What'sHerName

What'sHerName


Latest Episodes

BONUS: A Night of Celebration Live
June 26, 2024

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 performanc

THE ABOLITIONIST Ellen Garrison
May 29, 2024

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 sue

THE BYZANTINE Irene of Athens
May 16, 2024

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' lif

THE BUTTERFLY IN THE SUN Mata Hari
May 01, 2024

A charming Indonesian orphan danced her way to fame and fortune... except literally everything about Mata Hari was a lie. She said she wanted to live like a butterfly in the sun. So in the end, could she really have been guilty of espionage? Katie takes u

THE COUNTERFEIT COUNTESS Janina Mehlberg
April 17, 2024

When Jewish mathematician Pepi Mehlberg was offered a new identity as Countess Janina Suchodolska in Nazi-occupied Poland, she took that chance and used it - to join the underground resistance, feed thousands of Nazi prisoners every week, and eventually r

THE VOYAGER Hannah Masury Howe
March 27, 2024

In 1867, a ship bound for California with 400 Chinese passengers signaled distress as it drifted in the Pacific Ocean. The ship's captainwas a woman, and her mutinous crew had refused to sail the ship even though they were running out of water. How did C

THE SOLID CITIZEN Frances Perkins
March 13, 2024

Frances Perkins, first female cabinet secretary in US history, was the mind (and the will) behind nearly every landmark policy of the Roosevelt administration's New Deal - so why doesn't anyone know her name? Bestselling author Stephanie Dray introduces u

THE EQUESTRIAN Anna Sewell
February 28, 2024

"This was one woman with a very little life, who made the most enormous difference." Celia Brayfield shares with Katie the story of Anna Sewell who, on her death bed, wrote a story and changed the world. Black Beauty was no mere "horse book." It catapult

THE GUNG-HO ORIGINAL Helen Foster Snow
January 10, 2024

In 1931, a young American aspiring writer set off for what she thought would be a one-year adventure in China. Hoping to gain life experience so she could eventually write the Great American Novel - she would instead become famous as the "Voice of China"

CHRISTMAS IN SWEDEN Selma Lagerlöf
December 13, 2023

Selma Lagerlf poetically recorded old Norse fairytales and profoundly influenced Swedish identity. Her work was so brilliant, she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909. In old age, she turned her poetic pen to her own life, re