This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:36] Laura Camien: Welcome to the Sparks File, your one-stop maker lab for creative inspiration. I'm Laura Camien.

[0:41] Susan Blackwell: And I'm Susan Blackwell. If you're joining us for the first time, oh, you are so welcome. If you're joining us for the one millionth time, you are snuggled up with us.

[0:52] Laura Camien: You may be asking yourself, what exactly is a spark file? Where do I get one? What do I file in it? These are such good questions. And we do have answers.

[0:59] Susan Blackwell: A spark file is a place where you consistently collect all of your inspirations and fascinations. But here's the deal. We are makers and we make all kinds of things. If you're like us and you're making stuff all the time, or want to be making stuff all the time, you know that the wellspring of inspiration can run a little dry.

[1:16] Laura Camien: So we're on the lookout for fresh ideas, images, and inspiration that spark our creativity and pique our curiosity. Things that inspire us to get up off of our asses and make things like this podcast. Or a fewer better mindset to clear some physical and mental space. Interesting.

[1:34] Susan Blackwell: Or a brilliant mind hidden behind dazzling beauty. Ooh. Every episode, we're gonna reach into our spark files and exchange some sparks. And from time to time, we're gonna talk to some folks who spark us too. And if you are not careful, you might just see past the surface.

[1:51] Laura Camien: So without further ado, let's open up the spark file.

[1:57] Susan Blackwell: Camien.

[1:58] Laura Camien: Blackwell.

[1:59] Susan Blackwell: Welcome.

[2:00] Laura Camien: Oh, thanks. Welcome to you. I just realized in that little teaser that you know how we tease each other with like what's our spark? And I do. I was like, that's not really something you make.

[2:10] Susan Blackwell: A brilliant mind. I was like, mine is also not something you make. So for scrap this episode. We're it's done. We're both fired. We're rehired. We renegotiate our contracts.

[2:22] Laura Camien: Um, is there anything that you want to say to the people before we jump in?

[2:28] Susan Blackwell: I'm just excited. I'm excited to share some sparks and exchange some ideas. And you know, the more we do this, the more we get notes from people who have made things, and I just can't tell you how thrilling it is.

[2:44] Laura Camien: It is the best. It makes my entire day. Someone will just send us something on Instagram or email and be like, hey, I was listening to this and I made this, and it knocks our socks off. Or I was listening to this. It reminded me of I wanted to share this, and then it sparks me.

[3:01] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Or it sparks you.

[3:03] Laura Camien: Yeah, it's so awesome. That is a joy.

[3:05] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, it feels really good. Circle I'm just like floating on air over here.

[3:09] Laura Camien: I love that. Should we dive in?

[3:11] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[3:11] Laura Camien: Okay. My spark title for the day.

[3:13] Susan Blackwell: Okay.

[3:14] Laura Camien: She was not only thinking outside the box, she didn't even know that a box existed.

[3:20] Susan Blackwell: Oh, I like her already. Um, get ready. My spark sources include a documentary called Bombshell by a filmmaker named Alexandra Dean, an episode of the Kamla Show on YouTube, and good old, sometimes reliable Wikipedia.

[3:35] Laura Camien: Hey, thanks, Mickey. So this spark is the story of Hedvig Eva Maria Keisler. Hedwig was born on November 9th, 1914 in Vienna. She was an only child. Both her parents were born into Jewish families. Her parents were wealthy and cultured, and they took young Hedwig to the theater and the opera, and they lived in Vienna in a very fashionable artistic district.

[4:01] Susan Blackwell: Travel with me through time and space.

[4:05] Laura Camien: No.

[4:05] Susan Blackwell: I haven't.

[4:06] Laura Camien: I want to go.

[4:07] Susan Blackwell: It sounds so beautiful.

[4:09] Laura Camien: No.

[4:09] Susan Blackwell: Let's go.

[4:10] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[4:11] Susan Blackwell: Oh, can we?

[4:11] Laura Camien: On the world tour.

[4:12] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[4:12] Laura Camien: Of the Sparkfile podcast.

[4:13] Susan Blackwell: Yes, please. Okay. So little Hedwig had a very curious mind. Her father, Emile, was a successful bank director, but he was also interested in technology. So when they went for their walks together, he would point out how things worked, like electricity and streetcars and factories. And she learned to associate invention with her father, whom she adored.

[4:35] Susan Blackwell: So I watched this interview with documentarian Alexander Dean. What a basket of sparks she is. I watched this interview with her on an episode of Kamla Show. And this is a program that covers women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics STEM.

[4:51] Laura Camien: Okay.

[4:52] Susan Blackwell: Alexandra said that studying inventors over the last 10 to 15 years, as she has, how frequently you find a parent behind that inventor who really enjoyed and loved their child's intellect.

[5:04] Laura Camien: Yes.

[5:05] Susan Blackwell: And that parent is frequently a father, and that is the case with little Hedwig, which I thought was such an interesting distinction that she made.

[5:13] Laura Camien: Yeah, that they get such delight out of seeing how their child's brain works.

[5:18] Susan Blackwell: Because you can, it's so malleable, and you can truly see the eureka moments in a child. And then you're not hiding them into maybe what they become.

[5:27] Laura Camien: That's awesome.

[5:27] Susan Blackwell: So Hedwig's father encouraged her to take things apart and put them back together again. And at the age of five, um, she took her music box apart and put it back together. She was very bold about asking how things worked. She had a very inventive mind and a sort of a fearlessness about discovering the world, which I loved. I possessed none of those things as a child, but hats off to you, Hedwig.

[5:52] Laura Camien: Um, she attended private school in Vienna, and her favorite class was chemistry. In a different era, she might have become a scientist, but it was an option that was derailed by her beauty.

[6:04] Susan Blackwell: Whoa.

[6:05] Laura Camien: At the age of 12, Hedwig won a beauty contest in Vienna. By the time she was a teen, she was so beautiful that they say when she walked into a room, conversations would stop.

[6:17] Susan Blackwell: Oh my god.

[6:18] Laura Camien: Can you imagine?

[6:19] Susan Blackwell: I can only imagine.

[6:21] Laura Camien: That's my life story. As someone who did not look like that as a young person, I can only imagine. What is that like?

[6:28] Susan Blackwell: But Hedwig described her younger self as an enfant terrible, like just like one of those, you know, like just she sounds like she was probably a terrible infant.

[6:38] Laura Camien: Beautiful little handful.

[6:40] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, yeah. When she was 16, but not short on confidence. When she was 16, she walked into the largest movie studio in Vienna, and in short order, they started to put her in films. And one of her earliest was the film Ecstasy, where she appeared nude, and she also...

[6:50] Laura Camien: At 16?

[6:57] Susan Blackwell: Mm-hmm. Uh simulated kind of like an orgasm on camera.

[7:03] Laura Camien: Um at 16.

[7:04] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Where are the child labor laws?

[7:06] Laura Camien: Well, sorry.

[7:08] Susan Blackwell: Not in Vienna, apparently. So the Pope denounced the film. Hitler declared it should not be shown. Like it made some waves.

[7:16] Laura Camien: It made some waves, and some larger than life figures were not happy about this film.

[7:21] Susan Blackwell: It was sort of like having a sex tape.

[7:24] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[7:25] Susan Blackwell: And her father, her beloved father, was outraged.

[7:28] Laura Camien: Yeah, with a minor.

[7:29] Susan Blackwell: With a minor. I'm like, it's sort of like children.

[7:33] Laura Camien: Right.

[7:33] Susan Blackwell: I don't want to take us to a dark place, but it sounds like she made a bold move.

[7:37] Laura Camien: Yes.

[7:37] Susan Blackwell: A bold choice. It was uh there she makes clear that the simulated orgasm, like she's fully clothed, and there was nobody else in the room with her, the way that they shot it. It's just you just see her.

[7:50] Laura Camien: A coming of age moment.

[7:51] Susan Blackwell: Her face. Yeah. Okay. So coming of age, I guess. Um, after that, uh, she got married to a munitions tycoon named Fritz Mandel. Fritz was a super interesting guy. He was one of the most powerful munitions suppliers to the Nazis. He also worked with Mussolini. He was this very powerful figure on the Axis side, but he was Jewish.

[8:13] Laura Camien: So Hitler wouldn't even be in the same room with him.

[8:18] Susan Blackwell: This story has some layers already that I'm like, what? You have to buckle your seatbelt because this story is it is like a spark layer cake. It's crazy. It's crazy. And you could take any one of these little anecdotes or little characters like Fritz Mandel and completely like there's your screenplay.

[8:40] Laura Camien: What were you what I mean?

[8:41] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. It's interesting. So are we to believe from this, and maybe you'll s you'll clarify later, but it are we to believe that she and her husband were supportive of the case?

[8:58] Laura Camien: Listen, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna present something to you right now.

[9:02] Susan Blackwell: Okay.

[9:02] Laura Camien: The allies in World War II would eventually nickname uh Fritz Mandel the Merchant of Death. But according to documentarian Alexandra Dean, the deeper that you dig, the more sympathetic he becomes. It turned now, I don't want to take away the from the fact that he was like one of the biggest munitions suppliers to the Axis forces. But it turns out that the Nazis actually took his Jewish father, Fritz Mandel's Jewish father, they put him in a concentration camp in order to coerce Fritz Mandel to take their money, take it to Argentina, and become something of a banker for the Nazis.

[9:38] Susan Blackwell: But in order to preserve his own family, which he did.

[9:41] Laura Camien: So he ended up saving his family by doing evil things.

[9:46] Susan Blackwell: By killing millions.

[9:48] Laura Camien: Yes.

[9:49] Susan Blackwell: It's uh he it's but it's not so it's not black and so clean.

[9:52] Laura Camien: Yep, yep.

[9:53] Susan Blackwell: Nothing ever is.

[9:54] Laura Camien: Oh yeah.

[9:55] Susan Blackwell: So back to Hedwig. So with Fritz, Hedwig and Fritz had this country, in addition to their other, I'm sure, real estate. They had this country house with 25 guest rooms.

[10:06] Laura Camien: And she really loved it for a time.

[10:06] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, picture it. She really loved it for a time, but then it became her job to sit and be beautiful, and she was bored out of her mind. But because Hedvig was married to this guy and sitting at these dinner tables with his Nazi munitions clients, she was privy to early discussions about what the racial laws would be, what would constitute Jewish, who would be sent to concentration camps?

[10:34] Laura Camien: And there she is, somebody who is of Jewish descent, this beautiful woman, beautifully dressed, sitting at these dining tables. I mean, what a position to be in.

[10:43] Susan Blackwell: And she's, I presume, soaking it all up.

[10:47] Laura Camien: She's also got a magnificent brain.

[10:50] Susan Blackwell: That's right. So if all of that wasn't shitty enough, her husband became jealous and paranoid about his beautiful wife. He started buying up prints of the film Estasy, in which she had appeared new.

[11:02] Laura Camien: Of course.

[11:02] Susan Blackwell: And the more he bought up, the more they would print. Because they could make as many copies as he would buy. He had the maids listening in on Hedwig's phone calls. It was the classic story of she had everything she could ever want except for her freedom.

[11:19] Laura Camien: She was basically in a cage.

[11:21] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, a beautiful beautiful bird in a cage. So by 1937, the war was inevitable, and Hedwig was in this really tense situation. Jewish people's civil rights were being stripped away, and the stress of that climate brought on her beloved father's sudden death by heart attack. And this was a real turning point for her.

[11:44] Laura Camien: I keep going back to that. I'm like, okay, so he saved his own father, but not Hedwig's.

[11:48] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, her okay. Yeah.

[11:49] Laura Camien: So after several failed attempts to escape from her husband and from this life, one night, it is they say, one night they were having a dinner party, and Hedwig, as the woman of the house, helped choose the maids and the caretakers for the house. She found a maid who looked a lot like her. She made two cups of tea, one of them with a sleeping powder. She switched cups with the maid. The maid drank it and fell asleep. Hedwig had sewn her jewels into the lining of her coat. She put on the maid's costumes. She jumped on her bike, and she successfully escaped.

[12:25] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh.

[12:26] Laura Camien: This by bicycle.

[12:28] Susan Blackwell: My bicycle.

[12:28] Laura Camien: This dressed as a maid. After several failed attempts, they she would escape and they would like bring her back. This life is an amazing life.

[12:37] Susan Blackwell: That's incredible. We haven't even scratched the surface.

[12:42] Laura Camien: So her folks, her parents had friends in England. So she escaped to England and she spent several months in pre-war London, which was something of a safe haven. And while she was there, she saw a Metro Goldwyn Mare movie that had the lion at the beginning that goes, yeah, heart music.

[12:59] Susan Blackwell: Yep, MGM.

[13:01] Laura Camien: And she said, I want that. And she ended up meeting MGM studio head Louis B. Mare, who had come to Europe to buy up all the actors and actresses who were escaping from Nazi Germany, which that in and of itself is a fascinating moment. Um because he figured he could get them for a cheap price.

[13:19] Susan Blackwell: He offered Hedwig 125 per week.

[13:22] Laura Camien: She said, that's not good enough.

[13:24] Susan Blackwell: And she walked out of the meeting.

[13:26] Laura Camien: Then she immediately booked because she's so smart.

[13:29] Susan Blackwell: She immediately booked passage on the ship that Mare was sailing back to New York.

[13:34] Laura Camien: And on that trip, she made sure that she was out on the deck in her tennis clothes and her bathing suit.

[13:40] Susan Blackwell: And then on the first or second night, she went to her little modest cabin and she put on one of her designer gowns that she had escaped with, and she walked past Louis B.

[13:50] Laura Camien: Mare's table.

[13:51] Susan Blackwell: And Douglas Fairbanks was sitting at Mare's table, and apparently his eyes were glued to her.

[13:58] Laura Camien: Louis B.

[13:59] Susan Blackwell: Mare circled back and offered her offered her $500 a week for her to be on an MGM contract.

[14:06] Laura Camien: But they all knew that the name Hedvig Keisler had to change.

[14:09] Susan Blackwell: And on that boat out at sea, Louis B.

[14:11] Laura Camien: Mare's wife came up with Hedvig's new name.

[14:14] Susan Blackwell: And though Hedwick only had a few sentences of English, when she stepped off the ship, she was met with photographers and reporters who wanted to meet Louis B.

[14:22] Laura Camien: Mare's latest discovery, Hetty Lamar.

[14:25] Susan Blackwell: Hetty Lamar.

[14:27] Laura Camien: Do you are you familiar with Hetty Lamar?

[14:30] Susan Blackwell: I am a little bit like as you were talking, I was like, I think this might be Hetty Lamar.

[14:36] Laura Camien: But you've already given me so many details, I had no idea.

[14:38] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh.

[14:39] Laura Camien: This documentary that Alexandra Dean made, Bombshell.

[14:42] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[14:43] Laura Camien: I was gonna say this 17 times.

[14:44] Susan Blackwell: It's so good.

[14:46] Laura Camien: It's such a good documentary.

[14:48] Susan Blackwell: But I just want to get in your mind's eye, and we'll share this on social media.

[14:52] Laura Camien: This is what Hetty Lamar looks like.

[14:55] Susan Blackwell: Exquisite.

[14:56] Laura Camien: Exquisitely beautiful.

[14:58] Susan Blackwell: I feel like she looks a bit like Vivian Lee.

[15:01] Laura Camien: She does more than a bit.

[15:04] Susan Blackwell: She's a white lady, she's a brunette.

[15:06] Laura Camien: She's got, you know, that symmetric, beautiful, symmetrical face.

[15:10] Susan Blackwell: Here's some more pictures of her.

[15:12] Laura Camien: Um, hair parted down the middle, and then cascading into curls.

[15:16] Susan Blackwell: Yep.

[15:17] Laura Camien: She's gorgeous.

[15:18] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[15:18] Laura Camien: Um, she was a stunner.

[15:20] Susan Blackwell: But she you just also mentioned she didn't speak much English.

[15:24] Laura Camien: She didn't, but she got that good brain.

[15:26] Susan Blackwell: So she, you know, she learned it.

[15:28] Laura Camien: She learned.

[15:29] Susan Blackwell: Okay.

[15:29] Laura Camien: Uh, so yeah, she learned it to be in movies.

[15:32] Susan Blackwell: So she's a she gets to Hollywood, Charles Boyer saw her at a party and was just smitten by her.

[15:38] Laura Camien: And he asked that she be in his movie Algiers, which put her on the map.

[15:42] Susan Blackwell: And suddenly she was on the cover of all these movie magazines, and a lot of famous starlets started styling themselves to look like her.

[15:52] Laura Camien: That's and that's why when you look at her, you're like, oh, Vivian Lee looks like her.

[15:57] Susan Blackwell: And you know, you're But everyone was trying to copying her.

[16:00] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[16:01] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[16:01] Laura Camien: She also became friends with like the biggies, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Wells, Howard Hughes, John Kennedy asked her out.

[16:09] Susan Blackwell: At this point, she is so desired.

[16:12] Laura Camien: She could have married anyone, but she surprised everyone by choosing a screenwriter named Gene Markey.

[16:17] Susan Blackwell: And it seemed like she was deeply deeply in love with him.

[16:20] Laura Camien: They even adopted a son.

[16:22] Susan Blackwell: Just a just a little thread that I want to tie up.

[16:25] Laura Camien: So what about the how did she get divorced from the other guy?

[16:28] Susan Blackwell: She just I also had that.

[16:30] Laura Camien: I think she must have.

[16:31] Susan Blackwell: I think at some point she must have, because what we're gonna learn is that she married several people.

[16:39] Laura Camien: She had several marriages.

[16:40] Susan Blackwell: So I'm assuming there was marriage divorce.

[16:44] Laura Camien: Yep.

[16:45] Susan Blackwell: Wow.

[16:46] Laura Camien: So interesting.

[16:47] Susan Blackwell: Just because I'm I'm also still wondering like what happened after she escaped.

[16:51] Laura Camien: Did he come looking for her?

[16:53] Susan Blackwell: You know, she she got out, which is amazing.

[16:55] Laura Camien: She got out.

[16:56] Susan Blackwell: So curious.

[16:57] Laura Camien: And yeah, and escaped that war on Europe's soil.

[17:00] Susan Blackwell: So um so back to Gene Mark.

[17:02] Laura Camien: Yeah, wait, did you have another one?

[17:04] Susan Blackwell: So I was just gonna say, so she chose a screenwriter.

[17:06] Laura Camien: Yeah, so she chose this screenwriter deeply in love with him.

[17:09] Susan Blackwell: They even adopted a son, but within months of their marriage, he began dating other actresses.

[17:15] Laura Camien: What the hell?

[17:16] Susan Blackwell: I know.

[17:17] Laura Camien: It's so funny because when you look at a picture of Gene Markey, you're like, he must have had one hell of a personality.

[17:23] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[17:24] Laura Camien: And I was gonna say, and real balls.

[17:26] Susan Blackwell: Like, what the he must have been amazing in the sacks.

[17:29] Laura Camien: The most glorious and intelligent.

[17:32] Susan Blackwell: He likes he liked the ladies.

[17:34] Laura Camien: So he began dating other actresses.

[17:36] Susan Blackwell: She was heartbroken.

[17:37] Laura Camien: And she said, people never got past her face.

[17:41] Susan Blackwell: You never knew if they loved you or their fantasy of you, which I think was is interesting.

[17:47] Laura Camien: And creates the tension that I feel like was present for Hetty Lamar's whole life.

[17:56] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[17:56] Laura Camien: This this tension between her her brain and her beauty.

[18:01] Susan Blackwell: Okay.

[18:01] Laura Camien: Back to Hetty.

[18:02] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[18:02] Laura Camien: So her career's taking off.

[18:04] Susan Blackwell: And in the 40s, they ran these actors and actresses who were on contract.

[18:09] Laura Camien: They ran them like racehorses.

[18:11] Susan Blackwell: And she was given some sort of pills to wake her up to perform, and she was given pills to sleep, like very Judy Garland.

[18:16] Laura Camien: They worked six days a week.

[18:18] Susan Blackwell: Women had to report super early to get into that full hair, full makeup, those uh costumes.

[18:25] Laura Camien: But after her day on the set, Hetty didn't go to sleep.

[18:28] Susan Blackwell: She was at home working on whatever her latest invention was.

[18:32] Laura Camien: Inventing was her hobby.

[18:34] Susan Blackwell: Um, she said she didn't have to work on ideas, they came to her naturally.

[18:38] Laura Camien: She had a complete inventing table set up in her house, and Howard Hughes gave her a smaller version of the inventing equipment that she kept in her trailer that she worked with between takes.

[18:50] Susan Blackwell: So this is how Hetty Lamar was spending her free time.

[18:53] Laura Camien: She said she had a cerebral connection with Howard Hughes.

[18:56] Susan Blackwell: She actually said she dated him and he was a terrible lover, but they did have this cerebral connection.

[19:01] Laura Camien: Howard Hughes was, among other things, he's a spark, another spark for another day.

[19:06] Susan Blackwell: He is, he's a multitude of them.

[19:08] Laura Camien: Uh he was an airplane designer and he wanted to build the fastest planes in the world so he could sell them to the Air Force.

[19:14] Susan Blackwell: Hetty looked at the design of his planes and those plans and thought the end of the wings shouldn't be square.

[19:22] Laura Camien: It was the time when the wings were sort of like rectilinear, they were more square.

[19:26] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[19:27] Laura Camien: She bought a book on fish, she bought a book on birds.

[19:31] Susan Blackwell: She studied the fastest fish and the fastest bird, drew the shape of their wings slash fins together, showed it to Howard Hughes, and a more modern wing shape was born.

[19:42] Laura Camien: Wow.

[19:42] Susan Blackwell: Hetty Lamar.

[19:44] Laura Camien: Wow.

[19:44] Susan Blackwell: She pretty much she got those brains.

[19:46] Laura Camien: She does.

[19:47] Susan Blackwell: It was an intense time to be Hetty Lamar.

[19:50] Laura Camien: When she started at MGM, Louis B.

[19:51] Susan Blackwell: Mare adamantly instructed his talent not to discuss their religious backgrounds.

[19:57] Laura Camien: So Hetty never mentioned she was Jewish and would even deny it when her children would come to her and say, Mom, mom's on the playground, somebody's are we Jewish?

[20:07] Susan Blackwell: She would be like, absolutely not.

[20:09] Laura Camien: She would totally deny it and compartmentalize it, which it seems like she had a real talent for doing.

[20:09] Susan Blackwell: Seems like she had to.

[20:16] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[20:17] Susan Blackwell: Um, meanwhile, Hitler is taking over much of Western Europe and the life that she left behind is basically being wiped out.

[20:25] Laura Camien: During this time, her mother had escaped Austria and made it to London, but Hetty was very anxious that her mother tried to get to America.

[20:34] Susan Blackwell: But at that time, German U-boats were torpedoing these ships that were sailing to America and killing men, women, and children.

[20:42] Laura Camien: So it was a very, very dangerous journey.

[20:44] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[20:45] Laura Camien: Um at that time, German U-boats were on the verge of winning the war, and they seemed to be unsinkable because they could easily outmaneuver outdated British torpedoes.

[20:57] Susan Blackwell: You know so much more about the history of World War II than I know.

[21:01] Laura Camien: Yeah, it was than I do.

[21:02] Susan Blackwell: So a lot of the stuff I was like, no, I mean the U-boats are it it truly was a turning point.

[21:07] Laura Camien: Um, and we could have lost the war there.

[21:10] Susan Blackwell: But based on that technology, that's right.

[21:12] Laura Camien: So Hetty Lamar losing sleep, listening to the radio, extremely worried about the war and her mother's safety.

[21:19] Susan Blackwell: But to quote the film Bombshell, which all of this is from, yeah, which you should totally watch too because already it is unbelievable.

[21:28] Laura Camien: But Hetty being heady said, I'm going to do something about that.

[21:32] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh.

[21:33] Laura Camien: I'm not just gonna sit and stew, I'm going to do something about this, which gives me chills.

[21:40] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, I got this.

[21:41] Laura Camien: In the documentary, she says, I got the idea from my invention when I tried to think of some way to to even the balance for the British.

[21:50] Susan Blackwell: A radio controlled torpedo, I thought would do it.

[21:54] Laura Camien: Oh god.

[21:55] Susan Blackwell: So I know.

[21:56] Laura Camien: Just uh just a simple, you know, radio controlled torpedo.

[22:05] Susan Blackwell: Instead of just being, we live in such heightened times, and instead of just being like completely tortured by the idea of climate change, or like she really was like, What can I do about it?

[22:19] Laura Camien: That's right.

[22:19] Susan Blackwell: And she didn't stop with like, well, someone smarter somewhere is figuring that out.

[22:27] Laura Camien: That's right.

[22:28] Susan Blackwell: Filmmaker Alexandra Dean on the Kamla Show said, unless you're a student of World War II, which you are Cam, but I am not, you might not know that it was a war that was fought over the radio waves.

[22:39] Laura Camien: And like today, they were trying to come up with radio waves that were secure that couldn't be hacked.

[22:44] Susan Blackwell: And they were also trying to hack into the enemy's radio waves to jam them, to fill them with so much static that communication and things like the guidance of a torpedo's course could be impacted.

[22:55] Laura Camien: So, like today, secure communication was an obsession, and the side that could master secure communication would win the war.

[23:03] Susan Blackwell: So here's some more science for you.

[23:04] Laura Camien: This is from Bombshell.

[23:06] Susan Blackwell: A torpedo launched at any given trajectory might need to be changed or redirected.

[23:11] Laura Camien: You want ideally your launching boat to communicate with the torpedo.

[23:16] Susan Blackwell: The problem at that time was that radio communication was not secure.

[23:20] Laura Camien: Your enemy could find the frequency that you're communicating with your torpedo and jam it.

[23:24] Susan Blackwell: But Hetty Lamar co-created a way of guiding the torpedo to the target that couldn't be interrupted.

[23:31] Laura Camien: It couldn't be jammed.

[23:32] Susan Blackwell: Instead of one transmitted frequency, she asked, What if we changed those frequencies constantly in sync with each other?

[23:40] Laura Camien: It was called frequency hopping.

[23:42] Susan Blackwell: You couldn't jam it because you'd only jam a split second of it.

[23:46] Laura Camien: Her concept, secure radio communications, was brilliant, but she didn't do it alone.

[23:52] Susan Blackwell: The invention was hers, but the implementation of it was provided by a man named George Antiel.

[23:58] Laura Camien: Now, before I go on, any questions about the technology?

[24:02] Susan Blackwell: Does that make sense?

[24:03] Laura Camien: It makes total sense to me.

[24:04] Susan Blackwell: I did not know the specificity of that.

[24:07] Laura Camien: That's incredible.

[24:08] Susan Blackwell: The thing I love about the documentary Bombshell is they Alexander Dean has done a beautiful job.

[24:15] Laura Camien: I am not the most history-minded person or the most science-minded person, but the way that they literally illustrate her ideas coming to life, it is uh the way they animate her ideas coming to life, it made it easier for me to wrap my little brain that's a good one.

[24:33] Susan Blackwell: Around her big brain.

[24:34] Laura Camien: Around her big brain.

[24:36] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[24:36] Laura Camien: So Alexander Dean, like Wow.

[24:38] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, yeah, it's really cool.

[24:40] Laura Camien: I can't wait to watch this.

[24:41] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[24:41] Laura Camien: So um, Hetty had met George Antill at a party.

[24:44] Susan Blackwell: In their first conversation, apparently, they were discussing how they both had these inventor's minds.

[24:44] Laura Camien: They were discussing how Hetty might be able to increase her bus size.

[24:54] Susan Blackwell: Louis B.

[24:54] Laura Camien: Mara wanted her to have a fuller figure.

[24:57] Susan Blackwell: And George Antiel speculated if you could influence a person's endocrine system, you could change their bus size.

[25:04] Laura Camien: So she's talking about her breasts, and she's like lifting up her shirt, and he was like, Awga.

[25:09] Susan Blackwell: So when Hetty left the party, she wrote her phone number in lipstick on his windshield, and that was their meet cute.

[25:16] Laura Camien: And it really captures those different sides of Hetty.

[25:19] Susan Blackwell: Her unbelievable intellect, her movie stardom, her boobies, like all of it.

[25:19] Laura Camien: All of it.

[25:25] Susan Blackwell: And her Hutzpah, like writing her her, you know, number on his car on his windshield.

[25:32] Laura Camien: I mean, that's seriously, you couldn't write that more.

[25:35] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[25:35] Laura Camien: Captures her perfectly.

[25:36] Susan Blackwell: So whoever's gonna write this screen.

[25:38] Laura Camien: There you go.

[25:39] Susan Blackwell: Put that in there.

[25:39] Laura Camien: There you go.

[25:40] Susan Blackwell: Um, Hetty and George had a lot in common.

[25:42] Laura Camien: They both left school young, neither had advanced degrees.

[25:46] Susan Blackwell: I want to underscore that because you don't have to have an engineering degree to have brilliant ideas.

[25:52] Laura Camien: Uh, but they were both motivated.

[25:54] Susan Blackwell: Hetty, again, was concerned about her mother's safe passage to the US.

[25:58] Laura Camien: That's right.

[25:59] Susan Blackwell: And George's brother Henry was one of the first Americans killed in World War II, and he was devastated and he wanted revenge for his brother's death.

[26:07] Laura Camien: Wow.

[26:07] Susan Blackwell: So they both had these extremely visceral motivations for wanting to make a difference.

[26:14] Laura Camien: Uh George Antiel was a wildly, this could be a whole this is a whole spark.

[26:20] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[26:20] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[26:22] Susan Blackwell: He's a whole spark.

[26:23] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[26:23] Susan Blackwell: He was a wildly interesting dude.

[26:23] Laura Camien: He was an avant-garde American composer.

[26:26] Susan Blackwell: His music is described in the documentary as jazz put into a cuisine art.

[26:31] Laura Camien: Not my favorite, but hats off to you, George Antill.

[26:34] Susan Blackwell: His most famous composition was called Ballet Mechanique, which he scored for, and this is a spark for you, Cam's, 16 player pianos.

[26:45] Laura Camien: What?

[26:46] Susan Blackwell: Here's a fun fact about our friend Laura Camien: you own a player piano.

[26:50] Laura Camien: We do.

[26:51] Susan Blackwell: I love it.

[26:51] Laura Camien: Yeah, it's all the rolls.

[26:53] Susan Blackwell: All the scrolls. This next part of the spark is dedicated to you.

[26:57] Laura Camien: Oh my gosh.

[26:58] Susan Blackwell: 16 player pianos.

[27:00] Laura Camien: 16.

[27:00] Susan Blackwell: So my gosh. I listened to as much of Ballet Mechanique as I could. It is, I think maybe George would respond positively to this description. It is a bombastic sonic nightmare. It is one of those like, it's like acid jazz for player piano. It is a lot.

[27:19] Laura Camien: Why?

[27:19] Susan Blackwell: And then there's 16 of them.

[27:21] Laura Camien: Well, I don't, because that was his sparked vision.

[27:24] Susan Blackwell: Okay.

[27:25] Laura Camien: Okay. I'm not judging.

[27:26] Susan Blackwell: There's a, you can watch this on YouTube, and I've watched as much of it as I could. But there's a YouTube comment describing the accompanying video because it has a film that goes with it, a black and white film. They describe it, the video as the tape from The Ring.

[27:42] Laura Camien: Have you ever seen the movie The Ring?

[27:44] Susan Blackwell: So you pass the curse of the ring on that video tape and it's a nightmare.

[27:48] Laura Camien: No.

[27:48] Susan Blackwell: It's not that scary. But I thought that made me laugh.

[27:51] Laura Camien: That's really funny.

[27:51] Susan Blackwell: Um, while it's true that George didn't have any engineering training, he did know how to synchronize player pianos, which he had done for Ballet Mechanique. Listen, when we say sparks can come from anywhere, what sparks that change the course of a world war can come from anywhere.

[28:10] Laura Camien: Holy ships.

[28:12] Susan Blackwell: George's big spark was if piano rolls can activate piano keys, why couldn't they activate radio frequencies in both the torpedo and the ship? So basically, and take this ride with me, Camille, because it was a little hard for me to understand, but you're, you've got a player piano and you know about the world war. Basically, by using two miniature piano rolls that would start at the same moment and turn at the same speed, a ship and a torpedo could secretly communicate on the same pattern of frequencies.

[28:45] Laura Camien: So if you have one roll in the torpedo and one roll in the ship, and they start at the exact same time, and it's changing what frequencies, it's hopping frequencies, they could communicate.

[28:58] Susan Blackwell: They wanted their torpedoes and ships to communicate on 88 different frequencies, just like a piano has 88 different keys, creating an encryption system that no one could crack. They envisioned a fleet of these remote control torpedoes hunting down wolf packs of Nazi submarines, taking them down with deadly accuracy that had never been seen before. And they called it their secret communication system.

[29:26] Laura Camien: Wow.

[29:27] Susan Blackwell: I’m just like, so they basically took Hetty's idea for a, she was using basing hers was based, uh, was sparked by the Philco, a very early remote control system.

[29:41] Laura Camien: Yes.

[29:42] Susan Blackwell: And his was, his piece of it was sparked by his knowledge of player piano rolls.

[29:47] Laura Camien: That's right.

[29:48] Susan Blackwell: And the two of them, her peanut butter, his chocolate mixed together to create the secret communication system.

[29:54] Laura Camien: That's incredible.

[29:55] Susan Blackwell: I think it should be noted, side spark. There's one theory that Hetty stole the idea of frequency hopping. An engineer accused her of smuggling the idea away from those conversations at her husband's dinner table or even from his boardroom.

[30:11] Laura Camien: But according to Alexandra Dean's documentary Bombshell, which having mentioned is excellent, the record is clear that the Germans had not come across the idea.

[30:20] Susan Blackwell: That I don't think that there's record of this. Alexandra Dean did talk in an interview about how inventions, and we've talked about this in the past, how inventions start to pop off on different points on the globe, and then somebody will like bring it together and then it's a race.

[30:38] Laura Camien: It's a race for the finish.

[30:40] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. But she's saying that to anyone's knowledge, the Germans weren't even onto this idea and no one over there was working on it.

[30:54] Laura Camien: Um, in his book, George Antill described how Hetty was ready to quit MGM and go to Washington, DC to offer their services to the Inventors' Council.

[30:54] Susan Blackwell: Side spark. In World War I, Thomas Edison had come up with this idea that Americans could come up with the inventions and solutions to win the war. And this continued into World War II. There were posters everywhere saying, send your inventions to us at the Inventors Council. The Inventors Council agreed that the idea that they had come up with was brilliant. And they connected George and Hetty with a physicist at Caltech who was an electronics expert. Their invention was issued a full patent and they donated their invention to the National Inventors Council.

[31:37] Laura Camien: But it was generally understood at the time that if the military used an invention, the inventors would be paid.

[31:43] Susan Blackwell: But they gave it, I guess the Inventors Council then turned it over to the Navy. And the Navy said, Wait, you want to put a player piano in a torpedo? Get out of here. Shut them down.

[31:56] Laura Camien: And George, who had bills to pay, he was like, I'm done. I'm out.

[31:59] Susan Blackwell: But Hetty, maybe because she was eager for this to exercise this brain and for her brilliance to be recognized, wanted to keep developing it. So the patent was put into a file and labeled top secret. And the Navy told her that she would be helping out a lot more if she went out and sold war bonds instead of trying to invent something.

[32:20] Laura Camien: Couldn't she just be pretty and show up in a dress and get people to buy war bonds?

[32:25] Susan Blackwell: But guess what? That's exactly what she did. She would go to the Hollywood canteen, she would entertain the troops. She wasn't even an American citizen yet. And she was doing all of this work, and she sold $5 million worth of war bonds, which in modern currency is $343 million worth of war bonds.

[32:48] Laura Camien: Unbelievable.

[32:49] Susan Blackwell: And then after doing all that work, the US government seized the patent in 1942 as the property of an enemy alien.

[32:59] Laura Camien: So they used her to sell all these war bonds. And then they labeled her an alien.

[33:04] Susan Blackwell: Why? Why did they do that?

[33:05] Laura Camien: I don't know.

[33:06] Susan Blackwell: Just to get the patent out of her hands.

[33:11] Laura Camien: I don't know. And I don't think she knows. And I don't know that history knows.

[33:16] Susan Blackwell: I don't know. So I'm so curious. Is the answer like in figuring out like so what happens when they seize a patent?

[33:25] Laura Camien: They now own it. Like they're basically saying, so you're an alien, you can't have an American inventor's patent.

[33:33] Susan Blackwell: It gets all gets pretty murky in here. And there's some statute of limitations around it too.

[33:39] Laura Camien: So after a certain point, it doesn't matter.

[33:41] Susan Blackwell: I mean, the irony also is like she wasn't even asking for money. So like you didn't need to do that.

[33:48] Laura Camien: She wanted to work with you and wanted to give it to you.

[33:51] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Wow.

[33:52] Laura Camien: Yeah. That's a drag.

[33:54] Susan Blackwell: Then back to Hetty. And then this is this life.

[33:58] Laura Camien: What a life.

[34:01] Susan Blackwell: To distract the troops, Louis B. Mayer put Hetty Lamar in this third-rate movie where she had barely any clothes on. She's playing this character named Tandaleo. It's totally like you would never see something like this now. Her skin is painted dark. Like, um, but which, you know, yeah is wrong in so many ways.

[34:19] Laura Camien: But yeah.

[34:20] Susan Blackwell: But one of the ways it's wrong is there's this brilliant woman with this stunning intellect, and she knew by being in projects like this, she wasn't being respected for her acting like Garbo or Dietrich.

[34:32] Laura Camien: No.

[34:32] Susan Blackwell: Um, and perhaps as a result, she was always in conflict with Louis B. Mayer, and she got the reputation for being difficult. She might have also been difficult, but I can imagine there may have been some, it may not be black and white, and there may have been some real motivation for being challenging.

[34:48] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[34:48] Susan Blackwell: She finally went out and produced her own movie, which was very unusual in 1946. She was very ahead of her time in terms of personal agency and feminism. During this time, she married again. She had two kids, that marriage ended. She was a single mother in her 40s, and at that time, her kids describe her as being a great mom.

[35:12] Laura Camien: Then professionally in her movie career, she played Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah. It was a huge hit.

[35:22] Susan Blackwell: The second highest-grossing film of the decade, only Gone with the Wind surpassed it. So this is how big of a hit this was. And I think it's the thing that she's probably most known for in terms of her movie career, one of the things she's most well known for.

[35:37] Laura Camien: Um, what was you just smiled so big? What were you gonna say?

[35:41] Susan Blackwell: Uh, I was gonna say, like, and yet, like I have heard of that movie. I haven't seen it.

[35:45] Laura Camien: Yeah, but I would say generally, everyone knows Gone with the Wind.

[35:51] Susan Blackwell: Yes, and they do not know Samson and Delilah.

[35:54] Laura Camien: Even though it was the second highest-grossing film of the decade.

[35:57] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, yeah. So maybe it didn't have the lasting power of Gone with the Wind. Um, could be a lot of reasons behind that. But she also, it gave her this idea. She decided to produce her own epic. Like she saw the success of that. She put millions of her own dollars into it, and then no one would distribute it, and she lost all her money.

[36:19] Laura Camien: Would they not distribute it? Because they were like, you can't be doing that. That's not how it's done, or if they were like, This film is not the best film.

[36:26] Susan Blackwell: I'm not sure.

[36:28] Laura Camien: I'm not sure. What was the name of that film? I want to know.

[36:33] Susan Blackwell: Should we have a viewing party?

[36:35] Laura Camien: Yes.

[36:36] Susan Blackwell: Yes, Turner Classic Movies. All invited.

[36:38] Laura Camien: Oh, wait, so did it eventually get distributed? Like, can it be seen somewhere?

[36:41] Susan Blackwell: I don't know. Let's find out.

[36:43] Laura Camien: Okay. Um, so here she is. Like, she swung for the fences, she's completely broke. She then marries another fellow, an oil man, moves to Texas. She's a trophy wife again, but she has got this big brain. She's this very creative person. She needs something to do. She didn't have much to do. She visited Aspen, and there was very, at the time, there was very little in Aspen. But she had grown up skiing and thought it would be a wonderful ski resort. So she convinced her husband to buy some land and she created Villa Lamar. It was all Austrian. And she basically recreated her homeland. As she built that, this marriage was falling apart. And this time in her life is described as the darkest time in her life. Around the same time, her 11-year-old son almost died when he was hit by a car while he was riding his bike in California. She was called at the same time to testify in divorce proceedings from this oil tycoon husband.

[37:40] Susan Blackwell: This is a spark. Here's a spark for you. She sent her Hollywood body double to testify at her divorce proceedings.

[37:49] Laura Camien: The judge was furious and punished her by cutting down her divorce settlement.

[37:54] Susan Blackwell: And as a result, she had a nervous breakdown. I'm not laughing because it's funny. I'm laughing because it's just like it is so full of sparks. It is like you wouldn't believe it if you read it.

[38:04] Laura Camien: And she did it like as a F you.

[38:06] Susan Blackwell: I don't think it was an F U. I think she was so in overwhelm that she couldn't. She was like, I need to be by my child's hospital bedside, not going to my divorce proceedings. But she's so smart, but that she thought that was going to work.

[38:18] Laura Camien: Uh-huh.

[38:19] Susan Blackwell: Is a bag of bananas.

[38:21] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[38:22] Susan Blackwell: It's kind of amazing. So she had two more husbands. Neither marriage lasted longer than a year. And her behavior, her children said her behavior was becoming more erratic and unstable. And this was most likely due to drugs provided to her by Max, Dr. Feelgood Jacobson, who is a well-known figure in Hollywood. Hedy Lamar was a patient of his from the 50s until he lost his license in 1974. My math says 24 years. He told Hetty that he was injecting her with special vitamin elixir, but that turns out was methamphetamines, which at the time was legal.

[39:01] Laura Camien: Oh my.

[38:59] Susan Blackwell: So she's hooked on meth.

[39:04] Laura Camien: It's turning her into a monster.

[39:05] Susan Blackwell: She's abusive. This once loving mother is like abusive towards her children. She's just a, she's just a human being who is becoming a dumpster fire.

[39:15] Laura Camien: My God.

[39:15] Susan Blackwell: She's arrested in a department store for shoplifting, even though she had thousands and thousands of dollars on her. She took $80 in merchandise.

[39:23] Laura Camien: What?

[39:24] Susan Blackwell: I know.

[39:25] Laura Camien: And why?

[39:26] Susan Blackwell: And so she had, I assume by this point she wasn't making movies anymore.

[39:30] Laura Camien: She was, but she also wasn't married to the oil guy.

[39:33] Susan Blackwell: Right. She's afloat. It's a, it's she is adrift. She is a mess.

[39:37] Laura Camien: She's out of a, out of yeah.

[39:41] Susan Blackwell: She's a mess. And at this point, she's 60.

[39:43] Laura Camien: She's 50 or 60. I'm bad at math, but you're sweet to think that I'm good on that.

[39:48] Susan Blackwell: Okay, I just wondered.

[39:49] Laura Camien: But she is, she's aging.

[39:51] Susan Blackwell: Um, she's losing her beauty.

[39:54] Laura Camien: Of course.

[39:55] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[39:55] Susan Blackwell: So she begins to have plastic surgery to shore up her looks.

[39:59] Susan Blackwell: She started having plastic surgery in her 40s, and she thought she could invent her way out of aging.

[40:07] Susan Blackwell: One of her plastic surgeons even said that she was a groundbreaker in that arena.

[40:12] Susan Blackwell: She would tell the plastic surgeon where to cut, where to hide the scar.

[40:17] Susan Blackwell: And a lot of these things had never been done before.

[40:22] Susan Blackwell: But which I three cheers for invention.

[40:26] Susan Blackwell: But it got out of hand, and she became disfigured.

[40:31] Susan Blackwell: She was one of those like Jocelyn Wildenstein, you unrecognizable, unrecognizable.

[40:38] Laura Camien: You have to watch the documentary to see it though.

[40:40] Susan Blackwell: Okay.

[40:40] Susan Blackwell: We will not be posting that on our Instagram.

[40:42] Susan Blackwell: But she started to hide away, no longer going out in public because of this failed plastic surgery and the money was running out.

[40:50] Susan Blackwell: So in 1969, she wrote to a friend in the Navy asking if he could find out what happened to her patent.

[40:56] Susan Blackwell: And apparently the reply has been lost.

[40:58] Susan Blackwell: But what she probably learned is that her idea of frequency hopping had been put to use in military communications.

[41:05] Susan Blackwell: By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when President Kennedy had sent ships to blockade Cuba, the ships that were running the blockade were all equipped with frequency hopped radios.

[41:16] Susan Blackwell: And when she found out the patent was being used, she thought, hey, I'm broke.

[41:21] Susan Blackwell: I could be making some money off of this.

[41:23] Susan Blackwell: But for Hetty to be paid, they had to use her patent before it expired in 1959.

[41:29] Susan Blackwell: And there is evidence that they did give it to a contractor in 1955, and that contractor was had it handed that patent and was tasked to create with something called a Sonaboy.

[41:40] Susan Blackwell: The inventor of this, this adventure of the Sonaboy, had a website where he pays tribute to Hetty and George and their invention.

[41:48] Susan Blackwell: This technology was also eventually used in surveillance drones that flew over Vietnam.

[41:53] Susan Blackwell: But according to U.S. patent law, when a patent expires, the inventor has six years to sue for payment.

[42:00] Susan Blackwell: But Hetty didn't know that this technology had been used.

[42:03] Laura Camien: No.

[42:07] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[42:09] Laura Camien: Yes.

[42:10] Laura Camien: Drink it in.

[42:11] Susan Blackwell: Oh no.

[42:12] Laura Camien: And I can't believe that's the first person that's happened to.

[42:15] Susan Blackwell: No, certainly not.

[42:16] Laura Camien: How do you know if somebody is implementing your patent and prior to the internet?

[42:20] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, you were in the dark about pretty much everything.

[42:24] Susan Blackwell: So in 1990, starting in Forbes magazine, the mainstream media began to report the story about what Hetty had invented with George back in 1942.

[42:35] Susan Blackwell: And when her son told her, Hetty said, It's about time.

[42:39] Laura Camien: Oh.

[42:40] Susan Blackwell: Then people in the communications industry picked up the story because they realized frequency hopping was revolutionary and it had found its way into GPS.

[42:50] Laura Camien: Oh my god.

[42:51] Susan Blackwell: Wi-Fi technology, Bluetooth, and these billion dollar military satellites.

[42:57] Laura Camien: Oh my god.

[42:57] Laura Camien: Are you having a visceral reaction?

[42:59] Susan Blackwell: I am.

[42:59] Susan Blackwell: I feel sad.

[43:00] Laura Camien: How do you why do you feel sad?

[43:02] Susan Blackwell: Just that I'm I'm assuming that by the 90s she was nearing the end of her life.

[43:07] Susan Blackwell: And I don't know.

[43:10] Susan Blackwell: I guess it's good that they recognized it, but it's awfully frustrating that she didn't get credit for that.

[43:18] Laura Camien: And and the support that she could have used in the darkest moment.

[43:22] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[43:23] Laura Camien: You know, of her life.

[43:24] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[43:24] Susan Blackwell: And the support she could have used as a brilliant mind.

[43:28] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[43:29] Susan Blackwell: And if you just think, oh, if she had more support, oh my gosh.

[43:33] Susan Blackwell: What could she have made with it?

[43:35] Laura Camien: So I don't know if this is cold comfort, but eventually the Navy, the Electronics Frontier Foundation, Millstar, and Lockheed Martin finally gave Hetty an award thanking her for coming up with her idea.

[43:49] Susan Blackwell: She was alive, but because of her disfigurement from plastic surgery, she didn't want to be seen.

[43:54] Susan Blackwell: So her adult son Tony accepted the award on her behalf, and he played a taped message from Hetty saying, I am happy that this invention has been so successful.

[44:05] Susan Blackwell: I appreciate your acknowledgement of your honoring me, and that it has not been done in vain.

[44:11] Susan Blackwell: Her son said she would love to be remembered as someone who contributed to the well-being of humankind.

[44:18] Susan Blackwell: And you have to watch the documentary because there's this brilliant moment where her son is in front of this giant ballroom full of people accepting this award and Hetty calls on the phone.

[44:30] Laura Camien: Oh it is it is amazing.

[44:34] Susan Blackwell: You have to watch it just for that.

[44:35] Susan Blackwell: It's a fantastic moment.

[44:37] Susan Blackwell: Um I learned most all of this from the excellent documentary Bombshell by Alexandra Dean.

[44:45] Susan Blackwell: Bombshell was Alexandra.

[44:47] Laura Camien: Here's a spark for you.

[44:48] Susan Blackwell: This was Alexandra Dean's, I believe, debut as a film director.

[44:53] Susan Blackwell: And she knocked it out of the park.

[44:57] Susan Blackwell: We've talked about the maker that Hetty Lamar was, but to really appreciate her story fully, you have to see this film because you can see how physically beautiful she was, juxtaposed with her brain and what it accomplished.

[45:10] Susan Blackwell: And you can really appreciate the dynamic of storytelling that uh and the way Alexandra Dean depicts all of this is so wonderful.

[45:20] Susan Blackwell: When asked why she made the film, Alexandra Dean said, When we close our eyes and think of an inventor, we don't think typically of a woman.

[45:28] Susan Blackwell: We don't typically think of anything but a very certain type of band.

[45:31] Susan Blackwell: We even might think of his pocket protector and the look on his face.

[45:35] Susan Blackwell: We have a very specific idea of the people who shape our world and made it the way it is today.

[45:40] Susan Blackwell: And think of the power of those people.

[45:42] Susan Blackwell: And yet it didn't seem right to me that no woman or no person who wasn't this particular white man had shaped our world.

[45:48] Susan Blackwell: It just didn't seem right.

[45:50] Susan Blackwell: So I was out there looking for somebody who didn't fit that mold and had who had been a great inventor.

[45:56] Susan Blackwell: And boom, there was the story of a woman who completely didn't look like an inventor who had completely changed the world.

[46:05] Susan Blackwell: Completely and touched almost every one of our lives.

[46:09] Laura Camien: Absolutely.

[46:10] Laura Camien: Absolutely.

[46:11] Susan Blackwell: Unbelievable.

[46:15] Susan Blackwell: She is so like, do yourself a favor and just Google her and listen to interviews with her.

[46:22] Susan Blackwell: She is a really fun, smart person to listen to.

[46:27] Susan Blackwell: She went on to say, someone said to me, Hetty Lamar was not only thinking outside of the box, she didn't even know that a box existed.

[46:36] Susan Blackwell: That's how she inspires me.

[46:38] Susan Blackwell: Why do we even care that a box exists?

[46:41] Susan Blackwell: Why not just live outside of the box?

[46:45] Susan Blackwell: That is my spark.

[46:47] Susan Blackwell: And the question on the table is always is what do we make of it?

[46:51] Laura Camien: Well, first of all, make yourself a fun movie night and just like pop some corn.

[46:56] Laura Camien: Let's start there and dial it up.

[46:58] Laura Camien: I think it's right now, I think it's on Netflix.

[47:01] Laura Camien: I think that's where I watched it.

[47:02] Laura Camien: So free with your Netflix subscription.

[47:06] Laura Camien: Uh there are so many sparks in this, I can't even begin.

[47:09] Laura Camien: I just can't even with you.

[47:12] Laura Camien: I can't even with this spark.

[47:14] Laura Camien: Before I spark off a little bit, I just want to touch base with you because I feel like you're still rolling with the feelings.

[47:20] Susan Blackwell: I really am.

[47:21] Susan Blackwell: I just um I'm just thinking about that tension that she felt her whole life.

[47:25] Susan Blackwell: Um and even though I hear what you're saying about the filmmaker, you know, the quote about the box.

[47:33] Laura Camien: Yeah, I can't help but wonder if um there was a moment in her life where she felt like like it or not, she had been shoved back into a box.

[47:44] Susan Blackwell: She says, she said there was a time when she she stopped talking about and telling people that they had conceived of this invention because she was like, people didn't want to hear it.

[47:56] Laura Camien: No they didn't want to hear it.

[47:57] Susan Blackwell: And so she stopped talking about it.

[48:00] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, and it just went silent until there's this uh journalist who I believe was writing for Barons and in the time of the documentary ended up writing for Forbes, who 25 years earlier had uh heard about I think hashtag dad sparks from his father, who I believe worked at MIT.

[48:23] Susan Blackwell: I think I'm reaching deep into my butt to pull this story out.

[48:27] Susan Blackwell: But he had heard that Hetty Lamar may have been responsible for frequency hopping technology from his dad's colleague at work.

[48:35] Susan Blackwell: So had an idea, dad hashtag dad spark, passed on this idea to his son, who was a journalist.

[48:41] Susan Blackwell: And this journalist called Hetty Lamar and interviewed her and had hours and hours of tapes that kind of went, he might have done a story for Barons or Forbes and then kind of tucked it away.

[48:54] Susan Blackwell: Alexandra Dean had gone to every journalist that Hetty Lamar had spoken to on the record.

[49:01] Susan Blackwell: She went to Hetty Lamar's children.

[49:03] Susan Blackwell: She went to everyone she could think of to see if there was the sound of Hetty's voice talking about these things because Hetty had already passed when they were making the documentary.

[49:13] Susan Blackwell: They reached out to everyone, and no one responded with any tapes of Hetty speaking on the record about her invention.

[49:21] Susan Blackwell: In her desperation, what waking up in the middle of the night with her heart pounding saying we've got to have Hetty's voice in this documentary.

[49:31] Susan Blackwell: Alexandra and her team went back and checked every email they had sent, and they had gotten one email address wrong.

[49:39] Laura Camien: Oh my gosh.

[49:40] Susan Blackwell: And it was this journalist.

[49:43] Susan Blackwell: They emailed him again within I think like within an hour, certainly within a business day.

[49:49] Susan Blackwell: He was on the phone and he said, I've been waiting for your call for 25 years because I have the tapes.

[49:55] Susan Blackwell: And he had cassette tapes behind his garbage can at his office, and he produced these tapes.

[50:04] Susan Blackwell: So you get to hear this is another reason to list watch this documentary.

[50:08] Susan Blackwell: You get to hear Hetty's voice, which also makes you emotional.

[50:10] Laura Camien: It does.

[50:11] Susan Blackwell: It just really does.

[50:13] Susan Blackwell: I just think like I think, you know, there is a fantasy of like beauty and brains, and you must have it so easy.

[50:22] Susan Blackwell: Like that's everything, right?

[50:23] Susan Blackwell: Then you have it all.

[50:24] Laura Camien: If only if I thought that thought myself, if I was just beautiful, this life would be so much easier.

[50:29] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[50:29] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[50:30] Susan Blackwell: And and yet it does open a certain kind of door.

[50:34] Laura Camien: Sure.

[50:34] Laura Camien: It opens doors, and then they're like, but just these doors don't like you're not allowed to go.

[50:40] Susan Blackwell: Like, can you go back to selling the war bonds instead of saving American lives with your little ideas?

[50:48] Laura Camien: Could you please just sell some war bonds?

[50:50] Susan Blackwell: And I feel I just feel what a loss.

[50:50] Laura Camien: What a loss.

[50:54] Laura Camien: Can I share this?

[50:56] Laura Camien: I transcribe this, but it's not in my spark, but can I share something with you?

[51:00] Susan Blackwell: So this interview, this great interview I watched with Alexandra Dean, which I referenced at the beginning during my Sparks sources.

[51:07] Laura Camien: She had this message, which she really wanted to convey to, especially young women.

[51:12] Laura Camien: You do need to be aware that as a woman, the trajectory of your life may not be linear.

[51:17] Laura Camien: You may not just stack up awards and achievements as you grow in power and authority as you age, just because you're bright and contribute a lot to society.

[51:25] Laura Camien: You might find that it's more of a roller coaster because traditionally, for women, their beauty or their physical attractiveness has given them tremendous power.

[51:32] Laura Camien: And when it fades, that power goes away.

[51:35] Laura Camien: And what Hetty teaches us is navigating that push and pull of being beautiful and having brains and wanting to be recognized for them is difficult and full of pitfalls.

[51:44] Laura Camien: And you have to have your wits about you and realize what's important.

[51:48] Laura Camien: And at the end of the day, Hetty didn't realize what was important.

[51:52] Laura Camien: She botched her face because she thought it was so important that her beauty remained intact.

[51:57] Laura Camien: She did not realize how powerful her mind was or the contributions that she had made.

[52:03] Laura Camien: But those contributions become became what she was known for.

[52:07] Laura Camien: That's why she's a legend today.

[52:09] Laura Camien: That's how she's made her mark on the world.

[52:11] Laura Camien: So if women are watching this or listening to this podcast, to know a bit more about how they should live their own lives.

[52:18] Laura Camien: I think the message is really put a lot of eggs in that basket of your own intellect and brilliance, and don't pay too much attention to people's reactions to your face.

[52:28] Laura Camien: That changes and is really irrelevant.

[52:30] Laura Camien: It might be fun for a while and have fun with it, but treat it for what it is, which is this passing existence in beauty for a while, and then you pass through it.

[52:39] Laura Camien: Your mind, the things you do to help the world, the things you do out of your heart, these are the things you may really leave as a legacy.

[52:48] Laura Camien: This is what will give you power in your life, real power.

[52:52] Susan Blackwell: Power you can rely on, power you can be proud of.

[52:56] Laura Camien: Fuck yeah.

[52:57] Susan Blackwell: Those are the words of Alexandra Dean.

[53:00] Laura Camien: That is absolutely the truth.

[53:01] Susan Blackwell: That's it, isn't it?

[53:02] Laura Camien: That is the truth.

[53:03] Susan Blackwell: And I'm 100% with her.

[53:06] Susan Blackwell: And I think that Hetty learned the opposite lesson because when she was messing with her face, I think at that moment in her life that all she had been taught was your beauty is all that matters.

[53:18] Susan Blackwell: This is, you know, because you're gonna disregard the rest.

[53:21] Laura Camien: And then eventually it came back around.

[53:23] Susan Blackwell: But you know, for in that moment in time, who you how could you blame her? Because the only thing that she was uh being valued for was that that's right.

[53:28] Laura Camien: That's right.

[53:35] Susan Blackwell: I've always I've said this, and I don't mean this to be, I mean, I I I love myself and I actually love my body and I love my face. And that love has grown over time. It's grown over time. I didn't always feel that way.

[53:47] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[53:47] Susan Blackwell: Um, but because I never traded on my beauty, I've never traded on my looks. Um I I think I have an easier time in these later chapters of my life because I'm just building on a foundation of trading on ideas and heart and um my winning personality.

[54:08] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[54:08] Susan Blackwell: And I feel sometimes for people who their beauty has opened so many doors for them because I do think it's harder as one ages.

[54:16] Laura Camien: 100%.

[54:18] Susan Blackwell: I don't have the problem so much. Um I feel like I have to give my mom some credit for this as well, because my mom was very much like, um, that's not what we're gonna emphasize.

[54:29] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[54:29] Susan Blackwell: Um, despite you know, recognition that I may have gotten, or any of her kids may have gotten along the way, she'd be like, uh-huh, that's nice. We're not giving that the power.

[54:41] Laura Camien: Yeah, yeah.

[54:42] Susan Blackwell: And and as you know, my mom was never like, put on lipstick before you leave the house.

[54:46] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[54:47] Susan Blackwell: Like, never the focus. Never.

[54:49] Laura Camien: So, you know, there's an upside to that.

[54:51] Susan Blackwell: And now look at us scrubs.

[54:53] Laura Camien: Now we're just owning it with scrubs.

[54:55] Susan Blackwell: I have to say though, when I see myself now, there are there are many times when I look at myself and I'm just like, what a beauty.

[55:01] Laura Camien: Oh.

[55:01] Susan Blackwell: What a beauty. That's so awesome. I think it has a lot more to do with figuring out my own taste and style, what I love, and also there's a there's a glow from within.

[55:11] Laura Camien: And strength and like knowing who you are.

[55:13] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, what else do we make of it? Oh, I'll say just the story of her escaping that house of her first husband, of drugging the maid, of cycling off into the night and escaping to London. That like 24 hours would be a thriller of a screenplay.

[55:28] Laura Camien: I'm thinking like there's there's four different screenplays, you know, in there at least.

[55:33] Susan Blackwell: The story of our our first husband, Fritz Mandel.

[55:35] Laura Camien: That's right.

[55:36] Susan Blackwell: That's something.

[55:36] Laura Camien: That's right. Um, what do we make of it? Inventors, literally, not inventions, inventors. If you want to raise little inventors, delight in the intellect of the children in your life, whether that's your your own progeny, whether that are they're your students, your nieces, your nephews, delight in the intellect of children.

[55:56] Susan Blackwell: Holy shit, that is the truth.

[55:57] Laura Camien: And there's a lot of data uh uh in regard to girls in particular. Um, and I actually reflecting on my own life, like uh all the way through eighth grade, I was great in science, and even like in my yearbook was like best science students, eighth grade, right?

[56:14] Susan Blackwell: Oh, you don't say and then I'm like, what happened? Because I drifted off to other things.

[56:20] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[56:20] Susan Blackwell: And then years later, like 20 years later, I was reading about data, and I think that that this data. Um, I think we talked about um smart girls, Amy Poeurs.

[56:31] Laura Camien: Yeah, um, I think this this data is used like on her website as well.

[56:35] Susan Blackwell: But um when girls hit tween to teenage age, they are often tracked out of math and science.

[56:46] Laura Camien: Like there's a million people with this data now, and I know there's great people that hopefully will feature on the spark file um who are trying to do something about that.

[56:54] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, but um it still goes on to this day of like, oh sweetie, your mind, your mind is meant for other things.

[57:01] Laura Camien: Yeah, so if we can remember that and the young girls in our lives, remember to encourage them to stick with that if it interests them, stay with it.

[57:10] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. Um, support those who identify as women in science, technology, engineering, and math.

[57:18] Laura Camien: Yeah, support them however you can.

[57:21] Susan Blackwell: That's my spark, Cam.

[57:23] Laura Camien: Well, Suze, I've been a bright spot over here crying through the whole day. One of my better, better uh episodes. Thank you, Hetty Lamar. Thank you, Alexander Dean.

[57:31] Susan Blackwell: And thanks to the people who produce that documentary, including Susan Sarandon.

[57:37] Laura Camien: Oh, great work. Thanks for sharing that story. It it's it's a biggie.

[57:42] Susan Blackwell: It's a good one.

[57:43] Laura Camien: Yeah, should we take a break?

[57:44] Susan Blackwell: I need one.

[57:44] Laura Camien: All right, thanks. Spark me, baby.

[57:48] Susan Blackwell: So, Suze, we're gonna take it in another direction, mostly because I need to stop crying.

[57:53] Laura Camien: Okay, I'm really moved by that. That was such a good spark.

[57:55] Susan Blackwell: Like, so good. I don't think I have seen you cry through uh a nice slow continual cry.

[58:05] Laura Camien: As much as you did during Hetty Lamar. I was like, just so you all know, so you can, you know, visualize, it was just quiet tears streaming down my face.

[58:14] Susan Blackwell: Through the whole thing, pretty much.

[58:16] Laura Camien: It's great once it's great for radio. Great muffled sobs.

[58:22] Susan Blackwell: So yeah, mine's gonna be much lighter, and I think I'll stop crying, which is really, really good. Spark me on a dictionary.

[58:29] Laura Camien: Okay. So I think I've mentioned the spark to you in conversation over the years, but I thought I might take a little deeper dive here on the Sparks file. You know, I read an article a few years ago. It turns out it was five years ago now, and it really made an impact on me.

[58:43] Susan Blackwell: It was in Harper's Bazaar, and it was about a woman who worked as a creative director in a New York City ad agency where her job consisted of making millions of creative decisions every day.

[58:56] Laura Camien: But one thing that was stressing her out was choosing an outfit in the morning.

[59:00] Susan Blackwell: Oh and it just really sparked excitement. Right. Because we've talked about this a little bit, but like somehow this idea of like, what are you gonna wear today? Had been imbued with the pressure of like each and every outfit needing to illustrate her competency as an executive, her creativity as a creative director, her leadership, her intelligence, her sense of humor, like all of it.

[59:27] Laura Camien: And every day became like a oh, like is this what I should like? Should I wear this? And is this saying everything I needed to say? Just became a burden for her to just get dressed in the morning.

[59:40] Susan Blackwell: And can I sidespark a minute?

[59:42] Laura Camien: Please.

[59:42] Susan Blackwell: There's I am fascinated by this as somebody throughout the course of my life who has like, we were talking about this with Jill Twist the other day, who has struggled to define personal style. And finally, I feel like now, at the tender age of 50, it's kind of You got it.

[59:57] Laura Camien: You got it.

[59:58] Susan Blackwell: I'm nailing it. But um I was doing it was uh I was doing I think an episode of a TV show and then sub subsequently a film, and it was the same costume team design.

[1:00:11] Laura Camien: Interesting, yeah.

[1:00:12] Susan Blackwell: And there's a woman on this design team, and her name escapes me right now, but she every day that we all report to work, she would have this amazing fresh look, Luke, she would have this amazing fresh Luke that was like self-expressed and completely inventive and completely creative.

[1:00:35] Laura Camien: And I remember asking her, I was like, wow. I was like, do you just go home after a long day's work and spend an hour curating what you're going to wear for the next day?

[1:00:44] Susan Blackwell: Because it was, I mean, Luke's on Luke's on Luke's on Luke's. And she was like, no, I just like in the morning, it comes to me like fast and fresh, and she throws it together.

[1:00:55] Laura Camien: And I was like, I admire it, yeah.

[1:01:00] Susan Blackwell: And I think I may be more like in the camp of how about a uniform?

[1:01:06] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:01:07] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting because uh we'll talk a little bit about that. Like, obviously, that's a choice. And if you find that the way you dress is a form of creative self-expression, yes, and you take enjoyment from it. Please continue.

[1:01:22] Laura Camien: Yes, go about your business.

[1:01:25] Susan Blackwell: But if you if you find it to be stressful, got it.

[1:01:32] Laura Camien: Yeah, but if you find that it is um taking up valuable space in your mind that you'd like to be putting elsewhere towards that as far for you.

[1:01:40] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:01:41] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:01:41] Susan Blackwell: So in this article, she wrote about um beginning to think about the amount of mental space that she could free up if she didn't have the burden of this particular decision every day.

[1:01:52] Laura Camien: Yeah, not to mention the time spent on it.

[1:01:56] Susan Blackwell: So she looked around at her male peers in the office, and they didn't relate to this issue at all because they wore a suit every day.

[1:02:04] Laura Camien: They had their uniform.

[1:02:05] Susan Blackwell: They were like, well, often it's the same suit. They change the shirt underneath, or maybe they just change the tie underneath. They didn't worry that their outfit wasn't gonna reflect their worthiness in the workplace.

[1:02:17] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:02:18] Susan Blackwell: Um, and they had more time and they had more creative energy just to focus on doing the work.

[1:02:23] Laura Camien: So she adapted this idea to fit her needs.

[1:02:27] Susan Blackwell: She decided on a work uniform for herself of her own free will, one that suited her personality in fabrics that she loved that she felt comfortable in. You know, she allowed for a spark of her personality to show through.

[1:02:42] Laura Camien: Like for her, it ended up being like a comfortable but sleek, like well, well-fitting black pant, um, a white shirt, but it had it was a very specific, it had detailing.

[1:02:56] Susan Blackwell: Um she bought like 15 of them, um, a black jacket when she needed a jacket. And she remembered how her mom used to love to put a little ribbon in her hair, and as a little nod to her mom, as a memory of her mom, she used like this black leather bow around her neck.

[1:03:15] Laura Camien: It was really thin.

[1:03:16] Susan Blackwell: It was just a thin little, she tied a bow around her neck. Simple, easy. Chic.

[1:03:21] Laura Camien: Chic.

[1:03:22] Susan Blackwell: She felt relaxed every morning getting dressed. She felt empowered. She felt like she was running the show, not her wardrobe, which was important. And this article really stayed with me for a long time. First of all, a confession for anyone who's like, Cammy in you're so full of shit.

[1:03:39] Laura Camien: Uh nobody.

[1:03:41] Susan Blackwell: Why do you think the audience is? I'll say, I'll tell you. Because I am a child of the 80s. Like I admit that no matter how you slice it, the incredible pull of consumerism is in our bones. We were raised in that. It was a time of buying things and having things, and literally greed is good was the mantra.

[1:04:00] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:04:00] Susan Blackwell: Um Wall Street movie, the Gordon Greco character, like greed is good. And that was never said in our household, obviously, but it was a sentiment that sort of permeated the whole culture. Consumerism equals happiness.

[1:04:14] Laura Camien: Yeah, a literal sense of like it's never enough. Once you get here, you're gonna want more.

[1:04:19] Susan Blackwell: And it took some time and some years to unravel that in my own mind. And then just when I thought, like we might have moved past it culturally, 9-11 happened, and I was living in New York City at that time.

[1:04:33] Laura Camien: And as you know, part of the message in the wake of that event was please buy things, uh go out to eat and shop and see shows. Please, please, please spend your money because our economy is counting on it.

[1:04:45] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, proactive messaging around that.

[1:04:46] Laura Camien: That's right.

[1:04:47] Susan Blackwell: And so this was also the era of sex in the city, the clothes, the shoes, the outfits. Like it was very much, and I was a hundred percent like I love that show, and I was totally in that era in New York City at that time. You know what I mean?

[1:05:05] Laura Camien: And I think that it was very common to be like you can't that that concept of you can never have too many shoes, like the Carrie Bradshaw.

[1:05:15] Susan Blackwell: And this idea of never wear the same outfit twice.

[1:05:18] Laura Camien: Yes, and and like the person you were describing.

[1:05:22] Susan Blackwell: Well, I may have a day where I wake up and I feel more bohemian than I do today. And I want to have this just in case I'm feeling Bohemian.

[1:05:30] Laura Camien: This is my bohe bohemian look, right?

[1:05:33] Susan Blackwell: Uh, what if I'm going to a music festival? I'm gonna need to have this to have that look. I'm gonna need all the shit, frankly, that now when I reflect on, I'm like, I never needed all of that, but I definitely, you know, was guilty of it at that time.

[1:05:51] Laura Camien: But by 2009 and the housing market crash, the recession, and those, like those times were over for everyone.

[1:05:58] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:05:59] Laura Camien: And honestly, I felt like it was a relief in many ways of just like I'm so ready to pare my shit down, simplify minimalism started to become a thing, you know.

[1:06:13] Susan Blackwell: So when I read this article, and the article was by Matilda Call, she's the creative director, it resonated like a fucking bell ringing inside of me.

[1:06:24] ⚠ About 3 minutes of audio could not be automatically transcribed.

[1:09:25] Laura Camien: You know, I think that in regard to the like work uniform, I think some people are kind of terrified of like, well, you can't do that. Well, people will think I'm wearing the same thing. On day three or four, when you say to them, I gave myself a work uniform, no one's gonna think that anymore. You know, like you're not wearing the same pair of pants, literally the same pair of pants every day.

[1:09:46] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:09:46] Laura Camien: So choice, choice, choice, choice. So obviously Barack Obama has much bigger questions to answer than what I'm gonna, you know, than I'm working on, but it's all relative. And I think that it's okay to say I want my creative energy for other things. So while it was a woman who literally made headlines for giving herself a work uniform, she did like the number of places where this story ran, which I didn't know at the time. I just saw it in one. But it caught fire. People did like follow-up stories five years later. Are you still wearing the same thing?

[1:10:26] Susan Blackwell: She's adjusted it.

[1:10:27] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:10:28] Susan Blackwell: She's not forced to watch it.

[1:10:30] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:10:31] Susan Blackwell: She's figured out.

[1:10:32] Laura Camien: She's tweaked it.

[1:10:33] Susan Blackwell: Yep. But so when a woman did it, the world sort of freaked out and wrote about it everywhere.

[1:10:39] Laura Camien: Okay.

[1:10:40] Susan Blackwell: But the smartest men in the business have been doing it for years and years and years.

[1:10:46] Laura Camien: Steve Jobs.

[1:10:47] Susan Blackwell: Yes. After a trip to Japan in the 80s, he came back inspired to develop his own personal uniform.

[1:10:53] Laura Camien: A Simiyaki was his design.

[1:10:55] Susan Blackwell: That's right. The blacks, the black uh turtleneck.

[1:10:58] Laura Camien: Yeah, but Levi jeans and tennis shoes.

[1:11:01] Susan Blackwell: I think they were balance or new balance. I'm not sure.

[1:11:04] Laura Camien: But tennis shoes.

[1:11:05] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:11:05] Laura Camien: Um, Albert Einstein, gray suit, no socks, disheveled hair.

[1:11:10] Susan Blackwell: Gray suit, no socks.

[1:11:12] Laura Camien: Well, he was ahead of his time.

[1:11:14] Susan Blackwell: There it is. Andy Warhol, 501s, button-down shirt, blue jacket, striped tie.

[1:11:19] Laura Camien: Wow.

[1:11:20] Susan Blackwell: Alfred Hitchcock, dark blue suit.

[1:11:23] Laura Camien: David Byrne said, people remember you better if you wear the same outfit.

[1:11:27] Susan Blackwell: Interesting.

[1:11:28] Laura Camien: Mark Zuckerberg, famous for the hoodies.

[1:11:31] Susan Blackwell: But I did not know that he actually sent a memo around when he made the decision to have an official work uniform.

[1:11:39] Laura Camien: Just so he was like, just so you know.

[1:11:41] Susan Blackwell: Just so you know. Always be wearing the same thing.

[1:11:42] Laura Camien: This is it.

[1:11:43] Susan Blackwell: It's clean.

[1:11:44] Laura Camien: Yeah, it's clean.

[1:11:45] Susan Blackwell: It's my thing, and I want to be focusing my energy on other things.

[1:11:49] Laura Camien: The author Jackie Collins had her own take on the idea. She kept a closet full of black tank tops.

[1:11:56] Susan Blackwell: She simply rotated the custom jacket that she wore over them.

[1:12:00] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:12:00] Susan Blackwell: So she had different colors and different fabrics.

[1:12:02] Laura Camien: They all had the same silhouette and they were tailored and they had the sharp shoulders.

[1:12:08] Susan Blackwell: But that's how she made her life easy. She knew she was gonna black tank tops and then just what jack.

[1:12:13] Laura Camien: This works for my body. This works for my lifestyle. This works for my creativity.

[1:12:17] Susan Blackwell: That's right. And this is I love this. I I'm just I I think it I'm just fascinated. It didn't occur to me to talk about it as a spark. But then I was like, I've been sparked by this for a long time. And the freedom and the potential freedom that so I thought I would share it. I love I love it. And it's making me spark about just our own lives.

[1:12:41] Laura Camien: Yes. And I think there's other aspects to it that I think will spark you too. But one of the things that seems to be a worry for people is whether or not it's gonna feel like their creativity is suppressed by the process, you know. And when AdAge interviewed Matilda, they asked her, Don't you ever get bored of the monotony? And she said, That's what some might think. But it's in the nature of my line of work to be innovative and create things that have never been seen before. I guess that brings me more than enough variation and excitement to be happy to have at least one part of my life that runs on autopilot.

[1:13:13] Susan Blackwell: Yes. Right? Just check that off the list. And I read this great article in Esquire that was written by a man who tried this experiment. So super, super interesting. But in that article, they said 19th century psychologist William James said that what we do as part of our daily itinerary is crucial to our functionality. The more details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of the automatic, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work, which is just interesting philosophy.

[1:13:51] Laura Camien: Yeah. That's been around for a while. How much can you put on autopilot so that you can free up the deeper thinking in your own mind? So it also seems to me that this is like completely up for personal interpretation. Like there's no rules. Like if you say I'm gonna have a work uniform, like no one's a good thing. And that in a change creative act. Yeah. You can change it anytime. You're totally in charge of it.

[1:14:17] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. So you can add a bit of surprise and whimsy to like show your personality if you're worried about like, well, then I won't no one will know that I'm creative or no one will know this or whatever. All of that is still possible. But from day to day, you can eliminate the clutter of decision making that you need to do. Just brain space. So some of the benefits include saving time, like not just stressing about what am I gonna wear or putting outfits together, but shopping.

[1:14:46] Laura Camien: Yeah. So much less shopping.

[1:14:49] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Um, saving money. She Matilda bought in bulk. So when she found the shirt that she wanted, she got the manager of the store and said, I'm gonna buy 15 of these. What can you do for me? Oh negotiating.

[1:15:04] Laura Camien: Ooh.

[1:15:04] Susan Blackwell: Um, so she so you save money. You might save on self doubt, like just eliminating throughout the day the like, oh, I shouldn't have worn this.

[1:15:12] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:15:13] Susan Blackwell: I should have done something else. And no, this is what you're doing. End of story. Um, save yourself the stress of the visual noise of an overflowing closet, stuffing things into drawers. Save yourself the guilt about things that you haven't worn.

[1:15:29] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:15:30] Susan Blackwell: Save your creative energy. And but now I also have to admit that the desire to save my mental energy has rolled into a bigger issue. You might also be able to add save the planet to this list.

[1:15:44] Laura Camien: Yes.

[1:15:45] Susan Blackwell: Um, the fact is the fashion industry needs us to buy new clothes four to six times a year. Actually, six, because they've now added resort season and pre-seasons to the four seasons. They already had us buying things. Um, and they are the second most polluting industry there is. Number two behind oil and gas.

[1:16:09] Laura Camien: Wow.

[1:16:09] Susan Blackwell: That's right. So I have no ill will for the fashion industry. Like I'm seduced as everyone else. Like it's gorgeous and fun, and frankly, works of art, like fashion is a beacon of creativity and inspiration, and I love all of that. But the buying of things that we don't need when I still have clothes that fit, when I still when I've chosen carefully, you know, and I have things that last. Um, but it's their job to convince us that those things are out of style and we need new ones, you know, all of that. But Susan, recently I learned about this company, Kuyana. Have you ever heard of them?

[1:16:46] Laura Camien: I have not.

[1:16:47] Susan Blackwell: Suze, this lit me up. Their tagline is fewer better.

[1:16:50] Laura Camien: Fewer better.

[1:16:54] Susan Blackwell: And they make no bones about it. They are not trying to get you to buy more. They want you to buy less, but higher quality, but better pieces that will last longer. Uh quality over quantity. This is my jam. You will love them. I haven't even bought a single piece. I'm just in love with the concept. I want to support them. Any business that is like bold enough to come forward and say, we're not going to try to is everything like one million dollars.

[1:17:24] Laura Camien: It's not.

[1:17:25] Susan Blackwell: It's not. I it yes, it's probably it's a little bit, it's more than fast fashion.

[1:17:30] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:17:30] Susan Blackwell: Without the doubt. It's not more than what I spend on clothes now. It's very comparable, but you might spend like a cat, like a classic, a cashmere sweater, it might be $200.

[1:17:46] Laura Camien: But based on this concept, I also I was like, it's gonna be $500.

[1:17:50] Susan Blackwell: You know, it's gonna be obviously it's gonna be beyond. It's a I think they are attainable prices. I'm not saying that every I'm not saying like that's nothing, but they're very clear, they will last for years. And as you know and have known for a long time, I'm all about price per wear.

[1:18:09] Laura Camien: Price per wear.

[1:18:10] Susan Blackwell: So another article that I read years ago, and Susan can attest that we talked about it, I don't know, a decade or more.

[1:18:16] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:18:17] Susan Blackwell: When you look at price per wear for your clothing, rather than like, oh, this coat is a hundred dollars. Yes, but this coat I'm gonna wear to one fancy event, that price per wear is one hundred dollars per wear.

[1:18:28] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:18:29] Susan Blackwell: Here's this, I don't know. Uh, here's this sweater for a hundred dollars. I'm going to wear that sweater for the next until the wheels come off for the next five years. I'm gonna wear that sweater a hundred times. That's a dollar per wear.

[1:18:46] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:18:46] Susan Blackwell: So when you look at like those investments, and and I know, like, I'm not trying, I know this is a very privileged conversation, so I don't mean to be flippant about the amount of money that it is.

[1:18:56] Laura Camien: No, I was thinking of that with Matilda.

[1:18:57] Susan Blackwell: I was like, that even if you're buying in bulk and saving money price per wear, it's an investment. What you're talking about can represent a real investment.

[1:19:08] Laura Camien: That is the outset.

[1:19:09] Susan Blackwell: And I think you don't have to do it like I didn't do it all at once. I just found that there were certain brands for you.

[1:19:16] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:19:16] Susan Blackwell: And then you return to those brands and return to those pieces that sort of fit within that wardrobe that you've established a foundation for. And when they're on sale, then I'm like, great, I'll get another pair of these pants that I love.

[1:19:29] Laura Camien: I love this.

[1:19:30] Susan Blackwell: Um I don't know. I feel like it it does suit the world we're living in now to think about like, yes, creative energy, that is precious, and that alone to me is decision enough.

[1:19:47] Laura Camien: Like that's enough to inform that decision.

[1:19:50] Susan Blackwell: But also the, you know, we've spoken about wanting to consume less and create more.

[1:20:00] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:20:01] Susan Blackwell: And so this is one way to consider doing that.

[1:20:05] Laura Camien: I have so many spots.

[1:20:07] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, yeah. May I?

[1:20:08] Laura Camien: Yes, please. I do think about my 2019 consume less, create more challenge that I set for myself, which was I feel like I've mentioned this. Bear with me while I mention it again.

[1:20:19] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:20:19] Laura Camien: I decided I had a theory, a hypothesis that I was replacing actual creation with a counterfeit substitute of buying stuff, like looking at pretty pictures online, putting things in a cart, eventually pulling the trigger on it. And I could justify it by saying, well, those pieces will then be self-expression when I put them together in different looks, blah, blah, blah. But I was like, let's exercise, let's just like do a little research on this. And I was like, if I purchase less clothing specific, clothing, shoes, that sort of thing in 2019, I have a hypothesis that I will make more because I won't be using time, money, resources dedicated to that shopping. But I also will want the good feeling that comes from sometimes it's a dopamine hit that comes from buying, and a deeper good feeling that comes from actually creating.

[1:21:17] Susan Blackwell: And I have to say, at the end of the year, here's the tally. I bought one souvenir sweatshirt from the Performing Arts Project.

[1:21:26] Laura Camien: Nice.

[1:21:26] Susan Blackwell: I bought one vintage, I'd never seen anything like it before or since Pendleton jacket.

[1:21:33] Laura Camien: Lovely.

[1:21:33] Susan Blackwell: On sale 50% off. And I bought on final sale at the end of the year, right before the end of 2019. So it didn't feel great. I bought four sweaters that are part of what I think of as my uniform.

[1:21:53] Laura Camien: That's right.

[1:21:53] Susan Blackwell: For when we teach slash podcast in public.

[1:21:57] Laura Camien: That is right. Because I have learned a thing or two about what uniform works for me.

[1:22:01] Susan Blackwell: And it's got to do a lot of different things.

[1:22:04] Laura Camien: That's right. In addition to being like, I want it cuddly, I want it to keep smells in to protect the people near me.

[1:22:14] Susan Blackwell: Smelly teddy bear.

[1:22:15] Laura Camien: It also has to, it has to be comfortable. It cannot itch. I want it to look pleasing. So I want it to be to be to fit well. And here's a super bonus. I have to be able to fit two dogs inside it so that when I'm editing or writing at my computer, it's big enough that I can fit dogs inside of it. None of this is a joke. All of this is real.

[1:22:36] Susan Blackwell: That's awesome.

[1:22:37] Laura Camien: And it has that with a pair, like I'd layer shirts underneath it, and then a pair of what I call my creativity pants, which are this came out of this year, this year of living less consumerly, which was I take ex pants that I already have, eventually I'll run out, but right now I have it, and I paint them with colors that are pleasing to me. I smear them, I spatter them, I paint them, and I love them.

[1:23:02] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[1:23:03] Laura Camien: They make me so goddamn happy. I can't even tell you when I wear them.

[1:23:07] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[1:23:08] Laura Camien: So that's my uniform. And so I did sneak that in right under the wire because I was like, these prices are unbeatable.

[1:23:14] Susan Blackwell: I mean, yeah.

[1:23:15] Laura Camien: So but that's not bad. A total of six items. And as I say, when we are we when we talk about goal setting, even if you have if you set a goal, and say you don't exactly meet it to the letter, you still it ran the ball so much further down the field than you would have if you hadn't set the goal. I felt that way about my year of consume less, create more. I bought six things as opposed to the hundreds of dollars worth of things I would have bought if I hadn't set the goal. And I created a metric shit ton.

[1:23:48] Susan Blackwell: That is correct.

[1:23:49] Laura Camien: Yes. And that illustrates the point exactly. It's a confluence of all these things, though, like also defining that uniform.

[1:23:56] Susan Blackwell: That's right. It's been a real liberator for me.

[1:23:58] Laura Camien: That's right. And you defined it by like what functionality does it need to have? What does it need to say about me? How do I need to feel when I'm wearing it? That you were thoughtful about all so much of it.

[1:24:08] Susan Blackwell: In addition to keeping the smells in and keeping the dogs in, like, I also it I feel good when I'm in it. I feel comfortable and strong and creative.

[1:24:17] Laura Camien: That's right.

[1:24:18] Susan Blackwell: Yes. That's what this entire spark is all about. And I love it.

[1:24:22] Laura Camien: We love it.

[1:24:23] Susan Blackwell: Yay. We talked about that clothing thing before the year started. And I too was like, okay, I'm going to consume less. And I tallied, I bought 12 items, which on average is one per month.

[1:24:36] Laura Camien: That's pretty.

[1:24:38] Susan Blackwell: And that's so much better for me.

[1:24:39] Laura Camien: That's great. And I also crazy selective about those items.

[1:24:43] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:24:44] Laura Camien: I mean, like, I yes, I would put some there were times, like, especially on Instagram, they'll be like, that's cute. Punch, you know, uh, tap it, yeah, add it to the cart, and then be like, actually, I don't need that, and I don't need to spend any more time on this website, go away.

[1:25:02] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[1:25:03] Laura Camien: And I was just more conscious of that of like, I don't need any of this stuff. So I feel now, and it it's very empowering to say, like, I have everything that I need, I do. So to join the items in my wardrobe, you have to be something that like you might be a duplicate of something that I've learned I really love and I want to snatch you up while you're on sale, or I don't want to miss having that because I know you're a piece that I'll wear a lot. Um, or you have to like pass through this test that I now have of like, you know, is this gonna enhance my life in some significant way? And if not, then A, you don't get my money, and B, you don't get my time.

[1:25:49] Susan Blackwell: I love it.

[1:25:50] Laura Camien: So I think that what you just described, though, is what we make of this spark, or what I hope people will make of it. Just a thoughtful consciousness about their consuming, about self-expression, about permission to make it easy on yourself, and whatever that means, if that means less of things, if that means scrapping all of it and starting from scratch, whatever that means to you, you have permission to make it fucking easy on yourself.

[1:26:23] Susan Blackwell: I'm also it's so funny. I'm laughing here because I'm thinking about our listeners. Like I feel like we shout you out every time, hi Andy Berkey. I think about you because I think if you're a guy, not to make this gender, but if you're a guy and you are like working in your shop and you're like, who gives a fuck? But I feel like even Andy thinks about and makes t shirts that express something about him.

[1:26:47] Laura Camien: That's right.

[1:26:47] Susan Blackwell: That I bet when you wear that shirt, Andy Berkey. And I want one in the both like one. My sizes are I I just I feel like must fit two dogs inside.

[1:26:59] Laura Camien: That's right, must contain two dogs.

[1:27:01] Susan Blackwell: I feel like it isn't just for people who maybe have dressed, I don't know, I don't even know what I'm saying, but I feel like this is a spark that isn't it's not just for you and for me.

[1:27:14] Laura Camien: I think so too.

[1:27:17] Susan Blackwell: Like if you know that the physical activity that you do, like in several of these stories, I read about a woman who was um an art director. Yes, who I mean, like in an art gallery, who would be lifting paintings, putting them up and stretching and moving. And over the years, she found the fabrics and the brands that worked for her, and she's like, and for the last 20 years, I've been wearing the same thing.

[1:27:40] Laura Camien: Yes, yeah, and you can like give yourself that freedom of freaking donate all that stuff. Like I know that Marie Kondo and cleaning out our clutter is a whole other spark.

[1:27:53] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:27:53] Laura Camien: But you have permission, like, get rid of all that stuff that doesn't work for you. It doesn't work for you. Shoes that don't work for you. They don't feel good on your feet. Like get rid of them. And if you have that favorite shirt that you're like, I don't know why I just love when I go into the garage and I'm wearing this shirt and I'm like, this is this just works for me. Like if you're able to get 10 of them and forget all the rest.

[1:28:16] Susan Blackwell: Or get what you need.

[1:28:18] Laura Camien: Like that's another thing. I love in our closet. Like Nathan has, I love Nathan's clothes. He really buys those great pieces that are built to last. And they do express him as a person. And they fill up a little tiny slice of the closet, and then the rest is my fucking bag of tricks. But like but I do feel like by the time I die, whether that is tonight when I'm hit by a bus or 50 years from now, hey, we never know. Um, maybe I'll have like winnowed it down and distilled it to just like those perfect pieces.

[1:28:53] Susan Blackwell: Well, to me, it's like that's also a fantasy of like less visual noise.

[1:28:57] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:28:58] Susan Blackwell: As I get older, like I really like hair side of this. And so I have a fantasy one day, as you can see from my closet right now, this is not the day, but one day, you know, having just one of those closets that feels relaxing to walk into because you learn the hanger.

[1:29:16] Laura Camien: Oh my gosh.

[1:29:17] Susan Blackwell: That's a luxury.

[1:29:18] Laura Camien: I've not seen it.

[1:29:19] Susan Blackwell: Between the hangers between the hangs.

[1:29:22] Laura Camien: What's the name of the space between the hangers.

[1:29:25] Susan Blackwell: Renaming those sparks space between the hangers. There's something about space between the hangers. I am so crazy sparked by this. And it sparks another spark for another day that I've been badgering you with for some months now, which is there's a book called The Curated Closet.

[1:29:40] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:29:41] Susan Blackwell: How to do that. How to distill down your taste and style to those pieces, those essential pieces that they all work for you. They all work together. And I've been for at least a year been begging Cambian to take that journey with me. But maybe I'll force it on you with the spark.

[1:29:56] Laura Camien: We will.

[1:29:59] Susan Blackwell: Yes, yes. And we'll I'll make you do it, whether you like it or not.

[1:30:03] Laura Camien: Totally, we're gonna do it.

[1:30:04] Susan Blackwell: I love it. Um, and then I'll just mention one other thing. Like there's a thousand um resources and blogs out there, like uh the blog and the guy who writes like before 5 a.m. And it's all about those people who like the morning routine is the essential uh productivity tool, basically, right? I don't know.

[1:30:21] Laura Camien: Exactly.

[1:30:23] Susan Blackwell: Not everyone is wired that way. But um, in that Esquire article I read, one of the benefits the guy uh got from it was by reducing that time, yeah. He created a morning routine with that extra time that was beneficial for him. That was, you know, create uh a healthy breakfast and 15 minute workout. You know, it was um significant to him.

[1:30:50] Laura Camien: Buy back some creative time.

[1:30:52] Susan Blackwell: Take it back. I am so sparked by this.

[1:30:54] Laura Camien: You own the morning.

[1:30:56] Susan Blackwell: So one takeaway, you have a choice, do it or not do it. And if you are doing it, however you're doing, you're doing it right. Go for it to say and have fun. Soon. I can't wait to look at my closet through this lens.

[1:31:13] Laura Camien: I love this, Camille. I'm so sparked by you and by this podcast and by all of it.

[1:31:18] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[1:31:19] Laura Camien: I think that's it.

[1:31:20] Susan Blackwell: That's it. Ah, we hope this put another bunch of sparks in your file. Listen, if there's a spark you'd like us to explore, or if you've taken a spark and fanned it into a creative flame and you'd like to share that, will you email us at thesparkfile at gmail.com or submit it through our website, thesparkfile.com. We'll even take your feedback, but you know the price of admission. First, you need to share a creative risk that you have taken recently. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe, rate, five star review it. If you like this podcast, would you please? It would mean so much to us that you would share it with people that you're doing. It really does make a big difference.

And if you didn't like it, that's okay. Nothing is for everybody. If something tickles your fancy and gets your creative juices flowing, we're writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door. It's your turn to take a spark and fan it into a phylame.

[1:32:13] Laura Camien: You got a ballet bar it. You got a surgery scar it. You got a patent frequency hopping and heady lamarit. You gotta take it. And the tears come again. And make it up into something that inspires me. Could be something that I wanna take or how I want to be. I'll pump it in the spark file. Spark flies. I jump into my spark files. Spark find. Let's open up the spark flies.