Season 1
Baby Doe Tabor: The Queen of Colorado's Silver Empire
Catherine the Great Part I: A Stranger in Russia
In this episode, I tell you the extraordinary and heartbreaking story of Elizabeth McCourt Tabor, better known as Baby Doe Tabor. From poverty to glittering wealth in Colorado’s silver boom, and back again to isolation and tragedy, her life reads like a frontier epic. Alongside her husband, Horace Tabor, she rose to become one of the most famous women of the American West. But when the silver market collapsed, so too did everything they had built. What followed was not just financial ruin, but a decades-long descent into hardship that ended in one of the most haunting deaths in American history.
Before she was Catherine the Great, she was Sophia Augusta Frederica, a fourteen-year-old princess from a minor German principality traveling through the frozen Russian winter toward a future she could scarcely have imagined. In this episode of Dead People Talking, we follow the young Catherine from her childhood in Prussia to the dazzling and dangerous court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia. We explore her transformation from Sophia to Catherine, her conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, her disastrous marriage to the future Peter III, and the years of isolation, study, ambition and survival that began to shape one of the eighteenth century's most extraordinary rulers. From six-hour wedding celebrations and Peter's toy soldiers to Catherine's discovery of Enlightenment philosophy, affairs, miscarriages and the birth of her son Paul, this is the story of Catherine before she became "the Great" — when becoming Empress of Russia still seemed almost impossible. Sources & Further Reading Catherine the Great. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great. Translated by Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom. Modern Library, 2006. Alexander, John T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. Oxford University Press, 1989. Bushkovitch, Paul. A Concise History of Russia. Cambridge University Press, 2011. Music Music featured in this episode is licensed through Epidemic Sound. Follow Dead People Talking Instagram: @deadpeopletalkingpodcast TikTok: @deadpeopletalkingpod https://linktr.ee/DeadPeopleTalkingPod Dead People Talking: A History Podcast
In Episode Two of our series on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, we follow Jackie into the White House and through the years that turned her into an international figure almost overnight. At just thirty-one, she became First Lady, bringing a sense of history, art, and quiet glamour to a role she never really sought. Her restoration of the White House drew widespread attention, her overseas trips made her a diplomatic sensation, and the public became captivated by her style, intelligence, and carefully protected private life. But the image of the perfect First Family never told the full story. Jackie lived through her husband’s well-known infidelities, the strain of difficult pregnancies, the heartbreak of losing their infant son Patrick, and the constant pressure of life at the centre of Cold War America. Then, on November 22, 1963, everything changed. From Dallas and the bloodstained pink suit that would become one of the most haunting images of the twentieth century, to JFK’s funeral, the rise of the Camelot myth, her later marriage to Aristotle Onassis, and the intensely private life she built in its aftermath, this episode traces Jackie through grief, reinvention, motherhood, scandal, and survival. This is Jackie Kennedy after the campaign—the First Lady, the widow, the myth, and, beneath it all, a woman who spent her life deciding how much of herself the world would ever truly get to see. If you are enjoying Dead People Talking please share us, follow us, subscribe, and like NOW ON YOUTUBE https://linktr.ee/DeadPeopleTalkingPod Youtube Sources: America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Sarah Bradford