Fortune Has Changed My Life

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a new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series.

“Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F1.”

Including the story of the woman who last participated in a Formula One race weekend, the recent uptick in F1 romance novels, and plenty of mishab scandals and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long, the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty

that none of us likes. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body. Yeah, having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the I-Hart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I-Hart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky, listener discretion advised. St. Petersburg 1759, a man in full military dress stands before the court, as Empress Elizabeth prepares to make him general in chief

of the Imperial Russian Army, the second highest military rank in the Empire.

The man is black, African-born, and he has a reason further than almost anyone around him. Whatever the assembled nobility thought of the ceremony, there wasn't much they could say. The man had earned it. Though foreign born, the man had been in Russia for over 50 years. He had outlasted rivals, survived exile, built fortresses at the edge of the known world,

and engineered his way into the upper ranks of one of Europe's great military powers. But the achievement is even more remarkable when he pull back and see the full picture of how he got there. He was born in Africa most likely in the late 1690s, the son of a local chief. He was captured as a child, trafficked through the Ottoman Empire and eventually shipped to Moscow as a gift for Zarpeter the Great.

The man arrived with nothing, no language, no connections, no guarantee of anything beyond whatever use someone might find for him. He could have remained a curiosity at court, a symbol of the Empire's global reach,

comfortable maybe, but ultimately ornamental.

He chose otherwise. His name was Abram Petrovich Gannibal, and over six decades he transformed himself into one of the most formidable military engineers in Russian history. He was a nobleman with land and titles, a patriarch whose children would go on to distinguished careers of their own, and a great grandfather whose most famous descendant would become the

greatest poet arguably Russia ever produced. This is the story of a child who had every conceivable thing taken from him and who spent the rest of his life quietly and methodically building something that could not be taken away. A story about what happens when extraordinary intelligence meets extraordinary circumstances. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.

“Abram Gannibal's early life is difficult to pin down. His birth year is disputed, his birthplace is”

disputed. Even the details of his capture and journey northward exist somewhere between documented history and educated reconstruction. But what we can piece together paints a vivid picture. He was born somewhere between 1696 and 1698, most likely in a small principality

not a major power but a man of standing in his community. He had livestock, land, multiple wives,

“and somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 children by all accounts a good life for the time and region.”

But his world was under pressure. The neighboring principalities had converted to Islam, which gave them both ideological cover and practical motivation to view Abrams people and family as inferior, even as legitimate targets. When Ottoman forces moved through the region, Abrams' father died fighting them. In the chaos that followed the boy was seized, his sister Legan reportedly

drowned while trying to save him. This heartbreak would not be the last for young Abram.

He was taken to Constantinople, along and difficult journey that culminated in the summer of 1703. He was placed in the household of Sultan Ahmed III. Abram was kidnapped as part of a disturbing

“trend of that era to serve as what European courts of the time called a "commer more,"”

young black attendance kept at court, partly as servants, and partly as symbols of prestige and global reach considered fashionable. It was a dehumanizing institution dressed up in the language of exoticism, and it existed across courts from Moscow to London. If you've listened to our episode on Sarah Forbes Bonetta, you'll recall that not even Queen Victoria was above it. It was this custom that brought Abram the next chapter of his life. After about a year in the Sultan's palace,

Abram caught the eye of a Russian ambassador in Constantinople, looking for prospects to bring back to the court of Zarpeter the Great. Abram was selected, bribes were passed to the Sultan's

“viziers, and in around 1704, the boy was sent to Moscow to be presented to one of the most”

powerful men in the world. Peter the Great had spent years dragging Russia into conversation with the

rest of Europe, obsessed with modernization, with building things, with finding people who could do things well, regardless of where they came from. When he met Abram, he saw something immediately. This kid was sharp, curious, a fast learner, Peter took him under his wing immediately. That his protege was the victim of what we would now call human trafficking is an obvious fact when viewed through a modern lens, but we can assume that Peter had genuine affection for the young man,

and genuinely thought that he was helping him by giving him protection and resources, he wouldn't have had back home. In 1705, Abram was baptized in a church in Vilnius. Peter himself stood as Godfather, the middle name Petrovich essentially branded Abram as part of Peter's lineage. It was a pivotal moment, not just religiously, but practically. The baptism gave Abram a formal place in the social fabric of Peter's court. He didn't know his actual birthday, so he used

the date of his baptism as a substitute, a small practical act of self-creation that somehow feels very in character for the man he'd become. Life at court suited Abram. He traveled with Peter on military campaigns, serving as Valle, a modest job perhaps, but it allowed him to be physically present for some of the most consequential military decisions of the era. He was in the room. He was watching, and he grew close not just to Peter, but to Peter's daughter Elizabeth,

a bond that would matter enormously later in his life. By his teenage years, he was fluent in several languages and showed a particular gift for mathematics and geometry, skills that would eventually become the foundation of his military career. Peter recognized what he had and encouraged him to pursue that path. In 1717 Abram was sent to Metz France for formal training. This was the highest level of military and scientific instruction available in Europe at the time. It was an extraordinary

but a mind to be developed. We'll never know if Abram had a genuine passion for military strategy,

“or whether learning was as means to an end of keeping Peter happy, but either way he was a star”

on the rise, a generational talent that would change the course of Russian history. When Abram started school in France, he was a young man with a powerful godfather. When he came back six years later, he was something different, a soldier, an engineer, a man who had chosen his own identity and built it from scratch. What he didn't know was that the protection he'd always relied on

was about to disappear. But first, France. In 1718 Abram joined the French Royal Army,

the most sophisticated military institution in Europe. Two years later, he enrolled in the Royal Artillery Academy at Lafaire, where the mathematics of fortification and the physics of artillery

“were treated as serious intellectual pursuits. He was exactly where he needed to be and he thrived.”

It was during these years in France that he took a new surname, a decision that spoke volumes about the man he was becoming. He chose the name "Ganibal", the Russian transliteration of "Hannibal", the great Carthaginian general who crossed the outs with war elephants and terrified Rome for decades. This was no accident. He was a black man abrooted and dragged across continents, remaking himself as a soldier in Europe, claiming his place

among the most brilliant military minds. He also apparently made friends, Paris in the early 18th century was alive with enlightenment thinking, philosophy, science and the radical notion that

“reason could and should reshape human society. Abram moved through those circles and if his biographers”

are to be believed, he ended up in conversation with some of the era's greatest minds. It said that Voltaire called Abram, quote, "the Dark Star of the Enlightenment." Whether or not that actually happened, it's clear he was quickly growing into a man of distinction. Even if that distinction is loaded down by racist microaggressions. And then war interrupted. During the war of the quadruple alliance conflict broke out between Spain and a coalition of European countries.

Abram, again, will thought for France, rising to the rank of Captain. During one battle, he took a blow to the head and was captured by Spanish forces. He spent time as a prisoner of war

before he was released in 1722. Never wanted to let external circumstances slow him down,

who went right back to his studies. By 1723, Abram's education was complete. He returned to Russia, became an engineer, and took on a role as mathematics tutor for one of the Tsar's personal guard units. He was home, back in Peter the Great's orbit. Things were good. And then, in 1725, Peter the Great died. The court shifted overnight. The man who had pulled Abram from the Ottoman Sultan's household, who had stood as his godfather and protector sent him

to France and saw his potential before anyone else was gone. And the person who stepped into the vacuum of power was Prince Menshikov, a man with no particular fondness for Abram Petrovich, Ganobov. Menshikov's issues with Ganobov were numerous. Here was a man who was foreign-born, black, and had received one of the finest educations available anywhere in Europe. He spoke multiple languages. He had a head wound from actual combat, and as Peter's protege, he was a clear symbol

of the old regime. In a court suddenly navigating a brutal transition of power, none of that made Abram an ally to Menshikov. It made him a threat, or at least a convenient target. 1727, Ganobov was exiled to Siberia. Dispatched to the far eastern edge of the empire near the Mongolian

projects, drawing on everything he had learned during his studies in France. During that exile,

“he became one of the most capable military engineers in all of Russia. He was pardoned in 1730,”

completed his service in 1733, and then came back west. During this time, he also became a married man. This is where the story gets considerably more complicated. In 1731, Ganobov married a Greek woman named Evdocia Dioper. The marriage was not voluntary on her part. She was forced into it and she made her feelings known early and often. The relationship was volatile from the beginning, built on mutual hostility and almost no common ground. When she gave

birth to a white baby who was unmistakably not Ganobov's child, his suspicions about her fidelity

“were confirmed in the most public way imaginable. He had her arrested and imprisoned. She”

spent the next 11 years there. But Ganobov had already moved on. In 1735, he took up with a woman named Christina Regina Stilberg, the daughter of Scandinavian and German nobility. They married in 1736.

A year after the birth of their first child, while he was still legally bound to Evdocia.

It was technically big of me since his divorce from his first wife wouldn't be finalized until 1753. At this point, Ganobov received a fine and a formal reprimand, and Evdocia was sent to a convent for the rest of her life. His second marriage, meanwhile, was deemed lawful retroactively. The contrast between the two marriages is stark. With Christina, Abram found something he clearly hadn't before. Genuine partnership. She was faithful and warm, and he appreciated both qualities

enormously, probably more than most men would given his history. They went on to have 10 children together. But Evdocia's story is far more disturbing, and not at all together sympathetic chapter in Ganobov's story. By her count, Ganobov was a cruel husband prone to physical abuse. We can't tell if the relationship was marred by racism on Evdocia's part,

“the couple's genuine incompatibility or other factors, but the fact is that a woman was forced to”

marry a man she didn't want, was treated badly by him, and when she sought connection elsewhere it was locked up for over a decade. Whatever the norms of the era, it's worth pointing out the injustices now that we can see them. But before any of that domestic stability eventually took shape, the political winds shifted again. This time in Ganobov's favor. In 1741, Peter's daughter, Elizabeth, became the Empress of Russia. The girl Ganobov had grown close to in the early years at

court. The one he'd been loyal to, like family, was now in charge of everything, and she hadn't forgotten him. Ganobov was welcomed back into prominence with both arms open. He became a senior figure in her court, receiving a major military appointments, and in 1742 was given a sprawling country estate with land, a mannerhouse, and hundreds of serves. The man who was brought to Moscow as someone else's property, now owned property of his own, and lots of it. That same year he petitioned

for and received formal nobility and a coat of arms. For the crest he chose an elephant, a nod to the continent of his birth, and perhaps his chosen namesake, and a single word, Fumo. The meaning has been debated ever since. It may be a word in the Kotoko language of his people, meaning homeland, or it may be an acronym for a Latin phrase, for Tuna Vittam Mim Muttavit Amnino. Fortune has changed my life entirely. In 1756, he was appointed a chief military engineer of the Russian Army. In 1759,

he received the rank of general in chief, the second highest military rank in the Imperial Russian

and climbed high as the system would allow, and he wasn't finished yet.

“By 1762, Gannibal had served the Russian Empire for the better part of six decades. He'd”

survived the chaos after Peter's death, survived Siberia, survived a disastrous first marriage,

outlasted enemies and rivals and entire reigns. When Peter III briefly took the throne that year in 1762, Gannibal was officially retired. The decision was blamed on his advanced age, but the true meaning was simple. Thanks for everything, but we're done with you. It's done. He petitioned Catherine the Great who would overthrow that husband Peter within months, asking that neighboring lands be added to his estate in recognition of 57 years of service.

No one ever wrote back. He left Saint Peter'sburg and he didn't return.

“The resentment stayed with him, passed down through family stories long after he was gone,”

a legend of in gratitude that his children and grandchildren kept alive. But retirement,

even a bitter one, suited Gannibal in ways that court life never fully had. He settled into

his estate, the one that Empress Elizabeth had given him, surrounded by land and family and the particular freedom that comes from having nothing left to prove. He spent his entire adult life navigating a world that required him to be useful strategic, indispensable. Now he could simply exist. He was by most accounts a passionate landlord in his final years, who took a genuine satisfaction in managing his property. He died on April 20, 1781, likely in his 85th year.

“The cause was listed as a cranial illness, traced back, ultimately, to the head wound he had taken”

in France over 60 years earlier fighting at a Spanish fortress when he was barely in his 20s.

His body had been carrying that injury his entire life. He left behind 10 children with Christina, a coat of arms with an elephant on it, and a life so strange and full that it almost defies summary. His children did well. His eldest son Ivan became an accomplished naval officer who rose like his father to the rank of general in chief. Another son Osep had a daughter named Nadezhda, and Nadezhda had a son. That son was Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin is by most measures the

greatest writer in the history of the Russian language, poet novelist playwright, the figure that most completely captures the essence of Russian literature, and he was Abraham Gannibal's great grand son. In fact, he was deeply aware of and deeply proud of. After finishing school, Pushkin tracked down his great grandfather's last surviving son, a man named Peter, and interviewed him about his great grandfather's life. Pushkin came back years later,

writing in his diary that he wanted to extract every memory Peter still had. What came out of those conversations was an unfinished novel called "The More of Peter the Great," in which a fictionalized version of Abraham navigates the Russian court, a brilliant outsider in a world that can't quite decide what to do with him. Pushkin drew on his great grandfather's experiences and woven his own. The two lives rhymed in ways that clearly meant something to pushkin,

both men of African descent, both moving through Russian society on the strength of their mind, and both aware of how much their difference defined how the world saw them. Gannibal's birthplace remains a point of contention. For years, scholars assumed he was from Ethiopia, Russian researchers favored a region in what is now Eritrea, both governments eventually claimed him, naming streets after him and creating monuments in his honor. It's understandable why they

would both want to claim such a remarkable and interesting figure. But modern research points toward Lagone, Bernie, and what is now Cameroon, the region againable himself referenced in his

ambassador and the Sultan of Lagone Bernie gathered at the old Royal Artillery Academy in Lafaire

“France. There, at the place where Gannibal had studied nearly 300 years earlier, they unveiled a commemorative”

plaque. It identified him as a graduate of the Academy as Chief Military Engineer and General and Chief of the Imperial Russian Army and as the great grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, four countries in one place honoring a man none of them could fully claim. Ibrahim Gannibal belonged to all of those places and to none of them. He was stolen from Africa, educated in France, and rose to prominence in Russia. His life was full of contradictions. A man who had been property and later owned people himself,

someone who could be brutal to those who felt had wronged him, including his first wife,

and also deeply loyal to those who loved. A person driven by a hunger to belong that never

quite left him, even after he had earned every honor the empire could offer. What doesn't contradict is the sheer force of what he built. He made himself impossible to ignore and then impossible to forget. He was a man with a brilliant analytical mind whose legacy extended all the way to one of Russia's most expressive and sensitive poets. Fortune has changed my life entirely. That's one reading of Fumo. The other is simply homeland. Maybe in the end, Gannibal meant both.

That's the story of a braham petrovich Gannibal, but keep listening after a brief

sponsor break to hear a little bit more about his literary legacy outside his great grandson.

“Why hasn't a woman formally participated in a Formula One race weekend in over a decade?”

Think about how many skills they have to develop at such a young age? What can we learn from all of the new F1 romance novels suddenly popping up every year? He's still smelled of podium champagne and expensive friction. And how did a 2023 event called Waga Getin change the paddock forever? That day is just seared into my memory. I'm culture writer and F1 expert Lily Hermann and these are

just a few of the questions I'm tackling on no grip, a Formula One culture podcast that dives into the under explored pockets of the sport. In each episode a different guest and I will

“go deeper into the wacky mishaps scandals and sagas both on the track and far away from it”

that have made F1 a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. It's easy to look at somebody and be like, "Your life must be so sick." Man, you have no f*cking clue. Talking about the mental illness stuff. It used to be this thing that I was ashamed of. I'm just now trying to unwind this idea that I have to be

unhealthy physically or in pain in some emotional way in my life to create good music. If someone says that I did a good job, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm good." Someone says that I suck. I'm like, "F*ck, I suck." Getting the talk about this is not common for me. Right now I need it more than ever. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shakti on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long. The need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes.

podcast.

“Gannibal's story has a surprising literary connection that goes beyond his famous great”

grandson. Decades after Gannibal's death, Vladimir Nabokov sat down to translate Pushkin's Masterwork

Eugene O'Negin and found himself digging into Gannibal's origins in the process. At the time, the prevailing assumption was that Gannibal had come from Ethiopia. Nabokov wasn't convinced and pointed toward regions further west and south. He was right to be skeptical. The Ethiopian theory eventually collapsed, partly on its own thin evidence and partly because researchers exposed the assumption underneath it.

That Ethiopian origins were seen as more prestigious, more capable of explaining Gannibal's

“brilliance than origins deeper in sub-Saharan Africa. The people who wanted to honor him”

had quietly edited him into a more acceptable African.

That pattern extended to his great grandson Pushkin as well. African American scholar, literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., addresses this narrow-minded tendency in the foreword to "under the sky of my Africa," Alexander Pushkin and Blackness. "Many critics and writers, most famously Nabokov, dismissed Pushkin's "Africanness as a quirk of biographical fate, as a factor to be acknowledged only barely if at all,

and to be dismissed as a relevant to his artistic life. But these essays make a convincing

“at case for the merits of a sustained exploration of the role his African ancestry”

played in Pushkin's creative life, in his perception of himself, and in his perception and

interpretation of Russia," and quote. Pushkin knew what Gannibal had spent a lifetime proving that the truest version of a person is the one they insist on themselves, against every other force that says otherwise. Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz. Riders for Noble Blood are Hannah Johnston, Hannah's Wick, Paul Jaffee,

Natasha Lasky, and me, Dana Schwartz. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk and Nomes Griffin, with supervising producer Rima Il Kayali, and executive producers Aaron Manky, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. One of the biggest voices in music today.

Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than no grip, a new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under explored pockets of F1, including the story of the woman who last participated in a Formula One race weekend, the recent uptick in F1 romance novels, and plenty of mishab scandals and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years.

Listen to no grip on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shanker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes.

You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance, and then there's your body, having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,