Her Half of History
Her Half of History
Why don't women's clothes have more pockets? When and where did someone decide that men shouldn't wear skirts? How does a girl go about seizing control of an evil empire? Did the Amazons really exist and why wasn't I born as one of them? In short, what have the women of the world been up to while not getting covered in the standard history books? I explore these and other questions in this thematic approach to women's history.
- 17 minutes 8 secondsFu Hao, First Female Military Leader (ep. 16.3)
Fu Hao married a king, gave birth multiple times, and also commanded troops in battle. (Why not?) Living around 1200 BCE in China, she is the first recorded female military leader in history.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
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12 February 2026, 6:00 am - 21 minutes 35 secondsEnheduanna, First Named Author (ep. 16.2)
The first named author in history was Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, conqueror of Sumeria. Her poems have been called the world's first bestsellers. But she's also been accused of not really writing them.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
5 February 2026, 6:00 am - 16 minutes 40 secondsNeithhotep, First Named Woman in History (ep. 16.1)
Many religions and cultures have an answer to Who was the first woman?
But the records of those answers were all written thousands of years after any such women lived. For historians, the more answerable question is Who was the first woman named in a record written during or close to her own lifetime?
Neithhotep was a queen in Egypt's very first dynasty. Not much is known about her for certain, but what we do know is that she kicked off a very long list of women in the historical record.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
29 January 2026, 6:00 am - 31 minutes 49 secondsChildbirth, Literacy, Sources, the State of the World, and Other Listener Questions
Her Half of History turns 5 years old this month! In celebration, I'm taking questions from listeners and they range from the oldest account of childbirth to the reason I started a podcast in the first place.
In this episode you will can hear the voices of some of my fellow history podcasters. Please check out their shows for more great history:
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
22 January 2026, 6:00 am - 15 minutes 54 secondsWoman the Gatherer (and Also the Hunter)
Early anthropologists and archaeologists told us that in foraging societies, women gathered and men hunted. More recent research suggests that women did hunt, but the debate will go on about how much.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
8 January 2026, 6:00 am - 2 minutes 46 secondsGot Questions? (and the voters' choice for Series 16)
Please send me your questions for the Q&A episode to celebrate my 5-year podcast anniversary! There's a spot to do it on the website (herhalfofhistory.com). If you include contact details, there's a drawing for some free swag for you.
Also, the votes are in, and the topic of Series 15 is: The First Woman Who. That will start in January.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
25 December 2025, 6:00 am - 26 minutes 25 secondsThe Mothers of Invention (ep. 15.18)
They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I'm not convinced. Throughout this series on inventions, I noticed that almost all of the inventions I covered clustered in the second half of the 19th century, in a time period known as the Second Industrial Revolution. This episode is a retrospective on some of the factors that made that time period see the invention of more society-changing inventions than any other.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
18 December 2025, 6:00 am - 21 minutes 1 secondThe Sewing Machine (ep. 15.17)
Sewing is at least 45,000 years ago, and it was known in nearly every culture on earth, but for millennia it was all done by hand. There are multiple claimants for the inventor of the first sewing machine, but the one who emerged with the US patent was Elias Howe. Unfortunately, his machine didn't really work. This episode tells the story of how that got fixed and how it impacted women.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and polls. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Your support helps me keep bring the stories of past women into the present.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
11 December 2025, 6:00 am - 24 minutes 22 seconds100 Years of Santa's Letters
Santa gets more mail every year than any other person on earth, but the earliest letters that I know of were not to him. They were from him. Later on, it became more normal to write to him and ask for what you were hoping to get for Christmas. This episode covers a sampling of letters from the 1850s to the 1950s, and then finishes off with the story behind one of the most famous lines in American journalism: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."
It is time to vote in the poll to choose the topic of Series 16! It's available on the website, on Patreon, or directly right here: https://poll.fm/16320109
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4 December 2025, 6:00 am - 25 minutes 29 secondsSome Like It Cold: A History of Your Fridge (ep. 15.16, rebroadcast)
Most historical women lived and cooked in an era when cold storage meant something like the root cellar or down the well. The ability to keep food at a constant temperature radically changed our relationship with food, both before it arrives in our homes and afterwards.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
27 November 2025, 6:00 am - 21 minutes 29 secondsPeriod Products (ep. 15.15)
Early details are scarce, but women have been managing periods for millennia, using everything from free bleeding to tampons to sanitary napkins.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Threads as Her Half of History.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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