Episode Details

Bestselling author Mark Shaw returns to Commonwealth Club World Affairs with the untold details of the inspiring friendship in the mid-1930s between Dorothy Kilgallen, the intrepid young journalist, and Amelia Earhart, the courageous, pioneering aviatrix. Their mutual support ran deep, with Kilgallen covering up-close Amelia’s historic 1932 solo transatlantic flight, and Amelia taking a strong, personal interest in Kilgallen’s famous 24-day “Race Around the World” against two older male reporters in 1936.

As Kilgallen put it, “I’m off on a race around the world—a race against time and two men. I know I can beat time. I hope I can beat the men. I’ll circle the globe by plane, blimp, motor, train and bus, perhaps even by camel or bicycle if they’ll get me where I want to go.”

When Earhart’s plane was lost at sea, Kilgallen wrote a July 7, 1937 New York Evening Journal article that included a compelling account as to why Earhart’s plane had mysteriously disappeared while revealing that “My heart is with Amelia Earhart today, wherever she is—and I pray that wherever she is, she is safe.” What Kilgallen proclaimed as to what happened to her friend, it turns out, strongly echoes the same theories being pursued by the October 2026 Purdue University expedition to search for Amelia Earhart’s airplane.

Join us to hear these and other fascinating stories from Shaw’s new book, Girl Around the World, which describes the enormous respect these strong-willed women had for each other as they risked their lives smashing one glass ceiling after another.

ORGANIZERGeorge Hammond

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