How does a historian challenge the ‘misogynistic Monroe myth’ of lateness, drinking, and emotional fragility? Not by denying it, says Lucy Jane Santos, but by showing that memories can be faulty, stories retold and reshaped for their audience – and Marilyn’s own words are largely missing. And by remembering that history, like memory, is not […]
Looking for radioactivity in Las Vegas
Lucy Jane Santos, the author of Chain Reactions, is prepared to go anywhere to look for the history of radioactivity. Even Las Vegas. Fortunately, she found that the sinful city still radiates with its atomic heritage, which hasn’t decayed yet. Over the last — almost — decade of tracing the history of radioactive elements – […]
How to radium party
Lucy Jane Santos, the cultural historian, explains how to hold a radium party like the ones that lit up New York a century ago. At the beginning of July 2020 I held a radium party for friends and family to celebrate the launch of Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium. We had specially-created (slightly) glowing […]