Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and welcome to Steff whenever told you
Speaker 1: a prediction of iHeartRadio. And yes I'm still above myself.
Speaker 1: But Samantha is probably happy about that. For this one,
Speaker 1: because I am talking about cicados once again. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be a bit of a shorter episode, but I did
Speaker 1: really want to find a way to talk about them,
Speaker 1: and I think we're going to try to find another
Speaker 1: way to talk about them if anybody knows women in
Speaker 1: entomology would like to talk with us. So yeah, as
Speaker 1: you've probably heard, perhaps from me for the first time
Speaker 1: since the eighteen hundreds, two broods of cicadas are going
Speaker 1: to emerge in the US. At the same time, it's
Speaker 1: being called all kinds of things like cicada apocalyps. People
Speaker 1: are freaking out about it on TV. I'm interested. I
Speaker 1: don't think at Lanta, which is where we are, is
Speaker 1: gonna get the brunt of it. We're gonna get some,
Speaker 1: but I'm interested to see how loud it's going to be,
Speaker 1: especially as someone who records audio from home. I was
Speaker 1: determined to find a feminist topic to talk about with
Speaker 1: this and find it. I did, as I've said previously,
Speaker 1: fascinated with the science of cicadas, and it was one
Speaker 1: of the first podcast episodes I ever edited was about cicadas. So,
Speaker 1: all right, if you've heard the loud, humming, buzzing, chirping
Speaker 1: of cicadas, you know that it is a culmination of
Speaker 1: several sounds that are occurring at the same time. This
Speaker 1: is the result of different sounds made by different species
Speaker 1: of cicadas. For a long time we didn't know, though.
Speaker 1: Inter entomologist Margaretta Harre Morris in the early nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Ever since she was a teenager, she had studied cicadas
Speaker 1: when they would come out, and in eighteen seventeen she
Speaker 1: heard one song, and in eighteen thirty four she heard
Speaker 1: a different one. In eighteen forty six, at the age
Speaker 1: of forty nine, she publicly voiced her opinion that she
Speaker 1: had discovered a news species of cicada. This was in
Speaker 1: part due to some digging that she'd done that unearthed
Speaker 1: cicada larvae a whole five years before they were set
Speaker 1: to emerge. They were sucking at the roots of trees,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty big discovery in terms of how
Speaker 1: cicada survived underground. Four seventeen years in itself, at the time,
Speaker 1: but on top of that, she realized some were significantly
Speaker 1: smaller than others. So that very year she wrote up
Speaker 1: her findings in a report she sent off to the
Speaker 1: Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, asserting that she was
Speaker 1: quote inclined to believe that there are two species differing
Speaker 1: sufficiently in size. She even wrote descriptions describing the different
Speaker 1: sounds that they made. The larger ones were more sluggish
Speaker 1: and made a sound like bahoo. The smaller ones, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, were very active. Their song quote sharp
Speaker 1: and shrill, like the noise made by the loom of
Speaker 1: a stocking weaver. These are yea fa ru was a
Speaker 1: quote also, by the way, Because she wasn't a member
Speaker 1: of this academy, though, she had to enlist a male
Speaker 1: scientist to present her paper and supporting specimens to them.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, they were dismissive. But she didn't
Speaker 1: give up. She submitted and published articles about her findings
Speaker 1: to publications across the country. She invited scientists to visit
Speaker 1: her garden to see for themselves what she was talking about.
Speaker 1: Through these efforts, she built up an army of supporters
Speaker 1: of her theory in eighteen fifty she was one of
Speaker 1: the first women ever to be elected to the American
Speaker 1: Association for the Advancements of Science. So yeah, I mean basically,
Speaker 1: she impressed largely these dudes who were in control with
Speaker 1: her methods and her dedication and all of the work
Speaker 1: she had done. But of course she has largely been forgotten.
Speaker 1: One of the main reasons for that has to do
Speaker 1: with the years between the emergence of broods of cicadas.
Speaker 1: After the next emergence of cicada's post Morris's publications, in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, two male scientists who had read her
Speaker 1: work announced that they had discovered a new PCs of
Speaker 1: cicada that was smaller and thriller. So yes, exactly what
Speaker 1: she said, and they named it after themselves, which is frustrating.
Speaker 1: And this is especially bad in terms of the lack
Speaker 1: of women entomologists at that time and now. So like
Speaker 1: every time you're reading about cicadas or talking about cicadas,
Speaker 1: you see remnants of these two men who named the
Speaker 1: cicadas after themselves. But here was Morris who had done
Speaker 1: this work. It's documented. I think people in the field
Speaker 1: know who she is, But for people who don't you
Speaker 1: see their names, not hers, and associate them with this
Speaker 1: discovery and not hers. And as we talked about on
Speaker 1: our recent celebration with Eves of our fiftieth Female First,
Speaker 1: that it does inspire people when you see when you're
Speaker 1: young and you're like, oh, so I can do that too.
Speaker 1: But she was sort of removed from the picture unless
Speaker 1: you looked deeper, which it wasn't hard to find her.
Speaker 1: So again, it's not like she doesn't exist, but she's
Speaker 1: not the first thing you will find at all. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, as we also discussed in that
Speaker 1: episode of Female First, it's you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I was reading this and I was thinking, like, who,
Speaker 1: who else maybe had made this discovery outside of Morris
Speaker 1: and didn't get any credit. It's entirely possible she wasn't
Speaker 1: the first either, but certainly it wasn't the two dudes
Speaker 1: to get credit for it. But yeah, I would. You
Speaker 1: can look up more about this. I'm hoping to return
Speaker 1: to another cicada based topic for listeners. If you are
Speaker 1: in I believe it's like Chicagos, certain areas of the Midwest,
Speaker 1: we're really going to get all these cicadas. Let us
Speaker 1: know how it goes, how you're feeling, Yeah, because I'm
Speaker 1: very interested to see how this is going to play out.
Speaker 1: But I hope that now our listeners will think of Morris,
Speaker 1: who was just curious about cicadas and did our own research.
Speaker 1: It seems like just from a very passionate, interested, scientific place,
Speaker 1: she was just really intrigued by this, which I can
Speaker 1: relate to. But yes, listeners, if you would like to
Speaker 1: contact us, you can our email Stephanie Momsteff at iHeartMedia
Speaker 1: dot com. You can find is on Twitter at most
Speaker 1: of a podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok that's stuff
Speaker 1: I've never told you. You can also find us on YouTube.
Speaker 1: We have a tea public store, and we have a
Speaker 1: book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always too, our super producer Christina, our executive producer Maya,
Speaker 1: and our contributor Joey. And thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 1: Steffan never told you his direction of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can check
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.