Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you missed in history class? From house stuff works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to bling a chuck rewarding and I'm fair. And in two thousand nine, a couple of antique dealers from Mexico, Carlos and Laticia Neiola, stirred up a big controversy in the art world. They'd for some time had in their possession a huge, previously unknown trove of material that belonged to renowned twentieth century artists, free to Carlo Now, who's probably, of course, considered one of the most famous painters ever, certainly one of the most iconic painters absolutely, And this trove that they have includes paintings, letters, diaries complete with sexually explicit doodles, recipes, and other keepsakes. So this trope sounds pretty interesting, but the way they came by it is admittedly a little bit sketchy. The couple say that they bought it from a lawyer who got it from a wood carver who worked for Diego Rivera, CALO's husband, and they have a letter to the wood carver from Calo, offering the stash to him as payment for some work that he'd done, And this is kind of one of their one of the proofs that they have of it. Initially, nobody really paid much attention to the fact that they had this, But just when Princeton Architectural Press was about to publish a book featuring the fines called Finding Free to Callo Free to, experts from all over stepped forward to protest. Yeah. According to a article in Newsweek by Jenny Yabrof, twelve Calo experts signed this official letter denouncing the new collection, and the trust that controls Klo's copyright even filed a criminal complaint asking the Mexican government to investigate the fines and to ultimately try to block the book's publication. So we're gonna be talking a little bit more about how this situation has turned out in the second part of this two part podcast, but for now, we want to consider why are so many people convinced that the material is fake in the first place, especially since scientific testing has dated it to Kala's lifetime and a handwriting expert says that the writing in the letters does match kolos so Yabrov's article goes a little bit into the process of art authentication, which is really interesting, and she discusses how experts will often base their opinions regarding the works authenticity on whether it feels like something the artists would do, or, in the case of letters, whether it just sounds like something here. She would say, so, that sounds pretty inexact, but at least in Colo's case, there might be something to these sort of touchy feely verdicts because her works are so much about her. I mean, of about a hundred and forty three authenticated paintings, fifty five of those or self portraits. So, of course all of this attention is also partly because Frieda's work is just so high they acclaimed, and she's even developed kind of a cult following over the past couple of decades. Freedom maniacs, as Stephanie Mensmer calls Calo fans, and an article for The Washington Monthly seemed to be at least as interested in Kolo's life story as they are in her art. You know all the details and interesting facts about her. In fact, Mensimers suggests that this is why die hard feminists don't really celebrate Kolo that much, which I find to be really interesting. And it's because some of her feel some of them feel that her fame isn't really related to her work. So in this episode, we want to take a look at that life story that so many people are drawn to. It's one that involves politics and even a touch of glamour and a tumultuous love story. After we did the Brownings episode, a lot of people were requesting more love. Yes, so here it is. And um probably the part that touches people the most just Freeda's pain and suffering. It's a major part of her personality. So pain was something that Frieda Callo learned about pretty early on, even though she started out in a fairly happy situation. She was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda calo E Calderon on July six, nineteen o seven, and she was the third of four daughters, so she came from a mixed ancestry, to which must have made her stand out a little bit growing up. Yeah, her father was Guier Moo Callo, a German jew who had immigrated to Mexico in eighteen ninety one, and her mother was Matilda Calderon, a Mexican Catholic whose heritage was a mix of both Indian and Spanish, and according to an article by Phillis Tukman in The Smithsonian, Frieda's father really just adored her. She was his favorite of all his daughters, and he found her to be very smart and very much like him, and she doated on him in return. And her relationship with her mother, though was a little bit more contentious. Frieda seemed to admire her mom. She thought that she was smart, but sometimes she thought that her mom could be a little too fanatically religious and also cruel free to herself though, was a fairly obedient child, but she did have quite the quick temper, so the Calo called her own. Family lived in a house known as Casa Azul or Blue House, which her father had built in Koya Khan, an area outside of Mexico City. And it's significant to know this because it's a place that Frieda would come back to throughout her life. So she had her first real experience with adversity at only aged six, when she contracted polio. We've of course done an episode on that, so you can, you know, get a better picture of what that would have been like for her and her family by listening to that old episode. Frieda of course survived, but after her bout with polio, her right leg was thinner than her left and her right foot was also stunted. But she really didn't let that beat her, didn't let it stop her in any way. No, she didn't. She maybe to prove that her disabilities couldn't keep her down. She became a total tomboy. She played sports such as soccer, She did boxing, wrestling, swimming, and she would run around with the boys from her school instead of learning to clean and cook at home like the other girls might have been doing. She was also exposed to art pretty early on. Her father was a photographer, and he taught her some of the tricks of his trade, including how to retouch photos, and Frieda also took drawing lessons from one of her father's pals when she was growing up. So when she was fifteen years old, she started at the elite National Preparatory School in Mexico City, and at that time she was really one of only a few females studying there. And he might, of course expect free to college to have been studying art or something like that. But she was taking science courses like anatomy and biology because her ultimate goal was to become a doctor. And of course the things she learned in these classes, you know, anatomy and biology, might have really informed her artwork later on and made her pieces more realistic when it came to human anatomy, that sort of thing. She was at school when she met d a. Go Rivera, a man who, as we mentioned, plays a major role later on in her life story. Now Rivera, just to give you a little bit of quick background on him. He was a Mexican born also Mexican born like Frieda, and about twenty years her senior. He started drawing and studying art at an early age, and by nineteen oh seven he'd moved to Europe to study the great masters like Gogan and Matisset, but he was still searching for something new, a different style of painting that would allow him to reach a wide audience and really express his take on what was going on in the world. So he returned to Mexico and by nineteen twenty one he was painting a series of public murals as part of a government program, and these murals reflected his thoughts about Mexico and its history and its people. And that's what he was doing when he met Frieda for the first time. He was painting, painting a mural in her school's auditorium, and apparently Colo would play pranks on him while he was working, things like stealing his lunch, and she would put soap on the steps next to where he was working. And you just think of them as this dignified adult cover. It's hard to imagine these childish pranks of hers. But she was supposedly known for having this great sense of humor and for being quite the trickster. So according to Tukman's article in Rivera's autobiography, he recalls seeing Frieda for the first time when he was painting one night. He said, quote, all of a sudden, the door flew open, and a girl who seemed to be no more than ten or twelve was propelled inside. She had unusual dignity and self assurance, and there was a strange fire in her eyes. So apparently this older, worldly muralist actually noticed Frieda, even though she was only sixteen at the time. But as far as we can tell, nothing really happened between them. They didn't get to know each other at this point, so Frieda really seemed to be caught up in her studies and her friends. And she had a boyfriend tu named Alejandro Gomez Arias. And in nine one of the major events of her life happens, and she's actually with her boyfriend. When it happened, she was eighteen years old and they were riding home from school one day when a trolley car crashed into their bus, and in the accident, a metal handraill broke off and stabbed Frieda's body, basically going into her abdomen and exiting through her vagina. When it was all said and done, her spinal column was broken in three places, her collar bone, some ribs, and her pelvis were all broken, and then her right leg, the one that had already been affected by polio, was broken in eleven places. Her right foot was dislocated and crashed, and a lot of people died in this crash. I mean, you can imagine if her injuries were that bad, and initially doctors thought that Frieda wouldn't survive either. She had an operation, she was in the hospital for about a month and then finally she got to go home, but her recovery process after that was still a long long time and quite painful to it was not at all comfortable at lessoned for months, and she had to spend the whole time encased in these plaster courses, basically like a body cast. Obviously, she couldn't go back to school while she was in that state, so that is when she started painting. The way she described it, she started painting quote without giving it any particular thought. It was just sort of something for her to do to pass the time. And she basically taught herself. I mean she did, as we mentioned wed, she'd had those drawing lessons and everything, but this was kind of her foray into painting, and she did it from her sick bed. Her mom had a special easel rigged up for her and had a mirror attached to the underside of her beds canopy. And so that's how her self portraits started. And of course Frieda hadn't been to Europe to practice art and to study the masters as Rivera had, but she must have had some knowledge of them because she would incorporate little bits of their styles into her own paintings. Again, according to Tukman's article, she gave her boyfriend a painting of herself that showed her with a swan like neck and tapered fingers, and she called it your bought of Chili. It's really easy to imagine her in bed, staring at this mirror all day, every day for months and trying to heal. And it's also easy to imagine that that would lead to a lot of introspection. And it seemed that during this time, Frieda really started to see herself differently, or at least noticed some fundamental changes about herself. She wrote in a letter quote, I was a child who went about in a world of colors. My friends, my companions became women. Slowly I became old in instance. And maybe it was partially a result of seeing this change in herself. But as she recovered, Frieda, who had always had sort of a leftist streak, began to get more interested in Mexican politics. She struck up a friendship with Tina Bedotti, an Italian photographer who was a member of the Communist Party, and she ended up joining the Communist Party herself. According to PBS, freed To actually started telling people that her birthday was July six, nineteen ten, rather than ninet seven, So that's why you might see some discrepancies in her birthday if you're researching her on your own. And she probably chose that year because it coincided with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, so you can see how much she how ardent she was about her political beliefs, and how much she kind of internalized those. So of course Frieda's entrance into the political world also reformed some old connections. So an acquaintance from Frieda's past also happened to be Communist, and that was of course the muralist Rivera, and that was sort of what his working with murals was all about in the first place. It was a rejection of elite diesel art and fancy galleries and museums and the paintings that rich people would have in their homes that weren't as accessible for everyday people. You know, you have a mural in a public building, anybody can see it. And um Rivera also became a leading proponent of a post revolution nary movement called the Mexican and Dad, which rejected Western European influences seen among the aristocracy for all things considered authentically Mexican. So kind of like air quotes there and then running in the same political circles. Perhaps it was only inevitable that Rivera and Frieda would of course cross paths again, especially if she had made such an impression on him the first go round. And this meeting or re meeting probably happened at a party given by Frida's friend Medoti, who we mentioned in Night. This time, though, when Rivera and Freedom met, the two did start up a romantic relationship. By all accounts, they were truly the odd couple, at least as far as their appearances were concerned. He was six ft tall and three hundred pounds and really kind of awkward looking, and she was ninety eight pounds and five ft three, so very small and also considered quite pretty. And we've already mentioned the twenty one year age difference between them, so that was a big thing too. Even more if you go off of Frieda's fake birthday, Yeah, that's true that her fake age would have put them further apart. But when Rivera started courting Frieda, she was still living at her parents house, Casa Zul, and so he'd stopped by under the ruse of critiquing her paintings. After all, he was by this time, the most celebrated artist in Mexico and she was still unknown, so it would make sense that she would want his opinion and tips maybe on her art. Their friends and family were skeptical of their relationship, but it wouldn't take long before Frieda would roll pretty much head on into what she described as the second accident of her life, which was her marriage to Rivera. So that is it for this part of the podcast on Frieda Callo. But next time we're gonna give you a little bit more on this accident number two that we just mentioned, Diego and Frieda's travels into America, their tumultuous love, and of course Frieda's art. We're going to talk a little bit more about those portraits we've been mentioning those eyebrows. I'm sure you all want to go and talking about the eyebrows, yes, And we'll also talk more about the controversy of the recent free to call of fines. So with that, I think we will go ahead and move on to listener mail. Well, we haven't done too much listener mail in a while, so I think we're going to read a few emails this time to make up for it. The first one is from listener Jill, and she says, hello, ladies. I just made a trip to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. On the historic tour, visitors get to see booths Amphitheater, which is a large platform close to the top of the cave that looks out over a huge open part of the tunnel. The ranger recounted how the actor Edwin Booth once performed Hamlet from the platform to large crowds below. He also told the story of how one Booth killed the Lincoln and another save to Lincoln. Coincidentally, I listened to the Booth Conspiracy episode on the way home from the trip, which is so cool. I love the idea of getting to see Booth at Mammoth Cave for forming his signature role of Hamlet. Imagine when he picks up the skull or something from a cave. For been there but I haven't either, but it sounds like a cool place to see a play. Actually, so, we got a lot of mail about the Booth Conspiracy episode. Actually I kind of figured we did. We would get a lot of mail because there are so many Lincoln fans out there. But I wanted to share one interesting point that a listener Patrick wrote in to share with us. He said Booth wanted to kill General Grant, as you may know, but as everyone knows, he did not attend the play or Booth did not come up with a plan for the event. Uh. The interesting reason why why then rants did not attend is that Julia Dent wanted to see her children and leave Washington as soon as possible that afternoon, and that's what Grant told Lincoln. But more interestingly, many believed Julia did not care for Mary Todd Lincoln and did not want to attend the play with her. I kind of had wondered about that. They went through a few theater guest invitations before where they finally settled on their port engaged couple. Um, and it seems like, you know, people would be happened to go to a play with Lincoln. I would jump the chance to go to a play with the President and his wife. Yeah, I mean it sounds like a sounds like it would be an opportunity of a lifetime, although clearly things didn't go as planned. Now we're going to switch gears just a little bit and getting our way back machine because we have a listener mail here a very recent one from last week, but it is about an episode that we did a year ago on Paul Morphy, Chess Champion. And it's from Sarah in New Orleans, and she says, I'm a longtime listener, first time writer, inner, and a local TV producer here in New Orleans. When y'all did your Paul Morphy podcast back in June, I was completely surprised and delighted to hear that arguably the greatest chess player in the whole world hailed from right here in New Orleans. Anyway, y'all inspired me to do a short package for our five PM news about Paul Morphy. I figured that a lot of New Orleaning is, like myself, had no idea who he was, and I wanted to spread the word. In doing the research, I discovered lots of cool things about Paul Morphy and things that maybe y'all didn't get to mention. The way I see it, he was kind of the forest scump of the nineteenth century New Orleans, being that he managed to cross paths with more than a few major historical people in icons. For example, he was born in the house that PGT. Beauregard, a major general of the Civil War Confederacy later lived in. At nine, he defeated Winfield Scott at chess three times in a row, and later he lived in and died in the house that is now Brennan's restaurant, arguably the most famous and iconic restaurant in New Orleans. And she sent us a link. Maybe we'll post it on Facebook or something so you guys can check out her package that she put together. It's two minutes long. And um, thanks for writing and Sarah, it's really cool to know that are telling this story inspired other people to tell this story. Yeah, I liked her segment to it featured a chess teacher in New Orleans and a couple of boys who were who are learning the art of chess, just like pal Morphy would have um many many years ago. And she said she might learn to play chess from that chess teacher that she interviewed, same aspiration after we did the Palm Morphy episode that it didn't quite play out. Yeah, playing chests for me is like knitting. It's one of those things that I learned to do. I've learned to do multiple times over the course of my lifetime that continue to drop it. Yes, exactly. It's a phase that I get into for a couple of weeks and then I fall out of it, So maybe I'll take it up again someday. So thank you all for writing in sharing so much stuff about the Lincoln assassination. And yeah, you can always email us about really old episodes too. We like to hear things like you've produced a news segment based on a podcast. That's pretty cool. So we are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at missed in History, and we are on Facebook. And if you get inspired in the meantime before part you off, the free to CALLO episode comes along. To learn a little bit more about famous artists. We have a whole slew of articles about famous artists on our website, I mean Picasso, Jackson, Pollock, Sally even freed To and you can look them up by visiting our homepage at www dot House to works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House top Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you missed in history class? From house stuff works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to bling a chuck rewarding and I'm fair. And in two thousand nine, a couple of antique dealers from Mexico, Carlos and Laticia Neiola, stirred up a big controversy in the art world. They'd for some time had in their possession a huge, previously unknown trove of material that belonged to renowned twentieth century artists, free to Carlo Now, who's probably, of course, considered one of the most famous painters ever, certainly one of the most iconic painters absolutely, And this trove that they have includes paintings, letters, diaries complete with sexually explicit doodles, recipes, and other keepsakes. So this trope sounds pretty interesting, but the way they came by it is admittedly a little bit sketchy. The couple say that they bought it from a lawyer who got it from a wood carver who worked for Diego Rivera, CALO's husband, and they have a letter to the wood carver from Calo, offering the stash to him as payment for some work that he'd done, And this is kind of one of their one of the proofs that they have of it. Initially, nobody really paid much attention to the fact that they had this, But just when Princeton Architectural Press was about to publish a book featuring the fines called Finding Free to Callo Free to, experts from all over stepped forward to protest. Yeah. According to a article in Newsweek by Jenny Yabrof, twelve Calo experts signed this official letter denouncing the new collection, and the trust that controls Klo's copyright even filed a criminal complaint asking the Mexican government to investigate the fines and to ultimately try to block the book's publication. So we're gonna be talking a little bit more about how this situation has turned out in the second part of this two part podcast, but for now, we want to consider why are so many people convinced that the material is fake in the first place, especially since scientific testing has dated it to Kala's lifetime and a handwriting expert says that the writing in the letters does match kolos so Yabrov's article goes a little bit into the process of art authentication, which is really interesting, and she discusses how experts will often base their opinions regarding the works authenticity on whether it feels like something the artists would do, or, in the case of letters, whether it just sounds like something here. She would say, so, that sounds pretty inexact, but at least in Colo's case, there might be something to these sort of touchy feely verdicts because her works are so much about her. I mean, of about a hundred and forty three authenticated paintings, fifty five of those or self portraits. So, of course all of this attention is also partly because Frieda's work is just so high they acclaimed, and she's even developed kind of a cult following over the past couple of decades. Freedom maniacs, as Stephanie Mensmer calls Calo fans, and an article for The Washington Monthly seemed to be at least as interested in Kolo's life story as they are in her art. You know all the details and interesting facts about her. In fact, Mensimers suggests that this is why die hard feminists don't really celebrate Kolo that much, which I find to be really interesting. And it's because some of her feel some of them feel that her fame isn't really related to her work. So in this episode, we want to take a look at that life story that so many people are drawn to. It's one that involves politics and even a touch of glamour and a tumultuous love story. After we did the Brownings episode, a lot of people were requesting more love. Yes, so here it is. And um probably the part that touches people the most just Freeda's pain and suffering. It's a major part of her personality. So pain was something that Frieda Callo learned about pretty early on, even though she started out in a fairly happy situation. She was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda calo E Calderon on July six, nineteen o seven, and she was the third of four daughters, so she came from a mixed ancestry, to which must have made her stand out a little bit growing up. Yeah, her father was Guier Moo Callo, a German jew who had immigrated to Mexico in eighteen ninety one, and her mother was Matilda Calderon, a Mexican Catholic whose heritage was a mix of both Indian and Spanish, and according to an article by Phillis Tukman in The Smithsonian, Frieda's father really just adored her. She was his favorite of all his daughters, and he found her to be very smart and very much like him, and she doated on him in return. And her relationship with her mother, though was a little bit more contentious. Frieda seemed to admire her mom. She thought that she was smart, but sometimes she thought that her mom could be a little too fanatically religious and also cruel free to herself though, was a fairly obedient child, but she did have quite the quick temper, so the Calo called her own. Family lived in a house known as Casa Azul or Blue House, which her father had built in Koya Khan, an area outside of Mexico City. And it's significant to know this because it's a place that Frieda would come back to throughout her life. So she had her first real experience with adversity at only aged six, when she contracted polio. We've of course done an episode on that, so you can, you know, get a better picture of what that would have been like for her and her family by listening to that old episode. Frieda of course survived, but after her bout with polio, her right leg was thinner than her left and her right foot was also stunted. But she really didn't let that beat her, didn't let it stop her in any way. No, she didn't. She maybe to prove that her disabilities couldn't keep her down. She became a total tomboy. She played sports such as soccer, She did boxing, wrestling, swimming, and she would run around with the boys from her school instead of learning to clean and cook at home like the other girls might have been doing. She was also exposed to art pretty early on. Her father was a photographer, and he taught her some of the tricks of his trade, including how to retouch photos, and Frieda also took drawing lessons from one of her father's pals when she was growing up. So when she was fifteen years old, she started at the elite National Preparatory School in Mexico City, and at that time she was really one of only a few females studying there. And he might, of course expect free to college to have been studying art or something like that. But she was taking science courses like anatomy and biology because her ultimate goal was to become a doctor. And of course the things she learned in these classes, you know, anatomy and biology, might have really informed her artwork later on and made her pieces more realistic when it came to human anatomy, that sort of thing. She was at school when she met d a. Go Rivera, a man who, as we mentioned, plays a major role later on in her life story. Now Rivera, just to give you a little bit of quick background on him. He was a Mexican born also Mexican born like Frieda, and about twenty years her senior. He started drawing and studying art at an early age, and by nineteen oh seven he'd moved to Europe to study the great masters like Gogan and Matisset, but he was still searching for something new, a different style of painting that would allow him to reach a wide audience and really express his take on what was going on in the world. So he returned to Mexico and by nineteen twenty one he was painting a series of public murals as part of a government program, and these murals reflected his thoughts about Mexico and its history and its people. And that's what he was doing when he met Frieda for the first time. He was painting, painting a mural in her school's auditorium, and apparently Colo would play pranks on him while he was working, things like stealing his lunch, and she would put soap on the steps next to where he was working. And you just think of them as this dignified adult cover. It's hard to imagine these childish pranks of hers. But she was supposedly known for having this great sense of humor and for being quite the trickster. So according to Tukman's article in Rivera's autobiography, he recalls seeing Frieda for the first time when he was painting one night. He said, quote, all of a sudden, the door flew open, and a girl who seemed to be no more than ten or twelve was propelled inside. She had unusual dignity and self assurance, and there was a strange fire in her eyes. So apparently this older, worldly muralist actually noticed Frieda, even though she was only sixteen at the time. But as far as we can tell, nothing really happened between them. They didn't get to know each other at this point, so Frieda really seemed to be caught up in her studies and her friends. And she had a boyfriend tu named Alejandro Gomez Arias. And in nine one of the major events of her life happens, and she's actually with her boyfriend. When it happened, she was eighteen years old and they were riding home from school one day when a trolley car crashed into their bus, and in the accident, a metal handraill broke off and stabbed Frieda's body, basically going into her abdomen and exiting through her vagina. When it was all said and done, her spinal column was broken in three places, her collar bone, some ribs, and her pelvis were all broken, and then her right leg, the one that had already been affected by polio, was broken in eleven places. Her right foot was dislocated and crashed, and a lot of people died in this crash. I mean, you can imagine if her injuries were that bad, and initially doctors thought that Frieda wouldn't survive either. She had an operation, she was in the hospital for about a month and then finally she got to go home, but her recovery process after that was still a long long time and quite painful to it was not at all comfortable at lessoned for months, and she had to spend the whole time encased in these plaster courses, basically like a body cast. Obviously, she couldn't go back to school while she was in that state, so that is when she started painting. The way she described it, she started painting quote without giving it any particular thought. It was just sort of something for her to do to pass the time. And she basically taught herself. I mean she did, as we mentioned wed, she'd had those drawing lessons and everything, but this was kind of her foray into painting, and she did it from her sick bed. Her mom had a special easel rigged up for her and had a mirror attached to the underside of her beds canopy. And so that's how her self portraits started. And of course Frieda hadn't been to Europe to practice art and to study the masters as Rivera had, but she must have had some knowledge of them because she would incorporate little bits of their styles into her own paintings. Again, according to Tukman's article, she gave her boyfriend a painting of herself that showed her with a swan like neck and tapered fingers, and she called it your bought of Chili. It's really easy to imagine her in bed, staring at this mirror all day, every day for months and trying to heal. And it's also easy to imagine that that would lead to a lot of introspection. And it seemed that during this time, Frieda really started to see herself differently, or at least noticed some fundamental changes about herself. She wrote in a letter quote, I was a child who went about in a world of colors. My friends, my companions became women. Slowly I became old in instance. And maybe it was partially a result of seeing this change in herself. But as she recovered, Frieda, who had always had sort of a leftist streak, began to get more interested in Mexican politics. She struck up a friendship with Tina Bedotti, an Italian photographer who was a member of the Communist Party, and she ended up joining the Communist Party herself. According to PBS, freed To actually started telling people that her birthday was July six, nineteen ten, rather than ninet seven, So that's why you might see some discrepancies in her birthday if you're researching her on your own. And she probably chose that year because it coincided with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, so you can see how much she how ardent she was about her political beliefs, and how much she kind of internalized those. So of course Frieda's entrance into the political world also reformed some old connections. So an acquaintance from Frieda's past also happened to be Communist, and that was of course the muralist Rivera, and that was sort of what his working with murals was all about in the first place. It was a rejection of elite diesel art and fancy galleries and museums and the paintings that rich people would have in their homes that weren't as accessible for everyday people. You know, you have a mural in a public building, anybody can see it. And um Rivera also became a leading proponent of a post revolution nary movement called the Mexican and Dad, which rejected Western European influences seen among the aristocracy for all things considered authentically Mexican. So kind of like air quotes there and then running in the same political circles. Perhaps it was only inevitable that Rivera and Frieda would of course cross paths again, especially if she had made such an impression on him the first go round. And this meeting or re meeting probably happened at a party given by Frida's friend Medoti, who we mentioned in Night. This time, though, when Rivera and Freedom met, the two did start up a romantic relationship. By all accounts, they were truly the odd couple, at least as far as their appearances were concerned. He was six ft tall and three hundred pounds and really kind of awkward looking, and she was ninety eight pounds and five ft three, so very small and also considered quite pretty. And we've already mentioned the twenty one year age difference between them, so that was a big thing too. Even more if you go off of Frieda's fake birthday, Yeah, that's true that her fake age would have put them further apart. But when Rivera started courting Frieda, she was still living at her parents house, Casa Zul, and so he'd stopped by under the ruse of critiquing her paintings. After all, he was by this time, the most celebrated artist in Mexico and she was still unknown, so it would make sense that she would want his opinion and tips maybe on her art. Their friends and family were skeptical of their relationship, but it wouldn't take long before Frieda would roll pretty much head on into what she described as the second accident of her life, which was her marriage to Rivera. So that is it for this part of the podcast on Frieda Callo. But next time we're gonna give you a little bit more on this accident number two that we just mentioned, Diego and Frieda's travels into America, their tumultuous love, and of course Frieda's art. We're going to talk a little bit more about those portraits we've been mentioning those eyebrows. I'm sure you all want to go and talking about the eyebrows, yes, And we'll also talk more about the controversy of the recent free to call of fines. So with that, I think we will go ahead and move on to listener mail. Well, we haven't done too much listener mail in a while, so I think we're going to read a few emails this time to make up for it. The first one is from listener Jill, and she says, hello, ladies. I just made a trip to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. On the historic tour, visitors get to see booths Amphitheater, which is a large platform close to the top of the cave that looks out over a huge open part of the tunnel. The ranger recounted how the actor Edwin Booth once performed Hamlet from the platform to large crowds below. He also told the story of how one Booth killed the Lincoln and another save to Lincoln. Coincidentally, I listened to the Booth Conspiracy episode on the way home from the trip, which is so cool. I love the idea of getting to see Booth at Mammoth Cave for forming his signature role of Hamlet. Imagine when he picks up the skull or something from a cave. For been there but I haven't either, but it sounds like a cool place to see a play. Actually, so, we got a lot of mail about the Booth Conspiracy episode. Actually I kind of figured we did. We would get a lot of mail because there are so many Lincoln fans out there. But I wanted to share one interesting point that a listener Patrick wrote in to share with us. He said Booth wanted to kill General Grant, as you may know, but as everyone knows, he did not attend the play or Booth did not come up with a plan for the event. Uh. The interesting reason why why then rants did not attend is that Julia Dent wanted to see her children and leave Washington as soon as possible that afternoon, and that's what Grant told Lincoln. But more interestingly, many believed Julia did not care for Mary Todd Lincoln and did not want to attend the play with her. I kind of had wondered about that. They went through a few theater guest invitations before where they finally settled on their port engaged couple. Um, and it seems like, you know, people would be happened to go to a play with Lincoln. I would jump the chance to go to a play with the President and his wife. Yeah, I mean it sounds like a sounds like it would be an opportunity of a lifetime, although clearly things didn't go as planned. Now we're going to switch gears just a little bit and getting our way back machine because we have a listener mail here a very recent one from last week, but it is about an episode that we did a year ago on Paul Morphy, Chess Champion. And it's from Sarah in New Orleans, and she says, I'm a longtime listener, first time writer, inner, and a local TV producer here in New Orleans. When y'all did your Paul Morphy podcast back in June, I was completely surprised and delighted to hear that arguably the greatest chess player in the whole world hailed from right here in New Orleans. Anyway, y'all inspired me to do a short package for our five PM news about Paul Morphy. I figured that a lot of New Orleaning is, like myself, had no idea who he was, and I wanted to spread the word. In doing the research, I discovered lots of cool things about Paul Morphy and things that maybe y'all didn't get to mention. The way I see it, he was kind of the forest scump of the nineteenth century New Orleans, being that he managed to cross paths with more than a few major historical people in icons. For example, he was born in the house that PGT. Beauregard, a major general of the Civil War Confederacy later lived in. At nine, he defeated Winfield Scott at chess three times in a row, and later he lived in and died in the house that is now Brennan's restaurant, arguably the most famous and iconic restaurant in New Orleans. And she sent us a link. Maybe we'll post it on Facebook or something so you guys can check out her package that she put together. It's two minutes long. And um, thanks for writing and Sarah, it's really cool to know that are telling this story inspired other people to tell this story. Yeah, I liked her segment to it featured a chess teacher in New Orleans and a couple of boys who were who are learning the art of chess, just like pal Morphy would have um many many years ago. And she said she might learn to play chess from that chess teacher that she interviewed, same aspiration after we did the Palm Morphy episode that it didn't quite play out. Yeah, playing chests for me is like knitting. It's one of those things that I learned to do. I've learned to do multiple times over the course of my lifetime that continue to drop it. Yes, exactly. It's a phase that I get into for a couple of weeks and then I fall out of it, So maybe I'll take it up again someday. So thank you all for writing in sharing so much stuff about the Lincoln assassination. And yeah, you can always email us about really old episodes too. We like to hear things like you've produced a news segment based on a podcast. That's pretty cool. So we are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at missed in History, and we are on Facebook. And if you get inspired in the meantime before part you off, the free to CALLO episode comes along. To learn a little bit more about famous artists. We have a whole slew of articles about famous artists on our website, I mean Picasso, Jackson, Pollock, Sally even freed To and you can look them up by visiting our homepage at www dot House to works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House top Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you