The Babblery

Historian Ruth Rosen didn't just write a book about women's history—she lived it. In this short selection from the full interview, Ruth explains how women's history is erased, and what marginalized people need to do to keep their history from being erased.

In her work in the Second Wave feminist movement, historian Ruth Rosen experienced a lot of revelations about the lives of women. But once that time was past, she experienced a different type of revelation as male historians described the 70s as "a decade when nothing of importance happened."

[Platform listeners: Visit https://babblery.com for the full show notes.]

For Ruth and the other women who were touched by the Second Wave—which includes almost all adult women alive at that time—this surge of feminist awakening forced a tsunami of change. Galvanized by male historians' ignorance about the fundamental changes that feminism wrought in our society, Ruth started the deep research that led to the publication of her book, A World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America.

In this conversation, we start with the book and the period that set the trajectory of Ruth's life. Originally aiming to be a concert pianist, Ruth realized that women's history—a field that didn't exist before her PhD was granted—was an open field of wonders. Her academic work and then her career as a journalist led her to be a series of firsts: wherever her work took her, she was almost always the first woman in the room.

Finally, we address the world that she and her cohort navigates now, experiencing lives as elder women that bear little resemblance to their mothers' lives. What is her advice to young women facing backlash? Listen and find out!

“If you don’t name the problem, you can’t change the law. And you can’t change custom, you can’t change the zeitgeist of the culture. There’s nothing that you can do until you have a name for it, and then you can get a collective grievance.”

Ruth Rosen is a professor emerita of history at the University of

What is swing and why does jazz violinist Nora Germain love it so much? In this short outtake from our full interview, Nora explains what swing is, how it feels to play it, and why she believes that everyone would love it if they gave it a chance.

Listen in.

 "It reminds me of sitting in a house, it could be a family member's house or just any house in front of a nice fire, and feeling a sense of warmth from the universe."

At the end of my interview with jazz violinist Nora Germain, I realized that I had forgotten to ask her an important question spurred by her book. Why did she choose to write only one important sentence about her experience as a woman in the jazz industry?

  "After many years of being underestimated, discarded, harassed, assaulted, fired, groped, robbed, propositioned, and abused, after looking over my shoulder and clarifying my comments, being put down, intimidated and assaulted, insulted, he at least was one musician, one older musician who I felt comfortable being around."

I did incorporate some of this part of the interview into the full podcast, but I wanted to feature the full conversation here because I think Nora brings up some really important points. Women, she points out, don't just experience being a woman in a male-dominated industry at single points in time—women experience being women all of the time. Nora chooses not to highlight her struggles as a woman, but she ends with an important statement that I think everyone should hear and understand.

Listen in.

Jazz violinist Nora Germain has been playing her instrument for 30 years, yet she describes herself as a beginner. Attracted to improvisational music from a young age, Nora knew that she wouldn't follow her family's classical music tradition. With no plan other than to leave home, she became the first jazz violinist trained at the top boarding school for performing arts, Idyllwild, then the first violinist to graduate from University of Southern California with a degree in jazz.

In this emotional and engaging interview, Nora speaks of her drive to achieve in an industry shaken to the core by new technology. Without a traditional agent or label, she uses social media as her public relations firm. She talks about the importance of mentorship and collaboration between musicians, including her longtime collaboration with American roots musician Jon Batiste. And she explores the way her difficult childhood, coming to terms with her parents' alcoholism, and the early deaths of teen friends, influences her drive and her mindset.

Listen in for a fun tour through the unusual world of a woman unafraid to break new ground within an old tradition.

"Swing is a very particular type of rhythm, and I love it so much because it's a rhythm, it's a feeling, it's a lifestyle, but really it can't be written down. People have tried to write swing so that orchestras can do it... It doesn't work. It's something that a person has to feel."

Jazz violinist and author Nora Germain has been playing the violin for 30 years and performing professionally since 2010. She is currently based in Los Angeles. She has performed and/ or recorded with many of the world's greatest musical talents including Jon Batiste on his Grammy-winning album “Big Money,” Postmodern Jukebox, Sam Smith, Lewis Capaldi, Tommy Emmanuel CGP, John Altman, Jacob Collier, Martin Taylor MBE, JMSN, KNOWER, Jeff Goldblum, Dee Dee Bridgewater and many others. In addition to playing on over 150 recordings of many genres, she has also released 13 of her own jazz albums, an inspirational book, and her videos on Instagram have been viewed over 5 million times. She has appeared on episodes of The Late Late Show with James Corden and The Ellen DeGeneres Show accompanying other artists, and performed at the Eckhart Tolle Foundation, for the Gates Foundation, and as a musical volunteer for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. A musician of many facets who is only at the beginning of her career, Nora has been praised as the best jazz violinist in the world. The sky is clearly not the limit for Miss Germain. www.noragermain.com

Time and again, mothering is fundamental to how women do their work. Whether women choose to be mothers or not, the choice affects their lives deeply. Having children often changes or postpones career choices, but mothering also informs how women do their work outside the home.

In this interview, you will hear how mothering or choosing not to mother fundamentally changed the lives of twelve women: Retired judge LaDoris Cordell, Smart Politics founder Karin Tamerius, artist and writer Enid Baxter Ryce, filmmaker Brooke Berman, writer and nonprofit founder Rickey Gard Diamond, doula educator Anne Wallen, abortion rights crusader Merle Hoffman, historian Ruth Rosen, environmentalist Shilpi Chhotray, writer Joan Gelfand, and anonymous mothers Wendy and Rebecca.

[Platform listeners: Visit https://babblery.com for the full show notes.]

"Quote" Looking back, I had to be totally insane to do what I did"

"I think most people will gasp when I tell you that I screamed—yelled at Gloria at one point. But you know, that's, we thought those differences were life altering, basically. And she just laughed."

This week we lost a towering figure of second wave feminism, Gloria Steinem.

I find myself not at all sad because I can't imagine a life better spent. Gloria saw the trajectory of her life change in a church basement full of women telling their abortion stories. She never stopped being a journalist, but her life became so much bigger than a career.

She was a fighter who was never nasty, a white woman who believed in feminism for all, a poor child grown so eloquent and poised that she was accused of being many things that she was not. All human beings are complex, and thus so was Gloria Steinem. But in terms of legacy, she's leaving one filled with perseverance and grace.

Last month I interviewed Barbara Winslow, whose book Revolutionary Feminists, covers the second wave movement in Seattle in detail. I encourage you to read the full story, but here's what she had to say about Gloria Steinem. I think you'll enjoy the anecdote.

For all the shtick Gloria Steinem gets, and she deserves a lot of it, but I think history will be kind to her and I admire her. When she would go on public speaking tours, she only went with a, an African American woman and she went to Seattle with Margaret Sloan. The press only covered Steinem, didn't even mention Sloan, even though they spoke to the local, National Council of Black Women, they never mentioned her.

And so, yes, I mean the racism was pretty extraordinary. Even people who supported the Civil Rights Movement, it was sort of like, well, Gloria's the star. And Gloria would try, I mean, in fairness to Gloria, she would try.

Although I love this story. She came to speak on that trip at the UDub, and we were denouncing her for not supporting Shirley Chisholm's campaign enough. Now, by then, McGovern had gotten the, uh, nomination, so Chisholm was not a candidate, but our group sent Chisholm, Mrs. Chisholm, $15.

And when Gloria came to speak in 2008 to commemorate the whatever it was, 40th anniversary of Chisholm winning Congress, you know, I met her at the car and we walked in, I said, I don't think you'll remember this, but after you spoke at the UW in 1972, you very generously invited a whole bunch of us to your room to talk politics.

And all we did is scream at you for not supporting Shirley Chisholm. And she just laughed. And she said, "Oh, Barbara. But we thought those issues were so important." And when I introduced her, I told her the story. I said, I think most people will gasp when I tell you that I scream, yelled at Gloria at one point. But you know, that's, we thought those differences were life altering basically.

Like I said, a legacy of perseverance and grace. I'd say rest in peace, but I think it's more important to say: let's continue the fight for Gloria—and for all of us.

History records that Black women felt excluded from Second Wave Feminism. In this short piece, historian Barbara Winslow reflects on the issue through her experience as a radical feminist activist in Seattle. She traces the movement's roots to the anti-war and Civil Rights movements, but Barbara argues that there were complications that led to Black women's voices being stifled. While the media played a large role in ignoring the leadership of Black women, she explains, white feminists also had trouble listening to and understanding the concerns of Black women.

For a more in-depth discussion, please check out the full version of this episode, "Turning the World Upside-Down with Barbara Winslow."

"Outta Sync" © 2026 by Suki Wessling,

Barbara Winslow has been a political activist since she was a kid campaigning for Stevenson over Eisenhower in the 1950s. By the late 1960s she was a founding member of Seattle Radical Women and then Women's Liberation Seattle, groups that fought for legal abortion in Washington State years before Roe v. Wade. Her book, Revolutionary Feminists, is a hyperlocal history of that movement: the meetings, the splits, the leafleting, and the door-knocking that changed minds and the law. In this conversation, we focus on that success, and how it mirrors the challenges faced by today's activists.

Barbara explores the galvanizing events: a doctor who wouldn't let her sign her own medical consent form, a pro-life billboard that got corrected, and a viral (well, 1968-viral) confrontation with a Playboy Playmate. But our conversation doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable parts of feminist history. Barbara talks candidly about how her overwhelmingly white organizing group failed to build real coalition with Black women for Seattle's abortion referendum, and how that failure showed up starkly on election night when the only precincts that voted against the measure were in the city's Black neighborhoods. We hear about the importance of the fruitful dialogue with antiabortion Black activists like Fannie Lou Hamer.

"We have to find ways to find joy and peace and serenity in small victories. But I also think we have to find it in friendships, in family and in the arts. If you're in meetings 24 hours a day, you're not going to find joy. So you have to find a way to balance the political activism and the things that nourish your persona."

All of this history supports Barbara's advice to activists today: to understand how the Democratic Party's retreat from grassroots politics after the early '70s left an opening the right eagerly filled, how local school boards and library boards matter more right now than national races, and how—even in the middle of exhausting, often losing fights—she still believes, as she puts it, that the struggle is the joy.

Barbara Winslow is Professor emerita Brooklyn College and founder and Director Emerita The Shirley Chisholm Project of Brooklyn Women's Activism. Barbara has been a political activist for over sixty years -  in the Civil rights movement, as an ally in the Black Freedom Struggle, the labor union, public education, anti-war and anti imperialist movements and the women's liberation movements. She is a retired professor and author of books and articles on these topics, including Revolutionary Feminists: The Women's Liberation Movement in Seattle.

Enid Baxter Ryce has just published a book that explores spells and incantations across time and cultures. In this short version of the full episode, Enid reads and explains some of her favorite spells. We also discuss the function of spells and incantations in people's lives. Please visit BABBLERY.com to listen to the full interview, in which we discuss magic and spells, but she also addresses the importance of nature and education in the age of artificial intelligence.