Loading…
Hosted by Rebekah Haigh & Emily Chesley · EN-US · 22 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
Women Who Went Before is on a gynocentric quest into the ancient world. Join hosts Rebekah Haigh and Emily Chesley as they interview the world’s top scholars and unearth the lives of women from the past. It’s a history podcast and detective journey in one, sifting through texts and tropes to find the women who lived beneath.
Rebekah Haigh & Emily Chesley hosts Women Who Went Before, a history show with 22 episodes published.
In our Season 2 finale, we learn about Christian women from late antiquity who sought to transform their bodies inside and out: ascetics and monastics. From fasting to renouncing sexual “appetites” to special clothing—th
Can we trust Roman statues to tell us about real people? What were the differences between gods and humans in art? How much of a say did the emperor have over how Roman women dressed and lived their lives? Dr. Caroline V
People groups, power, hierarchy, and othering—big themes in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad. In this episode we learn from Dr. Jackie Murray about what race was and wasn’t in Ancient Greek literature. We see how gender and cla
CW: This episode discusses themes of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Dr. Rhiannon Graybill shares her research on sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible and ways of reading such messy stories for then and now.
We talk with Dr. Shai Secunda about the Babylonian rabbis’ science of blood, breaking taboos through sex education, and menstruation as a cure for rabies. Today, taboos about menstruation keep thousands of girls from att
Dr. Ada Nifosì tells us about the gymnastics of ancient Egyptian birth, why Egyptian women ate donkey balls and their cats ate penis cakes, and why the god Seth should be avoided at all costs. Childbirth was a scary time
Dr. Julia Watts Belser talks about ancient prenups, dancing at weddings, and what the rabbis had to say about beauty. We meet an Etruscan woman named Seianti Hanunia, an Egyptian Jewish woman Tapamet, and hear the (somet
Dr. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells us about the veil in ancient Greek culture. Many women in the distant past (as today) wore veils during their life. Veiling meant many things to many people. It could be a means of patriar
Dr. Julia Kelto Lillis asks, "To whom does a woman’s virginity belong?" Join her and your hosts as we dive into the world of early Christian purity culture, what wine has to do with the V-Card, and why the gods like to m
In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Rebecca Flemming and talk about ancient gynecology, wandering wombs, and what agency, if any, women had over the healing of their bodies. How did medical writers in Greece and Rome d
In a time when society is thinking passionately about bodily rights and who gets to make decisions about women’s bodies, Season 2 turns to history. Women in the ancient world mattered, and so did their bodies—maybe learn
On the Season 1 finale we talk with Dr. Deborah Lyons about ancient Greek myths, breaking cultural boxes, and why we should all strive to be killjoys. Pandora's box, Penelope's gifts, Helen's beauty in Sappho's poetry, a
In the penultimate episode of season 1, “In Her Own Words: Ancient Women Authors,” we talk with historian and classicist Dr. Kate Cooper about gatekeeping, the privilege of individualism, and those rare surviving moments
In Episode 8 our hosts talk with Dr. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander about whether women can keep track of their own periods, religious law as a boys’ club, and why ancient rabbis cared about witchery. Episode show notes: htt
Dr. Caryn Tamber-Rosenau explains how two lethal women perform gender in the Hebrew Bible. Judith and Jael were talented Jewish heroines who skillfully played their hands (and bodies) to save their people from invading a
Dr. Solange Ashby teaches us about Nubian warrior queens, Hollywood stereotypes about Egyptian women, and why you shouldn’t trust Wikipedia. Meet the powerful, voluptuous queens of Meroe—Amanirenas, Amanitore, Amanishakh
We interview Dr. Thomas A. J. McGinn about Roman prostitution, marriage laws, and a strange Cinderella story. What was a paterfamilias and how did they determine a woman’s life? Were prostitutes merely doing their civic
We talk to Dr. Susan Ashbrook Harvey about how gender shaped ancient thinking about God, women's church choirs, and the complex web of metaphors for the divine within Syriac Christianity. Women Who Went Before is written
Dr. Elaine Pagels joins us to talk about manic pixie dream girls, lost Gnostic texts, and why being a heretic might not be so bad. Stereotypes about women aren't solely a modern phenomenon. Two pervasive archetypes in ea
We explore ancient Jewish fan fiction, why makeup made the angels fall, and the ever-present problem of ghostwriting with Dr. Annette Yoshiko Reed in Season 1 Episode 2, "Ghostwriting the Daughters of Men: Whose Writing
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
1 appearance on this show
Kate Cooper
Lecturer in Clinical Psychology · EVT Hotels & Resorts
1 appearance on this show
Elaine Pagels
Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University · Princeton University
1 appearance on this show
Seianti Hanunia
Etruscan civilization
1 appearance on this show
Tapamet
Egyptian Jewish community
1 appearance on this show
Detected from recent episode content. Sponsor presence is a real signal of listener purchasing power and show monetisation.
No public pitch examples yet for this show.
Generate your own personalised pitchBased on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:
Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.
Shows with the most semantically similar episode content. Pitch one, pitch all; producers cluster.
To pitch Women Who Went Before, visit https://womenwhowentbefore.com for contact information, then craft a tight one-paragraph hook that ties your expertise to a gap in their recent history coverage.
Women Who Went Before is hosted by Rebekah Haigh & Emily Chesley. The show is categorised under history (religion) and has published 22 episodes.
Women Who Went Before has published 22 episodes.
Women Who Went Before regularly covers history, religion, spirituality. It sits in the history category, with a religion focus.
Women Who Went Before is accessible for guests with genuine history expertise. A personalised, episode-aware pitch will still outperform a generic one every time.
Women Who Went Before hasn't explicitly signalled guest openness in recent episodes. That doesn't rule out pitching. your hook just needs to be especially compelling and relevant to their recent content.
Episodes of Women Who Went Before average 54 minutes. a focused format where a clear narrative arc and tight preparation matter most.
Our data rates Women Who Went Before's guest bar at 80/100 (Premium tier). Established thought leaders with verified media credentials. Sign in to PitchCentric to see how your own Pod Score compares against this show.
Methodology. Booking Probability™ blends Listen Score, 30-day Virality, open-to-guests detection, and Apple ratings. Data refreshed every 60 minutes. Listen Score and Booking Probability are calculated by PitchCentric. Last enriched today.