America's Mata Hari? The Double Life of Esther Reed
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cautionary Conversation: When a small-town detective gets a tip about a missing woman, he believes he's uncovered a highly-trained chameleon: a foreign spy. Soon, Esther Reed is on the Secret Service's Most Wanted list, and a nationwide manhunt has commenced. But all is not as it seems.
Jake Halpern joins Tim Harford to talk about the latest season of his Pushkin podcast Deep Cover: Never Seen Again. They discuss the dangers of incrementally increasing lies; how and why certain stories are escalated up the media "food chain"; and what it takes to lead a double life.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What is a city without its music? |
| 0:02.4 | The legacy of the New York Philharmonic is incredible, nearly two centuries of history. |
| 0:07.4 | That's a lot of music and a lot of stories. |
| 0:10.5 | I was sitting on stage for the very first time thinking, |
| 0:14.0 | I can't quite believe this is happening. |
| 0:16.4 | Join me, Jamie Brunstein, as we explore the history of the New York Philharmonic. |
| 0:21.3 | It's the NY Phil story made in New York, |
| 0:24.1 | a podcast about a city, its people, and their orchestra. |
| 0:28.0 | Listen wherever you get podcasts. |
| 0:30.4 | Music |
| 0:36.4 | Pushkin. |
| 0:40.0 | She was tall and fabulously beautiful. |
| 0:43.2 | Her background, her dancing, and even her name were exotic. |
| 0:47.2 | She performed in the nude, or close enough for the standards of Paris in 1905. |
| 0:53.2 | She was Mata Hari, the most infamous lady spy of the 20th century. |
| 0:58.8 | At least, that's Mata Hari's reputation. |
| 1:02.0 | But, was she actually a spy at all? |
| 1:04.8 | Was she a desperate young woman, fleeing an abusive husband, |
| 1:09.0 | struggling to make a living in a cool world? |
| 1:11.8 | Her real name was Margueretta Zella, |
| 1:14.3 | but the Mata Hari persona soon became much bigger and more famous than |
| 1:18.5 | struggling single mother Margueretta. |
... |
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