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While researching our episode on Caravaggio, I couldn’t help but think of Lady Caroline Lamb’s assessment of another tortured artist, Lord Byron, famously called “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Caravaggio was dangerous to know; in fact, his rap sheet was long enough for us to toss the offenses back and forth like a ball on a pallacorda court.
This week on TechStuff we celebrated a visionary in computer science, Ada Lovelace. We also took some time to congratulate ourselves on reaching 200 episodes. That’s right, Chris and I have sat down at those microphones 200 times to talk about everything from semiconductor clean rooms to the Atari 2600 E.T. game. We’re already looking forward to 100 more.
Considering Byron popped up even in our podcast on Lucrezia Borgia, Sarah and I thought it high time for a podcast of his own. He’d become our Where’s Waldo for a while.
Oh, Byron. Handsome, rakish, promiscuous, well-traveled, brilliant. Exactly the sort of man you can’t help falling for, even when you know it’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
On Wednesday, we brought you Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace. Ada’s mother, Annabella Milbanke, Lady Byron, is determined that her daughter will turn out nothing like her dastardly father. Her stratagem? Ban little Ada from poetry.
Instead, Ada studies math and music, and she happens to be very talented at the former.
History plus literature is pretty much my favorite combination (except for maybe foie gras plus fruit…or anything plus cheese), so Katha Pollitt’s review of a new book on Lord Byron made my Monday morning.
Byron was a prolific poet, but he was also a dark, brooding, fascinating, powerfully attractive man. You don’t have to take my word for it – his many affairs speak for themselves. One of the most famous quotes about him was made by one of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, who summed him up as “mad—bad—and dangerous to know.”
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was also known as the Empress of Fashion. Married at the age of 16, the Duchess soon became enormously popular and led a life of excess. Learn what happened next in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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