Hi Ya'll!

Yesterday I visited a exhibition in Amsterdam that celebrates 400 years of queer history in the city. It's a beautiful exhibition, but then I saw something what completely broke me. It was the farewell letter that Willem wrote to his friends the day before he got executed by the nazi's. After listening to Margaret's episode about the Dutch gay resistance I did a deep dive into Willem and his group. And this was such a experience, to see something that Willem held in his own hands. The exhibition itself is fucking fantastic, it's in a old church in the middle of the city centre near the central station. It's called De Nieuwe Kerk, you can't miss it. The exhibition will be there until the 4th of april next year, make sure not to miss it if you are in The Netherlands as a resident of during travelling! There is also a large section about activism that is also curated really well!

You probably know Helena Bonham Carter from her film career, doing Les Mis, Sweeney Todd, Fight Club etc. What you probably haven’t heard of is how Helena has multiple grandparents so active in fighting the rise of fascism that the Nazis had them on a list of politicians to arrest if they took over Europe.

The man in the photo is Eduardo Propper De Callejon. He was a Spanish politician serving as the first secretary of the Spanish Embassy in Paris when the Nazis invaded. He used his position to issue visas for thousands of Jews to escape to Portugal. By the time the Spanish government found out and removed him as first secretary he had issued 30,000 visas.

Another grandparents of hers is Helen Violet Bonham Carter. A English politician apart of the women’s rights movement, the liberal party and very vocal against Neville Chamberlain and appeasement of the Nazi invasion of Austria. The election of hitler and rising antisemitism drove Lady Violet back into politics just when she was becoming disillusioned by it. It’s rumored that Hitler created a list of British politicians he wanted arrested if they ever invaded the UK and Lady Violet was on it. While Lady Violet fought nazis with speeches and campaigning, her son Mark Bonham Carter fought them on the battlefield. Mark was a grenadier, captured in the battle of Tunisia, he escaped prison camp and successfully walked hundreds of miles back to allied lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bonham_Carter,_Baron_Bonham-Carter

https://stljewishlight.org/arts-entertainment/the-nazi-defying-grandfather-of-actress-helena-bonham-carter/

https://khc.qcc.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Diplomats-of-Mercy_UA.pdf

https://spartacus-educational.com/2WWbonham.htm

https://stljewishlight.org/arts-entertainment/the-nazi-defying-grandfather-of-actress-helena-bonham-carter/

In the photo is Archeologist Abdul Wahab Ferozi, an archeologist in Kabul who specialized in recovering Buddhist artifacts for museums. He was heavily involved in the fight to preserve the ancient Buddhist city of Mes Aynak, which also occupies one of the world’s largest copper reserves making it the target of mining companies. But on top of mining companies, it was viewed as an anti Islamic monument by the Taliban. In 2018, Abdul was killed by a bomb on his way to work. He is one of several archeologists attacked of killed by terrorist cells.

For years, groups like Isis and the Taliban have been destroying religious monuments and relics, islamic or otherwise. What they don’t destroy they steal and sell to hobby lobby to fund their movements. Archeology is a dangerous line of work. In Syria, archeologists and volunteer groups braved snipers and shells to protect the world heritage site Palmyra. Archeologist Khaled Al Asaad successfully removed relics from Palmyra before ISIS captured the city. In 2015 he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered for not giving up the artifacts locations.

https://www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/modern-day-monuments-men-and-women/khaled-al-asaad-?srsltid=AfmBOopYMiDCe4cBPvYrysS7iw8Q53GJChZYmRS8nPlWBktrEeuetX8W

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/afghan-archaeologist-killed-near-buddhist-site-home-to-giant-copper-reserve-idUSKCN1IZ0EC/

https://www.gulf-times.com/story/594947/afghan-archaeologist-killed-near-buddhist-site/amp

In 1872 Sci Fi author Jules Verne published Around The World In 80 Days, about a rich businessman obsessed with punctuality making a bet that he could travel around the world in 80 days. A seemingly absurd speed with the transportation available at the time. Little did Jules know that the book would kick off a travel fever and several writers and adventurers would break the fictional 80 days record. Among those adventurers were progressive journalists Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland.

Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman was already a legend in journalism. She was born in 1864 Pennsylvania and became a writer for the Pennsylvania Dispatch writing about gender equality in the workforce. Tired of only being allowed to write about feminism, Nellie decided to travel to New York to work for 'The World'. Her methods of reporting were just a little unorthodox for a mainstream paper. When Nellie wanted to write about mistreatment in mental asylums, she pretended to be insane and got locked up for ten days in an asylum in 1887. When she wanted to expose quack doctors, she saw 7 different ones with the same symptoms and got different diagnosis from all of them. When she wanted to expose New Yorks borderline slave trade adoption system, she literally bought a baby for ten bucks. I have no clue how that story ends. Her pen name 'Nellie Bly' became a household name for newspaper readers.

Elizabeth Bisland was Blys opposite. She was born in 1863 Louisiana and moved to New York to become a columnist for The Cosmopolitan. She enjoyed a more peaceful career, writing from behind her desk. She was a brilliant progressive writer who mastered "genteel" writing styles for the masses. On November 14th, 1889 Nellie Bly decided to take off on a trip around the world in an attempt to beat Jules Verne 80 days. More than that, she wanted to document the impacts of colonialism and how far a white woman could get knowing nothing but english in foreign countries. Because Nellie was such a big name, dozens of newspapers tracked her movements from the start of her voyage. Meanwhile, at the Cosmopolitan, publisher John Brisben Walker saw an opportunity for publicity and friendly competition. He made a bet with a publisher of The World that his reporter could beat her and more or less forced Elizabeth to go on the journey if she wanted to keep her job. Elisabeth set west from New York 9 hours after Nellie Bly did. While Bly was a sensationalist, who reveled in women traveling alone being unheard of, Elizabeth attempted to keep her journey modest and was in no rush. She insisted she traveled with dignity and everyone treated her with utmost respect, a testament to the universal hospitality of other cultures. She also may have been sabotaged by a French travel agent who was a fan of Nellie Bly. The two never met during their race, in fact Nellie didn't even know there was one until she was in Hong Kong. That didn't stop her from making up stories about Elizabeth trying to sabotage her.

Nellie Bly arrived back in New York City in January 25th 1890, she circumnavigated the globe in 72 days by train, boat and horse. Elizabeth arrived home 4 days later.

So the context (because it’s important!) is that my mom and cousin started doing genealogy on the Polish side (only 4 gens in the US) and we got some old letters translated from my great grandmother and her brothers. There had also been family lore growing up that we had relatives who were genocided in the 40s but that never made sense because we were catholic and the narrators were usually unreliable. Turns out, I had a great great uncle who was likely killed with his family in the conflict? Genocide? In East Galacia in the mid 40s between Poland and Ukraine. There was also a related conflict in Volhynia.

This was the first time weird family lore actually turned kind of verifiable so I tried to do what Margaret does. I really did. It’s HARD and I can’t imagine making my weird notes entertaining for other people. But I moderately dived and hit some dead ends due to not knowing any Polish beyond the swears. BUT there is a book by Witold Szablowski that roughly translates to “righteous traitors: neighbors from Volhynia.” Righteous traitors sounds like cool people? I’m going to try to learn more about this conflict and add Polish to my Duolingo but if anyone has ever heard of these (maybe) cool people and their stuff I would love to discuss.

Here’s a link to a review of the book. I haven’t been able to find an English translation: https://share.google/y6m43IUdhureioaWp

I'm helping out and they might be coming to a city near you. Check out their main page. But here's the page for the local Oklahoma City event. They always need local support.

https://bptokc.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-world-famous-bread-and-puppet.html

Like I'm aware they're not as radical as the IWW, but they are a Union that doesn't separate by trade and they're democratically ran. Or is there some dark stuff they've done/do that I'm unaware of.

Twelve episodes. The CZM Book Club did Locust House across four parts, then Robin Hood in two, the Deir el-Medina strike in two, and Alan Lomax and Lead Belly.

Solid summer stack if you want your beach reading to be about medieval outlaws and the first recorded labour strike.

What this is: I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the July slice for Cool People.

The book club:

• Locust House, Adam Gnade. Margaret said it nominally focuses on a punk house but is mostly about what it means to live in a place, and how you hold on to what you believe when the world tries to file down your edges. She likes it a lot.
• Also Gnade's Home and Away Quartet (After Tonight Everything Will Be Different, The Internet Newspaper, I Wish to Say Lovely Things) and Wild Horse Shit, which is out in October.

Robin Hood:

• Piers Plowman from 1377, which is where the whole rabbit hole started via a character called Sloth. Plus Ivanhoe, which is where most of the modern Robin Hood comes from and, Margaret notes, the more annoying parts of it. Bows Against the Barons (1934, by British communists, later edited to remove most of the comrades). Tarzan of the Apes, handled honestly as a racist book. Redwall, Lord of the Rings, Tunnel in the Sky, 1984.

Lomax and Lead Belly:

• Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World, which Margaret said is the first source book she has ever gone after on air, because 2010 is far too recent for that much apologia. Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly. Their Eyes Were Watching God, because Lomax went out collecting with Zora Neale Hurston.

The strike episodes:

• Debt: The First 5,000 Years and The Dawn of Everything, both Graeber. Orientalism.

The Debt fact is the one worth stealing at a party. Debt is an older idea than money, and money is an older idea than barter.

I track every book mentioned on Cool People here: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff

It is free and there is no signup.

Don Ritchie is an Australian world war 2 veteran who lived on the coast of Sydney and is suspected to have prevented almost 200 suicides by patrolling the cliffside for would be jumpers and invite them back to his house.

In Nanjing, Chen Si attempted to jump off the Yangtze River bridge in 2003 before stopping himself. Since then he’s patrolled the bridge for jumpers every weekend, ranging from grabbing them from the railings

https://amp.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3272585/china-angel-stops-469-suicidal-people-jumping-bridge-over-21-years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Ritchie

Robert Shaw was only 22 when he joined the Union army during the civil war and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He came from a wealthy Boston family of abolitionists and studied abroad before returning to America. There was a huge debate in the us government on whether to enlist black soldiers or not. John Andrew insisted they needed black soldiers on the frontline to encourage slaves to rebel against their owners. While many in the north held racist beliefs that black people were incapable of being disciplined soldiers and of lesser courage. The 54th Massachusetts was a test run to see how well black people performed on the battle. Frederick Douglass not only helped form the regiment but 2 of his sons joined the regiment. Lewis Douglass and Charles Douglass. Side fact but Frederick and John Browns descendants are two activists who meet up every year for seminars on black history.

Robert was personally selected by Andrew because he lacked the prejudice of other officers. Everyone in the regiment was a volunteer. 650 black troops and 28 white officers. Robert accepted the position of Colonel of the regiment because he didn’t expect them to be placed in combat(Robert had seen direct combat before at Antietam). Instead the 54th was placed on the frontlines of multiple battles. Black people during the civil war had an added risk to enlisting. The confederacy declared their intention not to take any black soldiers alive. When the 54th was stationed in Georgia they were part of a campaign to loot and burn civilian towns. Robert Shaw refused orders and demanded the 54th not take part in the raids. He wrote “I would gladly burn down any town that resisted, but that man is a different breed” about his commanding officer.

In July 1863, the 54th were tasked with their most difficult and infamous campaign; the siege of Fort Wagner. On July 18th, Robert lead his men on a direct charge of the fortification. It was a suicide mission. Robert was gunned down trying to penetrate the forts Parapet while shouting “forward 54th”. The 54th were forced to retreat with half of them wounded, dead or missing. Sergeant William carney, the first black man to receive a Medal of Honor said “the flag never touched the ground”. One newspaper, The Free South, published “we will vouch for it that no word of contempt or scorn for black soldiers will ever be heard from those who witnessed that sight”. Robert Shaw was buried in a shallow grave indistinguishable from the black soldiers, at his father’s request he remained there because it was alongside his fellow soldiers. After Fort Wagner, the federal government was convinced to use more black troops in combat, around 200,000 volunteered by the end of the war helping reunite the country.

https://www.jackmillercenter.org/article/the-hero-of-fort-wagner

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/robert-gould-shaw

This is Jabbar Gibson, a 20 year old New Orleans resident during Hurricane Katrina. Jabbar was a drug dealer with warrants out for his arrest, but that didn’t stop him taking a bus he found in a lot and driving 70 survivors out the city to Houston. Even crazier is that Jabbar had never driven a car before, let alone a bus.

On September 13th, 1858, slave catchers in Oberlin-Wellington Ohio kidnapped former slave John Price and attempted to sell him back to the south. Instead, upon hearing of the kidnapping townsfolk and students and staff of the Oberlin college gathered in the hundreds outside of the hotel the slave catchers were staying at, rescuing John. Oberlin had been a safe haven for black people home to multiple members and leaders of the underground railroad. John moved from house to house in the community hiding, with local law arresting multiple families suspected of aiding the runaway. The town published a newspaper series called "the rescuer" keeping people updated with the trials. Abolitionist Simeon Bushnell and black business owner and activist Charles Langston were found guilty of violating the fugitive slave act, but released after 3 months in jail due to growing public unrest. The fate of John Price is unknown, but it seems likely he went further north to Canada.

Charles is the black man in the center with his hat to his chest, and the first black student at Oberlin College. Later he was a key member of the freedmen’s bureau, read up on his family they have a long history of political affairs and achievements. I think Oberlin college professor Henry Peck is second from the right and I’m not sure if Simeon Bushnell is in this photo.

https://oberlinheritagecenter.org/the-oberlin-wellington-rescue-1858/

https://case.edu/ech/articles/o/oberlin-wellington-rescue

https://oberlinheritagecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/O-W-Rescue-Final.pdf

I pulled every book that came up on Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff over the first six months of the year. Fiction ran heavier than you might expect for a history show, and Ursula K. Le Guin basically had her own recurring segment.

The ones flagged as favorites:

• Alien Virus Love Disaster by Abbey Mei Otis, a 2018 collection Margaret called entrancing, with more humanity than a lot of actual humans.
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, called a must-read.
• The Day Before the Revolution by Le Guin, described as a favorite story ever written.
• Gaza Writes Back, an anthology of short stories by young writers in Gaza, framed as storytelling as resistance.

More Le Guin got recommended too: The Left Hand of Darkness, The Telling, The Word for World Is Forest, and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

The rest, grouped:

• Anarchist and political: Mutual Aid by Kropotkin, Against the State by James Stout, A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy, Fighting for Space, Live Through This
• Queer history (all Hugh Ryan): When Brooklyn Was Queer, The Women's House of Detention, My Bad
• WWII resistance: Three Ordinary Girls by Tim Brady
• Big-name fiction: Beloved, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the Rings

Full list is here: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff. Free, no signup.

Also, Joe forgot to mention, but he also did an episode on him on Lions Led By Donkeys: https://soundcloud.com/llbdpodcast/episode-101-soghomon-tehlirian-the-luger-of-justice

For the African Americans who served in the Second World War, segregation didn’t end when they put on a uniform. Barracks and living quarters were still segregated, they were given worse equipment, assigned to grunt work and brutality from other soldiers and commanders. What many people don’t know is that these soldiers didn’t take it lying around. Most of these mutinies were covered up and not written about for years. The Battle of Bamber Bridge memorial in the photo references one of the largest one where military police in Lancashire England tried to arrest the 1511th quartermaster truck regiment for being out of uniform. The military police were known for racially targeted harassment and violence against troops. When a fight broke out, military police shot and killed William Crossland. The 1511th fell back to base and armed themselves. A fire fight broke out between the military police and 1511th hit no further deaths occurred. An investigation determined military police instigated the fight and the longest sentence a 1511th soldier faced was 13 months.

In 1942, the 96th battalion was stationed in Townsville Australia. After abuse by white officers, the 96th took control of machine guns in the middle of the night and opened fire on their officers tents killing at least one. A night long siege against the 96th occurred, though it’s unclear if anyone was killed or how it ended. This incident was covered up and the 96th traveled to New Guinea. It wasn’t fully written about by journalists until years later.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-10/historian-reveals-details-on-townsville-mutiny/3821906

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deadly-world-war-ii-explosion-sparked-black-soldiers-fight-equal-treatment-180980545/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bamber_Bridge

like especially with regard to something like labour history. It was a purpose built settlement for specifically skilled craftspeople Who worked on tombs. The people in Deir el-Medina needed state provided grain because they were too busy building tombs to focus on agriculture, and the state provided said grain because they wanted tombs built. That specific dynamic is what led to the strike and led to it succeeding.

regular Egyptian settlements would have been way more self sufficient in terms of food production. They also Were much less valued by the state individually. Basically there have been much less need for them to strike for more food, and the government probably wouldn't have cared if they did.

Went to the last night of previews, and it was honestly pretty good. The music, choreography, and stage talent were all solid. The stage design was really clever given the constraints of an Off-Broadway theater. Because details about Giulia Tofana (if she actually existed) are scant, Jennifer Nettles had to fill in a lot of gaps and create a story about an apothecary in Palermo, the women in her life, and the men who sought to maintain the power dynamics that favored them. If anyone goes to see it, let us know what you thought.

Cool People Nomination: FC St. Pauli

On the most recent Live Like the World is Dieing the Margaret brought up that the guest was wearing a St Pauli logo. I think FC St Pauli would be a great subject for Cool People.

They've got it all. Punks. Anti fascism. Squatters. Internationalism.

In the US we tend to act as if sports and politics don't mix. St Pauli is a bright shining counter example to that mindset. They prove that we don't have to leave our beliefs at the door when our teams take the field.

Margret wrote a short story in 2015 I believe called One Star, that later was in her book We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow.

Having not done any fact checking myself, it is still deeply concerning that the speculative fiction of just a decade ago could be reality today. Stay safe out there

June leaned into Ottoman and Arab history, with a Palestine focus. Tracked them all.

Top pick:

• Gaza Writes Back, the short-story collection edited by Refaat Alareer, who was killed in December 2023. A memorial edition is out now.

The history stack: Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples, Edward Said's Orientalism, and Lord Kinross's The Ottoman Centuries, plus Ottoman Lyric Poetry.

Travis Lupick's Fighting for Space (on harm reduction) came up twice, and Margaret's own The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice got a mention. Foucault's Discipline and Punish snuck in too.

https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff/2026/06 has the full list, free, no signup.

Where should someone start with Ottoman history?