Library’s Online Podcast Club Focuses On Celebrating Women In March

Library’s Online Podcast Club Focuses On Celebrating Women In March


Mar 15, 2021

The Podcast Club at Fort Bend County Libraries’ University Branch Library will focus on “Celebrating Women” in March for Women’s History Month. The Podcast Club meeting will take place online via Webex, so listeners throughout the area can participate from the comfort and safety of home.

Similar to a book club, the Podcast Club provides an opportunity for podcast listeners to get together to discuss podcast selections from a themed podcast-listening list and share their opinions on trending topics. Each month features a different theme, along with a short list of podcast episodes.

The next meeting of the University Branch Library Podcast Club will take place on Monday, March 15, beginning at 7:00 pm. A link to the Webex meeting will be emailed to all who register.

A direct link to the podcasts can be found on Fort Bend County Libraries’ online calendar on the FBCL website. The playlist of podcasts from which to choose includes:

  • Women’s Social Clubs” – No Man’s Land by the Wing (30 minutes). When Charles Dickens banned women from dinner, FDR forced Japanese Americans into Internment Camps, and symbolic Civil Rights Legislation was in peril, Women's Social Clubs were the solution. Get to know clubwomen of yore, who were so much more than the white-gloved-ladies-who-lunch that they've been reduced to.
  • Finally, An All-Female Spacewalk” – Short Wave (12 minutes). Hear from NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir. They completed the first all-female spacewalk last week.
  • The Sculptor Edmonia Lewis” – What’sHerName (38 minutes). What if you had a vision for your life, but absolutely everyone around you told you it was impossible? Edmonia Lewis lived a life so improbable, that if we didn’t have the actual evidence that she really existed, we’d never believe it! The orphaned daughter of a Native American mother and Caribbean father in mid-19th-century America, she set out on the most unlikely path: to become a famed classical sculptor in Rome, all while people of her race were literally enslaved in her homeland. Her journey to gain the education that was denied her, to buy her own boat fare, and make her impossible way in the world, defied the expectations of everyone, and still does. Guest speaker is Dr Charmaine Nelson, author of The Color of Stoneand professor at McGill University.
  • The Secret History of International Women’s Day” – Stuff Mom Never Told You (49 minutes). International Women's Day, celebrated every March 8, is a holiday inspired by factory women going on strike for better wages and working conditions. Get to the bottom of the holiday's history in this classic episode.
  • The Untold Story of Women & Space History – Sue Nelson” – When Women Win (34 minutes). This show is about women in space, in science, and in history. It’s only becoming mainstream knowledge now that there were many women involved in global space programs in the 1960s. As part of NASA’s Mercury 13, Wally Funk was one of the pioneering women of space travel who often outperformed male astronaut candidates in tests of endurance. One week before the final phase of training, however, the program was abruptly cancelled. Politics and prejudice meant Wally never flew into space. Undeterred, she went on to become an accomplished pilot and America's first female aviation safety inspector. Award-winning science journalist and broadcaster Sue Nelson is a physicist who authored a book about Wally Funk and her colleagues of Mercury 13. You’ll be shocked when you hear what they went through just to take the tests - from being divorced by their husbands to losing their jobs. These ladies pursued space and science at immense personal cost. Sue wrote this book to bring their stories, experiences, and learnings to a broad audience, in the hope of inspiring girls to pursue their dreams in science, and to ensure that the huge sacrifices and contributions that female aviators have made do not get left out of history books.

The Podcast Club is free and open to the public. Registration is required; a link to the Webex meeting will be emailed to all who register. To register online at the library’s website (www.fortbend.lib.tx.us), click on “Classes & Events,” select “Virtual Programs,” and find the program. Participants may also register by calling the University Branch Library (281-633-5100).

 

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