You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

Ben Franklin's world is The podcast dedicated to helping you, learn more about how the people

and events of our early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovvert. If we think about all of the

episodes we've ever had on this podcast, a big lesson we can take away from

them is that people are complicated. This is a truism that holds in the past as well as in the present.

Seldom do we ever find people where all of their actions and thoughts are black and white.

What we see instead is that people are colorful because they aren't just one thing

and they don't just act and think in one way. Now think about this

colorfulness in terms of identity.

How many people from the past have we met on this podcast

who identified as being part of a town, a colony or state,

a region, an empire, a nation,

or any combination of those.

And think about how many people we've met who strongly identified as members of a religious group or denomination.

Or how many people have we met who view themselves as more than just one racial or ethnic category,

such as they viewed themselves as both African and American, indigenous and American,

or as African, indigenous, and American.

And the same holds true further aspects of human identities as well.

Aspects such as gender.

Gen Manion, a professor of history and of sexuality and women's and gender studies at Amherst College,

joins us to explore the early American world of female husbands.

...