As the last legitimate heir to a powerful family, Catherine de Medici was married at only 14 into one of the most powerful royal houses in Europe. The two halves of her story are VASTLY different, and here in Part 1, we are going to tell you about how she had no resources but INNER resources - and the character that developed from the circumstances in which she was placed.

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It's field trip time again! We took 50 listeners with us to the cradle of our country - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Over the course of a long weekend, we absorbed the sites and stories we'd learned about in school, and learned about those figures whose vital contributions have faded over time.

Through our exposure to the artifacts, places and people at the heart of our country's founding, we began to comprehend that the freedoms we enjoy today were the result of hard-won battles and sacrifices from those who have gone before us; a torch we must pass to those who follow.

You'll also hear stories of ghosts, museums, ice cream, gallivanting, and that most hallowed of indulgences: the Philly Cheese Steak.

Thanks to all of the travelers who made this field trip a success, and we hope to see every listener on the bus someday.

We call the back seat!

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Suzanne Valadon was born on the wrong side of the tracks, and the wrong side of the blanket, but grew up to be one of the It Girls of the Impressionist era. She traveled a unique journey to stardom by parlaying her career as an artist's model into an artistic career of her own.

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The road to equality has never run smooth - in part 2, Alice Paul and the suffragists finally achieve their goal of a constitutional amendment giving women the vote - but not until a great deal of lobbying, schisms, sacrifice, and sheer willingness to go against the grain at every occasion.

Never one to rest for long, Alice then had a greater aspiration - an Equal Rights Amendment that would enshrine equality for women in the constitution , which she co-wrote in 1923.

One hundred years later, the ERA has yet to pass.

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Years before Alice Paul was even born, the women's suffrage movement began with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and others at the first women's rights convention in the US in 1848. The efforts of these early suffragists laid the groundwork for Alice Paul and her peers, and their stories will give you a better understanding of the long struggle to recognize a women's right to vote. This is a remastered revisit from 2013.

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Alice Paul was one of the most prominent activists of the 20th-century women's rights movement, who believed that moral authority always trumps the letter of the law; injustices must be called out and resisted as a matter of principle.

By hook or by crook; with personal sacrifice, determination, and a talent for spectacle, she moved the needle of public opinion through acts of resistance.

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We lived the dream... and traveled to Paris in the springtime!

Fifty of our friends joined us in the City Of Light for forays into history, art, wine, architecture, shopping, camaraderie, and SO MUCH FROMAGE! Some of our friends join us here on the show to tell you the tale of our adventures.

(And the friendships we made along the way)

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Susan has in fact taken a pilgrimage to Amsterdam to visit the attic where Anne lived and Miep worked so hard to keep her safe.

But, since we cannot all be there in person, here is our Anne Frank episode from 2018, the story of what was happening inside the secret annex, and in the hearts of the people who lived there.

As Anne once wrote in her diary: "What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it from happening again."

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Miep Gies risked her life in order to help her Jewish friends hide from the Nazis during World War 2. In Part 2 of her story, we'll take you through the years of struggle and subterfuge, the dark day when the Secret Annex was raided, and how Miep saved Anne Frank's writings from destruction. Anne's diary is one of the most significant historical documents of the 20th century, providing a deeply personal account of life during the Holocaust.

Said Miep of her work during the war: "My story is a story of very ordinary people during extraordinary times, times the like of which I hope with all my heart will never come again. It is for all of us ordinary people all over the world to see to it that they do not."

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In a land fraught with turbulence and oppression, Miep Gies helped to shelter and supply Anne Frank's family (and others) while they were in hiding from the Nazis; an act of civil disobedience that was, though illegal, the most moral of human endeavors.

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