They Tried to Erase Her

Hedy Lamarr was once called the most beautiful woman in the world, but behind the Hollywood image was a mind that helped imagine the future of secure wireless communication. From Vienna to MGM soundstages, from a controlling marriage to a wartime patent ignored by the Navy, her story reveals how beauty became a cage and genius became noise. Long before the world understood frequency hopping, Lamar...

Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem, inherited a throne that men expected her to surrender. Crowned in the Holy Sepulchre, she fought to keep the authority her father had secured for her while her husband and later her son tried to pull the kingdom into male hands. Her story reveals a medieval queen whose power flowed through law, sacred architecture, political memory, and the courage to stand within a...

Costanza Piccolomini Bonarelli was immortalized in marble by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, only to then be punished by the very world that protected him. Her story moves through desire, violence, reputation, and survival in Baroque Rome, revealing how a woman’s life was distorted into scandal while male genius was allowed to remain untouchable. Beyond the famous bust, Costanza emerges as a woman of resili...

King Tamar of Georgia inherited a throne that men wanted to control, then ruled through rebellion, forced marriage, war, diplomacy, and the slow violence of being renamed by history. Crowned as mepe , or king, she turned a fragile succession into Georgia’s Golden Age, while later writers softened her authority into legend. Her story reveals how power can be hidden inside translation, how praise ca...

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was more than the beautiful wife behind a famous name. Her life reveals an artist struggling to claim her own voice while her private words and lived experience were transformed into another man’s legend. From Montgomery society to Jazz Age fame, from ballet studios to hospital rooms, her story exposes how easily women’s brilliance can be borrowed, doubted, and diminished, a...

Lucrezia Borgia has long been reduced to poison, incest, and scandal. This narrative strips away the myths to reveal a woman shaped by power, political violence, and survival in Renaissance Italy. From pawn to ruler, her life exposes how female authority is distorted, then weaponized and erased. Lucrezia Borgia emerges not as legend, but as a capable leader whose reputation was rewritten to punish...

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, imagined computing long before computers existed. Raised between poetry and mathematics, she recognized that machines could follow instructions, repeat processes, and manipulate symbols beyond numbers. Her notes on the Analytical Engine contained the first computer algorithm, yet her contributions were minimized as later generations of men defined the digita...

Zheng Yi Sao ruled the South China Sea at the height of the Qing Dynasty, commanding hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of pirates. Yet history reduced her to a footnote, a wife, a curiosity. Her story dismantles the myth of romantic pirate legends and reveals a strategist who forced the empire to negotiate, rewrote the rules of surrender, and exposed how power, gender, and fear shaped the st...

Trota di Salerno was a medieval physician whose medical writings shaped women’s health care across Europe, yet her name was slowly stripped away. Working in the medical school of Salerno, she documented childbirth, menstruation, infertility, and women’s pain with rare precision and empathy. Her texts survived for centuries under male names, influencing medicine while erasing their author. This epi...

Before Homer. Before the Bible. Before history learned to remember men. Enheduanna of Ur was a high priestess, political power broker, and the first named author in human history. In this episode, we trace her rise inside the Akkadian Empire, her exile from the temple, and the radical act of writing herself into history. This is a story about power, authorship, and what happens when a woman refuse...

For centuries, midwives stood at the centre of birth, care, and women’s knowledge of their own bodies. They delivered generations into the world and passing wisdom from woman to woman long before medicine claimed authority over childbirth. As Europe entered an age of fear and religious control, midwives were accused of crimes that mirrored their expertise, blamed for tragedy, and cast as threats t...

Anne of Cleves is remembered as Henry VIII’s least wanted wife, mocked for her appearance and dismissed as a mistake. But this episode looks beyond the insult to uncover the woman history misunderstood. From her quiet upbringing in the Duchy of Cleves to her short and perilous marriage at the Tudor court, Anne navigated power, ego, and danger with extraordinary restraint. While other queens were d...

Mileva Marić was once a rising physicist whose brilliance matched the boldest minds of her generation, but history reduced her to a footnote in Albert Einstein’s story. Today's episode uncovers her early promise, her powerful intellectual partnership with Albert, and the barriers that pushed her out of the scientific world she fought to enter. Through letters, archival findings, and modern fem...

Fatima al-Fihri founded al-Qarawiyyin, the world’s oldest continuously operating university, yet her story was nearly erased from the historical record. This episode explores her journey, from a young migrant in Fez to a visionary builder whose dedication to knowledge reshaped generations. We follow the rise of her institution, the quiet forces that pushed her name into the margins, and the modern...

Maria Anna Mozart was once celebrated across Europe as a brilliant young musician, but history came to reduce her to a footnote beside her famous brother. In this episode, we uncover the truth of her remarkable talent, the constraints placed on her as she grew older, and the silence that swallowed her legacy. Through vivid storytelling and careful historical detail, we explore how a prodigy became...

Step inside the world of Hypatia of Alexandria, a pioneering philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician whose brilliance once lit the heart of a divided city. This episode uncovers her rise as one of antiquity’s most respected thinkers, the political tensions that positioned her in the crossfire, and the long history of erasure that followed her death. Through narrative storytelling and modern ref...

Mary Magdalene stands at the heart of one of history’s most powerful stories, yet her true role has been buried beneath centuries of distortion. This episode uncovers the woman behind the legends, tracing her life from first-century Palestine to the moment she became the first witness to the resurrection. We explore how the early Church reshaped her identity, why her authority threatened those in...

Artemisia Gentileschi rose from the margins of seventeenth-century Rome to become one of the most powerful painters of the Baroque era. Her story is one of defiance, resilience, and relentless talent in a world determined to silence her. In this episode, we explore her early struggles, the trial that tried to define her, the masterpieces that reshaped biblical storytelling, and the centuries of er...

Chien Shiung Wu was one of the most extraordinary experimental physicists of the twentieth century, yet the world repeatedly pushed her brilliance into the shadows. This episode uncovers how she proved the universe breaks its own symmetry, reshaped modern physics, and was overlooked by the institutions that benefited from her genius. Listen as we revisit the moments that history distorted, examine...

Eumachia was a priestess, patron, and visionary who carved her name into the heart of Pompeii at a time when women were expected to stay silent. In this episode, we explore how she rose to influence, funded one of the city’s most significant public buildings, and pushed into spaces reserved for men. We follow her journey through resilience, attempted erasure, and eventual rediscovery, uncovering w...

Arsinoe IV, the lesser-known sister of Cleopatra, has long been treated as a shadow beside one of history’s most iconic queens; yet her life was far more complex, courageous, and threatening to the powers around her than the surviving records suggest. In the pilot episode of They Tried to Erase Her , we uncover the truth behind a young woman who stood against Rome, challenged her sister’s alliance...

Every era had its rebels, geniuses, and revolutionaries—but too many of them were women whose names you’ve never heard. This is their comeback. With each episode, Wanderous Affair 's They Tried to Erase Her takes you behind the propaganda, into the archives, and through the smoke of history’s double standards to rediscover the women who changed everything.