Listen up, little ladies!

GirlTalk Radio is a podcast made by girls who love math and science. Hosted by 11-to-16 year olds, the program features interviews with diverse cadre of science-minded women—from stem cell researchers and computer scientists, to marine biologists and computational linguists. Even a CIA intelligence officer. Worth a listen for geek girls of all ages. (Thanks, Deborah Berebichez!)

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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Anonymous

So many girls are talked out of fields they are interested in — by teachers and counsellors, no less! When I was good at math, it was weird because I was a girl. When I was interested in computers, girls didn’t do that. When I wanted to become an auto mechanic in my early twenties, exasperated menfolk asked “Why are you only interested in men’s jobs?”

I’m under 40, too. The point is not to push the issue, but to make the girl already inclined to math or science resistant to the old man telling her she should limit herself ‘realistically’ — that’s his problem, and shouldn’t be hers.

We like to hope we’re beyond the need for this sort of cheerleading, and we keep getting closer (ironically helped by reality TV) but there are still dinosaurs among us.
SamSam

Rats, I was hoping it was going to be a postcast by the fun DJ and mashup artist GirlTalk. Oh well, science is also interesting, I guess.
Anonymous

waiting for the ironic story where GirlTalk (the DJ) sues them for trademark infringement..
tr0nk

* also immediately thought this was about girltalk the artist/dj

however, as a human of the male persuasion, i fully support this effort in that it will add more much-needed geek girls to the future dating pool of coming generations, to pair off with already abundant geek guys (or other geek girls !!) and make many geek babies, leading to more geek guys and gals and whatever falls inbetween.

and after that ? singularity !!
Ito Kagehisa

My daughter loves writing and science and is at the head of her class in math.

For Xmas my sister-in-law gave her a dress and a suitcase-sized makeup kit (made in China with god knows how much lead and melamine).

This is the 3rd year in a row she’s given my daughter cosmetics.
- Anonymous
  
  @Ito,
  
  Let her.
  
  Your daughter’s interests are her own. The aunt who doesn’t understand her achieves two goals — it educates her in the limits of relationships, and expands her horizons around the things that are less interesting to her.
  
  Your daughter will likely more-or-less reject the values, but may benefit from the information of that mindset.
  
  I am the opposite of your sister-in-law: my niece is a makeup-glitter-barbie obsessive who thinks her intellectual aunt is a bit crazy — I push her just a bit in my nerdy direction.
  
  They say it takes a village to raise a child. Absolutely, and then some!
Anonymous

I think this is a chance for girls to be inspired by topics that were less traditional.
MitchSchaft

Why does sex have to be an issue? Sexists!
- Caroline
  
  If that comment is serious, please spend some time looking up information about girls and women in science to find out why sex has to be an issue.
- Lobster
  
  You say that, but I once heard an interview with a female physicist in which one of the audience members stood up and gave a long speech about feminism and concluded with a “question” that amounted to, “don’t you agree?” The physicist basically said, “I’d really rather talk about science.”
  
  It’s great that this podcast is out there and I hope it inspires young girls to go into these fields, but the fact of the matter is that female scientists go into science because they like science, not because they want to stick it to the chauvinists.
- Antiqueight
  
  why is there always one
chesterbr

Awww, no RSS? :-(
oscar

This is awesome, but why should the audience be limited to girls (or women)?
jtollert

Has anyone found a rss feed for the show? A page listing a bunch of mp3 files really does not a podcast make.
- Anonymous
  
  We’re glad this got blogged about!
  Here is a link to where you can find all of the pieces for both the 2007 and the 2008 series’ for stream and download on our website:
  
  http://neighborhoodvoices.org/category/pyrc/girltalkradio
  
  Feel free to check out our radio program as well:
  http://slbradio.org
  
  -Justin
  -SLB Radio Productions
Anonymous

On the site girls talking about science & maths are represented by voluptuous lipsticked lips – so the aunt handing out the cosmetics wins. Have people NO sense of … oh I give up!