July 2, 2014 • 32 mins
Exploration has long be considered a manly pursuit, but a new generation of women explorers and adventures are changing that. Cristen and Caroline survey the women's rich and exciting history of exploration and how they've fought for the right the investigate the natural world -- even in petticoats and corsets.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mob Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristin. And today is a very exciting day
in the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, we are kicking off
our twenty fourteen summer series looking at Women in Exploration. Yeah,
(00:26):
and since this is our introductory episode, we wanted to
just offer an overview looking at what exploration actually is.
Because Caroline, exploration is not what I thought it was
before we started reading about this, I assumed exploration was
when people just go out into the wilderness and hike around,
(00:49):
or they climb mountains, or they go walk around the
snowy land. Yeah, but it's so much more than that.
I totally am on the Saint was on the same
page with you. I thought like, oh, well, exploration, it's
just any any old person who climbs a mountain or
goes into the woods or what have you to look around,
have a look around, a look see and and see
(01:10):
what's out there. But as we'll get into, like Kristen said,
there is so much more. There's so many more layers
to what an explorer is versus maybe an adventure and
and the purposes of each that's right. Um, But since
we're focusing on women and exploration, we thought a good
place to kick off this discussion. I was talking about
how exploration has long been considered more of a masculine pursuit.
(01:35):
There was a paper we found called Conceptions of Victorian
Masculinity within Britain's Colonial Project in Egypt by Claire Anderson,
and she talks about this. She writes about how the
explorer's gaze has been generically and literally a man's gaze
because at that time she's writing about the Victorian era,
travel outside of Europe was mostly a male experience. By definition,
(02:00):
travel outside of the homeland was identified as masculine and
was carried out by heroic explorers. And then she goes
on to talk about how ideologically and culturally our idea
of travel and exploration has often been the province of masculinity,
founded on designations of entitlement, autonomy, and agency and emblematized
(02:23):
by male members of the moneyed classes. That's a lot, right,
and and it's if you go back to the episode
that we did on Coffee, we kind of touched on
this in that episode, talking about how men were the
ones and a lot of times it was the upper class,
uh genteel gentleman who would go off and explore and
learn about this new hot beverage and and bring it
(02:46):
back and talk about their explorations. And so it very
much was considered a masculine thing, because why would women,
with all of their heavy skirts and their need to
be in the home sphere, why would they be traveling
out especially alone. Yeah, there's some very real gendered not
just baggage but luggage with this idea of exploration and
(03:08):
what it means more broadly beyond just stepping out beyond
your own doorstep. But there were though, a number of
women who violated those Victorian gender norms and set out
to explore. And one that we wanted to talk about
for a minute was Harriett Chalmers Adams, who was born
in California in eighteen seventy five. She was self taught,
(03:32):
kind of raised in the California Mountains and rode horseback
when she was an adult along the routes of Columbus
and the Spanish conquistadors because she was kind of obsessed
with this idea of Spanish colonialism, and she ended up
founding the Society of Women Geographers. Yeah, and she was
actually inspired by her father, who was a Scottish engineer,
(03:55):
who took her on a trip throughout California on horseback
when girlfriend was eight years old. So she had it
instilled in her from a very young age. And I
love seeing how, even back then, how important it is
for someone in a young girl's life to show her
the way literally and figuratively when it comes to anything
(04:15):
along the lines of exploration, stem if we're if we're
looking talking about more recent developments, but anyway, Yeah. She
She was one of four other women who founded the
Society of Women Geographers in nine and by the end
of her life, Adams had visited every country with a
Spanish or Portuguese connection, in addition to all of the
(04:36):
other countries she visited to. Yeah. And Adams was known
as the foremost female explorer of her day, and one
quote of hers that jumped out to us was her saying,
I've wondered why men have so absolutely monopolized the field
of exploration. Why did women never go to the Arctic
try for one pole or the other. I've never found
(04:57):
my sex and Hindrance never faced a difficulty with to
a woman as well as a man could not surmount,
never felt a fear of danger, never lacked courage to
protect myself. So Adam's clearly he was quite a tough woman.
But but it's interesting to hear her asking these questions
that I think some people still ask today. Yeah, as
(05:20):
my family would say, she's got a little bit of
that Scotch contrariness that we have in the urban family
as well. Um, but we should also talk about mountaineer
Annie Smith Peck. She is these self proclaimed if we
want to talk about self assured women out there in
this era, she has the self proclaimed queen of climbing
who in climbed twenty four thousand feet, which is higher
(05:43):
than any man or woman at the time. And Peck
would probably qualify a little bit more as an adventurer
than and explorer, someone who's going out to collect information
about an unknown land and then bring it back. Her
thing was more scaling these mountains. And she was clearly
a little bit of a feminist as well, because in
(06:04):
nineteen eleven she climbed Peru's second highest peak and planted
a votes for women's side on its summit. Awesome. And
Caroline is sitting across from me fist pumping right now.
I mean, it's so awesome. And this woman even had
a peak in was Garan named after her. And she
also has an awesome quote that we wanted to share
(06:26):
talking about men and women going mountain climbing, being mountaineers
and what they wear when they go do this. She says, men,
as we all know, climbing knickerbockers. Women, on the contrary,
will declare that a skirt is no hindrance to their locomotion.
And you're like, okay, cool, women can achieve things in
skirts do And then she's like, this is obviously absurd.
(06:47):
For a woman in difficult mountaineering to waste her strength
and endanger her life with a skirt is foolish in
the extreme. So yeah, you could say that she's on
the whole dress reform bandwagon. Yeah. And just to round
out this trio of early women explorers and travelers examples,
we have Isabella Bird Bishop, who was the first woman
(07:10):
inducted into the Royal Geographical Society in eight and she
was one of the premier travel writers of her day
and the author of A Lady's Life in the Rocky
Mountains and apparently it was a big deal when she
was riding horseback through the Rockies that she did so
(07:30):
not side saddle but a stride. Uh huh. Nice talk
about I mean like these women in terms of even
just riding horsebacker stride or in pects case, wearing the
knickerbockers instead of address these women who were having to
violate gender norms over and over again in the name
of expanding their worlds and also expanding the public's world
(07:52):
right bringing back this information exactly showing that women can
do it too, but not everybody was having it. Women
were typically exclude, for instance, from exploration in Antarctica, which
has been referred to as the most inconvenient boys club
in the world, and a lot of this is because
funding tended to come from scientific and military organizations, which
(08:14):
they themselves, of course, excluded women. So men provide the funding,
men received the funding, and then to top it off,
The Esteemed Explorers Club, which was founded in nineteen o four,
remained all male for seventy seven years and finally gender
desegregated in nineteen eighty one, and its first female members
(08:35):
included Sylvia Earl, Diane Fosse, Rita Matthews, Anna Roosevelt, and
Katherine Sullivan, which are names that will probably pop up
over the next few weeks as we dig deeper into
notable female explorers. And in two thousand, the Explorers Club
elected its first female president, Fania L. Rose. And it's
(08:56):
funny on their website they have the timeline of the
Explorers Club and at the very bottom of the web
page talking given going through their history, they say, and
then finally in the eighties, we brought in our newest
group of explorers, who, of course or women. But then
you go back to you know, Isabella Bird who was
(09:19):
being inducted into the Royal Geographical Society in what was
that the eighteen sixties, and it was clear they were
kind of trying to cover their tracks a little bit,
being like, oh, yeah, oh, yes, since women had never
been out of the house before, there are there, there
are new members. But yeah, so so let's look at
some of the incredible firsts that women have achieved in exploration,
(09:43):
because they have been everywhere from the sky space uh
and and a little bit below in zeppelin's depending on
what sort of vessel they're traveling, and all the way
to the bottom of the ocean and everywhere in between.
So let's talk about that. Yeah, because the question of well,
where have women explorers been every where? So take for instance,
Christina Channelska Liskowitz, who was the first woman to sail
(10:06):
solo around the world, starting and ending at the Canary
Islands in nineteen seventies six. Yeah, and then you have
a woman who has all the names Grace Marguerite, Hey, Drummond,
Hay or we'll just call her Lady Drummonday if you
want to. But anyway, she's a crackajack reporter and the
first woman to fly around the world, which she did
(10:29):
buy zeppelin in And if you Google image search this woman,
which I highly recommend, there are pictures of her because
she not only was this amazing explorer, but she was
also quite a fancy lady. She's also very beautiful. She
also donned as incredible like leather and fleece coat, so
(10:50):
very much. She was very much dressed for the role
of explorer. She's also in an ad for Lucky Strike
cigarettes with the quote above her saying something, I'll smoke
a Lucky instead of eating sweets. So there's some ba
advertising trivia there for you, Lady Drummond. Hey, my goodness,
She's also two of this early type of female journalists
(11:13):
who traveled a lot. It was a big deal. Nellie Bligh,
whom we'll talk about in an upcoming episode, is sort
of her predecessor in the sense of being a journalist
who really made her name not just through her writing
but also through her traveling. Uh. And then moving on though,
we have Annie London Berry kop Chovsky, who was the
(11:36):
first woman to bicycle around the world, and she similarly
was a writer like Lady Drummond Hey and a self
described new woman, which I think some of this her
self politicizing had to do with the fact that she
bicycled around the world, because one of her quotes, in
a similar vein as what we quoted from Harriet Chalmers
(11:58):
Adams a few minutes ago, was about how she can
do anything that a guy can do. She said, I'm
a new woman if by that it means that I
think that I can I'm capable of doing whatever a
man is capable of doing. Awesome on a bicycle especially,
we need to make like a trading cards series, don't
you think with all of these women on them and
(12:19):
their quotes. Yeah, I would totally get one of those
baseball card books and collect them. Um. Anyway, we also
have a Junko Taipei, who is the first woman to
reach the summit of Everest, which she did in nineteen
seventy five. And don't worry, we will be providing pool
anymore mountaineering information in a future episode for this series,
(12:40):
So just hold tight. And one thing to remember too
about exploration is that it doesn't just take place on Earth,
but it also includes exploration in space. So we have
to give a nod to Russian Valentina Tereshkova, who was
the first woman in space. We got up there in
nineteen sixty three. And you know earlier we mentioned that
(13:04):
women were excluded from Arctic missions. Well, Live Arniston became
the first woman to make it to the South Pole alone.
Can you imagine being at the South Pole alone? I
bet it's so quiet? Yeah, except I mean, like except
for polar bears. I guess seven or and as uh oh,
(13:26):
Santa's at the North Pole. Yeah mind. I was about
to say, well, maybe the South Pole is his vacation home. Yeah,
maybe so maybe? Okay. Well, then there's also Fiona Campbell,
who became the first woman to walk around the world
from nineteen eighty three to yeah, well it took her
eleven years because she was on foot. That takes a while.
(13:47):
That would take quite a while, eleven years to be precise.
But the thing about it is she almost walked around
the world. She later came out and confessed that she
fibbed about sucking a thousand of those miles because it
turns out she was pregnant and so walking was a
bit difficult. And then she later went and had an
(14:09):
abortion while she was doing this journey, and people were
really awful to her about the whole thing, and she
sort of dropped out of public life after that. So
more of a very fraught story of a female adventurer.
And again, Campbell is an example of one who would
be more of an adventurer than an explorer, because when
(14:30):
we think about exploration today, it has a lot to
do with stem fields, or science, technology, engineering, and math.
And one woman who really stresses this connection between exploration
and the stem fields is the very impressive Milbury Poke,
who founded and is the director emeritus of the group
(14:53):
Wings World Quest, which works really hard to raise money
for women explorers and get their story out there. Because
she talks about the importance of basically different viewpoints, and
how you have to have women involved to get sort
of all of the information that could possibly help humanity, right,
(15:13):
and that requires exploration, going outside of labs and getting
into the natural world and collecting samples, bringing some of
those samples back to labs, reporting from the field. And
she went on Bloomberg not too long ago to talk
about wings World Quest, and she mentioned how people tend
(15:34):
to think of exploration as being about big geographical continents
or undiscovered tribes, but actually exploration is about everything from
the infinitesimal to the universe. Yeah, And so she talks
about how when you look at magazines like Science News,
that they're publishing all of these discoveries across a vast
(15:55):
range of topics, and so she says it's very important
that we look and listen to explorers because they are
the people on the forefront making the discoveries that help
the rest of us make informed decisions about how we
go forward. And so that being said, how important it
is then that women be included in those discoveries, because
I mean, we've talked about this in terms of the workplace,
(16:19):
in terms of politics and world leadership. That if you
don't have the viewpoint of half of the population. Everybody suffers, right,
And this is also why we are making the distinction
between explorers and adventurers, because, as Caroline and I both
admitted at the top of the podcast, we, like probably
a lot of other people, imagine explores more along the
(16:40):
lines of Tunko Taipei, whose mission was to climb to
the top of Mount Everest and climb back down, not
so much in the sense of exploration, for the purpose
of broadening our knowledge of STEM. And Pulp talked about
too how it's a challenge for her and wings World
(17:01):
Quest to not just make that connection between exploration and STEM,
but then from there make the connection between STEM and women,
because she says, a lot of times, we probably don't
think about women as explorers, going back to that first
quote that we tossed out the top of the podcast
about how exploration has long been considered this masculine pursuit,
(17:24):
but there's also this underlying connection of we also don't
think of women as scientists. So if we don't think
of women as scientists, then of course we're not going
to think of them as these explorers who are going
out in the field to collect that scientific data. And
then circling back to when we were talking about Harriet
Chalmers Adams, who we talked about her father was an
(17:47):
engineer who inspired her love of exploration, took her on
those horseback adventures, and how important it is to have
someone in a young girl's life, whether it is the
nineteenth century or whether it's the twenty first century. Polpe
talks about how portant it is to both get these
women out in the field as explorers and to fund
their explorations because they can then serve as role models
(18:07):
to young girls. And she says, really to everybody, because
it's my belief that everybody's an explorer. Well, and the
big thing she was hammering home to was the fact
that they have a flag that the explorers take out
with them, and she says that the flag is important
because it's the symbol of women going into the field
to make a discovery, or under the ocean, under the
(18:29):
ocean that's in the ocean, and there's a picture of
one of the Wings World Quest explorers with the dragging
the flag underwater as they swim. Yeah, and I mean
that ends up going back to Annie smith Peck, who
you know, put that flag on top of the mountain
and Peru saying votes for women. So it's important to
get that image out there in people's minds. And it's
(18:52):
not just Wings World Quest who is out there supporting
women explorers. There's also the National Geographic Young Explorers Grant,
which if go to their web page, I was pleasantly
surprised to see a broad representation of women explorers that
they are funding. There's also the Explorers Club, finally gender
(19:13):
de segregated in nineteen eighty one, that does offer grants
for high school students through doctorate students in addition to
early post stoc explorers. Because what can also be challenging
speaking of doctorate students is that a lot of explorers
seem to be self taught, and if you aren't under
the umbrella of some kind of academic organization and are
(19:34):
able to get funding that way, someone might go for
a corporate sponsorship. So you can get companies which have
in the past sponsored explorers giving them equipment, such as Rolex,
Polar Tech, Gore, and land Rover, which really that combination
just makes it sound like someone's going on a super
lux safari fancistic explorations. But these are the kinds of
(20:00):
companies so that make tough, high end goods that can
withstand harsh conditions. So if you are, like say a
Live Arniston, the first woman to make it to the
South Pole alone, hopefully you're gonna go with rock solid
equipment like GPS and radios and hopefully podcast machines. Caroline,
(20:20):
that's right up with a crank, Yeah, maybe a flashlight
attack a podcast victrola to keep you company in the wild.
But I mean, speaking of Live Arniston, her bff and
Bancroft has started the and Bancroft and Bancroft Foundation, which
is granted specific to Minnesota, but it actually funds a
lot of awesome exploration adventures for young girls, So it's
(20:44):
sort of to encourage them to pursue this field. And
I mean, I don't have anything else really to list there,
because there's not a whole lot of women's specific exploration
funding groups out there. Well. I think it is partially
because of the public perception of what an explorer is.
(21:05):
I think that we forget that there are still modern
day explorers whose livelihood is doing this kind of work,
and I think that we don't at least you know, again, myself.
I didn't hadn't made the connection between exploration and the
stem fields we talk about so much. But there are
so many modern day female explorer role models for girls
(21:28):
and other women to look up to. And if we
want to talk about literally looking up, let's talk about
a couple of space explorers. There's Katie Coleman, who has
logged more than four thousand, three hundred thirty hours in
space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia and the International Space Station.
And May Jimmison, who was the first African American woman
(21:49):
astronaut who actually left NASA in and she and Coleman
are now working together to promote space exploration and based travel.
And Caroline and I may or may not have seen
them speak at a conference earlier in and it was
very exciting to see those explorers on stage talking And
(22:10):
we may or may not have been sitting next to
them for half of the day not realizing who they were,
and totally geeked out when they got on stage and
we realized who had been our seat mates for a
couple hours. Um, but yeah, we really, we really wanted
to highlight a couple of names. For you. Looking at
everything from the bottom of the ocean two, outer space,
just to prove as if we had to, but just
(22:32):
to prove to you that there are so many women
out there at every level of exploration. So if you
look at ecology, there's someone like Grace Gobo who's an
ethnobotanist working to preserve natural plant remedies and habitats in Tanzania.
So she's researching plants for you know, maybe people who
don't have access to drugs pharmaceuticals and who need the
(22:53):
healing powers of plants in their native countries. And then
if we look at one of the fields that young
Caroline wanted to enter as a as a small person
who imagined herself to be Indiana Jones, we've got to
look at paleontology, and we have to talk about the
amazing Sue Hendrickson, who she's not only a paleontologist, she's
also a marine archaeologist, I mean m b D. So
(23:16):
she has found everything from shipwrecks with treasure to ancient
sunken cities to the world's largest and most complete Trannosaurus
Rex skeleton in nineteen ninety oh and also Hendrickson never
went to college. She was one of those many Explorers
who was completely self taught, as in a self taught
(23:37):
fossil hunter, marine archaeologist, adventurer, and explorer. In other words,
it sounds like Sue Hendrickson has kind of the coolest
life ever. I think so, I think that's safe to say,
but I mean, speaking of the ocean, we also have
to talk about Sylvia Earle, who her biography is ginormous.
This woman is the National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence.
(23:59):
She's led more than one hundred expeditions, logged more than
seven thousand hours under water. She set a record for
solo diving in one thousand meter depth. She's formerly the
chief scientist at Noah. She's the founder of the Deep
Ocean Exploration and Research Inc. On and on and on.
This woman is incredible. And if her name sounds familiar,
(24:19):
it's because she was one of the first women admitted
to the Explorers Club when they started letting women in
the gates in ninety one. And two names that have
also come up already in the podcast Live Arniston and
Ann Bancroft are sort of the two leading women of
Arctic exploration these days. Together they were the first women
(24:42):
to ski across Antarctica in two thousand one, and they've
teamed up to establish Bancroft Arniston Explore, which is a
for profit company dedicated to supporting and promoting women's expeditions. So,
I mean, how many different disciplines did we just took off? There?
We were talking about space, ecologe, paleontology, oceanography, and Arctic exploration.
(25:05):
I mean, clearly the ven diagram between stem and exploration
intersect so much. It encapsulates so much of our world, right,
And what's so great to see two is that so
many people like Live Arniston an Am Bancroft, for instance,
are doing everything that they can to get other women
(25:26):
and young girls interested in this stuff and to show
them that there's so much out there yet to explore.
It's it reminds me of and I don't know if
I've shared this before, but it reminds me of my
freshman year roommate who when I told her that I
was thinking about majoring in archaeology, she told me that
(25:46):
why everything's already been found? Oh no, she needs to
talk to Milbury polk She needs to talk to Milbury Polke,
And she could talk to any of these other women
who would poo poo that notion well, because that was
one of the questions that a bloom or host had
for Polk when she was talking about wings world, quest
basically asking what is left to explore, and her answer
was everything we can. We will never know everything there
(26:12):
is to know about the world and the universe, And
so I cheer every time there is a story in
the news about another species being found, another galaxy, another
dinosaur skeleton, anything, another lost city, anything. I I think
of my my old roommate, and I cheer a little
bit well. And in terms of we, we've talked a
(26:35):
lot too about the importance of visibility and when it
comes to girls, they not only have this roster of
female explorers, but there was a recent development from LEGO
that they are coming out with this new line of
female scientists, which are also explorers in a way because
(26:55):
it's a trio of an astronomer, a paleontologist, and a chemist,
all of which do exploratory work. Yeah, and I love that.
The geochemist and LEGO enthusiast who submitted this proposal to LEGO,
Dr Ellen Kushman, said the motto of these scientists is clear,
(27:16):
explore the world. And beyond, and so there you go.
I mean, I love that. You know, Lego has been
doing a lot recently. We've talked about them before with
Lego friends, for instance, to encourage girls to play with
Legos developed their you know, sensory skills and all that stuff. Um,
And so I love that Lego is getting into the
game with these mini fig explorers who, you know, say
(27:40):
what you will about pink or not, but you know
they're not pink. They look like all the rest of
the Lego minifigs. Yeah. Well, I hope that this kickoff
episode is gotten folks excited about learning more about Women Explores,
because it's gotten me excited, Caroline. And for the next month,
we're going to be highlighting, in three separate up episodes,
(28:00):
women who explore the land and the mountains, women who
explore the oceans deep, and women who explore the Arctic
frozen lands. And we'll be digging deeper into the women
both past and present who have made the significant and
trailblazing contributions to what we know about those geographical areas
(28:23):
and those different ecologies. And so I think it's gonna
be a really fun summer. It's gonna be a good
time and it makes me want to go get my
my knapsack and some trail mix and and hit the
dusty trail. Yes, maybe get a magnifying glass sounds perfect,
or one of those GPS machines. Indeed, maybe you can
(28:43):
get Rolex to sponsor you perfect well. In the meantime,
if there are any neat female explorers that we haven't
mentioned that you would like to share with us, or
if you are a stem explorer or just an adventurer
and not just an adventurer unad insurer, what you want
to hear from you. Mom Stuff at how stuff works
(29:03):
dot com is where you can email us photos of
amazing places that you have been are always welcome as well.
You can also tweet us a mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And we got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
letter here from Erica. She's providing us some book recommendations
(29:26):
for people interested in sort of getting an introduction to feminism,
because we had read a letter from a young woman
who wanted to get her cousin a book to introduce
her to the idea of feminism that maybe wasn't in
your face or preachy, something that was easy for her
to relate to, and so Erica says, I would definitely
(29:46):
recommend Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti to the viewer
who wrote in asking about feminist books. It is an
amazing book written fairly conversationally, so it's an easy read.
It made me laugh while still providing detailed and relevant
information of out modern feminism. So thanks for the recommendation, Erica. Well,
I gotta let her hear from Daniel about our episode
on gay weddings, which we should have called same sex weddings.
(30:11):
He writes, I listened to the Gay Weddings Tradition podcast
and wanted to tell you how much I appreciate y'all
taking the time to talk about this topic. I did
want to mention and you were pretty good about it,
and I think just slipped in a few places that
calling it gay weddings is a bit cringe. E try
to stick with same sex weddings since gay people aren't
the only ones who are gaining the right to marry
(30:32):
with these laws. For example, bisexuals and pan sexuals. A
wedding between two bisexuals who are the same gender isn't
a gay wedding, same as a wedding between two bisexuals
of different genders. Isn't a straight wedding? You get me? Yeah,
we totally get you, Daniel. Um and he continues also
about straight couples standing in solidarity with same sex couples
(30:53):
and holding off on marriage. I think it's a sweet sentiment,
but it really sours when they eventually give in and
just marry. Anyway, I went to a wedding recently and
the couple decided to donate the money they would have
spent on things like extravagant decor and party favors towards
organizations that fight for marriage equality. I think the safest
bet is to put your money where your mouth is.
If you support marriage equality, do something about it. They
(31:16):
also had as guests two of our friends who had
gotten married in another state since marriage equality hasn't made
it to Florida yet, and had them cut the cake
with them, which I thought was adorable. And yes, that
is adorable. So thanks for your letter, Daniel, whom I
should have called Dan, because that's how you signed your email.
So if you have letters for us, Mom, stuff at
(31:37):
how stuff works dot Com is our email address, but
you can also reach us on Facebook or Twitter, and
defined links to all of our other social media's, as
well as every single blog, podcast, and video. There's one
place to go, and it's Stuff Mom Never told you
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(31:57):
Doesn't how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mob Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristin. And today is a very exciting day
in the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, we are kicking off
our twenty fourteen summer series looking at Women in Exploration. Yeah,
(00:26):
and since this is our introductory episode, we wanted to
just offer an overview looking at what exploration actually is.
Because Caroline, exploration is not what I thought it was
before we started reading about this, I assumed exploration was
when people just go out into the wilderness and hike around,
(00:49):
or they climb mountains, or they go walk around the
snowy land. Yeah, but it's so much more than that.
I totally am on the Saint was on the same
page with you. I thought like, oh, well, exploration, it's
just any any old person who climbs a mountain or
goes into the woods or what have you to look around,
have a look around, a look see and and see
(01:10):
what's out there. But as we'll get into, like Kristen said,
there is so much more. There's so many more layers
to what an explorer is versus maybe an adventure and
and the purposes of each that's right. Um, But since
we're focusing on women and exploration, we thought a good
place to kick off this discussion. I was talking about
how exploration has long been considered more of a masculine pursuit.
(01:35):
There was a paper we found called Conceptions of Victorian
Masculinity within Britain's Colonial Project in Egypt by Claire Anderson,
and she talks about this. She writes about how the
explorer's gaze has been generically and literally a man's gaze
because at that time she's writing about the Victorian era,
travel outside of Europe was mostly a male experience. By definition,
(02:00):
travel outside of the homeland was identified as masculine and
was carried out by heroic explorers. And then she goes
on to talk about how ideologically and culturally our idea
of travel and exploration has often been the province of masculinity,
founded on designations of entitlement, autonomy, and agency and emblematized
(02:23):
by male members of the moneyed classes. That's a lot, right,
and and it's if you go back to the episode
that we did on Coffee, we kind of touched on
this in that episode, talking about how men were the
ones and a lot of times it was the upper class,
uh genteel gentleman who would go off and explore and
learn about this new hot beverage and and bring it
(02:46):
back and talk about their explorations. And so it very
much was considered a masculine thing, because why would women,
with all of their heavy skirts and their need to
be in the home sphere, why would they be traveling
out especially alone. Yeah, there's some very real gendered not
just baggage but luggage with this idea of exploration and
(03:08):
what it means more broadly beyond just stepping out beyond
your own doorstep. But there were though, a number of
women who violated those Victorian gender norms and set out
to explore. And one that we wanted to talk about
for a minute was Harriett Chalmers Adams, who was born
in California in eighteen seventy five. She was self taught,
(03:32):
kind of raised in the California Mountains and rode horseback
when she was an adult along the routes of Columbus
and the Spanish conquistadors because she was kind of obsessed
with this idea of Spanish colonialism, and she ended up
founding the Society of Women Geographers. Yeah, and she was
actually inspired by her father, who was a Scottish engineer,
(03:55):
who took her on a trip throughout California on horseback
when girlfriend was eight years old. So she had it
instilled in her from a very young age. And I
love seeing how, even back then, how important it is
for someone in a young girl's life to show her
the way literally and figuratively when it comes to anything
(04:15):
along the lines of exploration, stem if we're if we're
looking talking about more recent developments, but anyway, Yeah. She
She was one of four other women who founded the
Society of Women Geographers in nine and by the end
of her life, Adams had visited every country with a
Spanish or Portuguese connection, in addition to all of the
(04:36):
other countries she visited to. Yeah. And Adams was known
as the foremost female explorer of her day, and one
quote of hers that jumped out to us was her saying,
I've wondered why men have so absolutely monopolized the field
of exploration. Why did women never go to the Arctic
try for one pole or the other. I've never found
(04:57):
my sex and Hindrance never faced a difficulty with to
a woman as well as a man could not surmount,
never felt a fear of danger, never lacked courage to
protect myself. So Adam's clearly he was quite a tough woman.
But but it's interesting to hear her asking these questions
that I think some people still ask today. Yeah, as
(05:20):
my family would say, she's got a little bit of
that Scotch contrariness that we have in the urban family
as well. Um, but we should also talk about mountaineer
Annie Smith Peck. She is these self proclaimed if we
want to talk about self assured women out there in
this era, she has the self proclaimed queen of climbing
who in climbed twenty four thousand feet, which is higher
(05:43):
than any man or woman at the time. And Peck
would probably qualify a little bit more as an adventurer
than and explorer, someone who's going out to collect information
about an unknown land and then bring it back. Her
thing was more scaling these mountains. And she was clearly
a little bit of a feminist as well, because in
(06:04):
nineteen eleven she climbed Peru's second highest peak and planted
a votes for women's side on its summit. Awesome. And
Caroline is sitting across from me fist pumping right now.
I mean, it's so awesome. And this woman even had
a peak in was Garan named after her. And she
also has an awesome quote that we wanted to share
(06:26):
talking about men and women going mountain climbing, being mountaineers
and what they wear when they go do this. She says, men,
as we all know, climbing knickerbockers. Women, on the contrary,
will declare that a skirt is no hindrance to their locomotion.
And you're like, okay, cool, women can achieve things in
skirts do And then she's like, this is obviously absurd.
(06:47):
For a woman in difficult mountaineering to waste her strength
and endanger her life with a skirt is foolish in
the extreme. So yeah, you could say that she's on
the whole dress reform bandwagon. Yeah. And just to round
out this trio of early women explorers and travelers examples,
we have Isabella Bird Bishop, who was the first woman
(07:10):
inducted into the Royal Geographical Society in eight and she
was one of the premier travel writers of her day
and the author of A Lady's Life in the Rocky
Mountains and apparently it was a big deal when she
was riding horseback through the Rockies that she did so
(07:30):
not side saddle but a stride. Uh huh. Nice talk
about I mean like these women in terms of even
just riding horsebacker stride or in pects case, wearing the
knickerbockers instead of address these women who were having to
violate gender norms over and over again in the name
of expanding their worlds and also expanding the public's world
(07:52):
right bringing back this information exactly showing that women can
do it too, but not everybody was having it. Women
were typically exclude, for instance, from exploration in Antarctica, which
has been referred to as the most inconvenient boys club
in the world, and a lot of this is because
funding tended to come from scientific and military organizations, which
(08:14):
they themselves, of course, excluded women. So men provide the funding,
men received the funding, and then to top it off,
The Esteemed Explorers Club, which was founded in nineteen o four,
remained all male for seventy seven years and finally gender
desegregated in nineteen eighty one, and its first female members
(08:35):
included Sylvia Earl, Diane Fosse, Rita Matthews, Anna Roosevelt, and
Katherine Sullivan, which are names that will probably pop up
over the next few weeks as we dig deeper into
notable female explorers. And in two thousand, the Explorers Club
elected its first female president, Fania L. Rose. And it's
(08:56):
funny on their website they have the timeline of the
Explorers Club and at the very bottom of the web
page talking given going through their history, they say, and
then finally in the eighties, we brought in our newest
group of explorers, who, of course or women. But then
you go back to you know, Isabella Bird who was
(09:19):
being inducted into the Royal Geographical Society in what was
that the eighteen sixties, and it was clear they were
kind of trying to cover their tracks a little bit,
being like, oh, yeah, oh, yes, since women had never
been out of the house before, there are there, there
are new members. But yeah, so so let's look at
some of the incredible firsts that women have achieved in exploration,
(09:43):
because they have been everywhere from the sky space uh
and and a little bit below in zeppelin's depending on
what sort of vessel they're traveling, and all the way
to the bottom of the ocean and everywhere in between.
So let's talk about that. Yeah, because the question of well,
where have women explorers been every where? So take for instance,
Christina Channelska Liskowitz, who was the first woman to sail
(10:06):
solo around the world, starting and ending at the Canary
Islands in nineteen seventies six. Yeah, and then you have
a woman who has all the names Grace Marguerite, Hey, Drummond,
Hay or we'll just call her Lady Drummonday if you
want to. But anyway, she's a crackajack reporter and the
first woman to fly around the world, which she did
(10:29):
buy zeppelin in And if you Google image search this woman,
which I highly recommend, there are pictures of her because
she not only was this amazing explorer, but she was
also quite a fancy lady. She's also very beautiful. She
also donned as incredible like leather and fleece coat, so
(10:50):
very much. She was very much dressed for the role
of explorer. She's also in an ad for Lucky Strike
cigarettes with the quote above her saying something, I'll smoke
a Lucky instead of eating sweets. So there's some ba
advertising trivia there for you, Lady Drummond. Hey, my goodness,
She's also two of this early type of female journalists
(11:13):
who traveled a lot. It was a big deal. Nellie Bligh,
whom we'll talk about in an upcoming episode, is sort
of her predecessor in the sense of being a journalist
who really made her name not just through her writing
but also through her traveling. Uh. And then moving on though,
we have Annie London Berry kop Chovsky, who was the
(11:36):
first woman to bicycle around the world, and she similarly
was a writer like Lady Drummond Hey and a self
described new woman, which I think some of this her
self politicizing had to do with the fact that she
bicycled around the world, because one of her quotes, in
a similar vein as what we quoted from Harriet Chalmers
(11:58):
Adams a few minutes ago, was about how she can
do anything that a guy can do. She said, I'm
a new woman if by that it means that I
think that I can I'm capable of doing whatever a
man is capable of doing. Awesome on a bicycle especially,
we need to make like a trading cards series, don't
you think with all of these women on them and
(12:19):
their quotes. Yeah, I would totally get one of those
baseball card books and collect them. Um. Anyway, we also
have a Junko Taipei, who is the first woman to
reach the summit of Everest, which she did in nineteen
seventy five. And don't worry, we will be providing pool
anymore mountaineering information in a future episode for this series,
(12:40):
So just hold tight. And one thing to remember too
about exploration is that it doesn't just take place on Earth,
but it also includes exploration in space. So we have
to give a nod to Russian Valentina Tereshkova, who was
the first woman in space. We got up there in
nineteen sixty three. And you know earlier we mentioned that
(13:04):
women were excluded from Arctic missions. Well, Live Arniston became
the first woman to make it to the South Pole alone.
Can you imagine being at the South Pole alone? I
bet it's so quiet? Yeah, except I mean, like except
for polar bears. I guess seven or and as uh oh,
(13:26):
Santa's at the North Pole. Yeah mind. I was about
to say, well, maybe the South Pole is his vacation home. Yeah,
maybe so maybe? Okay. Well, then there's also Fiona Campbell,
who became the first woman to walk around the world
from nineteen eighty three to yeah, well it took her
eleven years because she was on foot. That takes a while.
(13:47):
That would take quite a while, eleven years to be precise.
But the thing about it is she almost walked around
the world. She later came out and confessed that she
fibbed about sucking a thousand of those miles because it
turns out she was pregnant and so walking was a
bit difficult. And then she later went and had an
(14:09):
abortion while she was doing this journey, and people were
really awful to her about the whole thing, and she
sort of dropped out of public life after that. So
more of a very fraught story of a female adventurer.
And again, Campbell is an example of one who would
be more of an adventurer than an explorer, because when
(14:30):
we think about exploration today, it has a lot to
do with stem fields, or science, technology, engineering, and math.
And one woman who really stresses this connection between exploration
and the stem fields is the very impressive Milbury Poke,
who founded and is the director emeritus of the group
(14:53):
Wings World Quest, which works really hard to raise money
for women explorers and get their story out there. Because
she talks about the importance of basically different viewpoints, and
how you have to have women involved to get sort
of all of the information that could possibly help humanity, right,
(15:13):
and that requires exploration, going outside of labs and getting
into the natural world and collecting samples, bringing some of
those samples back to labs, reporting from the field. And
she went on Bloomberg not too long ago to talk
about wings World Quest, and she mentioned how people tend
(15:34):
to think of exploration as being about big geographical continents
or undiscovered tribes, but actually exploration is about everything from
the infinitesimal to the universe. Yeah, And so she talks
about how when you look at magazines like Science News,
that they're publishing all of these discoveries across a vast
(15:55):
range of topics, and so she says it's very important
that we look and listen to explorers because they are
the people on the forefront making the discoveries that help
the rest of us make informed decisions about how we
go forward. And so that being said, how important it
is then that women be included in those discoveries, because
I mean, we've talked about this in terms of the workplace,
(16:19):
in terms of politics and world leadership. That if you
don't have the viewpoint of half of the population. Everybody suffers, right,
And this is also why we are making the distinction
between explorers and adventurers, because, as Caroline and I both
admitted at the top of the podcast, we, like probably
a lot of other people, imagine explores more along the
(16:40):
lines of Tunko Taipei, whose mission was to climb to
the top of Mount Everest and climb back down, not
so much in the sense of exploration, for the purpose
of broadening our knowledge of STEM. And Pulp talked about
too how it's a challenge for her and wings World
(17:01):
Quest to not just make that connection between exploration and STEM,
but then from there make the connection between STEM and women,
because she says, a lot of times, we probably don't
think about women as explorers, going back to that first
quote that we tossed out the top of the podcast
about how exploration has long been considered this masculine pursuit,
(17:24):
but there's also this underlying connection of we also don't
think of women as scientists. So if we don't think
of women as scientists, then of course we're not going
to think of them as these explorers who are going
out in the field to collect that scientific data. And
then circling back to when we were talking about Harriet
Chalmers Adams, who we talked about her father was an
(17:47):
engineer who inspired her love of exploration, took her on
those horseback adventures, and how important it is to have
someone in a young girl's life, whether it is the
nineteenth century or whether it's the twenty first century. Polpe
talks about how portant it is to both get these
women out in the field as explorers and to fund
their explorations because they can then serve as role models
(18:07):
to young girls. And she says, really to everybody, because
it's my belief that everybody's an explorer. Well, and the
big thing she was hammering home to was the fact
that they have a flag that the explorers take out
with them, and she says that the flag is important
because it's the symbol of women going into the field
to make a discovery, or under the ocean, under the
(18:29):
ocean that's in the ocean, and there's a picture of
one of the Wings World Quest explorers with the dragging
the flag underwater as they swim. Yeah, and I mean
that ends up going back to Annie smith Peck, who
you know, put that flag on top of the mountain
and Peru saying votes for women. So it's important to
get that image out there in people's minds. And it's
(18:52):
not just Wings World Quest who is out there supporting
women explorers. There's also the National Geographic Young Explorers Grant,
which if go to their web page, I was pleasantly
surprised to see a broad representation of women explorers that
they are funding. There's also the Explorers Club, finally gender
(19:13):
de segregated in nineteen eighty one, that does offer grants
for high school students through doctorate students in addition to
early post stoc explorers. Because what can also be challenging
speaking of doctorate students is that a lot of explorers
seem to be self taught, and if you aren't under
the umbrella of some kind of academic organization and are
(19:34):
able to get funding that way, someone might go for
a corporate sponsorship. So you can get companies which have
in the past sponsored explorers giving them equipment, such as Rolex,
Polar Tech, Gore, and land Rover, which really that combination
just makes it sound like someone's going on a super
lux safari fancistic explorations. But these are the kinds of
(20:00):
companies so that make tough, high end goods that can
withstand harsh conditions. So if you are, like say a
Live Arniston, the first woman to make it to the
South Pole alone, hopefully you're gonna go with rock solid
equipment like GPS and radios and hopefully podcast machines. Caroline,
(20:20):
that's right up with a crank, Yeah, maybe a flashlight
attack a podcast victrola to keep you company in the wild.
But I mean, speaking of Live Arniston, her bff and
Bancroft has started the and Bancroft and Bancroft Foundation, which
is granted specific to Minnesota, but it actually funds a
lot of awesome exploration adventures for young girls, So it's
(20:44):
sort of to encourage them to pursue this field. And
I mean, I don't have anything else really to list there,
because there's not a whole lot of women's specific exploration
funding groups out there. Well. I think it is partially
because of the public perception of what an explorer is.
(21:05):
I think that we forget that there are still modern
day explorers whose livelihood is doing this kind of work,
and I think that we don't at least you know, again, myself.
I didn't hadn't made the connection between exploration and the
stem fields we talk about so much. But there are
so many modern day female explorer role models for girls
(21:28):
and other women to look up to. And if we
want to talk about literally looking up, let's talk about
a couple of space explorers. There's Katie Coleman, who has
logged more than four thousand, three hundred thirty hours in
space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia and the International Space Station.
And May Jimmison, who was the first African American woman
(21:49):
astronaut who actually left NASA in and she and Coleman
are now working together to promote space exploration and based travel.
And Caroline and I may or may not have seen
them speak at a conference earlier in and it was
very exciting to see those explorers on stage talking And
(22:10):
we may or may not have been sitting next to
them for half of the day not realizing who they were,
and totally geeked out when they got on stage and
we realized who had been our seat mates for a
couple hours. Um, but yeah, we really, we really wanted
to highlight a couple of names. For you. Looking at
everything from the bottom of the ocean two, outer space,
just to prove as if we had to, but just
(22:32):
to prove to you that there are so many women
out there at every level of exploration. So if you
look at ecology, there's someone like Grace Gobo who's an
ethnobotanist working to preserve natural plant remedies and habitats in Tanzania.
So she's researching plants for you know, maybe people who
don't have access to drugs pharmaceuticals and who need the
(22:53):
healing powers of plants in their native countries. And then
if we look at one of the fields that young
Caroline wanted to enter as a as a small person
who imagined herself to be Indiana Jones, we've got to
look at paleontology, and we have to talk about the
amazing Sue Hendrickson, who she's not only a paleontologist, she's
also a marine archaeologist, I mean m b D. So
(23:16):
she has found everything from shipwrecks with treasure to ancient
sunken cities to the world's largest and most complete Trannosaurus
Rex skeleton in nineteen ninety oh and also Hendrickson never
went to college. She was one of those many Explorers
who was completely self taught, as in a self taught
(23:37):
fossil hunter, marine archaeologist, adventurer, and explorer. In other words,
it sounds like Sue Hendrickson has kind of the coolest
life ever. I think so, I think that's safe to say,
but I mean, speaking of the ocean, we also have
to talk about Sylvia Earle, who her biography is ginormous.
This woman is the National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence.
(23:59):
She's led more than one hundred expeditions, logged more than
seven thousand hours under water. She set a record for
solo diving in one thousand meter depth. She's formerly the
chief scientist at Noah. She's the founder of the Deep
Ocean Exploration and Research Inc. On and on and on.
This woman is incredible. And if her name sounds familiar,
(24:19):
it's because she was one of the first women admitted
to the Explorers Club when they started letting women in
the gates in ninety one. And two names that have
also come up already in the podcast Live Arniston and
Ann Bancroft are sort of the two leading women of
Arctic exploration these days. Together they were the first women
(24:42):
to ski across Antarctica in two thousand one, and they've
teamed up to establish Bancroft Arniston Explore, which is a
for profit company dedicated to supporting and promoting women's expeditions. So,
I mean, how many different disciplines did we just took off? There?
We were talking about space, ecologe, paleontology, oceanography, and Arctic exploration.
(25:05):
I mean, clearly the ven diagram between stem and exploration
intersect so much. It encapsulates so much of our world, right,
And what's so great to see two is that so
many people like Live Arniston an Am Bancroft, for instance,
are doing everything that they can to get other women
(25:26):
and young girls interested in this stuff and to show
them that there's so much out there yet to explore.
It's it reminds me of and I don't know if
I've shared this before, but it reminds me of my
freshman year roommate who when I told her that I
was thinking about majoring in archaeology, she told me that
(25:46):
why everything's already been found? Oh no, she needs to
talk to Milbury polk She needs to talk to Milbury Polke,
And she could talk to any of these other women
who would poo poo that notion well, because that was
one of the questions that a bloom or host had
for Polk when she was talking about wings world, quest
basically asking what is left to explore, and her answer
was everything we can. We will never know everything there
(26:12):
is to know about the world and the universe, And
so I cheer every time there is a story in
the news about another species being found, another galaxy, another
dinosaur skeleton, anything, another lost city, anything. I I think
of my my old roommate, and I cheer a little
bit well. And in terms of we, we've talked a
(26:35):
lot too about the importance of visibility and when it
comes to girls, they not only have this roster of
female explorers, but there was a recent development from LEGO
that they are coming out with this new line of
female scientists, which are also explorers in a way because
(26:55):
it's a trio of an astronomer, a paleontologist, and a chemist,
all of which do exploratory work. Yeah, and I love that.
The geochemist and LEGO enthusiast who submitted this proposal to LEGO,
Dr Ellen Kushman, said the motto of these scientists is clear,
(27:16):
explore the world. And beyond, and so there you go.
I mean, I love that. You know, Lego has been
doing a lot recently. We've talked about them before with
Lego friends, for instance, to encourage girls to play with
Legos developed their you know, sensory skills and all that stuff. Um,
And so I love that Lego is getting into the
game with these mini fig explorers who, you know, say
(27:40):
what you will about pink or not, but you know
they're not pink. They look like all the rest of
the Lego minifigs. Yeah. Well, I hope that this kickoff
episode is gotten folks excited about learning more about Women Explores,
because it's gotten me excited, Caroline. And for the next month,
we're going to be highlighting, in three separate up episodes,
(28:00):
women who explore the land and the mountains, women who
explore the oceans deep, and women who explore the Arctic
frozen lands. And we'll be digging deeper into the women
both past and present who have made the significant and
trailblazing contributions to what we know about those geographical areas
(28:23):
and those different ecologies. And so I think it's gonna
be a really fun summer. It's gonna be a good
time and it makes me want to go get my
my knapsack and some trail mix and and hit the
dusty trail. Yes, maybe get a magnifying glass sounds perfect,
or one of those GPS machines. Indeed, maybe you can
(28:43):
get Rolex to sponsor you perfect well. In the meantime,
if there are any neat female explorers that we haven't
mentioned that you would like to share with us, or
if you are a stem explorer or just an adventurer
and not just an adventurer unad insurer, what you want
to hear from you. Mom Stuff at how stuff works
(29:03):
dot com is where you can email us photos of
amazing places that you have been are always welcome as well.
You can also tweet us a mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And we got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
letter here from Erica. She's providing us some book recommendations
(29:26):
for people interested in sort of getting an introduction to feminism,
because we had read a letter from a young woman
who wanted to get her cousin a book to introduce
her to the idea of feminism that maybe wasn't in
your face or preachy, something that was easy for her
to relate to, and so Erica says, I would definitely
(29:46):
recommend Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti to the viewer
who wrote in asking about feminist books. It is an
amazing book written fairly conversationally, so it's an easy read.
It made me laugh while still providing detailed and relevant
information of out modern feminism. So thanks for the recommendation, Erica. Well,
I gotta let her hear from Daniel about our episode
on gay weddings, which we should have called same sex weddings.
(30:11):
He writes, I listened to the Gay Weddings Tradition podcast
and wanted to tell you how much I appreciate y'all
taking the time to talk about this topic. I did
want to mention and you were pretty good about it,
and I think just slipped in a few places that
calling it gay weddings is a bit cringe. E try
to stick with same sex weddings since gay people aren't
the only ones who are gaining the right to marry
(30:32):
with these laws. For example, bisexuals and pan sexuals. A
wedding between two bisexuals who are the same gender isn't
a gay wedding, same as a wedding between two bisexuals
of different genders. Isn't a straight wedding? You get me? Yeah,
we totally get you, Daniel. Um and he continues also
about straight couples standing in solidarity with same sex couples
(30:53):
and holding off on marriage. I think it's a sweet sentiment,
but it really sours when they eventually give in and
just marry. Anyway, I went to a wedding recently and
the couple decided to donate the money they would have
spent on things like extravagant decor and party favors towards
organizations that fight for marriage equality. I think the safest
bet is to put your money where your mouth is.
If you support marriage equality, do something about it. They
(31:16):
also had as guests two of our friends who had
gotten married in another state since marriage equality hasn't made
it to Florida yet, and had them cut the cake
with them, which I thought was adorable. And yes, that
is adorable. So thanks for your letter, Daniel, whom I
should have called Dan, because that's how you signed your email.
So if you have letters for us, Mom, stuff at
(31:37):
how stuff works dot Com is our email address, but
you can also reach us on Facebook or Twitter, and
defined links to all of our other social media's, as
well as every single blog, podcast, and video. There's one
place to go, and it's Stuff Mom Never told you
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(31:57):
Doesn't how stuff works dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.