Umi is unusual in the field of herpetology, not only is she often the only woman in the room, but she is definitely the only woman in a headscarf. Over the years, many have suggested that she tell her story. But Umi realized that her story really wasn’t all that unique. She joined with two […]

The stories we tell about ourselves have long focused on men’s experiences. The story of the United States is no exception: American women, especially working women, have not been included in our history the way that men have. Carolyn Zola is one of the budding historians working to rectify the invisibility of American women in […]

“I never felt like I was ‘enough’,” Mimi Fox explains. “And now, for the most part, on my better days, I do. And that is a real gift of my aging and my healing, the changes I’ve gone through in my life. I’m really grateful for that ‘enoughness.’ That sense of being enough is great […]

KSQD Chief Engineer Sandy Stone, also known as the founder of Transgender Studies, sits down with the Babblery to talk about the question that pursued her through much of her young life: What does it mean for her to be a woman? Sandy’s answer to that question, and her generous view of the right for […]

Book artist Felicia Rice, UCSC emeritus professor and longtime former resident of Santa Cruz County, joins host Suki Wessling on The Babblery to talk about her life as an artist, a mom, and a community member. Felicia lost her home, her studio, and her life’s work in the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire, and has […]

What happens when women feel open to telling their stories, even when they aren’t professional writers? When writer Julia Nusbaum was a graduate student, the course of her life changed in answer to this question. This episode features an in-depth exploration of women’s storytelling, from talking about the roots of Julia’s business, Herstry, to the […]

Her Most Authentic Self: Women in Comedy This episode features two amazing funny women, Karin Babbitt and Leah Rogers, speaking from the heart. For them, and for all comedians of their ilk, comedy is about bringing their authentic selves to the stage. It’s about being able to express deep, difficult feelings and ideas in a […]

The Babblery is a podcast about women’s lives, and though identified female at birth, transgender men are not women. Recent events underscore, however, that LGBTQ rights and women’s rights are deeply entwined. And people’s views of pregnancy and birth are intrinsically tied to their perspectives on women. What can the experiences of transgender men who […]

“If you were a landscape”: Women walking, creating, and becoming This new podcast from The Babblery, featured on Talk of the Bay, explores the importance of walking in the writing lives of two women, Patrice Vecchione and Tania Romanov. Host Suki Wessling leads them through a conversation about their books about walking, as well as […]

by Suki Wessling When I found out that Santa Cruz had a female lighthouse keeper for 31 years, I naively wondered whether there were other female lighthouse keepers in her time. It turns out that Victorian women lighthouse keepers were a “thing”—stunningly, at the turn of the 20th century there were at least four of […]