APRIL 26, 2019

Happy Friday! Lots of stuff being unearthed and unpacked this week—a lost sequel to A Clockwork Orange, for one! Other stories include a lock of an iconic writer’s hair (gotta love those goth Victorians) and an ancient piece of poop in Texas. Let’s do this thing!

One hair-filled ring to rule them all.

Sometimes you go on Antiques Roadshow and find out your heirlooms are worthless, other times you find out you have Charlotte Brontë’s ring and a lock of her hair worth $26,000. A woman in North Wales found such a ring in her father-in-law’s attic, inscribed with C. Bronte and the date of the Jane Eyre author's death. Apparently people in the 19th century incorporated hair into jewelry all the damn time—to help remember someone after they’d died. (Charlotte herself wore a bracelet of her two sisters’ hair!) It seems a very fitting coda for the author of one of the spookiest gothic romances of all time.

Are you too a sci-fi newb?

Editor Sam (she of the sci-fi themed wedding) feels your pain. Sam claims that she herself suffered a little from imposter syndrome in her early days of sci-fi obsession, but it was the broadly reaching tour (you could even call it galactic) she experienced via sci-fi master John Scalzi that served as her ticket off planet. Here, she shares her love of his work and sets you up for your own genre journey.

Making art.

Producer Amy Sherman-Palladino is known for expertly centering women’s stories on their strengths as well as their quirks (see: Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel). Now she and her producing partner, husband Daniel Palladino, are bringing to life Pulitzer Prize-winner Mary Gabriel’s fantastic Ninth Street Women, which dives into the lives of five real, amazing women who ruffled feathers when they entered the world of 20th century abstract painting as artists instead of muses. Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler changed the art scene, and if this upcoming Amazon Prime show is half as inspiring and entertaining as the listen is…well, you’ll know where to find us.

Talk doctor to me.

One of our favorite romance authors, Sarah MacLean, shared a hilarious thread on Twitter this week about an interaction with her neurosurgeon. MacLean revealed that a few years ago she needed to have surgery to remove an unruptured aneurysm, and let’s just say her doctor sounds like the alpha male romance hero of our dreams. Here’s hoping MacLean is currently working on her next novel with him as the star.

Pregnant girls get the corner office.

As working moms, we hear a lot about how to do our jobs—Lean In, Lean Out, negotiate the motherhood penalty, and so on. This week we’re hearing a lot about the C-suite baby boom, which applauds a recent trend in high-profile, high-ranking female executives not only refusing to downplay the parenting side of their identities, but celebrating it. Traditionally, many women have learned to keep motherhood out of the office, lest we get turned down for the dream job, dream promotion, or even dream project. Which is why we’ll lean in any direction necessary to keep this trend going.

Weird flex but OK.

Thanks to a newfound piece of coprolite (that’s fossilized poop to you and me), we now know at least one hunter-gatherer ate an entire rattlesnake—fang included. The sample was part of a group that also contained a whole, uncooked rodent as well as seasonal asparagus and prickly pear (proto-hipster alert!). While snake was a common enough food for the time, finding the creature’s entire body, venomous head, and fang is unprecedented. Researchers speculate this meal was part of ritualistic or shamanistic behavior (so…Jaguar in the Body, Butterfly in the Heart, Snake in the 💩??), and not a nutritional thing. Good news for those of us trying to eat paleo, right?
Till Next Week!
—the audible editors
P.S. Keep the faith, Audicted listeners! Our latest episode—which is all about belief, spirituality, religion, and what editor Kat calls the new New Age—is here (and free, as always). Praise be!
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