Nellie Bly: 10 days in a mad house to 72 days around the world

Nellie Bly the woman who check herself into a madness to expose the grim realities inside, but that was only the start for this plucky young stunt reporter.

Elizabeth Cochran, practising a thousand-yard stare in a gaslit mirror, because the only way to report the truth is to be locked up with it. What follows is ten days inside the Blackwell Island asylum, where neglect, cruelty, and bureaucracy do their worst behind closed doors. Back in print, the fallout forces uncomfortable questions and real pressure for reform. And just when you think she’s done risking her life for a byline, Joseph Pulitzer hands her the kind of assignment that turns journalism into spectacle: an around-the-world dash that dares Jules Verne’s fiction to keep up.

Topics include

• Her early bylines and the making of a stunt journalist
• Getting committed on purpose and what she finds inside Blackwell Island asylum
• Investigative journalism as performance, and as a weapon
• New York World, publicity, and the machinery behind the story
• 72 days around the world and the cultural frenzy that follows

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

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