When Women Walked is a history podcast about movement — across streets, borders, courtrooms, classrooms, and generations.
Hosted by historian and educator Madison Givens, each episode centers the people, places, and moments that history kept moving past. Those who walked anyway. Toward justice. Toward power. Toward survival. Toward change.
Some of these stories you've heard before — just not the whole truth. Most of them you haven't heard at all.
When Women Walked asks what their movement made possible. And what it still demands of us.
Before she was 30, Ching Shih commanded a fleet of tens of thousands of pirates and ships, defying the Qing dynasty, Britain, and Portugal—and walked away undefeated. In this episode of When Women Walked, we explore how a former sex worker rose to become one of history's most powerful pirate leaders, the strict code of conduct she enforced on her fleet, and how she ultimately negotiated her way into a peaceful retirement on her own terms.
6 Jun 2026
Fire and Freedom
They were enslaved, outnumbered, and written off by the world — and they won anyway. This episode tells the story of the Haitian Revolution, one of the most successful slave revolts in history, and the fierce, defiant people who helped burn empires to the ground and birth a nation. But freedom came with a price — literally. Learn how France and the United States weaponized debt and isolation to punish Haiti for daring to be free, and why that stranglehold still echoes today.
6 Apr 2026
The Poetical Scientist
Before computers existed, one woman imagined what they could become.
In this episode of When Women Walked, we explore the remarkable life of Ada Lovelace, a nineteenth-century mathematician who saw the future of computing long before the modern computer was built.
But her greatest achievement may have been her vision. Ada understood that computing machines could transform the world long before such machines existed.
This is the story of Ada Lovelace — the woman who imagined the digital future.
30 Mar 2026
Blessed is the Match
In 1944, as the Holocaust consumed Europe, a 23-year-old Jewish poet volunteered for a mission many believed was impossible.
Hannah Senesh left her home in Palestine, trained with the British military, and parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe in an effort to aid resistance fighters and help rescue Hungarian Jews before they were deported to Auschwitz.
But her legacy lives not only in her courage, but in her words.
In this episode of When Women Walked, we explore the life, sacrifice, and poetry of a young woman who believed that even the smallest flame could light the darkest night.
23 Mar 2026
The Queen who Burned Rome
Rome believed Britain was conquered.
By the first century CE, Roman legions controlled much of the island. Cities were built, taxes were collected, and imperial authority seemed unshakable.
But in the year 60 CE, Rome made a brutal mistake...
They humiliated the Queen of the Iceni people.
Leading to rebellion.
16 Mar 2026
Brigid's Sacred Flame
Long before Ireland was filled with stone churches and monasteries, stories were told of a woman whose power felt almost otherworldly. Brigid of Kildare lived in the fifth century, at the crossroads of Celtic tradition and early Christianity, and her life became legend. She fed the poor, challenged kings, founded one of Ireland’s most influential monasteries, and created spaces where women could lead in a world that rarely allowed it.
In this episode of When Women Walked, we explore the life and legacy of one of Ireland’s most beloved saints. From the famous miracle of her expanding cloak to the eternal flame kept burning in her honor at Kildare, Brigid’s story reveals how faith, folklore, and fierce compassion shaped a woman whose influence has lasted more than fifteen centuries.
Sometimes the women who change history are the ones who simply refuse to let the flame go out.
9 Mar 2026
A Mother's War
In 2002, Susana Trimarco’s daughter, Marita Verón, disappeared in Argentina—kidnapped by a human trafficking network that preyed on young women. What followed was not just a mother’s search, but the beginning of a movement. Refusing to accept silence or corruption, Trimarco went undercover in brothels, confronted traffickers, and exposed a trafficking system that authorities had long ignored.
In this episode of When Women Walked, we tell the story of a mother who turned grief into resistance. Susana Trimarco’s relentless fight helped uncover trafficking networks across Argentina and led to the creation of the María de los Ángeles Foundation, which has since rescued and supported hundreds of women.
This is not only the story of one missing daughter. It is the story of a woman who refused to let the world look away—and who forced a nation to confront the violence hidden in plain sight.
3 Mar 2026
Read to Exist
Before there were marches, there were classrooms. Before microphones, there were pencils.
In this episode of When Women Walked, we explore the life and legacy of Septima Clark—the educator who helped build the intellectual foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Through the Citizenship Schools developed at the Highlander Folk School, Clark taught thousands of Black Americans to read, write, and claim their constitutional rights in a system designed to deny them both literacy and citizenship.
On National Reading Day, this episode asks a deeper question: what does it mean to read in a democracy where literacy itself has been used as a barrier to freedom?
Drawing on scholarship from Ready from Within and Freedom’s Teacher, we examine how Clark’s classrooms helped prepare a generation of organizers and voters who would transform the American South.
Because sometimes revolutions don’t begin with speeches.
Sometimes they begin with learning how to sign your name.
27 Feb 2026
Grit, Gold, and Glory
Before the medals. Before the endorsements. Before the prime-time coverage — there were women who ran anyway.
In this episode of When Women Walked, we enter the Olympic arena through the women who refused to wait their turn. From pioneers who were barred from entire events to athletes who shattered racial, political, and cultural barriers, this is the story of women who did more than compete — they transformed the Games.
We walk with runners who were told their bodies were too fragile. We stand beside women who broke the ice — literally and figuratively. We honor team sports once dismissed as unworthy of airtime. And we remember that every podium moment rests on decades of protest, persistence, and quiet defiance.
Featuring stories from athletes across generations — from early 20th-century trailblazers to modern champions like Erin Jackson — this episode traces the long arc of resistance inside the world’s biggest sporting stage.
Because the Olympics were never just about records.
They were about who was allowed to take up space.
And women took it.
19 Feb 2026
Henrietta Wasn't Immortal
Henrietta Lacks changed modern medicine, but she was never asked. In this episode of When Women Walked, I tell the story of the woman behind HeLa — the mother, the daughter, the Black woman whose cells helped develop the polio vaccine, advanced cancer research, contributed to HIV treatment, and were used in COVID research. We hold both truths: scientific breakthrough and medical exploitation. Henrietta was not immortal. Her cells were. And remembering her correctly means saying her name.
9 Feb 2026
First, But Forgotten
Claudette Colvin and the cost of being first.
4 Feb 2026
Rosa in the Rain
We are taught that Rosa Parks was tired.
That her refusal on a Montgomery bus was spontaneous.
Quiet.
Accidental.
In this episode of When Women Walked, historian and educator Madison Givens slows the story down and returns Rosa Parks to herself—not as a symbol, but as a lifelong organizer, investigator, and dissenter. Drawing on The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, this episode traces the years of resistance that came before December 1, 1955—and the costs that followed after.
Rosa in the Rain is about stillness as defiance.
About preparation, not accident.
About a woman who understood the danger of refusal and chose it anyway.
This episode asks us to reconsider what protest looks like, why certain versions of history are made comfortable, and what is lost when women’s political intelligence is softened into myth.
This is not the Rosa Parks of children’s books.
This is Rosa Parks, already walking.
3 Feb 2026
We Begin by Walking
When Women Walked is a history podcast about movement—literal and political—and the women who used it to challenge power, demand justice, and reshape the world.
This introductory episode lays the foundation for the series: why walking matters as a historical act, how women’s movement has been remembered and erased, and what it means to take women’s bodies in motion seriously as political intervention.
Hosted by historian Madison Givens, When Women Walked blends archival research, narrative storytelling, and cultural analysis to examine moments when women stepped into public space—and history shifted.
New episodes explore both individual women and broader movements, asking not just who walked, but what their movement made possible.
When women walked, history shifted.
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