Episodes

  • The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos

    The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos
    May 13 2026
    Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. These “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children. Judy Batalion's new book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos (William Morrow, 2021) —already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture—brings these largely unknown stories to light. Join us for a conversation with Batalion about this new book led by Andrew Silow-Carroll (New York Jewish Week). This book talk originally took place on April 20, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    Less than 1 minute
  • Shannon McKenna Schmidt, "You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her" (Sourcebooks, 2026)

    Shannon McKenna Schmidt, "You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her" (Sourcebooks, 2026)
    May 10 2026
    From the author of The First Lady of WWII comes You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her (Sourcebooks, 2026), the story of Lady Bird Johnson's groundbreaking trip during the 1964 election, and the women who rode with her. "It takes women to have guts." Deemed “the most important campaign effort ever undertaken by the wife of an American president,” the Lady Bird Special was a whistle-stop tour of the South undertaken by Lady Bird Johnson, in a bid for her husband’s reelection in 1964. Never before had a president’s spouse taken to the campaign trail so ambitiously. The 1,682-mile trek through the southern United States, from Washington DC to New Orleans, was a deliberate choice by Lady Bird—many in the southern states resented her husband’s championing of civil rights. But the first lady, proud of her southern heritage, wanted to appeal to her fellow southerners and bridge the divide. Despite the potential danger, she pressed forward, making speeches, shaking hands, and showing herself to be confident, capable, and impressive. You Can't Catch Us is a story of an election campaign, but it is also a story of a women-led operation and an appeal for understanding and civility. Lady Bird Johnson's exciting journey was monumental in expanding the role of women in politics and progressing the fight for women’s rights—a fight we still continue to this day. Hosted by Jane Scimeca, Professor of History at Brookdale Community College: website here @janescimeca.bsky.social  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    37 mins
  • Jewish Anarchist Women 1920–1950: The Politics of Sexuality

    Jewish Anarchist Women 1920–1950: The Politics of Sexuality
    May 8 2026
    Anarchist theory includes the belief in freedom for all - that no one person, nor group of people, should have power over any others; that individuals can best decide how to live (and love). In this presentation Elaine Leeder will discuss eight Jewish women who identified as anarchists, active during the 1920s to 1950s. Through analysis of in-depth interviews Leeder explores the complete sexual freedom that these women sought at a time when conventionality and conformity was the norm. These women attempted to create equality in the public and private spheres, some living communally and raising their children in progressive schools. They also sought to maintain complete equality of the sexes through economic independence and maintaining non-conformist sexual relationships. This talk will place a particular focus on the way that ethnicity played a role in these women’s identities, emphasizing their atheism, while still maintaining Jewish values and traditions. This lecture originally took place on June 10, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    Less than 1 minute
  • Lucy Stewart, "The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden" (Birlinn, 2026)

    Lucy Stewart, "The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden" (Birlinn, 2026)
    May 7 2026
    As detailed in The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden (Birlinn, 2026) by Lucy Stewart, at the turn of the twentieth century, Scottish adventurer Ella Christie returned home from a trip to Japan inspired to build her own Japanese garden. As might be expected from a woman who thought nothing of travelling to the other side of the world in search of the unusual, Ella’s approach to developing the garden was trailblazing. She chose a female designer – the gifted Taki Handa – to create the seven-acre site in the grounds of Cowden Castle, near the Scottish town of Dollar. In doing so, the Japanese Garden at Cowden became the first and only garden of its size and scale to be designed by a woman. It remains a unique and utterly authentic bridge between British and Japanese culture. This book tells the remarkable story of Ella Christie, her travels and the creation of her garden, its gradual decline and triumphant restoration. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    53 mins
  • Sophie Rose, "Intimacy and Social (Dis)Order in Dutch Colonial Expansion: Regulating Sex, Marriage, and Family Life, 1600–1800" (Brill, 2025)

    Sophie Rose, "Intimacy and Social (Dis)Order in Dutch Colonial Expansion: Regulating Sex, Marriage, and Family Life, 1600–1800" (Brill, 2025)
    May 4 2026
    Explosive sexual scandals, bitter domestic conflicts, and dramatic changes in fortune. Sex, marriage, and family life were matters of enormous consequence in the highly complex societies that formed across the early modern Dutch overseas empire. This was not only true for the colonial authorities that administered settlements on behalf of the Dutch East and West India Companies (VOC and WIC), but also for the people of various backgrounds and statuses that inhabited these places. Focusing primarily on the eighteenth century, this book explores how these disparate and unequally empowered groups contested the norms that governed intimate life in Dutch colonial outposts from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. Sophie Rose, Ph.D. (2023), is a post-doctoral researcher at Leiden University. This interview is conducted by Dr Lewis Wade, a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Bamberg. He is the author of the prize-winning Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France and can be found on Bluesky @wadehistory.bsky.social. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    51 mins
  • Samira K. Mehta, "God Bless the Pill: The Surprising History of Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion" (UNC Press, 2026)

    Samira K. Mehta, "God Bless the Pill: The Surprising History of Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion" (UNC Press, 2026)
    Apr 30 2026
    Most people today understand contraception as central to women’s liberation, and when the birth control pill arrived in 1960, the media thought it would usher in a sexual revolution. But a surprising number of religious Americans in the mid-twentieth century also saw contraception as part of God’s plan—a tool to create happy, prosperous American families in the post–World War II era.In God Bless the Pill: The Surprising History of Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion (UNC Press, 2026), Dr. Samira K. Mehta traces the remarkable story of how mid-twentieth-century Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish voices promoted the use of birth control and made it more accessible for many Americans. They hoped birth control methods would curb divorce rates by encouraging sexually dynamic marriages and families unstrained by “too many” children—thereby creating a postwar upwardly mobile middle class. Religious leaders also promoted this understanding of the family as tied to Cold War capitalism and encouraged neither racial nor gender equity.But then came the backlash, both from the Right—which failed to anticipate the feminist potential of contraception—and from the Left, where women, particularly women of color, sought to ensure that birth control was a tool of liberation rather than one rooted in patriarchal and racial oppression. Ultimately, Dr. Mehta offers compelling new insights into the way religion accommodates itself to social, technological, and medical change. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Mary Lisa Gavenas, "Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay" (Penguin, 2026)

    Mary Lisa Gavenas, "Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay" (Penguin, 2026)
    Apr 28 2026
    As detailed in Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay (Penguin, 2026) by Mary Lisa Gavenas, as the only woman in Forbes’ Greatest Business Stories of All Time and the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange, Mary Kay Ash has a life story that reads like a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel. Growing up in Depression-era Texas, Mary Kathlyn Wagner is a dutiful daughter and diligent student with ambition aplenty and no place to use it. Married at sixteen, she is a grandmother at thirty-four. When she is not cooking or cleaning or taking care of the kids, she peddles cleaning products to other housewives. The work has no salary and no security but she sticks with it, sure that direct selling will make her dreams come true. In 1963, after she has been divorced three times and widowed twice, she sets up her own company, selling second chance and self-invention for the price of a skin care showcase. Soon millions know her as the little lady in the big wig who gives away pink Cadillacs. From its unpromising start in a 500-square-foot Dallas storefront, Mary Kay Inc. grows into a global phenomenon with 3.5 million reps in over 35 countries. She becomes the most famous saleswoman in the world. Maybe the most famous ever. Based on fifteen years of research, Selling Opportunity gives us a page-turning rags-to-riches story set against the background of direct selling in all its overstated, over-the-top glory. Here, for the first time, is the definitive history of a peculiarly American industry and a mid-century mindset that ennobled extreme self-reliance, sticking to your guns, and blind faith in the American dream. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Vanda Krefft, "Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women" (Algonquin Books, 2026)

    Vanda Krefft, "Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women" (Algonquin Books, 2026)
    Apr 24 2026
    It’s a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday in the 1950 and '60s synonymous with supplying secretaries—always properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white gloves—to male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a “Gibbs girl” on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 90 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool to assume positions of power on the other side of the desk. And Gibbs graduates did just that, tackling the sexism of the era and paving the way for 21st-century women to succeed in any profession.Katharine Gibbs was one her own success stories. She started her school when, as a 46-year-old widow, she was left near-broke with two young sons. The school taught typing and stenography but Gibbs also hired accomplished professors from elite colleges to teach academic subjects—it was a well-rounded education that produced early feminists ready to tackle the sexism of their era. "Expect great things!" was her motto and her philosophy. Within a decade she’d opened schools in three elegant locations. With nostalgic period photographs throughout, Expect Great Things! takes us back to Katie Gibbs’s life and tells the stories of the women she influenced. We meet Gibbs graduates who worked for the Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe, and Robert F. Kennedy. Others forged pathfinding roles as an Emmy-winning television star, a women’s rights advisor to four U.S. presidents, a writer of Wonder Woman comic books, the head of the Women’s Marines, a best-selling young adult author, and a U.S. Ambassador.For readers of The Barbizon and Come Fly the World, Expect Great Things! reveals the seismic impact the Katharine Gibbs school had on the American workplace—and on women’s opportunities today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 mins