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 Kristin. And today is a very exciting day
Speaker 1: in the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, we are kicking off
Speaker 1: our twenty fourteen summer series looking at Women in Exploration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and since this is our introductory episode, we wanted to
Speaker 1: just offer an overview looking at what exploration actually is.
Speaker 1: Because Caroline, exploration is not what I thought it was
Speaker 1: before we started reading about this, I assumed exploration was
Speaker 1: when people just go out into the wilderness and hike around,
Speaker 1: or they climb mountains, or they go walk around the
Speaker 1: snowy land. Yeah, but it's so much more than that.
Speaker 1: I totally am on the Saint was on the same
Speaker 1: page with you. I thought like, oh, well, exploration, it's
Speaker 1: just any any old person who climbs a mountain or
Speaker 1: goes into the woods or what have you to look around,
Speaker 1: have a look around, a look see and and see
Speaker 1: what's out there. But as we'll get into, like Kristen said,
Speaker 1: there is so much more. There's so many more layers
Speaker 1: to what an explorer is versus maybe an adventure and
Speaker 1: and the purposes of each that's right. Um, But since
Speaker 1: we're focusing on women and exploration, we thought a good
Speaker 1: place to kick off this discussion. I was talking about
Speaker 1: how exploration has long been considered more of a masculine pursuit.
Speaker 1: There was a paper we found called Conceptions of Victorian
Speaker 1: Masculinity within Britain's Colonial Project in Egypt by Claire Anderson,
Speaker 1: and she talks about this. She writes about how the
Speaker 1: explorer's gaze has been generically and literally a man's gaze
Speaker 1: because at that time she's writing about the Victorian era,
Speaker 1: travel outside of Europe was mostly a male experience. By definition,
Speaker 1: travel outside of the homeland was identified as masculine and
Speaker 1: was carried out by heroic explorers. And then she goes
Speaker 1: on to talk about how ideologically and culturally our idea
Speaker 1: of travel and exploration has often been the province of masculinity,
Speaker 1: founded on designations of entitlement, autonomy, and agency and emblematized
Speaker 1: by male members of the moneyed classes. That's a lot, right,
Speaker 1: and and it's if you go back to the episode
Speaker 1: that we did on Coffee, we kind of touched on
Speaker 1: this in that episode, talking about how men were the
Speaker 1: ones and a lot of times it was the upper class,
Speaker 1: uh genteel gentleman who would go off and explore and
Speaker 1: learn about this new hot beverage and and bring it
Speaker 1: back and talk about their explorations. And so it very
Speaker 1: much was considered a masculine thing, because why would women,
Speaker 1: with all of their heavy skirts and their need to
Speaker 1: be in the home sphere, why would they be traveling
Speaker 1: out especially alone. Yeah, there's some very real gendered not
Speaker 1: just baggage but luggage with this idea of exploration and
Speaker 1: what it means more broadly beyond just stepping out beyond
Speaker 1: your own doorstep. But there were though, a number of
Speaker 1: women who violated those Victorian gender norms and set out
Speaker 1: to explore. And one that we wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: for a minute was Harriett Chalmers Adams, who was born
Speaker 1: in California in eighteen seventy five. She was self taught,
Speaker 1: kind of raised in the California Mountains and rode horseback
Speaker 1: when she was an adult along the routes of Columbus
Speaker 1: and the Spanish conquistadors because she was kind of obsessed
Speaker 1: with this idea of Spanish colonialism, and she ended up
Speaker 1: founding the Society of Women Geographers. Yeah, and she was
Speaker 1: actually inspired by her father, who was a Scottish engineer,
Speaker 1: who took her on a trip throughout California on horseback
Speaker 1: when girlfriend was eight years old. So she had it
Speaker 1: instilled in her from a very young age. And I
Speaker 1: love seeing how, even back then, how important it is
Speaker 1: for someone in a young girl's life to show her
Speaker 1: the way literally and figuratively when it comes to anything
Speaker 1: along the lines of exploration, stem if we're if we're
Speaker 1: looking talking about more recent developments, but anyway, Yeah. She
Speaker 1: She was one of four other women who founded the
Speaker 1: Society of Women Geographers in nine and by the end
Speaker 1: of her life, Adams had visited every country with a
Speaker 1: Spanish or Portuguese connection, in addition to all of the
Speaker 1: other countries she visited to. Yeah. And Adams was known
Speaker 1: as the foremost female explorer of her day, and one
Speaker 1: quote of hers that jumped out to us was her saying,
Speaker 1: I've wondered why men have so absolutely monopolized the field
Speaker 1: of exploration. Why did women never go to the Arctic
Speaker 1: try for one pole or the other. I've never found
Speaker 1: my sex and Hindrance never faced a difficulty with to
Speaker 1: a woman as well as a man could not surmount,
Speaker 1: never felt a fear of danger, never lacked courage to
Speaker 1: protect myself. So Adam's clearly he was quite a tough woman.
Speaker 1: But but it's interesting to hear her asking these questions
Speaker 1: that I think some people still ask today. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: my family would say, she's got a little bit of
Speaker 1: that Scotch contrariness that we have in the urban family
Speaker 1: as well. Um, but we should also talk about mountaineer
Speaker 1: Annie Smith Peck. She is these self proclaimed if we
Speaker 1: want to talk about self assured women out there in
Speaker 1: this era, she has the self proclaimed queen of climbing
Speaker 1: who in climbed twenty four thousand feet, which is higher
Speaker 1: than any man or woman at the time. And Peck
Speaker 1: would probably qualify a little bit more as an adventurer
Speaker 1: than and explorer, someone who's going out to collect information
Speaker 1: about an unknown land and then bring it back. Her
Speaker 1: thing was more scaling these mountains. And she was clearly
Speaker 1: a little bit of a feminist as well, because in
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven she climbed Peru's second highest peak and planted
Speaker 1: a votes for women's side on its summit. Awesome. And
Speaker 1: Caroline is sitting across from me fist pumping right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so awesome. And this woman even had
Speaker 1: a peak in was Garan named after her. And she
Speaker 1: also has an awesome quote that we wanted to share
Speaker 1: talking about men and women going mountain climbing, being mountaineers
Speaker 1: and what they wear when they go do this. She says, men,
Speaker 1: as we all know, climbing knickerbockers. Women, on the contrary,
Speaker 1: will declare that a skirt is no hindrance to their locomotion.
Speaker 1: And you're like, okay, cool, women can achieve things in
Speaker 1: skirts do And then she's like, this is obviously absurd.
Speaker 1: For a woman in difficult mountaineering to waste her strength
Speaker 1: and endanger her life with a skirt is foolish in
Speaker 1: the extreme. So yeah, you could say that she's on
Speaker 1: the whole dress reform bandwagon. Yeah. And just to round
Speaker 1: out this trio of early women explorers and travelers examples,
Speaker 1: we have Isabella Bird Bishop, who was the first woman
Speaker 1: inducted into the Royal Geographical Society in eight and she
Speaker 1: was one of the premier travel writers of her day
Speaker 1: and the author of A Lady's Life in the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountains and apparently it was a big deal when she
Speaker 1: was riding horseback through the Rockies that she did so
Speaker 1: not side saddle but a stride. Uh huh. Nice talk
Speaker 1: about I mean like these women in terms of even
Speaker 1: just riding horsebacker stride or in pects case, wearing the
Speaker 1: knickerbockers instead of address these women who were having to
Speaker 1: violate gender norms over and over again in the name
Speaker 1: of expanding their worlds and also expanding the public's world
Speaker 1: right bringing back this information exactly showing that women can
Speaker 1: do it too, but not everybody was having it. Women
Speaker 1: were typically exclude, for instance, from exploration in Antarctica, which
Speaker 1: has been referred to as the most inconvenient boys club
Speaker 1: in the world, and a lot of this is because
Speaker 1: funding tended to come from scientific and military organizations, which
Speaker 1: they themselves, of course, excluded women. So men provide the funding,
Speaker 1: men received the funding, and then to top it off,
Speaker 1: The Esteemed Explorers Club, which was founded in nineteen o four,
Speaker 1: remained all male for seventy seven years and finally gender
Speaker 1: desegregated in nineteen eighty one, and its first female members
Speaker 1: included Sylvia Earl, Diane Fosse, Rita Matthews, Anna Roosevelt, and
Speaker 1: Katherine Sullivan, which are names that will probably pop up
Speaker 1: over the next few weeks as we dig deeper into
Speaker 1: notable female explorers. And in two thousand, the Explorers Club
Speaker 1: elected its first female president, Fania L. Rose. And it's
Speaker 1: funny on their website they have the timeline of the
Speaker 1: Explorers Club and at the very bottom of the web
Speaker 1: page talking given going through their history, they say, and
Speaker 1: then finally in the eighties, we brought in our newest
Speaker 1: group of explorers, who, of course or women. But then
Speaker 1: you go back to you know, Isabella Bird who was
Speaker 1: being inducted into the Royal Geographical Society in what was
Speaker 1: that the eighteen sixties, and it was clear they were
Speaker 1: kind of trying to cover their tracks a little bit,
Speaker 1: being like, oh, yeah, oh, yes, since women had never
Speaker 1: been out of the house before, there are there, there
Speaker 1: are new members. But yeah, so so let's look at
Speaker 1: some of the incredible firsts that women have achieved in exploration,
Speaker 1: because they have been everywhere from the sky space uh
Speaker 1: and and a little bit below in zeppelin's depending on
Speaker 1: what sort of vessel they're traveling, and all the way
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the ocean and everywhere in between.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. Yeah, because the question of well,
Speaker 1: where have women explorers been every where? So take for instance,
Speaker 1: Christina Channelska Liskowitz, who was the first woman to sail
Speaker 1: solo around the world, starting and ending at the Canary
Speaker 1: Islands in nineteen seventies six. Yeah, and then you have
Speaker 1: a woman who has all the names Grace Marguerite, Hey, Drummond,
Speaker 1: Hay or we'll just call her Lady Drummonday if you
Speaker 1: want to. But anyway, she's a crackajack reporter and the
Speaker 1: first woman to fly around the world, which she did
Speaker 1: buy zeppelin in And if you Google image search this woman,
Speaker 1: which I highly recommend, there are pictures of her because
Speaker 1: she not only was this amazing explorer, but she was
Speaker 1: also quite a fancy lady. She's also very beautiful. She
Speaker 1: also donned as incredible like leather and fleece coat, so
Speaker 1: very much. She was very much dressed for the role
Speaker 1: of explorer. She's also in an ad for Lucky Strike
Speaker 1: cigarettes with the quote above her saying something, I'll smoke
Speaker 1: a Lucky instead of eating sweets. So there's some ba
Speaker 1: advertising trivia there for you, Lady Drummond. Hey, my goodness,
Speaker 1: She's also two of this early type of female journalists
Speaker 1: who traveled a lot. It was a big deal. Nellie Bligh,
Speaker 1: whom we'll talk about in an upcoming episode, is sort
Speaker 1: of her predecessor in the sense of being a journalist
Speaker 1: who really made her name not just through her writing
Speaker 1: but also through her traveling. Uh. And then moving on though,
Speaker 1: we have Annie London Berry kop Chovsky, who was the
Speaker 1: first woman to bicycle around the world, and she similarly
Speaker 1: was a writer like Lady Drummond Hey and a self
Speaker 1: described new woman, which I think some of this her
Speaker 1: self politicizing had to do with the fact that she
Speaker 1: bicycled around the world, because one of her quotes, in
Speaker 1: a similar vein as what we quoted from Harriet Chalmers
Speaker 1: Adams a few minutes ago, was about how she can
Speaker 1: do anything that a guy can do. She said, I'm
Speaker 1: a new woman if by that it means that I
Speaker 1: think that I can I'm capable of doing whatever a
Speaker 1: man is capable of doing. Awesome on a bicycle especially,
Speaker 1: we need to make like a trading cards series, don't
Speaker 1: you think with all of these women on them and
Speaker 1: their quotes. Yeah, I would totally get one of those
Speaker 1: baseball card books and collect them. Um. Anyway, we also
Speaker 1: have a Junko Taipei, who is the first woman to
Speaker 1: reach the summit of Everest, which she did in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. And don't worry, we will be providing pool
Speaker 1: anymore mountaineering information in a future episode for this series,
Speaker 1: So just hold tight. And one thing to remember too
Speaker 1: about exploration is that it doesn't just take place on Earth,
Speaker 1: but it also includes exploration in space. So we have
Speaker 1: to give a nod to Russian Valentina Tereshkova, who was
Speaker 1: the first woman in space. We got up there in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three. And you know earlier we mentioned that
Speaker 1: women were excluded from Arctic missions. Well, Live Arniston became
Speaker 1: the first woman to make it to the South Pole alone.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being at the South Pole alone? I
Speaker 1: bet it's so quiet? Yeah, except I mean, like except
Speaker 1: for polar bears. I guess seven or and as uh oh,
Speaker 1: Santa's at the North Pole. Yeah mind. I was about
Speaker 1: to say, well, maybe the South Pole is his vacation home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe so maybe? Okay. Well, then there's also Fiona Campbell,
Speaker 1: who became the first woman to walk around the world
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty three to yeah, well it took her
Speaker 1: eleven years because she was on foot. That takes a while.
Speaker 1: That would take quite a while, eleven years to be precise.
Speaker 1: But the thing about it is she almost walked around
Speaker 1: the world. She later came out and confessed that she
Speaker 1: fibbed about sucking a thousand of those miles because it
Speaker 1: turns out she was pregnant and so walking was a
Speaker 1: bit difficult. And then she later went and had an
Speaker 1: abortion while she was doing this journey, and people were
Speaker 1: really awful to her about the whole thing, and she
Speaker 1: sort of dropped out of public life after that. So
Speaker 1: more of a very fraught story of a female adventurer.
Speaker 1: And again, Campbell is an example of one who would
Speaker 1: be more of an adventurer than an explorer, because when
Speaker 1: we think about exploration today, it has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with stem fields, or science, technology, engineering, and math.
Speaker 1: And one woman who really stresses this connection between exploration
Speaker 1: and the stem fields is the very impressive Milbury Poke,
Speaker 1: who founded and is the director emeritus of the group
Speaker 1: Wings World Quest, which works really hard to raise money
Speaker 1: for women explorers and get their story out there. Because
Speaker 1: she talks about the importance of basically different viewpoints, and
Speaker 1: how you have to have women involved to get sort
Speaker 1: of all of the information that could possibly help humanity, right,
Speaker 1: and that requires exploration, going outside of labs and getting
Speaker 1: into the natural world and collecting samples, bringing some of
Speaker 1: those samples back to labs, reporting from the field. And
Speaker 1: she went on Bloomberg not too long ago to talk
Speaker 1: about wings World Quest, and she mentioned how people tend
Speaker 1: to think of exploration as being about big geographical continents
Speaker 1: or undiscovered tribes, but actually exploration is about everything from
Speaker 1: the infinitesimal to the universe. Yeah, And so she talks
Speaker 1: about how when you look at magazines like Science News,
Speaker 1: that they're publishing all of these discoveries across a vast
Speaker 1: range of topics, and so she says it's very important
Speaker 1: that we look and listen to explorers because they are
Speaker 1: the people on the forefront making the discoveries that help
Speaker 1: the rest of us make informed decisions about how we
Speaker 1: go forward. And so that being said, how important it
Speaker 1: is then that women be included in those discoveries, because
Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked about this in terms of the workplace,
Speaker 1: in terms of politics and world leadership. That if you
Speaker 1: don't have the viewpoint of half of the population. Everybody suffers, right,
Speaker 1: And this is also why we are making the distinction
Speaker 1: between explorers and adventurers, because, as Caroline and I both
Speaker 1: admitted at the top of the podcast, we, like probably
Speaker 1: a lot of other people, imagine explores more along the
Speaker 1: lines of Tunko Taipei, whose mission was to climb to
Speaker 1: the top of Mount Everest and climb back down, not
Speaker 1: so much in the sense of exploration, for the purpose
Speaker 1: of broadening our knowledge of STEM. And Pulp talked about
Speaker 1: too how it's a challenge for her and wings World
Speaker 1: Quest to not just make that connection between exploration and STEM,
Speaker 1: but then from there make the connection between STEM and women,
Speaker 1: because she says, a lot of times, we probably don't
Speaker 1: think about women as explorers, going back to that first
Speaker 1: quote that we tossed out the top of the podcast
Speaker 1: about how exploration has long been considered this masculine pursuit,
Speaker 1: but there's also this underlying connection of we also don't
Speaker 1: think of women as scientists. So if we don't think
Speaker 1: of women as scientists, then of course we're not going
Speaker 1: to think of them as these explorers who are going
Speaker 1: out in the field to collect that scientific data. And
Speaker 1: then circling back to when we were talking about Harriet
Speaker 1: Chalmers Adams, who we talked about her father was an
Speaker 1: engineer who inspired her love of exploration, took her on
Speaker 1: those horseback adventures, and how important it is to have
Speaker 1: someone in a young girl's life, whether it is the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century or whether it's the twenty first century. Polpe
Speaker 1: talks about how portant it is to both get these
Speaker 1: women out in the field as explorers and to fund
Speaker 1: their explorations because they can then serve as role models
Speaker 1: to young girls. And she says, really to everybody, because
Speaker 1: it's my belief that everybody's an explorer. Well, and the
Speaker 1: big thing she was hammering home to was the fact
Speaker 1: that they have a flag that the explorers take out
Speaker 1: with them, and she says that the flag is important
Speaker 1: because it's the symbol of women going into the field
Speaker 1: to make a discovery, or under the ocean, under the
Speaker 1: ocean that's in the ocean, and there's a picture of
Speaker 1: one of the Wings World Quest explorers with the dragging
Speaker 1: the flag underwater as they swim. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: that ends up going back to Annie smith Peck, who
Speaker 1: you know, put that flag on top of the mountain
Speaker 1: and Peru saying votes for women. So it's important to
Speaker 1: get that image out there in people's minds. And it's
Speaker 1: not just Wings World Quest who is out there supporting
Speaker 1: women explorers. There's also the National Geographic Young Explorers Grant,
Speaker 1: which if go to their web page, I was pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprised to see a broad representation of women explorers that
Speaker 1: they are funding. There's also the Explorers Club, finally gender
Speaker 1: de segregated in nineteen eighty one, that does offer grants
Speaker 1: for high school students through doctorate students in addition to
Speaker 1: early post stoc explorers. Because what can also be challenging
Speaker 1: speaking of doctorate students is that a lot of explorers
Speaker 1: seem to be self taught, and if you aren't under
Speaker 1: the umbrella of some kind of academic organization and are
Speaker 1: able to get funding that way, someone might go for
Speaker 1: a corporate sponsorship. So you can get companies which have
Speaker 1: in the past sponsored explorers giving them equipment, such as Rolex,
Speaker 1: Polar Tech, Gore, and land Rover, which really that combination
Speaker 1: just makes it sound like someone's going on a super
Speaker 1: lux safari fancistic explorations. But these are the kinds of
Speaker 1: companies so that make tough, high end goods that can
Speaker 1: withstand harsh conditions. So if you are, like say a
Speaker 1: Live Arniston, the first woman to make it to the
Speaker 1: South Pole alone, hopefully you're gonna go with rock solid
Speaker 1: equipment like GPS and radios and hopefully podcast machines. Caroline,
Speaker 1: that's right up with a crank, Yeah, maybe a flashlight
Speaker 1: attack a podcast victrola to keep you company in the wild.
Speaker 1: But I mean, speaking of Live Arniston, her bff and
Speaker 1: Bancroft has started the and Bancroft and Bancroft Foundation, which
Speaker 1: is granted specific to Minnesota, but it actually funds a
Speaker 1: lot of awesome exploration adventures for young girls, So it's
Speaker 1: sort of to encourage them to pursue this field. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't have anything else really to list there,
Speaker 1: because there's not a whole lot of women's specific exploration
Speaker 1: funding groups out there. Well. I think it is partially
Speaker 1: because of the public perception of what an explorer is.
Speaker 1: I think that we forget that there are still modern
Speaker 1: day explorers whose livelihood is doing this kind of work,
Speaker 1: and I think that we don't at least you know, again, myself.
Speaker 1: I didn't hadn't made the connection between exploration and the
Speaker 1: stem fields we talk about so much. But there are
Speaker 1: so many modern day female explorer role models for girls
Speaker 1: and other women to look up to. And if we
Speaker 1: want to talk about literally looking up, let's talk about
Speaker 1: a couple of space explorers. There's Katie Coleman, who has
Speaker 1: logged more than four thousand, three hundred thirty hours in
Speaker 1: space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia and the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: And May Jimmison, who was the first African American woman
Speaker 1: astronaut who actually left NASA in and she and Coleman
Speaker 1: are now working together to promote space exploration and based travel.
Speaker 1: And Caroline and I may or may not have seen
Speaker 1: them speak at a conference earlier in and it was
Speaker 1: very exciting to see those explorers on stage talking And
Speaker 1: we may or may not have been sitting next to
Speaker 1: them for half of the day not realizing who they were,
Speaker 1: and totally geeked out when they got on stage and
Speaker 1: we realized who had been our seat mates for a
Speaker 1: couple hours. Um, but yeah, we really, we really wanted
Speaker 1: to highlight a couple of names. For you. Looking at
Speaker 1: everything from the bottom of the ocean two, outer space,
Speaker 1: just to prove as if we had to, but just
Speaker 1: to prove to you that there are so many women
Speaker 1: out there at every level of exploration. So if you
Speaker 1: look at ecology, there's someone like Grace Gobo who's an
Speaker 1: ethnobotanist working to preserve natural plant remedies and habitats in Tanzania.
Speaker 1: So she's researching plants for you know, maybe people who
Speaker 1: don't have access to drugs pharmaceuticals and who need the
Speaker 1: healing powers of plants in their native countries. And then
Speaker 1: if we look at one of the fields that young
Speaker 1: Caroline wanted to enter as a as a small person
Speaker 1: who imagined herself to be Indiana Jones, we've got to
Speaker 1: look at paleontology, and we have to talk about the
Speaker 1: amazing Sue Hendrickson, who she's not only a paleontologist, she's
Speaker 1: also a marine archaeologist, I mean m b D. So
Speaker 1: she has found everything from shipwrecks with treasure to ancient
Speaker 1: sunken cities to the world's largest and most complete Trannosaurus
Speaker 1: Rex skeleton in nineteen ninety oh and also Hendrickson never
Speaker 1: went to college. She was one of those many Explorers
Speaker 1: who was completely self taught, as in a self taught
Speaker 1: fossil hunter, marine archaeologist, adventurer, and explorer. In other words,
Speaker 1: it sounds like Sue Hendrickson has kind of the coolest
Speaker 1: life ever. I think so, I think that's safe to say,
Speaker 1: but I mean, speaking of the ocean, we also have
Speaker 1: to talk about Sylvia Earle, who her biography is ginormous.
Speaker 1: This woman is the National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence.
Speaker 1: She's led more than one hundred expeditions, logged more than
Speaker 1: seven thousand hours under water. She set a record for
Speaker 1: solo diving in one thousand meter depth. She's formerly the
Speaker 1: chief scientist at Noah. She's the founder of the Deep
Speaker 1: Ocean Exploration and Research Inc. On and on and on.
Speaker 1: This woman is incredible. And if her name sounds familiar,
Speaker 1: it's because she was one of the first women admitted
Speaker 1: to the Explorers Club when they started letting women in
Speaker 1: the gates in ninety one. And two names that have
Speaker 1: also come up already in the podcast Live Arniston and
Speaker 1: Ann Bancroft are sort of the two leading women of
Speaker 1: Arctic exploration these days. Together they were the first women
Speaker 1: to ski across Antarctica in two thousand one, and they've
Speaker 1: teamed up to establish Bancroft Arniston Explore, which is a
Speaker 1: for profit company dedicated to supporting and promoting women's expeditions. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, how many different disciplines did we just took off? There?
Speaker 1: We were talking about space, ecologe, paleontology, oceanography, and Arctic exploration.
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly the ven diagram between stem and exploration
Speaker 1: intersect so much. It encapsulates so much of our world, right,
Speaker 1: And what's so great to see two is that so
Speaker 1: many people like Live Arniston an Am Bancroft, for instance,
Speaker 1: are doing everything that they can to get other women
Speaker 1: and young girls interested in this stuff and to show
Speaker 1: them that there's so much out there yet to explore.
Speaker 1: It's it reminds me of and I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've shared this before, but it reminds me of my
Speaker 1: freshman year roommate who when I told her that I
Speaker 1: was thinking about majoring in archaeology, she told me that
Speaker 1: why everything's already been found? Oh no, she needs to
Speaker 1: talk to Milbury polk She needs to talk to Milbury Polke,
Speaker 1: And she could talk to any of these other women
Speaker 1: who would poo poo that notion well, because that was
Speaker 1: one of the questions that a bloom or host had
Speaker 1: for Polk when she was talking about wings world, quest
Speaker 1: basically asking what is left to explore, and her answer
Speaker 1: was everything we can. We will never know everything there
Speaker 1: is to know about the world and the universe, And
Speaker 1: so I cheer every time there is a story in
Speaker 1: the news about another species being found, another galaxy, another
Speaker 1: dinosaur skeleton, anything, another lost city, anything. I I think
Speaker 1: of my my old roommate, and I cheer a little
Speaker 1: bit well. And in terms of we, we've talked a
Speaker 1: lot too about the importance of visibility and when it
Speaker 1: comes to girls, they not only have this roster of
Speaker 1: female explorers, but there was a recent development from LEGO
Speaker 1: that they are coming out with this new line of
Speaker 1: female scientists, which are also explorers in a way because
Speaker 1: it's a trio of an astronomer, a paleontologist, and a chemist,
Speaker 1: all of which do exploratory work. Yeah, and I love that.
Speaker 1: The geochemist and LEGO enthusiast who submitted this proposal to LEGO,
Speaker 1: Dr Ellen Kushman, said the motto of these scientists is clear,
Speaker 1: explore the world. And beyond, and so there you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love that. You know, Lego has been
Speaker 1: doing a lot recently. We've talked about them before with
Speaker 1: Lego friends, for instance, to encourage girls to play with
Speaker 1: Legos developed their you know, sensory skills and all that stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: And so I love that Lego is getting into the
Speaker 1: game with these mini fig explorers who, you know, say
Speaker 1: what you will about pink or not, but you know
Speaker 1: they're not pink. They look like all the rest of
Speaker 1: the Lego minifigs. Yeah. Well, I hope that this kickoff
Speaker 1: episode is gotten folks excited about learning more about Women Explores,
Speaker 1: because it's gotten me excited, Caroline. And for the next month,
Speaker 1: we're going to be highlighting, in three separate up episodes,
Speaker 1: women who explore the land and the mountains, women who
Speaker 1: explore the oceans deep, and women who explore the Arctic
Speaker 1: frozen lands. And we'll be digging deeper into the women
Speaker 1: both past and present who have made the significant and
Speaker 1: trailblazing contributions to what we know about those geographical areas
Speaker 1: and those different ecologies. And so I think it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a really fun summer. It's gonna be a good
Speaker 1: time and it makes me want to go get my
Speaker 1: my knapsack and some trail mix and and hit the
Speaker 1: dusty trail. Yes, maybe get a magnifying glass sounds perfect,
Speaker 1: or one of those GPS machines. Indeed, maybe you can
Speaker 1: get Rolex to sponsor you perfect well. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if there are any neat female explorers that we haven't
Speaker 1: mentioned that you would like to share with us, or
Speaker 1: if you are a stem explorer or just an adventurer
Speaker 1: and not just an adventurer unad insurer, what you want
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Mom Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com is where you can email us photos of
Speaker 1: amazing places that you have been are always welcome as well.
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us a mom Stuff podcast or
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook. And we got a couple of messages
Speaker 1: to share with you right now. Well, I have a
Speaker 1: letter here from Erica. She's providing us some book recommendations
Speaker 1: for people interested in sort of getting an introduction to feminism,
Speaker 1: because we had read a letter from a young woman
Speaker 1: who wanted to get her cousin a book to introduce
Speaker 1: her to the idea of feminism that maybe wasn't in
Speaker 1: your face or preachy, something that was easy for her
Speaker 1: to relate to, and so Erica says, I would definitely
Speaker 1: recommend Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti to the viewer
Speaker 1: who wrote in asking about feminist books. It is an
Speaker 1: amazing book written fairly conversationally, so it's an easy read.
Speaker 1: It made me laugh while still providing detailed and relevant
Speaker 1: information of out modern feminism. So thanks for the recommendation, Erica. Well,
Speaker 1: I gotta let her hear from Daniel about our episode
Speaker 1: on gay weddings, which we should have called same sex weddings.
Speaker 1: He writes, I listened to the Gay Weddings Tradition podcast
Speaker 1: and wanted to tell you how much I appreciate y'all
Speaker 1: taking the time to talk about this topic. I did
Speaker 1: want to mention and you were pretty good about it,
Speaker 1: and I think just slipped in a few places that
Speaker 1: calling it gay weddings is a bit cringe. E try
Speaker 1: to stick with same sex weddings since gay people aren't
Speaker 1: the only ones who are gaining the right to marry
Speaker 1: with these laws. For example, bisexuals and pan sexuals. A
Speaker 1: wedding between two bisexuals who are the same gender isn't
Speaker 1: a gay wedding, same as a wedding between two bisexuals
Speaker 1: of different genders. Isn't a straight wedding? You get me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we totally get you, Daniel. Um and he continues also
Speaker 1: about straight couples standing in solidarity with same sex couples
Speaker 1: and holding off on marriage. I think it's a sweet sentiment,
Speaker 1: but it really sours when they eventually give in and
Speaker 1: just marry. Anyway, I went to a wedding recently and
Speaker 1: the couple decided to donate the money they would have
Speaker 1: spent on things like extravagant decor and party favors towards
Speaker 1: organizations that fight for marriage equality. I think the safest
Speaker 1: bet is to put your money where your mouth is.
Speaker 1: If you support marriage equality, do something about it. They
Speaker 1: also had as guests two of our friends who had
Speaker 1: gotten married in another state since marriage equality hasn't made
Speaker 1: it to Florida yet, and had them cut the cake
Speaker 1: with them, which I thought was adorable. And yes, that
Speaker 1: is adorable. So thanks for your letter, Daniel, whom I
Speaker 1: should have called Dan, because that's how you signed your email.
Speaker 1: So if you have letters for us, Mom, stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com is our email address, but
Speaker 1: you can also reach us on Facebook or Twitter, and
Speaker 1: defined links to all of our other social media's, as
Speaker 1: well as every single blog, podcast, and video. There's one
Speaker 1: place to go, and it's Stuff Mom Never told you
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Doesn't how stuff works dot com