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!

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

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

Because, who doesn’t want an excuse to look for indoor treasures on a crisp, cloudy fall day?

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.

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.

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.