Disclaimer: Her Campus Pace doesn’t condone underage drinking. Please drink responsibly.
If you had asked me a year ago if I liked history and podcasts (together or separately) I would’ve immediately said, “No, my ADHD is too bad for me to actually pay attention to either.”
Enter: Queens Podcast on Spotify.
The podcast, which started in 2017, is hosted by childhood friends Katy Hearne-Church and Nathan Foster, genuinely the only two people I’ve ever met (or well, listened to) that can make a podcast about history not only super interesting but actually hilarious to listen to. After realizing that so many history podcasts were too boring to get through and that they were mostly hosted by men and about old dead white men, Hearne-Church came up with the idea to create a podcast that would not only be entertaining but more importantly, it would be about women in history, whether they’re really well-known or not, and about their stories, their lives and their accomplishments.
So far, there are six seasons of Queens Podcast with around 15-18 episodes each and every single one starts with different podcasters warning the listeners that there is a lot (and they mean a lot) of cursing in the episode, which I’m sure is appreciated by history teachers around the world who are looking for ways to keep their students’ attention in a school-appropriate fashion. If you’re not convinced yet, and you’re saying to yourself, literally why would I listen to two Southerners tell me about history for 45 minutes and miss out on learning about some of the most interesting women in history told in the funniest way possible? just know that the first thing Foster and Hearne-Church do before they dive into that week’s Queen, is tell you about the cocktail they’re drinking that night, which always follows the episode’s theme, and tell you the recipe so that you can make it at home — and I don’t know about you but I’m a fruity cocktail enthusiast and very much appreciate the new recipe ideas.
Anyway, with cocktails and endlessly entertaining storytelling, I’m very happy to tell you that a lot of the women discussed on this podcast are European queens that you probably have heard of at some point in your life. But, there are also episodes on people that you definitely have not heard about and are not white European royalty. Have you ever heard of Agrippina the Elder and Agrippina the Younger? Zenobia? Amina of Zaria? Someone called Roxelana, dubbed Roxie by our two hosts? If not, I highly recommend you open Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to music, go straight to Queens Podcast and play whatever episode you find the most interesting while you clean, do homework, etc. However, if you don’t find history interesting and could care less about queens throughout history, there are also episodes on kings’ mistresses. They cover people who were not necessarily queens but whose lives were just as interesting and wild. The Bad and Boujee series and the Side Hustle series, respectively, have episodes on people like Lucrezia Borgia and Madame de Pompadour (two women, who in my opinion, deserved so much better). And there are even episodes on Freddie Mercury and Marie Laveau (if that name sounds familiar, then you’ve probably heard of or watched American Horror Story: Coven. But spoiler alert: everything that show tells you about her is wrong).
If you’re still not convinced, then all I can tell you is that: as someone with horrible ADHD, listening to two people try to teach me about women in history that I thought I’d learned almost everything about but really hadn’t. This podcast doesn’t make me feel like I’m 12 again sitting in a stuffy history classroom, it has actually made me start really enjoying learning again!