Broads You Should Know

This week Sara dives into the most well-known incident of witch hysteria in North America - the Salem Witch Trials! While many of you may be familiar with the story from your history classes and Arthur Miller's popular play-turned-Daniel-Day-Lewis-Winona-Ryder-movie The Crucible, Sara's research turns up some VERY interesting truths about the motivations of the the girls and their parents - who (n...

This week, special guest Caitlin Parrish tells us the story of "Half-Hanged" Mary Webster. Accused of witchcraft more than once in her lifetime, she does not escape the noose - but you'll have to listen to find out the rest! Her story predates the Salem witch trials by several decades and she is an ancestor of Margaret Atwood's, inspiring her poem "Half-Hanged Mary" and one of the dedicatee's of T...

Today Sara brings us a new Series for the fall (to the delight of spooky season lovers everywhere): Women They Called Witches! Throughout the entire world, and pretty much ALL of recorded history through TODAY, women have been accused of being witches and paid the price for it with their lives. One historian notes that the witch trials served as "the most important institutionalized femicide in th...

Special guest Zach Livingston brings us the story of the 2nd female Pharaoh, who expanded Egyptian trade and built many of the greatest wonders of Egypt throughout her reign, including the Valley of the Kings. Why, then, were her name and robust accomplishments only discovered in the late 19th century? Listen and find out! — A Broad is a woman who lives by her own rules. Broads You Should Know is...

Annie Cohen Kopchovsky is already struggling under the weight of patriarchy when two arrogant gentlemen wage a bet that a woman cannot possibly be as physically capable as a man nor able to care for herself as a man can. The wager? $10,000 if Annie can circumnavigate the world in less than 15 months and raise $5,000 in the process. Eager to prove those "gentlemen" wrong, Annie jumps at the chance,...

This week, Sara researched Lucy Parsons, and enlightens all us Broads as to the history of the Labor Party & Anarchist Movement in the US in the early 20th Century! Lucy Parsons fought her entire life for workers' rights. She was possibly born a slave, but claims not to be Black at all. Still, she is considered by many to be one of the most important figures in the Labor Movement throughout 20...

Last week we dove into the history of the land and the hispanos who lived in Los Alamos when the government and Oppenheimer came to town - that’s right the land was not “unoccupied”, as the movie would have us believe. Hundreds of native ranchers and their families were forced off their lands and their livelihoods, and subsequently had no choice but to work at the labs. TODAY, in part two, best-se...

Best-selling author and award-winning journalist Alisa Lynn Valdés made international headlines a few weeks ago when her Twitter thread about the REAL story of what happened in Los Alamos went viral. Unlike Christopher Nolan's new film Oppenheimer suggests - the land that the Los Alamos Labs was built on and the area the first bombs were tested on were NOT "uninhabited" - the people living there h...

Ruth (Moskowicz) Handler was born the 10th child to a family of immigrants and from the get-go she was a hard working Broad jumping quickly from the local soda fountain to Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles. Her boyfriend Elliott was quick to follow, and soon enough they tie the knot, a partnership that would prove to be a huge success in both the personal and corporate worlds. How did Ruth origina...

Sara welcomes back guests Chloe Skye and Zach Livingston to gush over and analyze the new Greta Gerwig Barbie Movie and the way that the world is reacting to it! We daresay NEVER in the history of blockbuster filmmaking, has a film so well articulated the damage that patriarchy inflicts on EVERY PERSON it touches (yes, it's bad for Kens, too!), and so precisely defined the challenges ALL women fac...

Why isn't there another new Broad for you today? What in the world has been going on with Broads You Should Know the past few weeks?! The short answer: JURY DUTY. Sara was held captive by the "Justice" System, and now that the case is over she can finally tell all about what it was like to be on a Jury, and why she's feeling pretty messed up about it. BUT FIRST! We preview all the great new Broads...

Sara has been stuck in Jury Duty (where she's forbidden to act out in any way) so it's a great excuse to revisit our episode about Helen Hulick Beebe - the woman who DARED to wear pants to the courthouse in defiance of the judge... Helen Hulick Beebe is working as a teacher in Los Angeles in 1938, and when she's called to court to testify in a burglary case she inadvertently causes quite the rucku...

We just passed her birthday on June 6th, so it's a great time to revisit our episode on Frida Kahlo — the Mexico-born painter and revolutionary whose tragic backstory adds depth to her work. Frida originally wanted to be a doctor, but a bus accident left her broken and bedridden for an extended period of time. While she was confined to her room, she began painting self-portraits and developing her...

From the very beginning of the colonization of Australia, the treatment of Aborigine people was atrocious, but the end of the 19th century the codification of that treatment upticked sharply in an attempt to flat out remove the Aborigine people via cultural erasure and breeding, so when Molly Craig entered the world around 1915 the deck was heavily stacked against her. After 14 year old Molly, and...

We've talked a lot about Marsha P. Johnson but today we're finally circling around to her other half - her best friend and co-founder of STAR House - Sylvia Rivera! Orphaned at a young age and suffering much abuse at the hands of her caretakers, Sylvia left home at eleven years old and never looked back. She found a new home with the drag queens of 42nd Street who took her in, dubbed her Sylvia, a...

Mademoiselle Chevalier d'Éon is a contentious figure among modern historians. For the first 40 years of her life she lives as a man, during which time she works as a spy for the French Government, serves in the military, negotiates the Treaty of Paris (ending the Seven Years War with Britain), and blackmails the King of France to avoid imprisonment. However, eventually, rumors begin to spread that...

When you google the term "trans activist" you'll find Raquel Willis is at the top of your results. Empowered & encouraged by her loving and supportive family, even in the wake of her father's passing, Raquel was lit up by the activist flame as Black Lives Matter took center stage in the US, but frustrated by the lack of support for transgender people within the movement - Raquel was determined to...

Chloe Skye joins Sara to ring in PRIDE MONTH on the pod.  Specifically, this year, we are celebrating and lifting up the stories of our trans sisters. WHAT IS GOING ON with all these States trying to erase the existence of transgender people? What is all this vitriol and hatred REALLY ABOUT and how can we fight against it, and best support our trans friends? As a proud member of the trans communit...

BYSK is once again kicking off PRIDE month with one of our previously aired, but absolutely ESSENTIAL PRIDE Broads - MARSHA "Pay It No Mind" JOHNSON! Marsha was one of the figureheads in the fight for LGBTQ rights and a true legend. She was (allegedly) at the Stonewall Inn on the night the riots broke out, kicking off the LGBTQ revolution. She also helped organize the first Pride Parade and founde...

This week, Sara brings on guest host Dawn "Sam" Alden to teach us all about the Valiant Ladies of Potosí, two teenage girls who loved sword fighting, mayhem, and one another, and traveled the countryside to defend the freedom of the underprivileged. Check out the full episode to learn more of their exploits, and why they qualify as Broads You Should Know! — A Broad is a woman who lives by her own...

Sibyl Ludington, the oldest of 12 kids, may have only been 16 years old, but she knew exactly what to do when British soldiers burned her neighboring town to the ground: She Paul Revere'd it! Jumping on her horse, Sibyl rides over 40 miles across the countryside to awaken the militia, calling to arms the troops for what would be the Battle of Ridgefield. Her tale is legendary. And we might mean th...

Ching Shih came from humble beginnings, raised in a poor village and forced into prostitution at age 13 to help support the family. Early on, she realized she had a particular way with some of the male clients, and used her wit and beauty to eventually become the ruler of over 80,000 people in a pirate empire of her own making. — A Broad is a woman who lives by her own rules. Broads You Should Kno...

Ancient Greece in the 4th Century BCE was pretty tough for women. Women weren't allowed to practice Midwifery legally, and it was inappropriate for male Doctors to see female patients, so women and babies are dying in childbirth in record numbers and Agnodice is SICK OF IT! She bucks the law, deceives the teachers at med school by dressing as a man, and she becomes a gynecologist. When her practic...

When Sampat Pal Devi witnesses a women being beaten mercilessly by her husband she could not just walk by and ignore it. When her intercession fails, she returns the next day with five other women and their lathi (bamboo rods) and they beat the abuser. Word of their justice immediately spreads, and women begin flocking to Devi to help them right the terrible wrongs they have suffered at the hands...

No, she's not just a funny sketch from History of the World Part II - Shirley Chisholm was a real woman and she was the first black woman to run for President of the United States of America! But that isn't the only thing she did. She was also an important civil rights leader and politician - serving on the New York State Assembly and she was the first black woman elected to Congress. She accompli...