Ep. 39 Just-us on Election Day (& anxiety & stress eating & is this over yet?!?)

By |

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS

In today’s Election Day themed episode, BFFs Milena and Megan cover patriotic inventor, actress, and film producer, Hedy Lamarr & examine the allegorical figure that is Lady Justice

Hedy Lamarr

A beautiful thing about this nation is that anyone can be American. Just as equality, anyone can be screwed by America. Today we cover actress, film producer and inventor Hedy Lamarr who contributed to the war effort and received a polite ‘That’s nice, go raise up some money’ instead. Milena shares how she made a secret escape from an abusive partner, who performed the first feature film female orgasim & how we have wireless communication technology all thanks to Hedy.

Lady Justice

Justitia outside the the Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
We could learn from Canada by not blinding our Justice

Today’s episode is a Schrodinger’s cat – we’re recording on Halloween eve, releasing the during Election Week here in the States….potentially the results might be in….like, is it a sigh of relief, then back to advocating for change or just like a ‘oh god how could this happen, again?’

The election is a mess, Senate Republicans choice to push through a supreme court nomination instead of like…oh I don’t know, a Covid relief package…And on theme with this yea,r and really every year in America, we’ve had more fatal police shootings of Black Americans (Marcellis Stinnette & Walter Wallace Jr.) – in just the last week.

Right now particularly, justice seems fraught. Today, we’re not covering an artist, but instead giving the run down on a recurring female figure in art – Lady Justice. You know her – scales, sword, blindfold, found in courthouses all over the world – the saying goes Justice is blind.

Today we’re gonna learn that was not always the case, and how even back in the 1500’s people were calling bullshit on that with memes.

Selected Images
Political Memes 1500s style AKA illustration by Albrecht Durer for Ship of Fools
Roman coin from 23 AD featuring the goddess Justitia
Left: 1543 Lady Justice in Switzerland
Center: Lady Justice atop the Central Criminal Court in London
Right: 1961 Lady Justice in Brazil

  • Themis – Greek Titian, where we initially get the inspiration of Lady Justice from
  • Dike – Daughter of Themis, who presided over justice in mortal affairs
  • Ma’at – Egyptian goddess of Justice & Truth, who Lady Justices gets the symbol of scales from
  • Justitia – Roman goddess that rolled Themis, Dike and Ma’at together forming the basis of Lady Justice
  • Martin Luther – German monk who nailed a list of 95 grievances to a church door and basically kicked off the Protestant Reformation
  • Protestant Reformation – Political, ideological and religious fraction of German Protestants from the Catholic Church in the 1500’s
  • Albrecht Durer – Highly regarded German Renaissance artist, who provided woodcut illustrations for the satirical book Ship of Fools
  • Yeloje – Siberian god of the Sun & Justice, said that rainbows are his tongue
  • Samas – Ancient Mesopotamia god of the Sun & Justice, who required a sheep’s liver being sacrificed in order to communicate with mortals. Messy business…
  • Tenga – Goddess of the West African Mossi people, she rules over the Earth & Justice and is Megan’s front runner to replace the Greco-Roman Lady Justice

As always, music by EeL

1 Comment

Comments are closed.