Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mob Never told you. From how Supports
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
Speaker 1: and I'm Brisbane. And as part of our July summer
Speaker 1: Lady Explorer series, we're gonna look at overland explorers today.
Speaker 1: The women who cross deserts, climbed mountains, went into the
Speaker 1: jungles and studied plants, or just you know, went to
Speaker 1: Boston and studied plants. Women who traveled mostly by themselves
Speaker 1: to discover things that they probably wouldn't have discovered sitting
Speaker 1: in their parlors in Victorian England. Yeah, And in our
Speaker 1: introductory episode to the series on explorers, we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about sort of the masculine construct of the explorer
Speaker 1: hero and how in the nineteenth century when women really
Speaker 1: started leaving their homes, not too many of them, but
Speaker 1: some of them started following in these male explorers footsteps.
Speaker 1: How they had to fight even for the right to
Speaker 1: leave their homes in their dresses and petticoats and set forth,
Speaker 1: and also they had to fight for recognition as well, right,
Speaker 1: And we talked a little bit about the golden Age
Speaker 1: of exploration in our first episode, and that was really
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. In this Victorian era, of men going
Speaker 1: out discovering things, they were considered heroes. They was a
Speaker 1: manly pursuit. And I mean, you know, I can't blame
Speaker 1: women for wanting to get in on that, wanting to
Speaker 1: they're basically seeing what these men are doing and wanting
Speaker 1: to be a part of that discovery process. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, when governments and militaries, for example, sent
Speaker 1: men overseas abroad wherever to basically report back about cultures,
Speaker 1: about night life, about animal life, they they were only
Speaker 1: sending men because it was a manly pursued It wasn't
Speaker 1: the type of work that women were supposed to do.
Speaker 1: And so women, their viewpoints, their thoughts, their opinions, their
Speaker 1: reports were kind of suppressed. And when it comes to
Speaker 1: the motivations for exploring, when we're talking about the past
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, in that Golden Age, uh, it's
Speaker 1: really motivated by things like economic development, military operations, and trade.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of very selfish reasons were going
Speaker 1: out and exploring, whereas today we think of exploration more
Speaker 1: in the sense of stem fields of learning more about
Speaker 1: how the natural world works in order to apply it
Speaker 1: in more altruistic and scientific and technological ways to improve
Speaker 1: not just our lives, our lives being our Western lives,
Speaker 1: but also in prove the lives of you know, people
Speaker 1: living in indigenous cultures much unlike how they would have
Speaker 1: been treated in the Golden Age of Expiration when they
Speaker 1: were simply seen as oddities. We probably took a lot
Speaker 1: of land, well, not probably, we took a lot of
Speaker 1: land from them, took a lot of relics. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think about the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Speaker 1: Yes exactly. I mean, we sent Indiana jones Is into
Speaker 1: these places, into these countries, and they were just like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: look at this really cool like golden statue thing. I'll
Speaker 1: just take that because it belongs in a museum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you want to legitimized, then you should put
Speaker 1: it behind a display case that white well to do
Speaker 1: people can see and appreciate on a weekend, right, because
Speaker 1: how will anyone ever believe it exists if it stays
Speaker 1: in your temple? Yeah, And for that reason, for the
Speaker 1: next ninety minutes of this podcast, we're just gonna play
Speaker 1: the audio from Raiders of the Lost Dark. I think
Speaker 1: there might be some copyright issues but fingers cross, I
Speaker 1: have a feeling George Lucas might be a tabletagious. So
Speaker 1: let's let's keep going with our lady explorer theme, right,
Speaker 1: and so so in in the vein of what we
Speaker 1: were just talking about, using Indiana gens as a great example, um,
Speaker 1: basically around this time there was the feeling that there
Speaker 1: was so much out there in the world that they
Speaker 1: didn't know, but that no proper study of anatomy of disease,
Speaker 1: of ecology, of evolutionary relationships, none of the stuff could
Speaker 1: be complete without sending people out into the world to
Speaker 1: discover it. And you also have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that a lot of these fields are fledgling fields of study,
Speaker 1: and so you kind of couldn't even have these focus areas,
Speaker 1: these areas of study without sending these people out to
Speaker 1: discover what was even out there to begin with. But
Speaker 1: as a lot of people have pointed out, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the things we read, women's voices were pretty
Speaker 1: much lost, and it seems like from our research, Caroline,
Speaker 1: it's almost as though those lost voices of the Golden
Speaker 1: age of exploration are now experiencing maybe a resurgence in
Speaker 1: this twenty one century age of exploration, because you do
Speaker 1: have women like Melbury Polk, whom we talked about a
Speaker 1: lot in our introductory episode, who wrote an entire book
Speaker 1: about women explorers called Women of Discovery, a celebration of
Speaker 1: intrepid women who explored the world. You have women like
Speaker 1: Polk and others who are writing books, who are starting organizations,
Speaker 1: who are shining a light on those unsung heroines of exploration,
Speaker 1: which is really cool, right, because whereas it seems like
Speaker 1: the history of women explorers is one giant cycle of unfair.
Speaker 1: You know, they weren't allowed to have the same types
Speaker 1: of educational opportunities, which meant they weren't taken seriously, which
Speaker 1: meant they weren't allowed in the field, which meant their
Speaker 1: voices were lost, they didn't receive funding, right, And so
Speaker 1: now it's kind of the cyclist kind of going in
Speaker 1: in reverse in the other direction, because you have women
Speaker 1: like Milbury Poke, who is and was an explorer and
Speaker 1: who then is trying to shed more light on women
Speaker 1: who have come before us. And so then it becomes
Speaker 1: the snowball effect of well, the more women we can
Speaker 1: bring to our consciousness today, then maybe the more women
Speaker 1: who will be inspired by them. Yeah, and when you
Speaker 1: look back at those earliest women explorers, they did have
Speaker 1: some characteristics in common, which usually revolved around higher levels
Speaker 1: of socioeconomic privilege. Right, These people, whether they were male
Speaker 1: or female, going out exploring, tended to be very highly educated,
Speaker 1: and they had the financial means to fund their expeditions
Speaker 1: and then to publish those findings. That was very important
Speaker 1: because while you could go out and discover some things
Speaker 1: or paint some plants or what not, you know, if
Speaker 1: you couldn't didn't disperse that information to people back home,
Speaker 1: nobody really paid attention. And Polk also highlights in her
Speaker 1: book one difference that she noticed between male patterns of
Speaker 1: exploration at that time versus women's pattern of exploration in
Speaker 1: that because women were so often ignored by these larger institutions,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't as necessary as it might be for
Speaker 1: a male explorer to pick a dot on a map
Speaker 1: and find the quickest route to get there. Instead, women
Speaker 1: sort of meandered a bit more, right, Yeah, exactly, Um,
Speaker 1: she talks about, you know, especially since men were often
Speaker 1: subsidized by groups, whether that was a military type backing
Speaker 1: or a state funded type of thing, women often didn't
Speaker 1: have that type of backing, and so if they were
Speaker 1: going to go exploring, they didn't quite have that same
Speaker 1: type of pressure. And maybe pressure is the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but there was more of a put an internal push
Speaker 1: that they wanted to go discover these things, and so
Speaker 1: a lot of their travelogs and whatnot, and we talked
Speaker 1: about this in our first episode as far as like
Speaker 1: modern day travelogs for women are often expected to be
Speaker 1: about a personal, you know, internal journey, whereas men are
Speaker 1: more like action and what I saw and what I did,
Speaker 1: what I ate. UM. Back in this era too, women's
Speaker 1: travelogs tended to be like their journals, where they talked
Speaker 1: about what they experienced, sort of in a more personal tone. Well.
Speaker 1: And also the fact that when you consider how that
Speaker 1: internal drive at the time would have to be so
Speaker 1: strong and so specific because these women didn't really have
Speaker 1: many female role models at all doing what they wanted
Speaker 1: to do, and that doing what they wanted to do
Speaker 1: also required violating very strict gender norms at the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: it makes their journeys all the more fascinating. And it's
Speaker 1: not just um the lack of financial support in terms
Speaker 1: of being affiliated with scientific institutions or wealthy patrons, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Mona demash Um, who was writing about geography and sort
Speaker 1: of the gendered intersections of the development of that field,
Speaker 1: pointed out how even in socializing, when it comes to geography,
Speaker 1: you have like these field workers, obviously these mail field
Speaker 1: workers going out and they have this financial support. But
Speaker 1: then it was even more of an elite club because
Speaker 1: of the all male club atmosphere of the Royal Geographic
Speaker 1: Society in England and the American Geographical Society in the US.
Speaker 1: And we talked about that too in our introduction episode,
Speaker 1: talking about how the Explorers Club was all male until
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. So you just have all of these
Speaker 1: kind of tight male circles and women just meandering around
Speaker 1: them on the outskirts. Well, Um Domache, I mean, her
Speaker 1: paper is really really in interesting. It's it's a great
Speaker 1: look at just the gendered aspects of exploration through the
Speaker 1: lens of geography specifically. But I mean she talks about how,
Speaker 1: I mean, you want to talk about a cycle. She
Speaker 1: talks about how women were basically the victims of the
Speaker 1: society that they were a part of. They couldn't get
Speaker 1: that financial backing that we talked about or the proper
Speaker 1: education to be explorers, and then as a result, they
Speaker 1: weren't taken seriously because they weren't official and so don't
Speaker 1: watch talks about how their views were often ignored because
Speaker 1: they're the stuff that they wrote, the activities that they
Speaker 1: participated in did not accord with the standards of scientific geography.
Speaker 1: She wrote, Victorian women explorers could not escape the context
Speaker 1: in which they lived, and those contexts shaped not only
Speaker 1: their outlook on personal matters and social networks, but they
Speaker 1: operated in very material ways as well, by limiting the
Speaker 1: resources and support networks available to women in their travels.
Speaker 1: And so it's for this reason that I've had a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago that one common thread among a lot
Speaker 1: of these Victorian women travelers is that they were wealthy.
Speaker 1: I mean, they came from means that gave them good
Speaker 1: educations but also financed their trip on their own. They
Speaker 1: didn't need the backing of, say, a wealthy patron um.
Speaker 1: So when you have women like Mary Kingsley, who will
Speaker 1: talk about in a little bit, Mary Gaunt, Isabella Bird
Speaker 1: who we mentioned in our intro episode, and Marian North,
Speaker 1: who will also talk about more in a few minutes,
Speaker 1: these women were these women could afford to explore in
Speaker 1: other words, right, And so because these women had the
Speaker 1: appropriate means, they weren't going to let it stop them
Speaker 1: that they weren't sort of allowed into the professional circles
Speaker 1: of explorers. They realized that oh, I can go out
Speaker 1: and do field work. I can go explore the land,
Speaker 1: whether it's around me or overseas, just as any man
Speaker 1: could do, because hey, look I have the sources to
Speaker 1: do it. And so we've been talking about uh, you know,
Speaker 1: women not having enough funding, and so their voices weren't
Speaker 1: taken seriously. They were considered amateurs and as exploration, particularly
Speaker 1: land exploration, geographical studies. As these things became more professionalized,
Speaker 1: they became more masculinized, and so women's voices, since they
Speaker 1: weren't quote unquote professionals, they were definitely suppressed. As all
Speaker 1: these scientific fields flourished, there was this giant drive to
Speaker 1: make everything like super scientific and cut and dry. But
Speaker 1: who defined what was cutting, dry and scientific. Well it
Speaker 1: was the men folk, and they thought that women just
Speaker 1: were sort of silly and amateurs who couldn't be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: I mean, take it from one high ranking English statesman
Speaker 1: who maybe wasn't such a fan of women in the field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his name was George Curzon and he was a Viceroy
Speaker 1: of India at the turn of twentieth century, who said, quote,
Speaker 1: their sex in training render them equally unfitted for exploration.
Speaker 1: And the genus of professional female globe trotters with which
Speaker 1: America has lately familiarized us is one of the horrors
Speaker 1: of the latter end of the nineteenth century, right, And
Speaker 1: so dudes who are armed with this attitude, who have
Speaker 1: this attitude that women are just silly and they're frittering
Speaker 1: their time away and they're just they're just globe trotters. Well,
Speaker 1: of course you would want to exclude non serious globe
Speaker 1: trotting silly people from joining your super formal geographical society.
Speaker 1: But there were a few standouts whose accomplishments were so
Speaker 1: incredible even men like George Curzon couldn't deny them a
Speaker 1: place in their elite circles. So, for instance, a name
Speaker 1: that you might remember from our introductory episode, Harriet Chalmers
Speaker 1: Atoms in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, really
Speaker 1: established herself as one of the foremost explorers male or
Speaker 1: female in the world. Or at least we should say
Speaker 1: in the Western world. She really made herself an expert
Speaker 1: on Latin America. She was born in California and she
Speaker 1: rode on horseback through most of Latin America. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: ended up basically producing so much information for quote unquote
Speaker 1: back home that she was really valued by government and
Speaker 1: business uh interests alike in academic circles. And she was
Speaker 1: one of the first American women elected to membership in
Speaker 1: the Royal Geographic Society of London, which is like such
Speaker 1: a big deal because you know, as as we'll get
Speaker 1: into further in this series, especially when we talk about
Speaker 1: Antarctic explorers, the British were not like super excited about
Speaker 1: women joining their ranks. And no offense to UK listeners,
Speaker 1: but my witness, Britain was quite a holdout in terms
Speaker 1: of gender purity and exploration. Um. But we we've established
Speaker 1: that it usually cost women a lot of money to travel.
Speaker 1: It still does. It's not like it's cheap to explore,
Speaker 1: but um, back then they had to be independently financed.
Speaker 1: But there were some other interesting demographic similarities that you
Speaker 1: see among a lot of the names of this time.
Speaker 1: For instance, a lot of women travelers would have been
Speaker 1: in middle aged, and they were often unmarried. There's actually
Speaker 1: Caroline speaking which there was one book that I came
Speaker 1: across in our research called Spinster's Abra, all about Victorian
Speaker 1: women travelers, because many of them were spinsters. They were
Speaker 1: unmarried women who some of whom were like, I don't
Speaker 1: need marriage, I don't want marriage. I'm going to explore
Speaker 1: um and others whom society was like, no, you just
Speaker 1: you were unmarriageable. Well it's so funny. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's so funny to call someone like an explore
Speaker 1: an independent, incredible, brilliant woman who wants to go explore
Speaker 1: the world a spinster, you know, because spinster, the connotation
Speaker 1: there is that she's just like sitting at home alone
Speaker 1: in the dark weather cats. O. Hey, let's take back spinster. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's reclaim spinster right here right now. Yeah. And as
Speaker 1: we mentioned, a lot of these women had family members
Speaker 1: who were involved in some type of exploration too, and
Speaker 1: so they're, you know, I can't hammer home enough how
Speaker 1: important it is now or then for boys or girls
Speaker 1: to have people in their lives who can inspire them.
Speaker 1: And so they saw these people and their families doing this,
Speaker 1: and they were like, oh, well, I have a dream
Speaker 1: as well, and I'm going to go pursue it. And
Speaker 1: so they ended up a lot of these women sort
Speaker 1: of removing themselves from the shackles of these institutions that
Speaker 1: sort of oppressed other women of their age. They weren't
Speaker 1: going to not necessarily be married, or if they were,
Speaker 1: they certainly weren't going to let it stop them from
Speaker 1: going a traveling well. And it was that outsider spinster
Speaker 1: status that kind of made them good observers and other
Speaker 1: cultures species to range just depending on where they were
Speaker 1: going and what they were hoping to discover. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I mean as far as discovery and women traveling outside
Speaker 1: of the norms. You know, we we touched on in
Speaker 1: our introductory episode the fact that pilgrimage, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about women land explorers, pilgrimage was the main way that
Speaker 1: women could kind of get away from home go see
Speaker 1: other lands, um. And so Milbury Pope talks a lot
Speaker 1: about this in her book, and I thought it was
Speaker 1: interesting that, you know, Okay, so it was strange for
Speaker 1: women to travel, especially like in the Middle Ages, definitely
Speaker 1: not an accepted thing outside of gender norms not considered
Speaker 1: safe or a good idea in general. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the women who went traveling to distant lands for
Speaker 1: pilgrimage purposes ended up being declared saints by the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: So I think that's an interesting division between women who
Speaker 1: are considered outside the norm versus women who are traveling
Speaker 1: for the purpose of religion. They're considered not only okay
Speaker 1: but awesome. Well, I think it makes sense because and
Speaker 1: this is an entire conversation for another time, perhaps a
Speaker 1: podcast that has been requested many times on women in religion,
Speaker 1: But I feel like religious devotion and piety fits so
Speaker 1: nicely into the feminine box, especially if if those very
Speaker 1: feminine religious women are going overseas to like try to
Speaker 1: convert other people that are considered backwards into their religion. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the uncomfortable background noise for all of this
Speaker 1: Victorian era exploration history is that it is very much
Speaker 1: steeped in um racism and uh, white centric, Western centric
Speaker 1: views of the world. Yeah, both men and women are
Speaker 1: definitely guilty of that in this era for sure. But
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to go way back and
Speaker 1: talk about Christian pilgrims Byzantine Empress Helena, who died in
Speaker 1: three that's three, no one um. She along with her
Speaker 1: son Emperor Constantine, traveled numerous times to Palestine. They went
Speaker 1: to Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Sinai, where she ended up founding
Speaker 1: several churches. But so once the floodgates kind of opened
Speaker 1: as far as religious pilgrimage went where Okay, you're a woman,
Speaker 1: you only have one avenue for for traveling and exploring
Speaker 1: distant lands, and that's religious pilgrimage going to the Holy Land.
Speaker 1: Once those floodgates were opened, the local populations weren't always
Speaker 1: excited about it. And talking about this in the introduction
Speaker 1: to her book, Millbury Poke writes about one irate Egyptian
Speaker 1: asthetic who apparently told a wealthy Roman woman who was
Speaker 1: on a pilgrimage to Egypt uh. She wrote that he
Speaker 1: decried her and her kind who threatened to quote turned
Speaker 1: the sea into a thoroughfare with women coming to see me. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I think that's an illustration of
Speaker 1: how sisters are doing it for themselves, and they're getting
Speaker 1: to travel and explore other lands far away from home
Speaker 1: and sort of shed some of their societal norms in
Speaker 1: the process, but it was kind of at the expense
Speaker 1: of a lot of locals who had to deal with them.
Speaker 1: But thankfully there were plenty of plucky women out there
Speaker 1: who did not let what I rate locals thought of
Speaker 1: them stop them from wanting to explore. And this is
Speaker 1: such a such an important thing for you know, not
Speaker 1: just the lives of these women, but for our lives
Speaker 1: as well, because, as Courtney Stevens put it so perfectly
Speaker 1: in a ted ed presentation on some early women explorers,
Speaker 1: she said, the desire to see for one's self not
Speaker 1: only changes the course of human knowledge, but it also
Speaker 1: changes the very idea of what is possible. And that
Speaker 1: gets to the heart of why exploration is important and
Speaker 1: why we wanted to do this series as well. And
Speaker 1: let's not get those into some more names of women
Speaker 1: you probably haven't heard of who did some pretty incredible
Speaker 1: things back then and also now who were exploring now
Speaker 1: to help change the course of human knowledge and change
Speaker 1: our ideas of what is possible. Yeah, one woman that
Speaker 1: really stuck out to me who definitely was not a
Speaker 1: part of the Golden Age of exploration during the Victorian era,
Speaker 1: during the nineteenth century was some really cool kind of
Speaker 1: be a Viking lady good reader. Perhaps that's how we
Speaker 1: pronounce her name, good reader. Yes, this Viking woman good
Speaker 1: reader whose Viking last name is so challenging to pronounce
Speaker 1: that even the Internet didn't have a guide for us.
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna call her a good reader because
Speaker 1: her accomplishments really lend her the credibility to only go
Speaker 1: by one name. Yeah, she's like, yeah, she's like the
Speaker 1: share of Viking exploration because so get this. In the
Speaker 1: late nine hundreds, she travels to Greenland from Iceland and
Speaker 1: then she heads on over to North America with her
Speaker 1: husband where she had her son. Her husband dies and
Speaker 1: she's like, oh too bad, so sad. She remarries back
Speaker 1: in Greenland, and then they led another expedition to North
Speaker 1: America where she had a second son there. So you
Speaker 1: know all those stories from European and American history about
Speaker 1: how the trips you know, back and forth weren't so easy.
Speaker 1: She didn't hop on like a carnival cruise and go
Speaker 1: where the you know, the bathroom breaks down and everyone
Speaker 1: was like, oh no, no, she was doing this like
Speaker 1: back and forth at a time when it was an
Speaker 1: incredibly treacherous journey to make. Yeah, and and she was
Speaker 1: doing it alongside some big burly men her husband her
Speaker 1: first husband anyway, it was one of the sons of
Speaker 1: Eric the Red and I think the brother of Leif Ericson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was her brother in law. Yeah, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: no big deal. She's just like Viking Royalty. But so
Speaker 1: after her I think it's her second son after he
Speaker 1: grows up. So so Christianity has been introduced. They are
Speaker 1: Christian now. Um. She ends up making a pilgrimage to Rome.
Speaker 1: After that son grows up and gets married, she meets
Speaker 1: the Pope. Again, no big deal for a good reader.
Speaker 1: She ends up retiring to the church where her son
Speaker 1: her son built, and starts to live life as a nun.
Speaker 1: She just set her own path. She totally set her
Speaker 1: own I will say. When I was reading her biography,
Speaker 1: the end felt like a real plot twist. I did
Speaker 1: not anticipate good reader settling down to the life of
Speaker 1: a nun. Yeah, I'm picturing Xena Warrior princess just being like, ah,
Speaker 1: here's my soil. I'll be a nun. You're wearing a habit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: good reader, But I guess there weren't like so many
Speaker 1: options in the early by then thousands, by the early thousands,
Speaker 1: by the thousands of what else are you gonna do? Well,
Speaker 1: now we're going to take a giant leap in history
Speaker 1: to the eighteen hundreds to talk about Marianne North, who was.
Speaker 1: I feel like she's kind of the epitome of the
Speaker 1: Victorian spinster explorer. Yeah. Oh, she hated marriage. She I
Speaker 1: think she also kind of hated men. Yeah, she detested
Speaker 1: the idea of getting married. She called it a terrible
Speaker 1: experiment that turned women into a sort of upper servant.
Speaker 1: And she actually really just preferred to hang out with
Speaker 1: her father, whose passion for botany and travel inspired her.
Speaker 1: And when he died it left her both independent because
Speaker 1: she was no longer hanging out with him, but it
Speaker 1: also left her wealthy, which is t and through her
Speaker 1: travel she became the pre eminent botanical artist of the
Speaker 1: late Victorian period, and she powered her away wearing Victorian garb.
Speaker 1: She didn't trade out her skirts for Nicko Bakos, but
Speaker 1: she actually went to some of the world's most inhospitable terrain.
Speaker 1: She hit every single continent, in fact, except for Antarctica.
Speaker 1: On her journeys to find rare and beautiful plants that
Speaker 1: she then sat down and oil painted. And there was
Speaker 1: someone talking about how it was so significant that she
Speaker 1: oil painted rather than watercolor, which was a far more
Speaker 1: feminine art form at the time, because it lent a
Speaker 1: just a deeper richness visually to her art and also
Speaker 1: helped ensure that they stayed in prime condition for longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they would last. That you know, she's if she's
Speaker 1: going to these tropical locations to paint these incredible, multicolored,
Speaker 1: beautiful plants watercolor, you know, humidity not so good for
Speaker 1: water based pigment. I would I would think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not a painter. And what I mean one key
Speaker 1: thing about her art, so she was self taught. As
Speaker 1: an adult. She wanted to be, I think a singer,
Speaker 1: but it's like a life of the stage was beneath
Speaker 1: her family position or something. So she ended up taking
Speaker 1: up painting. Realized she loved it, you know, paint paint
Speaker 1: things with oils um And what was key about her
Speaker 1: painting is that, unlike a lot of the male explorers
Speaker 1: and male botanists who went traveling and took specimens and
Speaker 1: brought them back. She didn't dig them up, she painted them.
Speaker 1: She would just PLoP down with her her easel and
Speaker 1: her paints and paint them well. And as she was
Speaker 1: a woman of wealth and had a good family name,
Speaker 1: when she went on all these journeys, she often arrived
Speaker 1: with letters of introduct shin and would have had, you know,
Speaker 1: wealthy hookups to stay with and dine with and rub
Speaker 1: elbows with. But she really tried to avoid that as
Speaker 1: much as possible. She preferred to just trapes around on
Speaker 1: her own and paint her paintings. Yeah. And the cool
Speaker 1: thing about her paintings, which are now on display in
Speaker 1: England in her own gallery that she pushed to have built, Um,
Speaker 1: they're displayed really interestingly. They're all kind of swished together
Speaker 1: like a big pinterest board on the wall, uh to
Speaker 1: throw a modern reference in there. And they're all grouped
Speaker 1: according to country, which is really cool too. But she
Speaker 1: didn't she didn't paint in a super like quote unquote
Speaker 1: scientific way. I mean, if we're talking about women going
Speaker 1: their own way, doing their own thing and not really
Speaker 1: traveling and reporting back like the men did, she didn't
Speaker 1: just paint the single flower or the single leaf or
Speaker 1: plant against a white background, as was the science ific
Speaker 1: habit of the time. She really painted the plant in
Speaker 1: its whole ecosystem, so you might see the plant or
Speaker 1: the flower, but it would be on the bush in
Speaker 1: the field, so you would still see everything that was
Speaker 1: around it and how it was interacting with its ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And in the process she discovered a number of plant species,
Speaker 1: many of which are named in her honor, including just
Speaker 1: for an example, miss North picture plant, and even the
Speaker 1: genus name North thea, which is part of a plant
Speaker 1: family of evergreen trees and shrubs. And through her paintings
Speaker 1: she also showed Europeans for the first time because Google
Speaker 1: image did not exist, but she showed them plants they
Speaker 1: had never seen before, such as the giant picture plant
Speaker 1: of Borneo and the African tort lily. So she very
Speaker 1: much educated the public through her exploration. And I like
Speaker 1: that she didn't bring back all those speciments. It's like
Speaker 1: she went in painted and then left without a trace.
Speaker 1: She left a small minimal footprint, probably in the shape
Speaker 1: of a very uncomfortable Victorian high heeled shoe. And speaking
Speaker 1: of botanists slash explorers, I also want to mention Inez
Speaker 1: and Riquetta Julietta Mechia, who's who has a beautiful name
Speaker 1: that I'm hopefully doing justice to. Um. She came around
Speaker 1: a little bit later than North Um, and she was
Speaker 1: focused on South and Central America and Alaska, and so
Speaker 1: she set out on a series of journeys to remote
Speaker 1: locations around there and collected one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: botanical specimens, and she identified more than five hundred new
Speaker 1: species of plants, many of which were named in her honor.
Speaker 1: So she was more of the go and collective specimen,
Speaker 1: bring it back, not so much of an artist, but
Speaker 1: nonetheless an important explorer to know. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: I think about I think what's so neat a about
Speaker 1: Marian North I mean, being such a product of her time,
Speaker 1: is that she's exactly the type of woman from this
Speaker 1: era that Domash was writing about in terms of going
Speaker 1: her own way, doing what she was doing for her
Speaker 1: I mean, she just loved to paint, and so she's
Speaker 1: sort of fell into this love of plants and exploration
Speaker 1: from her father combined with her own love of painting
Speaker 1: to really go about this scientific pursuit in her own
Speaker 1: very unique way. Well, and the fact that she was
Speaker 1: focused on. Botany is significant too, because unlike say geography,
Speaker 1: which was a field, an emerging field at the time,
Speaker 1: very much exclusive to men, botany, not so surprisingly, was
Speaker 1: really the only hard science considered female appropriate because it's flowers. Well,
Speaker 1: of course we would want to study flowers. It's it's
Speaker 1: we could learn to arrange them in vases for our
Speaker 1: sitting rooms where we stay, right, exactly, that was my
Speaker 1: victory Orian woman. Well, okay, so one woman that we
Speaker 1: have to mention, we have to mention and who was
Speaker 1: focused on a little bit of a more masculine science
Speaker 1: or sciences plural is Gertrude Bell. Now we could do
Speaker 1: like fifteen hours worth of podcasts on Gertrude Bell because
Speaker 1: she's so fascinating and accomplished so much in her life.
Speaker 1: But we actually don't have to because stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class. Our sister podcast has already done a
Speaker 1: two parter on Gertrude Bell. That's right, So if you
Speaker 1: really want to dig into her bio, you can do that.
Speaker 1: But in the context of exploration, yes, we must discuss her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because she was an archaeologist, a linguist, a mountaineer. She
Speaker 1: traveled to the desert and helped form what is now Iraq.
Speaker 1: I mean this, this woman had a hand in a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. And what's interesting if we're talking about
Speaker 1: forming your own path and all that stuff. She also
Speaker 1: was one woman who did not get married. She wasn't
Speaker 1: really considered marriage material because she was so highly educated
Speaker 1: at Oxford, So she ended up teaching herself Persian, hanging
Speaker 1: out with her uncle and Iran who was a British
Speaker 1: official over there, developing this interest in the Middle Eastern region,
Speaker 1: and traveling all over the place. Yeah, the fact that
Speaker 1: she was the first woman to graduate with a modern
Speaker 1: history degree from Oxford essentially just banished her from the
Speaker 1: marriage market. They were like, oh, well, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not not you, Gertrude. You have too many things to
Speaker 1: talk about, Gertrude. Well, and and I also want to
Speaker 1: mention to her mountaineering passion because this is also a
Speaker 1: great snapshot of women exploring at the time, because in
Speaker 1: eighteen she made her first major ascent over thirteen feet
Speaker 1: in the French Alps. But there were no proper clothes
Speaker 1: for female climbers back then, so she took off her
Speaker 1: skirt and just kept climbing in her underclothes until she
Speaker 1: reached the summit. I love it yeah, in her under clothes,
Speaker 1: in her undercarriage clos And in nineteen o one, after
Speaker 1: a few more climbs, she ended up becoming the first
Speaker 1: person to climb all the peaks of the Angle Horner
Speaker 1: Range in the Swiss Alps, and during that time she
Speaker 1: spent two weeks wearing a blue climbing suit with pants,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, pants, although she always changed back into
Speaker 1: her skirt at base camp. And of the nine peaks,
Speaker 1: she was the first person to summit seven of them,
Speaker 1: and she even had a mountaintop named after her, Gertrude
Speaker 1: spitza Gertrude Spitzer Let's climate Caroline. I'm I'm wearing pants though,
Speaker 1: But she wasn't just interested in climbing mountains and just
Speaker 1: hanging out with her uncle in Iran. So in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: she's in Cairo at the time where she becomes the
Speaker 1: first woman officer to be employed by British military intelligence,
Speaker 1: and it's as a British spy that she sent. Then
Speaker 1: goes back to the Middle East and starts doing some
Speaker 1: scouting around. She does and she ends up having a
Speaker 1: huge impact over there um, but not everybody was super
Speaker 1: excited about her participation. Diplomatic advisor Sir Mark Sykes put it, thus,
Speaker 1: late confound the silly, chattering wind bag of conceited, gushing,
Speaker 1: flat chested man woman, globe trotting, rump wagging, bleathering ass. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he had a lot to say about her.
Speaker 1: And it's funny that like gendered stuff gets in there.
Speaker 1: He calls her a man woman and flat chested, and
Speaker 1: then you've got like, yeah, you've got the dismissive stuff,
Speaker 1: the globe trotting, rump wagging, she's a wind bag. She
Speaker 1: talks so much like God forbid women talk so But generally,
Speaker 1: I mean generally she was admired and appreciated. And I
Speaker 1: mean it's obvious because in Iraq in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: she's this powerful official of the British administration in Baghdad
Speaker 1: after World War One, and she helped ensure that an
Speaker 1: Arab state was founded from the three Ottoman provinces of Mosl,
Speaker 1: Baghdad and Bosra, but helped ensure that it would stay
Speaker 1: too weak to be independent of Britain. Yeah, she essentially
Speaker 1: drew the borderlines of Iraq and so If her name
Speaker 1: is ringing a bell right now, Gertrude Bell ding Ding,
Speaker 1: it might be because her name has been coming up
Speaker 1: recently in some news articles about the current unrest in Iraq,
Speaker 1: because you know, I mean, this was a state that
Speaker 1: was drawn up strategically to sort of pitt different groups
Speaker 1: and tribes against each other to ensure that they would
Speaker 1: never become more powerful than Britain. So yet again we
Speaker 1: have to reference sort of the the uncomfortable undercurrent of
Speaker 1: um political nastiness and white people muck and stuff up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good way to put it. But I mean,
Speaker 1: in all this, she did make bagged at her permanent home,
Speaker 1: and she did help to organize elections, and she did
Speaker 1: help to write a constitution, and in she was the
Speaker 1: first person to write a white paper called the Review
Speaker 1: of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia, And a white paper
Speaker 1: is basically like a really long informational booklet about a place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she kind of makes me feel like I need to
Speaker 1: do more with my life. I don't know, But the
Speaker 1: desert is so hot. It doesn't have to be in
Speaker 1: the desert, Carol, Okay, cool, Okay. Well, in the last
Speaker 1: big Explorer of your that we really want to focus
Speaker 1: on for this episode is one Alexandra David Neil. And
Speaker 1: it's like we've been kind of moving eastward on our
Speaker 1: our map here because we had Gertrude Bell in the
Speaker 1: Middle East, and now we're gonna have Alexander David Neil
Speaker 1: go into the deep East. Yeah. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a woman who lived to be just shy of her
Speaker 1: one first birthday and so in true in her true
Speaker 1: middle age. At fifty five, she became the first European
Speaker 1: woman to reach Tibet's forbidden capital, and she remains the
Speaker 1: most accurate, extensive source on hidden Buddhist practices of this
Speaker 1: really what is sort of vanishing Eastern world. But she
Speaker 1: didn't start out that way. She actually began her career
Speaker 1: as an opera singer and then her voice broke and
Speaker 1: she was like, well, now what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: And so she became a strongly feminist writer because of
Speaker 1: course naturally and uh, it was through her writing and
Speaker 1: research that her interests in Eastern philosophy really matured, and
Speaker 1: that plant the seed for this harrowing journey that she
Speaker 1: made over the trans Himalayas to Lassa. Now in order
Speaker 1: to get around and actually avoid getting arrested by British officials.
Speaker 1: She disguised herself as a Tibetan man by wearing a
Speaker 1: massive yak fur coat and a necklace made of animal skulls. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was in the winter of ninety four, and she
Speaker 1: went with one of her adopted sons and yeah, managed
Speaker 1: to just disguise herself as a beggar. No, no big deal,
Speaker 1: no threat here, definitely not a Western woman. Um. And
Speaker 1: three years later, in nine, her book My Journey to Lassa,
Speaker 1: which was published in New York, London and Paris, became
Speaker 1: an instant classic of travel and adventure. People couldn't get
Speaker 1: enough of this exotic story. Yeah, and she ended up,
Speaker 1: along with her adopted son, writing two dozen books on
Speaker 1: Eastern themes Um. And that one journey to Lasso was
Speaker 1: by no means the only journey that she took. I mean,
Speaker 1: she spent so much time in Tibetan and other areas
Speaker 1: in the Far East. And we could go on and
Speaker 1: on and on with other stories of other women doing
Speaker 1: incredible things around the world. Unfortunately, we only have time
Speaker 1: in this podcast just to do a survey of explorers
Speaker 1: past and present and since We've talked so much about
Speaker 1: women of the past. Now let's talk about what women
Speaker 1: are doing exploration wise today. Yeah, um, I mean speaking
Speaker 1: of you know, the East. Um, we have Christina Lee
Speaker 1: who's an American bioarchaeologist who is exploring diversity through skeletons.
Speaker 1: She combines physical anthropology and archaeology to study human remains
Speaker 1: that are millennia old. And she talks about her own
Speaker 1: personal experience what drove her, which is feeling um as
Speaker 1: an Asian student in Texas, feeling out of place. She
Speaker 1: says that she wanted to explore diversity, that it's at
Speaker 1: the core of her archaeological research, and to search for
Speaker 1: those sort of diverse beginnings through dental anthropology. I mean,
Speaker 1: this woman is incredible, saying that look ing a dental
Speaker 1: dental anthropology can reveal everything from population origin and history
Speaker 1: to migration and intermarriage. And she's doing a lot of
Speaker 1: this research in China, and so she was saying that
Speaker 1: she hopes her discoveries can give the people of China
Speaker 1: a greater sense of their own cultural identity and past.
Speaker 1: And then for another example of a modern stem explorer,
Speaker 1: we have Nalini ned Carney whose specialty is studying tree
Speaker 1: canopies in rainforests in Central and South America and it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: She she gave a ted talk on what she has
Speaker 1: learned from the tree canopies, because it's kind of like
Speaker 1: how we don't think of all the things you could
Speaker 1: learn from a tooth, like Christina Lee is doing. Nalini,
Speaker 1: who grew up climbing trees and loving climb trees, essentially
Speaker 1: climbs trees for a living in order to investigate what
Speaker 1: kind of bio diversity is living up high in those
Speaker 1: tree tops. And it's fascinating me the kind of mosses
Speaker 1: and insects and all of these things that support these
Speaker 1: very fragile ecosystems. And so obviously this is linked to
Speaker 1: ecological preservation and um. Just to think though of exploration
Speaker 1: and tree climbing as a modern day profession that has
Speaker 1: a positive impact on our daily lives is so incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think you just hit on something
Speaker 1: really important about modern day explorers. Whereas in the Golden
Speaker 1: Age of exploration, you had a lot of people not
Speaker 1: necessarily out for themselves, but out for the glory of
Speaker 1: their empire back home. Whether that was America or Britain.
Speaker 1: I think now you have a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of women in particular, who were out exploring for
Speaker 1: the purpose of shedding light on global problems, whether that's
Speaker 1: um ecological problems, environmental issues, or whether that's food problems
Speaker 1: throughout the world. You have a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there today trying to shed the light on tragedies that
Speaker 1: need our attention. Yeah, and that's one of the aims
Speaker 1: of Kiasalak, who is an incredible traveler. She's traveled alone
Speaker 1: to almost every continent, and she really focuses on going
Speaker 1: to remote and sometimes dangerous, outright dangerous locations. And she's
Speaker 1: been profiled in the National Geographic and all sorts of
Speaker 1: other places because, for instance, I mean, she was the
Speaker 1: first woman to traverse Papua New Guinea. She also biked
Speaker 1: seven hundred miles from Alaska to the Arctic Ocean. She
Speaker 1: also biked seven hundred miles from Alaska to the Arctic Ocean.
Speaker 1: She's a fearless woman in other words, right, And she's
Speaker 1: a fearless woman with goals, she said, to reveal situations
Speaker 1: no one else is covering, like slavery and timbuctoo and
Speaker 1: genocide and Eastern Congo. She said that these tragedies are
Speaker 1: very emotionally difficult to witness, but if by shedding light
Speaker 1: on them, I can improve even one person's life, I
Speaker 1: feel it's worth the risk. Well, and at one point
Speaker 1: to where she was is escaping me at the moment,
Speaker 1: but she was kidnapped by some locals and had to escape.
Speaker 1: She actually made an escape, and she was talking about
Speaker 1: how that kind of danger is terrifying. Yes, but when
Speaker 1: she encounters obstacles like that, getting through them only empowers
Speaker 1: her to keep exploring further. Right, And she told a
Speaker 1: story about um, I can't remember which river she was
Speaker 1: traveling down, but the women alongside the river were just
Speaker 1: cheering her on and chanting for her, you know, because
Speaker 1: she might raise the eyebrows of the men in the
Speaker 1: local populations that she travels past, but the women are
Speaker 1: definitely on her side. And then I mean continuing the
Speaker 1: theme of women out there exploring to benefit the global
Speaker 1: population at large. Alexander Custo, Yes, that Custo. She's the
Speaker 1: granddaughter of Jacques Cousto, is a social environmental advocate and
Speaker 1: one of National Graphics Emerging Explorers who looks at all
Speaker 1: different kinds of media opportunities and partnerships between different diverse
Speaker 1: groups to create platforms for emerging environmental leaders. So be
Speaker 1: Gaustove travels all over the world to highlight environmental issues.
Speaker 1: Her latest initiative, Blue Legacy, for instance, was created to
Speaker 1: inspire people to take action on water issues around the
Speaker 1: world and to help spark some dialogue on climate change,
Speaker 1: water availability to various populations throughout the world, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So those are just some names who instead of going
Speaker 1: out into the world just taking specimens to inform knowledge.
Speaker 1: Not that stuff like that is not important and obviously
Speaker 1: is critical to scientific research, but these are just a
Speaker 1: few women who are traveling the world to help everyone else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the biggest takeaways from and we're
Speaker 1: only focusing in this episode two on overland and exploration,
Speaker 1: and there are so many other names too that we
Speaker 1: could have talked about. Um, but when it comes to
Speaker 1: just the the giant umbrella of exploration, you know, the
Speaker 1: question from we when we're talking about the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: is why, well, why would they go explore? Well, because
Speaker 1: they had everything to discover. Fast forward to today, same question, Well,
Speaker 1: why would you explore because we still have everything to discover.
Speaker 1: There's always something new to learn. So hopefully we can
Speaker 1: do our part to shed light on the women who
Speaker 1: are doing that and have done that, and we'll do
Speaker 1: that in the future. So if you are an explorer,
Speaker 1: an adventurer, an outdoors person, um, if any of these
Speaker 1: names ring bells to you, we want to hear all
Speaker 1: of your exploration thoughts and stories, etcetera. Mom Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com is where you can email us.
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook and like us while you're at it.
Speaker 1: And we've got a couple of messages to share with
Speaker 1: you right now. So I got a couple of letters
Speaker 1: here from our episode on y a Fiction, and this
Speaker 1: one is from Rory, who writes I wanted to comment
Speaker 1: on Time editor joel Stein's comments. I wanted to find
Speaker 1: an article that would put his statement into context, and
Speaker 1: fortunately his opinion piece adults should read adult books was
Speaker 1: just a Google search away. After reading his article, it
Speaker 1: should be said that moderation is the key. This is
Speaker 1: not a revolutionary idea. It's a cliche concept, but it's
Speaker 1: a true one and one that so many people seem
Speaker 1: to forget. Stein appears to take the side in which
Speaker 1: the world of higher art is one in which he
Speaker 1: believes people should aspire to, even using such degrading sentences
Speaker 1: as the only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy
Speaker 1: on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is
Speaker 1: seeing a guy on the plane reading The Hunger Games.
Speaker 1: The only problem with the situation is when an individual,
Speaker 1: regardless of age gender, refuses to step out of their
Speaker 1: comfort zone. There is a point in which someone should
Speaker 1: step up, as it were, and move to the next
Speaker 1: level of literature that may be considered more substantial. It's
Speaker 1: hard to argue that a novel by Susanne Collins or
Speaker 1: John Green could match the prose or philosophical complexity of
Speaker 1: a novel written by by Nabokov or Thomas Hardy. But
Speaker 1: then again, maybe our contemporary way of thinking just can't
Speaker 1: see it yet. However, another problem in the situation is
Speaker 1: the assumption that this person only reads books like The
Speaker 1: Hunger Games or Harry Potter. If that's the case, as
Speaker 1: was hinted in the previous paragraph, that is a problem,
Speaker 1: just as it's a problem if someone only reads Victorian literature.
Speaker 1: It would be beneficial for any reader to move onto
Speaker 1: more challenging examples of literature justice. It would be beneficial
Speaker 1: for someone who has already reached that next level to
Speaker 1: step down from their pedestal and give those supposed lesser
Speaker 1: writers a chance. They may be surprised. Look no further
Speaker 1: than Philip K. Dick, who used to be considered a
Speaker 1: pulse science fiction writer. To my knowledge, he came the
Speaker 1: first science fiction author whose works were collected in two
Speaker 1: volumes that were published by the Library of America, an
Speaker 1: organization that has collected the works of authors such as
Speaker 1: John Updike and Ernest Hemingway. Who was to say that,
Speaker 1: decades from now, the works of John Green will not
Speaker 1: be published in similar collections. So thanks for your insights, Rory. Alrighty,
Speaker 1: I have a letter here from Mary. She says, I
Speaker 1: am a ninth grade English teacher at a high school
Speaker 1: in rural Wisconsin. The town in which I teach is
Speaker 1: very provincial, and as a result, the population is very homogeneous,
Speaker 1: meaning the students are largely white, working class or lower
Speaker 1: middle class kids. This being said in order to help
Speaker 1: my students game perspectives from all walks of life, regions,
Speaker 1: social classes, cultures, ethnicities, rates of sexual orientations, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I use young adult lit. Yes, perhaps I should be
Speaker 1: teaching more classics, and please understand that I do. But
Speaker 1: as wonderful as Lord of the Flies or Great Expectations
Speaker 1: can be, they are usually only presenting limited viewpoints, usually white, straight,
Speaker 1: sisgendered males, so my students do not have the means
Speaker 1: to travel the world and it's people in order to
Speaker 1: bring the world to them. I use young adult lit.
Speaker 1: As you stated in your podcast, it's more representative of
Speaker 1: all people and therefore has helped my students gain new
Speaker 1: views on the world. Through young adult lit. They're able
Speaker 1: to look at life through the eyes of someone with
Speaker 1: a severe disability and Terry Truman stuck in Neutral, or
Speaker 1: experience high school in the shoes of a transgender teen
Speaker 1: and Julianne Peter's Luna, or understand the impact of sexual
Speaker 1: assault on women and Lorie halls Anderson's Speak. Young adult
Speaker 1: lit has enabled me to foster a better understanding of
Speaker 1: the world with my students and helped instill an improved
Speaker 1: sense of empathy in them, much more so than a
Speaker 1: typical complex classic. This is not to say that classics
Speaker 1: have no place in secondary English language arts classes, but
Speaker 1: rather to say that young adult lit is and should
Speaker 1: be placed alongside the literary canon, as they both present
Speaker 1: important and needed aspects and education. So thank you, Mary,
Speaker 1: and thanks to everybody who has written into us mom
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff Works dot com is our email
Speaker 1: address and for links to all of our social media
Speaker 1: blog hosts, videos, and every single one of our five
Speaker 1: hundred plus podcasts, there's one place to go. It's stuff
Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com