What'sHerName
What’sHerName puts the women back into world history. Hosts Dr. Katie Nelson and Olivia Meikle are professors-turned-podcasters (and sisters!) Weaving interviews with experts into vivid, nuanced biographies, What'sHerName women's history podcast tells the stories of fascinating women you’ve never heard of (but should have). Fascinating and funny, thought-provoking and insightful. New episodes biweekly.
Episodes
April 4, 2025 • 43 mins
Nobody knows her real name. But this "Uncontested Pirate Queen of the Western Mediterranean" certainly earned her title: the Sayyida al Hurra, the Free and Independent Woman. From child refugee fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, to ruling Governor of Tetouan, to the Sultana of Morocco - Sayyida was never one to follow the path society had laid out for her.
Author Laura Sook Duncome helps us uncover the mystery of the one and only ac...
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March 21, 2025 • 57 mins
She lived through the worst century in human history: the Black Death, famine, war, death and despair. So it was all the more surprising when Julian of Norwich rose from her deathbed saying she'd received a vision from God: All shall be well. How could that be true when the whole world seems to be falling apart?
Travel with us to 14th century England, to visit famed mystic Julian of Norwich. I know it sounds crazy, she says, but...
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March 8, 2025 • 50 mins
Mary Ware Dennett was one of the most important and influential activist for women's rights, contraception, free speech and sex education in early 20th century America. So why does her nemesis Margaret Sanger get all the attention?
Returning guest Stephanie Gorton helps Olivia unravel the mystery of this fascinating, forward-thinking woman.
Music featured in this episode provided by Asher Fulero, Kevin Macleod, The Mini Vandals,...
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February 21, 2025 • 56 mins
She prevented war and death on an immense scale, in acts that could earn the Nobel Peace Prize today. But History enshrined Sisi, Empress of Austria, as a vain beauty queen. The smear campaign was personal, not political: it started with her own tyrannical mother-in-law. Can Sisi conquer her own self-doubt, and drag draconian Austria into the modern world?
Our guest is Nancy Goldstone, author of The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of ...
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February 8, 2025 • 58 mins
When world-famous strongman Eugen Sandow finally met his match, nobody expected it to be at the hands of an 18 year old girl. But whether it was bending metal bars, beating horses in a tug-of-war, or hefting her own husband over her head with one arm, German strongwoman Katie Sandwina would continue to shatter records (and Victorian gender norms) for another forty years. Guest Haley Shapley, author of Strong Like Her, introduces Ol...
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January 22, 2025 • 59 mins
A pirate ship jammed with treasure. The worst storm to ever hit Cape Cod. The mythical shipwreck-- 280 years later, found. Everything in this swashbuckling tale (full of impossible things that really did happen) occurred because of Maria Hallett. Did she turn witch, to curse her lover's ship, or to save it?
Join us on location at Real Pirates Museum in Salem, MA.
Music featured in this episode includes: Blow the Wind Southerly b...
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January 8, 2025 • 53 mins
How did two ordinary 18th century Anglo-Irish sisters end up gallivanting around the European continent, fraternizing with all the most radical and revolutionary minds of the Enlightenment, and becoming BFFs with a Russian Princess? Guest Dr. Alexis Wolf introduces Olivia to the astonishing lives of Katherine and Martha Wilmot.
Music for this episode provided by Amanda Setlik Wilson, Killarney, and Tatyana Kalmokova.
Learn more ab...
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December 16, 2024 • 49 mins
Travel to snowy Victorian Maine in this year's Christmas Special, as Katie reads from the memoirs of Sarah Orne Jewett. An immensely famous and beloved novelist in her day, Sarah wrote wholesome tales of the country folk of Maine, where as a child she had accompanied her physician father on his rounds.
Find a massive collection of Sarah Orne Jewett's works collected by the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project HERE.
Our What'sHerName ...
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November 3, 2024 • 40 mins
Zeynab Pasha was one of the most influential voices during several crises of 19th century Iranian history. From the Bread Crisis to the Tobacco Protests and the lead up to Iran's Constitutional Revolution, she led the way in taking back the power of the people. She was legendary, and then she disappeared - literally and figuratively.
Author Afarin Bellisario helps us rediscover the life of this incredible woman.
Music featured i...
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October 16, 2024 • 55 mins
If you knew the recipe for an undetectable poison, would you use it? What about giving it to women with abusive husbands? Giulia Tofana's legendary poison Aqua Tofana (brilliantly disguised as holy ointment) was famed and feared in 17th-century Rome. But just how many terrible husbands can drop dead, before the Pope gets suspicious?
In this year's Halloween Special, our guests are Gaia Aloisi and Ted Blackburn, the creators of Aqu...
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October 5, 2024 • 57 mins
When Sigrid Schultz was offered a job as a reporter in Berlin, Germany in 1919, she had no idea how her life was about to change - or how her work would change the world.
Returning guest Pamela Toler introduces us to this indomitable woman, who was one of the first to raise the alarm about the Nazis, one of the last to leave as WWII made reporting impossible, and the first woman in history to head an American News Bureau.
Music i...
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September 18, 2024 • 56 mins
Whenever Teresa Lim asked about a striking woman she saw in old family photos, she was told 'That's Aunt Fanny; she was unfortunate.' So naturally, Teresa Lim spent years excavating Aunt Fanny's life in 1920s Singapore. It's a story of three devoted sisters, ghost husbands, working-class Chinese feminists, and sworn spinsters.
Turns out, Fanny was very fortunate indeed...until History arrived at her front door.
_________________...
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September 4, 2024 • 61 mins
Throughout the 1920s, three sisters dominated the Australian film scene. The phenomenal filmmaking team of Isabel, Phyllis, and Paulette McDonagh reigned supreme as the undisputed Queens of Silent Cinema... until the talkies arrived to turn everything upside down.
Award-winning author Mandy Sayer tells Olivia all about Those Dashing McDonagh Sisters, whose lives were every bit as dramatic (and as complicated) as any Hollywood fil...
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August 21, 2024 • 55 mins
Aleksandra Samusenko commanded a unit of Soviet tanks through some of the most brutal battles in human history. The Soviet Union never told her story. But an American paratrooper who'd escaped a Nazi POW camp never forgot her. In the final months of World War II, he joined her unit, and together they made the final push to Berlin.
Guest Hayley Noble shares the story of THE TANK COMMANDER Aleksandra Samusenko.
Haley Noble's webs...
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August 8, 2024 • 55 mins
For decades, her remarkable achievements as United States First Lady have been overshadowed by her husband's big mistakes. Returning guest Heath Hardage Lee is back to help change that! Olivia introduces us to the remarkable and unfairly forgotten Pat Nixon.
Music in this episode provided by The Westerlies, Aaron Kenny, Josh Lippi and the Overtimers, The Mini Vandals, Cooper Cannell, Doug Maxwell, Quincas Moereira, and the US Mari...
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July 24, 2024 • 54 mins
She was one of the key figures of Irish Independence, known in her lifetime as The Irish Joan of Arc. But somehow, history only remembers her as the woman who wouldn't marry WB Yeats. More recently, a BBC headline called her "Ireland's heroine who had sex in her baby's tomb." Both those things are true, but... her real story is even more bonkers - and of course, so much more amazing.
Join us with guest Orna Ross to put Maud Gonne...
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July 13, 2024 • 55 mins
Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the most famed and respected painters in 17th century Europe, but after she died, her story - and many of her works - were lost, and over the years, Artemisia has become better known for what was done to her than for what she did. Award-winning artist Lindsay Huss helps us try to change that.
(Content warning: discussions of physical and sexual violence)
Music for this episode provided by Marc Ne...
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June 26, 2024 • 95 mins
What'sHerName goes live!
To launch our new book, What's Her Name, A History of the World in 80 Lost Women, former episode guests convene in London from all over the world for a Night of Celebration! In rapid-fire succession, brilliant 3-minute performances of poetry, song, story and dance take us chronologically through the history of the world. The magic is punctuated throughout with short readings by Katie and Olivia from the ne...
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May 29, 2024 • 51 mins
The story goes that the American Civil Rights movement started when Rosa Parks refused to leave her bus seat in 1955. But 89 years before that, Ellen Garrison refused to leave the waiting room at a Baltimore train station. When she was thrown out, she sued, in one of the first court cases to test African American civil rights. Criss-crossing America to teach former slaves wherever needed, Ellen Garrison devoted her life to lifting ...
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May 16, 2024 • 59 mins
From arriving at the port of Constantinople as a teenage bride to the heir to the Byzantine Throne, to exiling - and blinding - her own son, Constantine IV, to boldly crowning herself the first Empress Regnant of the Byzantine Empire, Irene of Athens' life was a wildly unpredictable ride through one of the most tumultuous and fascinating periods of medieval history.
Olivia interviews archaeologist and historian Judith Herrin, autho...
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