00:00:00.000All right, so today's guest is someone who has really been kind of really living at the intersection of science, history, storytelling, and has turned all of that experience into a historical novel that we're going to be talking about today, about a woman whose knowledge just really scared powerful men, which if you cannot tell by being a subscriber to my podcast or my sub stack, you probably already know that's my favorite kind of story and woman.
00:00:24.300um so this recent arc that we're just wrapping up here on the podcast has been all about what
00:00:30.100happens to women across history when they refuse to stay in the roles that the patriarchy has
00:00:35.000assigned to them and uh and so this makes this fit really perfect and with what we've been talking
00:00:40.480about on the podcast lately so uh let's get started and i will have our guest introduce herself1.00
00:00:46.960something that's you know kind of bitchy pretty bitchy bitchy i know it's just you know bitchy0.99
00:00:54.800well first of all you're a little bitchy that's that's next level bitchy uh she is dr gg berardi0.99
00:01:02.420who is a professor at western washington university and author of a forthcoming book0.99
00:01:08.020Bianca's Cure. Would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, let's see. I have been at
00:01:17.020Western Washington University and the College of the Environment for quite some time, but before
00:01:22.040that I had positions on the East Coast in other universities and colleges, and so I certainly
00:01:28.620identify as a professor, but I've also worked virtually all my life as a journalist too, and so
00:01:37.560It's really important to me to be able to move between genres and styles in terms of communicating.
00:01:45.620And that academic voice doesn't work for so many people.
00:02:07.560That's amazing. I really appreciate people who are very interdisciplinary in their approaches and are able to write well, which I, going back to my first master's, I remember my advisor telling me at once, she, I was complaining that I was worried that my writing wasn't academic enough. It didn't sound academic enough. And her response was, don't worry about it. It's because you can actually write well. Most academics can't. Bless her. Bless her. She was hyping me up a lot.
00:02:34.800But it is true that there are a lot of people who get so tied down into that academic style that they can't break out of it and write to work with other people.
00:02:44.800And I have to say, I thought that I was probably one of the most interdisciplinary scholars that I knew, not to toot my own horn, but I kind of free float between a lot of stuff.
00:02:54.860But I was looking at your work and I don't think I have anything on you because you've done a whole lot of stuff.
00:03:00.620And now I don't even know you've done journalism. That's amazing.
00:03:03.040uh but you've crossed into science humanities all across the board I tend to stay out of science
00:03:08.600mostly because math kind of gives me hives I don't I don't want to do that uh so I think it's
00:03:14.060just really impressive how how many different fields that you've covered and now breaking into
00:03:19.220you know writing in uh in writing fiction as well which is amazing so one of yeah go ahead yeah
00:03:26.900oh no I didn't know if that was a question yeah so yeah I just kind of a just me kind of fangirling
00:03:32.680I guess. I just really appreciate anybody who's able to communicate that well with people. I think
00:03:36.620it's a huge part of writing. So you've spent a lot of your career in teaching, obviously journalism,
00:03:44.560scientific spaces. What is it about your background and things that kind of drew you to
00:03:49.340writing historical fiction? Because I saw I was interested in what could be this story. And in
00:03:58.220fact i think you really nailed it when you described me as interested in science history
00:04:05.140and storytelling and i i think that's it in a nutshell that if you are interested in science
00:04:13.060and the history of science and can tell a good story about it i think that's a win-win-win and
00:04:22.660And we're, Phil, as you've interviewed, you know, others as well, we're filling in the story with what has been otherwise a very thinly sketched narrative.
00:04:37.920And so people ask me, you know, is this a true story or what about it is true?
00:04:47.220And I say that if I were to write a story based on the historic record, it would be about four pages long.
00:04:58.440So it always it always comes comes down to that.
00:05:03.400So so I think it's really all about, you know, filling filling in the spaces and writing a compelling story as if you were that character, because how can you write otherwise?
00:05:17.220So you have to put yourself in it. And I identified some with Bianca. It was not an easy road. I actually wrote the entire book from the standpoint of Francesco, her lover, and I threw out 100,000 words.
00:05:36.960Oh, my God. That's so much work. You were like, I can't write from this perspective anymore. I got to change this.
00:05:42.480and to this day if I have to let go of a paragraph I'm a maniac I'm an absolute maniac so
00:05:49.120a hundred thousand words was really significant yeah you're like oh boy how what am I going to
00:05:55.200do with all of this I'm sure you got you got to repurpose some of it but it's it's difficult if
00:05:59.060you're changing the whole perspective yeah surprisingly very little oh wow yeah and so
00:06:05.620what I did was I had a completely different approach then, which is kind of mood-driven,
00:06:13.860voice-driven narrative, and then took on the persona of Bianca.
00:06:20.600Yeah, and let's talk about Bianca, because I just really love her. As I mentioned before we
00:06:25.380started the interview, I haven't actually finished the whole book yet, and I know we don't want to
00:06:28.860give any spoilers to the listeners anyway, so that works out perfectly. I won't accidentally
00:06:33.340spoil a major plot point or anything that way. But let's talk about Bianca, kind of what drew
00:06:39.300you to her and what we do know about her as a historical figure. Well, this all happened one
00:06:47.580day when I was walking with an Italian friend across this piazza in Florence. So I teach in
00:06:54.080Florence. I've probably taken groups of students and lived in Italy in the summer for about 15
00:07:02.440years now and so um thought i thought i knew florence very well so i was walking with this
00:07:08.680friend we were speaking in italian and she said as we were walking look at the window uh behind
00:07:17.640you and where we were we were in front of the hotel loggiato dei serviti which is one of rick steve's
00:07:24.920favorite hotels in florence but kitty corner to it was an open window and if you actually google
00:07:32.120open window and Florence you'll have a story you'll get a story and she told me that the spirit
00:07:40.320of Bianca Capello lived this woman from the 1500s lived there and the window has to stay open and if
00:07:50.340it's closed then she screams and in fact her nemesis who was her lover's brother Ferdinando
00:07:59.860who went on to become a grand duke also is in bronze on a horse looking at her looking at that
00:08:06.660window okay then i snuck into the hotel and asked people working there is that true do you hear a
00:08:13.860scream in there but there's a scream so i was really taken up taken by this idea that uh
00:08:22.900that this person still had a presence and kind of asked the question, well, who was she?
00:08:33.200As it turns out, it's not clear that it's Bianca. It could be, you know, one of Ferdinando's lovers,
00:08:40.500whatever um but it got me started and uh and all i knew was that and this is well known
00:08:52.040that allegedly she and francesco who were lovers until his wife died and then they were married
00:09:00.280um that they were killed on the same day and supposedly by ferdinando the person in the
00:09:08.180square pointing. And I thought, well, there must be a story there. And in fact, her remains have
00:09:15.400not been found, not really, whereas Francesco was a grand duke and is buried in the chapel
00:09:24.460of the princes in Florence. And in fact, his remains have been exhumed twice, trying to look
00:09:31.340for evidence of malaria so the parasitic eggs or arsenic poison like degeneration of okay yeah yeah
00:09:41.500you see how how he died so there's that that's out there it's one of the biggest mysteries
00:09:48.220of the renaissance wow and um then i knew the other piece of information is i knew she came
00:09:56.300from venice and i knew that in palazzo vecchio which is one of the five top sites to go to in
00:10:06.700florence so this duco palace she had her own room for study just like francesco has this it's called
00:10:16.300the studio it's a room of treasures well she had another room which is a secret room you have to
00:10:22.780to go through secret passageways to get there. And she was interested in the occult. So that's
00:10:31.620what I knew. And in fact, that must have been one of the things that attracted Francesco
00:10:39.560to her and vice versa, because the Medici were occultists at that time, his father and Francesco
00:10:47.080himself and in fact even a century before in the 1400s with the real birth of the renaissance
00:10:56.280great masters there botticelli and others then through to the scientists in the 1500s
00:11:04.440were occultists they were alchemists they were interested in what was hidden that you couldn't
00:11:10.520see and how one accesses that i think that's it's always such a fascinating period for that and it's
00:11:16.440It's something I talk about a bit on the podcast when I talk about the witch trials, which people often associate witch trials with the Middle Ages, but that's not when they were ongoing.
00:11:24.320They were really towards the beginning parts of the Renaissance because people began to kind of poke into these areas that had previously been.
00:11:32.480We don't talk about that. It's it's hidden. It's not discussed.
00:11:35.740But the more science comes into the fore, the more they say we're going to we have to poke at all these things that that traditionally have been not looked at.
00:11:45.160uh you know that there have been forbidden to us and we have to we have to do that research
00:11:49.660and i think that's is something so fascinating about that because we think of the renaissance
00:11:54.240at this time of like science but it is a time where the occult is part of science because
00:11:59.640it's not understood and they're they're trying to understand it all uh so i think that's that's
00:12:04.320really fascinating it was but just like you're saying you know supposedly beginning in the 1200s
00:12:11.7201300 so obviously before then but men were involved in basically what was become the scientific
00:12:20.600method but if that's still the 1200s and 1300s and now we're talking about the 1400s 1500s you
00:12:28.760can see that it was a a a long road to travel down or through for for what would be science
00:12:37.640and one of my themes is that and this is not just my theme but i try and trace the origins of it is
00:12:45.380that science has been so male dominated and so at that time and what was going to happen was
00:12:53.800there was going to be this tension between chemistry and uh and alchemy so it would have
00:13:05.120the same root and chemistry comes from uh alchemy in in a sense and so i really wanted bianca to be
00:13:14.220this crazy badass alchemist and to a certain extent she was and she came from she came from
00:13:23.300in my book a family of women herbalists okay yeah um but instead she becomes but that is the space
00:13:32.200that men were inhabiting. So I had to, I had to give her another cause, which was to try and put0.98
00:13:40.300a little, a little systematic investigation into, into her pursuit of this cure and try and test
00:13:54.740what she was doing and see what was working and what was not. So that idea of testing, which is
00:14:00.980like you know biblical actually really yeah appropriated by and became a cornerstone of
00:14:08.680the scientific method i have her kind of being a champion for that and then from there what's1.00
00:14:14.940happened now is women scientists are taking the book and seeing that uh this road that women
00:14:23.120scientists travel is the same as five centuries ago it's still it's still very difficult yeah
00:14:31.660that's the person she became and after I had written quite a bit of this I came across a
00:14:37.840very academic book called Daughters of Alchemy I should check that but uh Daughters of Alchemy
00:14:44.720And in fact, there was a huge tradition of women alchemists in Venice in particular.
00:15:12.160and actually cortese is a anagram uh for secret in italian segreto oh okay okay that was just
00:15:22.240like a little cosmic whoa how did things coming together that weren't planned yeah it is always
00:15:28.720interesting when that happens you're working on something and then you find other research and
00:15:31.960you just go oh okay i i i jumped to a conclusion but somebody else had already you're like this
00:15:36.980is already there i just right my brain automatically connected it without even seeing this other
00:15:41.800other research it's always fascinating right so how much of obviously it's historical fiction
00:15:47.240right but how much is history how much is fiction kind of with the book so um uh so clearly
00:15:56.280um sorry i'm just looking up that title yeah daughters of alchemy um
00:16:02.920um so uh clearly i had to fill in there it is daughters of alchemy women and scientific culture
00:16:13.000in early modern italy yeah oh awesome i will put a link to that in the yeah i will put a link to
00:16:19.040that definitely so um the beats in terms of years and seasons even in which um the plot is laid out
00:16:34.000is accurate so what is what happened is I wrote this with I wrote this with um besides original
00:16:42.560sources like I have some of the letters that Bianca wrote Bianca the Grand Duchess
00:16:47.120Just as an example, besides that, I had a really good colleague in Italy, and who's an art historian, and then I had another colleague, Stefano Corazzini, who's a docent at Palazzo Vecchio, and he had written a book called A Duke in Love.
00:17:14.320so he basically wrote the non-fiction version of my book creative and i came across it
00:17:24.040maybe three or four years ago so i had actually written written the book but i really used that
00:17:32.980as a touchstone uh because his research was uh was um pretty detailed so so in terms of when
00:17:43.440she gets married and who her parents were and uh and um when she had a child or when she had another
00:17:56.080child that is all accurate um the casino the laboratory where francesco's magic happens that
00:18:09.920is accurate that is real the fact that there is a wooded area next to that casino that is real and
00:18:22.400in fact i mentioned michelangelo in the book and also galileo but michelangelo was a a very young
00:18:30.400teenager then when lorenzo de mendici in the 1400s plucked him from that particular garden
00:18:37.440So what happened to that garden afterwards, we don't know, but I have spun a story from that.
00:18:47.540I would say everything is accurate, except where, in terms of a historical record, except where, shocker, this woman's historical record is a little scanty.
00:19:02.440but the points in between that I was filling right with um our historical record right it's
00:19:11.440like filling it you're filling in like the internal thoughts and uh you know the the
00:19:14.820struggles and things that she's going through but it's it's following the exact timeline of her life
00:19:19.300which I think that's really great and I love that you're including these little historical figures
00:19:22.980who aren't who aren't famous yet they are that are just these smaller figures at the time
00:19:57.880yeah and i would just say that right now i'm working on an italian translation
00:20:03.080and so i uh i have an editor and uh we're working together on this so i'm kind of editing
00:20:10.840his editing and we are um going back and forth a little bit because he will write
00:20:18.440oh michelangelo was dead he was 89 years old and i you know and i said no he actually hadn't died
00:20:24.920it was two months before his death and the medicine trying to get him back into florence
00:20:29.800and you know damn well that's the case so anyway uh so here is a male editor that in italian and
00:20:38.360we're just going at it together in italian and so but but in a way it's another check
00:20:44.840which i love yeah yeah it is this double checking all of your your historical dates and accuracy and
00:20:51.480and things like that, which actually feeds into exactly the next question I was going to ask you,
00:20:55.080which is how you felt like your academic research background, how did that play into the writing
00:21:01.860for the book? And do you think it assisted with the writing of the book? I think it tied me down.
00:21:07.580I guess I think I was, despite what some of the readers say, I think it made me even
00:21:14.700extra cautious about the time sequence. At the same time, I had to frame it all in hopefully
00:21:29.180what is a uh an uninteresting uninteresting way um yeah and i uh what we what we don't know there0.99
00:21:45.040is no historical record of anyone working on malaria despite the fact that it's an italian
00:21:52.040word uh early on so so we don't know that we do know that she was interested in science or in in
00:22:04.660alchemy because of the little room because of the room that francesco had had made for her
00:22:11.140absolutely and i think that works in so many ways because the very idea that no one was researching
00:22:18.400malaria we don't know that no one was researching it but the idea that a woman might have been doing
00:22:24.060the research could be the exact reason why we don't have any record of the research being done
00:22:28.460right so it kind of beautifully fits into the the issue of women's contributions being silenced or
00:22:35.840you know um not given as much attention on in historical record exactly and so i yeah i um
00:22:47.880I'm not exactly sure how I came up with malaria what we know is that everybody was dying of it
00:22:58.600and we know that the Medici died of it and Francesco himself had Francesco himself
00:23:05.720had lost his mother and two brothers to malaria and he himself had malaria which is why scientists
00:23:15.420now removed his body and looked for evidence of malaria he had malaria they were in love really
00:23:23.400she wouldn't be working on a cure for malaria is italian but didn't come into being like that until
00:23:30.800the 18th until the 19th century but what it was called it was called the the third um the third
00:23:39.360fever the fourth fever because what happens is there is this cycle of every three or four days
00:23:46.400what happens is the parasite um kind of manifests itself uh and then it kind of dies down and then
00:23:55.060it bumps up and so people go through this cycle of fever and chills and that is actually what
00:24:00.840it was known as in the book i call it the heat disease but what i found out and i'm embarrassed
00:24:07.700to say this because this is actually after i had written the book is that in 2015 a chinese
00:24:14.340a chinese woman to you you got the noble prize in the category of physiology or medicine or medicine
00:24:23.540or physiology for discovering the cure to malaria and she had used she had used 2 000 years of chinese
00:24:37.700history of Chinese work, part of what she had done earlier before that, 50 years before that,
00:24:45.76040, 30 years before that, when China had its fingers all over the place and people were
00:24:56.860fighting and people had malaria. She used a record of a Chinese herb, which we call artemisian.
00:25:05.200And there's hundreds and hundreds of artemisia.
00:25:08.240The artemisia that's used as a prophylactic and for treatment is artemisia anua.
00:25:17.360And the artemisia looks like a long, spindly, almost weedy flower.
00:25:23.720Sweet Annie is one of the terms for it.
00:25:28.800We say it's a wormwood, but wormwood is an artemisia.
00:25:32.640we get actually vermouth from that vermouth in german means wormwood is the name for wormwood
00:25:40.240so this is this lived in chinese history or cafe's history as it was called for millennia and so she
00:25:50.600and her team went through the record and she was not trained as a doctor or just formally but she
00:25:59.260did she did study pharmaceuticals and extractions and she was she finally she finally extracted
00:26:08.660artemisinin which is the active ingredient which is the active ingredient and is used today
00:26:15.100wow and so and people also drink it as a tea and it's maybe less effective than having the actual
00:26:24.620isolate but we know now that you you don't really boil it you can't heat it you barely
00:26:33.120can distill it Bianca didn't know that but but um to you you did and so Bianca comes from Venice
00:26:45.380Venice was a major port they had to be getting they and they did of course trade with China and
00:26:53.600Artemisia had to be coming in right so it fit every every little bit even though it was something
00:26:59.220that you discovered later it all fits together into this perfect you know this perfect uh ball
00:27:04.520of historical fact where it's all everything comes together correctly uh and so you you can
00:27:09.480just be like yeah I I wouldn't I wouldn't even specify you didn't know about it ahead of time
00:27:13.960you just let everybody just let everybody think oh I knew all about uh I knew everything about
00:27:19.180this I did it on purpose but it's it's almost even better that you didn't know it ahead of time
00:27:24.060because it just it feels like it came together like Bianca's ghost was just kind of like hey
00:27:29.720here's the information you need go and go and write this up so that people know about what
00:27:33.880you know know about the history of of this uh and I think that's that is just so fascinating
00:27:38.680uh so your scientific background really shines through in how you write Bianca because like I
00:27:44.360said, I have glancing interest in science. So, you know, I look at it, my mother's, my mother
00:27:50.400works in science. So I know things about it, but it's so clear that the author knows what they're
00:27:57.300writing, right? If I was writing a book about a scientist, it would not come through as well,
00:28:02.180I promise. So you really, you know, are able to bring a lot to that as a result of your,
00:28:07.860of your scientific background. So your kind of scientific training really become part of writing
00:28:13.380this? Or was it just kind of in the background? Oh, I think so. I mean, I love chemistry. And so
00:28:20.540my biology degree at UC San Diego was really as much chemistry as biology. We never had any plant
00:28:28.840or animal biology, any organismal biology at all then. And it was only when I went to the
00:28:38.300University of Sussex for a year, but still there I also studied history and philosophy of science
00:28:45.140and for the year and got a very big dose of the kind of political underpinnings of
00:28:55.980uh of scientific thought and um and disagreement uh so uh yeah because i do very much um like
00:29:07.420chemistry and uh wanted to make sure that these this work that she was doing was was plausible
00:29:17.180with what was available yeah and i think that that is one of the amazing things about it is because
00:29:22.220It's also that history background, which allows you to look at the science that you know today and kind of translate that back to what was physically possible, what was available for her at that time.
00:29:33.780Because obviously what we have now, it's not the same as what they had then.
00:29:39.180The scientific technique, the scientific technology is not the same.
00:29:45.040And so translating that, it was so well done.
00:29:52.220correctly within the time time period that being said renaissance is not my specialty and italian
00:29:58.140renaissance is not my specialty at all so uh everybody knows i i stick with my american history
00:30:03.980a little bit of western a little bit of england uh witch trials that kind of stuff is my only
00:30:08.620only uh real knowledge of european history but it felt right to me anyway yeah but mystery is
00:30:16.060and so that is one of the things as much as history and uh and and just as an example
00:30:27.420uh as an example you know galileo was kicking around too and he is from pisa and i found out
00:30:38.380that uh that Ferdinandos this is the brother who is the um the antagonist uh of this story and
00:30:48.540later became a very big grand duke of Tuscany anyway he employed Galileo as a tutor and so
00:30:58.620ages were working out that one of their children Francesco and Bianca
00:31:03.740might be tutored by this person as well and in fact Bianca's son is known to have taken over
00:31:14.540the casino that we were talking about the laboratory and he was interested in the occult
00:31:20.700too. So was Galileo. When we look at physicists and even back to Newton, the whole idea of force
00:31:35.980is very esoteric. It's an occult touchstone. It's something you can't see, something that you can't
00:31:47.000touch and but it's there right there's a lot of that in early science definitely
00:31:52.180yeah i mean we look at that and it's like how how do you discover gravity right it's these things
00:31:57.900that are are you are invisible forces acting on if almost every single day yeah it feels a little
00:32:04.000bit like the occult feels a little bit like witchcraft if you can't see it uh and you just
00:32:08.140you just have to believe that it happens it just works um so one of the things to to kind of hone
00:32:13.960in on this for my for my audience specifically um how much of this book were you consciously
00:32:19.960writing about gendered authority like was it was there an intent to kind of deal with the gender
00:32:26.320roles and the the way that women were treated at that period when you went into this or did
00:32:30.580that just kind of happen because of the story i knew it was going to happen because it's a story
00:32:37.640that many of us have lived so uh so I that struggle or that relationship I should say
00:32:49.460is kind of embodied in the in the persona of the cardinal of Ferdinando there aren't many
00:32:57.560characters sorry there aren't many characters in the book and um and and so uh so uh as i said
00:33:12.000that struggle is embodied in his character the cardinal i mean in a sense men and women are
00:33:21.000playing into that so they're playing into patriarchal structures as are the nuns
00:33:30.760most of the nuns not all but the nuns in in venice in padua and in florence at
00:33:38.680santa elizabetta where a lot of the action happens which is on that same piazza with the open window
00:33:44.040um uh so uh it it it had to be and i think uh so i had to think about that yeah and how she was
00:33:56.900going to react and navigate that uh and what battles she was going to pick um is is all about
00:34:06.860that dynamic uh that sort of inherently part of the the story right yeah you can't you can't talk
00:34:14.620about her story without talking about the gender issues of the of the period oh absolutely and it0.96
00:34:21.420turns out by many historical accounts she was drop dead gorgeous and voluptuous she was a blonde
00:34:30.540um so uh and she acknowledges that when she's 10 in a conversation the very first chapter with her1.00
00:34:40.180aunts um and it's just uh it's just a data point for me how she how she looked but as women
00:34:54.280scientists will attest to, if not many women, that these structures, whether you're dealing with
00:35:04.480a person who identifies as a man or as a woman or both or neither, still exist.1.00
00:35:17.060Right. It's still impacting women in science and anyone in science to this day.
00:35:21.520And it's a reaction to her as a young person. So she's dealing with ageism also. And it's a reaction to her as a beautiful person dealing with, you know, bimbo images, triggers. Yeah.
00:35:37.760Yeah. Being a woman reduces your credibility to some degree. Being attractive, people just assume you must be dumb. It's this corollary of, you know, you didn't get where you are because you're smart or you know what you're doing. It's just because, oh, you're pretty and people like having you around. Those kind of things.1.00
00:35:58.080And it's it's it's completely it should be completely immaterial to assessing somebody's skills, but it's not. We're still dealing with that so much today. You know, many, many jobs or it's easier to get the job if you're attractive. But that doesn't mean you're going to get the you're going to get the funding or you're going to get the the attention that you want because because of that. It's unfortunate.
00:36:20.520that for sure for sure and in the book francesco is an interesting character remember i know him
00:36:28.140pretty well because of that first hundred thousand words in his perspective and but he doesn't play
00:36:35.120too much of a role in this i mean he's in it we're doing an audio tape and i was just last night
00:36:41.340trying to find good pages for the audition tape and there aren't very many for him actually and
00:36:49.940And so he actually saw her for who she was, even though he was a pawn in the whole thing also, in gender power.
00:36:58.640But he saw her for what and for who she was.
00:37:04.160And in fact, he wasn't a man's man either.