Two Sisters Uncover the Lost History of Women around the World

Olivia Meikle and her sister, Dr. Katie Nelson, are passionate, enthusiastic, self-proclaimed nerds when it comes to women’s history. The sisters, both CU graduates and current professors at Naropa and the University of Warwick, found it problematic that most students can only recall around ten names of women in history. 

“Frankly, I thought it was a terrible idea. I know how hard it is to get people to care about women’s history,” said  Olivia Meikle, co-host of  What’shername, a women’s history podcast. As it turns out, people care more about the subject than Meikle ever imagined because What’shername podcast has reached over one million downloads since 2018. 

Nelson floated the idea to Meikle of a podcast that would cover the forgotten stories of women whose names haven’t landed in textbooks. Meikle was skeptical but was not ready to shoot down her sister’s idea just yet.

“I was wandering through Columbia cemetery, and I stumbled upon a gravestone that just read ‘mother’ and some dates. It really struck me because I am a mom, I have three kids, and I love being a mom…but I’m not “mother”; I am me. I am a person.” So, on her way out of the cemetery, Meikle called Nelson and said, “Alright, I’m in; we’re doing it! 

We have to save the names of these women!” which ultimately sparked the idea for the podcast.

The first step in building their platform was reaching out to people who were also intrigued by women’s history and simply asking them, “who do you want to talk about?” Meikle said that when people are interested in something they will listen to you. 

This was the initial method for seeking out content. They faced the challenge of finding stories about women whose names they didn’t even know. Since What’shername has grown tremendously, all kinds of historians reach out to the sisters with pitches concerning women’s stories that desperately need to be shared. 

The way the episodes work is that one of the sisters will record a discussion with a historian. Afterward, they come together and discuss the interview, cutting back and forth between the original story and the discussion between the two of them.

One of the most exciting aspects of the podcast, according to Meikle, is that “[they] genuinely don’t know about these people, so part of the fun is learning about all of these incredible women that [they] have never heard of.” 

“It’s so easy to fall into this narrative we’ve all been taught that women just didn’t do stuff, with the mindset of the whole, ‘It wasn’t their fault, they just weren’t allowed to do anything, so women didn’t do anything interesting’…but actually, women have always been doing stuff,” said Meikle.

One of the hosts’ favorite episodes stemmed from an interview with a CU professor from the English department, Maria Windell. While most people know the story of Harriet Tubman, Windell covered a different Harriet from around the same time period. Harriet Jacobs holds a story so bizarre that people thought it was fiction for almost a hundred years. Jacobs, a brilliant, self-emancipated woman and author of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” hid in a coffin-sized attic space for seven years to escape horrific living conditions and unwanted sexual advances from her enslaver. Refer to episode 52 of What’shername to uncover the even wilder details of Jacob’s life, as this is just one piece of her incredible story. Jacobs’ narrative is just one of almost a hundred episodes of What’shername. 

Another host favorite is episode 86 with Jamie Goodall, a staff historian for the U.S. Army Center of Military History, covering the story of the Chinese pirate queen named Ching Shih. Goodall tells the story of how Ching Shih dodged the navies of the Chinese, British, and Portuguese navies for ten years yet somehow also dodged modern-day history books. 

The podcast covers stories of female scientists, empresses, cyclists, journalists, Vikings, farmers, witches–just about everything. Nelson and Meikle have even gone a step further to enrich the experience of What’shername by offering on-site women’s history tours, where anyone can reserve a spot to travel the globe with Katie and Olivia. They guide travelers through historical sites associated with fascinating women in history. The sisters have hosted walking tours in Colorado, Utah, and even a trip to England. 

This September, What’shername is hosting a trip to Mexico called the “Lost Women of Mexico” tour, and registration is open now. The sisters say that these are “not your average package tours. There is nothing on these tours that you would do on other trips. Much like the idea of the podcast, we visit museums you’ve never heard of and uncover things you didn’t know existed. Everything we do is centered around the historical women that we have profiled from these areas.” The group visits these women’s homes, private VIP tours of historical sites, shrines, hidden rooms, and other spots that are relatively inaccessible to the public.

As if these remarkable sisters have not already expanded their talents enough, they also have a children’s non-fiction book coming out on Apr. 5, 2022. The book will be published in seven countries and translated into English, Dutch, and Spanish. It will be called the “Book of Sisters,” and it will showcase the world’s history through the lens of different sisters from around the globe. The book will also be an astonishingly beautiful art collection, with illustrators from specific regions contributing to each pair of sisters’ story. It will be published by a brand new imprint of McMillan publications called Neon Squid. 

Katie Nelson and Olivia Meikle are undoubtedly making history by uncovering history. One can only imagine the impact their ever-growing knowledge will have on the education system in the future, with forgotten women’s stories exposed and new women’s names introduced in history books. In the words of Olivia Meikle, it is about time that society understands that “everything that humans have done, women have done.”