The Bones and Bobbins Podcast

S05E03: The very Victorian art of dating and the hidden codes in Victorian love letters.   Sit down for a bit of old fashioned Victorian dating advice, flirting etiquette, and fan wielding tips, then cozy up by the fire to search for hidden meanings within the latest sweet missive penned by your most beloved. So many rules! So much mail! Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2024/03/05/season-5-episode-03

S05E02: A brief history of love spells and how they’re still being used today.   As long as there have been people, there have been love spells. They’re sometimes beautiful, frequently horny, and nearly always ethically questionable. They also might make you want to hide your fingernails, put off buying supplies for that candle-making project, and never buy stick pins again. Which is all to say that love spells are messy. Just like emotions, and just like all of us.   Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2024/02/05/season-5-episode-02

S05E01: The Oneida Cult. Ever wonder if your silverware was once in a questionable cult? No? Just us?   The Oneida Cult had some truly ahead-of-its-time views on sex and sexuality. And, if their community hadn’t also included a dark shadow of appalling abuse towards its teenage members, this could have been a very different podcast episode. (Alas, no.) But, it may surprise you to know that, even today, this strange cult’s legacy continues to live on in a very unexpected place: our cutlery drawers.   Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2024/01/22/season-5-episode-01

S04E08: The secret drawers, hidden compartments, and locked cabinets nestled into pieces of antique furniture. Because, who doesn’t want an excuse to look for indoor treasures on a crisp, cloudy fall day? Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2023/10/13/season-4-episode-08

S04E07: American islands that never lost their British accents (from the 16 and 1700s) and the unnatural origins of the Transatlantic Accent.   Learn some new (old) phrases from Hoi Toiders, Outer Banks Brogue speakers, and the folks who live on Tangier Island, Smith Island, and other isolated seafaring outposts in the Chesapeake Bay who never quite lost their British accents. Then, brace yourself, because the engineered linguistic weirdness that is the Transatlantic Accent is coming for you from a past that never was!   Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2023/07/28/season-4-episode-07

S04E06: The USS Recruit (1917), the dreadnought in Union Square, and the Unsinkable Molly Brown   Like real historical stories that are way, way better than their legendary counterparts? Join us on a trip back through time and experience the United States’ plan to increase wartime recruitment by commissioning a fully crewed warship that was stationed in the middle of Union Square in Manhattan, then meet the absolute powerhouse that was Titanic survivor, philanthropist, socialite, and political move-maker Margaret Brown, aka the Unsinkable Molly Brown. Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2023/06/14/season-4-episode-06

S04E05: Metal detecting, geocaching, and digging up stuff in your own backyard!   It’s digging in the dirt and tromping through the woods season! Come along with us while Haley contemplates metal detecting, breaking the law, and digging up her basement, and Natali goes on a fantastic geocaching and letterboxing adventure (and also partakes in some light botanical thievery).   Note: We had a slight Mercury-in-retrograde-related sound kerfuffle. Some of Haley's audio might sound a bit echoey.   Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2023/05/15/season-4-episode-05

S04E04: Poisonous Plants and Drury Lane Gardens.   Take a stroll around a garden so dangerous that just walking through it can cause you to faint, then scamper off to the world of London’s pocket parks for a wholesome reinvention of a place with a deadly past. Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2023/04/13/season-4-episode-04

S04E03: The lore of black cats, crows, and ravens.   Us, to literally every black cat or corvid we see: Who’re our good little witches’ familiars? Sweet baby omens of doom? The bestest spooky speakers of truth ever?   Corvids and black cats:   Us: YES YOU ARE!!   Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2023/03/18/season-4-episode-03  

S04E02: Beauty entrepreneur and philanthropist Madam C. J. Walker and Boston bicycling trailblazer Kittie Knox.   Fan of a multi-step beauty routine? (Same.) So, as it happens, was Madam C. J. Walker, who built a national beauty empire while providing a path for other Black women to build businesses of their own. Meanwhile, over in Boston, Kittie Knox was riding and racing her bicycle, charming reporters, and challenging the idea that the sport was solely the domain of white men.  Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2023/02/12/season-4-episode-02

S04E01: Weird pope facts and the bizarro world that is Vatican City/the Vatican/the Holy See.   First: If you’re unfamiliar with the Prince song “Pope,” we highly recommend going down that weird rabbit hole. It’s where we got the title for this episode. We’ll wait…   Okay! Now that you have that cheery bit of mood music under your belt, let us take you on a somewhat questionable trip through the land of papal frippery, where we’ll discover the truth about the pope hammer, stop for a look at the holy tiara, marvel at the the Swiss Guard’s jaunty outfits, and then meet a robot pharmacist that honestly sounds pretty great.  We’ll also talk about the antipopes. Because antipopes are, apparently, a thing.   Fair warning: If you don’t want to hear us yelling about religion, this probably isn’t the episode for you. For obvious reasons. Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2023/01/19/season-4-episode-01

S03E17: It’s National Native American Heritage Month, so we’re talking about stone cold badass Madame Marie Dorion, and the many ways in which Native and Indigenous Americans have contributed to medicine and public health, from baby bottles, to pain killers, to early syringes! Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2022/11/30/season-3-episode-17

S03E16: Victorian dress reform, the Rational Dress Society, and the history of bicycles.   For Victorian women, bicycles usher in both a newfound freedom and a new wave in practical, flexible fashion: Pants!   Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2022/10/23/season-3-episode-16

S03E15: Madame Tussaud and her famed museum of lifelike wax figures, and Grand Guignol, a pioneering theater at the forefront of shockingly realistic body horror.   Marie Tussaud’s exceptional talent brought a spark of (kind of creepy) life to the art and craft of creating wax portraiture, inviting the public to mingle with likenesses of the famous. The masterful craftspeople at Grand Guignol, by contrast, brought a truly dramatic spark of death–and an in-house doctor–to audiences looking for a different kind of thrill. Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2022/10/11/season-3-episode-15

S03E14: Celebration, Florida and Arcosanti, Arizona: Two very different approaches to building a (mostly failed) utopia.   Learning how to almost successfully thrive in the desert, and why we wouldn’t want Disney in charge of our HOAs. Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2022/09/26/season-3-episode-14

S03E12: The spy gadgets of WWII and a married couple–Jonna and Antonio Mendez–who were very real masters of disguise.   Spy craft meets spy crafts with lipstick compasses, pencil daggers, and a truly ingenious use of foot powder.   Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2022/08/27/season-3-episode-12

S03E11: The history of women in pants and boobs in fashion.   Ah, yes. The perennial drama of possessing cleavage and/or legs. Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2022/08/12/season-3-episode-11

S03E10: The Brattleboro Retreat Tower, a Victorian structure tucked away amongst the trees and boulders on a hiking trail in Vermont.   Haley goes solo this week with a tour of one of her new hometown's most notorious haunts, the Brattleboro Retreat tower. Note: The Brattleboro Retreat was formerly known as the Vermont Asylum for the Insane, and some historical references use that name.   Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2022/07/31/season-3-episode-10

S03E09: Perfume making techniques, enfleurage, and musk.   It's all flowers and frippery...until it's not.   Show notes available Friday: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com

S03E08: Boobs and bling: the history of sports bras and custom grills.   Two jock straps walk into a marathon with some pretty mind-blowing mouth jewelry. Show notes: https://www.bonesandbobbins.com/2022/05/21/season-3-episode-08