Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

Today the first of two episodes we've been wanting to do for a long while

about something that means a lot to at least a couple of us in this conversation

but we're going to do two episodes on the American Girl Dolls series.

American Girl dolls are a series of historical dolls.

They're on the bigger side of things.

I would say they're definitely bigger than a Barbie.

They're intended for kids who are maybe on the older side, eight, nine, ten years old.

We'll get into all this.

And they all relate to American history in some way.

So some of you listening will know exactly what we're talking about and you'll be like, oh yeah,

Samantha, I had a Molly, or Eddie, or whatever.

And some of you will have no idea, but trust us, they are a phenomenon and also a really

interesting lens into American history both in terms of the story

that each doll tells about a particular historical moment in American history and also the choices

that American Girl doll itself made in terms of which dolls to make, which

dolls not to make, which stories to tell, etc.

So our guest for these two episodes on the American Girl Doll series is none other than

Aisha Harris of NPR Cultural Critic,

host of NPR's pop culture, Happy Hour. She was also at Slate where she wrote a bit about the American Girl Doll phenomenon. She also has a new book coming out soon called

Wannabe Reckonings with the pop culture that shapes me. Aisha, thanks for coming on. Thanks for doing this and

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