20. Jerrie Cobb: One woman's quest for Astronaut equality

The Untold Story of Geraldine 'Jerrie' Cobb: Pioneering Female Aviator and Space Advocate

This episode of 'She Changed History' dives into the remarkable life of Geraldine 'Jerrie' Cobb, an extraordinary American aviator who paved the way for women in aviation and space exploration. Cobb's story is one of unrelenting determination and self-belief. Despite passing all the physical and psychological tests for becoming an astronaut, she was barred from space due to societal and institutional sexism. Cobb, along with other female pilots, took their fight to Congress in the early 1960s, ultimately contributing to the broader civil rights movement. Though she never made it to space, her legacy lives on in the opportunities she created for future generations of female astronauts.

Sources today are:

The New York Times

Nasa.gov

The Independent newspaper

RealClearPublicAffairs

the washington Post

and the websites of

the NY Metropolitan Library

and the US Congress

00:00 Introduction and Excitement
01:26 Meet Geraldine 'Jerry' Cobb
02:23 Early Life and Passion for Flying
06:29 Challenges and Determination
08:45 Recognition and Achievements
14:57 NASA and the Mercury 13 Program
20:05 The Grueling Tests of Aspiring Astronauts
22:22 Facing Structural Sexism in NASA
23:12 Taking the Fight to Congress
29:40 The Impact of the Civil Rights Act
33:34 Jerry Cobb's Legacy and Recognition
39:11 Honoring Jerry Cobb's Contributions

Transcript

audio1814045918: 0:08

I think, um, you can't go wrong with a bit of red velvet. If you don't want red velvet, I don't want you. If it's curtains, if it's cakes, if it's carpet, I'm in. Do you want to dive straight into it? Why not? Let's go. Shall we do it? Hi Cara. Hi Vicky. This is very exciting. I am full of the joys. And a little nervous. That's okay. Nervous is good. I was listening to one of the first songs that me and Simon recorded a while ago. And, um, I was like, oh, you bet, when it was, it was literally in July and I was like, babies. A lifetime ago. All right. So that's, that's where I am on the timeline right now. No, no. You're going to graduate. Bring yourself back to that. Graduating with flying colors. Being fast tracked here. Okay. All right. Well, welcome to She Changed History. And, hi everyone. We've got the wonderful Cara with us today who's doing her first ever read for us. And I've had a little sneaky peek and it's a good one, so I can't wait to, to learn It's going to be good. Excellent. Well, thank you for the intro. yes. So I will get straight into it. If you think about women in space, the names that might come to mind are people like, the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tershikova, who was the first woman in space, or perhaps Sally Ride, who was the first American woman to go to space with NASA. but a generation before them, a cohort of American women took their battle for the place in the stars all the way to the U. S. Congress. It didn't ultimately take them where they wanted to go, but the determination of those women, and especially the most qualified of them, Geraldine Jerry Cobb, cleared the runway for the changes that were to come. And the sources for today are the New York Times, nasa. gov, the Independent Newspaper, a website called Real Clear Public Affairs, the Washington Post. on the websites of the New York Metropolitan Library and the U. S. Congress. So, we start in Jerry Cobb's early life. She was born in 1931 in Norman, Oklahoma, which is a place I've never been, but it's very easy to imagine, like, wholesome farmland, red barns, corn fields, that. Is it South? Sort of the Midwest, I would say, so yeah, picture that pastoral America, rural America, and you can't go far wrong. We've just started, watching Yellowstone on, because it's on Netflix now. So when I heard barn, my head went there, but maybe that's a little bit more hardcore. Bring it, bring it back slightly, but yeah, you're not a million miles away. Okay. Let's put it that way. Think Wizard of Oz vibes. Got it. And just to lean into that stereotype like a little bit more. So Geri learned to fly when she was just 12 years old. Wow. And very much the kind of airplane you would picture from the 1930s, the kind of fixed wing, open cockpit. Wooden. Yeah. Her dad's the pilot. She sat there learning all her skills, on his knee and she got a taste for it. So by the time she was 16 years old, she was out there doing barnstorming. Do you know that? So barnstorming is when the pilot does aerobatic skills and tricks and either that's for spectators on the ground, or if you're super brave, you can ride along with them, like they'll take you and do tricks and stuff like this. So, but, but 16 years old. So she's like. She's out there barnstorming away, taking jobs like doing, leaflet drops for the circus. And the whole time she's doing this, as well as presumably enjoying it, she's saving money and going out on these, work assignments, sleeping under her plane's wing to keep her costs down when she's away from home so that she can pay for her private pilot's license. And she achieved that while she's still in high school. She's amazing. And so she's, she's working away, getting that done. do you remember what you did for your 18th birthday? I think we were, quite boring. I went to the cinema, I think like it wasn't like this big turning of Asia. Yeah, it was Pizza and played cards. That was like, that was my, Jerry Cobb, however, she spent it getting her commercial pilot's license. I mean, like, that's pretty immense. it sounds like she was just doing her own thing. Like she wasn't so much worried about her peer circle. Cause I remember I only worry at 18 was having friends. Now I'm like, Pillock. It sounds like her compass had already set that way, yeah, she's absolutely a self determined woman. I so hear what you're saying. At that age already, yeah. And this is a bit naughty because I haven't actually written down the source for it, but I did read in one of the, One of the sources, that even her parents, her dad, who initially taught her to fly, ultimately said, look, this is not for you. This is not a career for you. And she. Thought about that and decided no, thank you. I've got a quote from her. she said, I have a feeling that life is a spiritual adventure and I want to make mine in the sky. So she had this deep vocation. Yeah, right from, right from jump, she was out there pushing and working towards it. And being so sure of yourself. I, I love that. my confidence at 18 was like on the floor, like it's taken so long to build it. That is so, so normal. And I think relatable. To feel that way as a young teen, you don't, even picking your, your job or your university course, you don't really know at that age what you like or what you want or what you're good at. You're just sort of fumbling but she was. Like a laser, absolutely on it. And this is one of those stories where her timing is great and her timing is awful. So I'll explain maybe when she qualified, it was just a few years after the end of world war two. So she's. clear. She knows what she wants. She knows what she loves and she's willing to work for it. However, she's entering the job market at a time where there's this flood of qualified pilots. And for reasons both of just unfortunate timing, probably patriotism, because people wanted to support the lads. They've come back from the war. But also if you read any of the sources just for sheer reasons of misogyny. male pilots are getting these jobs preferentially. So she's left, like so many of the women you talk about, she's left with the kind of crumbs So she just, goes, all right, then, and she takes those jobs, she goes out surveying pipelines from the air, or doing crop dusting, which is not elegant, but it gets you those flight times. And while she's doing those jobs, she's able to pay for her forward training. So she's not put off, she's carrying on. She's continually investing in herself. Yeah. The optimism of it and the sheer self belief. So brace yourself. This is what she does. In the years following her 18th birthday, she then gets Her multi engine certificate, her instrumentation certificate, her flight instructor certificate, her ground instructor rating, and then her airline transport license. And these are not cheap. These are not cheap things. Yeah. She's like, she's not living a luxury lifestyle. You presume because she comes from humble beginnings. She's paying for these things herself. She's investing in. Her own self belief and her own optimism about her career. Good for her. Yeah. Yes. it's an amazing testament to her self belief and her determination. And it kind of pays off because she's 21 years old and she's done all this stuff, And things kind of start to turn for the better for her. She now, she's getting these. Contracts to deliver military fighter planes and bombers, giant four engine bomber planes, which are ex war, no longer needed, or old technology, and they're being sold off to foreign air forces. Oh, interesting. Like traveling, it gets her into some kind of precarious situations. There's an, just a passing note in one of her obituaries that, she was arrested briefly in Ecuador as a suspect for espionage. So she was traveling through Ecuador and they're like, what are you doing here, lady? But then they also say that in 1959, she was invited to fly in the Paris air show, which is like this, enormous trade show every year. And they respected her. They gave her the pilot of the year award, not the female pilot. But the pilot of the year award, they also gave her the Amelia Earhart gold medal of achievement, which I don't know what you need to do that. But it sounds pretty impressive to me. Yeah. So it sounds like almost like this was her time to flex her muscles, right? She was like, now I'm playing with the big boys. Now I can, you know, show off a little bit. This is it. And these are pilots who have been through. The same rigorous training programs. They've also been through war conditions and for the, for them to turn around and say, okay, this lady's got the chops. She knows what she's doing. That is incredible. But that felt amazing. I'm sure that it did. Because she probably idolized these people as well. And then to be a accepted in that network to even get to attend this Paris Airshow and then to succeed in this Paris Airshow on merit as well like for them to recognize that she must have, it must have been this virtuous cycle too because all that self belief and all that determination Is then met with. Acceptance and enthusiasm and reward. So they're saying, you're right, you are great at this. Come on in. I mean, that's not always the case. So good for her. it reminds me a little bit of Taylor Swift because I don't know if you've seen her documentary on, whatever it is. They had, clips of her when she was young, like 16, 17, 18. And her self belief. and self determination. Because she was reading back on her diaries. I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. And that was probably the only thing that stuck with me without that whole documentary, was my god, you really did believe in yourself. That's pretty amazing. And that's what's happened here, isn't it? Is that no, I believe in myself and push myself. I'm going to pay for myself. I'm going to do all these things. Then to get acknowledged in the way, like Taylor Swift has been acknowledged, like she's an absolutely powerful since she, but in the pilot world, this sounds very similar, right? I think, it's a really good comparison in a really harsh industry where it'd be quite easy to be beaten down by the negativity. And I'm. aware that as I'm reading these sources, I'm probably not seeing the struggle. There were probably many incidents of the door being closed in her face or people being dismissive or her having to take those like second tier jobs. Instead of the things she really could have done. So it isn't just handed to them on a plate, but at the same time, how much of their doing it is because they thought, well, of course I can do it. I am going to do it. Amazing. All right. So we have, we've whacked in a lot of, a lot of bam, bam, bam through her career. I'm going to do a little tiny bit more of that. She's now 28 and she is a pilot and a manager for a company called Aero Design and Engineering. Classic. It's a classic name. Stanton, really strong, says what it does, does what it says. She is, it's 1960 and by this point she has accrued 7, 000 hours of flying time. And to give you like a little basis of comparison, a modern commercial pilot, so you know, the EasyJet crew, the people who are bam, always out there, always doing it. They in that same period of time would have accrued about 9, 900 hours on average. So considering she's on par and she's on par for someone who hasn't been being paid to be a commercial pilot. if you sit down with her. Yeah, really good. She's She's Push in. She's busting it out. And then we roll into 1961. And this is where we get where we were heading. she has come to the attention of the American population as a whole. They're aware of her as a pilot. She was used by American Airlines to promote one of their planes. Like a post it girl. Kind of, but a poster pilot. So they did not hire female pilots at this time. However, imagine like a mad men style marketing room and they're going, women don't like this plane. Why don't the ladies like this plane? We need to fix that. So they invite Jerry Cobb, who is a well known, wholesome American go getter. Um, and they say, could you please do a test flight in this plane and just show the ladies that it's cool. They didn't like offer her a job or anything, don't be crazy, but they wanted her to do this. So she's, she's caught the public's attention. She's seen as trustworthy, hardworking. How do you say no in that situation? This is, yeah, so this is part of her story and we'll come to some more about that because one of the things that I think. Got her as far as she went is that she, she played the game to get the gain and did not say, No, I want to be a pilot or nothing at all. She went, All right, I'll do your test flight. Fine. And then open that door. That's it. Yeah. Hey, all right. We're all in the room. You see what I can do. Why wouldn't you let me have these chances? She's being like positive, positive, positive. And then James Webb, which is a name you might recognize from that there space telescope, the one taking beautiful photographs of the faraway galaxy. So James, that guy, the one that named that. After, was setting up his team at NASA and he decided to invite her to come on as a consultant and she always wanted to be, as far as she could go, as far as she could go. She wanted to explore. She wanted to take herself. Into these new terrains. So for her, this is an incredible opportunity, even more exciting. She's invited by a man called Lovelace to come along to a pioneering program where he was going to test the suitability for women in space. And you can see a photo of her there. She is standing with a NASA landing craft, happy. Happy as can be and just beaming. She's, she's delighted. She also looks like, she also looks like proper old girl American. Yeah. Like her hair's in like pinned in roller kind of thing. She's got like the 1960s kind of, well, a bit before that, maybe with the long prim dress and the little button up shirt. Very, very Dorothy. Very, and then she stood next to this fricking space like craft thing. Like you say, happy as a clam, right? If you kind of covered up the half of that photograph that has the landing craft in it and thought, what is this girl standing next to? You would imagine a boy or maybe her prize winning horse or like, it's such a. Wholesome, farmland, Americana image, you can see how happy she is. And I am going to bring the vibe right down because, uh, maybe not all the way down, but yeah, so she's invited to take part in this program and that the program I'll refer to it a few times. It's called the Mercury 13. Lovelace's background is that he designed all of the tests that the NASA pilots, would be put through. So he was the doctor who established the standards that astronauts needed to meet to safely go into space. And so this is where it gets maybe a little bit nuanced. It sounds amazing. The reality is a little bit more mixed. so the Mercury 13 program was privately funded and not part of NASA. Lovelace, who had developed these NASA tests, became curious. Say the documents about how women would do and you think great and then you sort of go well Why did he get curious? And so I've got a quote. Do you want to get rid of someone? Shoot a woman that Larry didn't like? Well, maybe. Maybe. I've got my ex wife here. It's not quite as dark as that, but I like, You know, you're taking it into true crime. Instantly. So that he is His colleague said, even before anyone had gone into space, Lovelace was already thinking about huge orbiting space stations. And in Lovelace's view, women were to function as an essential part of the space stations, working as secretaries or nurses. And so, yeah, so close. That's so disappointing, Cara. So close. so to determine if women would be able to survive in space, he invited Cobb to perform the same tests that he had used on the Mercury astronaut candidates. Fine. yeah. So close. So he wanted cities in the sky. He wanted cities in the sky. He wanted like Elon Musk, we're all going to move to Mars, everything's going to be amazing. He was ahead of his time in so many ways. And he opened those doors in so many ways, but his vision, though radical enough to include floating cities, was not radical enough to include women doing anything but the kind of boilerplate jobs that he had seen women do. It's like the saying was down here, we can't improve, earth is perfect. Yeah, we are. Golden. Let's just leave it. We've got this down on earth. Take it up there. Tickety boo. Everything's good. So yeah, it isn't recorded in any of the sources that I read what Jerry Cobb or the other women who accepted his invitation thought. I have seen multiple quotes where, she says again and again. Women are up to the task of being fully fledged astronauts. So, what do we surmise from the fact that she and the others took this on? It's the same predicament we had earlier, right? Yes. It's like, how do you say no in that situation? You say Yeah. You either say Take that fold it up till it's really pointy and stuff it or you say, all right. Yeah, I'm gonna show you Yeah, I'm gonna make you so aware of my capability that you have to give me the opportunity I'm gonna excel more than you could ever believe. Yeah, so I'm assuming here that is what was going on in her and the other pilots heads Because that's what they did. Oh, would you like to hear about these tests, by the way? That's a frickin lootly. Okay. So I'm thinking. And these are the same tests as the men went through. Same tests. Exactly. Same tests. Because we need to know. Those tests were, Physiologist saying, what does it take to survive and to work in an emergency scenario in space? And he wanted to make sure he wasn't sending anyone up there who would then become a liability. It's a tricky environment, obviously. So here's what the Independent said to describe the tests that she and all the other astronaut candidates went through. Cold water was shot into her ears to induce vertigo. Okay. Then she had to swallow three feet of rubber hose to have a stomach exam. They're pouring radioactive fluid down there. So the science scientists can look at her metabolism. Of course. She spent. a record setting, nine hours in an isolation chamber, a dark, silent tank of water. And then for 45 minutes, she piloted the machine the gimbal rig. And these are their words, a gyroscopic vomit inducing space flight simulator. spinning her on three axes at once. Horrific. And there's a photo there of her in the gimbal rig. She's smiling. She's smiling. She's like, yes, give me this. I am up for this. So how did she do? She was the first and only woman to pass every single physical and every psychological test. And she not only passed, she tested at the top 2 percent of candidates in either gender. So she isn't just scraping. She's smashing it. Ideal candidate. Ideal in every way. And I'm thinking if you're her, having put it all out there, proved yourself. Absolutely. In uncertain terms, she's got to be thinking, I'm in. I'm ready. Let's go. Let's go to space. However, this is another example of her being on time, but too early because at that time, NASA dictated that astronaut trainees had To be jet fighter pilots. But they wouldn't let women do that. They would not let women do that role. So de facto, you cannot be this job. So your Jerry Cobb. Your dream that you've worked, scrimped, saved, sacrificed to attain, you've proved you can do, 100 percent you can do the role, and it's held out of reach because of structural sexism. Don't have a willy. You don't have a willy, sorry, go home. Maybe we'll ask you to be a secretary sometime. So, not ideal. She thought. All right, then I'm not going to just let that stand and she, along with others around her, including the other astronaut candidates, took it to Congress, they went forward and I'm going to quote now, it's a bit confusing, so bear with me, but in 2023, a representative put a bill to Congress to give the congressional gold medal to The Mercury 13 women to recognize their contributions to aeronautics and to equality So that piece includes this quote, which describes, I think, quite succinctly how the congressional hearing like what it was about. So. Geraldine Jerry Cobb and Jane Janey Briggs Hart spoke to Congress to advocate for the continuation of their program. That, in turn, led to an investigation into discrimination on the basis of sex, which took place two years before the Civil Rights Act was passed. I'll say more about that, but that is still a foundational document that Opens up the workplace for all we're in 1962 that act. Has not even been ratified yet, and she and the others are there and here's what Jerry Cobb had to say. She at that hearing said, we women pilots who want to be part of the research and participation and space exploration are not trying to join a battle of the sexes. As pilots, we fly and share mutual respect with male pilots in the primarily man's world of aviation. We very well know how to live together in our profession. We see only a place in our nation's space future without discrimination. And she's like, boom, you know, mic drop. I'm not interested in your. Oh, women are asking for too much. Oh, should we give them this? She's like, you're not giving me anything, mate. I can do that. And you are going to let me. And I think that's really important to know as well. Cause in that quote, she says as pilots, you know, we have mutual respect for male pilots. Like being a secretary and being a nurse is absolutely valid, absolutely valid, but that's not what she wanted. She wanted to be a pilot. And it's, I really hope that I haven't come across as kind of denigrating that. That work, all of these things are important, but what isn't okay is for somebody to be siloed into a particular career path because, because, and whether that be a male or a female, you cannot exempt people from a whole field of work. People who are really, really good at it but yes, absolutely. if she was a secretary, if she was a nurse, if she was a stay at home mom, she would have been the best that whatever she was, because that was her persona, she just put herself to it. Yeah, she really put it out there. It's the certainty. Again, the surety. Not only that I can, but that this is going to happen. Um, okay. You know what? That, that probably stems from having a dad who had your back or having parents who, even if they didn't say it out loud or said this isn't for you, they still let you try, they still took you on their knee and made you part of that experience. That's very true. And that's actions speak louder than words, isn't it? even though the dad said this isn't really for you, I'm going to take you anyway. that speaks volume, isn't it? I think, yeah, it's easy to imagine that when he's saying this isn't for you. What he was trying to do maybe was to warn her, the world isn't gonna let you do this, but her faith in herself and her optimism, let her say. Well, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, yeah. So for all of that eloquence and positivity and just reason, just logic, we have the tide of the times pushing back. So this is, unfortunate to me because, John Glenn, astronaut John Glenn is kind of a national treasure, but he was a man of his time. And. Okay. Spoke at that congressional hearing and unfortunately put the boot in and said, Men go off and fight the wars and fly the planes. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order. Mm. It's very Churchill. Churchill was very like that, wasn't he? Blinkered. Absolutely blinkered. And then the vice president, at the time was Johnson and he kind of was putting in as well. And there's a memo, there's a printout you can see of it in the library saying on the margins, he wrote, let's stop this now, next to her words. Like, absolutely not. So for context and without comment, I will tell you at this point that between 1948 and 1951. So not long before this congressional hearing, NASA was launching a series of monkeys into space in test flights. And, yeah, I do have a small comment, which is, how entrenched is your misogyny if you think female astronauts are against nature, but scooping up a monkey and shooting it in a rocket is perfectly fine? Like, guys. Come on, we can do better. We can do better. My chest has gone so tight. Yeah. Yeah. It's infuriating. And the poor monkeys. I mean, it's just. The poor monkeys. In every direction. It just. It's not good enough. So the congressional hearing rolled on and Cobb and the other women did not get the result that they wanted, which is devastating. And for all of her positivity, Cobb, resigned from NASA. Okay. So that was like her, that was like her protest. I think, or just her sort of thinking, this isn't happening for me. This isn't going to lead where I thought, what more can I do, perhaps? I do, I don't know, is the truth. I don't know. But that's the point where she parts ways with NASA. And It wasn't until 1972 that that Civil Rights Act amendment that I was talking about in the congressional hearing kicked in, and that, Title VII, it says, prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age, and it rendered that insistence on jet fighter pilot training precluding women effectively from, that could no longer be the case. So NASA, inducted its first class of women in 1972. 1972. Yeah. So very much in her lifetime. Immediately on it. She's still alive, but she's now. Not at the peak of her physical fitness, she, she's now missed that, that opportunity for herself, for that level of rigor, that testing that she had already undergone, more than a decade before. So NASA is bringing these new women in and they've invented a new job role to cover the fact that they aren't. That pathway of jet fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut, they are the mission specialist, which I'm saying as a job role, absolutely great. I'd be delighted to have it. And I'm thrilled that NASA did that the minute it was possible for them to, it's so parallel to today, isn't it? Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're removing now women's biographies, aren't they, off their websites and stuff like that. this is such a poignant time to be talking about these things and talking about, well, I mean, yeah, I'll come to that. I don't want to preempt myself too much, but yeah, it really, when I was figuring my way through this. Don't know if you get this when you're writing things, but you're like, how do I explain why I just find this woman so cool? And then you start going, Oh, because it reflects. And the work, the struggle, is everything that's being unpicked it takes the wind out of your sails. Yeah. A little bit, yeah. The pendulum will swing back and it'll swing back harder. It will. So, sorry, I'll, I'm going wildly off on a troll off. Shake it off, shake it off, shake, shake off the Trump. Right, let's talk, let's talk some more about Jerry Cobb. and the fact that these short sighted measures, So America at this time, it's roll it back a little to the 60s when this congressional hearing is going on, it's the space race, we're headed against the Russians. We're going to, America's going to be first to the moon. America's going to blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Well. So publicly as well, wasn't it? So publicly. So publicly. Resting so much civic pride on it. And mean times. This whole holding back on letting these women achieve cost America the space race in equality terms. So, Jerry Cobb's talking to the New York Times about the Soviet launch of Valentina Teshkova, the cosmonaut, first woman in space. And Jerry Cobb's saying, it's a shame. Since, I'll get this, a shame that since we are eventually going to put a woman into space, we didn't go ahead and do it first. Bam! Yes, Jerry! Yes! Bam! And even Tershikova is getting in on it. Yeah! And she said to her, Soviet government newspapers about the American politicians, they shout at every turn about their democracy, and at the same time, they announced they will not let a woman into space. This is open inequality. So she's just like, you can keep it. You talk about how great you are. Show me you're showing me nothing. I love, I love these women. It costs America as well as costing Cobb and that, that's heartbreaking because she never got to fulfill her potential and that we were just saying this, it's a key to her story. It's a key to a lot of the women that we talk about on the podcast and we want these stories. Like just, it's so satisfying when the goal is reached or the inequity is overturned but sometimes. The win is part of a bigger effort and these women like Jerry Cobb are contributing to this aggregate change that takes lifetimes, not one lifetime, several to heal the results. And we benefit or we work towards their ongoing goals even now. So with people who didn't get to benefit themselves, I think what. And what is especially gratifying is to see the recognition coming back towards them. So I have a quote here from astronaut, Anna Fisher, who flew in the space shuttle in 1984 and she says of the Mercury 13. They wanted it so badly, and then we came along and caught the wave at just the right time when society was changing. I felt so grateful to them and sad that they weren't able to achieve their dream, but they did in a way by opening the door for us. Oh my god. Anna is, um, she's socially aware. Yes. That is so, humbling. Yeah, she knows that she is one. Yeah. And standing on the shoulders of these giants and that's during Cobb's lifetime that this is being said. So that is beautiful. And, you know, for Cobb, Oh, this is, this is hard to hear, but there's a quote here from Cobb, saying she didn't make it to space, but she never gave up hoping she said. At age 67 in 1999, I would give my life to fly in space. It's hard for me to talk about it, but I would. I would then and I will now. She never stopped wanting it. How many just send her? Like, it can't be that hard. Let it happen. And there were, one of the commercial space, flights that was owned by a private company who took one of the other female candidates who couldn't go and she was part of their crew. And I believe that at that point, which was within the last 10 years, she was the oldest woman to ever go into space. So that would have been deeply meaningful to her. And unfortunately, Jerry Cobb never got that chance, although so the biographer Martha Ackman, who wrote a book about the Mercury 13 said Cobb was never bitter and delighted in the accomplishments of the today's female astronauts. But there was about her a deep reservoir of disappointment. If you look at those pictures from the start, those pictures of pure glee and excitement and dreams that could have it's the hope that kills you. Yeah. So I'm not going to leave us on a downer. I will tell you that although you can see it would be really easy to become very bitter. But, um, Cobb didn't, she had this reserve within her, this It's wellspring of positivity and okay, this is what we're going to do. And she turned all that energy towards service. her remaining decades of life, she was still a pilot. She was flying humanitarian missions into the Amazon to deliver food, medicine and clothing to indigenous people. And this is her second career. This is her like, yeah, this is her like retired hobby. I'm just going to go. She was out there finding new roots across the Andes mountains and the Amazon rainforest. I'm not only going to fly, I'm going to fly solo across the Andes. And by the way, found this route. It's a bit better than what you were using. Thanks. Bye. She's incredible. And she ultimately was nominated for the Nobel peace prize. And she was inducted into the American National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2012, which again was within her lifetime. Okay. And the reason I know about her at all is because she is the basis for a character on an Apple TV series called For All Mankind. Oh, wow. And And the character they based on her is called Molly Cobb. And she's, she's just this little badass lady, who I think it's really interesting show because it takes this time in American history as a jumping off point and does speculative science fiction, about how would the world have been different if these female pilots. in America had been allowed to take the roles they were qualified for on The First Asking. Oh, damn right. It's such a good series. It aired for the first time eight months after Jerry Cobb died, so we're not, we're not talking about like looking at some deep historical. This isn't hundreds of years ago. Yeah. Right? So this is what strikes me. It's what we were just talking about. This sort of relative closeness of these times. And especially right now, when women's contributions to American institutions are being painted over, sometimes literally, physically, it's so important to talk about women like Jeri Cobb and to remember how recent their struggles actually are. And that's it. That's what I have to say today. That's the story of Jeri Cobb. That's the story of Jeri Cobb and the women who took the baton. And ran with it after she sacrificed so much. Oh my god, Chorus. There you go. I feel quite, um emotional, you know? Yeah. Because 2019, that's so re Also, Apple TV have so many hidden gems like that, don't they? Oh, I know. They're good at making TV. I like, I like to talk that one up, that probably of all of them, we devour it. And I mean, I love I wish I had the source for this quote, but somebody was talking about loving the first generation of Star Trek because it was the first time they saw someone who looked like them. And this was a person of a non white, background. And they said, this is the first time I've seen someone who looks like me depicted in the future. Like doing a job, being like, just no questions asked. They're just a part of society. I love sci fi and stuff like For All Mankind is taking it where I want to see it go. It's going, how could things have been different? How could things have been better or worse or whatever? But just It is not even up for negotiation. We are all included. Yes. Amazing. Amazing. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much, Cara. My pleasure. How did that feel? Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm less nervous now that I'm thinking, Oh God. Did you enjoy it? I really did. And I, I think it helps when it's somebody who you just have so much admiration for because you're excited. And I didn't know about her. So I've definitely learned something. So so much. Thank you for allowing me. That was really neat. And thank you everyone for listening. And I hope you enjoyed it too. If you did, please follow us on Instagram, like, share, subscribe. These episodes, you know, that's the only way we can get these stories. All right, me and Cara are telling each other, but we need to share. Yeah, we're enjoying ourselves, but we want to bring you all. And, thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next time. See you later. Thank you.