Futility Closet

In February 1943, hundreds of German women joined in a spontaneous protest in central Berlin. They were objecting to the roundup of some of the city's last Jews -- their husbands. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the Rosenstrasse protest, a remarkable example of civil disobedience. We'll also ponder whether a computer can make art and puzzle over some unusual phone calls. Intro: Between 1946 and 1953, British wordplay maven Leigh Mercer published 100 immortal palindromes in Notes & Queries. In 1933 English sculptor John Skeaping recorded his opinions of his contemporaries inside a horse of mahogany. Sources for our feature on the Rosenstrasse demonstration: Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany, 2001. Wolf Gruner and Ursula Marcum, "The Factory Action and the Events at the Rosenstrasse in Berlin: Facts and Fictions About 27 February 1943: Sixty Years Later," Central European History 36:2 (2003), 179-208. N