What'sHerName

Nur Jahan was the only Empress in the history of the Mughal Empire. Reigning as an equal with her husband Jahangir, she was the only woman to issue executive orders, mint coins, or lead an army — and her tiger-hunting skills were legendary. Though she was one of the most influential leaders in 17th century Asia, for centuries her legacy has been reduced to a love story that ends where her real adv...

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 she...

Our 2018 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! [remastered 2025] In 1612, ten people were hanged as witches in Lancashire, England, sentenced to death because of the testimony of a 9 year old girl. The eight women and two men Jennet Device accused...

Mae Mallory was a radical civil rights activist, Black Power movement leader, school desegregation organizer and strong proponent of Black armed self-defense. Her passionate dedication to “solving Black peoples’ problems” changed the world, but her name is mostly known because of her false arrest and conviction for kidnapping an elderly white couple in 1961. After the verdict was overturned by the...

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...

Marjorie Hillis’ surprise bestseller Live Alone and Like It was a sensation when it was published in 1936. Determined to shift the narrative around singleness and encourage women to make active choices about their lives, Hillis used the insights gained in her decades as an editor for Vogue to empower single women to enjoy their single years instead of viewing them as an embarrassment. Her innovati...

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.” Katie intervie...

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 “back in th...

Caroline Herschel lived a real-life Cinderella story. Except instead of marrying a handsome prince, she became a world-renowned astronomer! Her brutal childhood of servitude and misery stunted her growth, disfigured her face and blinded her in one eye. But Caroline Herschel’s story is an incredibly beautiful tale of triumph and achievement. Her astonishing work in Astronomy (she discovered a plane...

Alma Schindler Mahler was a brilliant composer, pianist, and “influencer” who has largely been remembered only for the men with whom she had relationships. Her musical compositions are finally beginning to be recognized for their brilliance and performed on stage in the past few years, and her reputation as a “femme fatale” is long overdue for an overhaul. The “It Girl” of turn of the century Vien...

Sally Lunn was born in France, but moved to Bath, England in 1680 to escape religious persecution. She brought with her a special skill: baking delicious brioche-style bread. Developing her own unique recipe, she sold her buns in the streets of Bath, soon becoming famous for the “Sally Lunn Bun.”Fast-forward 350 years to the 1930s: a baker in Bath with a love of archaeology decided to excavate the...

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 England. There...

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 basic human dig...

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...

 A classic story of a young woman defying her parents to follow her heart, but with a fascinating Russian twist! Sahib Gizzatullina lived for the stage, introducing Russian audiences to theater for the first time in their lives. She and her penniless traveling theater troupe experienced all the passion, heartbreak, and drama that you’d expect from a roving band of actors. But they did it during Ru...

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 British literat...

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. H...

900 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 the sick an...

Adelaide Herrmann ruled the stage for fifty years as one the brightest stars of the Golden Age of Magic. After the death of her husband, renowned magician Herrmann the Great, Adelaide took center stage, and toured for thirty years as one of the most famous magicians in the world. She was more famous than Houdini, and continued performing until her death at age seventy-nine - when she was inexplica...

Mary Lou Williams was one of the most innovative, creative, groundbreaking musicians in the history of jazz. She was a brilliant and prolific composer and uniquely gifted pianist whose influence spans nearly the entire timeline of jazz music, but her name is almost never listed among the “giants of jazz.” Although prejudice kept her from achieving the recognition and fame she deserved during her l...

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 "Molly" Brown 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 compelling and unusual tale of character, compassion and just the rig...

Te Puea Herangi was one of the most important and influential Maori leaders of the 20th century. Born into the family of the Maori King, she was a tireless activist for her people. Her work to assure economic prosperity in the Waikato region, her fierce battles for justice for Maori communities harmed by illegal land seizures, and her passionate dedication to Maori cultural revival assure that she...