UNSUNG HISTORY
A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.
Recent Episodes
Sept. 26, 2022
The Pacific Coast Abortion Ring
In mid-1930s, pregnant women in cities in California, Oregon, and Washington could obtain safe surgical abortions in clean facili…
Sept. 19, 2022
Mary Ware Dennett & the Birth Control Movement
For birth control advocate Mary Ware Dennett, the personal was political. After a difficult labor and delivery with her third chi…
Sept. 12, 2022
Abortion in 18th Century New England
In 1742, in Pomfret, Connecticut, 19-year-old Sarah Grosvenor discovered she was pregnant, the result of a liaison with 27-year-o…
Sept. 5, 2022
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, whose books have been outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. You ca…
Aug. 29, 2022
Mary Seacole
When the United Kingdom joined forces with Turkey and France to declare war on Russia in March 1854, Jamaican-Scottish nurse Mary…
Aug. 22, 2022
Henrietta Maria
Henrietta Maria, the French Catholic wife of King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the 17th Century, was called a “…
Aug. 15, 2022
Anne Bonny & Mary Read, Pirate Queens
During the Golden Age of Pirates, two fierce and ruthless pirates stood apart from the rest, despite their brief careers. The onl…
Aug. 8, 2022
The Women who Programmed the ENIAC
During World War II, the United States Army contracted with a group of engineers at the University of Pennsylvania Moore School o…
Aug. 1, 2022
Filipino Nurses in the United States
A February 2021 report by National Nurses United found that while Filipinos make up 4% of RNs in the United States, they accounte…
July 25, 2022
The Townsend Family Legacy
When Alabama plantation owner Samuel Townsend died in 1856, he willed his vast fortune to his children and his nieces. What seems…
About the Host
Kelly Therese Pollock
Producer & Host
Kelly has always been the kind of person who asks questions — lots of questions — to anyone who will listen and answer. With a BA in Religious Studies from Northwestern University and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara (where she wrote a thesis on feminist witches), Kelly has turned her questioning to politics and history where she digs deep into stories that aren’t getting enough attention.
By day Kelly is an administrator at the University of Chicago, where she has worked since 2004.
Kelly lives on the southside of Chicago with her husband, two kids, and two cats. When she’s not podcasting or working you can find Kelly with knitting needles in her hands. If she could knit and podcast at the same time she would.