Hacks, Hitler & the Hotel Imperial

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

Society, Sex, Scandal, Education, History

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We might now be used to hearing about the intimate details of celebrities and world leaders, but when did this become the norm?

In the lead up to the Second World War, a collection of American journalists began to report not only on world affairs - interviewing Hitler, Gandhi and Mussolini to name a few - but also private affairs, their own and those of others.

Today, Kate is Betwixt the Sheets with Deborah Cohen to find out about the reporters John Gunther, Frances Fineman Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson. Deborah is the author of a new book ‘Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On A World At War’

*WARNING there are naughty words and adult themes in this episode*

Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Sophie Gee.

Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello my lovely betwixters! How are you? It's Kate Lister and I'm here with your fair do's warning.
0:06.3	What is a fair do's warning Kate? Well this is the point of the show where I give everyone a heads up
0:11.4	that this is an adult podcast of an adult nature and there will be adult themes flying around.
0:16.1	So fair do's you have been warned. This episode we are veering into the sex lives and the general
0:22.4	scandalous debris of a bunch of pioneering journalists who were writing just before the Second
0:27.7	World War broke out. It's not the weirdest one we've ever done but there is definitely naughty words
0:32.4	and of course as always just a smattering of sexual content and you just might not fancy that today
0:38.4	in which case you can just sit this one out and I'll catch you next time because fair do's you
0:42.9	have been warned. If your day job just so happens to involve traveling the world, conversing with
0:51.9	world leaders some dictators as well and a few revolutionaries to boot. You'd think that that
0:58.4	was exciting enough but is that ever where the excitement stops? Well not for the people that
1:04.1	we are looking at today. Gunther, Nickabucker, Sheehan and Thompson were a group of pioneering
1:10.9	globe-trotting American reporters and if you've never heard of them don't feel bad neither at
1:17.4	but we're going to hear about them today and they are just amazing. So today we are getting
1:22.5	the twigs the sheets of their reporting and of course their bedrooms.
1:46.7	Hello and welcome back to Betwix the Sheets, a history of sex scandal in society with me
2:04.4	Kate Lister. The 1920s and 30s saw the birth of a new form of journalism, one which saw reporters
2:12.1	not just anonymously and unbiasedly reporting on what they were seeing but one that saw reporters
2:18.0	listening at keyholes and psychoanalyzing their subjects in the manner of Sigmund Freud.
2:24.1	But the resulting merging of public with private was also taking place for the reporters themselves
2:30.4	and as much as they wrote about the dirty secrets of dictators and there were many they were also
2:36.9	handing their own dirty washing on the line for everyone to see. Today I am talking to Deborah
	...

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