SIM Ep 854 Pod 255: The great outdoors and a colossal prick

Making babies for a chance to win cold, hard cash sounds like something out of a dystopian nightmare, but was something wealthy lawyer and high-level prankster/prick Charles Vance Millar planned for lols in Toronto, in the decade after his death in 1926. When our Hannah heard about Caroline Lea’s fictional retelling of the shockingly real-life Great Stork Derby in her latest novel Prize Women, she had to talk to her. They chat about Vance Millar, the women who got caught up in his dubious legacy and why the number of children women have is topical again. Award-winning and best-selling author, and long-distance runner, Dr Rachel Hewitt was interested in the erasure of women from the history of sporting pursuits in the great outdoors, when a series of family bereavements made her question loss in the wider sense. She joins Jen to chat about In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors, her new book, which examines grief, the things women lose - or rather are taken from them - just by virtue of their sex, and the women who blazed a trail in early outdoor sports.  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices