Their three-part series draws from their own personal experiences of growing up playing with the doll, and Lord’s research for her book from nearly three decades ago that includes never-before-heard tapes of interviews with Barbie inventor Ruth Handler, her wardrobe designer and the sculptors, and the marketers who made her the cult figure she is today.

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The first episode explores the time Barbie first arrived on the toy scene. The story begins in 1938, when Ruth and her husband Elliot Handler married. Shortly after their daughter Barbie, aka Barbara, was born (1941), Elliot was drafted into the US Army to fight World War II. Their son, Ken, came three years later, in 1944. While Elliot continued to shuttle between home and long stints on the battlefield, Ruth spent her time “playing mother” and dreaming up her company Mattel with a family friend. They started by making plastic ukuleles, xylophones, and even toy guns to cater to the baby boomers market, before Ruth noticed her daughter’s own obsession with paper dolls. “She always bought the adult or teenage-type of dolls...in watching her play with her girlfriends, I realised the doll was a prop through which they were interpreting the world as they saw it.”

Barbie, the doll, was born some years later in 1959—her celebrityhood, the hosts share, was almost instantaneous. The podcast goes on discuss how the idea for Ken came into being, before talking about the ups and downs, and criticisms Mattel faced for setting unrealistic beauty standards with their dolls. But Barbie is at the heart of this story—she reminded women they could be anything: A beauty queen to a corporate powerhouse, and even an astronaut, with her heart set on the moon... which leads to today when you can be all of these in one person.

Apple Podcasts; Spotify