The Exploress

Season 1, Episode 1. Mid-19th century America was a pretty buttoned-up place. Or was it?

For women, marriage and family was their destiny, their lives confined to a small and private sphere. They could toil, but they couldn’t vote; they could work their land, but often couldn’t own it. They were laced into corsets, surrounded by a piece of clothing called a cage.

The whole thing sounds pretty...constricting. But women in this era d...

Season 1, Episode 3. She was many things: A celebrated teacher, a pioneering civil servant, a battlefield nurse, a public speaker, and a leader of many initiatives, including the American Red Cross. In a time when single, middle-class women didn't have all that many career options, Clara Barton went ahead and had, oh, let's call it five different careers. This dynamo was a woman of many contradictions: she was incredibly shy, but a...

Season 1, Episode 4. Look for the word 'prostitute' in 19th-century America and you'll find it everywhere. But it went far beyond a job description: It was a line in the sand, a punishment for women who dared to step across and act out of line in the public sphere. Let's step behind the velvet curtain of sex in the Victorian era and look at how 19th-century ladies related to it, their bodies, and themselves as sexual beings. We'll ...

Season 1, Episode 5. When we think of a Civil War soldier, it's a man we see. But there were women out there on the battlefield, too - hundreds of them - fighting and dying for their cause. Let's travel back into the life of a secret lady soldier to find out why they joined, how they hid their identities, what they faced out in the field, how they were caught and what happened when they were. We'll explore their legacy and impact i...

Season 1, Episode 6. Franklin Thompson did it all as a Civil War soldier: spied, rode, nursed, and fought. And during his service, almost no one knew his secret: that he was really Sarah Emma Edmonds in disguise. Emma left home in Canada at 17 to escape a life she didn't want, living as a man so she could make her own way in the world. When the American Civil War came, she felt called to join up and fight for the Union. She had man...

Season 1, Episode 7. 19th-century women weren't supposed to be devious - and that's what made them such effective spies. Hundreds of women tied gun parts to their crinolines, baked quinine into bread loaves, hid generals in their attics, and made daring midnight rides for their cause. In this episode, we follow four of them: Union ladies Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Jane Bowser and Confederate dames Rose O'Neal Greenhow and Bell Boyd...

I'm bringing one of my bonus episodes out of the Patreon vault and sharing it with everyone! Back by popular demand, this bonus gives a more in-depth glimpse into sex in 19th-century: specifically the fascinating lives and times of two very prominent madames. One was Washington's most renowned brothel owner, who opened up a gilded bawdy house just a stone's throw from the Capitol building. The other made quite a scandalous splash a...

Season 1, Episode 9. Elizabeth Keckley and Harriet Tubman spent decades in bondage, suffering everything the "peculiar institution" promised before finding very different paths to freedom. What they did with that freedom is nothing short of extraordinary. In weaving together the lives of these two incredible women, a picture emerges: a window into what it might have been like to be an enslaved woman in 19th-century America. In Part...

Season 1, Episode 10. Harriet Tubman and Elizabeth Keckley took different paths to freedom, and navigating their new world. One because a famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, spending a decade liberating family and strangers alike. The other became a successful dressmaker in the nation's capitol, dressing the leading political ladies of the day. Both showed an incredible work ethic, a hunger for success, and a deep commitm...

The 19th century's best-selling novel was an incendiary story about the evils of slavery, written by a northern woman who wanted to change the world. Meet Harriet Beecher Stowe, the authoress who refused to sit down and be silent about the peculiar institution. In this bonus episode, let's find out how (and why) she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, and what about it lit mid-19th century America on fire. We'll also explore what it took to b...

Season 1, Episode 11. America's Wild West evokes images of grizzled men in fringed chaps, but women were also there to help shape the frontier: the pioneer women who fought through many hardships to carve out a life on the dusty plains and the Mexican and Native American women who were already there, trying to hold on to their way of life. What was life like for these women as they traveled by wagon train and set up houses on the p...

Season 2, Episode 1. Of all the civilizations in the ancient world, Egypt was perhaps the most prone to the miraculous. They invented many wonders: the 365-day calendar, breath mints, paper, the ramp and lever. And then there’s this particular wonder: ancient Egyptian women had more freedom and power than anywhere else in the ancient world. Why was Egypt such an exception to the ancient rule? What did their lives really look like? ...

Season 2, Episode 2. Let's continue our day as an everyday lady in ancient Egypt's New Kingdom during the 18th Dynasty. We'll talk about what we're doing for both work and pleasure, go to a feast, and explore medicine, contraception, mummification and the afterlife. Put on your best jewels and let's go traveling.

For show notes, head over to my website. While you're there, become a patron of the show and receive bonus goodies by c...

Season 2, Episode 3. In ancient Egyptian, the word "pharaoh" doesn’t mean king; it means “great house”. They had no word for queen at all. All royal women were defined by their relationship to that house: with titles like Great Royal Wife, Great Royal Daughter, Great Royal Mother. They were there to support, not to rule. And yet, in an ancient world where men ruled the day, Egypt saw a slew of influential females stalking the gilde...

Season 2, Episode 4. Let's continue exploring the lives of ancient Egypt's female pharaohs. We'll start by talking about Hatshepsut's rise to fame and glory: how she stayed on top and what she did while she was there. Then we'll dive into the stories of Nefertiti, a savvy beauty queen with a fanatical boyfriend, and Tawosret, who wasn't afraid to get blood on her hands on her path to power. We'll travel through several eras, lookin...

Season 2, Episode 5. For millennia, brewing was overwhelmingly a woman’s game. You can’t research beer’s history without stumbling across female brewers. So why, when we conjure up an image of a brewer, is it a bearded dude we always picture? How did beer, both the brewing and the drinking, become overwhelmingly a “man’s drink”? To find out, we’ll explore how beer was made in the ancient world, then skip-hop forward through time up...

Season 2, Episode 6. Ancient Greece is notorious for keeping women silent, veiled, and firmly fixed beside the loom. But was life for the ladies in places like Athens really so restrictive? What did they get up to behind those veils and shaded screens? Let's time travel back to the Classical period to find out what it was like to be them.

To check out the show notes, go here. If you'd like to give a one-off donation or become a pat...