Nellie Bly: life of the week

Hello and welcome to Life of the Week, where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures, from ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors to daring 20th century spies. In the late 19th century, When female reporters were largely confined to newspapers' society pages, Nellie Bly's daring investigations and headline-grabbing exploits made her a household name. She was a pioneer of stunt journalism and perhaps, says Dr Bob Nicholson, would have been a social influencer had she lived today. Speaking to Kev Lochen, Bob explores how Bly not only exposed injustice, but also proved that women could excel where they are expected to fail, from tricking her way into an asylum to racing around the world to beat the fictional record set by Phileas Fogg.

Bob, welcome to the podcast. In this Life for the Week episode, we're talking about Nellie Bly. I wonder if you could start off for us by just introducing who she is to someone who might not have heard of her before. Or Nellie Bly is one of the most remarkable women o of the late 19th century, I would say. She's a journalist at a time when to be a woman in the world of journalism was an incredibly difficult thing.

And she doesn't just do it. in a sort of basic run-of-the-mill sort of way, she is behind some of the most extraordinary and remarkable stories of that period. Most famously she gets committed to a madhouse for ten days, where she convinces people that she's insane and reports on conditions in there. Later on, a few years later, she also tries to beat Phileas Fogg's trip around the world, which she famously did in the novel, of course, in 80 days, she aims to do it in 75, at a time when Even just travelling around a city, your own home city as a woman, would have been extraordinary.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (45 minutes, 10,291 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.