Forgotten women, complicated on purpose.
What’sHerName is a brisk women’s history show built around lives that conventional history tends to flatten or forget. Its stories move from Catherine Jemmat’s refusal of voyeuristic scandal to Jarena Lee’s religious argument for her own authority, with warmth, skepticism, and archival care.
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What’sHerName is a women’s history show about the lives that refuse to stay in the footnotes. Each episode starts with a vivid scene, then keeps widening the frame until one woman’s choices reveal the rules around her. The show likes complicated subjects. Good. Catherine Jemmat’s episode begins with the machinery of scandal publishing, then moves toward a sharper question about what readers think they are owed from women with sexual reputations. Jarena Lee’s story follows an itinerant Methodist preacher across the early United States, using her own spiritual autobiography as proof of calling, discipline, and authority. Juliette Gordon Low is not presented as a mascot-like founder, but as a bruised, restless, loyal woman whose encounter with scouting gave her a new structure for purpose. Shaaw Tláa appears inside the Klondike Gold Rush, where discovery, claim-making, hunger, and frontier myth all collide. Uno Chiyo’s episode follows a former waitress, writer, magazine-maker, designer, and adapter who keeps her center even when public fashion and wartime rules change around her. The show’s historical range is broad, but the recurring instinct is consistent. It asks who benefits when a woman is remembered as scandalous, eccentric, saintly, decorative, or inconvenient. It also keeps uncertainty visible. When the archive is thin, the show does not pretend otherwise; it uses the gap to show how power shaped what survived. The style is conversational and quick, with room for dry reactions and small bursts of disbelief. Underneath that ease is a serious interest in evidence, genre, and social structure. Memoirs, religious writing, newsreels, scouting organizations, fashion magazines, gold rush records, and later memory all become usable clues. The result is accessible history for listeners who want narrative momentum without losing the hard questions. It is especially strong on women navigating systems that tried to name them before they could name themselves.
Made for: For listeners who like narrative history, women’s lives, archival mysteries, and stories where social context matters as much as the famous event. It suits people who enjoy smart conversation without academic distance.
What sets it apart: What’sHerName does not just recover overlooked women; it studies the labels used to contain them. Scandal, sainthood, frontier myth, religious obedience, and modern style become tools for reading power.
What’sHerName puts the women back into world history. Hosts Dr. Katie Nelson and Olivia Meikle are professors-turned-podcasters (and sisters!) Weaving interviews with experts into vivid, nuanced biographies, What'sHerName women's history podcast tells the stories of fascinating women you’ve never heard of (but should have). Fascinating and funny, thought-provoking and insightful. New episodes biweekly Mondays.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
By reading memoirs, religious autobiography, and public careers closely, What'sHerName shows how women built authority inside restrictive institutions.
What'sHerName starts with a woman at a point of pressure, then lets Katie Nelson and Olivia Meikle widen the frame through brisk conversation and pointed questions.
Juliette Gordon Low and Jarena Lee get your history brain out of its familiar rut.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Catherine Jemmat''s 1762 memoir becomes a pointed look at what readers expect from women''s stories.
What''s Her Name turns Catherine Jemmat''s 1762 memoir into a study of misdirection. It begins with the sense that readers thought they were getting another scandal memoir from a notorious sex worker, then settles into a sharper point: Jemmat refuses that bargain and pushes…
A woman keeps moving toward a life larger than the one she was meant to accept.
Juliet Gordon Lowe's return to Savannah in 1912 at 51 gives the story its emotional center. It frames a life marked less by the expected course of a wealthy southern belle than by disappointment, failure, heartbreak, and humiliation, and it treats that restlessness as the force…
Jarena Lee's call to preach becomes a sharp case for religious authority and self-authored proof.
Jarena Lee is framed as an itinerant Methodist preacher in 1819, moving on foot from New England to the Deep South in a brand new United States.
A Klondike Gold Rush story that leans on claims, food, and frozen ground.
The episode uses the Klondike Gold Rush as its frame, but it keeps returning to the labor beneath the fever: Lying George's discovery at Rabbit Creek, the rush on Forty Mile, the limits on claims, and the winter practice of heating frozen ground before digging to bedrock.
Uno Chiyo's story turns early scandal, wartime pressure, and cherry blossoms into a brisk portrait of reinvention.
Uno Chiyo's rise begins in Sapporo in 1920, when a 23-year-old former waitress packages short stories about her time in the United States and hands them to a magazine editor she knows from the cafe.
History argued after dark.
Piracy stripped of romance.
It opens in 1762.
Juliet Gordon Lowe returns to Savannah in 1912 at 51.
The hosts begin with an itinerant Methodist preacher in 1819.
Olivia and Katie head into the Klondike Gold Rush.
It starts in Sapporo in 1920.
This episode tells the story of Janina Mehlberg, a Jewish woman who posed as a Polish countess to infiltrate a Nazi concentration camp and save lives.
The episode begins with sponsor acknowledgments and a news reel about a rescue mission.
Katie and Olivia introduce a story about Helen Foster Snow, an American woman who smuggled herself across enemy lines in 1937 China.
A Christmas special episode celebrating Swedish traditions and the memoirs of Selma Lagerlöf.
A discussion exploring the historical and mythical figure of Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess, and whether she was a monstrous serial killer or a victim of historical misrepresentation.