Hurrem Sultan ( Empress Roxelana )

In this revisit from 2019, we wonder: was Annie Londonderry a flim-flam artist or a true pioneer? Maybe both? Her trip around the world on a bicycle may have been controversial - but she was always up for both an adventure and a tall tale. For information and to register for the ...  Show more

Virginia Hall wanted to be a diplomat, but the State Department kept shutting doors in her face …and then she lost her leg in a hunting accident, which seemed like she’d reached a dead end. Never one to accept defeat, she learned how to walk again on a wooden leg nicknamed “Cuthb ...  Show more

Hürrem Sultan, aka Haseki Sultan, aka Roxelana, was born around 1502 and was captured and sold into slavery as a young girl. She caught the attention of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and wound up shattering all kinds of glass ceilings for women, the enslaved, and concubines a ...  Show more

This is the second part of a two-part episode about Hürrem Sultan. It will make most sense if you listen to part one first! Hürrem Sultan, aka Haseki Sultan, aka Roxelana, was born around 1502 and was captured and sold into slavery as a young girl. She caught the attention of the ...  Show more

Ottoman Sultans kept a harem of hundreds of enslaved concubines to bear their children. But from 1533 to 1656 a handful of remarkable women bent the harem system to their wills and exercised extraordinary political influence and power. This period is known as the The Sultanate of ...  Show more

Shajarat al Durr was born in the golden age of Islam. Despite her beginnings as a child slave, she went on to become the first woman to sit on the throne of Egypt since Cleopatra nearly 13-hundred years before. But in hindsight, Shajarat al Durr’s life is a Cinderella story witho ...  Show more