The Grimm Podcast

In 1976 Melissa Ludtke was the only woman working as a full-time baseball reporter. She tried to nicely integrate herself into the institution of baseball, but when the commissioner banned her from a stadium for entering the locker room, she wound up the plaintiff in a discrimination suit that opened up the sport to women reporters forever. Episode Sponsor: LOLA -- a monthly subscription service for organic tampons, pads, and more. Save 40% off all subscriptions when you go to mylola.com and use BEARCAT at checkout.

Reverend Roslyn Bouier runs Brightmoor Food Pantry, one of the largest food pantries in Detroit. Her work feeding hundreds of hungry folks in Detroit every month is profiled in an upcoming episode of The Fifty One.  For Bearcat, we dig into Rev. Roslyn's general approach to community service and her push back against the hypocrisy of religious folk who shun the poor.  For $35 off your first SunBasket order, visit sunbasket.com/bearcat

She helped start NOW, then left to start The Feminist Party, which got Shirley Chisholm elected to Congress (the first Black woman elected to Congress). She was the first Black woman to graduate from Columbia law school, and she defended so many famous activists and feminists it's impossible to list them all here. And yet, we hear precious little about Florynce "Flo" Kennedy. If you want more Flo, check out this amazing archive of her show: https://archive.org/details/flokennedyschlesingerlibrary This episode is brought to you by Audible. Go to audible.com/bearcat to start a 30-day free trial and get your first audiobook free!

Arlene Blum led the first all-women ascents of most of the world's tallest mountains. But before she started climbing mountains, she took on another huge challenge: the chemical industry. In the 1970s Blum discovered that children's pajamas were being coated in a carcinogenic flame retardant chemical. She sounded the alarm, got the chemical banned from kids' products and set off to tackle the world's mountains. In her 60s, she realized that the chemical had not disappeared from the market, it had simply shifted into different categories, particularly furniture. Returning to her first career after decades, Blum led the charge to get flame retardants out of furniture. Now she's tackling electronics and building materials, and she's begun to focus on fluorinated chemicals (found in food packaging, clothing, and even makeup). Over 70 now, she shows no sign of slowing down. In this episode she takes us on a hike and tells us about her adventures in both realms.

As a longtime fatherhood researcher, Masako Ishii-Kuntz was instrumental in the launch of the ikumen project, a nationwide campaign aimed at encouraging fathers to get more involved in home-making and childcare. Now she trains most of the home economics teachers in Tokyo, and has introduced gender-balanced labor and childcare as part of the class, which is required all through school in Japan.

In this episode, we meet Leticia Aguilar and hear about her epic journey, from growing up as one of 18 kids in a small town in Mexico to her early days in Sacramento to the work she does now, helping Latina immigrants get educated and defeat machismo.   

In our first episode, traveling bookseller Rita Collins talks to us about why she loves living in the Montana woods and how she came to own and operate the country's first traveling bookstore.

Bearcat (noun): 1920s slang term for a hot-blooded or feisty woman.  Bearcat is a podcast for serious women. Bi-weekly episodes, hosted by reporters Brittany Shoot and Amy Westervelt, celebrate women who are committed to leading by example, to benefiting their communities in ways big and small, to taking their lives and their impact on the world seriously.