Episodes
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Evelyn Berezin (1925-2018), who built and marketed the first computerized word processor.
Published 09/13/24
Published 09/13/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Maria Agnesi (1718-1799). She did groundbreaking work in the field of mathematics, creating a two-volume textbook that helped to shape math education. Later, she gave up her academic success to serve the poor and live in poverty.
Published 09/12/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017). She was an optimist and an innovator, contributing new points of view and new teachings to the fields of dynamics and geometry. She is the only woman to have won the coveted Fields Medal.
Published 09/11/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Sophie Germain (1776-1831). She was a French mathematician and physicist who contributed to the study of acoustics, elasticity, and number theory. She was forced to assume a fake male identity to have her work taken seriously, but her efforts paved the way for further breakthrough discoveries in mathematics.
Published 09/10/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Ada Lovelace (1815-1852). She is known as the first computer programmer. Despite living during a time when women were not considered scientific thinkers, her contributions to computer science are indispensable–and indisputable.
Published 09/09/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Ella Cara Deloria (1889-1971). She was a linguist and ethnographer who became one of the foremost experts on Dakota and Lakota oral history.
Published 09/06/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Sappho (c. 615 BC). She was an ancient Greek poet and an architect of the very words we use to talk about queer identity today.
Published 09/05/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Gayl Jones (1949-present). She is a prolific author celebrated for her writing about Black womanhood, slavery, and the African Diaspora. She disappeared from public life by choice until very recently, when she reappeared in words with her 2021 novel, “Palmares.”
Published 09/04/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Begum Rokeya (c. 1880-1932). She spent her life fighting for women’s rights in India and Bangladesh. She opened the first school for Muslim girls in her region and advocated for women’s education. She dreamed of a world where women could reach their full potential — a world she brought to life in her revolutionary feminist utopian short story “Sultana’s Dream.”
Published 09/03/24
This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Marguerite Duras (1914-1996). She was a pioneer of autofiction and one of the most widely-read French writers in the postwar era. She specialized in blurring the lines between autobiography and imagination, mining her myriad of hardships for narrative gold. Her novel “The Lover” reflected her experiences growing up in French Indochina and became an international...
Published 09/02/24
Monica Seles (1973-present) and Steffi Graf (1969-present) held one of the most famous rivalries in tennis history. They battled for the No. 1 ranking for years, equally matched in prowess.  This episode of Womanica is brought to you by the all-new Toyota Camry.
Published 08/31/24
Roxanne Shanté (1969-present) ignited The Roxanne Wars, a series of hip hop rivalries during the mid 1980s, that created the most answered records in history. It was also one of the first “rap beefs” in history.
Published 08/30/24
Lee Radziwill (1933-2019) was an American socialite, public relations executive, and interior designer. She was the younger sister of former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Lee and her sister had a complicated relationship that often relegated Lee to the shadows.
Published 08/29/24
Louella Parsons (1881-1972) was an American gossip columnist and screenwriter, whose work boasted an audience of 20 million across many newspapers. She called herself the first-ever film reviewer and was known for her influence in Hollywood and her fierce competition with rival journalist Hedda Hopper.
Published 08/28/24
Zelia Nuttall (1857-1933) was a Mexican-American archaeologist. She was a single mother who decoded a number of Mesoamerican texts and artifacts, including the Nuttall Codex and the Aztec Calendar Stone. She laid the groundwork for archaeologists to reimagine pre-Hispanic civilizations in a new light.
Published 08/27/24
Dr. Germon “Mama G” Miller-Bey (c.1953-present) is the “Grand Matriarch” of African martial arts, or sciences, as she prefers to call it. Rooted in her own experiences with domestic violence, she became a lifelong competitor, teacher, and community advocate for the sport and the arts.
Published 08/26/24
Mabel Fairbanks (1915-2001) was an American figure skater and coach. A Black and Seminole woman, she was often relegated to the shadows and dedicated the latter half of her career to breaking down barriers for other skaters of color.
Published 08/24/24
Fabulous Moolah (1923-2007) was a pioneering American pro wrestler, promoter and trainer. She held different versions of the women’s championship title almost continuously from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. She was also the first woman to be inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame.
Published 08/23/24
Lillian Hellman (1905-1984), a playwright and novelist who sued writer and critic Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) after Mary McCarthy called her "a dishonest writer" on the "Dick Cavett Show." The suit captured public attention, and the legal battle became one of the most legendary feuds in modern contemporary literature.
Published 08/22/24
Remedios Guinto Gomez-Paraiso, known primarily as Kumander Liwayway, (1919 - 2014) was a beauty queen-who became a -military commander during the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines.
Published 08/21/24
Alice Lee (1859-1939) was a statistician and one of the first women to earn a Doctorate of Science from the University of London. Her dissertation, published in 1900, helped disprove the widely held belief that skull capacity was linked to intelligence.
Published 08/20/24
Joanie “Chyna” Laurer (1969-2016) was a mainstay in the WWE in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Billed as “The Ninth Wonder of the World”, she wrestled men and women and bested them both. In 2019, she was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Published 08/19/24
Tituba (c. 1692) was an enslaved woman who played a significant role in the Salem witch trials of 1692. As one of the first to be accused of witchcraft, she confessed under duress and implicated others, fueling the mass hysteria. Her confession included vivid descriptions of supernatural experiences, which greatly influenced the course of the trials. Despite her pivotal role, much of her life before and after the trials remains shrouded in mystery.
Published 08/16/24
Tomoe Gozen (c. 1180s) was a female samurai in 12th century Japan who became renowned for her fierceness and bravery as a warrior during the Genpei civil war.
Published 08/15/24