MFM Minisode 480

Then she says, have you seen a photo of my son and I am like, who is this person?

Welcome to the Boys and Girls Podcast.

A ranged marriage is basically a reality show and you are auditioning for your soulmate

and who is judging.

Only your entire family, I sacrificed myself to this ancient tradition hoping to find

love the right way.

And instead, I found chaos, comedy and a lot of cringe.

Listen to Boys and Girls on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get

your podcast.

Hey, it's Alec Baldwin.

This season on my podcast, here's the thing I talk to composer Mark Shaman, it's about

the hang.

It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with.

You know, Rob and I was always a great hang and journalist Chris Whipple.

Every White House staffer, they work in a bubble called the West Wing and it's exponentially

more so in the Trump White House.

Listen to the new season of Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you

get your podcasts.

Just like great shoes, great books take you places.

Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never

forget.

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

I'm Danielle Robe and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and

I Heart Podcasts where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off.

Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars and more for conversations that

will make you laugh, cry and add way too many books to your TBR pile.

Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts.

Talk to you by cotton, the fabric of our lives.

Movies can make you feel, make you dream, sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture.

Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor?

That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new

podcast from the exactly right network.

Every Tuesday we break down the film's work Russian on from blockbusters to deep cuts.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts.

This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security,

one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world.

The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's

ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get

your podcasts.

Hello and welcome to my favorite murder.

The mini-sode.

We reach out your stories and they're from emails, emails, stories.

You know those digital stories that you love to tell so much.

Imagine that.

Do you want to go first for this women's history month spectacular?

Okay, let's do it.

I have a really good first one that I love.

Okay.

My bad ass, great grandmother escaped the Nazis.

Oh, yes.

Oh, elastic.

But I guess.

What a kick off.

Here we go.

It gets pretty crazy.

Hi, team.

Every time I hear a mini-sode that has a brilliant grandparent, I shout at myself for

not writing in.

So today, instead of shouting, I am writing in, yay me.

My incredible great grandmother was brilliant and terrifying and one hell of a woman.

Lisa Lett-Haminson was born in Cologne, Germany in 1913.

Her family was all caps rich.

I mean, being driven to school by a chauffeur whilst wearing furs rich.

Do you think that child being driven to school was wearing furs?

I hope the car was wearing furs like everyone had a fur on the chauffeur, the principal

of the school.

Everybody's decked out in fur covered in furs.

Here's our new line of child furs.

That's right.

Nicole, we have a whole new March idea.

She started off as a classical pianist and then decided to retrain as a dancer and learned

modernist ballet.

While dancing, she met her soon to be husband Ernest Burke.

They fell into a wild kind of love.

They started to make a name for themselves as dancers and became pretty famous in Germany.

And then the Nazis came.

Unfortunately for Laudie, oh, that's what she calls her great grandmother.

Unfortunately for Laudie, her rich family were Jewish.

As defiant creatives, Laudie and Ernest tried to carry on, but the SS made it impossible.

There was a time when Ernest was dancing.

He wasn't Jewish, so wasn't banned.

In a famous venue in Cologne, and he was dancing a dance that usually involved Laudie.

The SS were surrounding the hall, think the final scene in Blues Brothers, looking out

for Laudie to see if she would break the rules and dance on stage.

Laudie was hiding in the wings and started to hear the crowd shout her name.

She defiantly went onto the stage and the crowd went wild.

People shouted, dance Laudie, dance.

The SS edge mirror, but she stayed on the stage.

She was shouted for flowers and shouted back to the crowd.

Thank you.

Thank you for not being Nazis.

The next week Laudie, Ernest, and Esther, their young daughter, my grandmother, fled

Germany on fake British passports.

They had nothing.

They slept in a cold room along with other refugee families.

Britain wasn't ready for their modernist dancing, and Laudie and Ernest struggled to

make ends meet.

There are some old tapes somewhere of Laudie talking about sneaking back and forth to

Germany throughout the war to smuggle jewelry and money back into the UK for them to survive

on.

I could tell you so many stories about Laudie.

Some are on her Wikipedia page.

Yep.

She's even got one of those.

I checked it out.

She does.

Laudie Burke, if you want to check it out.

At 40, she invented a new exercise, which is called bar.

If you know, you know.

But it's bar.

Everyone knows bar.

The bar method.

She was the most inspiring woman to me.

She retained her strong German accent, wore red lipstick and Chanel number five every

day.

I have one of her fur coats.

Is it a child's fur coat?

Yeah.

What size?

25 years after her death, it still smells of her.

So stay sexy.

Love your brilliance combined.

A humor, true crime and mental health.

All my favorite things.

Vanessa from Shrewsbury, UK.

And I looked her up.

It's like, just fucking totally legit.

Her daughter, the grandma, wrote a biography about her called My Impropper Mother and Me.

Wow.

That's all real.

All right.

Legendary.

I mean, people with books.

All right.

So here's another.

This is another badass, great grandma story.

I won't reach it.

It's like, line.

It says, hi, ladies.

I grew up in Southwest Michigan near a little tourist town called St. Joseph.

It sits right along Lake Michigan's coastline, a short boat ride to Chicago.

So throughout the peak era of mafia rain, it became a known hotspot for mobsters to escape

the city.

The history of popular dance hall and amusement park right on Silver Beach that high-ranking

members were known to frequent, but it's long since been leveled to a single carousel

with a small history museum in the back dedicated to the site's heyday.

Side note.

So where I had my senior prom, I learned a lot about the Chicago outfit.

That's a title case, Chicago outfit, when I was in high school, which is definitely where

my love of true crime came from.

But my favorite story didn't come from a history book.

Picture me.

Roughly 16 sitting on the floor of my great grandma's trailer beside a crocheted, doily-covered

coffee table, picking the orange gum drops out of a forever full crystal candy jar.

My Mima, as we called her, is chain-smoking in her lazy boy.

When in-between drags, she shares that she not only knew Al Capone, but she, in fact,

had been quite close with him when she was young.

What?

And then an asterisk that says, pause for a jaw drop.

So then it says a little context.

Mima grew up one of 14 siblings and wasn't all that close with her parents.

She ran away from home when she was very young, and her mother's parting words to her were,

you'll end up a knocked up alcoholic.

Heartwarming, right?

Seeing the stubborn badass she was, a trait I can proudly say all of the women in my family

have.

Mima was determined to never drink a lick of alcohol and to save herself for marriage.

Not that I would necessarily follow such resolutions myself, but I do give her major props for

the, oh yeah, we'll see about that attitude.

She had to lie about her age to get a job that would support living on her own and eventually

landed a gig as a waitress at the Shadowland Ballroom, the epicenter of Chicago gangster for

Volody on Silver Beach.

Most young girls would be terrified in that environment, but not Mima.

Through whatever bravada she surely was giving off at the time, Mima earned the attention

of none other than Scarface himself, Al Capone.

Holy shit.

Now I know the man was responsible for horrible things, but when he caught onto my Mima's

real age, he began slipping her envelopes of cash at the end of the night.

No questions asked.

Not only that, but knowing she was living alone downtown, he had his men escort her back home

each night at the end of her shift.

I tried to pry for more details because Holy shit, but Mima only added that she knew the

sheriff too, so she was never that concerned for her safety.

I like to think hard knocks recognize hard knocks and maybe Capone just had a sweet spot

for my gritty, great grandma doing what she needed to to get by.

Not hard to imagine as Capone would frequently donate to Chicago charities as well, earning

him a Robin Hood like reputation.

Mima sadly passed in 2019.

We have no idea how old she was right before the world would have become unrecognizable

to her.

Her final request is that we not hold a funeral because she considered herself, quote,

not worth the fuss over.

She threatened to haunt the hell out of us if we didn't respect her wishes.

So we begrudgingly obliged, but it breaks my heart to this day that she didn't see how

much she was loved by so many.

And how much we would have appreciated the opportunity to celebrate her life.

She had her flaws, same as anyone.

But her door was always open to this once angsty teen whenever I needed to drop by and vent

or just listen to her stories over a can of coke and a handful of gumdrops.

Her name was Mae and Mae E.

And I hope she gets to hear her story from wherever she's puffing her marble light 100s

nowadays.

Hearing how she furiously left home no doubt gave me the confidence post college to move

from my small Midwestern town to New York City to pursue my dreams.

I've since relocated, but against all odds, I put my dual English and dance degrees

to use and became a professional dancer and a literary editor for a big five publishing

house.

She's us.

Stay sexy and know your worth, Caitlin.

And then it says, yes, here's a pick of the legend herself.

Oh, to cutie.

Mima.

Mima with a tiny horse.

Walk a poem, took an interest in me love it.

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Goodbye.

Hi, I'm Danielle Robe, host of Bookmarked, the podcast by Reese's Book Club.

And this week we are talking about a monster or maybe the woman who refused to be one.

I'm sitting down with Maggie Jill and Hall to unpack her new film The Bride.

And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein.

It's darker, smarter, sexier, a full reimagining of what happens when the monster gets a voice

of her own.

So I was more interested in what's the monstrousness inside of each of us.

You can spend your life running from those things or you can turn around and shake hands

with them.

If I'm honest about that and I tell my story about monsters really dealing in something

truthful and I do it in a way that's pop, that's hot, that's like getting on a roller

coaster will people respond.

Listen to Bookmarked, the Reese's Book Club podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police.

Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast where dating is in dating.

A ranged marriage is basically a reality show except the contestants are strangers and

your entire family is judging.

You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another and praying your

karmic ken or barbie appears before your shelf life runs out.

Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition.

I jumped in hoping to find love the right way and instead I found chaos, cringe and comedy.

And now I'm looking for healing.

Boys and Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel.

The me talk word, the near misses, the heartbreak and let's not forget all the jokes.

Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts.

When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on?

Biggie.

You put on biggie when you feel uncomfortable?

I want to get confident.

This is DJ Hester Prince, music is therapy.

A new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist that asks one simple question, who do

you want to be and what's the song that can take you there?

Music changes what you feel and what you feel changes what you do, right?

That moment where a song shifts something inside you, that's where transformation starts.

This year I'm talking to experts across every area of life, like personal finance icon

Jean Chatsky, New York Times journalist David Gellis, relationship legend Dan Savage,

gaming connection teacher Mark Brogues, and the man who shaped my ear more than anyone,

Questlove.

They'll bring the strategies, I'll pair them with the right records and we'll teach

you how to use the music to make a change stick.

This isn't just a podcast, it's unconventional therapy for your entire year.

Listen to DJ Hester Prince, music is therapy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts.

Hi it's Alec Baldwin, this season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more

artists, policymakers and performers, that composer Mark Shaman.

Once you've established it, you have the talent, it's about the hang, it's the pleasure of

hanging out with the people that you're with, you know Rob and I was always a great

hang.

We would sit in kibbits for hours and then eventually get around to the music, that's

what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time together, laughing, lawyer Robbie

Kaplan.

The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society

in a way that very few people can.

You can really make a difference to causes and I say it's if you bring the right case

at the right time.

Marriage equality.

Yeah, Windsor's the perfect example.

And journalist Chris Whipple, every White House staffer, they work in a bubble called

the West Wing and it's exponentially more so in the Trump White House.

Listen to the new season, up here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you

get your podcasts.

That was great.

Yeah, these are all just pretty awesome.

This one's a badass great great aunt story.

So good.

Okay, this one's my badass great great aunt survived Joe Pelsinsky, who I talked about in

rewind episode 80.

So good morning friends, I'm taking a break from murder cleaning my Saturday morning

ritual of catching up on the week's MFM episodes while resetting the house to offer

up some background and additional details for the rewind of episode 80.

My great grandmother's sister was the 81 year old who survived Joe Pelsinsky.

In the show, she was mentioned as a cardiac victim, but there's more to it.

Aunt Dolly lived up the road from mom, mom, Ethel, and pop pop bill late 70s early 80s.

Mom took us up regularly to visit and my older brother and I would immediately run over

to Aunt Dolly's because a she was no nonsense, cool as fuck and didn't treat us like to

not be seen slash herd annoyances even when she began but she ring a chicken while we

watched.

B, she had the greatest dog Duchess who looked just like Sandy from Annie.

C, she let us help collect eggs from her chickens.

And D, there was no screaming at hers pop pop would turn down his hearing aid for peace

so there was a lot of yelling down the road.

Fast forward to 2000 and there's a man hunt for JP.

I better saw something on the news about an elderly woman who was briefly held hostage

before JP stole her car.

But since I'd never known Aunt Dolly's actual name, Anna Eder, I didn't know it was my

relative until my mom shared the story.

Wow.

It was also when I learned that Aunt Dolly was an army coordiners in World War II, clearly

the source of herd level headedness and ability to deal calmly with chaos and children.

JP showed up at Aunt Dolly's house, she kept the door unlocked when I was younger so he

probably let himself in.

He handcuffed her to the bed.

Aunt Dolly talked to him and he ended up uncuffing her.

She packed up some food for him and he left with her car.

Mom said she was all right and more pissed off about learning that neither the police nor

her insurance would cover the damage to her car, which she got back riddled with bullets

from the shootout at the motel.

Holy shit.

Thanks for distracting me from the dregs of choring and for the occasional delight of hearing

my 19 year old tell her father to stay sexy when she leaves the house.

As a reminder to lock the door behind her, Kathy, I mean, Kathy, that was a great story

but it really built in the, yeah, like a hard finish or a strong finish, strong finish

for the teenager telling her own dad to be to stay sexy.

Yeah, that's the, I mean, here's the thing it makes perfect sense, a combat nurse when

all of a sudden there's guns and threats and men acting crazy.

That's, she's like, yeah, I've seen this before.

Totally.

I know how to handle this.

That's incredible.

Incredible, Dolly.

Okay.

Well, here's another, this similar but like a little left turn from there and I won't,

I won't read you the title.

It says, hi, friendly murder fans.

I've been meaning to send in this story for a while now partly because it's inspiring

and badass and mostly because my friends are sick of hearing it and I need another outlet.

My, my great grandmother was a true icon.

She was born in 1891 in a small fishing village in Northern Scotland.

In 1916, she became the first woman to graduate with a medical degree from the University

of Sheffield.

Then because why not, she immediately volunteered her services as a physician and surgeon

on the front lines of World War I in a Scottish women's hospital.

Wow.

Yeah, these hospitals are too cool not to expand on further after being rejected for her

services by the British Army because she was a woman.

Dr. LC English decided to form her own hospitals to serve allied nations during the first

World War.

These hospitals were all caps solely run by women.

Women nurses, women physicians, women orderlies, women secretaries, even women ambulance drivers.

These women all banded together to form hospitals on the front lines in France and Serbia.

My great grandmother served at the hospital set up in France at Roy Mall Abbey.

She operated on injured soldiers and often had to make the incredibly difficult decision

of who they would try to save when too many casualties came in the door.

While the work was taxing and the hours were incredibly long, she reportedly often said

these were some of the best years of her life.

After the war, when all the soldiers had left the hospital and everything had been packed

up, my great grandmother took a few things she found around the Abbey as souvenirs to take

home.

Her trip back to Scotland, she was staying at an inn in France and she showed off her souvenirs

to a local man who served in the war.

He proceeded to quite rudely, she thought, grab one of the trinkets, get out of his chair

and walk briskly out the door.

My great grandmother, who I'm sure was quite annoyed, followed him out.

The man then proceeded to throw the trinket into the lake.

In my head, she yells at him some old-fashioned form of what the fuck.

But then he explains that what she thought was a fun little souvenir was actually a

live hand grenade.

Oh my god.

Well, this is cute.

Excuse me, sir.

Oh my god, I love these eggie shape.

Oh my god.

I'll just put this up on the bookshelf.

Oh my god.

Remembrances.

So it says, yes, my great grandmother, who had survived the First World War working on

the front lines, operating on wounded soldiers almost got herself blown up because she wanted

to take home a few cute souvenirs.

Although I never got to meet her, my great grandmother has always been a huge inspiration

to me.

And she's a big reason why I decided to pursue my own career in medicine.

In two years, I will graduate medical school and become the first woman descendant of hers

to become a doctor.

Oh.

Wow.

Yeah.

If I do even a very small portion of the good in the world that she did, I will be a very

happy person.

Stay sexy and don't take lethal weapons home as souvenirs.

Okay.

She heard from Canada.

And then you can look up information on the Scottish Women's Hospitals from World

War One in the book, The Woman of Roy Amal, a Scottish Women's Hospital on the Western

Front by Eileen Crofton.

Wow.

Legendary.

Literally.

Right?

Great grandmother with a book under her belts.

Damn.

Come on.

Just love like you're in the train and then you have a fucking grenade in your pocket.

That soldier who himself made it all the way back home.

Right.

And then I'm talking to this bird and a boy lady.

Oh, that a grenade.

Hi, I'm Danielle Robay, host of Bookmarked, The Podcast by Reese's Book Club.

And this week we are talking about a monster or maybe the woman who refused to be one.

I'm sitting down with Maggie Jill and Hall to unpack her new film The Bride.

And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein.

It's darker, smarter, sexier, a full reimagining of what happens when the monster gets a voice

of her own.

What I was more interested in was the monstrousness inside of each of us.

You can spend your life running from those things or you can turn around and shake hands

with them.

If I'm honest about that and I tell my story about monsters really dealing in something

truthful.

And I do it in a way that's hot, that's like getting on a roller coaster will people respond.

Listen to Bookmarked, The Reese's Book Club Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police.

Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast we're dating is in dating.

Arranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and

your entire family is judging.

You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another and praying your

karmic ken or barbie appears before your shelf life runs out.

Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition.

I jumped in hoping to find love the right way and instead I found chaos, cringe and comedy

and now I'm looking for healing.

Boys and Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel.

The meat awkward, the near misses, the heartbreak and let's not forget all the jokes.

Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts.

Can you feel uncomfortable?

What do you put on?

Biggie.

You put on biggie when you feel uncomfortable?

I want to get confident.

This is DJ Hester Prins Music Is Therapy, a new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist

that asks one simple question, who do you want to be and what's the song that can take

you there?

Music changes what you feel and what you feel changes what you do, right?

That moment where a song shifts something inside you, that's where transformation starts.

This year I'm talking to experts across every area of life, like personal finance icon

Jean Chatsky, New York Times journalist David Gellis, relationship legend Dan Savage,

human connection teacher Mark Brogues, and the man who shaped my ear more than anyone,

Questlove.

They'll bring the strategies, I'll pair them with the right records and we'll teach you

how to use the music to make change stick.

This isn't just a podcast, it's unconventional therapy for your entire year.

Listen to DJ Hester Prins Music Is Therapy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, it's Alec Baldwin.

This season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policy makers

and performers, my composer Mark Shaman.

Once you've established it, you have the talent, it's about the hang.

It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with.

You know, Rob and I was always a great hang.

We would sit in kibbits for hours and then eventually get around to the music.

That's what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time together, laughing.

Lawyer Robbie Kaplan.

The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society

in a way that very few people can't.

You can really make a difference to causes, and I'd say it's if you bring the right case

at the right time.

Marriage equality.

Yeah.

Windsor's the perfect example.

Every White House staffer, they work in a bubble called the West Wing, and it's exponentially

more so in the Trump White House.

Listen to the new season of here's the thing on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your

podcasts.

Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those

two employees behind the counter arguing about movies?

Well, that's us.

I'm Millie De Cherico.

I'm Casey O'Brien, and now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I

Love You, from the exactly right network.

Can I say something about the Criterion closet?

Go ahead, dude.

They're letting too many people in there.

Okay, that's another film right by GOT2.

Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore.

It's probably a store that sells running shoes.

Or an ice cream shop with an extra P and an E at the end.

So consider us your slacker movie clerks and podcast form.

I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tayden

was.

Every Tuesday we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over from hidden gems to big

screen favorites.

New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts.

My last one is actually a trash sister story's lead.

She's a woman for a woman's month.

Hey, MFM fam.

I'm a woman.

She's a woman.

She's a woman like any other woman.

I inherited the inability to tell a short story from both parents so buckle up.

Do you all remember Lime Wire?

Great, because I have a trash sister story for you.

Lime Wire was where you stole music from the internet in the very beginning before they

had like free music.

Spotify.

Spotify.

Yes, exactly.

Because the original, I'm going to burn this onto a CD and put fuck the man.

Right.

But it was illegal.

Yeah, exactly.

My parents were extremely strict about music growing up.

My dad was an Episcopalian priest, so my approved playlist was gospel, musical theater,

and my parents' music, the Beatles, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Motown, all great.

Before a seven-year-old, it was not exactly hitting when Britney Spears was out here

changing lives.

The only place I could listen to music of my generation, Britney, Destiny's Child in

Sink, was dance class, and I lived for it.

Enter my sister, Stacey.

She knew I loved music and had caught me watching MTV approximately a million times.

So when she went off to college, she became my underground music dealer via a little website

called Lime Wire.

Hell yeah.

Anytime I visited, I'd bring blank CDs like it was a drug deal.

That's such a cool sister.

My sister would have never done that for me.

I know.

And she made me, it was labeled Holy Hip Hop, which was how I discovered two-pock and

biggie.

I listened and secret on my portable CD player, so my parents would never know I was absolutely

not listening to church-approved content.

It's amazing.

Turns out I wasn't the only one benefiting.

Half her dorm used her computer to burn CDs, and her IP address eventually landed on

an FBI internet-high-resue watchlist.

Ooh.

Then it says casual.

Fast forward.

Stacey studies abroad in Australia and hands the computer down to our other sister, Anzli.

Since I knew the login info, I naturally used Lime Wire a few more times before Anzli

took it to college.

During Anzli's sophomore year, the FBI started cracking down hard.

They tracked the computer, knocked on her door, and seized it.

Anzli, who barely used Lime Wire, kept saying, my sister gave this to me.

Unfortunately, she was the current owner and ended up with 40-hours community service.

Girl.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

I would kill my sister.

Yeah.

My parents were livid.

She didn't do it.

Stacey and I just kept telling Anzli, I mean, don't do the crime if you can't do the

time.

She fucking did it.

Remember the commercial that was like, there are victims and piracy or whatever, it's

not a victim's crime.

Oh, my God.

It's her sister.

Anzli is the victim, actually.

Of her sister's stupidity.

Right.

And it says, you know, as trash sisters do.

Since my dad has dementia, we've been sharing a lot of family stories lately and laughing

a lot.

When he heard this one, he cried from laughter and said, now that was funny.

Mean, but funny.

I miss my dad, but moments like that, getting to share stories and hear his laugh, give

me the little glimpses of the dad I've always known.

Anyway, stay sexy and legally purchase music.

Ab me.

Ab me.

And Anzli.

Yeah.

Great names.

Just improvising over there.

Oh, that's such a classic like the frustration of the youngest sibling of being the clearinghouse

of fuckups that everyone else does and is good at pinning on you.

Totally.

Totally.

Like, you get away with more as a little sister, but she knows how to get away with more.

The reason you get away with more is because you had to learn your lesson when you were

four years old, not when you were 12.

No one carried you to the to junior high.

Exactly.

You were in the game.

Wait too early.

Okay.

Not better.

This email, maybe my favorite email we've ever gotten.

Oh, my God.

And how fitting for women's history month.

Okay.

You'll see.

Okay.

It just says, hello, this might be a long one, so I'll get right to it.

My grandma on my mom's side is famous in her smallest town in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

She's been writing columns for the Grand Forks Herald since the 1950s, where she is known

for her straightforward attitude and quick wit.

While only a fraction of her columns were restaurant reviews, these columns skyrocketed

her from small town legend.

Yep.

Yes, it's her to viral grandma of the year.

It's her.

Is Olive Garden?

Yes.

Yes.

I love this.

I'm sorry.

They're getting the Olive Garden journalist's granddaughter to tell us her story.

This may the past 10 years all worth it, everything that happened.

It's our lives have been leading up to this email.

Okay.

The national attention began in 2012.

I just love this story.

I've read and reread this story online so many times because I love it so much.

Okay.

Okay.

This all began in 2012 when she wrote an overall positive eat beat.

The name of the column was eat beat.

It works.

It works.

Of the new Olive Garden in town.

I believe she said something along the lines of quote a warm meal on a cold day end quote.

She was absolutely torn apart by the millennials of the internet going viral as the old lady in

the middle of nowhere saying nice things about a mediocre chain Italian restaurant.

She quickly went from writing her weekly columns to being interviewed by Anderson Cooper

and Pierce Morgan following all of this attention.

Anthony Bourdain himself published my grandma's book Grand Forks which is a collection of the local

eat beat columns she wrote over the years.

She went on to be a guest judge on top chef where she called a Tomali attaco and then a parentheses

in parentheses.

It says white people.

Am I right?

And then it says and continued the media frenzy until the attention died down.

As a kid, my siblings and I always knew grandma M was kind of a big deal around town when we'd

get up to North Dakota and spend a few weeks with her every summer.

She'd take us to restaurants and ask our opinions as she jotted down notes.

My mom passed away in 2011, only a few months before my grandma walked into the Olive Garden

that started it all.

My mom would have had the time of her life if she were here for it.

Probably the first in line to shake Anderson Cooper's hand.

In her long career, I can't imagine the glass ceiling she has shattered all while raising

three kids who became a judge, a lawyer, and a Wall Street Journal journalist.

Wow.

And then the words of Marilyn Hagridi herself, quote, I've been a lot of other things, but never

viral.

Thanks for the hours and hours of stories to keep me company during my weekly panic cleaning

sush.

Stay sexy and long live never ending soup salad and breadsticks, Anna, she, her.

And just here's a little note that Alison added in that it says Marilyn Hagridi passed

away on September 16th, 2025 at the age of 99.

Wow.

Her last column for the Harold was published on October 26, 2024 over her nearly 70 year

career at the Harold.

She wrote approximately two thousand eight beat columns and that's just her food column

output.

Oh my God.

And in the opening of her book, Anthony Bourdain writes, quote,

Ms. Hagridi is not naive about her work, her newfound fame or the world.

She has traveled widely in her life in person.

She has a flinty, dry, very sharp sense of humor.

She misses nothing.

I would not want to play poker with her for money.

This is a straightforward account of what people have been eating still are eating in

much of America as related by a kind good-hearted reporter looking to pass along as much useful

information as she can while hurting no one.

Someone who comes away from this work, anything less than charmed by Ms. Hagridi and the

places and characters she describes has a heart of stone.

This book kills snark dead.

End quote.

Wow.

What an honor, what an honor to get an email about Marilyn Hagridi.

Incredible.

And I will say as someone who married into an Olive Garden family, I have never been

disappointed by what I've had at Olive Garden.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

It's always what I thought it would be.

It's never bad.

Yeah.

It's exactly what it is.

It is what it is everyone.

Fuck everyone.

But also, I'll point this out too.

I feel like Marilyn Hagridi and that column and then what happened there in the lesson

everybody learned in 2012 was the beginning of the end of Gen X 90s snark shit toxic.

Like everything from let's say 1990 up until the internet started and it was almost like

the internet was doing its own little purging of like, hey, we're not going to treat

a Marilyn Hagridi like this.

Like everyone who tries doesn't get like fucking torn down.

That's not what we're doing here anymore.

Right.

And also if you can stop being snarky for one second because she's praising Olive Garden,

you could actually take a look at the body of work and who you're talking to.

And then just the idea that all these people rallied for her, including Anthony fucking

bored day.

It's just so bad.

Yeah.

Okay.

No, we need.

I'm requesting a very specific thing.

We need the granddaughter of the woman who did the touch up of the like reproduction of

that painting years ago and just completely, I don't want to say ruined it, but changed

it.

We need the granddaughter.

I wasn't it turned into something they called like monkey Jesus or something.

I have a t-shirt of it.

I bought a t-shirt of that picture.

We're requesting her family.

I think they're like Italian, so maybe they can't, but whatever.

We want it.

We want it.

Yes.

Tell us your story.

My favorite murder at Gmail.

Thank you guys for listening in Happy Women's History Month.

Happy Women's History Month.

Stay sexy.

And don't get murdered.

Bye.

Bye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie?

This has been an exactly right production.

Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.

Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

This episode was mixed by Leonis Koalachi.

Email your hometowns to my favorite murder at gmail.com.

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Listen to my favorite murder on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you

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And now you can watch my favorite murder on Netflix.

And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and the remind me buttons.

That's the best way you can support our show.

Bye.

This episode is brought to you in part by Vital Farms.

Have you noticed that the egg section at the grocery store has gotten very complicated

lately?

But Vital Farms makes it simple, pasture raised eggs traceable to the farm.

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Goodbye.

Then she says, have you seen a photo of my son?

And I'm like, who is this person?

Welcome to the Boys and Girls Podcast.

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After your entire family, I sacrificed myself to this ancient tradition, hoping to find

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Hey, it's Alex Baldwin.

This season on my podcast, here's the thing.

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That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new

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Just like great shoes, great books take you places.

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I think any good romance it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

I'm Danielle Robe and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and

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