61. Women Who Fly- Amelia Earhart
Flipping Tables
Monte Mader
5.0 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 71 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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My grandma Ena was a pilot and they were her favorite stories to tell. I am sure its no surprise that I grew up with Amelia Earhart as one of my heroes. The woman who flew so that my grandma could fly.
She vanished into the sky—and into one of the greatest mysteries of the modern age.
In this episode, we fly into the world of Amelia Earhart, a woman who refused to stay grounded, refused to stay compliant and traditional in a time when society expected her to. She became record-breaking aviator and one of the most famous women in the world. The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. A symbol of independence, grit, and relentless ambition.
But Earhart wasn’t just chasing records—she was chasing the edge of possibility itself.
In 1937, she set out on a daring attempt to circumnavigate the globe, navigating thousands of miles over open ocean with only the tools and technology of her time. Somewhere over the vast Pacific, near a tiny speck called Howland Island… she disappeared.
No confirmed wreckage. No distress call that told the full story. Just silence.
In this episode, we’ll trace her rise from a curious, rebellious girl to one of the most famous pilots in history and then dive headfirst into the theories, investigations, and unanswered questions that have kept her story alive for nearly a century.
And we will take a brief flyover to meet the Night Witches of the USSR's air service.
This episode is to celebrate Women's History month with women who paved a runway for those who would come later!
Rachel Hartigan, Lost: Unsolved Mysteries of Amelia Earhart and the Bermuda Triangle
Susan Butler, East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart
Doris L. Rich, Amelia Earhart: A Biography
Mary S. Lovell, The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart
Candace Fleming, Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart
Ric Gillespie, Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance
Elgen M. Long and Marie K. Long, Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved
Mike Campbell, Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last
Fred Goerner, The Search for Amelia Earhart
Vincent V. Loomis, Amelia Earhart: The Final Story
Les Kinney, Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave
Theodore G. Tharpe, Crash and Sink: The Salvage of the Earhart Electra
National Geographic Society, “Amelia Earhart Biography and Disappearance”
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “Amelia Earhart”
Library of Congress, “Amelia Earhart Papers”
FBI Records: The Vault, “Amelia Earhart”
TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery), “Amelia Earhart Project Research”
U.S. Navy Historical Center, “Earhart Search Operations 1937”
PBS American Experience, Amelia Earhart
History Channel, “Amelia Earhart Disappearance Theories”
Transcript
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| 0:20.5 | My grandmother, Ina, and her sister Evie, were two of the first licensed pilots in Wyoming and Montana region, |
| 0:25.9 | and flew trans-mountainal flights, particularly during the war when all the men were gone. |
| 0:30.8 | Evie was one of the safest, most successful mountaineer pilots, |
| 0:33.6 | and my grandmother was trained as a wasp, the Women Air Force Service pilots. |
| 0:37.6 | There were civilian volunteers in World War II who became the first women to fly U.S. military aircraft, |
| 0:43.0 | with a thousand seventy-four women flying over 60 million miles. |
| 0:46.4 | While they were primarily operated within the U.S. to free up male pilots for combat, |
| 0:50.8 | some, like the seventh ferrying group, flew to Alaska-Siberian border for the |
| 0:55.1 | Lend-Lease program. My grandmother was trained for this program, but was never called to that |
| 0:59.7 | flight due to the atomic bombs dropping and the end of the war. I have a copy of my grandmother's |
| 1:04.4 | pilot's license, and to this day she died, it was the thing that she was the most proud of. |
| 1:08.4 | I have a dollar bill signed by World War I Ace Eddie Rickenbocker that she kept, and it was her favorite set of stories. She was all fire and adventure. But then she did what women were supposed to do. She got married after the war, became a housewife, and part of her faded. She was only ever truly lit up when she talked about being a pilot with that little quote puddle jumper flight |
| 1:28.0 | she used to fly cultural pressure is a hell of a monster when i was eight and she was teaching me |
| 1:33.3 | gaelic she was a hundred percent scottish she said her two dreams were to fly again and to see |
| 1:37.8 | scotland for herself her parents had come over to the u.s shortly before she was born she never |
| 1:42.5 | achieved either of those dreams. |
| 1:51.2 | Not surprisingly, my grandmother ignited in me a fire and a passion to fly or to do whatever I wanted, like a girl, and as a girl, if I damn well pleased. While I was being taught in church |
| 1:56.4 | that my only purpose was motherhood, my grandmother was whispering, oh, but what if you could fly? I suppose |
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