What'shername

Late in life, Mary Donelson Wilcox recalled a magical childhood Christmas she spent at the White House with her elderly uncle, President Andrew Jackson. Her captivating memoirs paint a picture of a surprisingly global White House, with servants from around the world, and a surprisingly warm and playful President Jackson. Mary offers us a rare glimpse at Christmas in the early 19th century–wh...

In 1965, Sybil Stockdale was a mild-mannered Navy wife in Southern California. But after her husband’s plane was shot down over Vietnam, she would become one of the most important and effective activists in American history. Her organization, The National League of Families, fought for nearly a decade to bring home nearly one thousand POWs who were being held by North Vietnam in conditions o...

Sabina Spielrein was one of the first female psychoanalysts, “invented” child psychology, and innovated some of the most famous concepts now attributed to Jung and Freud. So why don’t we know her name? Learn how an accident of translation (and some sexism and antisemitism on the side) erased this powerhouse from our bookshelves and our classrooms — and why it’s more t...

In 1996, a graduate student working in a library in England discovered the manuscript of a novel and 120 poems by completely unknown 17th century woman writer. Hester Pulter had been hiding in plain sight for four centuries. Now a dedicated team of scholars is sharing her work with the world. “Then being enfranchised, free as my verse, I shall surround this spacious universe, Until by other...

The story of America’s transcontinental railroad is a masculine saga. But today we present the story of Union Pacific’s most unlikely employee: a 12-year-old Mormon girl. Mary Peterson Ipsen was a Danish immigrant who walked across the plains to Utah territory and grew up in an isolated religious enclave. But when her father died and she had to find work, she found herself cooking for hundreds of...

Malintzin has been one of Mexico’s greatest villains for 500 years. A native of Veracruz, she translated for Hernán Cortés, the conquistador who destroyed the Aztec Empire. But she did more than translate: she birthed his children, helped him win battles, and saved his life again and again as they trekked from the Maya coast to the heart of the empire. Through it all, she alone spoke for Cortés &#...

In Nazi Germany, resistance was not just forbidden, it was deadly. But in 1942, a group of young college students went from enthusiastic supporters of the Third Reich to some of its most vocal opponents, publishing thousands of leaflets calling Hitler a criminal, and attempting to start a student revolt. Though their dream of a revolution never became reality, their courageous stance in the face o...

Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Émilie du Châtelet thought so, and set out to prove it with empirical evidence three hundred years ago. Raised at the lavish court of Louis XIV, she stood out like a sore thumb: while the women around her were glamorous, graceful and illiterate, she was clunky, fierce, and bookish. The story of her world-changing contribution to science is as delightf...

Carolyn Cassady was an artist, costume designer, writer, and critical influence on the members of the Beat Generation. Her marriage to Neal Cassady and her friendships with Jack Kerouac and other prominent members of the Beats have long overshadowed her own life and accomplishments, but with the recent publication of new manuscripts discovered after her death that is finally beginning to change. A...

Ursula Bloom wrote over 560 books, earning her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most prolific female writer. Born in 1892, Ursula spent her early years in Shropshire, England, the daughter of a clergyman. Her memories of childhood Christmases at the turn of the 20th century were published many decades ago in a local periodical, Warwickshire and Worcestershire Life. What...

November 11, 2018 is the 100th Anniversary of the end of World War I.  To mark this day, we bring you the story of one fearless woman and her ambulance.  Maud Fitch, a cowgirl from the desert between Nevada and Utah, wanted to join up when America entered WWI. Unable to enlist as a soldier (she was a woman, after all!) she purchased an ambulance and shipped it at her own expense to France, where &...

The Pendle Witches – Pearl DeVere – Bess Houdini – Lily Cove Our very first Halloween Special brings back four of our most popular guests with four new stories of hauntings, mysterious deaths, witch hunts, and seances, to bring you many spooky returns of the season! The Pendle Witches: In 1612, ten people were hanged as witches in Lancashire, England, sentenced to death because o...

In this episode, a 17th-century tale of true love and extreme patience. Dorothy Osborne and William Temple fell deeply in love, but her family forbade the match. For years, while Dorothy’s creepily overbearing brother presented her with suitor after suitor of his own choosing, Dorothy and William faithfully sent each other secret love letters. Dorothy’s letters survive, and reveal the story of her...

When your heart tells you to do one thing, and your parents tell you to do another, what do you do? 22-year-old Perpetua faced this dilemma 1,800 years ago in ancient Carthage. She faced a grisly death in an ancient Roman arena with her slave, Felicitas, at her side. Their tale is full of bizarre twists, gladiators, preemie babies, religious visions, and even a “most ferocious cow.” Our guest is E...

Constance Fenimore Woolson was one of the most popular writers of the 19th century. Though her life was full of drama, excitement and fame, for nearly a hundred years she’s been known only for the story of her death. Our guest, Dr. Anne Boyd Rioux, is changing that with her biography of Woolson, Portrait of a Lady Novelist. We join forces to help put this astonishingly brilliant writer &#822...

Claudia Jones (born Claudia Cumberbatch) was a journalist, Black Nationalist and prominent member of the American Communist Party. Emigrating from Trinidad to NYC at eight years old, she was an extremely well-known peace activist and worked toward civil rights and women’s rights in America. Arrested for giving a speech promoting peace and women’s rights, in 1955 she was deported to Eng...

Living in Saxony 1100 years ago, in a culture much like the Vikings, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim probably witnessed violence against women all the time. Violence was a part of society, and she retreated to an intellectual life. But there, too, she found violence against women in the ancient Roman plays she was reading. If she couldn’t change society, at least she could change the plays! She rewrote...

Bessie Margolin grew up in the New Orleans Jewish Orphan’s Home, was one of the first women to graduate from Tulane Law School and earned her PhD in Law from Yale University in 1932. Her groundbreaking work as Assistant Solicitor of Labor for the New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act championed many of the wage and hour rights Americans take for granted today and enshrined in law the bas...

Maria Ruiz de Burton was a writer, entrepreneur and businesswoman, and the first Mexican-American woman to publish a novel in English. Born in 1832 in Baja California, Mexico to a prominent Spanish family, Maria Amparo Ruiz was fifteen when the Mexican-American war ended and California became part of the United States. She married the commander of the American forces that invaded Baja shortly afte...

Sisters Jane and Anna Maria Porter were wildly popular writers–among the most widely-read writers in Regency England. (Yes, more popular than Jane Austen!) Their novels were on every British bookshelf, their poetry was popular and acclaimed, and Jane Porter’s historical novel The Scottish Chiefs would retain its popularity for nearly 150 years. So how did these bestselling icons of Bri...

Are public debates like the feuds we see on Twitter and Facebook a product of modern society? Gargi Vachaknavi has long been remembered in India for her brilliant performance in a public debate 2,700 years ago. Her story offers a refreshing model for how to engage in heated ideological discussions: she didn’t just throw down an epic victory, humiliating her opponent. She did something much more cl...

Rose Emily Ridge was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1973. After spending her childhood in Australia and New Zealand, she fled an abusive husband for California in 1907. Arriving in America, she promptly changed her name, her age, her nationality and her marital status and launched her new life as Lola Ridge, radical poet, anarchist organizer, and editor of the influential avant-garde magazine Broom. A...

Nine hundred years ago, the young Hildegard of Bingen was given by her parents to the Catholic Church. She was literally “walled up” in a tiny convent, completely cut off from the outside world. But over the course of her long and varied life, she emerged from the walls to embrace the world. She founded her own convents and traveled across Europe on preaching tours. She spent decades caring for th...

Four hundred years ago, Margaret Cavendish dared to contemplate the biggest philosophical questions of her day. Brilliant and bold, she wrote 21 books despite being dismissed or mocked by the almost entirely male intellectual community. A famously eccentric dresser, she and her husband hosted high-society parties at their fantastical castle, but she was also paralyzed by bashfulness and dreaded ta...

Margaret Brown (who was renamed Molly after her death by the playwright Meredith Wilson) is often cited as the quintessential American rags-to-riches story. Born to poor Irish immigrants in Missouri, Margaret went on to become one of the wealthiest women in the country. She cemented her place in history through her heroism on the disastrous maiden voyage of the Titanic, but her life story is a com...