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A new podcast, Frances Wright: America’s Forgotten Radical, delves into the life and work of author and speaker Frances “Fanny” Wright. Wright is credited as the first woman lecturer in the United States, speaking against slavery and for women’s rights. Her views were radical for her era; however, Wright captured the attention of audiences and activists with her “overwhelming eloquence” as a public speaker.

On Cincinnati Edition, we’ll learn more about Frances Wright and how she used persuasive speech to inspire activism and change.

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How do you engage with others in a polarized society? Early 19-century writer and freethinker Frances “Fanny” Wright offers an ostensible how-to manual in the witty didactic novel she penned at age 19, A Few Days in Athens. Wright’s radical ideas garnered her the praise of Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette and Walt Whitman, to name a few, but detractors dubbed her “The Red Harlot of Infidelity.” Tristra Yeager and Eleanor Rust, hosts of the 2024 podcast “Frances Wright: America’s Forgotten Radical,” join us to discuss Wright’s historical importance and relevance to today’s political and cultural conversations.

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Tristra Newyear happened upon an historical marker in New Harmony revealing the spot as a one-time home of Frances “Fanny” Wright. Newyear discovered the Scottish-born American émigré was among the very first female newspaper editors, a teenaged author of a study of American customs and mores, an abolitionist, and a feminist who called for universal education, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, liberalized divorce laws, and so much more. Newyear and friend and colleague Eleanor Rust have produced an historical documentary podcast series, “Frances Wright: America’s Forgotten Radical.”