Josephine Baker: Diva and WWII spy!

Forever Ago

American Public Media

Kids & Family, History, Education For Kids

4.4 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joy and co-host Obasi are so obsessed with historical spycraft that they become top secret spies! Their mission, should they choose to accept it: investigate the life of superstar Josephine Baker.

Josephine danced and sang on the biggest stages of Europe in 1920s and 30s — and fell in love with France. In fact, she loved the people of France so much that she was willing to risk her life as a spy during World War II. Her story has everything: coded messages written in invisible ink, dangerous missions and even a pet cheetah! All that, plus a new First Things First!

Featured experts:

Hanna Diamond is a historian and author of Josephine Baker’s Secret War.

This episode was sponsored by:
Disney - Experience Disney's Elio, only in theaters June 20. Rated PG, parental guidance suggested.

Transcript

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0:30.1	And tune in to Million Billion wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
0:42.6	00 Obasi, do you copy? Over?
0:46.7	Yeah, Joy, I mean, double O'Dolo, copy that, over.
0:49.4	Roger that? What's your 20? Over?
0:52.2	You mean my location? Joy, we've been... Uh-oh-oh-oh. Okay, double-o-d-o. We've been sitting next to each other slurping milkshakes
0:58.6	for the last 10 minutes. You know my location.
1:04.3	Over. Copy that. I just wanted us to test our new H-E-R-M-I-E, aka Hermie,
1:15.0	issued thumb radios before we get our next spy mission. Over and out.
1:20.9	Ah, gotcha. These tiny communication devices disguised as our thumbs are pretty cool.
1:25.5	Yeah, now when we spy on somebody, they'll just think we're giving them a big thumbs up,
1:29.2	when actually we're sending our super secret spy messages by talking into our thumb radios.
1:31.7	The perfect tool for agents of Hermie, like us.
1:35.6	What does Hermie stand for?
1:37.4	Historical effects retaining mystery, intrigue, and excitement?
	...

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