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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Sandy and Samantha. I'm not kind of

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Speaker 1: stuff I've never told your production of I Heart Radio. Samantha.

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Speaker 1: I've been to your neck of the woods where you

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Speaker 1: grew up. And speaking of woods, were you an explorer

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Speaker 1: as a child? Did you like go out and imagine

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Speaker 1: things or go searching around? Oh? So yes. I lived

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Speaker 1: in the woods, and uh, definitely in a valley, so

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Speaker 1: I was surrounded by a lot of hills and mountains,

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Speaker 1: and in those areas I would go and do my

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Speaker 1: little adventured things when I was younger. Of course I

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Speaker 1: got older and I was like, no, I don't want

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Speaker 1: to be in the bugs. And and of course we

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Speaker 1: had a lot of bears too, and random coyotes and bobcats,

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Speaker 1: so we did have a lot of creatures that I

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Speaker 1: was scared of. But there was an area where my

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Speaker 1: dad actually into the woods away from our house, where

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Speaker 1: he had a creek and we would we made this

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Speaker 1: really pretty bridge, and then there was this tree that

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Speaker 1: did this like almost like LK curve tree that I

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Speaker 1: would sit in. It was my reading tree and I

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Speaker 1: would go and hide away in the woods and be

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Speaker 1: by myself to get and it was so wooded, so

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Speaker 1: you could have sunlight coming in, but it was like

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Speaker 1: streams of rays because it was so overcast with all

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Speaker 1: the trees. So it definitely was my fairy land, I

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Speaker 1: guess you could say. And then I had another part

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Speaker 1: where he made little steps for me into the side

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Speaker 1: of a hill, so it looked like it was my

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Speaker 1: own little So I was really into like box car

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Speaker 1: children and they had that little you know, the box

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Speaker 1: car that was by the creek that had like their

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Speaker 1: own little refrigerator. I did all of that where I

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Speaker 1: tried to do all of that on my own. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I definitely had my woods fairy land fantasy. I love that.

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Speaker 1: I love the reading tree that's solid. Yeah about then

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Speaker 1: I gotta talked about all the bugs. Yeah. I was

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Speaker 1: very fortunate too that I grew up like in and

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Speaker 1: around was and I was a very like you know,

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Speaker 1: I just remember my mom being like being back before

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Speaker 1: dark and you'd go outside and just wander in the woods.

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Speaker 1: And I had like a I had a fairy house,

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Speaker 1: and I would try to like watch for the fairies. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would get climb trees and if there was a

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Speaker 1: tree that was like across the valley, I would like

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Speaker 1: crawl over it, and I would just sit and imagine

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Speaker 1: all these things, and yeah, I have the time of

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Speaker 1: my life with just like exploring around and finding like

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Speaker 1: there's this patch of really bright grass and orange flowers.

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Speaker 1: And I was like, this must be magic. That's the

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Speaker 1: only oly And it was just so so fun. I

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Speaker 1: haven't ridden a bike. I I know you can't write

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Speaker 1: a bike, right, but I had an old Trusty bike

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Speaker 1: and I would go zooming down the trails and uh,

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Speaker 1: I would just find all kinds of things back there,

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Speaker 1: like a little little caves and stuff, and I'd find trinkets. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: those are fun times. Those were fun times. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: was thinking about this because I'm also very fortunate. And

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Speaker 1: then I got my first dose of the vaccine. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and my mom got hers. And last night my mom

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Speaker 1: is in a text her. But last night kind of

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Speaker 1: like she texted me and she said we could go

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Speaker 1: hiking again. Oh my goodness. And then she like a

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Speaker 1: couple of minutes past and she was texting me all

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Speaker 1: these hikes and She's like, look at all the places

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Speaker 1: we could go. And I was just like, oh, it's

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Speaker 1: something you can't yeah, not that you can't go hiking now,

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Speaker 1: but we especially me, have been very, very hesitant to

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Speaker 1: go outside. But it was Yeah, hiking is one thing

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Speaker 1: I have missed a lot. Uh, and just hearing her

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Speaker 1: excitement and like, oh, you don't realize how much you

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Speaker 1: missed things you can't do them exactly exactly Well. In

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Speaker 1: the spirit of this conversation, we did want to share

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Speaker 1: a classic episode on women explorers, so please enjoy Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports dot Com. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Crispin.

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Speaker 1: And as part of our July summer Lady Explorer series,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna look at overland explorers today. The women who

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Speaker 1: cross deserts, climbed mountains, went into the jungles and studied plants,

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Speaker 1: or just you know, went to Boston and studied plants.

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Speaker 1: Women who traveled mostly by themselves to discover things that

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Speaker 1: they probably wouldn't have discovered sitting in their parlors in

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Speaker 1: Victorian England. Yeah, and in our introductory episode to the

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Speaker 1: series on explorers, we talked a lot about through the

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Speaker 1: masculine construct of the explorer hero and how in the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century when women really started leaving their homes. Not

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Speaker 1: too many of them, but some of them started following

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Speaker 1: in these male explorers footsteps. How they had to fight

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Speaker 1: even for the right to leave their homes in their

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Speaker 1: dresses and petticoats and set forth, and also they had

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Speaker 1: to fight for recognition as well. Right, And we talked

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the Golden Age of exploration in

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Speaker 1: our first episode, and that was really the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: In this Victorian era of men going out discovering things,

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Speaker 1: they were considered heroes. It was a manly pursuit. And

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I can't blame women for wanting

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Speaker 1: to get in on that, wanting to they're basically seeing

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Speaker 1: what these men are doing and wanting to be a

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Speaker 1: part of that discovery process. But for the most part,

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Speaker 1: when in governments and militaries, for example, sent men overseas

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Speaker 1: abroad wherever to basically report back about cultures, about plant life,

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Speaker 1: about animal life, they they were only sending men because

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Speaker 1: it was a manly pursuit. It wasn't the type of

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Speaker 1: work that women were supposed to do. And so women,

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Speaker 1: their viewpoints, their thoughts, their opinions, their reports were kind

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Speaker 1: of suppressed. And when it comes to the motivations for

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Speaker 1: exploring when we're talking about the past in the nineteenth century,

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Speaker 1: in that Golden age, Uh, it's really motivated by things

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Speaker 1: like economic development, military operations, and trade. There were a

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Speaker 1: lot of very selfish reasons were going out and exploring,

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Speaker 1: whereas today we think of exploration more in the sense

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Speaker 1: of stem fields, of learning more about how the natural

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Speaker 1: world works in order to apply it in more altrue

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Speaker 1: wi stick and scientific and technological ways to improve not

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Speaker 1: just our lives, our lives being our Western lives, but

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Speaker 1: also improve the lives of you know, people living in

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Speaker 1: indigenous cultures much unlike how they would have been treated

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Speaker 1: in a Golden age of expiration when they were simply

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Speaker 1: seen as oddities. We probably took a lot of land,

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Speaker 1: will not. Probably we took a lot of land from them,

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Speaker 1: took a lot of relics. Yeah, I think about the

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Speaker 1: beginning of Raiders of the Lost Arc. Yes, exactly. I

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Speaker 1: mean we sent Indiana jones Is into these places, into

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Speaker 1: these countries, and they were just like, oh, hey, look

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Speaker 1: at this really cool like golden statue thing. I'll just

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Speaker 1: take that because it belongs in a museum. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: if you want to legitimized, then you should put it

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Speaker 1: behind a display case that white well to do people

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Speaker 1: can see and appreciate on a weekend, right, because how

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Speaker 1: will anyone ever believe it exists if it stays in

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Speaker 1: your temple? Yeah, And for that reason, for the next

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Speaker 1: nine few minutes of this podcast, we're just going to

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Speaker 1: play the audio from Raiders of the Lost Dark. I

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Speaker 1: think there might be some copyright issues, but fingers cross,

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Speaker 1: I have a feeling George Lucas might be a tabletagious,

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Speaker 1: So let's let's keep going with our Lady Explorer theme, right,

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Speaker 1: and so so in in the vein of what we

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Speaker 1: were just talking about, using Indiana gens is a great example. Um. Basically,

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Speaker 1: around this time, there was the feeling that there was

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Speaker 1: so much out there in the world that they didn't know,

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Speaker 1: but that no proper study of anatomy of disease, of ecology,

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Speaker 1: of evolutionary relationships, none of the stuff could be complete

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Speaker 1: without sending people out into the world to discover it.

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Speaker 1: And you also have to keep in mind that a

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Speaker 1: lot of these fields are fledgling fields of study, and

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Speaker 1: so you kind of couldn't even have these focus areas,

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Speaker 1: these areas of study without sending these people out to

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Speaker 1: discover what was even out there to begin with. But

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Speaker 1: as a lot of people have pointed out, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of the things we read, women's voices were pretty

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Speaker 1: much lost. And it seems like from our research, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: it's almost as though those lost voices of the golden

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Speaker 1: age of exploration are now experiencing maybe a resurgence in

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Speaker 1: this twenty one century age of exploration, because you do

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Speaker 1: have women like Melbury Polk, whom we talked about a

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Speaker 1: lot in our introductory episode, who wrote an entire book

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Speaker 1: about women explorers called Women of Discovery, a celebration of

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Speaker 1: intrepid women who explored the world. You have women like

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Speaker 1: Polk and others who are writing books, who are starting organizations,

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Speaker 1: who are shining a light on those unsung heroines of exploration.

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Speaker 1: Which is really cool, right because whereas it seems like

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Speaker 1: the history of women explorers is one giant cycle of

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Speaker 1: unfair you know, they weren't allowed to have the same

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Speaker 1: types of educational opportunit unities, which meant they weren't taken seriously,

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Speaker 1: which meant they weren't allowed in the field, which meant

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Speaker 1: their voices were lost. They didn't receive funding, right, And

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Speaker 1: so now it's kind of the cycle is kind of

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Speaker 1: going in in reverse in the other direction, because you

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Speaker 1: have women like Milbury Poke who is and was an

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Speaker 1: explorer and who then is trying to shed more light

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Speaker 1: on women who have come before us. And so then

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Speaker 1: it becomes the snowball effect of well, the more women

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Speaker 1: we can bring to our consciousness today, then maybe the

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Speaker 1: more women who will be inspired by them. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: when you look back at those earliest women explorers, they

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Speaker 1: did have some characteristics in common which usually revolved around

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Speaker 1: higher levels of socioeconomic privilege. Right. These people, whether they

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Speaker 1: were male or female, going out exploring, tended to be

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Speaker 1: very highly educated, and they had the financial means to

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Speaker 1: fund their expeditions and then to publish those findings. That

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Speaker 1: was very important because while you could go out and

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Speaker 1: discover some things or paint some plants or what not,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you couldn't then disperse that information to

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Speaker 1: people back home, nobody really paid attention. And Polk also

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Speaker 1: highlights in her book one difference that she noticed between

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Speaker 1: male patterns of exploration at that time versus women's pattern

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Speaker 1: of exploration in that because women were so often ignored

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Speaker 1: by these larger institutions, and it wasn't as necessary as

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Speaker 1: it might be for a male explorer to pick a

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Speaker 1: dot on a map and find the quickest route to

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Speaker 1: get there. Instead, women sort of meandered a bit more. Right, Yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: um she talks about, you know, especially since men were

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Speaker 1: often subsidized by groups, whether that was a military type

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Speaker 1: backing or a state funded type of thing, women often

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Speaker 1: didn't have that type of backing, and so oh, if

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Speaker 1: they were going to go exploring, they didn't quite have

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Speaker 1: that same type of pressure. And maybe pressure is the

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Speaker 1: wrong word, but there was more of a push, an

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Speaker 1: internal push that they wanted to go discover these things,

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Speaker 1: and so a lot of their travelogs and whatnot, and

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Speaker 1: we talked about this in our first episode as far

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Speaker 1: as like modern day travelogs for women are often expected

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Speaker 1: to be about a personal, you know, internal journey, whereas

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Speaker 1: men are more like action and what I saw and

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Speaker 1: what I did, what I ate? Um. Back in this

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Speaker 1: era too, women's travelogs tended to be like their journals,

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Speaker 1: where they talked about what they experienced sort of in

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Speaker 1: a more personal tone. Well, and also the fact that

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Speaker 1: when you consider how that internal drive at the time

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Speaker 1: would have to be so strong and so specific because

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Speaker 1: these women didn't really have many female role models at

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Speaker 1: all doing what they wanted to do, and that doing

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Speaker 1: what they wanted to do also required violating very gender

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Speaker 1: norms at the time. Uh, it makes their journeys all

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Speaker 1: the more fascinating. And it's not just um, the lack

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Speaker 1: of financial support in terms of being affiliated with scientific

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Speaker 1: institutions or wealthy patrons, etcetera. Mona demash Um, who was

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Speaker 1: writing about geography and sort of the gender intersections of

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Speaker 1: the development of that field, pointed out how even in

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Speaker 1: socializing when it comes to geography, you have like these

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Speaker 1: field workers, obviously these mail field workers going out and

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Speaker 1: they have this financial support. But then it was even

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Speaker 1: more of an elite club because of the all male

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Speaker 1: club atmosphere of the Royal Geographic Society in England and

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Speaker 1: the American Geographical Society in the US. And we talked

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Speaker 1: about that too in our introduction episode, talking about how

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Speaker 1: the Explorers Club was all male until the nineteen eighties.

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Speaker 1: So you just have all of these kind of tight

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Speaker 1: male circles and women just meandering around them on the outskirts. Well,

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Speaker 1: Um domach I mean, her paper is really really interesting.

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Speaker 1: It's it's a great look at just the gendered aspects

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Speaker 1: of exploration through the lens of geography specifically. But I

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Speaker 1: mean she talks about how I mean, you want to

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Speaker 1: talk about a cycle. She talks about how women were

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Speaker 1: basically the victims of the society that they were a

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Speaker 1: part of. They couldn't get that financial backing that we

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Speaker 1: talked about or the proper education to be explorers, and

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Speaker 1: then as a result, they weren't taken seriously because they

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Speaker 1: weren't official. And so Domash talks about how their views

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Speaker 1: were often ignored because they're the stuff that they wrote.

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Speaker 1: The activities that they participated in did not accord with

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Speaker 1: the standards of scientific geography. She wrote, Victorian women explorers

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Speaker 1: could not escape the context in which they lived, and

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Speaker 1: those contexts shaped not only their outlook on personal matters

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Speaker 1: and social network but they operated in very material ways

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Speaker 1: as well, by limiting the resources and support networks available

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Speaker 1: to women in their travels. And so it's for this

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Speaker 1: reason that I said a few minutes ago that one

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Speaker 1: common thread among a lot of these Victorian women travelers

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Speaker 1: is that they were wealthy. I mean, they came from

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Speaker 1: means that gave them good educations but also financed their

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Speaker 1: trip on their own. They didn't need the backing of say,

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Speaker 1: a wealthy patron um. So when you have women like

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Speaker 1: Mary Kingsley, who will talk about in a little bit,

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Speaker 1: Mary Gaunt, Isabella Bird who we mentioned in our intro episode,

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Speaker 1: and Marian North who will also talk about more in

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Speaker 1: a few minutes, these women were these women could afford

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Speaker 1: to explore in other words, right. And so because these

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Speaker 1: women had the appropriate means, they weren't going to let

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Speaker 1: it stop them that they weren't sort of allowed into

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Speaker 1: the professional circles of explorers. They realized that I can

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Speaker 1: go out and do field work. I can go explore

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Speaker 1: the land, whether it's around me or overseas, just as

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Speaker 1: any man could do, because hey, look I have the

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Speaker 1: resources to do it. And so we've been talking about, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, women not having enough funding, and so their

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Speaker 1: voices weren't taken seriously. They were considered amateurs and as exploration,

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Speaker 1: particularly land exploration, geographical studies. As these things became more professionalized,

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Speaker 1: they became more masculinized, and so women's voices since they

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Speaker 1: weren't quote unquote professionals. They were definitely suppressed. As all

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Speaker 1: these scientific fields flourished, there was this giant drive to

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Speaker 1: make everything like super scientific and cut and dry. But

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Speaker 1: who defined what was cutting, dry and scientific. Well, it

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Speaker 1: was the men folk, and they thought that women just

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Speaker 1: were sort of silly and amateurs who couldn't be taken seriously.

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Speaker 1: I mean, take it from one high ranking English statesmen

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Speaker 1: who maybe wasn't such a fan of women in the field. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: his name was George Curzon and he was a Viceroy

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Speaker 1: of India at the turn of the twentieth century, who said, quote,

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Speaker 1: their sex in training render them equally unfitted for exploration.

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Speaker 1: And the genus of professional female globe trotters with which

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Speaker 1: America has lately familiarized us is one of the horrors

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Speaker 1: of the latter end of the nineteenth century, right, And

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Speaker 1: so dudes who are armed with this attitude, who have

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Speaker 1: this attitude that women are just silly and they're frittering

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Speaker 1: their time away and they're just they're just globe trotters. Well,

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Speaker 1: of course you would want to exclude non serious globe

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Speaker 1: trotting silly people from joining your super formal geographical society.

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Speaker 1: But there were a few standouts whose accomplishments were so

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Speaker 1: incredible even men like George Curzon couldn't deny I them

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Speaker 1: a place in their elite circles. So, for instance, a

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Speaker 1: name that you might remember from our introductory episode, Harriet

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Speaker 1: Chalmers Adams, in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: really established herself as one of the foremost explorers male

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Speaker 1: or female in the world, or at least we should

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Speaker 1: say in the Western world. She really made herself an

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Speaker 1: expert on Latin America. She was born in California and

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Speaker 1: she rode on horseback through most of Latin America. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she ended up basically producing so much information for quote

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Speaker 1: unquote back home that she was really valued by government

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Speaker 1: and business uh interests alike in academic circles. And she

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Speaker 1: was one of the first American women elected to membership

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Speaker 1: in the Royal Geographic Society of London, which is like

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Speaker 1: such a big deal because you know, as as we'll

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Speaker 1: get into further in this series of actually, when we

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Speaker 1: talk about Antarctic explorers, the British were not like super

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Speaker 1: excited about women joining their ranks and no offense to

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Speaker 1: UK listeners, but my goodness, Britain was quite a holdout

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Speaker 1: in terms of gender purity and exploration. Um. But we've

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Speaker 1: we've established that it usually cost women a lot of

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Speaker 1: money to travel. It still does. It's not like it's

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Speaker 1: cheap to explore, but um, back then they had to

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Speaker 1: be independently financed. But there were some other interesting demographic

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Speaker 1: similarities that you see among a lot of the names

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Speaker 1: of this time. For instance, a lot of women travelers

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Speaker 1: would have been in middle aged and they were often unmarried.

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Speaker 1: There's actually Caroline speaking which there was one book that

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Speaker 1: I came across in our research called Spinster's Abra, all

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Speaker 1: about Victorian women travelers, because many of them were spinsters.

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Speaker 1: They were married women who some of whom were like

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Speaker 1: I don't need marriage, I don't want marriage. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to explore, um, and others whom society was like, no,

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Speaker 1: you just you were unmarriageable. Well it's so funny, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think that's so funny to call someone like an

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Speaker 1: explore an independent, incredible, brilliant woman who wants to go

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Speaker 1: explore the world a spinster, you know, because spinster the

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Speaker 1: connotation there is that she's just like sitting at home

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Speaker 1: alone in the dark with her cats, Hey, let's take

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Speaker 1: back spinster. Okay, let's reclaim spinster right here, right now. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And as we mentioned, a lot of these women had

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Speaker 1: family members who were involved in some type of exploration too,

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Speaker 1: and so they're, you know, I can't hammer home enough

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Speaker 1: how important it is now or then for boys or

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Speaker 1: girls to have people in their lives who can inspire them.

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Speaker 1: And so they saw these people and their families doing

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Speaker 1: this and they were like, oh, well, I have a

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Speaker 1: dream as well, and I'm going to go pursue it.

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Speaker 1: And so they ended up a lot of these women

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Speaker 1: sort of removing themselves from the shackles of these institutions

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Speaker 1: that sort of oppressed other women of their age. They

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Speaker 1: weren't going to necessarily be married, or if they were,

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Speaker 1: they certainly weren't going to let it stop them from

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Speaker 1: going a traveling well, and it was that outsider spinster

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Speaker 1: status that kind of made them good observers and other

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Speaker 1: cultures species to range just depending on where they were

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Speaker 1: going and what they were hoping to discover. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: I mean as far as discovery and women traveling outside

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Speaker 1: of the norms. You know, we we touched on in

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Speaker 1: our introductory episode the fact that pilgrimage. If we're talking

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Speaker 1: about women land explorers, pilgrimage was the main way that

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Speaker 1: women could kind of get away from home go see

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Speaker 1: other lands, um and so Milbury Pope talks a lot

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Speaker 1: about this in her book, and I thought it was

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Speaker 1: interesting that, you know, Okay, so it was strange for

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Speaker 1: women to travel, especially like in the Middle Ages. Definitely

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Speaker 1: not an accepted thing outside of gender norms, not considered

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Speaker 1: safe or a good idea in general. But a lot

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Speaker 1: of the women who went traveling to distant lands for

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Speaker 1: pilgrimage purposes ended up being declared staints by the Catholic Church.

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Speaker 1: So I think that's an interesting division between women who

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Speaker 1: are considered outside the norm versus women who are traveling

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Speaker 1: for the purpose of religion. They're considered not only okay

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Speaker 1: but awesome. Well, I think it makes sense because and

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Speaker 1: this is an entire conversation for another time, perhaps a

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Speaker 1: podcast that has been requested many times on women in religion.

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Speaker 1: But I feel like religious devotion and piety fits so

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Speaker 1: nicely into the feminine box, especially if if those very

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Speaker 1: feminine religious women are going overseas to like try to

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Speaker 1: convert other people that are considered backwards into their religion, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's the uncomfortable background nor ways for all of

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Speaker 1: this Victorian era exploration history is that it is very

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Speaker 1: much steeped in racism and uh, white centric, Western centric

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Speaker 1: views of the world. Yeah, both men and women are

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Speaker 1: definitely guilty of that in this era for sure. But

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to go way back and

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Speaker 1: talk about Christian pilgrims Byzantine Empress Helena, who died in

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Speaker 1: three that's three, no one um, she along with her

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Speaker 1: son Emperor Constantine, traveled numerous times to Palestine. They went

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Speaker 1: to Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Sinai, where she ended up founding

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Speaker 1: several churches. But so once the floodgates kind of opened

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Speaker 1: as far as religious pilgrimage went where Okay, you're a woman,

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Speaker 1: you only have one avenue for for traveling and exploring

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Speaker 1: distant lands, and that's religious pilgrimage going to the Holy Land.

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Speaker 1: Once those floodgates were opened, the local populations weren't always

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Speaker 1: excited about it. And talking about this in the introduction

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Speaker 1: to her book, Millbury Poke writes about one irate Egyptian

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Speaker 1: aesthetic who apparently told a wealthy Roman woman who was

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Speaker 1: on a pilgrimage to Egypt. Uh. She wrote that he

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Speaker 1: decried her and her kind who threatened to quote turned

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Speaker 1: the sea into a thoroughfare with women coming to see me, So,

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Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I think that's an illustration of

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Speaker 1: how sisters are doing it for themselves. And they're getting

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Speaker 1: to travel and explore other lands far away from home

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Speaker 1: and sort of shed some of their societal norms in

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Speaker 1: the process. But it was kind of at the expense

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Speaker 1: of a lot of locals who had to deal with them.

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Speaker 1: But thankfully there were plenty of plucky women out there

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Speaker 1: who did not let what irate local thought of them

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Speaker 1: stop them from wanting to explore or And this is

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Speaker 1: such a such an important thing for you know, not

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Speaker 1: just the lives of these women, but for our lives

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Speaker 1: as well, because, as Courtney Stevens put it so perfectly

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Speaker 1: in a ted ed presentation on some early women explorers,

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Speaker 1: she said, the desire to see for one's self not

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Speaker 1: only changes the course of human knowledge, but it also

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Speaker 1: changes the very idea of what is possible. And that

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Speaker 1: gets to the heart of why exploration is important and

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Speaker 1: why we wanted to do this series as well, and

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Speaker 1: let's not get those into some more names of women

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Speaker 1: you have probably haven't heard of who did some pretty

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Speaker 1: incredible things back then and also now, who who were

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Speaker 1: exploring now to help change the course of human knowledge

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Speaker 1: and change our ideas of what is possible. Yeah. One

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Speaker 1: woman that really stuck out to me, who definitely was

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Speaker 1: not a part of the Golden Age of exploration during

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Speaker 1: the Victor Rain era during the nineteenth century, was some

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Speaker 1: really cool kind of be a Viking lady good reader.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps that's how we pronounce her name good reader. Yes,

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Speaker 1: this Viking woman good Reader whose Viking last name is

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Speaker 1: so challenging to pronounce that even the Internet didn't have

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Speaker 1: a guide for us. So we're just going to call

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Speaker 1: her a good reader because her accomplishments really lend her

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Speaker 1: the credibility to only go by one name. Yeah, she's yeah,

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Speaker 1: she's like the share of Viking exploration because so get this.

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Speaker 1: In the late nine hundreds, she travels to Greenland from

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Speaker 1: Iceland and then she heads on over to North America

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Speaker 1: with her husband where she had her son. Her husband

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Speaker 1: dies and she's like, oh too bad, so sad. She

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Speaker 1: remarries back in Greenland and then they led another expedition

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Speaker 1: to North America, where she had a second son there.

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Speaker 1: So know all those stories from European and American history

431
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:08,960
Speaker 1: about how the trips, you know, back and forth weren't

432
00:27:09,040 --> 00:27:12,120
Speaker 1: so easy. She didn't hop on like a carnival cruise

433
00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:15,720
Speaker 1: and go where the you know, the bathroom breaks down

434
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: and everyone's like, oh no, No. She was doing this

435
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 1: like back and forth at a time when it was

436
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:24,280
Speaker 1: an incredibly treacherous journey to make. Yeah, and she was

437
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: doing it alongside some big burly men her husband, her

438
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:30,080
Speaker 1: first husband. Anyway, it was one of the sons of

439
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: Eric the Red and I think the brother of Leif Ericson. Yeah,

440
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 1: that was her brother in law. Yeah, so I mean,

441
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:40,359
Speaker 1: no big deal. She's just like Viking Royalty. But so

442
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 1: after her I think it's her second son after he

443
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 1: grows up, so so Christianity has been introduced. They are

444
00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: Christian now. Um. She ends up making a pilgrimage to Rome.

445
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: After that son grows up and gets married, she meets

446
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: the Pope again, no big deal for a good reader.

447
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:00,640
Speaker 1: She ends up retiring to the church where her son

448
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,600
Speaker 1: her son built, and starts to live life as a nun.

449
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: She just set her own path she totally set her own.

450
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:11,119
Speaker 1: I will say, when I was reading her biography, the

451
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: end felt like a real plot twist. I did not

452
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 1: anticipate good reader settling down to the life of a nun. Yeah,

453
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:22,920
Speaker 1: I'm picturing Xena Warrior princess just being like, ah, here's

454
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:26,160
Speaker 1: my story. I'll be a nun. You're wearing a habit. Yeah, yeah,

455
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,440
Speaker 1: good reader. But I guess there weren't like so many

456
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:33,399
Speaker 1: options in the early by then thousands, by the early thousands,

457
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 1: by the thousands of what else are you gonna do? Well,

458
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: now we're going to take a giant leap in history

459
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: to the eighteen hundreds to talk about Marianne North, who was.

460
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: I feel like she's kind of the epitome of the

461
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 1: Victorian spinster explorer. Yeah. Oh, she hated marriage. She I

462
00:28:51,600 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: think she also kind of hated men. Yeah, she detested

463
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:57,560
Speaker 1: the idea of getting married. She called it a terrible

464
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: experiment that turned women into a sort of up her servant.

465
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: And she actually really just preferred to hang out with

466
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: her father, whose passion for botany and travel inspired her,

467
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: and when he died it left her both independent because

468
00:29:12,080 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: she was no longer hanging out with him. But it

469
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:17,600
Speaker 1: also left her wealthy, which is ty and through her

470
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: travel she became the pre eminent botanical artist of the

471
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: late Victorian period, and she powered her away wearing Victorian garb.

472
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: She didn't trade out her skirts for Nickobakos, but she

473
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 1: actually went to some of the world's most inhospitable terrain.

474
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 1: She hit every single continent in fact, except for Antarctica

475
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 1: on her journeys to find rare and beautiful plants that

476
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:47,960
Speaker 1: she then sat down and oil painted. And there was

477
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 1: someone talking about how it was so significant that she

478
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: oil painted rather than watercolor, which was a far more

479
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:58,840
Speaker 1: feminine art form at the time, because it lent a

480
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 1: just a deeper richness visually to her art and also

481
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: helped ensure that they stayed in prime condition for longer. Yeah,

482
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: that they would last. That you know, she's if she's

483
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: going to these tropical locations to paint these incredible, multicolored,

484
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: beautiful plants watercolor. You know, humidity not so good for

485
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:22,719
Speaker 1: water based pigment. I would I would think, I mean,

486
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: I'm not a painter and what I mean one key

487
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: thing about her art, so she was self taught as

488
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:30,600
Speaker 1: an adult. She wanted to be I think a singer,

489
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 1: but it's like a life of the stage was beneath

490
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 1: her family position or something. So she ended up taking

491
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 1: up painting realized she loved it, you know, paint paint

492
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 1: things with oils um. And what was key about her

493
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: painting is that, unlike a lot of the male explorers

494
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 1: and male botanists who went traveling and took specimens and

495
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 1: brought them back, she didn't dig them up. She painted them.

496
00:30:54,320 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 1: She would just PLoP down with her her easel and

497
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: her paints and paint them well. And as she was

498
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 1: a woman of wealth and had a good family name,

499
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: when she went on all these journeys, she often arrived

500
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: with letters of introduction and would have had you know,

501
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: wealthy hookups to stay with and dine with and rub

502
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: elbows with. But she really tried to avoid that as

503
00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: much as possible. She preferred to just trapes around on

504
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 1: her own and paint her paintings. Yeah. And the cool

505
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 1: thing about her paintings, which are now on display in

506
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 1: England in her own gallery that she pushed to have built. Um,

507
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:40,720
Speaker 1: they're displayed really interestingly. They're all kind of swushed together

508
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: like a big pinterest board on the wall. Uh, to

509
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 1: throw a modern reference in there, and they're all grouped

510
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: according to country, which is really cool too. But she didn't.

511
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: She didn't paint in a super like quote unquote scientific way.

512
00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 1: I mean, if we're talking about women going their own way,

513
00:31:56,560 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: doing their own thing, and not really traveling and pouring

514
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: back like the men did. She didn't just paint the

515
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: single flower or the single leaf or plant against a

516
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 1: white background, as was the scientific habit of the time.

517
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 1: She really painted the plant in its whole ecosystem, so

518
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 1: you might see the plant or the flower, but it

519
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: would be on the bush in the field, so you

520
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: would still see everything that was around it and how

521
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: it was interacting with its ecosystem. And in the process

522
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: she discovered a number of plant species, many of which

523
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 1: are named in her honor, including just for an example,

524
00:32:34,760 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 1: miss North picture plant, and even the genus name North thea,

525
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: which is part of a plant family of evergreen trees

526
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 1: and shrubs. And through her paintings, she also showed Europeans

527
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: for the first time because Google Image did not exist,

528
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: but she showed them plants they had never seen before,

529
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,720
Speaker 1: such as the giant picture plant of Borneo and the

530
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 1: freaking torch lily. So she very much educated the public

531
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 1: through her exploration. And I like that she didn't bring

532
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: back all those speciments. It's like she went in painted

533
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 1: and then left without a trace. She left a small,

534
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: minimal footprint, probably in the shape of a very uncomfortable

535
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 1: Victorian high heeled shoe. And speaking of botanists slash explorers,

536
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 1: I also want to mention Inez and Riquetta Julietta Mechia,

537
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:31,120
Speaker 1: who's who has a beautiful name that I'm hopefully doing

538
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: justice to. Um. She came around a little bit later

539
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: than North Um and she was focused on South and

540
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 1: Central America and Alaska, and so she set out on

541
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 1: a series of journeys to remote locations around there and

542
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: collected one hundred and fifty thousand botanical specimens, and she

543
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 1: identified more than five hundred new species of plants, many

544
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: of which were named in her honor. So she was

545
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:01,520
Speaker 1: more of the on collect the specimen, bring it back,

546
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: not so much of an artist, but nonetheless an important

547
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 1: explorer to know. Yeah, and I mean I think about

548
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 1: I think what's so neat about Marian North I mean,

549
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: being such a product of her time, is that she's

550
00:34:14,680 --> 00:34:17,800
Speaker 1: exactly the type of woman from this era that Domash

551
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:21,839
Speaker 1: was writing about in terms of going her own way

552
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: doing what she was doing for her I mean, she

553
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: just loved to paint, and so she's sort of fell

554
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 1: into this love of plants and exploration from her father

555
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: combined with her own love of painting to really go

556
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: about this scientific pursuit in her own very unique way. Well.

557
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 1: And the fact that she was focused on botany is

558
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 1: significant too, because unlike say geography, which was a field,

559
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:52,120
Speaker 1: an emerging field at the time, very much exclusive to men, botany,

560
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: not so surprisingly, was really the only hard science considered

561
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: female appropriate because it's fa Well, of course we would

562
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 1: want to study flowers, it's it's we could learn to

563
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:07,600
Speaker 1: arrange them in vases for our sitting rooms where we stay,

564
00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:13,000
Speaker 1: right exactly. That was my Victorian woman. Well, okay, so

565
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:16,400
Speaker 1: one woman that we have to mention, we have to

566
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 1: mention and who was focused on a little bit of

567
00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: a more masculine science or sciences plural is Gertrude Bell.

568
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:28,840
Speaker 1: Now we could do like fifteen hours worth of podcasts

569
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:31,600
Speaker 1: on Gertrude Bell because she's so fascinating and accomplished so

570
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: much in her life, but we actually don't have to

571
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:37,360
Speaker 1: because stuff you missed in history class. Our sister podcast

572
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:40,879
Speaker 1: has already done a two parter on Gertrude Bell. That's right,

573
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:43,320
Speaker 1: So if you really want to dig into her bio,

574
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: you can do that. But in the context of exploration, yes,

575
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:51,719
Speaker 1: we must discuss her. Yeah, because she was an archaeologist,

576
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:55,759
Speaker 1: a linguist, a mountaineer. She traveled to the desert and

577
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:58,759
Speaker 1: helped form what is now Iraq. I mean this, this

578
00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:01,279
Speaker 1: woman had a hand in a lot of stuff. And

579
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:04,040
Speaker 1: what's interesting if we're talking about forming your own path

580
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. She also was one woman who

581
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:11,400
Speaker 1: did not get married. She wasn't really considered marriage material

582
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: because she was so highly educated at Oxford, So she

583
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,319
Speaker 1: ended up teaching herself Persian, hanging out with her uncle

584
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:22,480
Speaker 1: and Iran, who was a British official over there, developing

585
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 1: this interest in the Middle Eastern region, and traveling all

586
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: over the place. Yeah, the fact that she was the

587
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:30,920
Speaker 1: first woman to graduate with a modern history degree from

588
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: Oxford essentially just banished her from the marriage market. They're like, oh, well, no, no, no, no,

589
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:40,759
Speaker 1: not not you, Gertrude. You have too many things to

590
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:43,440
Speaker 1: talk about. Gertrude. Well, and and I also want to

591
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: mention to her mountaineering passion because this is also a

592
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:52,320
Speaker 1: great snapshot of women exploring at the time, because in

593
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:57,320
Speaker 1: eighteen nine she made her first major ascent over thirteen

594
00:36:57,360 --> 00:37:01,239
Speaker 1: thousand feet in the French Alps, but there were no

595
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:04,879
Speaker 1: proper clothes for female climbers back then, so she took

596
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:09,359
Speaker 1: off her skirt and just kept climbing in her underclothes

597
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 1: until she reached the summit. I love it yeah, in

598
00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:17,279
Speaker 1: her underclothes, in her undercarriage cloth. And in nineteen o one,

599
00:37:17,440 --> 00:37:20,239
Speaker 1: after a few more climbs, she ended up becoming the

600
00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:24,320
Speaker 1: first person to climb all the peaks of the Angle

601
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:28,520
Speaker 1: Horner Range in the Swiss Alps, and during that time

602
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 1: she spent two weeks wearing a blue climbing suit with pants,

603
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:36,600
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, pants, although she always changed back into

604
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: her skirt at base camp, and of the nine peaks,

605
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:42,960
Speaker 1: she was the first person to summit seven of them,

606
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:46,240
Speaker 1: and she even had a mountaintop named after her, Gertrude

607
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:52,719
Speaker 1: spitza Gertrude Spitzer Let's climate Caroline. I'm I'm wearing pants though,

608
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 1: But she wasn't just interested in climbing mountains and just

609
00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 1: hanging out with her uncle in Iran. So in nineteen fifteen,

610
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: she's in Cairo at the time where she becomes the

611
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:08,000
Speaker 1: first woman officer to be employed by British military intelligence,

612
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 1: and it's as a British spy that she sent. Then

613
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:14,800
Speaker 1: goes back to the Middle East and starts doing some

614
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: scouting around she does, and she ends up having a

615
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:24,279
Speaker 1: huge impact over there. Um, but not everybody was super

616
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:30,359
Speaker 1: excited about her participation. Diplomatic advisor Sir Mark Sykes put

617
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: it thus, late confound the silly, chattering wind bag of conceited, gushing,

618
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 1: flat chested man woman, globe trotting, rump wagging, bleathering ass. Yeah.

619
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 1: I mean, he had a lot to say about her,

620
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:47,799
Speaker 1: and it's funny that like gendered stuff gets in there.

621
00:38:47,840 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 1: He calls her a man woman and flat chested, and

622
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:53,200
Speaker 1: then you've got, yeah, you've got the dismissive stuff, the

623
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 1: globe trotting, rump wagging, she's a wind bag. She talks

624
00:38:57,080 --> 00:39:01,360
Speaker 1: so much like God forbid women talk so But generally,

625
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: I mean generally she was admired and appreciated, And I

626
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:09,320
Speaker 1: mean it's obvious because in Iraq in the nineteen twenties

627
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:13,840
Speaker 1: she's this powerful official of the British administration in Baghdad

628
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:17,560
Speaker 1: after World War One, and she helped ensure that an

629
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:22,279
Speaker 1: Arab state was founded from the three Ottoman provinces of Mosl, Baghdad,

630
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:26,359
Speaker 1: and Bosra, but helped ensure that it would stay too

631
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: weak to be independent of Britain. Yeah, she essentially drew

632
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: the borderlines of Iraq. And so if her name is

633
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 1: ringing a bell right now, Gertrude bell ding Ding, it

634
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:42,200
Speaker 1: might be because her name has been coming up recently

635
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:46,880
Speaker 1: in some news articles about the current unrest in Iraq,

636
00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:49,880
Speaker 1: because you know, I mean, this was a state that

637
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 1: was drawn up strategically to sort of pitt different groups

638
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: and tribes against each other to ensure that they would

639
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: never become more powerful than Britain. So yet again we

640
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 1: have to reference sort of the the uncomfortable undercurrent of

641
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: um political nastiness and white people muck and stuff up. Yeah,

642
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:15,239
Speaker 1: that's a good way to put it. But I mean,

643
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:18,719
Speaker 1: in all this, she did make bagged at her permanent home,

644
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:21,839
Speaker 1: and she did help to organize elections, and she did

645
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: help to write a constitution, and in es she was

646
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:27,160
Speaker 1: the first person to write a white paper called the

647
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:30,279
Speaker 1: Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia, and a white

648
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 1: paper is basically like a really long informational booklet about

649
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 1: a place. Yeah, she kind of makes me feel like

650
00:40:38,719 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 1: I need to do more with my life. I don't know,

651
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:46,320
Speaker 1: but the desert is so hot. It doesn't have to

652
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: be in the desert, Carol. Okay, cool, Okay. Well, in

653
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 1: the last big explorer of your that we really want

654
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:57,319
Speaker 1: to focus on for this episode is one Alexandra David Neil.

655
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: And it's like we've been kind of moving sword on

656
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:04,320
Speaker 1: our our map here because we had Gertrude Bell in

657
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:07,240
Speaker 1: the Middle East, and now we're gonna have Alexander David

658
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 1: Neil go into the Deep East. Yeah. I mean, this

659
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 1: is a woman who lived to be just shy of

660
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: her first birthday and so in true in her true

661
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 1: middle age. At fifty five, she became the first European

662
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 1: woman to reach Tibet's forbidden capital, and she remains the

663
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 1: most accurate, extensive source on hidden Buddhist practices of this

664
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:36,880
Speaker 1: really what is sort of vanishing Eastern world. But she

665
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:39,040
Speaker 1: didn't start out that way. She actually began her career

666
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 1: as an opera singer and then her voice broke and

667
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:43,480
Speaker 1: she was like, well, now, what am I gonna do?

668
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 1: And so she became a strongly feminist writer because of

669
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: course naturally and uh, it was through her writing and

670
00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 1: research that her interests in Eastern philosophy really matured, and

671
00:41:55,719 --> 00:42:00,080
Speaker 1: that planted the seed for this harrowing journey that she

672
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: made over the trans Himalayas to Lassa. Now, in order

673
00:42:04,239 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 1: to get around and actually avoid getting arrested by British officials,

674
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,719
Speaker 1: she disguised herself as a Tibetan man by wearing a

675
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:19,719
Speaker 1: massive yak fur coat and a necklace made of animal skulls. Yeah.

676
00:42:19,800 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 1: That was in the winter of nine four, and she

677
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 1: went with one of her adopted sons and yeah, managed

678
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:30,600
Speaker 1: to just disguise herself as a beggar. No, no big deal,

679
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:34,320
Speaker 1: no threat here, definitely not a Western woman. Um. And

680
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 1: three years later, in nine her book My Journey to Lassa,

681
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:41,280
Speaker 1: which was published in New York, London and Paris, became

682
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: an instant classic of travel and adventure. People couldn't get

683
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 1: enough of this exotic story. Yeah, and she ended up,

684
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:52,000
Speaker 1: along with her adopted son, writing two dozen books on

685
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 1: Eastern themes um. And that one Journey to Lassa was

686
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:58,640
Speaker 1: by no means the only journey that she took. I mean,

687
00:42:58,719 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 1: she spent so much time in Tibet and in other

688
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:06,400
Speaker 1: areas in the Far East. And we could go on

689
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: and on and on with other stories of other women

690
00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:13,520
Speaker 1: doing incredible things around the world. Unfortunately, we only have

691
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 1: time in this podcast just to do a survey of

692
00:43:16,880 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 1: explorers past and present. And since we've talked so much

693
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 1: about women of the past, now let's talk about what

694
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:28,719
Speaker 1: women are doing exploration wise today. Yeah, um, I mean

695
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:32,799
Speaker 1: speaking of you know, the East. Um, we have Christina Lee,

696
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:39,800
Speaker 1: who's an American bioarchaeologist who is exploring diversity through skeletons.

697
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: She combines physical anthropology and archaeology to study human remains

698
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:48,640
Speaker 1: that are millennia old. And she talks about her own

699
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: personal experience what drove her, which is feeling um as

700
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 1: an Asian student in Texas, feeling out of place. She

701
00:43:56,000 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: says that she wanted to explore diversity, that it's at

702
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:02,640
Speaker 1: the core of her archaeological research, and to search for

703
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 1: those sort of diverse beginnings through dental anthropology. I mean,

704
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:11,080
Speaker 1: this woman is incredible, saying that looking at dental dental

705
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 1: anthropology can reveal everything from population origin and history to

706
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: migration and intermarriage. And she's doing a lot of this

707
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:20,120
Speaker 1: research in China, and so she was saying that she

708
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:22,759
Speaker 1: hopes her discoveries can give the people of China a

709
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 1: greater sense of their own cultural identity and past. And

710
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:30,320
Speaker 1: then for another example of a modern stem explorer, we

711
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:37,440
Speaker 1: have Nalini ned Carney, whose specialty is studying tree canopies

712
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 1: in rainforests in Central and South America and it's fascinating.

713
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 1: She she gave a TED talk on what she has

714
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 1: learned from the tree canopies, because it's kind of like

715
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:50,319
Speaker 1: how we don't think of all the things you could

716
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:54,399
Speaker 1: learn from a tooth like Christina Lee's doing. Nalini, who

717
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:58,640
Speaker 1: grew up climbing trees and loving climb trees, essentially climbs

718
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 1: trees for living in order to investigate what kind of

719
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:08,720
Speaker 1: bio diversity is living up high in those tree tops.

720
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 1: And it's fascinating me the kind of mosses and insects

721
00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:15,840
Speaker 1: and all of these things that support these very fragile ecosystems.

722
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 1: And so obviously this is linked to ecological preservation and

723
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:25,440
Speaker 1: um just to think though of exploration and tree climbing

724
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 1: as a modern day profession that has a positive impact

725
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:34,319
Speaker 1: on our daily lives is so incredible. Yeah, But I mean,

726
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 1: I think you just hit on something really important about

727
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:40,800
Speaker 1: modern day explorers. Whereas in the golden Age of exploration,

728
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: you had a lot of people not necessarily out for themselves,

729
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: but out for the glory of their empire back home,

730
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:50,440
Speaker 1: whether that was America or Britain, I think now you

731
00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:52,759
Speaker 1: have a lot of people, a lot of women in particular,

732
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: who were out exploring for the purpose of shedding light

733
00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: on global problems, whether that's um ecological problems, environmental issues,

734
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: or whether that's food problems throughout the world. You have

735
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there today trying to shed

736
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 1: the light on tragedies that need our attention. Yeah, and

737
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: that's one of the aims of Kurasalak, who is an

738
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 1: incredible traveler. She's traveled alone to almost every continent, and

739
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:27,040
Speaker 1: she really focuses on going to remote and sometimes dangerous,

740
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 1: outright dangerous locations. And she's been profiled in the National

741
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 1: Geographic and all sorts of other places because, for instance,

742
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:37,120
Speaker 1: I mean, she was the first woman to traverse Papua

743
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:40,880
Speaker 1: New Guinea. She also biked seven hundred miles from Alaska

744
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 1: to the Arctic Ocean. She also biked seven hundred miles

745
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:48,520
Speaker 1: from Alaska to the Arctic Ocean. She's a fearless woman

746
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:52,760
Speaker 1: in other words, right, And she's a fearless woman with goals.

747
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:56,320
Speaker 1: She said, to reveal situations no one else is covering,

748
00:46:56,400 --> 00:47:00,080
Speaker 1: like slavery and Timbuctowo and genocide and Eastern Congo. She

749
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 1: said that these tragedies are very emotionally difficult to witness,

750
00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:04,760
Speaker 1: but if by shedding light on them, I can improve

751
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:08,160
Speaker 1: even one person's life, I feel it's worth the risk. Well,

752
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:11,600
Speaker 1: and at one point to where she was is escaping

753
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 1: me at the moment, but she was kidnapped by some

754
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:19,840
Speaker 1: locals and had to escape. She actually made an escape,

755
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:23,800
Speaker 1: and she was talking about how that kind of danger

756
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:28,440
Speaker 1: is terrifying, Yes, but when she encounters obstacles like that,

757
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:35,239
Speaker 1: getting through them only empowers her to keep exploring further. Right.

758
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:37,760
Speaker 1: And she told a story about um I can't remember

759
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:40,640
Speaker 1: which river she was traveling down, but the women alongside

760
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:43,399
Speaker 1: the river were just cheering her on and chanting for her,

761
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 1: you know, because she might raise the eyebrows of the

762
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: men in the local populations that she travels past, but

763
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: the women are definitely on her side. And then I

764
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: mean continuing the theme of women out there exploring to

765
00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: benefit the global ppulation at large. Alexander Custo, Yes, that Custo.

766
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: She's the granddaughter of Jacques Cousto, is a social environmental

767
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 1: advocate and one of National Geographics Emerging Explorers who looks

768
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:17,320
Speaker 1: at all different kinds of media opportunities and partnerships between

769
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:22,480
Speaker 1: different diverse groups to create platforms for emerging environmental leaders.

770
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:27,480
Speaker 1: So Gusto travels all over the world to highlight environmental issues.

771
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:31,759
Speaker 1: Her latest initiative, Blue Legacy, for instance, was created to

772
00:48:32,040 --> 00:48:35,239
Speaker 1: inspire people to take action on water issues around the

773
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:40,280
Speaker 1: world and to help spark some dialogue on climate change,

774
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:44,120
Speaker 1: water availability to various populations throughout the world, etcetera, etcetera.

775
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 1: So those are just some names who instead of going

776
00:48:48,040 --> 00:48:52,200
Speaker 1: out into the world just taking specimens to inform knowledge.

777
00:48:52,360 --> 00:48:54,840
Speaker 1: Not that stuff like that is not important and obviously

778
00:48:55,000 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: is critical to scientific research, but these are just a

779
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 1: few women who are traveling the world to help everyone else. Yeah,

780
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:07,319
Speaker 1: and that's one of the biggest takeaways from and we're

781
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:11,320
Speaker 1: only focusing in this episode two on overland exploration, and

782
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:12,799
Speaker 1: there are so many other names too that we could

783
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 1: have talked about, um, But when it comes to just

784
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 1: the the giant umbrella of exploration, you know, the question

785
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 1: from we when we're talking about the nineteenth century is why, well,

786
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 1: why would they go explore? Well, because they had everything

787
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:30,279
Speaker 1: to discover. Fast forward to today, same question, Well why

788
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:33,160
Speaker 1: would you explore? Because we still have everything to discover.

789
00:49:33,920 --> 00:49:39,279
Speaker 1: There's always something new to learn. So hopefully we can

790
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 1: do our part to shed light on those women who

791
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 1: are doing that and have done that and will do

792
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:48,760
Speaker 1: that in the future. So if you are an explorer,

793
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 1: an adventurer, an outdoors person, um, if any of these

794
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:55,920
Speaker 1: names ring bells to you, we want to hear all

795
00:49:56,000 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 1: of your exploration thoughts and stories, ETCETERA. Mom's Stuff at

796
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com is where you can email us.

797
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:05,920
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or

798
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook and like us while you're at it.

799
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:11,880
Speaker 1: And we've got a couple of messages to share with

800
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:18,279
Speaker 1: you right now. So I got a couple of letters

801
00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 1: here from our episode on y a Fiction, and this

802
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:25,760
Speaker 1: one is from Rory who writes I wanted to comment

803
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:28,879
Speaker 1: on time editor Joel Stein's comments. I wanted to find

804
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:32,080
Speaker 1: an article that would put his statement into context, and

805
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:36,360
Speaker 1: fortunately his opinion piece adults should read adult books was

806
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 1: just a Google search away after reading his article. It

807
00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: should be said that moderation is the key. This is

808
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:45,399
Speaker 1: not a revolutionary idea. It's a cliche concept, but it's

809
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:47,959
Speaker 1: a true one, and one that so many people seem

810
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:51,040
Speaker 1: to forget. Stein appears to take the side in which

811
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:53,279
Speaker 1: the world of higher art is one in which he

812
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:57,400
Speaker 1: believes people should aspire to, even using such degrading sentences

813
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: as the only thing more embarrassing than watching a guy

814
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:03,320
Speaker 1: on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is

815
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 1: seeing a guy on the plane reading The Hunger Games.

816
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:09,239
Speaker 1: The only problem with the situation is when an individual,

817
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:12,400
Speaker 1: regardless of agere gender, refuses to step out of their

818
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: comfort zone. There's a point in which someone should step up,

819
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:18,680
Speaker 1: as it were, and move to the next level of

820
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:22,080
Speaker 1: literature that may be considered more substantial. It's hard to

821
00:51:22,200 --> 00:51:24,680
Speaker 1: argue that a novel by Susanne Collins or John Green

822
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 1: could match the prose or philosophical complexity of a novel

823
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:31,240
Speaker 1: written by by Nabokov or Thomas Hardy. But then again,

824
00:51:31,480 --> 00:51:34,920
Speaker 1: maybe our contemporary way of thinking just can't see it yet. However,

825
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:37,719
Speaker 1: another problem in the situation is the assumption that this

826
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:41,680
Speaker 1: person only reads books like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter.

827
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:45,240
Speaker 1: If that's the case, as was hinted in the previous paragraph,

828
00:51:45,560 --> 00:51:47,480
Speaker 1: that is a problem, just as it's a problem if

829
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:50,920
Speaker 1: someone only reads Victorian literature. It would be beneficial for

830
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:54,720
Speaker 1: any reader to move onto more challenging examples of literature justice.

831
00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: It would be beneficial for someone who has already reached

832
00:51:57,040 --> 00:51:59,480
Speaker 1: that next level to step down from their pedestal and

833
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: give the supposed lesser writers a chance. They may be surprised.

834
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:06,920
Speaker 1: Look no further than Philip K. Dick, who used to

835
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:10,280
Speaker 1: be considered a pulp science fiction writer. To my knowledge,

836
00:52:10,360 --> 00:52:12,640
Speaker 1: he became the first science fiction author whose works were

837
00:52:12,719 --> 00:52:15,920
Speaker 1: collected in two volumes that were published by the Library

838
00:52:16,000 --> 00:52:18,719
Speaker 1: of America, an organization that has collected the works of

839
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:22,040
Speaker 1: authors such as John Updike and Ernest Hemingway. Who was

840
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:24,799
Speaker 1: to say that decades from now, the works of John

841
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:28,919
Speaker 1: Green will not be published in similar collections. So thanks

842
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:32,600
Speaker 1: for your insights, Rory. Alrighty, I have a letter here

843
00:52:32,640 --> 00:52:35,880
Speaker 1: from Mary. She says. I am a ninth grade English

844
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:38,399
Speaker 1: teacher at a high school in rural Wisconsin. The town

845
00:52:38,440 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 1: in which I teach is very provincial, and as a result,

846
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:44,400
Speaker 1: the population is very homogeneous, meaning the students are largely white,

847
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: working class or lower middle class kids. This being said

848
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:50,799
Speaker 1: in order to help my students game perspectives from all

849
00:52:50,880 --> 00:52:55,839
Speaker 1: walks of life, regions, social classes, cultures, ethnicities, racist, sexual orientations,

850
00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: et cetera, I use young adult lit. Yes, perhaps I

851
00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:01,719
Speaker 1: should be teaching more classics, and please understand that I do,

852
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: But as wonderful as Lord of the Flies or Great

853
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:07,719
Speaker 1: Expectations can be, they are usually only presenting limited viewpoints,

854
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:11,360
Speaker 1: usually white, straight, sisgendered males. Since my students do not

855
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:13,600
Speaker 1: have the means to travel the world and it's people,

856
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:15,359
Speaker 1: in order to bring the world to them, I use

857
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,440
Speaker 1: young adult lit. As you stated in your podcast, it's

858
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:21,239
Speaker 1: more representative of all people and therefore has helped my

859
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 1: students stain new views on the world. Through young adult lit.

860
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:26,200
Speaker 1: They're able to look at life through the eyes of

861
00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:28,719
Speaker 1: someone with a severe disability and Terry Truman stuck in

862
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:31,200
Speaker 1: neutral or experience high school in the shoes of a

863
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 1: transgender teen in Julianne Peter's Luna or Understand the Impact

864
00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:37,720
Speaker 1: of Sexual Assault on Women and Lorie halls Anderson's Speak.

865
00:53:38,360 --> 00:53:40,319
Speaker 1: Young adult lit has enabled me to foster a better

866
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:42,720
Speaker 1: understanding of the world with my students and helped instill

867
00:53:42,760 --> 00:53:45,239
Speaker 1: an improved sense of empathy in them, much more so

868
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:48,399
Speaker 1: than a typical, complex classic. This is not to say

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00:53:48,440 --> 00:53:51,720
Speaker 1: that classics have no place in secondary English language arts classes,

870
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:53,600
Speaker 1: but rather to say that young adult lit is and

871
00:53:53,640 --> 00:53:56,680
Speaker 1: should be placed alongside the literary canon, as they both

872
00:53:56,719 --> 00:54:00,959
Speaker 1: present important and needed aspects and education. So thank you, Mary,

873
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:04,240
Speaker 1: and thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom stuff

874
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:07,040
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com is our email address

875
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:11,400
Speaker 1: and for links to all of our social media blog, post, videos,

876
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:15,759
Speaker 1: and every single one of our five hundred plus podcasts,

877
00:54:16,120 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: there's one place to go. It's stuff Mom Never Told

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00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:24,960
Speaker 1: You dot com. For more on this and thousands of

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00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,200
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com.