The Amelia Earhart, Eyes, Throat, and Nose Expertease

Clare Sera, you are an expert in Amelia Earhart. And so I thought we could probe your area. Pardon? Of expertise. Spelled wrong? Naturally. Oh, yike. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Ladies and gentlemen, flight enthusiasts, goggle wearers, welcome to the Expertise podcast. I'm Danno Sullivan, professional podcast host. And my guest today is Clare Sera, who has literally written the book on lost aviatrix, Amelia Earhart.

Clare, welcome to the program. Yeah. Hold on. Let me take these goggles off. Just easy. Those are the original Amelia Earhart goggles. They are her goggles. Not a lot of people know how small her head was. She had the opposite of encephalitis. Oh, elephant situs. Yes. Yes. She had Ella Fitzgerald's sighting on her head and it. Well, wait, will you, will you explain that? So this was the opposite of encephalitis. Yes. Her, her head was three times smaller than a normal head. Wow. And how does Ella Fitzgerald fit into this? Well, because as, as everybody knew, Ella Fitzgerald was a large and powerful woman and she could never have fit into Amelia Earhart's head.

The, the whole of Ella into, was such a joke among the medical profession that they named the disease, which is the opposite of encephalitis, which is a, an enlarged skull. Ella Fitzgerald's itis. Ella Fitz situs. Yes, she does. But she does not fit Amelia. Now, Claire, you're, you're jumping way ahead. We usually like to start at the beginning and work our way through. Way ahead. I would like to weigh ahead. If only we could find the head. And of course, that's the question that everybody has. How did you happen to have the goggles and leather flying helmet of Amelia Earhart when the entire rest of her body and plane vanished?

Her normal sized body. Her normal sized body and normal sized plane. We just need to backtrack real quick for our listeners who might not. Amelia Earhart was of course, the first woman with the tiniest head to fly across the widest ocean. She was a woman of extremes. First, widest, tiniest. Biggest personality in the smallest head is the subtitle of my book. And you know, from a medical perspective, the personality is not housed in the head, is it? No, that's exactly right. It's in the bosom, which were very normal sized for it for the day. You know, this was the twenties.

Women had eschewed the brassiere of the time. That was the beginning of the trouble between her and Charles, which is what really her husband, Charles Lindbergh, of course, and I forgot they were married. Well, I do have Amelia's journals, of course, when I discovered her head. Because she weighed it daily, didn't she? She was kind of self-conscious about that tiny, tiny, very self-conscious. And she actually approached a famous fitness guru of the time, Charles Atlas, to help her with head exercises to see if there was a way to grow, you know, at least muscle around her skull to just, you know, proportionately.

And that is when she actually fell in love with flying. How so? What's the connection between face exercises and flying? It was actually Charles Atlas who taught her how to build up muscle between her, their skull and her scalp. And he said, envision it like the wind racing around inside of your head. And she started to hear that wind. So it was a dream, an imaginary feeling. And she felt like she wanted to recreate that in the physical world. I mean, as a man, I'm not surprised you saying that the woman dreamt it or imagined it, but she did have wind rushing around her skull between the muscle and her scalp.

Well, the interesting thing about such a small head was that it made her very aerodynamic. That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah. Even before she had her first plane, she was swift cutting through the air like a knife. Oh yeah. And she would bend at such an angle when she ran. So she was head first, you know, she had like a 45 degree angle from the spine. And even that, that stance sort of gives her the illusion of speed. You know, your, your head gets over the finish line well before your waist or feet. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, very long limbed to her hands would be flapping, but sometimes her hands would come in third.

But her head was first. Am I accurate in saying that she won the 1936 Olympics track and field gold, bronze, and silver first, second, and third. She was the first woman to win all three. Yeah. Yeah. She, that really shook Hitler. Yeah. Hitler took them away from her. That was a troubled time. And I think the troubled time of that day, her troubled secret marriage to Charles Lindbergh was, uh, all of what spurred her on to leap off of this earth. It was a very competitive marriage. Charles Lindbergh was famous for his solo flight from New York to Paris. And there's Amelia Earhart's famous quote.

Well, the, the women have to fly to Paris backwards and in high heels, right? That is right. That is right. And that is how she flew, which was controversial at the time. She did have her, the cockpit was in the back of the plane. Now, did the plane fly backwards or did she just take the reverse route around the globe to arrive in Paris? She sat backwards. The plane flew forwards, of course. You know, I am not an arrow nut. Bear with me if I ask some, some really dumb questions here. That's fine. There are no dumb questions, just dumb people. So Claire, of course, the big question about Amelia Earhart's surrounds are mysterious.

What was she wearing? Oh, what was she wearing during that startling disappearance that we assumed to be a plane crash, but she, she was something of a fashion icon. Wasn't she? Oh, she was beyond an icon. She was one of the first function meets form fashionistas of her day. With the regalia of the aviatrix. I mean, you know, it became popular during World War II to create wedding dresses out of old parachute silk. Well, she had created her cross country outfit. She wore a, a bridal dress made of parachute silk. So she was dressed as a, as a bride? Yes, with a voluminous skirt.

So, so that's good for safety. You would think, you know, falling out of a plane, you get that loft. Well, that's why she did not die in that plane crash, Dano. You're convinced? Oh, a hundred percent convinced. Yeah. She knew what she was doing. So you think her voluminous, flowing bridal outfit that she wore while sitting backwards in her plane would have ballooned up. Absolutely. Now, I mean. Like a parachute and floated her to safety. There's risks with that. She was exposed for all the world to see on the way down. Um, the wind was moving about parts that were not inside her skull.

Let me just put it that way. Hang, hang on just a second. Claire, we are on the verge of a scoop right here. Are you telling me that Amelia Earhart flew an airplane without bloomers? I am here to say absolutely. Yes. Yes, she did. Sans culotte. And it was part of how she wanted to hug the world. Is there any consideration for the idea that she was just too advanced, too forward thinking for her time? A woman going around in a dress like that with nothing underneath. What about sabotage, Claire? Well, the idea has been floated, pun intended, that, uh, perhaps Charles, either Atlas or Lindbergh, who were both madly in love with her, that one of them, or perhaps together, they may have had their reasons to tinker with the plane because she was no longer tinkering with them.

If you don't mind me saying. So a lot of personal baggage here, and I know they didn't have much room for baggage on those planes. Do they even have an overhead compartment? Or should we not use the word head in relation to Amelia? They, they certainly didn't in Amelia's plane. Claire, I want to go way out on a limb here and tell you my personal theory about what happened. I feel like I've heard them all, but I'm, I'm curious. Has anyone gone down the path of blaming Ella Fitzgerald in a fit of rage that Ella Fitzgerald used her pitch perfect voice to somehow jam the radar system on Amelia's plane and that in her jealousy for the tininess, the petiteness, the lady like bird-like build of Amelia's head, it was Ella Fitzgerald that brought her down.

So it almost feels like you've, you've read my book. Did you, did you? No, no, no. Because I'm sorry. We have, we have a policy on the podcast. If anyone has a book, we do not read it. We try to make sure that all our guests are treated equally that way. Okay. That, that is an equalizing policy. Daniel, I could give a lot of credibility to that very paranoid theory of what happened to Amelia. But Ella Fitzgerald was known for her extremely large head and her beautiful, pure pitch. It could have happened the way I described it. Well, and you know, it's not for nothing that Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Lindbergh and Charles Atlas released an album the year after Amelia had been gone.

That's a collector's item. We never did find out for sure what happened to Amelia. And we may never find out because tragically her remains remain unfound. In the circles of Amelia Earhart, you know, discovery on my Reddit, ameliaairhead.com.blogspot backslash. There's a community in Australia who have found her plane. Well, they say they have found her plane. What I've read is they have found tiny scraps of metal, the occasional nut or bolt. And this is what throws the whole thing into a cocked hat is that they claim to have found her cocked hat, her leather flying helmet, which you arrived wearing.

Yeah. Doesn't that destroy your theory right there? How can one helmet exist in two places? I got this helmet from the Australian commission for Amelia Earhart.blogspot.net backslash Reddit. Wow. So you really do buy into that, that that theory that her plane and artifacts were found because you are the proud owner of said artifacts. Yeah, I know. And I really do have to take it off soon. I hope that we can wrap up this podcast. I'm getting a massive headache. Those goggles are on very tight. Claire, we do need to wrap this up. But the reason we were excited to have you on the show instead of one of the myriad other Amelia Earhart fan tricks is your startling proposal to rebuild her airplane from the metal scraps that you have acquired, presumably from the original ship itself.

I'm so excited about this project, Dano. And, um, if anybody wants to join in the crowdfunding, it's at Amelia dot airhead dot air heart dot Lindbergh dot Atlas backslash Reddit, Reddit. Have you read it.com. And because I really do believe we found the backwards positioned cock seat, uh, seat, cock seat, the cock seat. We believe we found the cock seat of Amelia Earhart's plane. Is that an actual expression? Is that pilot talk? The Australians have told me that they, it's called a cock seat, which is the seat in the cockpit. It's just, I am, I think maybe your, your Redditors might be leading you down the garden path a little bit.

I'm sure that's not the right word. Well, all right, let's let it be right. Uh, it just sounds like a more fascinating website than I had imagined at this point. Uh, if you wouldn't mind giving us the website address one more. Oh, of course. It is, uh, Amelia dot airhead dot, uh, airheart dot blogspot dot Atlas dot Charles dot Lindbergh dot Ellen Fitzgitis dot Reddit. Have you read it? I read it. Let's not read it. Dot com backslash head size. Enter here. Got it. Got it. And that's a.org at the end. Oh, no, no. It's it's for profit. It's dot com. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So for any of those who are interested in seeing the cock seat in action, I'd be sure to drop by Claire's website there.

You do have to be 18 or over to access. Okay. Now, do you validate that with the checkbox? Because I know a lot of kids are getting into these adult sites. Oh, no, absolutely. We do. Um, you have to answer a series of questions, including the circumference of your head, you know, which also gives away your age. Sure. Yeah. It's, it's like the rings of a tree, isn't it? That's exactly right. So by that measurement, how old was Amelia Earhart? She was five years old. Is it any wonder that she crashed an airplane? You know, what kind of a society are we, Claire, that allows a five-year-old, a five-year-old, a five-year-old, a five-year-old head, headwise, a five-year-old.

We're putting a headwise five-year-old into the cock seat of a plane. Allowing her to marry. Yes. And have an affair and a tete a tete with the premier Jaws chanteuse of the world at the time. And send her off on a voyage across the sea. Dressed as a bride, only in a voluminous wedding dress. I mean, what kind of society, what a sick society. Thank goodness. We were not like that anymore. Well, ladies and gentlemen, listening at home, you can access more information about Amelia Earhart, Charles Atlas, Charles Lindbergh, and a few interesting tidbits about a certain Mr.

Adolf Hitler at claireswebsite.com. Claire, thank you so much for being a guest today. Here's the $7 I promised you for Greyhound bus fare to get home. Thank you so much. Keeping it low, keeping it rolling. That's the way I travel. That's Claire Serra, ladies and gentlemen. Amelia Earhart, nose and throat expert. Thanks for tuning in today. The expertise spelled wrong podcast is free and like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com and follow us in your favorite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener.

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