Vulgar History - How Ada Lovelace Predicted The Rise of AI

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is 0.73

00:00:17.240 Anne Foster and we are in the Regency era season. We've been talking about people living

00:00:21.700 mostly in England, the late 1700s, early 1800s, what is commonly known as the Regency era,

00:00:27.740 aka the Georgian period and today we're sort of closing out that chapter this is not the finale

00:00:32.680 of the Regency era that's next week but we're talking about a person who was born in the

00:00:36.920 Regency era and then she lived a bit later on so we're sort of like bookending things

00:00:40.660 in that person we're talking about is Ada Lovelace and I have a very special guest today this episode

00:00:46.500 would not exist without her because I didn't realize Ada Lovelace was interesting until this

00:00:51.340 person made me read about her. Welcome, returning guest, Lana Wood Johnson.

00:00:56.480 Hello, it is me, the resident nerd.

00:01:00.040 So for people who maybe haven't heard a Lana Wood Johnson episode yet, can you explain your

00:01:05.360 historical interests and expertise and what sort of episodes people are in store for when you're

00:01:10.400 on the scene?

00:01:11.360 Expertise is a little bit of a strong word. I have a history degree that I used to become

00:01:17.560 an IT nerd and a database person. But when I studied, I studied early modern history.

00:01:25.320 I secretly also studied modern history because that's what I actually wanted.

00:01:29.460 I have a strange obsession with the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs because they're

00:01:37.320 interesting. Not talking about either of those things today. But we're not talking about that

00:01:40.820 Today, what we're talking about is what I used my history degree for, which is data analytics.

00:01:48.920 And I actually went into history of population.

00:01:52.760 So I love technology.

00:01:55.440 And of course, I love anybody that has to do with technology.

00:01:59.720 And more importantly, the social science aspect of technology, not just the hardware and the geekery of it. 0.98

00:02:07.800 and ada lovelace before you know i'm gonna just throw it out there right now trigger warning lord

00:02:14.220 byron she is the daughter of lord byron so we're gonna have to talk about him a bit but he dies

00:02:19.040 very early on in this story but all all that i knew about her i think i know for a fact you

00:02:24.420 suggested we should do an episode about her and i was just like uh lana i don't i don't know what's

00:02:28.360 wrong with me that i keep when when you suggest a podcast idea they're always good but i'm like

00:02:32.080 oh you were the one who was like you should do a season on marie entranet and i was like oh no

00:02:36.000 thanks. And then, you know, that happened. I'll agree Maria Teresa was not scandalicious in the

00:02:44.180 slightest, but she did give us the passive aggressive letters. So when you suggested

00:02:51.120 Ada Lovelace, here's what I knew about Ada Lovelace. And maybe this is what some listeners

00:02:54.380 also know about Ada Lovelace. So we're all going to learn together, which I just vaguely knew,

00:02:58.740 like I work for a public library and my job at the public library is I help to choose like which

00:03:04.300 books to order for the library. And so I'm very familiar with the fact that there are numerous,

00:03:07.940 I would say dozens of children's book biographies about Ada Lovelace that focus on like girls can be

00:03:14.840 computer programmers to women in STEM, you know, like rebel girls presents Ada Lovelace. She

00:03:20.780 invented computers. So all I knew is just she's this person that there's picture books about.

00:03:24.880 And I misguidedly assumed that at all times, woman or girl who's interested in science would be boring, would be a person who's studious and does not get up to anything scandalous.

00:03:40.160 And I was incorrect.

00:03:43.180 I was incorrect. 1.00

00:03:44.120 Women in STEM can be messy bitches. 1.00

00:03:46.200 And that's what Ada Lovelace is here to show us. 1.00

00:03:48.080 And when I was pitching this episode to Anne, I'm like, no, what I am doing is I'm stealing an Allison episode right from under her because this is like dirtbag central.

00:04:00.240 So the Ada Lovelace story, it's really it's really at the Venn diagram of your interests, my interests, Allison's interest.

00:04:07.080 It's like right there. And I just didn't know I was part of that Venn diagram because I just assumed based on people who I know in my personal life or interested in math and science.

00:04:17.000 I thought that the people, all people who are interested in math and science are just kind of like boring nerds.

00:04:24.380 no no no science uh technology in particular doesn't move forward without people that have

00:04:32.660 just like the most outlandish ideas and intentions and and there's there's there's always two sets of

00:04:41.880 people like in apple there was steve wozniak who is the stereotypical hardware nerd wanted to make

00:04:48.000 computers be computers and then there was steve jobs who like studied zen and was like obsessed

00:04:55.880 with health and wouldn't like made people put their their degrees on the outside of their 0.98

00:05:03.180 cubicles so he'd know whether or not they were worth talking to like he was he was a messy bitch 0.86

00:05:10.140 those two people are necessary to move technology forward and we have one of those examples for 0.97

00:05:16.900 today he's the steve job side of that listeners yes and as you might guess when i told you who 1.00

00:05:24.080 her father was genetically this this woman was not gonna not be a messy bitch at least 50 her 0.97

00:05:30.320 mother tries her mother tries real hard um but yeah the byron genes are strong 0.98

00:05:36.360 but it's also an interesting story because like to do in this podcast in this context because we

00:05:42.340 started the regency era series talking about like mary shelley oh actually no we start with like

00:05:46.560 Mary Wollstonecraft so we're in like the late 1700s getting through so you know Lord Byron

00:05:52.320 looming large over all of this frankly in a way that I don't appreciate but Ada Lovelace was born

00:05:58.360 so she's born literally in the Regency era and there's people like there's people in the story

00:06:03.640 who we've seen before like in previous episodes like she's interact her mother certainly is

00:06:08.000 interacting with one of these people last week's episode we were talking about you haven't heard

00:06:12.180 atlantic because it hasn't come out yet um but a lady caroline lamb who uh lady caroline lamb

00:06:18.920 was present when lord byron met his his brief wife um well they briefly lived as man and wife but uh

00:06:30.580 so just to explain sort of where did she come from so actually no first i'm going to say my

00:06:37.500 My main resource for this is I read a biography by Miranda Seymour called In Byron's Wake,

00:06:43.120 The Turbulent Lives of Lord Byron's Wife and Daughter, Annabella Milbank and Ada Lovelace.

00:06:48.260 And it's a really good read. You were telling me before when pitching this episode and coaching

00:06:54.800 me through my aversion to learning about scientists, you're saying like, no, no, no,

00:07:00.060 like Byron, like he's not present, but like he, he's so large in this story.

00:07:05.420 the genes the genes are run true so i like that this book is called in byron's wake you know it's

00:07:12.280 like he came on the scene married her father this child died but like his influence overwhelms both

00:07:19.460 of their lives really so i read this book it's really good by marina seymour um and then also

00:07:24.000 just for sort of factual fact checking i've got the entry here in front of me for ada lovelace

00:07:29.120 from. It's called the Women in World History, a biographical encyclopedia. So just to go through

00:07:36.020 to make sure I don't miss any of the facts and figures. So she's known as Ada Lovelace. She was

00:07:41.980 never called that in her life. Well, she was born Augusta Ada Byron. And we need to get into this.

00:07:51.120 There's going to be numerous sidebars. Listeners, actually, can I just say, listeners, if you're

00:07:56.160 the sort of person who is like, wants a podcast, that's, that's sort of someone just reading out

00:08:01.980 loud in the encyclopedia entry. You're not going to get that here. There's going to be giggles.

00:08:06.600 There's going to be, um, sidebars. There's going to be lots of tangents. So if that's you and you

00:08:12.440 don't like that, turn off this episode. Now don't leave me silly reviews on Apple podcasts being

00:08:20.980 It took them 20 minutes to get to the topic.

00:08:23.220 That's the point of this show.

00:08:25.920 And when Len and I get together, there's a lot of extra sidebars.

00:08:30.000 So just trigger warning.

00:08:31.860 We already know at least one.

00:08:35.000 It's just going to be what it is.

00:08:36.520 And if you like this, then on the Patreon, there's Ann Allison and me doing this constantly on our Vulgar Peace Theater.

00:08:47.440 Exactly.

00:08:47.960 So yeah, if you like the chit chat, join the Patreon.

00:08:50.480 and or just listen to this episode if you don't like the chit chat peace out and go listen to

00:08:55.800 I don't know noble blood whatever so we've got Augusta Ada Byron and for tangent number one

00:09:04.520 so she's named Augusta after Lord Byron's half-sister Augusta

00:09:10.820 Lana's chortling because she knows what I have to explain to you now I'm sorry this is definitely

00:09:19.960 time to go please get this there will be giggles so lord byron had a half sister called augusta lee

00:09:29.300 this is crucial i think they were not raised together and they didn't really know about each

00:09:34.360 other until they were fully adults and then they met and then they by most accounts had a

00:09:41.720 years-long sexual relationship half brother and half sister and although we're in an era where a

00:09:49.580 lot of first cousins got married um siblings was a step too far for for this culture even even the 0.83

00:09:58.480 regency even this wild ass jersey shore time period um siblings was a step too far so she

00:10:08.420 was named augusta after byron's sister a person who so her mother is annabella milbank annabella

00:10:17.200 Millbank is this like really wealthy. She's very interesting. If you, if one is to read this book

00:10:23.340 in Byron's wake, I learned a lot about Annabella Millbank. She was like, um, we'll see this

00:10:28.860 throughout her life. And it transforms in some ways that I find less pleasant, but as a young

00:10:33.220 person, she was so sure of herself. She was raised, she was like the surprise child of older

00:10:40.300 parents. And they just like worshiped her. They adored her. They thought she was so great.

00:10:44.560 everybody loved her in society. She was this heiress and everyone thought she was so great. 0.85

00:10:49.200 And then when she entered the marriage market, it's like, who's she going to marry? And everybody

00:10:53.860 wanted to marry her because she was like cute and pretty, but also like this heiress with lots of 1.00

00:10:59.060 money. And she's just like, no, no. And she was in the marriage market for three seasons, like 1.00

00:11:03.680 three years in a row. And she just kept saying no to everybody. And her parents were like, that's 1.00

00:11:06.560 fine. We love you, which is regrettable who she ended up choosing to marry. But her thing,

00:11:10.640 why she was turning everybody down Annabella Milbank was because she read a lot of novels 1.00

00:11:15.320 and she really wanted a great love she didn't want to just marry some guy first mistake 0.72

00:11:22.240 oh second mistake is the novels she read were about virtuous young women who reformed rakes

00:11:29.520 so she wanted to find a guy she could fix she wanted to find

00:11:34.000 second mistake well and i mean and then the third mistake is that byron she's like oh here's a 1.00

00:11:43.480 person here's a messy bitch like who i can fix with my excellence and you know christianity or 1.00

00:11:51.460 whatever and math maybe a lot of math oh yeah no she loves math he called her byron called her the 1.00

00:11:59.080 princess of parallel grounds. There's a lot of cute nicknames. And this man is known for being

00:12:04.660 a poet. Yeah. She loves math and she read a lot of novels and wanted to fulfill this like trope

00:12:15.240 of like finding a man and fixing him. But it's like, that's a trope in books, Annabella.

00:12:21.400 This is not how life works. Anyway. So she chose, she chose Byron to marry.

00:12:27.140 and the other thing about this and then he was kind of like no i can't and that just made her

00:12:32.340 even more invested in it because he was behaving intentionally because this is how he always

00:12:36.560 behaved like a hero from a novel and then she's just like oh he's fulfilling everything and i mean

00:12:42.640 we talked about this in last week's episode about lady caroline lamb i had alexander vasti was on

00:12:47.720 the romance novelist and she like she hates byron so much like i i hate byron who doesn't hate byron

00:12:56.860 if you don't hate Byron you're not in the right place well and she kept saying Alexander she's

00:13:01.640 just like why why has everyone drawn to him why and I I understand why people are drawn to him

00:13:07.360 because he was very hot he had a lot of charisma like his charisma was very high he was hot and

00:13:16.480 charismatic he's just like oh no like I'm just trying to think of somebody and like he's I don't

00:13:22.500 know i'm sure his love bombs were were hard oh my gosh yeah no he was like and he's a poet um

00:13:29.860 and he's and he's got he's like inspiring this like i can fix him feeling like what i'm picturing

00:13:36.200 is like er era george clooney in terms of just like handsomeness mixed with charisma where it's

00:13:42.040 just like well i would be helpless in front of that too um in modern times for my for the younger

00:13:47.920 listeners i'm thinking maybe connor story who is nice but also very charismatic very hot

00:13:55.620 so it's just like you have no chance less narcissism yeah yeah connor story not exactly

00:14:01.940 right but like connor story if he was shitty connor story connor story if he were actually

00:14:06.560 ilia yeah connor story if you if you give him dark hair dye i think could play byron in a very

00:14:13.220 oh yeah i think he he has curly hair anyway so byron wins her over and at this point it's like 0.92

00:14:19.980 why why byron like you're fucking your sister you're fucking everybody like why do you want 0.99

00:14:25.260 to marry like lady caroline lamb the rich heiress why would he want to marry the rich heiress 1.00

00:14:30.240 well that's why because lord byron was very famous and very popular and very hot but he

00:14:39.520 had never been wealthy and he needed money and so he met annabella milbank and so they got married

00:14:46.300 but the thing of this too is like and this is you know ladies spend time alone with a man before

00:14:54.440 marrying him is what one of the things we learned from annabella milbank don't just let this all 0.85

00:14:59.420 take place via letters especially with a narcissistic poet yeah so they agreed to get 0.99

00:15:06.660 married. And the first time she's alone with him was like in the carriage ride, like after their

00:15:10.640 wedding. And she was just like, oh, oh no, he's shitty. And she like realized pretty much right 0.99

00:15:15.460 away, but it was too late. They were already married. And she didn't know yet, but he's in

00:15:22.000 this sexual affair with his sister, Augusta Lee. And why would Annabella think that was happening?

00:15:28.760 So they like, Augusta Lee is on the scene a lot. And she's like, this is great. We can be this fun

00:15:33.960 trio a husband a wife and the husband sister pals best friends chums um so augusta lee's on 1.00

00:15:45.160 the scene a lot augusta lee is like being a messy bitch about it she's like acting 0.89

00:15:50.320 jealously and annabella millibank is just like we're friends this is nice 0.99

00:15:55.080 yeah annabella's situational awareness was not high

00:16:00.160 no that continues for the rest of her life well the thing with Annabella too is I mentioned she

00:16:06.320 was like the only child of older parents like everything had always gone really nice well for

00:16:11.620 her she had never had like challenges in life she just assumed everything was nice always because

00:16:17.360 she was rich she's she's also kind of this the stereotypical homeschool kid yeah like she was

00:16:24.540 really smart she spent a lot of time she like she voluntarily learned things as opposed to

00:16:30.380 like reluctantly learning things so she is she is kind of that homeschool kid that didn't get out

00:16:37.060 much and and maybe doesn't reads definitely reads too much yeah well definitely takes novels

00:16:45.880 at face value so this does become important later on so byron and his sister augusta had a child

00:16:53.660 together um he was the father of augusta's daughter medora who comes in later medora similar

00:17:02.340 age to ada anyway so ada is born named after augusta because annabella at this point still

00:17:08.960 doesn't know that byron is fucking his sister so her name is technically augusta ada byron when

00:17:14.520 she's born she's known by everybody as ada and when she was five months old annabella was just 1.00

00:17:19.740 like she finally figured it all out and she's like fuck this and fuck you and goodbye and she 0.99

00:17:28.880 leaves him so she is smart enough to figure it out like no not my child yeah and part of the 0.99

00:17:38.860 reason why the marriage falls apart despite ada being a very like conventional like following 1.00

00:17:44.180 the rules. Like the thought of leaving a husband would be, this is a real last resort for her. 1.00

00:17:50.980 But he, Byron, and you know what? Listen back listeners. I did a whole episode with Emily

00:17:55.360 Edwards about Byron, but he had various psychological issues and which were not

00:18:02.420 helped by the fact that he drank a lot and seemingly was allergic to alcohol. So when he

00:18:07.580 drank, it like affected him really profoundly. Anyway, he was abusive to her. You know what?

00:18:13.780 good for her she figured this out she married him bad decision but she like you were just saying 0.99

00:18:19.260 she's a sheltered homeschool girl and then when she figured out it was a shitty decision like

00:18:22.700 this was bad she left and because she knew her parents would always support her and always love

00:18:26.840 her and that's more than a lot of the women in his life like she she's like no not my child

00:18:31.920 not me anymore we're out of here go be shitty with anyone else well and this is where when 0.99

00:18:38.360 we're looking at Ada Lovelace and just in terms of like 50% of her DNA is Byron and 50% is Ada,

00:18:45.020 who is like a strong willed person, like, like to be raising her, like this is, you know,

00:18:52.760 just imagine listeners, like what kind of person Ada Lovelace is going to show up to be when these

00:18:56.360 are the parents, like could not be stronger personalities in oppositional directions. So

00:19:02.960 usually well legally in this time um the custody of children always went to the dad and we've seen

00:19:11.000 that a bit in this regency era season like georgiana duchess of devonshire like the husband 0.82

00:19:15.200 always had possession of the children like this is a reason why a lot of wives wouldn't leave

00:19:19.340 their husbands because they didn't want to abandon their children but byron was just like

00:19:22.320 no it's fine bye i mean if anybody's going to abandon their children it's going to be byron

00:19:27.080 yeah it's kind of his thing well and this is 1815 so byron leaves and this is also at the

00:19:35.200 time period where byron so he was really famous really popular and then rumors of his

00:19:41.240 incestuous relationship with his sister started to spread the rumors about like him having like

00:19:46.080 gay relationships like he suddenly was like too scandalous for regency london which is saying a

00:19:52.240 lot so he left to continental europe he was just like see you later england and he this is where 1.00

00:20:00.940 he went off and one of the things he ended up doing was renting a villa in switzerland where

00:20:04.880 the shellys came it's at this point where claire claremont is like you know what i'm gonna do

00:20:09.720 become the love of byron's life like claire after seeing all of this and all of the mess and

00:20:16.440 like the fact that he couldn't even keep his own child he's got a lot going on claire you're like

00:20:22.760 17th in his list of priorities so you know poor anyway so unlike some other relationships with

00:20:30.260 some other couples byron was just like annabella leaves him and then byron leaves the country and

00:20:35.620 so she just raises ada by herself and there's no like you know custody battles or anything

00:20:40.020 because he's just like goodbye everybody like annabelle is like okay great

00:20:44.520 this worked out pretty well actually so anyway the so they separated and it's kind of like well

00:20:54.260 i guess she's legally in charge or we're not sure but then lord byron died 1824 of a cold

00:20:58.680 when like play acting as a greek freedom fighter in greece um allegedly um his dying words were

00:21:09.880 addressed to his daughter. Allegedly, he said, oh, my poor dear child, my dear Ada, my God,

00:21:15.940 could I have but seen her? Give her my blessing. Don't think he said that.

00:21:20.500 Yeah, I don't think he remembered he had a kid. Of the kids he had, I don't think he specifically

00:21:25.940 remembered Ada either. Nope, I don't think so. So Ada is growing up in her mom's household.

00:21:35.140 I do want to say like I will get you Lana to explain what it was like growing up

00:21:39.760 with Annabella I want to say I have a cat her name is Hepburn she's asleep right now but she

00:21:46.320 often likes to stroll around when I'm recording podcasts and when she comes by I feel like she's

00:21:51.360 wondering like is there a cat in this story is this a cat and I'm just like babe I'm sorry it's

00:21:55.380 just dogs in this one but there is a cat in this story Ada had a beloved pet cat named Mistress

00:22:01.820 Puff. And in her journals and diaries, she drew pictures of Mistress Puff. She loved this cat.

00:22:09.120 And I was just happy to have a cat moment in this story. So are the children's authors.

00:22:19.000 Children's authors love having a cat in this story.

00:22:21.480 The picture books feature Mistress Puff long past the period in which Mistress Puff was on

00:22:25.760 the scene of the story. Mistress Puff, isn't it? If you're writing a children's book about

00:22:31.040 this situation just like oh thank god there's a cat but lana can you explain annabella's parenting

00:22:36.220 well annabella obviously raised by older people and obsessed with learning and especially

00:22:45.220 obsessed with math is like i know what will counteract byron more math

00:22:50.580 and basically anytime uh it presented any sort of personality at all which she had in spades with 0.96

00:23:00.720 these two people as her parents uh she she just like you know you gotta learn more math and and

00:23:07.600 so she was a kid like 16 15 16 17 writing letters to um mathematicians and befriending them like

00:23:18.060 uh Faraday who who invented electromagnet or well discovered electromagnetism and and Faraday

00:23:25.580 cages which is why your cell phone doesn't work in an elevator and and why microwaves work no i

00:23:32.800 was gonna say so it's a real like homeschool kid homeschooling her kid so it's like kind of like

00:23:38.460 so i i have some details about the the techniques that annabella used so ada lovelace a spirited

00:23:47.340 young child her father's daughter and annabella was just like i need to squash any byron tendency 0.57

00:23:57.480 but and like ada is such a like physically the same charisma the same charisma well and she's

00:24:06.980 got the same just sort of like i'm gonna be a revolutionary in greece like that sort of 1.00

00:24:11.160 She gets real hyper fixations, but she also is fidgety. 0.96

00:24:17.000 So her mother would, when Annabella or when Ada got too fidgety, 0.81

00:24:21.620 here's the story. 0.99

00:24:23.160 When a housemaid was summoned to imprison Ada's fidgety fingers within black 0.98

00:24:27.020 cotton bags, Ada bit the maid. 1.00

00:24:32.760 Dispatched to a distant corner in disgrace, 1.00

00:24:35.160 Ada started chewing on the banister. 1.00

00:24:37.040 um so her mother made her this sort of like ticketing system where when ada did something 0.90

00:24:46.480 good she would get like a little handwritten ticket being like ada did something good

00:24:50.260 she did something bad the ticket would be taken away um and she would be like so one ticket back

00:24:57.240 and forth basically and then she would be like her punishments were just like solitary confinement

00:25:02.500 trapped in closets like she had to like squash underneath desks like her mother was just kind 0.58

00:25:08.360 of like i'm gonna break your spirit and she was incapable of it and she was incapable of it that's 0.98

00:25:16.440 that's the byron jeans but then also oh and actually i want to mention she got a second cat

00:25:21.680 don't know the cat's name but it was black puff was white there's a black cat as well 0.97

00:25:26.320 so she her mother's just like math math study math why aren't you studying more math and she 0.69

00:25:32.360 liked math. Not to get anything wrong, she did enjoy the math. She also had different interests.

00:25:39.220 She liked a lot of things, not just math. Yeah, she's a very creative person. And when she was

00:25:45.180 in her childhood, so let me see, she was born 18 and 15. So when she's 13 years old, she decided

00:25:50.660 she's going to invent a flying machine, for instance. When you were talking about the two

00:25:55.080 kinds of sort of like scientists, there's sort of the like, like, let's sit here and do some

00:25:59.240 computations type person. And then there's the like, let's think big picture. And she's a real

00:26:03.680 let's think big picture type. Her mother's like, do math. And she's like, invent Da Vinci's flying 1.00

00:26:10.060 machine. Like she's, she's like a imagination is huge for her. If she had been a man, everyone

00:26:20.320 would have known her name from like birth. Like she would have invented things. She would have

00:26:26.060 had all these opportunities because she, she saw the connections in everything.

00:26:31.420 So she was going to invent. So she's just like, I'm going to invent a flying machine. And so

00:26:35.220 she's looking at like, see it like she has, she makes like a little boat and watches how the

00:26:39.860 sails go. And she's like, okay, like I need, so we need to harness the wind. We need, you know,

00:26:44.640 she's inventing all these things. And because she's like rich and a homeschool kid, her mother's 1.00

00:26:48.320 like, great, you know, child led learning. So they set up all these ropes in this one disused room

00:26:54.160 to like, so she could like hoist herself up

00:26:56.360 and feel like she was flying.

00:26:58.320 Like this is, so she's really into flying machines

00:27:01.480 for a while, like super invested in it.

00:27:04.560 And then, but you were saying like,

00:27:06.020 she's writing letters to like the prominent scientists

00:27:08.180 of the day being, hello,

00:27:09.320 I am a young budding scientist myself

00:27:11.800 and I have questions about your theorems.

00:27:14.340 She's like reading their white papers.

00:27:16.300 Like she's reading people's theses.

00:27:18.440 Yeah.

00:27:19.080 Because she's so obsessed with figuring out

00:27:21.800 these problems that interest her.

00:27:24.160 So she moves on from the flying machine into being interested in building a planetarium, her own planetarium. And so her mother is just kind of like, you know, I like when you do math. I don't like when you think about imagination. So like, put you in this closet, do some more math, please.

00:27:40.740 anyway there's a period of her time uh there's like a period of three years in her teenage

00:27:46.380 life where she comes down with what her mother describes as measles but it seems like maybe it

00:27:51.300 was polio for some reason she lost her sight and became paralyzed for three years and her mother

00:27:59.940 kept her going was just like saying like ada what's what's 12 times 28 ada like what's the

00:28:06.300 square root of like Ada. When in doubt math. Just kept it like, I know you're blind. I know

00:28:12.920 you're paralyzed, but like, let's just do some equations. Okay. Like let's math. We'll see us

00:28:16.820 through this. And it did. Uh, she recovered, but she was like, so many people have talked about

00:28:21.900 on this podcast, you know, had, you know, symptoms for this, for life. And this is,

00:28:28.360 we're getting just out of the like bloodletting cure era, but we're into the sort of like doctors

00:28:34.640 are invented like no one knew it was up with her she had various symptoms for her whole life

00:28:39.560 anyway her mother connected her with mary fairfax somerville a lady mathematician who 0.83

00:28:47.460 is you know showing like women in stem girls can do anything 1.00

00:28:52.200 annabelle milbank would have absolutely been like the girls can do anything as long as it's science 0.99

00:28:59.840 here meet a science lady exactly so mary fairfax somerville like in the the byron way you know like 0.94

00:29:08.420 she's really charming she's really lovely she's also really pretty but she like and she's so into

00:29:13.500 math and science and so when she meets these adults they're like oh my god you're delightful

00:29:17.120 what a delightful little nerd this is love this kid so on the one hand she's like seeing mary

00:29:25.560 fairfax somerville she's getting and this mary fairfax somerville is her like lifelong sort of

00:29:31.020 mentor and friends like this is a great relationship less great relationship is when

00:29:35.640 ada fell in love with her tutor a man and ran off with him because because in the end byron's gonna

00:29:44.480 byron just when she's so it's like she's perilous for three years she gets her her sight back and

00:29:50.080 she's like oh my god a hunk my legs work i'm gonna run away

00:29:55.260 her mother's looking for math equations yeah no her mother's looking for math equations and all 0.82

00:30:02.220 she wants to do is run away with this hunk and so she runs away with her tutor and i need to say

00:30:06.060 for the first time that we're going to talk about this this township a lot brighton is where where

00:30:12.920 they're living we're we'll we'll sidebar on brighton in a bit but she spends a lot of time

00:30:18.280 in Brighton, which is a place just outside of London. You can get there on the train in about

00:30:22.760 an hour. I visited there when I was in, in England in March. And it's what I will say about Brighton.

00:30:29.720 I'm a big fan of this. Just actually, let me see. I don't want to say, I don't know if it's a city

00:30:34.080 or a town. Back then it wasn't much. Like it was just, it was just growing. Brighton and Hove is a

00:30:41.720 city. The first results I'll just say a seaside resort, a seaside resort. I'm like, yes, but what

00:30:47.040 is it? Is it, is it a city? Anyway, Brighton is the gayest part of England. I've never been in a

00:30:54.620 place with per capita, more pride flags in every business. Um, it was described to me later by one

00:31:01.980 of the, one of the podcast listeners I met. It's kind of like, yeah, it's kind of the San Francisco

00:31:06.220 of England. It's like, if you're going to celebrate pride, like people go to Brighton

00:31:10.840 for pride because it's like such a gazing and you know I was just like strolling around the sort of

00:31:18.020 like I don't want to call it downtown but sort of like the market shops area and all those stores

00:31:23.680 are just kind of like free trade coffee like really interesting looking vintage clothes like

00:31:32.560 vinyl like vinyl albums I'm like oh this is just hipster paradise right so I'm a fan back then

00:31:40.760 it was just kind of like a place where you go to take the waters if you're sick which i think is

00:31:46.060 probably why she was there in the first place anyway that is where ada lovelace ran off with

00:31:51.120 her tutor which is better than gretna green similar to her mom um in terms of like not 0.99

00:32:00.480 really having she's been writing letters to the outside to these um scientists but she doesn't

00:32:05.500 really have any life experience so she ran away to her tutor's um family home where he lived with

00:32:12.340 his parents and they were like uh and his parents were like friends with annabella and they were

00:32:18.520 like we'll just send you back this is not this is not a good idea either of you no you don't run

00:32:27.540 away to the your lover's parents house that's not how we're friends with your mom yeah that's not

00:32:36.900 how eloping works you're doing this Byron thing so wrong yeah you see the Byron thing um so let's

00:32:46.740 see so she's she did Byron in the nerdiest way possible is what she did here's a quote from

00:32:52.500 in Byron's wake one of Ada's greatest resources oh my little thing went asleep one of Ada's 1.00

00:32:58.240 greatest resources was an absolute refusal to repress her feelings in market contrast to the

00:33:02.940 self-control that Annabella had determinedly acquired so anyway so they're in Brighton she

00:33:10.500 tries to run with her tutor it doesn't matter she comes back and then she's at this point I'm glad

00:33:15.160 she's born in 1815 because I can do that math in my head pretty well 18 years old she wants to 0.98

00:33:21.580 be presented into society if i can't run off with a tutor i'm gonna get a different man 0.91

00:33:27.520 yeah like she wants to be like what if i don't do just math while trapped in a closet all day

00:33:33.200 what about going to balls what about meeting people my own age like i love hanging out with

00:33:39.380 elderly scientists but also are there other people of other ages in the world yeah she like

00:33:45.720 also befriends dickens like she likes people she likes all people right and this is like you told

00:33:51.980 me before like similar to byron like she liked meeting interesting people she liked collecting

00:33:56.540 interesting people and it's just most of the people she met happened to be elderly scientists

00:34:01.540 because of her mother yeah her mother wanted her to meet

00:34:07.580 anyway so she was introduced at court and again this happened in brighton so um this is when

00:34:17.840 so going through the regency era you know prinny the george the prince of wales he is the regent

00:34:27.160 and then when george iii dies then prinny becomes king george the fourth and then when he dies his

00:34:33.900 brother William becomes William IV. He becomes the next king. So at this point, that's who the

00:34:39.160 king is, is William IV. His wife is called Adelaide. And so this is where we need to sidebar

00:34:45.400 about the Brighton Royal Pavilion, because that is where Ada Lovelace was presented to the king. 0.97

00:34:50.620 And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? This is where the... Are you fucking kidding me? This 0.99

00:34:56.760 is... Okay. So I will say though, at her presentation, it says healthy enough by now

00:35:02.520 to stand for 15 minutes but no more without fatigue she was introduced to the luminaries

00:35:08.040 who were on the scene including wellington um who was good friends with lady caroline lamb

00:35:13.520 the naval guy and she also met you know who's on the scene the duke of orleans aka to this podcast

00:35:20.340 ryan philippe

00:35:22.300 she lived in interesting times oh actually no it wouldn't be renfield because he was executed

00:35:33.820 it would be his son but still the connection the new duke of orleans anyway so she's meeting

00:35:37.860 just all these kind of like elderly dirtbags and asking them interesting questions no doubt like

00:35:43.220 i i have a feeling she she gave good grown-up like there's certain kids you meet and they can 1.00

00:35:48.900 have conversation with grownups I have no doubt she was just peppering them with all of the

00:35:53.900 questions oh for sure it's like when you have like an only child of like older parents or like in

00:36:01.240 this case of like Annabella who is you know mentally an older parent she was born old she

00:36:06.200 was raised middle you know it's like they interact I've I know like friends of mine who have kids and

00:36:11.220 then the kids go to adult dinner parties all the time like those kids can like interact perfectly

00:36:15.060 with adults yeah okay so sidebar the brighton pavilion aka today the royal pavilion okay so

00:36:23.020 when i was in england one of the places that i visited was brighton the gayest city in england

00:36:30.160 love the vibe flawless perfect vibe um and the one so everywhere in england has kind of like their

00:36:38.880 one like heritage home like there's one palette like there's so many palaces everywhere so each

00:36:43.740 town is just kind of like, here's what our tourism industry is based on this one home. You know,

00:36:47.560 it's like, is it best of Hardwick's house? Is it like, whatever, like here's this one house that

00:36:51.640 we have. And Brighton and Hove, the gayest city in England, their claim to fame is the Royal 1.00

00:36:58.240 Pavilion, which was built by Prinny. So I went to visit it because I wrote a book called Rebel 1.00

00:37:07.980 of the Regency about Carolina Brunswick, the wife of Prinny. And I wanted to see this home

00:37:14.420 that he had built. And I want to encourage everybody to visit it because I support Brighton

00:37:22.700 and Hove. The Royal Pavilion is like owned by the city. Like this is how they make money. And

00:37:28.480 honestly, it's worth seeing. I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying don't see it. I'm just

00:37:32.660 saying it is a nightmare it's an experience it's an experience that you should experience

00:37:40.780 okay so pretty this was an era not just him but other people we touched on this in the Emma

00:37:46.080 Hamilton episode because her husband did this too everyone was just kind of entranced by the

00:37:50.880 concept of Asia no one had very few people in England had been to Asia but they liked the idea

00:38:00.480 of it. And so Prinney, when he decided to build his home here, and this is like,

00:38:07.440 Brighton is a seaside spa resort town. The Royal Pavilion is not on the waterfront.

00:38:12.320 It's in the middle of the city because he, what was important to Prinney was not being on the

00:38:19.080 waterfront and seeing the scenery and taking the waters. It was, he wanted to be close to where

00:38:22.620 people would go like parading in their outfits every day. So he could like watch people. So he

00:38:27.040 built this the royal pavilion not in the whole point of brighton which is like the sea but in

00:38:32.320 the middle of the city so he could like look at people people watching later his niece queen

00:38:39.820 victoria wrote some scathing remarks about the royal pavilion one of which was basically like 0.98

00:38:45.080 why is this in the middle of the city what the fuck why is this here this house is insane 0.97

00:38:49.660 i don't often agree with queen victoria but i do agree with her 0.98

00:38:54.020 sometimes she says correct things yeah i think she has to critique the quote oriental decor i'm

00:39:01.180 like you could say that in victoria so britney built this place the only context i have for

00:39:10.700 the royal pavilion is the great british bake-off episode in season six bread week where matt made

00:39:18.200 a curry royal pavilion out of bread and that is literally what she was saying she was saying oh

00:39:24.940 it's the royal pavilion it's like oh right like like bread week and making a curry is a really

00:39:32.320 clever thing to do making a curry bread pavilion because the outside of it was inspired by the

00:39:37.540 Taj Mahal Prini and his architect had never been to India or seen the Taj Mahal but they had seen

00:39:42.800 watercolor paintings of the Taj Mahal and so the outside I took a picture of this um everyone

00:39:49.440 in Brighton they're just like they know what they have there they're not lying in their signage but

00:39:55.100 they're being as polite about it as they can be in a British way but the sign said like you wouldn't

00:40:02.280 find a building like this in india but it took inspiration from the domed the domes of the

00:40:13.760 taj mahal so it's kind of like pretty so the taj mahal and he's like what if the taj mahal had

00:40:18.700 25 times as many domes what if it was just all domes what if you just tried to put 25 taj mahal

00:40:26.780 in the footprint of the actual so it's just like domes just domes on domes on domes so the outside

00:40:32.000 you're just kind of like, Oh, am I hallucinating? Like what, why is there so many domes on this

00:40:37.280 building? Okay. So that's the exterior. The exterior is just kind of like MC Escher presents

00:40:42.920 the Taj Mahal. And then inside is inspired. I thought kind of like Graceland. It's like,

00:40:50.800 here's the jungle room and here's the, this room, like each room would have a theme,

00:40:55.940 but instead, no, the theme of almost every room, except for one, which I'll tell you,

00:40:59.080 the theme is what do we think China is like is is the vibe so I took the audio tour they couldn't

00:41:07.920 be inside of China it's not that they couldn't even go to China it's that once you got to China

00:41:11.660 they wouldn't let you in you had to stay on on a little island so it's kind of like what do we

00:41:19.480 think China is like? Maybe. And so it's clearly what, here's what they knew about China. Bamboo, 0.80

00:41:29.240 dragons, and a sort of like pagoda style trim on the ceiling. So in Canada, there's a long history,

00:41:41.620 well, in terms of Canadian history of like Chinese food restaurants, like Chinese immigrants would

00:41:47.180 come to Canada in like the early 1900s. And it's just like, what are we going to do? Let's open a

00:41:50.960 Chinese food restaurant. So there's like little Chinese food restaurants in like tiny prairie

00:41:54.460 cities, like all over the place. And those restaurants would be like, oh, we're in a

00:41:59.380 community where people have never been to China. They don't know what China is like. So let's just

00:42:02.660 like give them the experience. And that's what the inside of the Royal Pavilion looks like,

00:42:09.220 except not done by Chinese people to begin with. So again, this is a sidebar, but I have to get

00:42:16.440 this off my chest so when you first walk in there's this kind of like grand hallway that you

00:42:21.280 go in and there's these i was listening to the audio tour and they're saying like okay you'll

00:42:25.620 notice and so there's these sort of like wooden statues i'm holding up my hands they're maybe

00:42:30.680 two feet tall little wooden like i will call them like little asian people statues and then the audio

00:42:38.980 tour mentioned yeah and there's like a little there's a hollow in the back of the head so that

00:42:42.760 you can like, so you can tilt them. And I'm like, Oh, I wonder what you do that for. And then they

00:42:47.080 explain like, so, so what these are is basically, you know, in Chinese restaurants, the like cat

00:42:50.960 with the hand that like goes back and forth, back and forth or sort of like a bobbing head dog you

00:42:56.340 put in your car. So Pranita got these like bopping head, little Chinese statues. So when people 0.80

00:43:02.120 coming down the hallway, he would get his butlers to like nudge the backs of them. So these statues

00:43:06.600 are all just kind of like bowing at you and we wonder why the british museum is the way it is

00:43:16.300 and the audio tour was like yes and such again the other tour is so polite not lying but just

00:43:22.680 polite it's like yes and many dignitaries came to visit here including wellington and georgiana

00:43:29.220 duchess of devonshire and i thought what did georgiana think of these nodding head dogs like

00:43:35.360 was anyone impressed by this?

00:43:38.980 These like Funko Pop toys.

00:43:44.880 Oh Lord.

00:43:46.000 And the banisters,

00:43:48.040 they're sort of like a grand staircase

00:43:49.060 and the banisters is like,

00:43:50.260 oh, that kind of looks like bamboo.

00:43:51.420 It's not because there wasn't any sort of trade

00:43:53.460 between China and England at the point in bamboo.

00:43:55.940 But what they had done is just taken like British wood

00:43:58.380 and then they like trimmed it to look like bamboo,

00:44:00.600 what they thought bamboo would look like.

00:44:02.140 So it's like fake bamboo banisters.

00:44:04.380 and then i think it's in the same room the wallpaper it's kind of like none of them had

00:44:08.720 ever seen bamboo the audio tour said but they imagined this is maybe how it grew

00:44:13.920 it's like turquoise and like florals coming out of it it's kind of like okay okay bamboo okay

00:44:22.460 um everything is carpeted and they okay so every everything is carpet it's not it's not the

00:44:30.320 original carpets but they painstakingly restored what the original carpets look like i'm like did

00:44:34.200 you have to do that and okay I won't tell you everyone but then the the dining room was just

00:44:42.520 there's giant sort of paintings of like I'm gonna I'm using finger quotes listeners like

00:44:48.700 oriental maidens and like oriental warriors so just kind of huge paintings of just kind of people

00:44:57.480 it's sort of just like red and gold and like dragons and there's this giant chandelier that

00:45:05.160 just seems like very precarious and overly large and it's it's just full of like lions and dragons

00:45:10.680 and it's it's huge and what i love is so prinny had this place built prinny lived here he loved it

00:45:16.960 um he lived there all the time because he didn't want to be king he just wanted to throw parties

00:45:22.040 it's okay it's a mixture of like graceland mixed with mar-a-lago is what the world pavilion was

00:45:27.420 in pretty state he would just have everyone come and visit him there in his preferred holiday home 0.92

00:45:32.260 that is tacky as fuck he died his brother william was like oh god okay this is my holiday home and 0.99

00:45:39.500 he like removed as much of the tacky shit as possible and his wife adelaide was like 1.00

00:45:43.440 remove that chandelier i think it's gonna kill someone one day 0.99

00:45:46.840 it's unfortunately it's unfortunate those two didn't procreate because

00:45:53.280 that might have actually been rational yeah so they removed the chandelier so like by the time

00:45:59.680 ada went there to like have her presentation like you'd still have the wallpaper you'd still

00:46:03.260 have the carpets but i think maybe the nodding head dogs were gone maybe like the chandelier

00:46:07.700 was gone like william was trying to make it be less tacky then by the time like victoria becomes 0.96

00:46:12.520 queen she's just kind of like what the fuck is this place and she like removed so she's she 0.85

00:46:18.360 very rarely went to Brighton um she didn't like it there she didn't like this house um and she 0.97

00:46:24.540 removed a lot of the furnishings but now in 2026 they have restored it to what it looked like

00:46:30.620 they've put they've restored all the carpets they've restored the chandeliers so and and it's

00:46:38.080 like yeah fair enough like if you have Graceland make it look like when Elvis lived there like

00:46:42.020 otherwise it's just kind of like a weird half empty Graceland I guess like you can't cover it

00:46:46.540 up really no no and that's the thing i was just like oh brighton like bridgerton's not filming 0.80

00:46:52.560 here this is too fucked up there's so many things bridgerton isn't going to tell you about the 0.83

00:46:58.820 regency but brighton is the big one they're not gonna film a scene in here i'm so sorry um 0.96

00:47:05.440 you're not getting that income from bridgerton so the one room that's not

00:47:09.680 asian themed is instead versailles slash napoleon themed

00:47:14.500 i mean why not so it's kind of like yeah so it's got sort of i think the carpet is like a phoenix

00:47:24.700 and then everything is just kind of like gold filigree and it you know la foo foo versailles

00:47:30.260 like the white house now yeah very much like that yeah so the whole the royal pavilion is just like

00:47:36.900 honestly go there it's like being inside of printy's brain it's so similar to i've also

00:47:41.960 been to Graceland and it's just kind of like oh like a kind of like drug addicted 50 year old man

00:47:49.020 who no one had ever said no to him in his life decided to design a house and here's what he did

00:47:54.780 here's what he did um and now we're cities are struggling to make a tourism economy out of

00:48:02.780 this midlife crisis manifest for anybody listening and may have only been talking

00:48:11.360 about the Regency for the last few months, but she's been living Prinny's nightmare world since

00:48:17.720 she started writing this book. And so this is purging that for her because she's going to leave

00:48:24.120 the Regency and she's going to leave Prinny behind and he will no longer give her jump scares.

00:48:28.700 I'm so excited to never have to think about him again in my life. And I think going to his home

00:48:34.820 in Brighton was just like the pinnacle, like just going in this house and knowing every horrible

00:48:40.580 design choice was his like had there been you know like hidden cameras like to capture my facial

00:48:47.360 expressions as I went room to room I was just like oh oh no like the audio commentary I was

00:48:54.240 like talking back to it I was just like no it's just like it needs to be seen to be believed and

00:49:04.260 as I understand this I met some listeners when I was in London and I mentioned that I went to the

00:49:08.660 to the royal pavilion and they were all like oh yeah no we haven't i've never been there i'm like

00:49:12.760 yeah i don't know how many people in england go to it but you know what take a dream to brighton

00:49:17.080 get some ethically sourced coffee you know visit the vintage shops and like take a stroll around

00:49:25.460 the tackiest unethically sourced

00:49:29.500 unethically sourced um like i think where culture appropriation was invented question mark um if

00:49:38.160 you've ever wondered what cultural corporation is visit the brighton royal pavilion um i do want

00:49:46.940 to say actually so like i like i have such a fondness now for brighton and for everything

00:49:52.960 there because i just had such a nice time but like we're this episode's coming in may so for 0.96

00:49:58.480 for pride for june like they're doing like pride at the pavilion because it's like the gayest city

00:50:03.960 And I'm like, you know what? Maybe having this camp, tacky home is perfect for this vibe of this city. 1.00

00:50:12.120 They just, anyway, I will mention too.

00:50:14.820 So from the Royal Pavilion, like down the street a bit, it's like you're back in kind of the city.

00:50:20.880 Because this is in the middle of the city.

00:50:24.520 Anyway, just down the street is Brighton's number one alternative rock bar, Carolina Brunswick.

00:50:30.440 which had not one but two pride flags waving outside of it so of course I think like Brighton 0.92

00:50:39.160 was pretty is like place you like to visit but it's it's got such a Caroline vibe now thank God

00:50:44.400 all of which to say Ada Lovelace lived in Brighton a lot she was there a lot throughout her life

00:50:54.200 and I don't I didn't know about her when I was visiting there and I was looking up later I'm

00:50:57.880 like oh what sort of memorials and whatever do they have to aid a love life in brighton nothing

00:51:01.600 i don't think but so she this is where she was a lot later in her life she she got a house there

00:51:08.980 and everything so but this is where she was introduced to society under under the reign of

00:51:14.040 william so it's kind of like maybe he took out some of the carpets maybe he covered over the

00:51:18.900 wallpaper i don't know but that she went into that graceland-esque mar-a-lago place and that

00:51:25.920 is where she she was introduced to society this seems appropriate like that seems way more

00:51:33.000 appropriate than her going to like buckingham palace or whatever yeah like her her vibe is

00:51:38.620 just you know you know who would have loved that pavilion is byron tragically dead he could never

00:51:44.440 go there he would have he would have liked that i think and now for a quick advertising break

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00:54:25.120 And we're back.

00:54:26.740 Anyway, so she's introduced to society in Brighton.

00:54:31.640 And then, so she's, it's her first London season,

00:54:34.060 and she's invited by Charles Babbage

00:54:36.860 to view his

00:54:38.200 difference engine

00:54:39.720 so it's her first season

00:54:42.800 in London and now picture

00:54:44.600 Bridgerton and what does she do

00:54:46.940 she makes friends

00:54:49.000 with an elderly mathematician

00:54:50.700 who is really

00:54:52.460 obsessed with creating a

00:54:54.740 computer the very first computer

00:54:56.600 and so instead of

00:54:58.680 like flirting with boys

00:55:00.480 and making

00:55:01.840 making real friends she's she's like tell me more about this math machine you're making

00:55:08.440 and he's i want to say this is like i've been i'm not i don't want to say traumatized but like

00:55:16.440 i've come to expect a certain kind of story to progress when i'm researching young women

00:55:22.920 for this podcast and when they encounter elderly men it generally doesn't turn out into like a oh

00:55:29.780 he becomes her surrogate grandpa. And this is sweet. That never happens. I was just like,

00:55:34.460 usually the elderly man, like does something shitty to her, even if he's not like sexually 0.93

00:55:40.380 assaulting her, or maybe he's like trying to get her money or whatever. But Babbage is just,

00:55:44.660 he's just like, this girl gets it. I like this nerd. Let's be friends. I'm 50 years older than

00:55:51.600 you. Let's go. And it's, it never gets creepy. And so I was, I found that reassuring and nice.

00:55:57.400 and and like she helps his career and he he like they they spend all of their time talking about

00:56:04.160 the computers they're not weird at all and it's it's mostly because charles babbage was very much

00:56:10.540 like her mother and would rather like criticize people for having fun and doing interesting things

00:56:16.640 so yeah he was not he's the what's the other apple guy he's the wozniak he's very much wozniak

00:56:25.060 He's like, it's all about the machines.

00:56:27.720 You got to make them better and got to make them interesting.

00:56:30.220 And he truly is the first programmer, but he wasn't thinking creatively.

00:56:34.720 He was very much, I mean, he was creative, but he wasn't thinking outside of a box.

00:56:40.200 He was creating the box.

00:56:43.060 He's like, this is going to be the box.

00:56:44.540 It's going to be a great box.

00:56:47.360 And he was a genius.

00:56:50.440 Ada's bringing in her understanding of math and science, but also her imagination.

00:56:54.580 I want to just mention at the same time.

00:56:56.880 So at the same time that she's entering society, like 1833.

00:57:00.460 So 1834 is when the word scientist was first coined,

00:57:05.580 which was actually in a review of Mary Somerville's,

00:57:08.780 one of her science papers.

00:57:11.060 So like the word scientist had just been invented.

00:57:13.580 Like science is like an exciting new thing people are up to.

00:57:18.060 And so Babbage just had,

00:57:20.480 what can you explain about the machines that he's,

00:57:24.580 building he's they're they're mostly theoretical and that's the big thing is like he didn't make

00:57:29.700 things he didn't he he didn't create like he didn't sit in a little shop and tinker he had

00:57:36.680 he was thinking through the possibility of what a machine would be like and so he was using um like

00:57:44.880 very early actual computers used punch cards and if you're like a super nerd like me who studied

00:57:52.320 population science you know a lot about punch cards but if you haven't they're literal like

00:57:57.860 little um like three i can't remember the exact dimension but like three by nine cards and you

00:58:05.080 and you punch holes where you want data to go because okay computers themselves are all just

00:58:14.200 little on and off switches and this is the part where computers get like weird mystical science

00:58:18.380 for for even for me but it's all on and off switch like this this on or is this off and

00:58:24.340 that's how your whole like I'm looking at Ann in Canada because my computer is turning things on

00:58:30.860 and off really really fast and so he was using very big cards to turn things on and off and

00:58:38.680 and that was his idea and and Ada Loveless what she brought to the table was um the fact that

00:58:47.120 she looked at the cards and he was thinking math he was thinking numbers um each of the each little

00:58:52.260 on and off switches was like zero through nine and he could do math with this and it a loveless

00:58:58.500 looked at it and she what she thought about was uh jacquard looms which is these really fancy

00:59:06.120 like silks and the the beautiful dresses of the time and and the curtains and all of that and

00:59:13.960 what they did with that is they had punch cards too but some of the punch cards were like changing

00:59:19.300 the color of the thread or making like a little knot there or changing the way the weave works

00:59:25.120 and so she looked at that big picture thing and so he was thinking this little mat like basically

00:59:30.620 a calculator but like the ti-81 calculator was what he was going for and she was thinking

00:59:36.160 me looking at ann in canada yeah no she's just like oh artificial intelligence let's go

00:59:42.660 so there's somebody witnessed so i think when when she first learned about this so uh somebody

00:59:50.220 named sophia de morgan witnessed her so he had he had built a model of this what he thought it would

00:59:57.260 do but it wasn't really like nobody really made it into like the 50s yeah yeah so other people

01:00:03.920 just sort of like gaping at this but miss byron young as she was understood its workings and saw

01:00:09.740 the great beauty of the invention so i want to mention health health update ada lovelace um 1835

01:00:18.680 so she's 20 years old um and she has what is described as a nervous breakdown so i mean who

01:00:26.600 amongst us whom amongst us what's it called the like quarter life crisis so many people go to

01:00:32.060 university it's like when you're 20 that's when a lot of like mental health things like kick in

01:00:36.040 And so she, something happened to her at this point.

01:00:40.460 She wrote a letter to Mary Somerville, the lady scientist friend.

01:00:43.980 She wrote, I'm always so exceedingly terrified at nobody knows what, that I can hardly help

01:00:48.280 having an agitated look and manner.

01:00:50.720 Every time you describe it, I'm like, don't say that she has pots. 0.98

01:00:54.400 Don't say she has pots.

01:00:57.360 But as somebody who can really stand up for 15 minutes and standing up causes me to have

01:01:01.800 an adrenaline crisis, I'm like, this all sounds really familiar.

01:01:06.040 i don't know lana she had a mysterious woman disease that caused anxiety yeah that nobody

01:01:13.240 could figure it out after an extended illness yeah which yeah i mean that's that's a symptom of 1.00

01:01:21.520 that's usually a trigger for those symptoms because they don't like pots is an autonomic 0.81

01:01:27.660 disorder so your nerves get shot one million percent yeah but she's like living in a time

01:01:34.020 where they're like, I guess, bloodletting or maybe,

01:01:36.300 and this is the thing they kept treating her

01:01:37.600 with like everybody's favorite, laudanum, 0.94

01:01:40.480 opium mixed with alcohol.

01:01:41.980 And perhaps she inherited from her father, Lord Byron,

01:01:46.520 an allergy to alcohol.

01:01:48.280 So I think being treated with this just didn't help her,

01:01:51.460 but actually exacerbated things.

01:01:53.560 Alcohol also exacerbates POTS and causes mast cell inflammation.

01:01:58.140 But, you know.

01:02:00.040 That's the treatment she's being given.

01:02:02.400 That's what's up.

01:02:04.020 look i like when i was before i was diagnosed when they didn't know it was a thing i was told

01:02:09.760 to take vitamin d and so like she wouldn't have had a chance even in my era no that's that's the

01:02:18.620 thing that's that's what i was saying just kind of like oh like a woman having mysterious symptoms

01:02:23.320 i don't know have you tried sleeping you tried breathing well yeah have you tried yeah exercise

01:02:30.640 eyes anyway so ada's like living with a lifelong condition of some sort anyway in the midst of

01:02:39.980 this so she has her nervous breakdown um and she meets william king so 10 years her senior and a

01:02:48.100 diplomat who had served on various missions in the mediterranean in the middle east

01:02:51.280 he spoke several languages among them greek french italian and spanish he was an interesting dude

01:02:56.500 he was yeah a lot like her mother he is a lot like her mother and that's you know when you

01:03:03.300 grow up in a family dynamic like that it's it feels familiar and i think ada needed

01:03:07.780 someone who is kind of like steady she didn't need some she didn't need like a byron type

01:03:14.180 to marry like she she needed to be the like kooky one in the relationship she needed the

01:03:18.740 other person to just kind of like support her and he also guess what big fan boy of lord byron

01:03:25.320 so she's not a pointless favor so the thing is with with ada throughout her whole life she keeps

01:03:33.760 meeting men who are just like your lord byron's daughter oh my god i love lord byron i feel it's

01:03:38.640 probably the same as like francis bean cobain meeting men where it's just like oh my god i

01:03:43.720 loved your father like everyone is just upset like byron died when she was very young but

01:03:49.280 it looms large over her life because he was such a notorious person

01:03:53.820 and this is the other thing about her too is that because she's the daughter of lord byron

01:03:57.680 all she's doing well i mean she did try to run away with her tutor at that one time

01:04:01.540 but she's just like doing science experiments and math but like the tabloids and the press are just 0.99

01:04:06.240 like waiting for her to fuck up like any nepo baby you know it's just like let's oh what's she 0.98

01:04:12.460 gonna do her father's crazy what's she gonna do like maybe she'll do something crazy like 1.00

01:04:15.940 so there's kind of this extra pressure on her to like not act out anyway so she marries this guy

01:04:23.520 William King in terms of the husbands we've had on this podcast he's just fine they liked each

01:04:30.360 other they maybe weren't wildly in love but they liked each other they liked each other and he

01:04:35.400 supported her science he was just like you want to do science experiments babe that's great do

01:04:40.460 your science experiments that's cool oh you have a large dowry don't mind that either oh and you're

01:04:46.800 connected to uh you're connected to the current prime minister at Lord Melbourne that's that's

01:04:52.420 great for my potential political career. Don't worry about it. So at this point, so they get

01:04:57.780 married in 1835, two years later, he was elevated to the earldom of Lovelace. So that's where she

01:05:02.460 becomes the countess of Lovelace. And he has a political career. He's the Lord Lieutenant of

01:05:07.760 Surrey, um, but kept supporting. And she's just like, I like science experiments. That's what I'm

01:05:13.560 into. But she has three children. So in the, do you remember in, I don't know, anyone who watched

01:05:21.060 Downton Abbey there's something where like the Maggie Smith's character is just like oh yeah no

01:05:27.360 I always I raised my children I visited them every Saturday in the summer or something like

01:05:32.260 aristocrats were not expected to raise their children right correct which is why her mother

01:05:38.020 raising her was very weird yeah well that which is why anytime in this whole podcast when I'm like 0.57

01:05:43.600 a mother wants to breastfeed her child everybody's like she's insane this person is insane 1.00

01:05:48.880 And Carolina Brunswick liked to get on the floor and play with her daughter. 1.00

01:05:52.160 Everyone just sent her to the asylum. 1.00

01:05:54.200 This is lunatic behavior.

01:05:56.140 So I want to put this in the context of... 0.99

01:05:59.340 Ada didn't give a fuck about her children, but no one really did. 0.89

01:06:03.620 So this isn't her as much as just society, I would say. 0.99

01:06:09.320 It wasn't expected of her.

01:06:11.660 No, exactly.

01:06:13.500 So she and her children grew up and they were like, our mother was great.

01:06:16.840 It's like, yeah, because this is what it's just other mothers weren't spending all their

01:06:20.520 time doing science equations, doing like science experiments, Charles Dickens, having 0.98

01:06:27.180 conversations with him about like her latest thoughts or, or, or corresponding with the

01:06:34.900 guy that's figuring out that magnets, how magnets work or how electricity, like she

01:06:41.560 talked to so many people about electricity.

01:06:44.400 She was into everything.

01:06:45.560 i love she had a whole we'll talk about this in a sec i'll wait until i get that to that it has 0.99

01:06:49.660 to do with electricity but i will say just like yeah so she didn't give a shit about her children 1.00

01:06:53.820 this says like most women of her class ada left the child rearing to servants yeah and that's 1.00

01:06:59.240 just like normal which is probably for the best frankly given how she was raised chronic chronic 0.99

01:07:07.080 illness um abusive mom emotionally abusive mom and physically and if she was like okay

01:07:15.120 hey, children, I have this one ticket.

01:07:17.280 I'll give it to you and sometimes I'll take it away.

01:07:22.660 It's for the best.

01:07:24.000 I have a funny feeling those servants did a better job.

01:07:28.380 Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

01:07:29.460 So she has three children.

01:07:30.700 And one of my side conversations we're going to have later is about the children.

01:07:36.060 Anyway, so she had two sons and a daughter. 0.99

01:07:37.800 And in the most fucked up way, her first two children were a son and a daughter. 1.00

01:07:43.860 and her mother was like, 0.98

01:07:44.820 call them Byron and Annabella.

01:07:49.940 Really?

01:07:50.660 She must live.

01:07:53.360 Really?

01:07:54.000 Name them after each other?

01:07:55.280 And then when the news kind of broke

01:07:58.100 about that Lord Byron

01:08:01.660 had had this sexual affair with his sister

01:08:03.360 and that this woman, Medora Lee, 0.90

01:08:06.240 was the child of incest,

01:08:08.880 then Ada and her mom,

01:08:10.600 her mom's still around,

01:08:11.640 like her mom's overseeing the child care.

01:08:13.860 oh no but anyway they're just like don't let any of the siblings be alone with each other

01:08:18.260 it's not how it worked even for him in case they have incest too we're like lord byron and

01:08:27.580 august lee were not raised as siblings they met as adults which is not to excuse the incest but

01:08:33.180 like it's not the same it's not the same as these two boys and a girl being raised together anyway

01:08:38.600 so yeah she left the children to servants asterisks and overseen by her mother so like

01:08:43.780 Okay. Anyway, so she's just like, God damn it, this difference engine. So like when she was a 0.99

01:08:50.520 kid, she's just like, I'm going to build a flying machine. I'm going to build a planetarium. And now

01:08:54.420 she's just like, I'm going to get in on this difference engine. So then she, she started

01:08:59.880 really getting into math so she could like understand so that she could like engage with

01:09:05.140 this better. So she could understand it, but she already knew math obviously, but she's just getting

01:09:08.560 higher level mathematical tutoring. And so 1842, this is where it took me a while. And this is

01:09:19.000 part of why I went to the children's biographies because I was like, what is this sequence of

01:09:23.200 events? So as you explained, Charles Babbage has like this machine that he wants to build,

01:09:29.780 but hasn't built, but theoretically could exist. And he's just kind of like, here's what I'm doing.

01:09:36.340 Like I'm a tinkerer type scientist.

01:09:38.300 Like I'm just going to build this.

01:09:40.020 So a guy named Luigi Federico Menebrea, an Italian mathematician, ambassador to France,

01:09:46.060 future prime minister of Italy, wrote a paper.

01:09:48.660 Okay.

01:09:48.780 So there's the difference machine and then there's the analytical engine, which are two

01:09:53.960 different things.

01:09:55.140 I don't know.

01:09:55.500 The difference machine is like, is a souped up calculator.

01:10:00.180 The analytical engine was kind of the first real, like the idea of the first real computer.

01:10:07.120 Exactly.

01:10:07.540 And it's an idea.

01:10:08.800 So Babbage has the idea for the analytical engine, the first computer.

01:10:12.420 And then this guy, Amanda Brea, wrote a paper about it in French.

01:10:17.680 So Ada Lovelace, like with her money, like with her family connections, she's supporting Babbage.

01:10:23.260 Like she's helping to get him funding for his continued research and stuff.

01:10:26.620 and she's like oh if i could explain what this machine is that would like more people will fund

01:10:32.300 it more people understand it maybe he could actually build it so this is where she puts on

01:10:36.320 her black uh turtleneck and starts starts explaining what this can do exactly she's in

01:10:45.560 her black turtleneck she's walking across the stage she's like presenting to you like imagine

01:10:49.520 a world where this could happen and so what she's going to do what she offers to do and he agrees 0.98

01:10:55.340 everybody agrees. She's going to translate this French paper into English so more people can

01:10:59.040 understand about what Babbage wants to do. So this is where I had an only vague understanding

01:11:04.880 of Ada Lovelace going into this. And I'm like, oh, Ada Lovelace, didn't she build the first

01:11:09.440 computer or something? No. No one built a computer, let alone her. But Babbage had the idea of the

01:11:16.300 concept of a computer. And then Ada translated a paper about it. But as she was translating

01:11:24.080 the paper, she was like expanding on it. She was like, he wrote this paper, but it was just kind

01:11:29.840 of for science guys. And she was like, well, I want to explain this more thoroughly. And so she

01:11:34.540 was consulting with Babbage and he, she was like, well, you know, you want to do this with the

01:11:38.060 machine, but what if we think about the Jacquard loom and what do we think about this? And here's

01:11:41.780 what it could do. So she translated this guy's paper, but then wrote like twice as long of her

01:11:49.000 own, what's called the notes, like explaining, here's what it could do. Here's what artificial

01:11:54.060 intelligence could be. Like here's a, and then she wrote a program. Here's like a program that

01:11:59.780 you could put into this computer that could do something. And this is the first computer programs.

01:12:03.920 This is what Ada Lovelace is, is most celebrated for is like writing the first ever computer

01:12:09.060 program. And it was a part of this translation of this paper, but she wasn't translating it.

01:12:15.380 she invented it so her work produced a manuscript three times the original length she's like

01:12:21.620 she had footnotes and and all of the extra stuff in it and copied his first programming and then

01:12:30.720 she she made her own she made one program of her own and she yeah and there's illustrations as well

01:12:37.420 that she added she was literally in her black turtleneck like that that image you have of

01:12:44.000 Steve Jobs standing up front explaining to you why you want an iPhone, what an iPhone

01:12:48.900 is going to do to change your life, why it matters that you can send a text message with

01:12:53.900 a little keyboard to your friend and pictures and all of that stuff back and forth.

01:12:59.780 That explanation of why this is important to you is almost more important in some ways

01:13:08.140 than the actual making of the machines.

01:13:10.340 Like if you don't understand, if a normal person doesn't understand why you would want

01:13:16.300 a computer, then it's not going to change the world.

01:13:20.740 It's not, like you can have all the iPhone.

01:13:24.160 I sold, I had my first phone that acted like an iPhone in 2003 when no one else really

01:13:33.400 did because no one understood why they would want to until Steve Jobs put on that shirt.

01:13:38.260 and so that's what she was doing that's that's why she is so influential and this is but when

01:13:45.040 we say she's so influential in the 20th century like she was being like here's what computers

01:13:50.160 could do this could change the world but until like the 1950s when people actually started

01:13:55.740 building computers no one like no one knew how forward-thinking and correct she was at the time

01:14:00.760 it's just kind of like oh lady lovelace she likes to write scientific papers do do do like

01:14:05.220 it wasn't a big deal at the time i don't think but okay so

01:14:08.400 it wasn't like life-changing at the time but people started thinking about it so this is like

01:14:15.160 the 1830s and uh what they started doing is uh building cryptographic machines that would do

01:14:24.220 translation and so like there it's it's a it's it's a slow build but it wasn't nothing like there

01:14:33.420 there were things happening like the radio came about and all of this stuff like electricity plus

01:14:39.020 the ideas of the difference engine and all of that stuff like it came to a head in the 40s

01:14:44.280 when they were trying to break the cryptographic machines and that's that's when people started

01:14:49.600 putting money into it i want to mention that uh this is a detail that i appreciate she when she

01:14:56.780 wrote this thing when she translated and then wrote her notes and made these diagrams she

01:15:01.360 refer to this as her firstborn child even though she had three yep yep but this is the one she

01:15:10.240 cared about this is the one she actually worked for she brought this one up and so no people

01:15:21.440 didn't people didn't know who she was people didn't really care about babbage no and she

01:15:27.140 couldn't say that she'd written it because like ladies couldn't weren't respected for doing so

01:15:31.960 she just signed it as aal like augusta ada oaa lovelace so no one knew that it was her who had

01:15:39.680 done this and and no one wanted to because like the the men folk like scrubbed her off of it

01:15:46.880 like even even growing up i didn't know much about her yeah yeah and even even computers like 0.99

01:15:52.940 honestly hidden figures did a whole lot for the just how much women influenced computers like that

01:16:01.840 uh oh what's her face olivia's character um the the one that like went down to the ibm 1.00

01:16:10.560 and figured out how to make it work for the for the flight calculator like

01:16:16.540 she she goes down to the basement and they're like trying to figure out how to make the ibm

01:16:21.740 where she like she opens up the manual and starts reading it like that that moment right there do

01:16:28.240 you mean in in hidden figures like the figures oh uh yeah catherine catherine johnson was

01:16:35.900 she was she was the mathematician upstairs her friend octavia spencer's character octavia

01:16:44.580 spencer thank you her character dorothy vaughn yeah dorothy vaughn goes down to the basement

01:16:52.520 starts figuring out the ibms well the ibms what they were doing was like they were trying to 0.93

01:16:57.680 replace the women that were the computers yeah like upstairs like the the even the name computer

01:17:04.400 comes from women because that was their job during the war was doing the math they they 1.00

01:17:10.300 computed the math. Well, and this is where like, I don't, my experience of Ada Lovelace prior to 0.99

01:17:17.200 doing this research was like, there was, I was saying like, there's all these children's books

01:17:21.980 about her. It's like, yeah, because like 10 years ago she became better known and it was like, oh

01:17:27.380 wow, women were involved in computers. Let's like let girls know this. It's an important thing. And 1.00

01:17:31.520 I celebrate that. I love that there's all these books about Ada Lovelace in the world, but it was

01:17:36.460 growing up for me, there was not a bunch of books about Ada Loves. I had never heard of her.

01:17:41.460 So she just like around the time that Hidden Figures came out, like the book and the movie, 0.56

01:17:44.800 and then other people like Hedy Lamarr, it's like, here's women. And they did science, 0.96

01:17:50.260 like people who are. I did know about Hedy Lamarr because I was in wireless cell phones.

01:17:57.600 And the fact that she invented a time division multiplexing. So TDMA, which ends CDMA.

01:18:06.460 which are what run the Verizon

01:18:09.960 and what used to be the Sprint network.

01:18:12.800 And it's now part of the T-Mobile network.

01:18:14.760 And then there's like literally

01:18:16.680 this Hollywood hotshot starlet

01:18:19.780 figured out how to make it 0.95

01:18:21.360 so people can't overhear your cell phones.

01:18:23.960 She did the math on that.

01:18:25.400 I love her.

01:18:26.500 Well, and I feel,

01:18:27.740 and you knew that because of your job,

01:18:29.700 but like now little kids growing up, 0.98

01:18:32.340 there's so many books about like women in STEM.

01:18:34.800 And so I celebrate that

01:18:35.680 and I'm happy about it, but we're here to celebrate Ada Lovelace hot mess. 0.99

01:18:40.300 And she's about to enter her hot mess era. 0.95

01:18:43.420 What I want to say though, is like Ada Lovelace, I was just like, oh my gosh. So like you were

01:18:47.420 saying, you know, she saw the machine and she saw the potential and what it could do.

01:18:51.180 So she grasped the implications of the analytical engine, even though it was never built. It was

01:18:55.580 just a set of drawings. Even so she issued a warning about AI. And I'm just like, God damn

01:19:03.560 it. This is so pertinent. She intuitively understood the implications of technological 0.99

01:19:08.220 change upon the nature of science. I'm going to read you a quote from her notes.

01:19:13.800 Basically, she's saying what she's saying. I'll explain it as I understand it. And I'll read

01:19:18.040 what she said. She knew that like, okay, like this computer, you can put information in it and

01:19:23.500 it can synthesize that information, but it's never going to come up with its own thought.

01:19:27.220 It's never going to originate anything. It's always just going to be like taking stuff you

01:19:30.480 put into it and messing around which is what ai does now like is we're all so it's not thinking

01:19:34.440 it doesn't do math it doesn't think it's a predictive engine here's what she wrote in like

01:19:41.400 1843 the analytical engine has no pretension whatsoever to originate anything but it is

01:19:47.900 likely to exert an indirect and reciprocal influence on science itself in another matter

01:19:52.160 for in so distributing and combining truths and the formulae of analysis that they may

01:19:57.220 become more easily and rapidly amenable to the mechanical combinations of the engine the

01:20:02.120 relations and nature of science are necessarily thrown into new light and more profoundly

01:20:05.920 investigated this is a decidedly indirect and a somewhat speculative consequence of such an

01:20:11.160 invention and this is where when we get into her legacy and stuff like later on so like alan

01:20:17.780 turing the turing test he's like one day computers will become you won't be able to tell if it's a

01:20:24.100 computer thinking or if it's a um a person's thought like you won't be able to tell them

01:20:29.780 apart and he he's just like ada lovelace said computers can never think on their own but they

01:20:35.420 can so he was like anti ada lovelace with his yeah they were they had very different perspectives

01:20:41.000 on things and i think like we could get to a point where computers can originate thought

01:20:47.420 we're not even close to that right now. What we have for AI, I'm not going to get on my own rant

01:20:55.040 because this is a history podcast, but what we have for AI is a predictive engine. So it looks

01:21:01.580 for what's the next most logical word based on the inputs it's been given. So it's interpreting

01:21:09.260 things based on what it knows. It's not thinking. And that's why it can't tell you how many E's

01:21:15.000 there are in the number 17 or something like that. Like it's, it's not thinking it's, it's just

01:21:20.740 regurgitating. And so we're not there yet. So I mentioned like, I, well, I mentioned to you,

01:21:27.820 I don't know if I forget if I said it on the podcast or not, but I was raised around women

01:21:31.680 in STEM. My, my mother did a math degree. One of my sisters did an engineering degree. My other

01:21:37.560 sister is like a robot scientist. Um, so I, and I was always into like theater fashion. So, you

01:21:48.600 know, I was, I was, I was the black sheep of my family in that way. So anyway, my one sister who

01:21:55.380 is a robot scientist, when AI started becoming more like in the mainstream discussion, she was

01:22:00.680 like, Oh no, what this is like, what's it called? An LLM. She's like, what it does. Yeah. She's

01:22:06.260 like what these do is like they just figure out what answer will make you happy and then they

01:22:13.000 tell you that and that's why it's not giving you good that's why it's not giving you good advice

01:22:17.140 that's not why it's not telling you truthful facts it's just it's been trained to be like

01:22:20.920 what answer will make the user happy is what it provides you it's why there's literally instructions

01:22:28.160 in the code of chat gpt that says it's not allowed to talk about goblins or raccoons

01:22:36.240 because there was a model that was like told to be geeky and it was rewarded for talking about

01:22:44.580 goblins and raccoons and like all of these creatures and now and and that infected the

01:22:50.940 other models so by default it really wants to tell you about goblins because like that made

01:22:57.620 one person happy once that made that made a bunch of the programmers really happy

01:23:02.680 it makes me happy like i i'd almost maybe consider using things that stole my property 1.00

01:23:10.600 if it told me about goblins and raccoons it's just so funny that ada lovelace like she

01:23:17.480 like she saw the theory of the concept of a computer and she was like you know what though

01:23:22.940 it can't think for itself so be cautious about that i'm like that's so pertinent but that's like

01:23:30.160 even for the entirety of my career i've been explaining that to people because people want

01:23:34.420 the computers to be thinking they they the only the only thing that charles babbage also kind of

01:23:41.860 sort of invented that is evil and does think is a printer and it does hate you that's true yeah

01:23:50.220 everything else is not thinking it's just doing what it's told i'm gonna give you one

01:23:57.800 we won't get into a whole ai discussion but i will just say how it i was watching like just

01:24:03.960 it was a woman who works at like the mac cosmetics counter in a department store and she was like

01:24:09.520 ai is telling people like these are the makeup colors you should wear you should buy them and

01:24:13.160 people are coming to mac and being i want this lipstick and she's like we don't have a lipstick

01:24:16.620 with that name. That doesn't exist. And they're like, oh no, but I want this lipstick. She's 0.99

01:24:22.400 like, do you want me to show you the lipsticks we have? And I can recommend one. And the people

01:24:25.800 are so, they're like, no, no. They're like so committed to thinking that this AI is some sort

01:24:30.520 of like Star Trek next generation level intelligence and they have to do what it says.

01:24:36.620 And she's like, but that doesn't exist. And they're like, she's like, I've never seen people

01:24:39.960 like this. Like they're so committed to these things that are just not true.

01:24:44.600 it like and that's why you're saying it's like people want to believe in this like higher

01:24:49.280 intelligence that is like gives you the perfect answer where it's like but it's it's just a

01:24:53.460 machine that was told not to talk about raccoons that's all it is and people people see humanity

01:25:00.440 it like we're we're we are coded to see humanity and things that don't have humanity it's it's why

01:25:08.200 we love our pets it's it's why we see jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich we we find humanity and

01:25:18.640 things that don't have it it's why it's why we all cry when wilson floats away in castaway it's

01:25:26.740 we're we're social creatures and and we want it and so that's the that's exactly why the large

01:25:33.080 language is dangerous and what ada was was warning about is that you're gonna find like she saw it as

01:25:40.740 as byron's daughter she saw we are going to find humanity and things that don't have humanity to

01:25:46.820 them it is dangerous watch out for it ada lovelace she got it she she got it she saw it and here we

01:25:56.660 all are living in this world she's like this big brain she sees things bigger than people do she

01:26:03.720 that's why she talked to the guy that did electromagnetism and charles dickens even though

01:26:08.560 i wouldn't talk to charles dickens no you know who came to visit her in brighton charles dickens at

01:26:14.080 one point but we'll get to that so in her dirt bag era oh we'll get to that um so in a lovely

01:26:21.820 and I think like part of it is you know 10 or 15 years ago there's there started being this like

01:26:26.740 girls should be encouraged to do computers let's find some heroines from history who they can look

01:26:30.400 up to like there was that but there's also getting more like how she saw they were going to be

01:26:34.860 like work has become only more pertinent with time which is so interesting but that's not what

01:26:41.060 they talk about they talk about she was the first programmer yeah and she did write this program and

01:26:47.480 So she wrote this thing, her notes, and she translated this thing.

01:26:52.720 And so Babbage began to refer to her.

01:26:54.720 Remember how Byron called her mother the princess of parallelograms?

01:26:58.140 So Babbage started calling her the Enchantress of Numbers.

01:27:01.200 There's a lot of names.

01:27:02.720 I'm pretty sure that's the name of one of the picture books.

01:27:05.280 She sent a copy of her work to Mary Somerville, her mentor, who was just like,

01:27:09.820 good job.

01:27:10.680 This is great.

01:27:11.380 And she was just like, I am science lady.

01:27:13.540 I did this great science work.

01:27:15.080 and so she's just like and now I launched my scientific career and her children are like

01:27:21.620 mommy she's like not now children I'm spending time with my first born my first born science

01:27:29.300 so so she has you know health concerns ongoing obviously she visited Brighton a lot so that

01:27:37.100 summer not with her children obviously her children are elsewhere but she was just like

01:27:41.720 hanging out on the seafront not near the royal pavilion anyway she took daily immersions from

01:27:46.960 a bathing machine wearing a black one-piece oldie time swimsuit with a pair of leather boots and so

01:27:54.560 she was just and then she's just like you know i'm gonna be championship swimmer because everything 1.00

01:27:58.760 she does she's just like she goes in like 100 and she's like i'm gonna do science experiments on

01:28:02.820 myself and my swimming abilities like everything is just like this is what i'll do but this is part

01:28:07.700 of the like health thing right like she's told like do exercise this will help you with your

01:28:10.980 various things. So a la Cece, Empress Cece, she had gymnastic ropes installed in her various homes. 1.00

01:28:21.200 She went to the circus and she was like, great. Should I install trapeze? Maybe. So she's just 0.96

01:28:29.060 like getting all in. And then she's like, well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do

01:28:32.260 a science experiment or a scientific paper about my own body and symptoms. It'll be called

01:28:36.900 calculus of the nervous system she knew she knew she had an autonomic disorder

01:28:44.060 she did she did this is what i was like this this this is like something you would do lana

01:28:50.680 sounds like work nope yeah sorry so she's just like i'm gonna figure this out anyway so she's 0.85

01:28:59.880 just like doing daily exercise she set out to make a clinical study of her own afflicted body

01:29:05.460 is what she's up to and this is where she uh she gets really into Faraday so can you explain

01:29:11.900 what he did he was the electricity guy right yeah he uh electromagnet electromagnetism so like

01:29:18.840 it goes so nerdy and I can go so nerdy so I'm gonna keep it very very like keep it as

01:29:23.880 understandable as possible for fashion enthusiasts like myself right so um when electricity goes

01:29:32.160 through a wire there's there's magnet stuff around it is basically what it is and so

01:29:40.220 understanding that like how the how the magnetic stuff around the electricity going through the

01:29:46.720 wire changes things helped us figure out stuff like microwaves like the like the microwave like

01:29:55.680 keeping it from frying you while you stand in front of it and look at it and the fact that

01:30:01.980 you know how when you're in an elevator your cell phone stops working it's because there's

01:30:09.200 steel all around you and and the waves that that make it so that your cell phone gets a signal

01:30:17.280 can't pass through that steel I never knew that but when I'm at work and I'm in the elevator I'm

01:30:24.240 like god damn it why don't my phone work it is literally what that is called is it's called a

01:30:29.300 faraday cage because that's the stuff he figured out is that when you're in steel the the signals 0.97

01:30:35.980 from outside can't come through and the signals from inside can't get out the the little waves

01:30:41.900 of various things and so cell phone signals are electromagnetic waves microwaves or electromagnetic

01:30:48.580 waves there's a whole bunch of them but those are the two big ones that that like specifically

01:30:53.560 Faraday is associated with so she wrote to Faraday and she said I present myself as the bride of

01:31:00.500 science so nickname count that is the most ironic thing I've ever heard nickname count three we have

01:31:08.340 princess of parallelograms we have enchantress of numbers and now we have the bride of science

01:31:12.740 and she was like I want to work not only alongside you but I would like to become your soulmate

01:31:17.960 um i really like electricity and he's just like oh my god so this is so her biography

01:31:27.840 marina seymour says so she knew that she could yield or wield this byronic power she wrote about

01:31:36.280 the power i know i have over others like she knew she knew her charisma was hard

01:31:42.140 yeah so it was to this most byronic aspect of ada's seductive personality that a dazed

01:31:49.480 michael faraday was about to be subjected so when she wants to be your friend like you will

01:31:54.700 suddenly find yourself writing scientific papers with her like this just this is what's going to

01:32:00.100 happen she did also have here's she wrote her desire to become quote high priestess of god's

01:32:08.800 works is manifested on this earth her mother tried so hard and she just failed so hard

01:32:19.680 her mother like pointed her in the direction of mathematics but she's byron dna is still

01:32:26.280 gonna be byron dna i'm gonna do i'm gonna byron the heck out of mathematics

01:32:30.520 these poor scientists won't know what's coming so he was then michael faraday regarded then

01:32:38.760 as the greatest scientist of the day had confidence in her declared belief that she,

01:32:44.020 Lord Byron's daughter, had been singled out to act as the high priestess of God's earthly

01:32:47.360 manifestations. So if she lived longer, she would have started a whole on cult.

01:32:53.720 Basically. Yeah. But she was just like, this is what's happening. He's like, yeah. Okay. I believe 0.99

01:32:58.780 you. So this is where, okay. So her next, like she's involved in Michael Faraday. And then

01:33:05.040 there's this scientist called andrew cross c-r-o-s-s-e so he we started off this whole

01:33:13.260 regency era series the discussion of mary shelley and so mary shelley was writing about like what

01:33:17.800 if we use electricity to reanimate bodies right and that was in like 1819 i think that she wrote

01:33:25.360 that so in 1836 andrew cross actually did the experiment to see if he could make it work so

01:33:31.820 like medical halls have been doing stuff like like marichelle was partially inspired by science of

01:33:35.500 what's happening back then which is people like attach electronics to you know dead frogs and

01:33:41.540 make the legs jump or whatever but anyway so andrew cross was like into this he had this like crazy

01:33:48.000 um sort of like his house was out in the country somewhere and it was just like jam-packed full of

01:33:54.660 just like so much science experiments just like he was doing stuff all the time and ada lovelace's

01:34:00.500 mom annabella still on the scene it's just like i need to like show ada that like if she continues

01:34:05.200 this way like she's gonna become insane so she's like wow i'm gonna send her to this like crazy 0.97

01:34:10.460 sort of like hoarder house to see like how bad it could be what could possibly go wrong and she was

01:34:16.940 just like this is the greatest house i've ever seen my house should be like this house so what

01:34:22.920 you're saying is there's this electricity inside of me right now yes so she like she she really

01:34:31.100 hits it off with uh Andrew Cross but then he has a hot son called John Cross and she really hits it

01:34:38.100 off with him so at this point so we're in 1845 she is a 29 years old just like this whole era

01:34:47.500 But for her, it's like what today a nerd would be their like undergraduate, postgraduate, PhD level.

01:34:54.880 Like this is the age that she is, right?

01:34:57.060 Like she's the age of a university student.

01:34:59.920 Just doing this self-guided stuff.

01:35:03.060 Anyway, she meets Andrew Klaus's son, John.

01:35:06.660 And John is like, I think 16 years younger than her.

01:35:10.800 Is that true?

01:35:11.600 No, because she's 29.

01:35:12.500 He's a bit younger than her.

01:35:13.840 Not that much.

01:35:15.240 Anyway, and they get along really well.

01:35:17.180 And then they spend time together in this house and they begin some sort of

01:35:22.720 love affair. I don't know. No one knows.

01:35:27.500 It was probably not a sexual relationship because Ada at this point had a large 1.00

01:35:33.040 sore on her cervix that made intercourse very painful and also peeing. 0.99

01:35:42.900 Anyway, so she's like got all these health things going on.

01:35:47.180 And she's just like, I will fix my health problems by through science, through exercise and electricity.

01:35:55.040 I don't know.

01:35:56.060 And unfortunately, even today, we cannot fix what was actually wrong with her and her cervix.

01:36:03.620 So so she is just like she's kind of she's spending so much time.

01:36:07.920 She's like, I'm just going over to Andrew Cross's house, do science experiments.

01:36:11.760 Don't worry about me. And her husband's like, love you, babe.

01:36:13.760 love your interest in science have fun with them but really she's hanging with john cross

01:36:19.200 and then eventually so john cross he was interested in what i don't know what this is

01:36:27.700 crystallography do you know um no not off the top of my head but she also liked

01:36:34.380 she liked some weird stuff like she she got into phreniology and like all of it so

01:36:40.840 okay so john cross was interested in crystallography the branch of science devoted to

01:36:46.940 the study of molecular and crystalline structure and properties oh so like how things become crystal

01:36:53.800 like the how the crystals form and i just think about in star trek next generation there's a

01:37:00.340 thing called the crystalline entity and i'm just like okay like that so anyway so so she's just

01:37:07.740 like, Oh my gosh, I love crystallography. And then she's like, Hey, babe, she's like still

01:37:12.000 at Andrew Cross's house. She's like still here, right into her husband. Like, guess what? I met

01:37:16.500 this guy and we're going to do more science and I'm going to move in here basically. So like,

01:37:21.600 don't worry about me. And her husband's like, love you, babe. Got it. That's fine. Anyway. So she,

01:37:25.900 um, eventually like she was having this relationship with John Cross that she was

01:37:31.000 not telling her husband about whatever it was. And then eventually she's like, huh,

01:37:34.900 If I come back to London, like the newspapers, all they want is for Lord Byron's daughter to be doing something scandalous.

01:37:39.520 So I need to like not go to London.

01:37:41.160 Where should I go?

01:37:42.240 Brighton.

01:37:42.900 So she goes to Brighton.

01:37:48.320 Which is where John Cross also lives.

01:37:50.720 And they just like secretly have this affair in Brighton.

01:37:55.180 Now, what she doesn't know, but eventually she finds out is that John Cross is secretly already married to somebody else and has a family.

01:38:03.460 So...

01:38:04.900 Some people's lives start off messy and get less messy, but Ada's life becomes more messy with time, which is a trajectory that I don't often find in my research.

01:38:18.980 So she's like, like her health stuff is getting worse.

01:38:24.500 Simultaneous with like, she's having some sort of affair with John Cross.

01:38:29.820 At least an emotional affair.

01:38:31.260 At least an emotional affair.

01:38:33.120 it's to the extent that like after you know what no i'll tell you later well i'll tell you right

01:38:40.000 now after she dies he john cross tries to blackmail her husband with the publication of their love

01:38:45.400 letters so like he's a shitty person he you know what here's the byron type relationship that she

01:38:51.620 was inevitably going to be drawn to anyway so her her sort of final era can you explain 0.59

01:39:01.880 about do you want me to explain you started i'm just gonna giggle

01:39:09.260 okay so she and charles babbage she's just like what is a practical use of these like

01:39:16.920 computer type devices like we have these things that can kind of figure out mathematical

01:39:21.140 probability what's like a practical use for that i know predicting horse races

01:39:26.840 so it was just like no oh no Babbage was like okay sure he's like oh yeah no he's like the

01:39:36.260 practical like oh yeah let's let's figure that out I can make my machine do that no problem

01:39:42.600 so she okay here she decided that she could use her mathematical skills to outwit experienced

01:39:49.460 bookmakers um but she could never allow her own name to be used for placing bets because she's 0.84

01:39:54.840 byron's daughter and she's you know but if she could get some friends the countess yeah so she 0.99

01:40:00.740 got some friends to help um who could make a little money by like placing the butts for her

01:40:05.520 by the use of her computation so by january needed money actually lana she does need money and here's

01:40:12.960 why okay her lover john cross oh right john cross owed money to a lot of people and he needed money

01:40:20.520 and she couldn't like she's wealthy on like her mother's wealthy her husband's wealthy but she

01:40:25.020 couldn't ask them for money because she couldn't let them about her affair so she's like i need to 1.00

01:40:28.240 find a way to earn money myself to give to my shitty lover she didn't need money her shitty 0.98

01:40:33.540 lover needed money yeah he needed money it's like it's almost like he has to pay for a house and a 0.99

01:40:38.920 family that he secretly has so she starts doing this to make money i i think for fun but also 0.51

01:40:48.780 because he needs also to prove that her machines do like the machines work and do something and so

01:40:55.740 yeah that's it start a gambling ring yeah so here's a quote from the biography how good is 1.00

01:41:03.720 ada at bookmaking or more accurately gambling on horses the fact that her ring stuck with her 0.93

01:41:08.440 through at least one full racing season suggests she must have had some degree of success

01:41:11.980 nevertheless the few scraps of notes and papers that survived from the bookmakers themselves

01:41:16.340 suggests that the excited countess

01:41:17.780 was doing little more than following tips

01:41:19.460 and making judgments based on the odds.

01:41:24.340 So she, no one knows,

01:41:26.020 and I didn't say this at the beginning,

01:41:27.520 but it's important to know that her mother

01:41:28.860 is so opposed to horse race gambling.

01:41:33.020 It's like the one thing her mother

01:41:35.380 is most passionate about in this life besides math 0.95

01:41:37.620 is being opposed to horse race gambling.

01:41:41.000 So Ada is like, my mother can never know about this.

01:41:44.020 No one can know about this.

01:41:44.340 And that's also why she picks it.

01:41:46.340 I think so. It's, like, the one thing her mother hates the most in the world.

01:41:50.680 So, yeah, so Charles Babbage is kind of, like, if you just have your sort of, like, little squad, it's, like, he's, like, the one running the numbers.

01:41:58.900 And then she's kind of, like, in there, too. And then she gets the other, like, their maids and their servants and whoever and other friends to, like, go and actually place the bets.

01:42:06.000 and Babbage is the kind of guy that it's like oh I'm going to figure this out to see if I can do

01:42:11.740 prediction analysis not I am I am secretly the math guy behind a a horse gambling ring

01:42:19.840 like so anyway so she's just like she like so many people in the regency era she winds up in 0.67

01:42:31.720 wild amounts of debt to the point that she and her her lover is like oh my gosh I need money 0.98

01:42:38.120 for undisclosed reasons totally not a secret family so then she pawns the family jewels

01:42:43.760 literally the actual lovelies family jewels for money for him and then by this point like 0.70

01:42:52.300 she's effectively like bed bound like she's just like running this from her sick bed so people are 1.00

01:42:59.700 coming to her and she's like overseeing it. And I feel like this is pretty badass, honestly, to be

01:43:04.260 like, so overcome with symptoms that you're like bed bound, but you're just like, you know what

01:43:10.500 I'm going to do? Start a criminal enterprise from my bed. People are going to come to me.

01:43:16.400 Anyway, her mother finds out about this and she finds where the jewels were pawned and then she

01:43:20.320 like buys them back and then it upon them again sounds about right that's like their whole

01:43:34.540 relationship actually what she had done i need to clarify so she'd arranged with john cross to

01:43:39.120 pawn her husband's most treasured heirloom the lovelies diamonds in their place she had

01:43:43.480 substituted paste replicas so she they pawn the jewels but then replace them with fakes

01:43:49.980 this is getting into like jean de lamotte like the necklace level anyway so this is what she's

01:43:57.540 up to um so her husband like when she started doing the horse racing stuff there's a thing where 0.93

01:44:03.780 she had to get for some of the loans she was taking it like her husband knew about the horse

01:44:08.580 racing stuff was he complicit in it i don't know but he was just like love you babe is this you

01:44:13.580 new science experiment horse racing i support it so he had written a babbage is involved it must be

01:44:17.920 fine yeah so her husband had written a paper being like yeah to to one of the like money

01:44:23.520 lenders being like yeah this is fine give loan her as much money as you need but this was like

01:44:27.040 very damning to him that he was letting her do this so like he could be blackmailed later he

01:44:32.280 was blackmailed by john cross about this anyway so she she gave john cross this document that would 0.95

01:44:39.140 that could harm her husband's future so john cross is just like this is a shitty person like 0.99

01:44:45.160 this is a horrifying 0.99

01:44:47.000 he does not have anyone's best interest but his

01:44:49.320 own no yeah

01:44:51.360 so he's a scientist

01:44:52.880 but he's kind of like

01:44:54.920 I don't know as I'm learning

01:44:57.280 there's a lot of different kinds of like

01:44:59.400 technological he's like 0.94

01:45:01.400 a tech bro just like shitty 0.99

01:45:03.380 person so 0.98

01:45:04.920 anyway so

01:45:07.340 she's just kind of like wasting away

01:45:09.200 basically she's like her

01:45:11.340 her disease is progressing

01:45:13.000 she's like 1.00

01:45:14.180 has been discovered her mother now knows that she's like overseeing a gambling ring 1.00

01:45:19.200 so her mother's really mad at her but eventually so i need to like sidebar about her children

01:45:24.640 so her favorite child is her oldest son byron jr and he's also my favorite of her children

01:45:34.520 because this guy is great so byron jr was i mentioned before like the children were sort

01:45:40.560 of like raised by the servants and he was raised like it was so foundational to him that he was

01:45:46.960 hanging out with like the servants and the servants children and he's just like oh i'm like them i'm

01:45:50.780 not like my family i'm like them i want to just like be a working class like person and he was

01:45:56.600 always kind of wild and kind of uninhibited like kind of like ada herself kind of like

01:46:00.960 grandpa byron and he like he didn't do on school and they're all just like oh byron jr like he's

01:46:07.120 like, what are we going to do with him? And then from the time he was five years old, he's like,

01:46:10.860 I want to be a sailor. I want to go to sea. Like, just let me go and be a sailor. So when he's 11,

01:46:15.100 they're like, okay, go ahead, go be a sailor. This is grandfather's child too.

01:46:21.240 Oh, it's like the best parts of Byron were inherited by Byron, like the only good parts

01:46:25.940 of him. So he's just like, great. And then his first like ship assignment when he's, I think

01:46:31.940 he's like 13 years old he's assigned to this ship that is transporting these three irish aristocrats

01:46:38.340 who were being sent to australia as punishment for like being irish like um national nationalists

01:46:47.880 like rebels so he had like however it takes to get from like england to australia so like to just

01:46:55.780 like hang out and like learn from these guys and he's just like this is great i too will be a rebel

01:47:00.640 a gentleman rebel um and so he's just like living he's loving it like they send him off to see to

01:47:08.740 maybe sort of like train him because he's supposed to be the heir to lovelace and everything and he

01:47:12.620 just comes back and he's just like he's got tattoos on his hands this is a part where i was

01:47:17.060 just like i love this guy tattoos on my count so he's like yeah in bridgerton he is the he is the

01:47:24.720 same level as anthony yeah yeah so he's like he's gonna be an earl which is higher

01:47:30.580 and he does not want to do that when he was a kid he went on like a field trip to a coal mine once

01:47:36.380 and he was just like you know what i want to do work in the coal mine industry is like one of

01:47:41.900 these like guys with the shovels that's my goal and dream so he's anyway so he comes back for a

01:47:48.500 visit at one point and he's like tan and like handsome and like byron jr tattoos on his hands

01:47:56.160 and his family's like oh no well you can never be like a lord admiral with tattoos on your hands 0.99

01:48:00.220 and he's like fuck you i don't want to that's why i got the tattoos in my hands fuckos and then he 0.99

01:48:06.420 like they try to get him in sort of like a higher-up job on a ship and he ends up i think 0.99

01:48:10.600 like overseeing a mutiny and then he like he like leaves the navy which we talked about in other

01:48:15.740 episodes is like a criminal offense for which he can be like executed. And he's just like,

01:48:19.800 fuck all this. I just want to go work with my hands and be a worker. Um, and he does. And he 0.99

01:48:26.400 goes and he like finds a coal mine and he's just like, if there was like unions, he would have

01:48:30.920 been like on the forefront of that. He was just like, I like, I'm here to support on one of his

01:48:36.500 first like ship trips. He, it was somewhere in like South America and he showed up and he saw

01:48:43.080 that this like the wealthy people's house had sort of like a direct pipeline of like bringing

01:48:48.180 fresh water to the wealthy people and he like started digging to redirect the water to the

01:48:52.980 poor like he's just like if he was here today he'd be like you know supporting Bernie Sanders 1.00

01:48:59.860 or whatever like he's just like I love this guy he's just like fuck aristocracy fuck being a 1.00

01:49:07.060 Viscount. I just want to be here amongst the real, but in a genuine way. Not like Byron is play 1.00

01:49:14.300 acting being a hero to Greece. Byron Jr. was just like, this is me. This is actually me.

01:49:20.220 So he abandoned his family. He abandoned everything. And then when his mother was sick,

01:49:24.000 he went back to see her. And she's just like, oh, my favorite son. Look at you. So tan and

01:49:28.720 handsome. Tattoos in your hands. Love you so much, kid. And he's like, I refute my lordship

01:49:35.860 and i'm just gonna go and live in the coal mines and peace out and he was a stealth

01:49:43.960 um major supporting character in the story that i appreciate he tragically um he was saving a

01:49:50.820 money to buy a ship so he could go to america where i think he would have had a fun time

01:49:54.780 the wild west but he tragically died of like a brain aneurysm on

01:49:59.720 and that's the story of byron jr i love him anyway so he did come back when she was like sick

01:50:09.320 and he he came to see her on her deathbed etc and there's something about when she was on her

01:50:16.940 deathbed like she like her i mentioned the like the growth on her cervix like this is like it's

01:50:24.060 cancer and it's spreading throughout her organs and then towards okay so she charles babas was

01:50:32.480 summoned and given a draft of her will and he was asked to look through certain papers that ada had

01:50:38.260 given him and to destroy what he judged unfit to preserve and then she asked so she's just like

01:50:43.640 slowly dying over the month of august or at the end of august she writes to her friend charles dickens

01:50:47.700 and she's like dear charles dickens can you please come and read to me

01:50:52.620 about little Paul Dombey gliding into death

01:50:56.000 with a peace that she craved and could not find.

01:50:59.220 So he, like they had this kind of like pen pal relationship.

01:51:03.100 And so he did, he did come to see her in Brighton.

01:51:09.560 And he wrote in his diary that he was wonderfully struck

01:51:13.400 with her courage and calmness.

01:51:15.920 And then, so she's like slowly dying.

01:51:18.140 This is when it was discovered that she had pawned the jewels

01:51:20.640 for a second time.

01:51:22.620 and so her husband yeah this is this is genetic i mean her mother did her father did this is like

01:51:34.160 of course she did her but her husband was like there for her until towards the very end she told

01:51:39.980 him something and we don't know what it was probably i've been having an affair with john

01:51:44.780 cross who is currently black male in me because he suddenly um turned against her um like he was 0.99

01:51:52.780 there for her and then suddenly he was just like fuck this woman um and he uh was less kind and he 0.99

01:52:00.340 did not take seriously the various addendums to her will that she had done um yeah so she recited 0.99

01:52:06.740 a line from her father's poem as she died allegedly she said believe and sink not doubt and

01:52:13.400 perish i don't know for last words what the context of that would be her mother like as ada

01:52:22.700 is in this sort of like depleted state like just like she is she is dying she is like she's in

01:52:28.120 constant excruciating pain nothing can help it her mother is just like are you gonna see the lord now

01:52:33.800 and repent has my have my trainings finally done something for you now that you're dying

01:52:42.160 so her mother later wrote about like and on her deathbed ada found the lord and turned to

01:52:48.080 christianity it's like it's sort of like in torture like you would say whatever someone

01:52:51.900 tells you to say in that situation so she did request that she be interred beside her father

01:53:00.040 um near the byron family seat i didn't mention this but john cross but this goes without saying

01:53:05.380 was a fanboy of lord byron and that's part of what they had in common

01:53:09.040 um so this is where so she dies r.i.p um john cross threatens to publish their love letters

01:53:22.140 and to ruin her reputation so then like her husband and her mother

01:53:25.160 are trying to figure this out with him they pay him off um including they wanted to get that like 0.99

01:53:32.060 vetting authorization that that the husband had so anyway john cross shitty ass person 0.98

01:53:38.500 um ada lovelace dies age 36 the same age lord byron died um and then she's buried 0.98

01:53:46.200 with lord byron so talking about i just want to get to 0.93

01:53:54.500 sort of the the life and legacy like it sucks it fucking sucks that she died so yeah like she 0.90

01:54:02.300 was getting into some real interesting stuff um and if she'd been able to shake off john cross 0.98

01:54:12.340 and like all that stuff like would she have fallen down deeper into her dirtbag era 0.85

01:54:17.760 or would she have like ushered in an era of computers earlier than we expected

01:54:23.440 he could have gone either way it honestly it could have so she is just kind of

01:54:29.420 when she died just a sec i have this she requested and it's like did she request this

01:54:38.100 or did her mother just say that she requested this um her her plaque on her tomb by her specific

01:54:45.500 request carried only the dates of her birth and death together with the information that she was

01:54:50.080 byron's daughter and lord lovelace's wife so it's like here lies a wife and daughter of men

01:54:56.960 the typical vulgar history tomb i mean obviously yeah and then she kind of then there's a bunch of 0.90

01:55:05.000 shit happened later on where her mother's name was trashed um it was a lot of like byron acolytes 0.98

01:55:13.780 were just like Annabella Milbank she sucks like and so that took a lot of attention like Ada Lovelace 0.93

01:55:20.240 died and kind of wasn't really remembered for what like she became much better known for what she did 1.00

01:55:27.800 much later on when they when you're unearthing all of the women like the the um woman who actually

01:55:36.280 discovered DNA that was stolen by Watson and Crick yeah yeah like there was an era where we went back

01:55:42.840 and we're like hmm was there a woman involved here yeah so part of it is like

01:55:50.200 alan turing who is famous science guy played by benedict come in the movie

01:55:55.600 he published a paper i just want to see when it was

01:56:00.660 he was a lot like babbage in that he had ideas for computers and he made things that were

01:56:08.980 computer adjacent, but he never actually made a computer. Okay. So in 1953, somebody called

01:56:16.980 B.V. Bowden republished Ada Lovelace's notes in a book or a paper called Faster Than Thought,

01:56:23.980 a Symposium on Digital Computing Machines. So this is 1953. This is like, this is like

01:56:29.240 before Hidden Figures, but like when people are thinking, oh, computers, this could be a thing.

01:56:33.900 This is when they were starting to actually build the very first computers. So

01:56:37.780 the abc in iowa um the eniac over at university of pennsylvania uh i know a lot about the abc

01:56:46.740 because i grew up 40 minutes from where it was first built but the eniac is the first like

01:56:53.720 programmable computer and the abc is the first non-programmable computer but i feel like the

01:57:00.000 people in this era like in the 1950s are being like wow okay like they're looking back at paper

01:57:04.440 like they're looking at Babbage and then they find this paper or this book about him and then

01:57:09.640 it's it's now known that like AAL is Ada Lovelace so this is when Alan Turing um 1950 he publishes

01:57:19.200 a paper beginning with the statement I propose to consider the question can machines think and so

01:57:25.480 he's just like Ada Lovelace thought that they couldn't but she was wrong blah blah so this is

01:57:30.260 kind of like this is so as computers started being discussed as a thing and becoming a thing that

01:57:36.380 existed and her work was right up there in the conversation so i think at that point

01:57:43.520 like the nerds are familiar with her work um to the point that the computer language ada

01:57:51.380 created on behalf of the united states department of defense was named after her

01:57:54.960 this is in 1980 1981 the association for women and computing inaugurated its ada lovelace award

01:58:03.000 so by then 1981 like she's at least to the nerds so it's like yeah between like her death so 1852

01:58:10.920 to like 1952 she's not really discussed or thought about but then in the 50s her work

01:58:18.220 is regarded and then they did actually i forget what year it was i read it somewhere in my research

01:58:24.860 but somebody built the actual Babbage machine and then they took her computer program and there's

01:58:29.580 like one small mistake, but otherwise it worked perfectly. Like she got it. Like she was

01:58:33.820 incredibly forward thinking. There's the British computer society has awarded the Lovelace medal

01:58:41.060 since 1998. And in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students. So this is like,

01:58:47.580 I feel like since 2008, we've had this like women in STEM, like let's, you know, so 2013,

01:58:54.860 There's the Spanish award, the Ada Byron Award for Women in Technology.

01:58:59.460 I'm not going to read all these things, but because there's a lot of commemorations for her.

01:59:03.680 Ada Lovelace Day is an annual event celebrated the second Tuesday of October.

01:59:07.260 It started in 2009 to raise the profile of women in science, engineering, technology, and maths.

01:59:14.440 She's definitely the poster child for women in STEM.

01:59:19.180 Absolutely.

01:59:19.760 And she is. 0.99

01:59:20.620 As a kid, all she was doing was making science experiments.

01:59:24.860 The building of the Department of Engineering and Mathematics at University of Bristol near, oh no, that's near Bath.

01:59:32.200 That's not near Brighton.

01:59:32.900 Anyway, it's called the Ada Lovelace building.

01:59:36.240 The computer center in the village of Porlock near where Lovelace lived later on is named after her.

01:59:41.440 Again, nothing in Brighton, a place where she was often.

01:59:45.580 There's a statue of her in London in the city of Westminster.

01:59:49.960 I was going to make a terrible joke 1.00

01:59:52.440 about how queer people 1.00

01:59:54.940 all know we're bad at math 0.99

01:59:56.420 I just wanted to mention

02:00:00.740 that the statue of her is fully closed

02:00:02.400 which I need to say now

02:00:04.640 since the Mary Wollstonecraft statue

02:00:06.440 Lord

02:00:07.980 so she's just 1.00

02:00:10.840 like

02:00:11.160 she is like we're going to get into

02:00:14.920 the scoring and stuff

02:00:16.800 but she's like one of the most commemorated

02:00:19.100 people ever but it's all been like since 2008 she got dug up like they they went they found

02:00:27.660 women in stem and they found her like turing is the only one that was really having a science

02:00:34.080 conversation with her like even after her death he was like arguing with her which is like the

02:00:40.020 biggest form of respect from a scientist is look at this person she's wrong and i'm gonna tell you

02:00:45.480 all about it look at this lady um yeah so in 2015 it was the bicentenary of ada lovelace's birth

02:00:52.220 there was a number of events including a one-woman show called ada ada ada um which at the edinburgh

02:00:58.940 fringe and it used an led dress which she would have loved which she would have loved you know

02:01:06.420 that time at the met gala when zendaya went wearing the led like cinderella dress i feel

02:01:11.280 like that's what ada lovelace would have loved it's it's all of her it's all of her things it's

02:01:17.140 being dramatic and electricity so she was she appeared in an episode of doctor who um

02:01:25.120 and she appeared on the itv series victoria and there's like various games like the fact that like

02:01:36.040 she's so known by nerds and by like women nerds like of course she's commemorated in all these

02:01:43.920 nerdy ways like this is i can't even i've never seen a like in popular culture this part of her

02:01:51.220 wikipedia just like i'm just scrolling scrolling just like it's been so commemorated where popular

02:01:59.180 is is used very loosely quote-unquote popular yeah but yeah there's a board game um she's

02:02:06.080 been in video games like there's oh my gosh there's so many like lecture series buildings like

02:02:12.020 um computer languages like I love I feel I feel like and I saw this in one of the things I was

02:02:19.520 reading about her like I think at this point she's been commemorated more than her dad like

02:02:25.100 i think she's like there's so many active things now that are like the ada lovelace things versus

02:02:31.500 lord byron it's like if you're a certain kind of like nerd like a history nerd a literature nerd

02:02:37.360 like you've heard of lord byron but like ada lovelace stuff is like everywhere 0.87

02:02:41.740 which i appreciate for her because she's much more interesting than her shitty dad

02:02:47.760 and as i said much more much more interesting than the very watered down understandably

02:02:57.420 children's picture book biographies i mean none of them involve the horse racing

02:03:02.300 grift

02:03:03.620 practical applications of prediction engines

02:03:09.080 none of them get into that this is like if there was a movie about her i would want it to

02:03:14.660 be about that but i know it would be about her like earnestly doing math equations because

02:03:20.300 yeah she because it's the regency and what we do is we water it down and make it less interesting

02:03:27.420 yeah no absolutely no hand holding raise 14 children together because you don't know who

02:03:34.100 the fathers are but yeah be worried about hand holding if anything i hope that people who've

02:03:41.500 listen to this full regency era series of vulgar history now appreciate how preposterous it is that

02:03:47.420 in common understanding like in regency things like bridgerton it's like oh no a man and a woman

02:03:53.160 were seen together like i guess now they have to get married where it's like actually everybody

02:03:57.540 was on so much opium constantly they wouldn't have noticed or cared that those two people

02:04:04.900 are together never mind they're all also in like weird toxic polycules like 0.88

02:04:11.500 anyway so we're gonna score ada lovelace and what's exciting about this is once we have her

02:04:19.960 score i'm gonna be able to announce um the first brackets of my diamond of the season

02:04:25.240 march madness like playoffs that we're doing for the regency era and i'm really curious to see

02:04:31.060 where she lands because this is gonna affect this is gonna like it's gonna be a bloodbath 1.00

02:04:36.580 this competition but anyway so scandalousness ada lovelace out of 10 where would you rank her 1.00

02:04:45.780 i mean she starts out so low and then she just zooms so it's so unusual usually people start 0.94

02:04:52.160 off high and then they become less scandalous but she just like like the fact that her lover

02:04:58.300 was blackmailing her husband after her death it's like this like she ran away so many points

02:05:06.300 just because it's like hmm i have invented computers what shall i do with it ah yes

02:05:11.420 horse it horse races oh yeah start this kind of like multi-level marketing scheme horse racing

02:05:17.980 grift to get enough money my married lover blackmailing me like up to that point she like

02:05:28.720 she ran away with her tutor but not very well and then she came back and like she married she got 1.00

02:05:33.840 married she had kids like she did everything that was expected of her for uh like aristocratic young 1.00

02:05:39.620 lady she wasn't doing any of the shit that like lady caroline lamb was up to like she was just 0.99

02:05:45.120 like she was married she wasn't really having affairs but then the final part of her life does 1.00

02:05:49.460 get so bananas like she's dying she's dying of cervical cancer while playing the ponies

02:05:57.700 with a machine that she helped invent yeah she's pawning the family jewels twice getting

02:06:04.940 fake versions of them put in like i want to go at least an eight but you tell me because you know 0.94

02:06:13.020 you know relative relative and i've been trying to think about where she would land

02:06:18.180 i think like all of her kids were her husbands so that like diminishes no that's the thing like 0.95

02:06:25.400 compared to like georgina emma hamilton like she's but she was playing the pony she was like there

02:06:32.180 was all this stuff and like her mother was like horrified by all this stuff but like

02:06:35.160 well this would have ruined her name in society if it came out but it didn't and her husband

02:06:39.620 and her husband and his political career i'm gonna say let's go um because uh it's tricky

02:06:48.860 you know like she i'm gonna say seven how about that okay because i just don't think she's quite

02:06:55.320 at an eight because it was such a had she lived longer i think she would have gotten there 1.00

02:07:00.920 but you know she's cut down to the prime of her dirtbag era again she could have gone either way 1.00

02:07:06.020 for the for the child of byron you know there was some milbank in there that kind of 1.00

02:07:12.180 yeah kept her out yeah well and also she hadn't had the like ovarian cyst she might have had 0.99

02:07:20.520 cervical cancer is definitely gonna gonna hinder your chances of having uh illegitimate children

02:07:26.560 so um okay the next category is scheminess and i think for her especially i want to clarify it's

02:07:33.460 not just about like oh hey i have a scheme it's just about like are you coming up with plans are

02:07:38.340 you like doing things are you like an active member of your life are you like so i think

02:07:43.360 in terms of the like horse racing scheminess it's like yeah she's doing all that stuff

02:07:47.500 like inventing like she started a horse racing grift she pawned the jewels she but also like 0.69

02:07:54.700 in terms of scheminess like she's coming with inventions you know she's doing things she's

02:07:58.000 writing she was an active member of her life she's predicting the entire future

02:08:02.960 yeah she predicted ai in like 1840 like she like she she knew that that computers weren't just

02:08:11.900 going to do math that they were going to have letters and that they were going to have music

02:08:15.840 and they were going to like she she could see what charles babbage couldn't was that computers

02:08:21.700 were going to be everywhere once once we figured them out when i like her scheminess she's like 0.50

02:08:26.980 i want to learn about this kind of science so she writes to that person and she wins them over and

02:08:31.720 then she gets to do that kind of science like like she took the byron charisma is like i am going to

02:08:37.380 befriend all of the scientists that are doing the things that i'm interested in it's like i see it

02:08:43.200 i want it i get it it's like she used her scheminess for mostly science reasons until the

02:08:48.080 very end but she certainly had it it's just she like filtered it through science instead of through

02:08:54.100 like you know she tried to use it for good until she couldn't byron stuff just overcame her so i

02:09:00.500 don't know how high does that get her do you think i mean i i like that i'm saying i again i'm gonna

02:09:06.240 give her all of the points because i love her so i'm gonna i'm gonna get i'm gonna go for an eight

02:09:10.760 and you're gonna talk me up or down i think an eight is fair i think i think she was a very

02:09:16.020 planning like to me scheminess like if you're how schemey can you be when you're like an isolated

02:09:22.940 homeschool child but like she was she was like okay i'm gonna make a flying machine okay i'm

02:09:27.260 going to hoist these ropes up. I'm going to do this. Like she was always coming up with a scheme

02:09:31.720 and a plan. It's just, they were science experiments, which we don't usually describe

02:09:34.800 as schemes, but. Right. She's like, I need to exercise. So I'm going to turn it into a white

02:09:39.760 paper. Like she couldn't even exercise without a plan. Yeah. No, she was, she was, I think an eight

02:09:48.020 is very fair for scheminess. Um, and then we have significance and this is. See, that's where I go

02:09:54.260 a thousand like yeah she's she's influenced my whole life and I didn't even know it half the

02:10:00.340 time yeah I think that her it's interesting because it's like in her time it's like it's

02:10:06.600 like he lies a wife and a daughter of men but then like her legacy has become so massive like

02:10:14.420 she's seen like when you're predicting the future it doesn't become apparent that you did that until

02:10:20.780 the feature happens and they're like oh wait she got it like so at the time well and like even the

02:10:27.460 fact that there's like no like I was saying there's all these commemorations to her but like

02:10:31.120 she lived in Brighton for such a long time but there's nothing there about her like Brighton

02:10:34.620 get on it like this is I think you could really lean into this for your tourism industry but it's

02:10:40.640 like they're like no we're fine we have the pavilion we're good we don't need another thing

02:10:44.340 getting faraday and babbage to have a conversation those are the two people that make the computers

02:10:52.080 talking to each other a thing like they're they're they're so like that is a huge like that's where

02:10:59.740 superconductors come from and semi semiconductors sorry semiconductors come from is the ideas of

02:11:05.340 babbage the on and off switches and the and the electromagnetism and so it's like she she knew

02:11:13.200 these people were going to be important and got them having conversations and she was also working

02:11:19.080 to like increase babages getting more people to know about him getting people to fund him like

02:11:25.640 she was like in terms of like philanthropy or just sort of like she was yeah i i mean like we

02:11:31.540 can only go as high as 10 but i think she's for sure a 10 out of 10 she just is like i think name

02:11:37.240 recognition i think like what she actually accomplished and then like retroactively what

02:11:41.820 she predicted like i think yeah what i would like to see is somebody replicating her horse

02:11:49.920 racing algorithm and to see if it works today no because there's too many factors we can't

02:11:55.820 we can't control for it we can't control for um the track we can't control like that it's true

02:12:02.680 literally it is what it is what people have been trying to do for so long yeah but you can't control

02:12:10.740 for it yeah no it's more just like card counting i guess is where you can get mathematical help with

02:12:16.360 gambling the final category is the sexism bonus and i'm going to propose a few things and then

02:12:22.200 you can tell me what you think but first i'm going to say just the fact like you said like

02:12:26.080 if she was a man doing all the scientific stuff she would have been famous in her time and she

02:12:29.360 was not although i would counter that with like she's so famous now because she was so important

02:12:34.680 and she was a woman like the fact that she was a woman has made her more famous now 1.00

02:12:38.620 her various health conditions if women's medical stuff have been taken more seriously back then 0.99

02:12:45.380 maybe she wouldn't have died age 36 but at the same time men were dying age 36 of yeah like you

02:12:50.660 can't cancer even today cancer is hard yeah that's that's a trick you want to but you know 1.00

02:12:56.580 like her various other ailments i don't know like because she you know she had to marry because she

02:13:03.000 was a woman but like he was fine up until the end like he didn't get in her way he didn't stop her

02:13:07.900 she had kids but she did not let that stop her at all she forgot about them most of the time 0.72

02:13:12.520 so i don't know how much yeah she she had the uh wealth and uh title offset 1.00

02:13:20.080 that like if she was middle class like she's she's about the equivalent of a middle class man 0.97

02:13:26.460 yeah yeah it's a bit like um in the french revolution there was that who's that nerdy 1.00

02:13:33.240 woman madame something um anyway there was a woman who was salons yeah with the salons where 0.99

02:13:41.520 you couldn't drink or eat what's her face anyway like she really wanted to be up there like writing 1.00

02:13:46.580 papers and stuff and she just could not she was not allowed to like she was really stymied from

02:13:50.340 living her sort of like nerd life but ada because of her wealth and like she was able so i don't 1.00

02:13:56.000 like the sex but also because because she had the byronic audacity yeah somebody's saying oh you

02:14:02.780 can't write papers she's like watch me i am the goddess of science worship me like okay okay i know

02:14:13.700 i'm gonna write the papers if you don't let me publish them i will just wipe my name off of them

02:14:18.640 it's fine like it they're gonna be published yeah like the sexism bonus is to give points to somebody

02:14:25.260 who maybe could have accomplished more if not for the patriarchy but i feel like she

02:14:29.580 because i think she could have accomplished more if not for the patriarchy but i don't think it

02:14:35.700 stopped her from accomplishing like yeah i i i only think she could have gotten through more

02:14:42.500 doors and maybe talked to more people or maybe like but she did enough like if it's anything

02:14:50.100 it's like a one or a two it's not it's not a lot i think it's like a two and i think part of this

02:14:55.200 is like, you know, her mother is like, well, you know, no one in this story is a good mother,

02:14:59.640 but I think what her mother did bestow upon her was just sort of like the fact that her mother

02:15:04.640 wasn't like, you need to do, I don't know, like ballet lessons. She was like, you need to do

02:15:10.300 math. Like the fact that her mother was just like, here's what you're going to do. Like,

02:15:14.020 what's the least Byron thing I can think? Ah, yes, math. But the fact that her mother's like,

02:15:19.100 i'm gonna educate you so hard like her mother did set her up for success in that way like that her

02:15:26.100 mother was i don't know like her mother never thought thought that there was a problem with

02:15:32.060 her being more sciencey and i think that that was really a lot of it that was really beneficial

02:15:38.000 this gives her a total score of 27 which is good for me yeah no you i think this might be the

02:15:47.140 highest Lana episode no no because I have Catherine de Medici which is my cheat no you're

02:15:53.760 right you're right but you just don't tend to have people with other than her um scandal in their

02:15:58.940 lives so let me just go over here to my bracket for the yeah so you know how on um on Bridgerton

02:16:11.300 like that she's like the diamond of the season so I wanted to make it fun because we always give 1.00

02:16:15.060 the score to people on vulgar history. And I thought, well, at the end, we're going to see

02:16:18.480 who is the diamond of our podcast season. And then I was like, well, I want to have it be like a

02:16:22.960 public vote somehow, but I want to involve the scores. So I was like, okay, so what I'm going

02:16:27.200 to do is I'm using the scandalousness scores for the seeding. You know what, Ada, I've got a little

02:16:32.940 algorithm. Not really. What I have is a little Google document. But anyway, but thank you, Ada,

02:16:40.640 for Google. So I have like the seating and that's how people, how the matchups are going to be

02:16:46.240 paired. Um, and then I'm going to be, so listeners, this is maybe the first time you're

02:16:50.360 hearing about this. When you hear this episode starting today, uh, there's going to be, you can

02:16:56.220 vote on these matchups on Instagram where I'm at vulgar history pod. It'll be on my stories. Like

02:17:01.860 every other day will be a matchup and then, or around several matchups. And then if you're on

02:17:10.100 my patron you can also vote there so patron.com slash ann foster writer and i'm going to add up

02:17:14.260 the scores and then at the end of it we'll see who is the diamond of our season and it's bananas

02:17:19.040 because of the scores that people have i love that of the bottom five of your scores three of

02:17:26.340 them are mine and like of the bottom 10 like most of them like they're more mine than anything else

02:17:32.160 well i think it's it's going to be interesting because we did so all together there's 18

02:17:37.460 competitors and but you can only do a bracket for bracket of 16 so there's going to be two

02:17:42.240 play-in games to begin and those play-in games are going to be um jane austen versus princess

02:17:48.580 caribou and georgiana duchess of devonshire versus the brontes like that i mean i appreciate

02:17:56.660 that you didn't put a jane austen against the brontes because they don't belong in the same

02:18:01.060 class their scores were really close though but also i just feel like their scores are very close

02:18:06.840 but let me see so ada lovelace i'm seeing who she's up against

02:18:10.620 and i think it's ada love oh i think it might be ada lovelace versus claire claremont

02:18:16.120 the battle of the byron adjacent

02:18:19.720 i don't know if she can beat claire i don't know this is what's interesting yeah no because we've

02:18:30.260 got some like every name is like pretty well known but the fact that like jane austen is 1.00

02:18:34.040 towards the bottom because of her lack of you know scandal and things but then you girl 0.99

02:18:38.600 she's a middle-class good girl in the regency she is what the re what people think the regency was 0.99

02:18:45.060 in terms of the scores like the number one rated seed is um queen marie louise christophe from

02:18:51.060 haiti and then ann lister is next and then chevalier d'on is next like it's this is like

02:18:58.100 when i say it's gonna be like a bloodbath it's just like it's gonna be a bloodbath

02:19:01.220 like the opening rounds you're like this isn't the final this is gonna be

02:19:05.420 bananas but anyway so if you want so for everybody i know you want to if you want to

02:19:11.240 vote on this voting starts today on instagram at vulgar history pod or if you're not on instagram

02:19:16.660 go to my patreon patreon.com slash ann foster writer and then you can vote and we'll see how

02:19:22.240 this all shakes out and i'm i'm excited i love i love a matchup but also i think some of these

02:19:28.040 are going to be really wild competitions. I knew this was going to be a long episode and I'm glad

02:19:33.940 it is because we had a lot of stuff to get into and we did. So Atlanta, I don't know. Do you have

02:19:40.320 any, any wrap up thoughts? Like next week is going to be officially the finale of the Regency era,

02:19:44.700 but do you have any Regency era thoughts in general? I'm so glad we got to this point.

02:19:51.540 the very beginning of the podcast before the pod, before any of you know about the podcast

02:19:58.460 was me and Anne talking about how she was going to get her book about Carolina Brunswick published.

02:20:11.280 And so it's like, how do we do that? Well, you need a platform. What kind of platform can you do?

02:20:16.800 okay a podcast so the end of this season is kind of the culmination of the of the long con

02:20:24.220 it really is because i started the podcast with an episode about carolina brunswick

02:20:29.140 now i have a book about carolina brunswick rebel of the regency get it wherever you get your books

02:20:33.560 from even if you're in the uk i think it's there now depending when this episode comes out may 21st

02:20:38.280 it'll be in the uk but yes then i did this whole season the regency season to help promote the book

02:20:42.880 And so it's like a beautiful, a beautiful full circle thing.

02:20:46.200 And I will not give any spoilers, but so we're going to have the Regency era finale next week.

02:20:51.260 And then, and that's not going to evolve the diamond of the season next week.

02:20:55.040 I'm just having like a discussion about Regency era stuff.

02:20:57.480 Then we're going to have a little break by which I mean me interviewing various authors.

02:21:02.520 And then we're going to be back in with a new season, a new era starting in like July or something like that.

02:21:09.900 So the show is not going anywhere.

02:21:11.040 It's just this Regency, like from Blana and I scheming with a 10 out of 10, how can Anne

02:21:19.060 get to publish a book about a queen no one's ever heard of to the point of me having a

02:21:24.020 podcast, the podcast being successful enough that someone bought the book, the book being

02:21:27.960 published.

02:21:28.680 Yeah, it's been a beautiful journey and I'm excited for the next era and where it takes

02:21:32.440 us all.

02:21:33.340 And there's more schemes afoot, so it'll be fine.

02:21:36.500 There's more schemes.

02:21:37.600 there's always I personally

02:21:40.180 I'm a 10 out of 10 scheminess

02:21:42.100 and I'm also

02:21:43.840 someone who hates

02:21:45.940 secrets

02:21:47.680 I like I love other people telling me

02:21:50.020 secrets I hate having secrets

02:21:52.140 and it kills me every time

02:21:55.560 for a schemey person

02:21:58.100 I know I have various things that I can't

02:22:00.060 tell you about yet listeners but

02:22:02.120 it's all exciting and fun

02:22:04.120 well including what the theme is for the next season

02:22:05.980 can't tell you that but

02:22:07.600 it'll be a good time. Mostly I'm glad that you're going to be leaving your pretty villain era

02:22:12.020 and that you'll never have to think of him again. I'm excited. Like after I finished the French

02:22:16.820 Revolution season and a week later, I was like, what was the name of that guy? I'm like, oh,

02:22:21.640 I forgot. Oh, thank God. Like I'm excited to forget a lot of Regency era stuff. Everything

02:22:29.460 about pretty, like just leave it in the past. One day I'll think the Regency era and I'll be like,

02:22:33.800 Who was the regent? I don't recall. I look forward to that for myself and for my sanity.

02:22:39.820 Anyway, Lana Wood Johnson, thank you for inspiring the show. Thank you for, it's so funny. Every time

02:22:46.600 you're like, you should do a podcast episode about this person. I'm like, Lana, no, that sounds

02:22:49.620 boring. It's like, I don't know why I still don't trust you. Which is funny because the only boring

02:22:55.820 episode was the one you suggested. Queen Charlotte? Yes. You'll notice she's not on my diamond of the

02:23:03.400 season bracket she's the worst i hate her no wait nope she's she's the second worst her 1.00

02:23:09.020 granddaughter is the worst i hate her victoria yes yeah yeah victoria the one you know like we 0.99

02:23:17.320 like the brighton pavilion when i went there and it was like queen victoria came here and she 0.72

02:23:20.940 basically wrote in her you know queen victoria wrote a diary every day of her life and when she 0.97

02:23:24.860 went to the brighton pavilion she was just like what the fuck is this place this is like it's 0.99

02:23:28.860 like the Taj Mahal on crack like the dick the decor is so like offensive and she's like and why 1.00

02:23:35.960 is it why are we in Brighton but we're not on the seashore like this this castle sucks I hate it 0.97

02:23:40.500 here and then I guess she and Albert tried to like go strolling around and the people of Brighton

02:23:44.440 like came up to them too much and they're like we don't care for this so they like almost never

02:23:47.860 would have been me how dare you how dare you get away with me and my husband honestly though when

02:23:53.940 I was in it was like this is the room where Queen Victoria would stay when she came here 0.99

02:23:57.240 and i was like oh man victoria and albert fucked in this room 0.99

02:24:01.060 victoria was there and albert was alive that's what happened it's a fuck room 0.99

02:24:09.160 so you know there's we've talked about a lot of things this episode but what i do want to just

02:24:15.460 emphasize is like go to brighton visit the royal pavilion take pictures and send them to me because

02:24:22.780 everything i've described you're like haha and that sounds funny but when you go you're like 0.97

02:24:26.000 oh fuck this place is fucked up like I feel like I'm in like the worst escape room like what is 0.99

02:24:32.120 this what am I in some sort of like movie about being trapped in like the ugliest house in the 1.00

02:24:38.540 world like this is just like what is happening so you need to go because it you need to understand 0.95

02:24:44.780 what it's like just it's like being in pretty's head and it's like you know I'm glad I went

02:24:50.620 a place to pee next to it or nearby there's a pub called mrs fitzherberts that's prinny's other

02:24:58.420 wife and it's like a pub like brighton is just like go there for pride oh speaking of speaking

02:25:04.880 of i have my fundraiser that's going on um until the end of may i'm raising funds for the trevor

02:25:09.920 project i have this art the regency queera so it's this beautiful design made by my friend

02:25:16.980 Yeah, and Yupiter, which features all the queer 0.83

02:25:19.460 Coded people from the Regency 0.99

02:25:21.120 Season of this podcast, and this is the Regency 0.99

02:25:23.560 Queer-a, and it's gorgeous

02:25:25.460 And all the proceeds are going to

02:25:27.460 Support the Trevor Project, so get your shirt

02:25:29.640 Now, you can also make donations there to the Trevor

02:25:31.560 Project, which is wonderful

02:25:33.180 Always support the Trevor Project

02:25:35.700 Yeah, like suicide prevention 0.93

02:25:37.840 Hotline for

02:25:39.180 LGBTQIA plus people

02:25:42.060 And support, if you're all

02:25:43.660 Alone, it's the right place to go, talk to them

02:25:45.820 Yes

02:25:46.980 Absolutely. Trevor Project. We love the Trevor Project. And just all the conversations about like Bridgerton and like, oh my God, what? There's going to be a sapphic story? That's not historically accurate, which is like, first of all, when has Bridgerton ever been historically accurate? And secondly, as I hope I've portrayed in this series, the Regency era was queer as fuck.

02:26:05.480 so like so 0.98

02:26:07.480 it made this beautiful design and I'm

02:26:09.460 having this shirt now and you can get it at

02:26:11.540 so go to vulgarhistory.com slash trevor

02:26:13.560 that's vulgarhistory.com slash trevor 0.97

02:26:15.340 to get your regency queer 0.84

02:26:17.480 tea and then you'll get it in time 0.79

02:26:19.520 for pride which is June so

02:26:21.520 you can wear it and explain to

02:26:23.420 everybody how the regency was a 0.97

02:26:25.320 wild time and everybody was queer really 0.99

02:26:27.320 anyway thank you Lana 0.75

02:26:29.340 for joining me yet again

02:26:31.100 and to all my listeners keep your 0.99

02:26:33.320 pants on and your tits out 0.99

02:26:34.880 vulgar history is researched scripted and hosted by ann foster editor is christina lumagi theme 0.98

02:26:42.880 music is by the severin duo regency era artwork by karen moynihan social media videos by magdalena

02:26:49.240 denson transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by aveline malik you can get

02:26:55.100 early ad-free episodes of vulgar history by becoming a paid member of our patreon at patreon.com

02:27:00.280 slash ann foster writer vulgar history merchandise is available at vulgar history.com

02:27:05.320 slash store for americans and at vulgar history.redbubble.com for everyone else

02:27:10.420 follow us on social media at vulgar history pod get in touch with me at vulgar history pod

02:27:15.240 at gmail.com legendary stories awe-inspiring sound and endless adventure welcome to the realms of

02:27:27.660 peril and glory explore the mechanically magical vistas of vale the paranormal mysteries of liminal

02:27:39.340 london and the cyberpunk chaos of cyborg fall in love with our core cast or be awed by our

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02:27:59.800 Barred. Ignite your imagination and discover the Realms of Peril and Glory today. Go to

02:28:07.940 RealmsPod.com or search Realms of Peril and Glory wherever you listen to podcasts.

02:28:14.340 Hi, I'm Whitney.

02:28:19.620 And I'm Katie.

02:28:20.800 And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire.

02:28:23.180 We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to.

02:28:26.560 We get right to the story. 0.95

02:28:28.240 We don't do a lot of extra talking, and when we do, it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. 0.97

02:28:34.640 You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. 0.89

02:28:37.220 Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?

02:28:41.380 BTK and his awful poetry.

02:28:43.520 Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.

02:28:47.260 We look for the stranger-than-fiction stories, like the case of Patty James,

02:28:51.140 a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing.

02:28:53.600 Or Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry who convinced his town he'd won the lottery,

02:28:59.460 fleeced local businesses out of thousands, and then became a romance scammer.

02:29:03.820 We've covered tons of cases you've never heard of. 0.94

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02:29:10.200 Listen to True Crime Campfire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Vulgar History - May 13, 2026

How Ada Lovelace Predicted The Rise of AI

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