0:03

Welcome to stuff Mob Never told

0:05

you. From how Supports dot com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline

0:14

and I'm Kristin. And today is a very exciting

0:16

day in the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, we are kicking

0:19

off our twenty fourteen summer

0:21

series looking at

0:23

Women in Exploration. Yeah,

0:26

and since this is our introductory

0:29

episode, we wanted to just offer an

0:31

overview looking at what

0:34

exploration actually is. Because

0:37

Caroline, exploration is

0:39

not what I thought it was

0:41

before we started reading about this, I assumed

0:44

exploration was when people just

0:46

go out into the wilderness

0:48

and hike around, or they climb mountains, or

0:50

they go walk around the snowy

0:53

land. Yeah, but it's so much

0:55

more than that. I totally am on the

0:57

Saint was on the same page with you. I

0:59

thought like, oh, well, exploration, it's just any any

1:01

old person who climbs a mountain

1:04

or goes into the woods or what have you to

1:06

look around, have a look around, a look

1:09

see and and see what's out there. But

1:12

as we'll get into, like Kristen said,

1:14

there is so much more. There's so many more layers

1:16

to what an explorer is versus

1:18

maybe an adventure and and the purposes

1:20

of each that's right. Um, But since

1:22

we're focusing on women and exploration,

1:25

we thought a good place to kick off this discussion.

1:28

I was talking about how exploration

1:30

has long been considered more

1:32

of a masculine pursuit.

1:35

There was a paper we found called Conceptions

1:38

of Victorian Masculinity within Britain's

1:40

Colonial Project in Egypt by

1:43

Claire Anderson, and she talks about this.

1:45

She writes about how the explorer's

1:47

gaze has been generically and

1:50

literally a man's gaze because

1:52

at that time she's writing about the Victorian

1:54

era, travel outside of Europe

1:56

was mostly a male experience. By

1:59

definition, travel outside of the homeland

2:01

was identified as masculine and was carried

2:03

out by heroic explorers.

2:06

And then she goes on to talk about how ideologically

2:09

and culturally our idea

2:12

of travel and exploration has

2:15

often been the province of masculinity,

2:17

founded on designations of entitlement,

2:19

autonomy, and agency

2:22

and emblematized by male members

2:24

of the moneyed classes. That's a lot,

2:27

right, and and it's if you go back

2:29

to the episode that we did on Coffee, we

2:31

kind of touched on this in that episode, talking about

2:33

how men were the ones and

2:36

a lot of times it was the upper class, uh

2:38

genteel gentleman who

2:41

would go off and explore and learn

2:43

about this new hot beverage and

2:45

and bring it back and talk about their explorations.

2:48

And so it very much was considered a masculine

2:50

thing, because why would women,

2:53

with all of their heavy skirts and their

2:55

need to be in the home sphere, why

2:57

would they be traveling out especially alone.

3:00

Yeah, there's some very real gendered

3:02

not just baggage but luggage with

3:05

this idea of exploration

3:08

and what it means more broadly

3:10

beyond just stepping out beyond

3:12

your own doorstep. But

3:15

there were though, a number of women who

3:17

violated those Victorian gender norms

3:19

and set out to explore.

3:22

And one that we wanted to talk about for

3:24

a minute was Harriett Chalmers

3:27

Adams, who was born in California in

3:30

eighteen seventy five. She was self

3:32

taught, kind of raised in the

3:34

California Mountains and rode

3:37

horseback when she was an adult along

3:40

the routes of Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors

3:42

because she was kind of obsessed with this idea

3:45

of Spanish colonialism, and she

3:47

ended up founding the Society of

3:49

Women Geographers. Yeah, and

3:51

she was actually inspired by her father, who was

3:53

a Scottish engineer, who took her on a

3:56

trip throughout California on horseback

3:58

when girlfriend was eight years old.

4:01

So she had it instilled in her from a very young

4:03

age. And I love seeing

4:06

how, even back then, how

4:08

important it is for someone in a

4:10

young girl's life to show

4:12

her the way literally and figuratively when

4:14

it comes to anything along the lines of exploration,

4:17

stem if we're if we're looking talking

4:19

about more recent developments,

4:22

but anyway, Yeah. She She was one of

4:24

four other women who founded the Society of Women

4:26

Geographers in nine and

4:28

by the end of her life, Adams

4:30

had visited every country

4:32

with a Spanish or Portuguese connection,

4:34

in addition to all of the other

4:36

countries she visited to. Yeah. And Adams

4:39

was known as the foremost

4:41

female explorer of her day, and

4:44

one quote of hers that jumped out to us

4:46

was her saying, I've wondered why men

4:48

have so absolutely monopolized

4:50

the field of exploration. Why

4:52

did women never go to the Arctic try

4:55

for one pole or the other. I've

4:57

never found my sex and Hindrance never faced

4:59

a difficulty with to a woman as well as

5:01

a man could not surmount,

5:03

never felt a fear of danger, never lacked

5:05

courage to protect myself. So

5:09

Adam's clearly he was quite

5:11

a tough woman. But but

5:13

it's interesting to hear her asking

5:15

these questions that I think some people

5:18

still ask today. Yeah,

5:20

as my family would say, she's got a little bit of that

5:22

Scotch contrariness that we have

5:24

in the urban family as well. Um,

5:27

but we should also talk about mountaineer

5:30

Annie Smith Peck. She is these self

5:32

proclaimed if we want to talk about self assured

5:35

women out there in this era, she has

5:37

the self proclaimed queen of climbing

5:39

who in climbed twenty four

5:41

thousand feet, which is higher than

5:43

any man or woman at the time. And

5:46

Peck would probably qualify a little bit more

5:48

as an adventurer than and explorer,

5:51

someone who's going out to collect

5:53

information about an unknown land

5:55

and then bring it back. Her thing

5:58

was more scaling these mountains.

6:01

And she was clearly a little bit of a feminist as well,

6:03

because in nineteen eleven she

6:05

climbed Peru's second highest peak and

6:08

planted a votes for women's side

6:10

on its summit. Awesome. And Caroline

6:12

is sitting across from me fist pumping right

6:15

now. I mean, it's so awesome.

6:17

And this woman even had a peak in

6:20

was Garan named after

6:22

her. And she also has an

6:24

awesome quote that we wanted to share talking

6:27

about men and women going

6:29

mountain climbing, being mountaineers and what

6:31

they wear when they go do this. She says,

6:34

men, as we all know, climbing

6:36

knickerbockers. Women, on the contrary, will

6:38

declare that a skirt is no hindrance to their

6:40

locomotion. And you're like, okay, cool, women

6:42

can achieve things in skirts do And then she's like,

6:44

this is obviously absurd. For

6:47

a woman in difficult mountaineering

6:49

to waste her strength and endanger her life

6:51

with a skirt is foolish in the extreme.

6:54

So yeah, you could say that she's on the whole dress

6:56

reform bandwagon.

6:59

Yeah. And just to round out

7:01

this trio of early women

7:04

explorers and travelers examples,

7:06

we have Isabella Bird Bishop, who

7:08

was the first woman inducted into

7:11

the Royal Geographical Society in

7:13

eight and she

7:15

was one of the premier travel

7:17

writers of her day and the author

7:20

of A Lady's Life in the Rocky

7:23

Mountains and apparently it was a big deal

7:25

when she was riding horseback through the Rockies

7:28

that she did so not side

7:30

saddle but a stride. Uh

7:33

huh. Nice talk about I mean like

7:35

these women in terms of even just riding horsebacker

7:37

stride or in pects case, wearing

7:40

the knickerbockers instead of address these

7:42

women who were having to violate gender

7:44

norms over and over again in the

7:47

name of expanding

7:49

their worlds and also expanding the

7:51

public's world right bringing back this

7:53

information exactly showing that women

7:55

can do it too, but not everybody was having

7:58

it. Women were typically exclude, for

8:00

instance, from exploration in Antarctica,

8:03

which has been referred to as the

8:05

most inconvenient boys club

8:07

in the world, and a lot of this is

8:09

because funding tended to come from

8:11

scientific and military organizations,

8:14

which they themselves, of course, excluded

8:16

women. So men provide

8:18

the funding, men received the funding, and then

8:20

to top it off, The Esteemed

8:22

Explorers Club, which was founded

8:25

in nineteen o four, remained all

8:27

male for seventy seven years

8:29

and finally gender desegregated

8:32

in nineteen eighty one, and its

8:34

first female members included Sylvia Earl,

8:36

Diane Fosse, Rita Matthews, Anna Roosevelt,

8:39

and Katherine Sullivan, which are names

8:41

that will probably pop up over

8:43

the next few weeks as we dig deeper

8:46

into notable female

8:48

explorers. And in two thousand,

8:50

the Explorers Club elected its first

8:53

female president, Fania L.

8:55

Rose. And it's funny on their

8:57

website they have the timeline

9:00

of the Explorers Club and at

9:02

the very bottom of the web page

9:05

talking given going through their history,

9:07

they say, and then finally in the eighties,

9:10

we brought in our newest group

9:12

of explorers, who, of course

9:14

or women. But then you go back

9:17

to you know, Isabella Bird

9:19

who was being inducted into the Royal Geographical

9:21

Society in what was that the eighteen sixties,

9:24

and it was clear they were kind of trying

9:27

to cover their tracks a little bit, being like, oh,

9:29

yeah, oh, yes, since women had

9:31

never been out of the house before, there

9:34

are there, there are new members. But

9:37

yeah, so so let's look at some of the incredible

9:39

firsts that women have achieved in

9:42

exploration, because they have

9:44

been everywhere from the sky

9:47

space uh and and a little bit

9:49

below in zeppelin's depending on what sort of vessel

9:51

they're traveling, and all the way to the bottom of the ocean

9:53

and everywhere in between. So let's talk about that. Yeah,

9:56

because the question of well, where have women

9:58

explorers been every where?

10:00

So take for instance, Christina Channelska

10:03

Liskowitz, who was the first woman

10:05

to sail solo around the world,

10:08

starting and ending at the Canary

10:10

Islands in nineteen seventies

10:12

six. Yeah, and then you have

10:14

a woman who has all the names Grace

10:17

Marguerite, Hey, Drummond,

10:20

Hay or we'll just call her Lady

10:22

Drummonday if you want to. But anyway, she's

10:24

a crackajack reporter and the first woman

10:26

to fly around the world, which she did

10:29

buy zeppelin in And

10:31

if you Google image search this

10:33

woman, which I highly recommend, there

10:36

are pictures of her because she

10:39

not only was this amazing

10:41

explorer, but she was also quite

10:43

a fancy lady. She's also very beautiful.

10:45

She also donned as incredible like leather

10:48

and fleece coat, so

10:50

very much. She was very much dressed for the role of

10:52

explorer. She's also

10:54

in an ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes

10:57

with the quote above her saying something,

11:00

I'll smoke a Lucky instead of eating sweets.

11:02

So there's some ba advertising

11:04

trivia there for you, Lady Drummond. Hey,

11:07

my goodness, She's also two

11:09

of this early type of

11:12

female journalists who traveled

11:15

a lot. It was a big deal. Nellie Bligh, whom

11:17

we'll talk about in an upcoming episode,

11:20

is sort of her predecessor in the sense of

11:22

being a journalist who really

11:25

made her name not just through her

11:27

writing but also through her

11:30

traveling. Uh. And then moving

11:32

on though, we have Annie London Berry

11:34

kop Chovsky, who was the first woman

11:37

to bicycle around the world, and

11:39

she similarly was a writer

11:41

like Lady Drummond Hey and a self described

11:44

new woman, which I think

11:46

some of this her self politicizing

11:49

had to do with the fact

11:51

that she bicycled around the world,

11:54

because one of her quotes, in a similar

11:56

vein as what we quoted from Harriet

11:58

Chalmers Adams a few minutes ago, was

12:00

about how she can do anything

12:03

that a guy can do. She said, I'm a new woman

12:05

if by that it means that I think that

12:07

I can I'm capable of doing whatever

12:09

a man is capable of doing. Awesome

12:12

on a bicycle especially, we need to make

12:14

like a trading cards series,

12:17

don't you think with all of these women on them

12:19

and their quotes. Yeah, I would totally

12:21

get one of those baseball card books and collect

12:23

them. Um. Anyway, we also have

12:26

a Junko Taipei, who is the first

12:28

woman to reach the summit of Everest,

12:30

which she did in nineteen seventy

12:32

five. And don't

12:34

worry, we will be providing pool anymore

12:37

mountaineering information in a future episode

12:39

for this series, So just hold tight. And

12:41

one thing to remember too about exploration

12:44

is that it doesn't just take place

12:46

on Earth, but it also includes exploration

12:49

in space. So we have to give

12:51

a nod to Russian Valentina

12:54

Tereshkova, who was the first

12:56

woman in space. We got

12:58

up there in nineteen sixty

13:00

three. And you

13:02

know earlier we mentioned that women

13:05

were excluded from Arctic missions.

13:08

Well, Live Arniston became

13:10

the first woman to make it to the South

13:12

Pole alone. Can you imagine

13:15

being at the South Pole alone? I

13:17

bet it's so quiet? Yeah,

13:20

except I mean, like except for polar bears. I guess

13:23

seven or and as uh

13:25

oh, Santa's at the North Pole. Yeah mind. I was about

13:28

to say, well, maybe the South Pole is his

13:30

vacation home. Yeah, maybe so maybe?

13:33

Okay. Well, then there's also Fiona Campbell,

13:35

who became the first woman to

13:37

walk around the world from nineteen

13:40

eighty three to yeah,

13:43

well it took her eleven years because she was on foot. That

13:46

takes a while. That would take quite

13:48

a while, eleven years to be precise. But

13:50

the thing about it is she almost

13:54

walked around the world. She later came out

13:57

and confessed that she fibbed

13:59

about sucking a thousand of those

14:01

miles because it turns out she

14:03

was pregnant and

14:06

so walking was a bit difficult. And

14:08

then she later went and had an abortion while

14:10

she was doing this journey, and people

14:12

were really awful to her about the whole

14:14

thing, and she sort of dropped out

14:17

of public life after that. So

14:19

more of a very fraught

14:22

story of a female adventurer.

14:24

And again, Campbell is an example of one

14:26

who would be more of an adventurer than

14:28

an explorer, because when

14:30

we think about exploration today,

14:34

it has a lot to do with stem

14:36

fields, or science, technology,

14:39

engineering, and math. And

14:41

one woman who really stresses this connection

14:43

between exploration and the stem

14:46

fields is the very impressive

14:48

Milbury Poke, who founded

14:51

and is the director emeritus of the group

14:53

Wings World Quest, which works

14:55

really hard to raise money for women

14:57

explorers and get their story

15:00

out there. Because she talks about the

15:02

importance of basically

15:04

different viewpoints, and how you have

15:06

to have women involved to get

15:08

sort of all of the information

15:11

that could possibly help humanity,

15:13

right, and that requires exploration,

15:16

going outside of labs

15:18

and getting into the natural world

15:20

and collecting samples, bringing some

15:23

of those samples back to labs, reporting

15:25

from the field. And she went

15:27

on Bloomberg not too long ago to talk

15:29

about wings World Quest, and

15:32

she mentioned how people tend

15:34

to think of exploration as being about big geographical

15:37

continents or undiscovered tribes,

15:39

but actually exploration

15:42

is about everything from the infinitesimal

15:45

to the universe. Yeah,

15:47

And so she talks about how when you look at magazines

15:50

like Science News, that they're publishing

15:52

all of these discoveries across

15:54

a vast range of topics,

15:57

and so she says it's very

15:59

important that we look and listen to explorers

16:01

because they are the people on the forefront

16:04

making the discoveries that help the rest of us

16:06

make informed decisions about how we go forward.

16:09

And so that being said, how important it

16:11

is then that women be included

16:13

in those discoveries, because I

16:15

mean, we've talked about this in terms

16:17

of the workplace, in terms of politics

16:20

and world leadership. That if you don't

16:22

have the viewpoint of half of the population.

16:25

Everybody suffers, right, And this is

16:27

also why we are making the distinction

16:29

between explorers and adventurers,

16:32

because, as Caroline and I both admitted

16:34

at the top of the podcast, we, like

16:36

probably a lot of other people, imagine

16:39

explores more along the lines of

16:41

Tunko Taipei, whose mission

16:44

was to climb to the top of Mount

16:46

Everest and climb back down, not so much

16:48

in the sense of exploration,

16:51

for the purpose of broadening

16:53

our knowledge of STEM.

16:56

And Pulp talked about too how

16:59

it's a challenge for her and wings

17:01

World Quest to not just make

17:03

that connection between exploration

17:05

and STEM, but then from there

17:07

make the connection between STEM

17:10

and women, because she says, a

17:12

lot of times, we probably don't think

17:14

about women as explorers,

17:16

going back to that first quote that we tossed

17:18

out the top of the podcast about how exploration

17:21

has long been considered this masculine

17:23

pursuit, but there's

17:25

also this underlying connection of

17:27

we also don't think of women as scientists.

17:30

So if we don't think of women as scientists, then

17:33

of course we're not going to think of them as these

17:35

explorers who are going out in the field

17:37

to collect that scientific data.

17:40

And then circling back to when we were

17:42

talking about Harriet Chalmers Adams,

17:44

who we talked about her father was

17:47

an engineer who inspired her love

17:49

of exploration, took her on those horseback adventures,

17:51

and how important it is to have someone

17:53

in a young girl's life, whether it is the nineteenth

17:56

century or whether it's the twenty first century. Polpe

17:59

talks about how portant it is to both

18:01

get these women out in the field as explorers

18:03

and to fund their explorations because

18:06

they can then serve as role models to young girls.

18:08

And she says, really to everybody,

18:10

because it's my belief that everybody's

18:12

an explorer. Well, and the big thing she was hammering

18:15

home to was the fact that they have a

18:17

flag that the explorers take out with them,

18:20

and she says that the flag is important because

18:22

it's the symbol of women going

18:24

into the field to make a discovery,

18:27

or under the ocean, under the

18:29

ocean that's in the ocean, and there's a

18:32

picture of one of the Wings

18:34

World Quest explorers with

18:36

the dragging the flag underwater

18:38

as they swim. Yeah, and I mean that ends

18:40

up going back to Annie smith Peck, who

18:43

you know, put that flag on top

18:45

of the mountain and Peru saying votes for women.

18:47

So it's important to get that image

18:50

out there in people's minds. And it's not

18:52

just Wings World Quest who is out

18:54

there supporting women explorers. There's

18:56

also the National Geographic Young Explorers

18:59

Grant, which if go to their web

19:01

page, I was pleasantly surprised

19:03

to see a broad representation

19:07

of women explorers that they are

19:09

funding. There's also the Explorers

19:11

Club, finally gender de segregated in nineteen

19:14

eighty one, that does offer grants

19:16

for high school students through doctorate students

19:19

in addition to early post stoc explorers. Because

19:21

what can also be challenging speaking

19:24

of doctorate students is

19:26

that a lot of explorers

19:29

seem to be self taught, and if you aren't

19:31

under the umbrella of some kind of academic

19:33

organization and are able to get

19:35

funding that way, someone

19:37

might go for a corporate sponsorship.

19:39

So you can get companies which have in the

19:42

past sponsored explorers

19:44

giving them equipment, such

19:46

as Rolex, Polar Tech, Gore, and land

19:49

Rover, which really that combination

19:51

just makes it sound like someone's going on

19:54

a super lux safari

19:56

fancistic explorations.

19:58

But these are the kinds of companies so that

20:01

make tough, high end goods that can

20:04

withstand harsh conditions.

20:06

So if you are, like say a Live Arniston,

20:08

the first woman to make it to the South Pole alone,

20:11

hopefully you're gonna go with

20:13

rock solid equipment like GPS

20:16

and radios and hopefully

20:18

podcast machines. Caroline, that's right

20:21

up with a crank, Yeah, maybe a

20:23

flashlight attack a podcast victrola

20:25

to keep you company in the wild.

20:27

But I mean, speaking of Live Arniston, her bff

20:30

and Bancroft has started the

20:32

and Bancroft and Bancroft Foundation,

20:35

which is granted specific to Minnesota,

20:38

but it actually funds a lot of

20:40

awesome exploration adventures

20:43

for young girls, So it's sort of to

20:45

encourage them to pursue this field.

20:48

And I mean, I

20:50

don't have anything else really to list there,

20:53

because there's not a whole lot of

20:55

women's specific exploration

20:58

funding groups out there. Well. I

21:00

think it is partially because of the

21:03

public perception of what an explorer is.

21:05

I think that we forget that there are still

21:07

modern day explorers whose

21:09

livelihood is doing this kind

21:12

of work, and I think that we don't at least

21:14

you know, again, myself. I didn't

21:16

hadn't made the connection between

21:18

exploration and the stem fields we talk about

21:20

so much. But there are

21:23

so many modern day female

21:26

explorer role models for girls

21:28

and other women to look up to. And

21:31

if we want to talk about literally looking up, let's

21:33

talk about a couple of space explorers.

21:36

There's Katie Coleman, who has logged

21:38

more than four thousand, three hundred thirty

21:40

hours in space aboard the

21:42

Space Shuttle Columbia and the International

21:45

Space Station. And May Jimmison, who

21:47

was the first African American woman astronaut

21:49

who actually left NASA in and

21:53

she and Coleman are

21:55

now working together to promote

21:58

space exploration and based travel. And

22:01

Caroline and I may or may not have seen

22:03

them speak at a conference

22:05

earlier in and it was very

22:07

exciting to see those explorers on stage

22:09

talking And we may or may not have been sitting next

22:12

to them for half of the day not realizing who

22:14

they were, and totally geeked out when

22:16

they got on stage and we realized who

22:18

had been our seat mates for a couple hours.

22:21

Um, but yeah, we really, we really wanted to highlight

22:23

a couple of names. For you. Looking

22:25

at everything from the bottom of the ocean

22:27

two, outer space, just to prove

22:30

as if we had to, but just to prove

22:32

to you that there are so many women out there

22:34

at every level of exploration.

22:37

So if you look at ecology, there's

22:39

someone like Grace Gobo who's an ethnobotanist

22:42

working to preserve natural plant remedies

22:44

and habitats in Tanzania. So she's

22:47

researching plants for you know, maybe people

22:49

who don't have access to drugs pharmaceuticals

22:52

and who need the healing powers

22:54

of plants in their native countries.

22:56

And then if we look at one of the fields

22:58

that young Caroline wanted to enter

23:01

as a as a small person who

23:03

imagined herself to be Indiana Jones,

23:05

we've got to look at paleontology, and

23:07

we have to talk about the amazing Sue Hendrickson,

23:10

who she's not only a paleontologist, she's also

23:12

a marine archaeologist, I mean m b D. So

23:16

she has found everything from shipwrecks with

23:18

treasure to ancient sunken

23:20

cities to the world's largest

23:23

and most complete Trannosaurus

23:25

Rex skeleton in nineteen ninety

23:28

oh and also Hendrickson never

23:30

went to college. She was one of

23:32

those many Explorers who was completely

23:35

self taught, as in a self

23:37

taught fossil hunter, marine archaeologist,

23:39

adventurer, and explorer.

23:42

In other words, it sounds like Sue Hendrickson has

23:44

kind of the coolest life ever. I think

23:46

so, I think that's safe to say,

23:48

but I mean, speaking of the ocean, we also

23:51

have to talk about Sylvia Earle, who

23:53

her biography is ginormous. This woman

23:56

is the National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence.

23:59

She's led more than one hundred expeditions,

24:01

logged more than seven thousand hours

24:03

under water. She set a record

24:06

for solo diving in one thousand meter

24:08

depth. She's formerly the chief scientist

24:10

at Noah. She's the founder of the Deep

24:12

Ocean Exploration and Research Inc. On

24:15

and on and on. This woman is incredible.

24:17

And if her name sounds familiar, it's because

24:20

she was one of the

24:22

first women admitted to the Explorers

24:24

Club when they started letting

24:26

women in the gates in ninety

24:29

one. And two names that have also come

24:31

up already in the podcast Live Arniston

24:33

and Ann Bancroft are sort

24:35

of the two leading women of

24:38

Arctic exploration these

24:40

days. Together they were the first

24:42

women to ski across Antarctica

24:45

in two thousand one, and they've teamed up to

24:47

establish Bancroft Arniston Explore,

24:49

which is a for profit company dedicated

24:52

to supporting and promoting women's

24:54

expeditions. So, I mean, how many

24:56

different disciplines did we just took off? There? We were

24:58

talking about space, ecologe, paleontology,

25:01

oceanography, and Arctic

25:03

exploration. I mean, clearly

25:06

the ven diagram between stem

25:08

and exploration intersect

25:11

so much. It encapsulates so

25:14

much of our world,

25:16

right, And what's so great to see

25:19

two is that so many people like Live

25:21

Arniston an Am Bancroft, for instance, are doing

25:24

everything that they can to get other women

25:26

and young girls interested in

25:28

this stuff and to show

25:31

them that there's so much out there yet to

25:33

explore. It's it reminds

25:35

me of and I don't know if I've

25:37

shared this before, but it reminds me of my freshman

25:39

year roommate who when I told

25:41

her that I was thinking about majoring in archaeology,

25:44

she told me that why

25:47

everything's already been found? Oh

25:49

no, she needs to talk to Milbury polk She

25:52

needs to talk to Milbury Polke, And she could talk to

25:54

any of these other women who would poo

25:56

poo that notion well, because that was one of the questions

25:59

that a bloom or host had for Polk

26:01

when she was talking about wings world, quest

26:03

basically asking what is left to

26:05

explore, and her answer was everything

26:09

we can. We will never know everything

26:11

there is to know about the

26:14

world and the universe, And

26:16

so I cheer every time there is a

26:18

story in the news about another species

26:21

being found, another

26:23

galaxy, another dinosaur skeleton,

26:26

anything, another lost city, anything. I

26:29

I think of my my old roommate, and

26:31

I cheer a little bit well. And

26:33

in terms of we, we've talked a lot too

26:35

about the importance of visibility and

26:37

when it comes to girls, they not only

26:40

have this roster of female

26:42

explorers, but there was a recent development

26:45

from LEGO that they are coming out

26:47

with this new line of female

26:49

scientists, which are also

26:52

explorers in a way because

26:55

it's a trio of an astronomer,

26:58

a paleontologist, and a chemist,

27:01

all of which do exploratory work.

27:03

Yeah, and I love

27:06

that. The geochemist

27:08

and LEGO enthusiast who submitted

27:10

this proposal to LEGO, Dr

27:12

Ellen Kushman, said the motto of

27:14

these scientists is clear, explore

27:16

the world. And beyond, and

27:19

so there you go. I mean, I love that. You know,

27:21

Lego has been doing a lot recently.

27:23

We've talked about them before with Lego friends, for instance,

27:26

to encourage girls to play

27:28

with Legos developed their you know, sensory

27:31

skills and all that stuff. Um,

27:33

And so I love that Lego is getting

27:35

into the game with these mini fig

27:37

explorers who, you

27:39

know, say what you will about pink or not, but

27:42

you know they're not pink. They look like all the rest of

27:44

the Lego minifigs. Yeah. Well, I

27:46

hope that this kickoff episode is

27:48

gotten folks excited about

27:51

learning more about Women Explores, because it's gotten

27:53

me excited, Caroline. And

27:55

for the next month, we're going to

27:57

be highlighting, in three separate

27:59

up episodes, women who explore

28:03

the land and the mountains, women who

28:05

explore the oceans deep, and women

28:07

who explore the Arctic

28:09

frozen lands. And we'll be

28:11

digging deeper into the

28:14

women both past and present who have made

28:16

the significant and trailblazing

28:18

contributions to what we know

28:21

about those geographical areas

28:23

and those different ecologies. And so

28:25

I think it's gonna be a really fun

28:27

summer. It's gonna be a good time and it

28:30

makes me want to go get my

28:32

my knapsack and

28:34

some trail mix and

28:36

and hit the dusty trail. Yes, maybe

28:38

get a magnifying glass sounds perfect,

28:40

or one of those GPS machines. Indeed,

28:43

maybe you can get Rolex to sponsor you perfect

28:46

well. In the meantime, if there are any

28:48

neat female explorers that we haven't

28:51

mentioned that you would like to share with

28:53

us, or if you are a

28:55

stem explorer or just an adventurer

28:57

and not just an adventurer unad

29:00

insurer, what you want to hear from you.

29:02

Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com

29:04

is where you can email us photos

29:06

of amazing places that you have been

29:08

are always welcome as well. You can also tweet

29:11

us a mom Stuff podcast or messages on

29:13

Facebook. And we got a couple of messages

29:16

to share with you right now.

29:21

Well, I have a letter here from Erica.

29:23

She's providing us some book

29:25

recommendations for people interested

29:28

in sort of getting an introduction to feminism,

29:30

because we had read a letter from

29:32

a young woman who wanted to get her

29:35

cousin a book to introduce her

29:37

to the idea of feminism

29:39

that maybe wasn't in your face or

29:41

preachy, something that was easy for her to relate

29:44

to, and so Erica says, I would

29:46

definitely recommend Full Frontal Feminism

29:48

by Jessica Valenti to the viewer who wrote

29:50

in asking about feminist books. It

29:53

is an amazing book written fairly conversationally,

29:55

so it's an easy read. It made me laugh while

29:57

still providing detailed and relevant information

29:59

of out modern feminism. So

30:01

thanks for the recommendation, Erica. Well, I gotta

30:04

let her hear from Daniel about our episode

30:06

on gay weddings, which we

30:09

should have called same sex weddings.

30:11

He writes, I listened to the Gay Weddings Tradition

30:13

podcast and wanted to tell you how much I appreciate

30:16

y'all taking the time to talk about this topic. I

30:18

did want to mention and you were pretty

30:20

good about it, and I think just slipped

30:22

in a few places that calling it gay

30:25

weddings is a bit cringe. E try

30:27

to stick with same sex weddings since gay

30:29

people aren't the only ones who are gaining the right

30:32

to marry with these laws. For example,

30:34

bisexuals and pan sexuals. A

30:36

wedding between two bisexuals who are

30:38

the same gender isn't a gay wedding,

30:41

same as a wedding between two bisexuals of different

30:43

genders. Isn't a straight wedding? You

30:45

get me? Yeah, we totally get you,

30:48

Daniel. Um and he continues also

30:50

about straight couples standing in solidarity with same

30:52

sex couples and holding off on marriage. I think

30:55

it's a sweet sentiment, but it really

30:57

sours when they eventually give in and just

30:59

marry. Anyway, I went to a wedding

31:01

recently and the couple decided to donate the money

31:03

they would have spent on things like extravagant

31:06

decor and party favors towards organizations

31:08

that fight for marriage equality. I think the

31:10

safest bet is to put your money where your mouth

31:13

is. If you support marriage equality, do something

31:15

about it. They also had as guests

31:17

two of our friends who had gotten married in another

31:20

state since marriage equality hasn't

31:22

made it to Florida yet, and had them

31:24

cut the cake with them, which I thought

31:26

was adorable. And yes, that is adorable.

31:29

So thanks for your letter, Daniel, whom I

31:31

should have called Dan, because that's how you signed your

31:33

email. So if you have

31:35

letters for us, Mom, stuff at how stuff

31:37

works dot Com is our email address,

31:39

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31:42

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31:44

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31:47

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31:49

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31:51

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31:55

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31:57

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