JK Rowling's forgotten idol, Edith Nesbit, wrote about loveable, bulgy-eyed monsters, threw wild parties, and was part of a legendary open marriage (in the 1800s!)

Cool Dead Women: June Jordan, Miriam Makeba, Muriel Rukeyser (Protest Edition)

Jul 10th, 2020 30m 52s

Not one, not two, but three Cool Dead Women! We explore the stories of two revolutionary American poets and one South African exile musician. All fought hard for they believed in, and we hope they inspire you do the same.

Cool Dead Women: Elma Napier

May 29th, 2020 10m 54s

A writer! The first woman elected to a Caribbean parliament! A royal scandal! All of this (and a pet lion) await you in our newest episode...

Cool Dead Women: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Apr 24th, 2020 16m 12s

Moonshine, orange groves, and catching flounders barehanded: the life of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling.

Cool Dead Women: Jeannette Rankin

Mar 27th, 2020 10m 28s

Before Nancy Pelosi, before literally any woman was in federal office...there was Jeannette Rankin.

Cool Dead Women: Sophie Blanchard

Mar 16th, 2020 6m 49s

Sophie Blanchard, the world's first female aeronaut and the inspiration behind the new Amazon movie, The Aeronauts. Sort of.

Cool Dead Women: Lucia Pamela

Feb 21st, 2020 11m 6s

Lucia Pamela: a child piano prodigy turned beauty queen turned astronaut who released her first album in her mid 60s.

Cool Dead Women: The Three Parachutists

Feb 7th, 2020 10m 48s

Hannah Szenes, Haviva Reik, and Sara Braverman were three Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine. One of our heavier episodes...

Cool Dead Women: Dr. Denmark

Jan 17th, 2020 7m 48s

Dr. Leila Denmark was a pediatrician in Atlanta who started treating children (or "little angels," as she called them) in 1928...and didn't stop for 73 years. She also helped develop a vaccine for whooping cough, popularized "mush," wrote num

Cool Dead Women: Belle da Costa Greene

Dec 13th, 2019 9m 34s

Meet the world's most glamorous librarian.

Cool Dead Women: Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Dec 6th, 2019 21m 13s

Do we owe rock music to a queer black woman from Arkansas? Probably.

Cool Dead Women: Edna St. Vincent Millay

Nov 22nd, 2019 10m 23s

Edna St. Vincent Millay was the highest paid poet-dramatist in American history, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was praised by the likes of Thomas Hardy and A.E. Houseman - yet most people hardly knew she existed. What happened?

Cool Dead Women: Ellen Terry and Edith Craig

Nov 14th, 2019 12m 43s

When a mother is internationally famous, it’s hard for a child, especially for a daughter, to step outside her mother’s shadow. And that’s why, really, it’s impossible to separate Ellen Terry, the most beloved actress of the late nineteenth cen

Cool Dead Women: Leonie Von Zesch

Nov 8th, 2019 11m 2s

Now you finally have something to talk about with your dentist!

Cool Dead Women: Lillian Nordica

Oct 31st, 2019 8m 33s

We're back for Season Two with Lillian Nordica! She was of the foremost dramatic sopranos of her day, a Coca-Cola model, an outspoken advocate for women, and now...a very friendly ghost.

Cool Dead Women: Marian Newhall Horwitz O'Brien

Mar 1st, 2019 9m 40s

Arson, shootouts, and sugarcane: the story of the first woman mayor of the south.

Cool Dead Women: Una Marson

Feb 12th, 2019 13m 37s

This story is very personal to me, not because I ever knew Una Marson - she died in 1965 and our paths never crossed - but because I’ve been researching her for decades. I've taken dangerous taxi rides in Kingston, Jamaica; drunk straight rum f

Cool Dead Women: Jean Rhys

Dec 7th, 2018 18m 46s

The story of Jean Rhys, a writer from Dominica who moved to London and Paris, who found success but never happiness. Featuring commentary from Elaine Savory (Jean Rhys, Cambridge University Press) and Christine Pountney (The Guardian). Archival

Cool Dead Women: Dare Wright

Nov 23rd, 2018 9m 59s

Incest rumors, an overbearing mother, and golden years alone in an apartment, talking to photographs: an abandoned soap opera plot, or the story of Dare Wright, a photographer best known for The Lonely Doll series, dubbed by The New Yorker as t

Cool Dead Women: Betty Pack

Nov 8th, 2018 8m 33s

A spy who used "sexpionage" to help win WWII, flirtatious safe cracking, several unexplained deaths...

Cool Dead Women: Connie Converse

Oct 19th, 2018 15m 55s

Hailed as the "first singer-songwriter" by the BBC , Connie disappeared forever in 1974, leaving behind a meticulously curated filing cabinet of cryptic diaries and letters. Massive thanks to Andrea Kannes, without who this episode would not b