I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.

Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

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From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette.

I'm Greta Johnson, and today we are going to explore some not-so-distant feminist history, the 90s.

You might remember, or you may have learned since then, that 1992 was actually called the Year of the

Woman. And that's because the number of women elected to Congress here in the United States

jumped up by two-thirds. It was the biggest increase in U.S. history. But just six years later,

Time Magazine actually accused the younger generation of being politically

inactive. And the cover of the magazine asked if feminism was dead. So how important were the

90s in feminist history and how did they shape the place we're in today? Well, today we're going to speak with Lisa

Levenstein to find out. Now, I had always been really suspicious of this narrative about feminism

being dead. And when I started going to the archives and conducting oral histories and looking

at the forms of activism that weren't getting the attention of the reporters

from Time magazine. I found that, in fact, this wasn't just a dead decade. This was actually

one of the most pivotal decades, I believe, for feminist history. Lisa is the director of the women's gender and sexuality studies program at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro.

And she is also the author of a new book called They Didn't See Us Coming, The Hidden History of Feminism in the 90s.

Lisa, hey.

Thanks for having me.

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