June 29, 2018 ▸ History, People

Episode 310: Amelia Earhart: Feminist, Trail-Blazer, Spy?

On this episode of The Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the fame, flight records, trail blazing, and life story of the biggest missing persons case in American History: they case of Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart was born to an upper middle class family, and though her father was an alcoholic, and her parents had a decades long on-again off-again relationship, she still managed to get admitted to Columbia medical school and have a very liberal childhood. She was raised to be free from the typical constraints of women back in the early 1900s, and this freedom from male oppression was part of what made her rise to fame.

Earhart ended up signing up as a nurse volunteer during World War One, and this is where she met wounded pilots and fell in love with the idea of flying. Within a couple of years, she had taken flying lessons, and within one year of learning how to fly, she set the high altitude record for a woman! Amelia Earhart continued to set records, buying her first plane at an incredibly young age. She lived the dream of the Wright Brothers, and eventually, she was part of a rare flight across the Atlantic (though not the pilot), and this made her famous. She wrote a book, became editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, started a fashion line, and continued to set record after record as a pilot and continued to be a trail blazer for women’s liberation.

Eventually, Amelia Earhart decided to assemble a team and fly completely around the globe, taking a more dangerous route that covered more miles (and hopefully set another record….). She set out to fly a westerly course leaving Oakland, but she had back luck in Hawaii, and her plan was very badly damaged. After a delay in repairs and new fundraising, she had to chart a new course heading east this time and flew 22,000 miles of the roughly 30,000, almost completing her course. However, as she left New Guinea for a small island near Hawaii, her plane vanished. She was in contact with a Coast Guard ship, but lost radio communication with them.

So, where do people think she ended up? Did she drown in the sea with her co-pilot? Did she live out her years as a castaway? Was she captured by the Japanese as they postured to begin World War II? Was she actually a spy working for President Roosevelt, and why do people think this? What about the picture of Amelia Earhart that surfaced recently? Listen, laugh, learn.