Mary Woodard Lasker had a singular goal: saving lives by increasing medical research. Together with her husband, advertising genius Albert, they created the Lasker Foundation, bestowing the Lasker Awards. Known as the "American Nobels," these became the most prestigious research awards in America. The Laskers' next step was transforming the sleepy and ineffe ... Show More
Nov 24
Yolanda Aixelà-Cabré, "African Women’s Histories in European Narratives: The Afropolitan Krio Fernandino Diaspora (1850-1996)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
Little is known about the African women who came to Europe from the 1870s onwards, nor do we dare to imagine them as wealthy, elegantly dressed individuals with refined tastes and fluent in several languages. The Krio Fernandino represented a multisited, multilocal, transnational ... Show More
44m 1s
Nov 23
Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025)
A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club (Temple UP, 2025) is Dr. Sarah Hoiland’s insightful ... Show More
44m 53s
Nov 22
Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to suggest that they are haunted by their own racialized death machines—by racialized premature death. If this haunting is not adequatel ... Show More
58m 24s
Apr 2024
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" (FSG, 2021)
Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya to offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonization. Decolonizing heals what has been divided, reestablishing our relatio ... Show More
1h 3m
Jul 2019
Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer, England
Dame Sally Davies is the outgoing Chief Medical Officer for England. She will take up her next post as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, later this year. She was born in Birmingham in 1949 to academic parents - her father was an Anglican priest and theologian, her mother a sc ... Show More
40m 39s
Oct 2023
Helen Rappaport, "In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Black Cultural Icon" (Pegasus Books, 2022)
Raised in Jamaica, Mary Seacole first came to England in the 1850s after working in Panama. She wanted to volunteer as a nurse and aide during the Crimean War. When her services were rejected, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where her reputation for her nursing—and ... Show More
1h 9m
Oct 2020
Gutsy Women (with Gloria Steinem and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha)
By now it’s an all-too-familiar phenomenon: A woman who dares to defy stereotypes or step out of her “place” gets called “shrill,” “bossy,” “ambitious,” or worse. But more often than not, those are the women who get the job done. Hillary talks to feminist activist Gloria Steinem ... Show More
44m 3s
Sep 2023
Dame Joan Collins, Universities and sexual misconduct, Dr Ophira Ginsburg - a feminist approach to cancer
Dame Joan Collins has dominated the stage and screen for over seven decades, starting her career at just 17. Best known for her roles in the 1980s TV phenomenon Dynasty and Hollywood Golden Age films, she has written a new memoir Behind the Shoulder Pads: Tales I Tell My Friends. ... Show More
57m 36s
Feb 2022
Rachel Pagones, "Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love" (Brevis, 2021)
Many in the global West have heard something about acupuncture as a treatment for pain relief; they may even have learned of its use in treating opioid addiction. But few know that, in the early 1970s, acupuncture was employed as a means of social and political revolution by Blac ... Show More
49m 52s
Mar 2023
Caroline Rusterholz, "Women's Medicine: Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspective, 1920-70" (Manchester UP, 2021)
Who built the twentieth century birth control movement? In Women's Medicine: Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspective, 1920-70 (Manchester University Press 2020), Dr. Caroline Rusterholz highlights British female doctors' key contribution to the pro ... Show More
31m 42s
Oct 2023
Dr. Rochelle Walensky on making health care policy under fire
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who served as CDC director from 2021 to 2023, calls the job “probably the hardest thing I will ever do.” But she also calls it “the honor of a lifetime.” When she was appointed by President Biden as the CDC’s 19th director, she was already used to politiciz ... Show More
41m 29s