Ep. 18 Betting on Horses & Fighting Nazis

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This episode Megan and Milena cover the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace & our first non visual artist but complete badass, Lisa Fittko

Ada Lovelace

– Our Bad Woman of Science-

This is the world’s first computer programmer. Stylin’ and killing it.
Ada Lovelace (born Augusta Ada Byron) was born in December of 1815. Raised by a single mother who she had a cold relationship with, abandoned by her father, and bedridden for most of her childhood by various illnesses- our girl had a lot of alone time to learn math and science.

And then she got out of bedrest and got into a LOT of trouble. But you’re going to have to tune into episode 18 to get the scoop on that….

BUT- While she was getting into trouble, she was also creating the first ever known computer program in the world. So there’s that.


This is a daguerreotype of her- called the Countess of Lovelace- was done by Antoine Claudet. Thought I would just put this here.

This is the not-fully-completely Analytical Machine that was being built by Ada’s BFF Charles Babbage. He could not complete it because he had lost funds and eventually passed. But before he did that, he held a lecture on the possible machine. An Engineer in the lecture took notes in Latin, and Ada translated those notes into English.

She also added her OWN notes, that were triple the size of the original ones. Labeled A-G, she picked apart the machine, explained what it, mused the possibilities of such a machine, discredited the idea of machines making its own decisions, and then wrote the first known computer program in history.

Like wtf is this?

WHICH IS WHAT THIS IS. This is the very detailed notation of how to make the Analytical Machine generate Bernoulli Numbers….which is a number sequence in number theory. It’s fairly tedious to do yourself. So she made the algorithm!!!

And above, not mentioned in the episode but still pretty cool….. an entire comic series called The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. It is based loosely off the two best friends Ada and Charles and written by Sydney Padua. Padua is a talented Artist and Author. So if you want to give a female artist (A LIVING ONE) some love, you can find her website and work HERE

Lisa Fittko

1942 Passport photo of Lisa as she was trying to GTFO of Europe

Lisa Fittko is a Fucking Badass™. This episode we explore our first non-visual artist, a woman whose World War II efforts were so impactful to the arts that I couldn’t not cover her. While Lisa might not be a painter, or sculptor, or musician, the work she did while fleeing from the Nazi’s has countless artists indebted to her.

This episode we cover how Lisa, a Jewish anti-fascist resistance activist AKA pretty badass woman subverted the raise of the Nazi’s while ensuring the survival of those fleeing from them. Stubbornness, determination and a well bribed salami are not to be underestimated.

Photo from the Vél d’Hiv roundup in 1942 – Lisa was caught in an earlier round up like the one above, leading to her imprisonment under the French government. From those buses people were held in camps, eventually being relocated to death camps outside of France
Photo of the Gurs prison camp in the south of France that Lisa, along with dozens of other women, escaped from
Mentioned this Episode
  • Hans Fittko – Journalist, vocal critic of the Nazis and husband to Lisa
  • Gurs camp – Prison in southwestern France where Lisa was detained before escaping
  • Degenerate Art Exhibition – Show the Nazis put together in order to slander and discredit any artistic creation not inline with their ideology
  • Emergency Rescue Committee – Private rescue organization founded in large part thanks to Varian Fry, who frustrated with the lack of American government action took maters into his own hands
  • Otto Meyerhof – Nobel prize winning scientist who fled Europe thanks to the ERC & Lisa’s efforts
  • Piet Mondrian – Modern artist who keeps popping up these last few episodes
  • Max Ernst – Pioneer in Surrealism art movement, who escaped war thanks to the ERC & Lisa’s efforts
  • Marcel Duchamp – Guy who wrote ‘R. Mutt’ on a urial and submitted it to a art show, escaped war thanks to the ERC & Lisa’s efforts
  • Andre Breton – Founder of Surrealism, who escaped war thanks to the ERC & Lisa’s efforts
Wanna know more? Always a book for that (usually) (or article)

Celeida Tostes by editors Marcus de Lontra Costa & Raquel Silva. Available to read for free, this is a great collection of essays in both Portuguese and English

Escape through the Pyrenees – by Lisa Fittko
Solidarity and Treason – by Lisa Fittko

As always, music by EeL