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

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, February 21st, 1963, W. W. Norton publishes the enormously influential book, The

Feminine, by Betty Friedan. Now, to be clear, we're fudging this date a little bit as we sometimes do.

It was published on February 19th. So I guess we can say that by this day February 21st

second-wave feminism was in full swing because for two days women had been reading the

feminine mistake. Look this book was very influential maybe not that influential

but it was a sort of mix of academic work and a lot of first-person narratives about the domestic life of women and ultimately it was a critique of a world in which women were defined by their domestic obligations.

Friedan writes, quote, the only way for a woman as for a man to find herself, to know herself as a person

is by creative work of her own.

So let's talk about the publishing of the Feminine

Mystique second-way feminism and the many ways this book has been evaluated,

re-evaluated, and we re-evaluated over the years. Here as always is Nicole Hammer of Columbia. Hello

Nicky. Hello Jody and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley. Hello Kelly.

Hey there. And we have a special guest for this episode.

Nicole Perkins, a writer, podcast host.

Many of you may know her from the show Thirst Aid Kit.

There's a new podcast called This Is Good for You.

And Nicole is one of my favorite people in podcasting. Thank you so much for doing this.

Thanks for having me.

I'm really excited to talk about this.

Yeah, good.

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