The Exploress
Episodes
Arsinoë II, Queenmaker of Ptolemaic Egypt
11 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Cleopatra maneuvered her way through Egyptian, Greek, and Roman politics, defying the odds to keep the Ptolemaic dynasty – and Egypt's independence ...
Cleopatra, Part 4: Exploring Her Legacy
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 24. Cleopatra died more than 2,000 years ago. And yet stop any person on the street today and ask them who she was, and they'll know...
Cleopatra, Part 3: It Is Indeed Most Fine
13 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 23. When we last left Cleopatra, she was creeping out the back door of a chaotic Rome in the wake of Julius Caesar's death. As she s...
Cleopatra, Part 2: Make It So
19 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 22. Last time, we saw Cleopatra grow up in the city of Alexandria, amid both luxury, excess, and the constant threat of death by fam...
Cleopatra, Part 1: Growing Up Ptolemy
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 21. Cleopatra, the last great queen of Egypt, doesn't really need an introduction. You can see her in your mind already, can't you? ...
A History of Women & Poison
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 20. Throughout the ages, women have used poison - but their worlds also found ways to poison them. Doctors who didn't know better, g...
The Women Who Ran Ancient Rome, Part 3: Fulvia
20 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 19. It's 47 or 46 BCE, and we've stepped into a private chamber, where a woman is pulling down her saffron-colored veil. Today she's...
The Women Who Ran Ancient Rome, Part 2: Servilia
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 18. In ancient Rome, a woman was defined in relation to her family. Any fame she won was supposed to be confined to the private, dom...
The Women Who Ran Ancient Rome, Part 1: Cornelia
14 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 17. In ancient Rome, a woman was defined in relation to her family. Any fame she won was supposed to be confined to the private, dom...
A Lady's Life in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 3
29 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 16. Welcome to a day in the life of an ancient Roman matrona. In Part 3 of our exploration of a Roman woman's day, we go out into th...
A Lady's Life in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 2
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 15. Welcome to a day in the life of an ancient Roman matrona. Now that we've learned a bit about Rome's overarching history, woken u...
A Lady's Life in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 1
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 14. Let's travel back to ancient Rome and meet the women who lived amid this ancient-world juggernaut. Many are Roman citizens: the ...
A History of Female Hair Removal
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 13. Our grooming habits are a contested issue, no more so than the question of what we do with our hair down below. This is especial...
Queen Olympias & Alexander the Great's Women, Part 2
22 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 12. In Part 1 we met Olympias, Alexander the Great's mother, and saw her navigate some savage drama to get her and her son to the to...
Queen Olympias & Alexander the Great's Women, Part 1
15 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 11. Ancient Greek queen Olympias went to epic lengths to ensure her son Alex ended up on the throne. In doing so, she helped make hi...
Amazons & the Real Warrior Women of Antiquity, Part 2
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2, Season 10. The ancient Greeks told lots of stories about the Amazons: the mythic bands of warrior women that Hellanikos of Lesbos described...
Amazons & the Real Warrior Women of Antiquity, Part 1
01 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 9. The ancient Greeks told lots of stories about the Amazons: the mythic bands of warrior women that Hellanikos of Lesbos described ...
Sappho & Sexuality in Ancient Greece
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2, Episode 8. When it comes to the words that made it through time to us, ancient Greece is particularly loud with men's voices. But if you li...
A Lady's Life in Ancient Greece, Part 2
10 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 7. Ancient Greece is notorious for keeping women silent, veiled, and firmly fixed at the loom. But was life for women in places like...
A Lady's Life in Ancient Greece, Part 1
03 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 6. Ancient Greece is notorious for keeping women silent, veiled, and firmly fixed beside the loom. But was life for the ladies in pl...
The History of Women and Beer
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 5. For millennia, brewing was overwhelmingly a woman's game. You can't research beer's history without stumbling across female brewe...
The Lady Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, Part 2: Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Tawosret
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 4. Let's continue exploring the lives of ancient Egypt's female pharaohs. We'll start by talking about Hatshepsut's rise to fame and...
The Lady Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, Part 1: Merneith, Neferusobek, and Hatshepsut
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 3. In ancient Egyptian, the word "pharaoh" doesn't mean king; it means "great house". They had no word for queen at all. All royal w...
A Lady's Life in Ancient Egypt, Part 2
08 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 2. Let's continue our day as an everyday lady in ancient Egypt's New Kingdom during the 18th Dynasty. We'll talk about what we're do...
A Lady's Life in Ancient Egypt, Part 1
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 2, Episode 1. Of all the civilizations in the ancient world, Egypt was perhaps the most prone to the miraculous. They invented many wonders: th...
Pioneer Women in the Wild West
11 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 11. America's Wild West evokes images of grizzled men in fringed chaps, but women were also there to help shape the frontier: the pi...
Novelist & Abolitionist: Harriet Beecher Stowe
21 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The 19th century's best-selling novel was an incendiary story about the evils of slavery, written by a northern woman who wanted to change the world. ...
Harriet Tubman & Elizabeth Keckley, Part 2
30 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 10. Harriet Tubman and Elizabeth Keckley took different paths to freedom, and navigating their new world. One because a famous condu...
Harriet Tubman & Elizabeth Keckley, Part 1
09 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 9. Elizabeth Keckley and Harriet Tubman spent decades in bondage, suffering everything the "peculiar institution" promised before fi...
The Madams: Mary Ann Hall & Madame Restell
26 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I'm bringing one of my bonus episodes out of the Patreon vault and sharing it with everyone! Back by popular demand, this bonus gives a more in-depth ...
Lady Spiritualists & Mediums of 19th Century America
11 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 8. Victorian America was a very haunted place, and by mid-century the Spiritualist movement was sweeping through it. People went in ...
Lady Spies of the Civil War
14 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 7. 19th-century women weren't supposed to be devious - and that's what made them such effective spies. Hundreds of women tied gun pa...
Sarah Emma Edmonds: Soldier, Nurse and Spy
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 6. Franklin Thompson did it all as a Civil War soldier: spied, rode, nursed, and fought. And during his service, almost no one knew ...
Lady Soldiers in the Civil War
16 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 5. When we think of a Civil War soldier, it's a man we see. But there were women out there on the battlefield, too - hundreds of the...
Sex & Prostitution in 19th Century America
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 4. Look for the word 'prostitute' in 19th-century America and you'll find it everywhere. But it went far beyond a job description: I...
Angel of the Battlefield: Clara Barton
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 3. She was many things: A celebrated teacher, a pioneering civil servant, a battlefield nurse, a public speaker, and a leader of man...
Nurses of the American Civil War
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 2. The soldiers called them angels, but they were warriors: They battled bullets, disease, terrible medical knowledge, and the belie...
A Lady's Life in 19th Century America
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Season 1, Episode 1. Mid-19th century America was a pretty buttoned-up place. Or was it? For women, marriage and family was their destiny, their lives...
Welcome to The Exploress
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Time traveling through women's history, one era at a time.