maybe she'll step outside of the box next time because Josie does do these goddamn 97 percent true lies. It is true. That is a Josie lie. Everything about Jerry Brown. Everything about Fran Drescher. True, true, true, except for their meeting. Fran Drescher does have a political career.

Jerry Brown is a rockstar fucker. They just never met on a plane, which was like such a small part of the story. I know. Yeah, it wasn't a big good. Not to roast you. I mean, OK, in comparison to the sensation of a cloud of shit. Yeah, that's the bad news. Yeah.

I'm sure we can all handle the fact that Jerry Brown and Fran Drescher didn't meet on an airplane, but. I'm pretty crushed. I don't know. The Dave Matthews band poo story is real. I don't know any Dave Matthews band songs. All I know is when I hear about the Dave Matthews band, I think of this. It was there like Marilyn Manson removed a rib to suck his dick moment. You know what I mean?

People love to memorialize this day. I've noticed, especially in Chicago, just because the story is so absurd and gross and like weird. And it has this like bizarre celebrity cameo in it. What do you do to memorialize this day? Like what's the ritual like? Like on the birth of Christ, we all sing songs and there's a tree and a star. But like, what do you do on Dave Matthews shit dump day of national recognition? I saw someone brought a sign to the I'll find you hold on.

And what day is it? Because I want to shit off a bridge one day. It was August 8th, 2004. So we're coming up on 20 years. But check the link I just posted to everybody. I did. So what we see in this image is a sunny day, a beautiful green murky Chicago river in the background and in the foreground, a poster board sign that says in August 2004 at this very location,

a DMB tour bus dumped 800 pounds of poo on some people. Hashtag never forget. Hashtag always remember. And it is next to it is a glass. It's a candle. It's it's hard to tell. Yeah, it doesn't look like it. But it's a it's like a gel candle in a glass.

I thought it was water with poop in it. Yes, it looks like what it looks like. Yeah, it's like refracting some knots in like the wooden bench behind it in a way that looks fecal for shorties. And I was like, is this a signature cocktail? The Chicago River. They just went in and scooped a nice. It's a gel candle that's doing some unfortunate things with the light.

And it does say cancun on the can. Yes, I think that's an important note. Yeah, go get your picture taken by those giant beans. Just to close this out, I've got one last tribute and it comes in the form of music from the Y 98 Philips and Company morning show. Here is Poo Poo Bus by fake Dave Matthews. Except it can. Don't look up at the street.

You'll get a face full of me. We're not satisfied until you're covered by. A poo poo bus, a poo poo bus, a poo poo bus, poo poo bus. Stop singing. I'm sorry, it's Tessie. Strike. Tell me something I don't know, Amp. Well, unlike that nasty curveball, there aren't any surprises when you

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Plus, enjoy a whole suite of travel perks and rewards. The TD Aeroplan Visa Business Card. Learn more at TD.com slash Aeroplan Business. Conditions apply. All right, my friends, I have brought to you today a story of tremendous infamy. Perfect. Has this befitting podcast with this particular name.

So let's set our scene. The year 1918, the place London, England. A scandalous trial is lighting up the London headlines. The prosecution, famous Canadian dancer, Maude Allen, best known for a salacious turn as the biblical figure Salome, dancer of the infamous Dance of the Seven Veils. Yes, I know of her veils. Word of the Veils has made way to me.

Excellent. Okay, good. We got some context already, so we'll get back to the veils. Don't worry. Also on the side of the prosecution, theatrical producer Jack Green, who had just mounted a private showing of Oscar Wilde's band play Salome, starring, of course, Maude Allen, in the titular role of Salome. The accused, Noel Pemberton Billing,

member of parliament and editor of the right wing nationalist tabloid, The Vigilante, formerly the imperialist. Fuck him. Bad vibes? Just don't know him, but fuck him. Agreed. We'll get back to Noel Pemberton Billing and his bad fucking vibes later as well. Oh, I can't wait.

This is a tightly woven story, my friends. The threads pull the threads pull the threads, and a beautiful tapestry of infamy is woven. Oh, beautiful. Back to the trial at hand. Yes. So we have the prosecution. We have the accused, the accusation libel.

Oh. The libel? An article printed on the front page of Billing's reg, The Vigilante, accusing Maude Allen and Jack Green of connection to a group of British elite, some 47,000 strong, all of them sexual perverts being blackmailed by the German Secret Service. Oh, dear. The title of the article, The Cult of the Clitoris.

That's where we begin. Clitoris. Clitoris. You want to write a song about it? We can play it on national clitoris. So we begin at the beginning, but I'm going to jump ahead and just spoil the ending. There were no 47,000 British perverts. Well.

There might have been. There probably were. Yeah. Who's counting? On balance. But they weren't aligned with one another in this particular way that they're being accused of. They were just 47,000 independent perverts who may or may not have existed in any overtime. Yeah.

Were they organized? I don't know. They had a lot of perverting to do. So who's to say? There was no seditious plot. There was no secret society of lesbian, espioners perverting powerful British people and extorting them for state secrets. What a shame.

I know. It's a bummer. I'm sorry. This is why I didn't want it to be a big let down at the end. Thank you. No, you did it right. The cult of the clitoris was not a real thing. The clitoris itself, however, is a real thing.

Good to know. Yes. Good in talent and sincerely. Thank you. Yeah. I think we should get this out there. Please. Public service announcement.

The clitoris is real. And there begins the rest of our story. Beautiful. I'm really excited. I've never heard of this. I love clitorises. OK, excellent. It sounds quite epic.

I'm surprised I haven't heard of this. Yeah. OK, so we have our components. We have the pieces of the story, a famous dancer, a salacious news article. Oscar Wilde is in there. And then what else do we have? What else was going on in 1918? Something big.

Another pandemic, a world war that wasn't even called the first one yet. It was just the world war. Yeah, it was the Great War. We didn't even know there were going to be more than one. And those are the pieces we're going to talk about. And really, it's a choose your own adventure in this case, because everything connects here. So is there any particular place that you all would like to begin,

or do you want me to choose the adventure for you? Stop. What a performance. I know. Great instinct. This is like a very elaborate structure for this. I'm really into it. I say we take her up on it, Josie.

Hyper-connective ADHD brain. Look at that. The beauty of neurodivergence. We love to see it. I say we take the bitter pill first. What's up with this tabloid reg editor? All right. So the tabloid reg editor, by the name of Noel Pemberton-Billing,

and I should warn you, there are going to be so many so British names in this story. Yeah, OK. Good, thank you. Yeah. Noel Pemberton-Billing is a conservative member of parliament. He has a history of just like being a sort of rich, annoying British dude. Here's Morgan. Yes.

In the long history of rich, annoying British dudes. They bought off each other. Exactly. And he joined the Royal Naval Air Service when the first war broke out. He had a big role in planning the first bombing raid on Germany. And he really, really is mad about the Germans and their allies. He hates the Bolshevik Revolution. He thinks that Germany is being controlled by homosexuals.

He also hates the homosexuals. He also hates the Jews, who we sometimes also think are controlling Germany. Like I think that in Noel Pemberton-Billing's mind, there is a cloud of like gay, horny, Jewish, and probably like, you know, ethnically stereotyped people out there doing all the bad shit that isn't bangers and mash. Yes. Yes. Right?

And we see variations on that theme to this day in politics in many countries. Indeed. Wasn't new at the time and it's not going away, unfortunately. He is also the editor of this nationalist tabloid. And of course, we all know the British tabloid press is also infamous for being just sort of vicious and brutal and really going after people in life-destroying ways. In fact, in this trial, Noel Pemberton-Billing is not the person going after anyone. He's the defense and he is defending himself against Maude Allen.

And I think it's maybe a good time to learn a little bit about Maude Allen. Love to. Maude, tell us about yourself. So Maude Allen is actually born Bula Maude Durant in 1873 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And in 1887 or possibly 1879, depending on which Wikipedia I believe- Yes. She and her family moved to San Francisco. Bula Maude is a really talented musician as a young child.

She is a pianist and she's really excelling as a pianist. And so in her teens, she goes off to Germany to study pianoing. She has a whole bunch of like really famous teachers, none of whom are names that anybody in 2023 would probably recognize. But I think it is good to know that one of her famous teachers allegedly performed a surgical procedure on more than 575 of his students to sever the accessory slip of the tendon of the ring finger to give their hands more flexibility and a wider stretch so they could play piano better. Sudden body horror.

Oh my god, that means like, oh, like the webbing between your fingers. That's the tendon. That's the tendon. That's what that means. I don't know. Oh god, I didn't even know what that meant. I don't know. I just went to the poop bus.

Poop Poop Bus. Remember when things were better? 2004. Yeah. We're going to have to bring Poop Poop Bus back a lot because it only gets darker from here. So Maude is studying piano in Germany and she starts having sort of just a bad feeling, sort of a dark premonition. Hate those.

Right? Doesn't get a letter from her family for a couple weeks and she's like, oh man, what's going on? What is going on is that her brother, Theodore Durant, a medical student, a signal core member, an assistant Sunday school director at Immanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco, has been accused of murdering two young women brutally in the Baptist Church where all of her family are congregates and where he is an assistant Sunday school director. Oh my. Why?

It's the case of the century. You know, the newspapers are calling it that. It draws huge attention. He's given the nickname Demon of the Belfry. And I won't go into the gruesome details of this case because they are fucked up and there's enough fucked up shit in the world and this story. But suffice it to say that if you want to, you can. It's super upsetting.

He almost certainly did do it, but maintains his innocence. Up until his execution at San Quentin in 1898. His family also believes him to be innocent. They get harassed by the press like crazy in San Francisco. Like after his execution, they have his body at the house and the press are trying to like look in the windows and it like takes a really long time because no crematorium will take him because he was such a notorious murderer. And understandably, this is really hard on Maude who kind of blames herself.

She both thinks that he's innocent and I think in some way feels like she could have prevented the murders if she wasn't in Germany. I think that that's like a surprisingly common response to being proximal to tragedy like that is that like the only thing we can control is ourselves, right? So when we see something like that that is probably out of our control, it's easy to rationalize that as oh, one, how do I center myself in this like incident that really doesn't have that much to do with me when it comes down to it? And then how could I have prevented this?

How am I responsible for what this is? Yeah. How this is played out? Yeah, exactly. And sort of on that note, it seems to also kind of this incident lives in her as a really strong need to be successful in order to kind of redeem her family name. Oh dear. Combat the bad press.

That's a lot to put on yourself. Yeah. It's a lot to put on yourself and she does end up changing her name from Bula Maud Durant to Maud Allen probably as an attempt to like not be associated with this case so that she can be a successful performer. A couple years after her brother's death, she kind of realizes she's probably not going to be a famous pianist. She goes to Vienna or somewhere to study with someone else who does terrible things to hands.

And I don't know, I'm making that up, but they all did that, right? Everybody hands were in a lot of danger in 1901. In the words of our Alstine, piano lessons can be murder. Exactly, right? Industrial revolution, you can get your fingers caught in looms. In fact, looms. Anyhow, so a couple years after this terrible thing happened in her life, Maud has still this real drive to like be successful, but it's not going to be in piano.

And so she pivots, pun intended, into dance. Yeah, she loves music. She's a fox. She's like, how do I put these things together? And at this time, dance is changing. Modern contemporary dance is starting to just be born. Like Isadora Duncan, whom you may be familiar, is sort of a contemporary of Maud Allen. Usually credited as starting this movement.

Because before that, dance had been pretty stuffy. Regimented like very technical trained ballet where you wore a corset and the right shoes and you did the moves correctly. And this new modern contemporary dance, which is like also sometimes called barefoot dance at the time, is really expressionistic. It's it's like about showing your feelings. It's the body as the instrument. It's done with bare limbs and like bold liberated movement.

It has a real like sensuality and almost carnality to it that, you know, it ruffles some feathers, but it also it also captures a lot of imagination. Ruffled some dicks, yeah. Yeah, evidently ruffled and clitoris. Hey, speaking of, yeah, true. And thus formed the cult. We're all just one modern dance performance away from joining the cult of the clitoris. Know what I'm saying?

So Maud Allen, who doesn't have any dance training, decides that this is the way that she's gonna go. And it is indeed the way that she goes. She is still in Europe. And one day she goes with her friend Marcel Remy, who's a musician and composer. They go and see a performance of Oscar Wilde's Salome. Maud Allen sees this character of Salome being portrayed in the play, feels connected to the character and is like, you know what, this character is being expressed in words, but could be even more expressed in dance.

And so with her friend Marcel Remy, who composes the music, while she does the choreography, they create the vision of Salome, which is a, for the time, very salacious dance performed in a very salacious costume. Yeah, very filmy, some like beads and things. I actually do have a photo of this. I'm imagining like a diaphanous, like belly dancing vibe. Lots of layers, but the layers move, you know? Veils, seven of them.

At least. Yeah, maybe that's where that's coming from. So what do you see? Oh my. Not as many veils as I had thought. She's dripping in pearls and gems and jewels. This is something that if anyone, even mildly controversial, wore this at a performance now, people would be up in arms.

It's like a little, I don't know, a bustier kind of guy that is barely there. It's held together by strands of jewels and pearls. Yeah, I think a bustier implies more of like a structure and like corseting. This has none of that. It's all jewels. Fight about the definition of bustier. Do it. Do it.

And I think an important detail to depict to the listening audience here is that it is covering her breasts, but with more breasts. So like the jewels are arranged in a way where there is a nipple made of jewels. There's a ruby nip. Yeah. So you can imagine, I mean, we're looking at this and it's pretty juicy. We're sinking our teeth in. If the going styles of the era just before this were Edwardian, so like high lace collars,

big flowered hats, corsets, like you're not showing ankle. We have a see-through skirt. We got ruby nips. Oh, Maud Allen basically has her pussy and asshole out. Like, let's call it what it is. She is basically naked. A little sparklier than naked and killing it. She looks fantastic.

Oh, a million bucks. Yeah, she does. But you know, this was controversial. So by 1906, the vision of Salome is ready to be performed and is performed in December 1906. The first venue it's supposed to be in cancels when they see the outfit in final rehearsals. Cancel culture. Which only adds to like the buzz around this performance. Yeah, taboo.

And it does really well. I bet. She performs it around Europe a bit and then in 1908 takes it to London. Her mother's a little worried about all this. She's anxious that she's going to be recognized and connected to the family. So like her mom's writing her letters being like, were there any Americans in the audience? Like, or anyone else who recognized you?

Yeah, so there's this kind of backdrop of tragedy, intention, and trauma behind it. But Maud's dreams are coming true. In London, Salome is an overnight sensation. It actually kicks off something called Salomania. Love it. Salamanders everywhere. It's just raining Salamanders. It was actually a plague more than a mania.

Ah, potato patung. Yeah, branding. And weirdly, it's actually illegal to portray biblical characters on stage in England at this time. And Salome is from the Bible. We'll talk about that a bit more. But it's 1908. They've got other things to do, I guess, then shut it down. And maybe because it was like a dance performance and not verbal.

Yeah, maybe that's a law that doesn't really get enforced very often. If it's the right thing, but if it's the wrong thing, then also the law peeps up, yeah. Yeah, one of those, exactly. And the Chancellor of Plays, which is a real thing, comes down on your head. I know. I don't want to report to the Chancellor of Plays. Why do we need a Chancellor of Plays? I can see the playwright squirming in your seats right now.

That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my entire life, subjectively. Despite that fact, it's a runaway success. 250 performances in 18 months. It sparks all this debate over, like, is this just erotic sensationalism? Or is this a new art form, you know, liberation of the body and of sexuality and storytelling and music and whatever? And it gets butts in seats. It also sells a lot of merch.

Like, there were a lot of picture postcards, which should just become really cheap to produce. Nice. Something to beat off to when you get home. Exactly. Images of Maude Allen, like, in the Salome garb especially, are everywhere. But then also pictures of her in that Edwardian garb I was talking about with the collars and, like, the really pretty, like, carefully curled ringlets, the, like, gauzy expression. Yeah.

Madonna and whore, one woman can do it both. Exactly. And it really speaks to what was going on culturally at that time, which was this sort of slow pulling out of Victorian and Edwardian age into, I mean, technically, I think the Georgian age, because you'd go by British royalty, but, like, into the 20th century. Yeah, into flappers. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. This takes us up to about, uh, yeah, like 1908.

If you will recall, our trial is taking place in 1918. Yeah. So we have a little bit of ground to cover. Basically, from 1910 to 1917, Maude Allen is on the International Circuit. She's, like, making new dances, but the vision of Salome is always her most famous and demanded work. She takes it to the U.S., does really well, it's scandalous, their same thing. For a really long time, she's one of the most well-known performers in the Western world,

at least. She's in a silent movie called The Rugmaker's Daughter that doesn't exist anymore, like the last copy got burned in an Hollywood fire or something. That's not true facts. There's always one of those in every story I research, so it sounded plausible to me, too. I was like, yeah, last forever, nothing we could do about it. I didn't have to watch it. Moving on.

She performs excerpts of the vision of Salome in it. So the bummer part about that being lost is there aren't any actual, like there's lots of writing about it. And one of the things about this performance that is so sensational is a prop that is used in the play. So in order to fill you in on that, we're going to have to talk a little bit about this whole Salome thing. Yeah.

Anybody here know about the Bible? This has come up a few times on the show. And the short answer is not really. The longer answer is I would probably wager that Josie knows a bit more about it than I do because she went to an Episcopalian school. Look at you. And most of my Bible knowledge comes from the time that I was like mortally depressed. And so I put on American Bible Study Challenge hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, and I just watched

that through. Wow. Okay. Well, that's not bad. It's a unique expression of sadness. I like that. Dude, the heart wants what it wants. There's nothing I can tell you.

So in recent months, I've met a few people who had really, really religious upbringings. And one of the things that comes up is that when you are raised in a really intense religious culture, you know so fucking much about the Bible. But then they leave the fold and it becomes totally useless information. Yeah. I think that every city should have a prostate trivia night. That's a nice idea. Right.

And then I was at a party and I told someone this idea and she was like, oh, I'm a trivia host who was raised in like intense, anabaptist fucking beautiful. That's such a good way to connect with other people over a shared experience. Which is also, I think it's often really isolating. Yeah. Of course. The exact community, yeah. And a lot of people don't know how to connect with other folks with the same experience.

The wise hall. Do it at the wise hall. That's a good idea. Yeah, there we go. We'll do it at the wise. Yeah, Josie, you can start the Houston chapter. Oh, the Houston chapter might. Oh yeah, you might.

Yeah, that might be a bad idea. Yeah, the apostates are keeping it on the DL for a reason. So Salome, originally, is a story that's told in the Gospel of Mark and Matthew. And it all starts with Herod Antipas, who was the ruler of some Roman Empire states. Herod Antipas, as a Roman sort of governor, is not a big fan of prophets who wander around telling people that the Messiah is coming. It's bad for business. For example, John the Baptist.

So-called because he baptized Jesus and he spotted it. He like called it. He was like, this little wet baby. Yeah, searches over everyone. Show up. Like the holy water doesn't usually do this. But it's new. This one's a special one.

John the Baptist is wandering around the Roman Empire telling people that the Messiah is about to show up. Herod doesn't like this. So he imprisons John the Baptist. Herod has a wife named Herodias, probably not her original name. But who knows? Maybe that's what brought them together. Maybe they met on an airplane.

Save on the motograms. And she has a daughter named Salome. Herod has a thing for Salome that's like not a role. Stepdaughter thing. Exactly. Salome is young and exploring the power of her sexuality. And Herod is like, I like what you're doing with this exploration and asks her to do a dance for him.

And says that he will offer her anything she wants up to half of the land he rules for a dance. Oh, desperate. She doesn't even think about it. She's just like, I want to express myself much like the modernists. I'd do it for free. Go ahead and does the dance. And Herod is like, that was really nice.

What do you want? Slow clap from Herod. Salome's like, oh gosh, I don't know. She didn't think about it before she did the dance. She didn't think about it before she did the dance. Yeah. Girls just want to dance. She's got the music in her.

Yeah. She's like Kevin Bacon and Footloose. Exactly like Kevin Bacon and Footloose. That's what Footloose is based on. That's the original seed story. Yes. Actually, yeah. Yeah, there was sort of what started the wave of movies

based on biblical stories like Clueless. And 10 Things I Hate About You. So she goes to her mom and Herodias who also doesn't like John the Baptist is like, oh my god, what a great opportunity. Ask your dad, your stepdad, for John the Baptist's head on a silver platter. And Salome's like, ooh, I like it.

Goes back, makes the ask. Herod is a little bit uncomfortable with this, but is like, you know what? I said what I said. Has John the Baptist executed? Brings the head on a platter. And that's the end of the story, or at least as far as I bothered learning about it in the Bible.

OK. It's a pretty steamy Bible story as Bible stories go. It does get a fair amount of attention over the years. And especially in the sort of late 1800s, when there's starting to be more interest in sexual liberation in queer sexuality, in female sexuality, in the sexuality of young people, in taboo sexualities. So there's some weird sort of incestuous themes in this story.

There's some gore. There's the dance that hypnotizes the men. And there's a femme fatale. Yeah. Exactly. The man eater, the dangerous, carnivorous, seditious, salacious woman. Who's not into it?

I'll tell you who is into it. Your friend and mine noted homosexual Oscar Wilde. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, titties, girl. Every time I happen across Oscar Wilde in the wild, or because I Googled it for a podcast, the first thing I think is, god damn,

he really does look like Stephen Fry. I haven't seen. I don't know if I've seen a picture of him. Oh, you should look it up. So Stephen Fry plays Oscar Wilde in a movie called Wilde. So Oscar Wilde, who was a writer and socialite in a certain echelon of society, I suppose, and really prominent in his day.

He was a messy public homosexual. Yeah, and clever about it, you know? We didn't have Andy Cohen yet then. We had Oscar Wilde. Exactly. He did some pretty hard time for being gay. I know that he had a public trial for it, and I know that supposedly the last thing he said

on his way out before he died was that either me or the drapes have to go. And it was him. Supposedly. I don't know if that's actually, if that's apocryphal or not. He was indeed doing a lot and writing a lot that kind of pushed the envelope at the time.

He was tried for homosexuality, I think, in 1895 and did a lot of time. The adaptation of the Salome story that he wrote, he wrote in French, it debuted in 1896 in Paris, and was really popular. Though, of course, still in England, he translated it into English, but he couldn't present it

because you couldn't depict biblical characters. Right. The story is a little bit saucier even in Oscar Wilde's hands. He throws in a romance between Salome and John the Baptist. Or more accurately, I think Salome lusts after her stepfather's prisoner, John the Baptist. And John the Baptist is like,

no, no, I'm not into it. And that's why she wants his head. Oh, it's a revenge beheading. Well, she didn't really have a motive prior to that, did she? No, really a big oversight on God's part while writing the Bible. That's true. God hadn't honed his long-term novel skills.

Early in the workshopic phase. It's a strong image, and there's a lot of paintings of Salome with John the Baptist's head off and on a platter. Usually she's looking real good and he's looking real dead. And sometimes she is making out with the severed head. I love it. I love it. So we get some necrophilia themes in there,

speaking of taboo sexualities. That's something that happens in, I believe, Oscar Wilde's play and also in Maude Allen's vision of Salome, where she has a wax head on stage with her all the time and does indeed get down with it towards the end of the performance. So I want to just say that if I can't attain

my dream job of being a heel pro wrestling manager, then what I would like to do with my life is I would love to get myself in the position where it's just me coming out and I'm dressed in nothing but jewels every night and I'm just hanging dong underneath whatever and everyone loves it. Everyone's like, I'm yet another sold-out night

of jewels over my dick and I'm just making out with a prop head. And everyone's like... A wax prop. Yeah. That's the dream. That's how you know you've made it. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, this might be a bit of a cautionary tale to dreamers such as yourself, but don't let the dream die. Shhh. Oh, hang on. I'll hold on to that feeling. Yeah.

Yeah, please do. Okay. Please do, because Ruby Nips must rise again. Please. So there's an opera that uses Wild's Play as the libretto. There's a lot of different performances. Sarah Bernhardt, who is a really famous French actress, is like the first, I think, person to do the role of Salome.

It only serves to further reinforce Salome as this figure who's kind of the incarnation of female lust, like dangerous female lust, and the originator of the femme fatale trope. In this era, when these dances are being done, the dance of the seven veils, there is also all of this eroticized Western perspective of Middle Eastern dance styles

being brought in. Yeah. We're mixing our isms, you know? Yeah. As so frequently we are when we look back historically in stories like these. Yeah. Relevant to this story is Mata Hari,

who also performed the Dance of the Seven Veils in a pretty similar kind of style and get-up as Maud Allen. Mata Hari was executed as a German spy during World War I. It was a big deal. The charges were not very substantiated, and I think a lot of the trial was about scapegoating a sexualized, exoticized, eroticized, badass, powerful, like draped in jewels dancing.

Yeah. It turns out a lot of people are just on trial for being a woman a lot of the time. Yeah. It turns out they really fucking are, even when they're the prosecutors, which brings us to World War I. Hi.

You might have heard of it. It sucked a lot. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big and important thing to mention about World War I. Pretty bad. It sucked real bad for everyone involved. Here's a couple basic scene setting facts about World War I.

It started in July of 1914. Basically, there were two sides. They were upset with each other, and they handled it poorly. By handled it poorly, I mean, by the end of the war, which was almost five years later, there were nine million dead soldiers, 23 million wounded ones, and at least five million civilians who had died because of being in the wrong fucking era

in the wrong fucking continent. And entire generations of traumatized people attempting to compartmentalize that war for the rest of their lives. By the end of the first year of this conflict, there was a Western Front, which was just a row of trenches that reached from the English Channel like to Switzerland. Nothing good was happening in those trenches.

On the Eastern Front, there was this just sort of endless tug of war between the Allies and the Central Powers. No one could get a good foothold. There was famine, just terrible, terrible violence, and in a way that had never been possible before. This is what we all learned about World War I, right? It was particularly brutal, kind of senseless, and long, and mean. I'm very conscious of my privilege of not having been born in an era

where I would have been drafted to the fucking war that happened in the trenches. That shit? Fuck that shit. Trenches? No, no, no. No, no, no. I hope to avoid a trench in my life, if I can help it. It's a noble pursuit of avoiding trenches. And the various gases that flood them, and the various diseases they breed, and the various necrotizing things that sort of environment does to your flesh, all of these things.

I didn't even mention the rats. I didn't mention the rats. I didn't mention bayonets. That was a fucking... they had bayonets in that one. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, yeah. That's how Stainless Steel got invented. They were trying to find an alloy that would be light enough to be a good bayonet, but stay sharp enough to be a good bayonet. Oh my God, I didn't know that.

That's what it took for us to discover Stainless Steel, huh? We needed to make killing better. We're gonna say mostly on the home front, but World War I is important because it has a lot to do with how everything is going down in Britain. Yeah, okay. So we've talked a little bit about the Victorian era and the way that it's ending before the war starts.

So there's already kind of an unease in British society around changing gender rules and sexual mores and the role of the family and how society is structured. There's this rise of what's called the new woman, that they called the fin de cyclee, when the Victorian era is like the cycle is ending, who's more sexually liberated, more ambitious, delays marriage and childbirth for longer, and is, you know, dangerous and dissenting, wants to vote, you know? Do crazy shit like that.

Lock her up. Yeah, exactly, right? Like put her back in the corset, man. The Victorian era was an age of like intense denial of female sexuality. The clitoris was not a real thing in Victorian era, and it was, you know, where all the, a lot of the ideas about like hysteria and like unhealthy sex drive causing mental illness in the women folk came from. And so we're coming from that into an era where

not only are the lives of women starting to be able to look different, especially women of means and privilege, but also where the things that women will do all the time, like have relationships with other women, try to influence politics, all that shit, it's more visible because in the Victorian era, there was this like separate sphere ideology it was called, which was basically like men and women live separate lives in separate parts of society, which meant you could have your lesbian affair and you'd be in trouble if it got found out.

If it kept in your sphere, then you're fine. You could spend your entire life among women. You also probably had to get married, but you know, you find yourself someone to be your beard and you'd be their skirt. And if you're lucky, yeah, there you go. And now, because you can put off marriage, the idea that women who are not getting married are lesbians, even though there's a million reasons why you might not immediately get married,

there are all these sort of cyclical worries happening. It's like, ah, women are out in the world, and that's making the world worse, and it's making the women worse, and it's making the world worse, and it's making the women, you know, add nausea, and it's making the men worse. That's one of the big concerns. What's happening to men, folks? Nobody is saying this.

Not one person, but I will. We have a masculinity crisis. This is from a book called Dark Venus, which is about Mod Allen and other stuff, written by Wendy Bounaventure, I believe. So to give you a sort of a feeling of like the kind of moral panic that was fomenting at this time, and I quote, in 1908, a report on the ladies' pages of the Illustrated London News

announced that one out of every two men enlisting in the army was rejected as physically unfit. And then there's a quote from this article, which is amazing. As the average man has grown physically weaker and smaller within the last few years, so has the average woman increased in height and improved in physique. Why is it the last thing to be desired is to see the sexes equalized by the degeneracy of men?

There's a lot to unpack there. This is also the era of kind of eugenics as well. So it's like, how big is your skull that says things about you and the people you come from? I don't know. Yeah, totally. Well, there's this obsession with the body, and that comes from like the sort of pseudo-scientific racialism,

phrenology, like ubermenchi shit that's been getting bigger and bigger, and then also this tremendous fear of the body. Yes, yes. For sure. I also think it's like compelling that a person's fitness in this context is measured by their worthiness for military service. Right, yeah, that's the other. If we can't use you as a soldier, then what the fuck is the point of you?

It must be because the women are making you shrink, because they took your dick. Now you have a little dicklet. That's what they're saying. Exactly. It's exactly, exactly. Like the clits are getting bigger and cold here, and your dicklets are getting dickletier and dickletier.

The phrase I was waiting this whole time to say. I'm sorry if I stepped on your line. I apologize. No, no, it only adds to it to be in collaboration with you, sweet Taylor. So, but that's the thing, right? Yeah, so it's this mentality too of like there is only so much virility, and if the lady folk get any of it, we're taking it away. And this is before the war starts.

That's from 1908. Yeah, that's well before the war starts. It's well before the war starts, and when the war starts, it gets fucking worse. I bet. Often, you'll find people saying that like World War I was like a flashpoint of sexual mores and roles and all this shit changing because women went into the workforce. But in fact, like it just crystallized shit that was already started.

Yeah, it amplified fears. It preyed upon these fears and it enforced them. It explicitly separates people by gender too, because you have men on the front lines. You have women back home doing the roles in society that were previously allotted to men as often happens during wars. And you have women actually in the army and on the front lines for the first time as well, which was happening.

And like running the train systems and working in factories, doing these things, wearing pants again. Liz Astrada, baby. Yeah, it was complex. It was scary. And it was definitely like something that was co-opted by social conservatives and by political conservatives who were like, this country is going to hell in a handbasket.

Look at this war. And it went so far as like there were people who were saying that the reason the war started was the independent minds of new women and suffragettes who were disrupting like the social order. This started because Franz Ferdinand got shot. Don't get it twisted. It started because there were too many empires and fucking empires don't last. Empires fall.

Right. And someone shot a duke. Yeah. So as the war is mounting, it's just getting worse and worse. And the war itself is like, it's so carnal. It is everyone's body is involved in war in some way. Like primarily soldiers, but the body is political. The war is political at all.

As I said, all the threads connect. So all of these things are happening where if you are looking through a lens of, we're going to hell in a handbasket because the dicklets are getting smaller, it'll just reinforce that view. So there's the women in the workforce, but then there's demographic changes. Right. So like there's fewer marriages. There's more divorce, but the marriages that are happening, a lot of them are happening

like right before people are getting sent to the front. So you get married really fast and then there's a long separation. It's not like a great recipe for a relationship. And then you come back different if you come back at all. Exactly. The image of soldiers are hyper-masculinized and there's some really racy join the forces posters that use some of that same imagery that we're seeing like of the sort of diaphanous, gauzy, like large titted women.

Fuck you away from port to port. Yeah. Oh man, there's this one, this really sexy lady in most of a uniform, like a navy uniform, but it's like really low cut. And it goes, I wish I were a man so I could join the navy. What a girl wants. What a girl needs. Whatever makes me, yeah.

Exactly. So it's really confusing is like a big piece of it. And the war creates fear around like the erosion of male power also by taking men out of family life. And then, yeah, sending them back wounded and shell shocked, if at all. So this kind of circular argument forms, the war is harming morality, bad morals are harming the war effort. Right, yeah. And by the time we get to 1918, which is near the end of the war, but no one knows it. It's not really showing any signs of letting up.

People like our good friend, Noel Pemberton Billing. MPB. I forgot about it. I've had a lot of time to clutch their fucking pearls about what is happening. Not be enlisted as well. Yeah. Got him, fucking roasted that bitch. I also would point out that because we're at war or on the brink of it or recovering from it,

this gives us a lot of angst about things that we can't control, but we can control this if we angst hard enough. Right. If we're picking scapegoats, how hard can it be to get a play stopped or a person arrested? One person, one little titty lady or whatever your goal is, right? Totally. Yeah. Everything was topsy turvy.

So like in the past, the English and the French had looked across the channel and been like pervert, like French kissing comes from like the French and then the French would look over and be like, you educate boys by like hazing them with slapping them on the ass with canes. Like no wonder you're the way you are, but we could do that anymore because we're allies. So then it all gets transferred over to the Germans who are also sort of like vaguely racialized as Huns. Like that idea is kind of mixed with, yeah, like Mongolian stereotypes. And as I said, everything is all overlapping.

And then there's also this concern that the war is freeing libido. Young people don't know how long they're going to survive. So they're just fucking like rabbits. There's good time girls. There's something called khaki fever, which is like housewives wanting to fuck soldiers. And you know, children being had out of wedlock and syphilis and prostitution and, you know, homosexuality in the trenches. Let them suck dick in the trenches.

What do they have left? Yeah. Right? That's what I'm saying. So if you are somebody who maybe is a little bit conspiracy minded and maybe a little bit worried that the way of life that has served you very well thus far is eroding, you might start a paper where you publish ridiculous things. Yeah, who would do that?

Like, come on. Who would do that? I've never heard of such a thing. So let's return to our friend, Maude Allen. She's been in America doing pretty well, but her career has kind of been declining between 1910 and 1917 or so. She gets an offer to star in Oscar Wilde's Salome as Salome. Now remember, she's not an actress.

Like she did the one thing in The Rugmaker's Daughter, but it wasn't huge. And she wants her career to keep going. She's in her forties now and apparently still looking real good. A friend dresser of the era. Yeah. Yeah, but she wants job security. She's like, I tried the music thing. I've been doing the dance thing.

I want to be an actress. And she gets an offer from John Green, who's a producer, in London to star in Oscar Wilde's Salome. Green is getting around the Chancellor of Plays by having two performances of the play that are put on privately. They're advertised publicly, but they advertise if you want to come see this play, get in touch with this lady on this fancy street and she'll get you a ticket. It's like how you can still smoke in private clubs. Or you could back when the world was a brighter place.

That's the one thing where I will go, and I don't even smoke anymore. I haven't smoked for like a year now, but God, it's good to smoke inside. I've lived in places where I smoke inside and in retrospect, I'm like, that was disgusting. That's foul. I loved every moment of it. Absolutely. So this private performance is being put on, and it does exactly what it was supposed to do

for Maude Allen. Like it causes a stir. There's a lot of buzz around it. While she is in London preparing for the show, a rumor goes around that somehow gets back to our good friend Noel Pemberton Billing that Maude Allen is having an affair with Margo Asquith, the wife of former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. Good for them. I'm sure it's true.

So the funny thing is this one, it actually probably was. Good for them. Yeah, which makes me really happy actually. Yeah. Love to see two girl bosses winning. Right, exactly. But Pemberton Billing doesn't like it, and partly he doesn't like it because lesbians are scary and eroding the moral fabric of whatever.

Also because Pemberton Billing has been for some time nurturing this conspiracy theory about the unseen hand. Oh dear. He prints articles about this in his trashy anti-Semitic, you know, homophobic paper. Toilet paper, fucking garbage tear, sub-periodical, yeah. Exactly. The unseen hand is a secret society of, it's the, I mean, it's all of them, man. The Jews, it's the perverts, it's the homos, it's the like, you know.

Communist women's libbers. Whoever. Totally, it's the Pinko Commies. Come on over, unseen hand. Everybody in the unseen hand is trying to exert pro-German influence in allied countries, taking orders from Berlin and sowing seeds of degeneracy of all sorts. So you did end up going topical. It's true.

It's a timeless story. I've thought that the whole time I thought, isn't this relevant from the moment you said that there's this like, secret cabal of pedophiles running everything, which is very much the kind of things that conspiracy theories regurgitate in present tense to this day. Everyone I don't like is a pedophile and is conspiring to run the world unless we stop them. No, it is, it's a tale as old as time. So depressing. It's so depressing, man.

And it always has the same mechanisms. This story is really the story of those mechanisms and the kind of conditions that oil that particular machine. It's an era of huge social change, technological change, conflict, and people trying to get freer and other people trying to make sure that doesn't happen. And leveraging promas in order to make sure that the order stays intact. So I also want to make sure that this is funny because it is a pretty old story in a lot of ways. Pemberton Billing believes that the unseen hand is functioning in many ways.

And one of the things he claims is that he has seen in like a German count's special secret stuff cabinet. What was he doing there? We are looking at that question. He was visiting I don't know. Poking around. He was probably his cousin. That he's seen a book where the 47,000 names of the British like nobility.

Just all printed out. Yeah. Look at all these binders. Binders full of nobles. Binders full of perverts, yeah. 2012 Mitt Romney, look it up. If you're still looking up Swift Boats from last week, tack on binders full of women onto that nice vintage presidential beef.

May your Google search be rich. He claims that Herbert and Margo Asquith, so the former prime minister and his wife who Maude Allen is rumored to be doing are in this book. Our members of the unseen hand. It's all coming together. That's undeniable proof. Wow. So we're almost back where we started at this trial, but before we get quite back there,

I need to introduce one last, last British named character. Please. Captain Harold Spencer. And I need you to believe me. I really genuinely tried to find out whether he wasn't any way related to Lady Diana Spencer. I wonder, that was the first thing I thought. Because the Spencers are a thing. They were a royalish family.

Uh-huh. And as far as I can tell, no. He also was born in America, so who knows. He attended the Naval Academy. Apparently he was kind of a bon vivant at the time and like into poetry and things like that. That's French for good, vibrant. Good vibes. Yes.

I think that's what it is. Good vibes. Yeah, good vibes. Good vibes, man. Fresh for good vibes only. It's on the French flag, I believe. During World War I, Captain Harold Spencer moves to England and he joins the army. He claims that he did undercover work in the Middle East for MI6,

but he was also dismissed from the army in 1917 because he was found to be suffering from paranoid delusional insanity. That's tough. Poor thing. So his narrative may not be super reliable. After he's dismissed from the army, he finds a job as the assistant editor of, you guessed it, The Vigilante, formerly the Imperialist. Let us not forget the name change.

Hey, what better occupation for a paranoid delusional person? Also an anti-Sem. Also a homophobe. I'm sure he has all kinds of degrees. I'm not disputing his credentials. But he seems like the right man for the job because if you think that the world is against you and you specifically, give the man a printing press. Yeah, yeah.

And he does think that he has this, apparently he's like kind of laboring under, this is a quote from someone named James Hayward, where it's due, a deep and probably pathological sense of injustice that he complained to Pemberton Billing of having not been taken seriously and treated badly by superior officers and higher authorities because they refuse to take his outlandish conspiratorial theories seriously. So these guys are like, oh my god, together at last. Yeah, chocolate and peanut butter.

Spencer is feeding Billing a lot of this unseen hand stuff. Billing's eating it up off his finger. They're really feeding into each other. And they really get their collective dicklets in a twist about this performance of Salome by this alleged lesbian, alleged prime minister's wife, scissoring, bejeweled, femme fatale. Just a lot of women. Ruby Nips.

On the front page of the vigilante on the 16th of February, 1916, if you were to open up your copy of the vigilante that day, you would see the Cult of the Clitoris, our headline. Surprise they know the word. Right? Initially I was like, the Cult of the Clitoris, that sounds great. That's good branding. Right, we'll get to, get back to that seriously. So basically the article insinuates the lesbianism of Maude Allen. And it says, if you were to look at the audience list of the people who have gotten tickets for

this private show, no doubt you would see some of the people who also happened to be in this book of 47,000 British perverts being blackmailed by pro-German Jew gay forces. Gotcha. And Maude Allen is like, not cool. Fair. Yeah, exactly. She and Green who produced the play Sue Pemberton Billing for libel. And here we are.

Rightly so. Back at our trial. Wow. We made it. We did it. This is like my cousin Vinnie. This trial is a gorge. Yeah, it seems like it.

It only lasts five or six days, but it is an action-packed five or six days. Noel Pemberton Billing is over the moon because what this means is that his batshit conspiratorial theories are finally going to start getting like some traction and some notoriety. Some press. It's good press. It's like it's a wider circulation than you can get as one tiny neoconservative like reg. Now other papers need to report on this trial because it concerns Maude Allen,

who is a person of great public interest. That's true. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And not that long before, like in Living Memory, Oscar Wilde had this famous trial. So he's connected to it now. That was a big deal.

He wrote the play in question, you know. And Pemberton Billing is also really interested in this becoming more publicly known because he's worried that the war is going to end and he really doesn't want that. Gross. Yeah. I know. The Bolshevik Revolution has happened and he's afraid that the Bolsheviks might try to broker peace talks.

And if there's one thing that your tiny dickhead do not want, it's peace. No disrespect to small dick kings in the crowd. We love you. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It is not in any way about dicks themselves or the size of dicks.

I also, it's worth recognizing, and I should have done this off the top, that we're doing a lot of man and woman talk in this particular bittersweet infamy. Yeah. It was an era. It was an era, and it was an era in which trans and non-gender non-conforming people were all over, living lives and killing it as we have always been, and godwilling may always be. In the discourse of the day, there was a very clear binary, at least in the discourse of this corner of this story of this day.

And in the way the history is written as well. And also, this is a queer story. A lot of the characters in the story are actually queer. Some of them don't even hate themselves about it. God, imagine that. This was also this moment in history where things really could have gone differently. The way that sexuality and non-heteronormativity and non-nuclear family heteromonogamy and all that shit was starting to get some traction at the end of the Victorian era.

The new woman. Cabaret, baby. Yeah, it wasn't something that everybody hated. A lot of people were really into it. If World War I was a flashpoint for anything, it might have been so fucking horrifying that there was more of a return to conservative values because there was so much loss of family, because there was so much loss of stability and certainty and horror. There's an argument that it did curtail some of the other energy, and then you get into things

like the Hayes Code in Hollywood that changed the course of how stories were told and all this stuff. I feel like history is weirdly full of those moments where it seems like things could turn, because you've got 60s going into the 70s, sexual liberation, Stonewall, all this shit. Oops, Reagan and the AIDS crisis. Gotta go back. Similar things with the 20s followed by, again, a depression and another war. Two steps forward, three steps back.

Social progress is so cyclical. So, Pemberton Billing is stoked about being sued for libel, and the fact that he thinks he can stir up more fervor for the war by bringing this plot of the unseen hand into the light. And then the war can keep going, which obviously would be great. Not that war. Maude Allen and John Jack, Whoever Green, the dude, are being represented by a lawyer, and then there's a judge. The lawyer's name is Travers Humphrey.

Jesus. The judge's name, perhaps the British's name so far, Charles Darling. Judge Darling. Mr. Justice Darling. All rise. Sorry. Nominally, Pemberton Billing is on trial for libel, but what actually ends up happening is that Charles Darling, the judge, is like, hold on, my interest here is in how the fuck

this banned work got performed in the first place. Oh no, the Chancellor of Plays. The Chancellor of Plays, let it through the net. And Pemberton Billing's interest is in putting Maude Allen on trial. Right. What a horrible judge. Which is basically what ends up happening. Yeah, it doesn't do a great job.

The first witness called is a woman by the name of Eileen Villers-Stewart. The plot gets thicker by friends. Let's add in some flour. Let's thicken that baby up. Yeah, yeah. So according to Tony Bentley, who wrote a book in 2002 called Sisters of Salome, she believes that Eileen Villers-Stewart was hired by the prosecution to seduce Pemberton Billing, lead him to a male brothel where he would be secretly photographed for black male.

Oh, which, according to Tony Bentley, it's not, sorry, I got it wrong. It's not the prosecution who hires her. It's his political opponents. Oh, so a third party. In Parliament. A third party. However, Eileen Villers-Stewart, who was like, she was game. She was like, I'm an attractive 25-year-old bigamist.

This is how she's described. Hot. And she's like, this is a great opportunity for me to like climb the social ladder, make a buck. This is a branding opportunity. She goes and has lunch with, let us not forget, member of Parliament. Dear, I forgot he was doing that also. Right? Falls in love with him, sleeps with him, flips her allegiance.

Like Jennifer Love Hewitt and Heartbreakers. Just like JLH and HB. And tells him of the plot to blackmail him. And he's like, well, as it just so happens, I'm defending myself in this case, which means I get to call you as a star. Chicken suit for the paranoid delusional soul. She gets up on the stand. She's like, I've seen the black book.

I've read the names in it. I did see that there is this evidence. And you're not supposed to allow evidence that like you can't produce. It's hearsay. But apparently in cases where the documents are withheld by foreign enemies, you can, which is convenient for everyone. The unseen hand. They've done it again.

So she's like it. And somehow, you know, she knows that this is an exception you can make. So she calls upon that exception. And then during cross examination, she says that she has seen Herbert and Margot Asquith's name. She named some other people. And the judge is like, listen, this is ridiculous. This is a soap opera.

Cut off the stand. Go away. And she's like, Charles, darling, I saw your name there too. Got him. Fucking got him. Bye, Charles. Bye, Charles. I memorized all 47,000 names and yours was the first one.

Oh, my god. We can't yet. Can't argue. You're like, well, I wasn't in the German vice comps secret cabinet room. Oh, my god. This is beautiful. Wow. The next witness called is our friend, Captain Harold Spencer,

who is in fact the author of The Cult of the Clitoris. Yeah. His magnum opus. And he's out to lunch. You don't say. The prosecuting lawyer is like, can you tell us exactly what you meant when you said that Maude Allen was administering a cult? And he's like, well, she's performing in a play that's full of lust and madness and

sadism and kissing severed heads and veils of dances. He says, anybody who's seeking this unusual excitement, erotic excitement, must be the kind of person who is also doing crazy perverted shit that the Germans can blackmail them for. It's not really a watertight argument. No. Almost. Yeah.

Jack Green is a naturalized alien, so he brings that up that he's not British. And when asked, so what did you mean by The Cult of the Clitoris? He's like, well, I'm a gentleman and I can't say those words, but Maude Allen knows what it is. But I can write them and publish them under my name and have a byline of Cult of the Clitoris? Fuck you. He didn't have the byline. He didn't have the byline. It was just like an editorial in the paper.

But it's his paper. Staff, staff report. Billing's paper. He's the assistant editor, you know? He's like, no, no, I'm assistant to the editor. Oh, no. Distance, distance. But yeah, he does that thing where he's like, well, Maude Allen knows what a clitoris is,

lesbian spy, but I would never say the word. One of the other really heartbreaking things about this trial is that one of the witnesses for Pemberton Billing was Oscar Wilde's ex-lover. How sad. Yeah, who like came back to be like, this shit's evil. No, Billing, you're right. It's a conspiracy. Yeah, turned on sweet Oscar after his death.

It wasn't the drapes in the end. Oh, man. No, he had to go. It was the ex-boyfriend. Yeah. Oh, yeah, a lot of heartbreak here. Worst of all, they bring up Maude Allen's brother. They're like, what's your full name?

And she has to say her birth name. And they're like, oh, you mean part of the hereditary line of the demon of the Belfry? Well, gosh, seems like immorality must run in the family, huh? And that's just fucked. It's a bad argument, and it's so goddamn mean. If I may bring it back to the Bible, surely we're not our brother's keeper, right? Amen. Yeah, but if you were in this time where genetics and evolution and racial purity,

like as backed up by science, all these things were kind of this going scientific force of the day, it wouldn't be a crazy argument. Especially because she's a lesbian ergo. We already have this deviant stipend on her, right? He's a foreigner. She's a lesbian with a murderer brother. What more do we need to say? And in fact, they didn't need to say anything more.

Pemberton-Billing was acquitted. The charges went nowhere, except that it does seem like they really hurt Maude Allen's career. Yeah. You can kind of find two narratives about this. Some writers will be like, it ruined her career. She never really was able to, like Daniel followed her and she was never able to work again. And some people will say like, you know, but she was a tough lady and she bounced back and had some more acting roles and this kind of stuff, which both I think have truth in them.

Yeah, those aren't incompatible. Yeah. But Billing left the court to a thunderous applause from the crowd outside. And apparently a path strewn with flowers. Venus flychaps and the stems of roses, like, please, thorns, thistles. My kingdom for a pit of barbed wire for him to crawl across as he leaves that courtroom. And it did get this narrative out there that sex-starved English women were turning to lesbianism because all the men were off fighting a noble war and that people who performed sexy dances

were more likely to be connected to shady cabals of lesbian, Jewish, German, etc. etc. We just keep listing the same ironic, you know, so-called epithets. And it's also anyone who goes to watch that performance is in bed with her. So I better not see you there. So that essentially concludes the story of the case of the clitoris. Found it! The case of the missing clitoris, we found it. We're good.

But I think it's worth doing a little, like, where are they now? Yeah, that's my favorite part. Is the answer dead for all of them? Well, yeah, that's the short answer. The long answer is that Pemberton billing. He eventually left politics. His sort of conservatism did eventually fall out of favor. And he died on his yacht, poor guy.

Sorry, I'm dead. No, that was a good boo. I mean, he deserves a longer boo than that, frankly. Maude Allen, she did have a few more sort of turns in showbiz. She also lived in an apartment that I think was paid for by Margot Asgwiff, her likely lover. Yeah, that sounds right. But eventually had to return to the States and died penniless in a nursing home in California in the mid 1950s.

There's no justice in how it turns out for anybody, huh? No, there really isn't. Well, maybe a tiny bit. Captain Harold Spencer. He continued to hang out in Britain being kind of not so and had a big anti-churchill campaign in later years. But that didn't work out too well. Spencer and an accomplice named Alfred Douglas

had this campaign against Winston Churchill, issued 30,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled The Murder of Lord Kitchener and the Truth about the Battle of Jutland and the Jews. That gave me like psychic damage, that title. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Anything that just has the and the Jews at the end, like.

Yeah. As a result, Spencer and Douglas, who actually was the editor of another weekly magazine, as he has a type, what can I say, were arrested and charged for criminal libel. That's fine by me. Hey, and found guilty. Yeah, found guilty.

Spencer was sentenced to six months in jail. He was stripped of his army rank by the war office. And then a few months after he got out of prison, he was convicted again of unspecified, disgusting behavior in quotes and fined 40 shillings. And I didn't even look up how he died. Who cares? Yeah.

Our last, where are they now? Salome herself. Oh, yeah. In 2011, Al Pacino directed and starred alongside Jessica Chastain in Salome, which I haven't seen, but kind of wanting to know. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So the femme fatale, like, you know, lives on and probably always will.

Yeah. And hopefully will someday be at a point where that kind of like femme power and sexuality is not connected with vice and. Right. Corrupted power or whatever. Carnivorous severed head kissing, necrophiliac. I liked that a lot. That was your dream.

Yeah. That was the dream. I think that that elevates it to something where you're like, if you remember nothing else about this play, which you would have, the way this girl was dressed back in those days, you'd remember a lot about this play, but you need like a good story beat to really put it over, make out with a severed head.

Any chance you get it. I think. Yeah. A prop, a prop severed head. Well, yes, yes, please. Thank you. If you can't buy fresh canned will do. And that's my story.

That was really, really, really good. I really enjoyed the hell out of that. I thought that that was so interesting. I hadn't heard of any of it. And I'm really surprised because this is, this is a, like you say, it's a real gold mine of minutia and there's a million kind of paths that wind off into other forests of eugenics and war profiteering.

The history of, as you say, famously one of the most insidious and vicious tabloid environments in the world. There's a lot going on. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot going on. Yeah. You could follow threads of this to the ends of the earth. And then you'd wrap right back around to like what's going on right now.

As you guys have pointed out so astutely, like it is really not a new story. No. And then I'm going to leave you with a quote that is so fucking timeless. It could not possibly be more applicable. And it is simply this. Conservatives everywhere sought to reconstruct a normality that never existed. Boom.

Well, we're losing the red states again. That's for sure. Yeah, I'm sorry. Is this bad for you? The demo is going to take a real hit off this one. Oh, dang. Yeah. Sorry.

No, it's good. It's worth it. I don't think it stood a prayer once you asked me on to be on. I am a queer Jewish member of the Cult of the Glitteries. Like I'm going to a Pilates class after this. And I am wearing my ruby nips. Yes. Buy Luchia's book, The Problem with Solitaire.

If you want to find out The Problem with Solitaire yourself in the form of poetry. Luchia, will you see us out with a Stay Sweet? Absolutely. I will. Josie, Taylor, Stay Sweet. Thank you. You too. Thank you.

Bye. We're waving. You can't see us, but we're waving. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinfamy.

But no pressure. Bittersweetinfamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. Or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. I first encountered this story on Metafilter, which is a great website. It's a community weblog, so anyone can contribute a post or a comment.

The thing that I think makes Metafilter special is how well-moderate it is, and the kind of discourse and community that that seems to have fostered. It's one of my favorite places on the internet, and I recommend checking it out if you don't already know it. Other sources I accessed while putting together this story include an article called A Hundred Years On from the Cult of the Glitterous Liable Trial. Let's remember that Fake News is Nothing New by Kevin Childs, published in The Independent. Willing to be Thrilling, written by Carol Bishop Gwynn and published in Canada's History.

And it's where I found the image that Josie and Taylor and I discussed in the episode. Side note, at the time I said I wasn't sure what the underwear situation in the Salome costume was, but I have since done a little bit of further research and I can just say that it is imperceptible at best. Angus McLaren's 20th Century Sexuality History, in particular the first chapter, which is called The Cult of the Glitterous, Sexual Panics of the First World War. I watched a YouTube video called A Look at Oscar Wilde's Salome, by a YouTube user named Words About Words.

I checked out the Wikipedia page for Maude Allen, as well as Theodore Durant. And an SF Gay article, The Tale of the Demon of the Belfry, San Francisco's Forgotten Jack the Ripper, by Katie Dade. The National Archives provided an article called LGBTQ Plus History, Maude Allen, and Unnatural Practices Among Women, that last bit in quotes, written by Vicki Eglicowski Broad. Dark Venus, by Wendy Bonaventura. The Maude Allen Affair, by Russell James.

Changing Lives, Gender Expectations and Rules, during and after World War I, by Susan Grazel. Accessed via the British Library. The Wikipedia page for The Dance of the Seven Veils. Sisters of Salome, a book by Tony Bennett. Women as Figures of Disorder in the Plays of Oscar Wilde, by Sirika Pradishani Rose. That's a thesis that was submitted to the University of Birmingham's Philosophy Department.

The Digital Public Library of America provided an article on The New Woman, Destiny Rogers wrote an article that I read called Maude Allen in the Cult of the Clitoris, that was published in Pew News. Several articles from Spartacus Educational, all of them written by John Simkin, on Harold S. Spencer, The Unseen Hand, Eileen Lee Stewart, Noel Pemberton Billing, The Black Book, and last but not least, Maude Allen. I also brushed up on my general World War I trivia via the Wikipedia page for World War I. And those were my sources for this episode of

bittersweet infamy. Oh, I woke up the dog. Gotta go. All right. Bye. The sources that I used for The Minfamous were 15 years after the Dave Matthews Band let loose over the Chicago River. We surveyed the damages and uncover a new victim by Steve Johnson, August 9th, 2019, for the Chicago Tribune. 18 years ago today, a Dave Matthews Band tour bus dumped human waste on a tour boat in the Chicago River. Here's our original report.

Angela Rosas and Brett McNeil, August 8th, 2022, for the Chicago Tribune. I read the Wikipedia page for the Dave Matthews Band Chicago River incident. The interstitial music was from the Y-98 Philips and Company Morning Show with Pooboo Bus, hosted by Y-98 on YouTube. I did have some sources for my fake. Minfamous, and they included an entry entitled Linda and Jerry, 1971 to 1983, an article written in the Pop History Dig. I read an article from Vanity Fair, entitled Fran Drescher.

Newly elected president of SAG-AFTRA is Thinking Big, published by Joy Press, January 26th, 2022, and I looked at the Wikipedia entry for Jerry Brown. Special thanks to our coffee subscriber, Jonathan Mountain. Thanks so much, Jonathan. This podcast is hosted by the 604 Podcast Network, and the song you're listening to now is Tea Street by Brian Steele.