SPOILERS: Go See the Movie FIRST!!!!

When you see a film based on a book, you get the rare opportunity to peek inside the head of a specific reader, namely the director. Whatever else, we now know how Christopher Nolan reads Homer’s THE ODYSSEY.

So let’s dig in!

This episode will give you some background: What are “the sea people”? Did people in the “Bronze Age” know they were in the Bronze Age? Did Helen really talk about trade routes during dinners with out-of-town guests?

And the women…we gotta talk about the women.

We look at the Sirens, Helen, Calypso, Circe, Athena, Melantho, and Penelope, and for each, we tell you how they are described in the poem and what Nolan kept in, took out…and in some cases, just 100% invented.

We’ll also pinpoint some powerful female characters who got tossed overboard and didn’t even make it into the movie.

Maybe at the end of the day, the movie says more (than anything else) about the wealthy, powerful director who was lucky enough to make his dream version of THE ODYSSEY. And yet, it gives us an excuse to talk about Homer--again! We get to talk about odysseys--again! This whole thing is trending! How often does that happen???

Along the way, Sonja surprisingly says something complimentary about Emerald Fennell, and Vanessa tries to picture an ad for Viking Cruises on PBS.

REFERENCES:

Treat yourself to this great conversation with the legendary classics scholar, Mary Beard as she offers her wisdom on what was lost in Nolan’s version of the poem.

Emily Hauser’s Guardian Review of Nolan’s film is really insightful, and she’s our next guest on In Walks a Woman where she’ll talk about her book PENELOPE’S BONES and she’ll discuss the movie.

We have several episodes that are about the Odyssey or related to the Odyssey. Below are links to the episodes on Spotify. If you’re on another platform, note the episode number, and you should be able to find it pretty easily.

Episode 1. Do Heroes Make Good Husbands?: The Case of Penelope and Two Decades of No Sex

Episode 2. Penelope in Fact and in Fiction

Episode 3. What Does THE RETURN Get Right, or Wrong About Penelope and Odysseus?

Episode 4. Can Witches Have Odysseys? The Case of Circe in Home and Madeline Miller

Episode 6. Helpers & Monsters: Women Making THE ODYSSEY Possible

Episode 7. The Dark Side of the Hero: Margaret Atwood’s THE PENELOPIAD

Episode 8. Are Older Women Allowed to Have Odysseys? The Case of Janie Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD

Episode 9. Can a Lowly Governess Have an Odyssey? The Case of Charlotte Bronte’s JANE EYRE

What if women are naturally as intelligent as men, but refusing them an education is the reason men know more? Seems like a no-brainer…and yet, in the late 1700’s, a woman had to point this out to “enlightened” men.

That woman was Judith Sargent Murray, and to explain why women were just as intelligent as men, she had to address the Eve story.

Her essay, “On the Equality of the Sexes,” is a tour de force argument for women’s education. Truth be told, it probably illustrates the real reason men didn’t want women to have an education: they’d end up with a nation of women like Judith Sargent Murray, running intellectual circles around them.

Along the way, Sonja hopes there’s pudding in Heaven, and Vanessa delves into some very scientific rib-distance-from-head intelligence theory.

REFERENCES

While we are not enough versed on Hebrew to completely evaluate Sargent Murray’s claim about serpent/seraph, even wikipedia suggests that she might be on to something.

Here is a link to the book Sonja mentions: A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South by Melvin Patrick Ely.

When Sonja mentions the use of pseudonyms in newspaper writing, that refers to our episode 70. Take the Rake to Court about the 1783 Sewing Girl Rape Case.

We also reference these two episodes in which we interview Elizabeth Lesser and Sharon McMahon.

Eve as seductress is a cliche. That would make more sense if it were actually in the story about her. People realizing they are naked does not = having sex like bunnies. Sorry guys (and we do mean guys), but there is no sex in the Genesis story.

In this episode, we’ll tell you about John Milton, mid-to-late 17th century biblical scholar, who wrote a landmark narrative poem, PARADISE LOST (1667). It’s mostly about Satan falling from grace, but in Satan’s many adventures, he squeezes in a stop by the Garden of Eden to stir up trouble.

Milton takes some ideas from other (male) biblical scholars and spins some sexy ideas of his own in this massively (x1000) influential work of English literature. And one of those ideas is that after eating the fruit, Eve and Adam lay right down and have the first sex ever. Fan fiction, anyone?

What you might find, after hearing this episode, is that some of the ideas you have associated with Eve come from THIS poem, NOT the Bible. That’s how powerful stories work: they infiltrate, and at some point, we’re not even sure how they infiltrated our sense of reality–but they have.

Along the way, Sonja susses out some birthing metaphors, and Vanessa gives Paradise Lost an environmentalist read.

REFERENCES:

Feel brave? Check out Paradise Lost for yourself. Eve’s story is in Book 9.

If you want to look at a footnoted text, this link will take you right to Book 9 at the John Milton Reading Room at Dartmouth site.

Here is a link to John Milton’s Sonnet 19 that starts, “When I consider how my light is spent.”

No fruit. No talking snake. No woman breaking rules.

So why is THE TEMPEST in the All About Eve season?

For starters, in this 1612 play, we do have an old, powerful, white guy in charge of an idyllic island. His name is Prospero and he happens to be a sorcerer who can control the weather, puts others into magical slumbers, make people bring him firewood, but most of all, he completely controls the only female character on stage.

If a man with magical powers controls you completely, how can you ask questions and explore? How can you be Eve? Perhaps that’s the goal…

Beyond that, THE TEMPEST demonstrates an early exploration of how to approach the “New World.” It’s a great example of Shakespeare basing a story on something akin to a newspaper headline in the early 17th century.

Along the way, Sonja says cannibalism as many times as she can, and Vanessa switches a C for T.

REFERENCES:

Roanoke Colony Story explained here.

Here’s some basic information about the Virginia Colony

Jamestown Settlement 1607 information here

Smithsonian account of cannibalism in Jamestown.

Here is information about the ship wreck of the Sea Venture

We reference our episode #57 on MUCH ADO, which you can find here.

Here is Michel de Montaigne essay, "Of Cannibals"

Have you read CASSANDRA SPEAKS? If not, run to your local bookstore and get a copy! It will change how you see the worl

In this interview with Elizabeth Lesser, we focus on the Eve story: what it actually says, what stories have grown out of it, and why.

Beyond Eve, we discuss what impact it's had on the history of the world when about half the population–women–have been cut out of the storytelling. Can we really reflect humanity as a whole when only half of humanity gets to speak and be heard?

Lesser’s research will enrich you and surprise you. For example, we think of the fight-or-flight response as a fundamentally “human” response. But is it? The first study that introduced that concept used only men as test subjects. What did scientists find when they studied women?

This episode is about Eve, but CASSANDRA SPEAKS is one of the books that inspired the podcast, so we really hope you join us!

EXPORE FURTHER:

Elizabeth Lesser’s TED TALKS:

Say Your Truths and Seek Them in Others

Take "the Other" to Lunch

Check out Elizabeth Lesser’s Omega Institute for Holistic Studies

One cannot really understand how stories have shaped women’s lives without taking on the story of Eve in Genesis.

This episode is the start of our All About Eve season, and this one is close to our hearts: we’ve wanted to explore the Eve story since the genesis of the pod.

Our special guest is medieval scholar, Dr. Jana Byars, and she helps us answer some important questions. What is the original story? How does Eve handle the serpent’s offer? Why is Eve blamed for tempting Adam when he just pops the fruit in his mouth, no questions asked?

And who adds to the story? Jana tells us about three rather vocal and opinionated men of the Early Church: Paul, Tertullian, and Augustine. How much of their own personalities and life experiences enter into how they revise the Eve story?

No matter what your take is on the Bible, the Genesis story of Eve has affected your life. This episode helps us see how the stories men have--quite literally--invented about the OG story have affected our lives, too.

FURTHER EXPLORATION:

Jana Byars hosts the New Books Network Podcast, and if you click here you can find out more about her and her work on the pod. You can also follow Jana @janalena.bluesky.social

If you have a New Yorker subscription, you can read the article Jana mentions by Stephen Greenblatt from 2017: "How St. Augustine Invented Sex" A quote from the article: “He rescued Adam and Eve from obscurity, devised the doctrine of original sin—and the rest is sexual history.”

Gerda Lerner's The Creation of Patriarcy from 1987 gets mentioned by Sonja, and wow is it worth reading if you want to get an overview.

“The virgin book,” Sonja references is one we did an episode on to begin our “Fallen Women” season, S5E1: Like a Virgin. Here is a link to the book: Virgin: The Untouched History (2007) by Hanne Blank. It’s deeply researched, highly readable, and–as you can tell from the title–has a sense of humor.

For more on the Eve story as metaphor for a shift over to agrarian civilization, Eve's Seed (2000) by Robert McElvaine is a fascinating read.

This season, there will be an episode all about John Milton’s sexy take on the Eve story, so that will fill in the gap of John Milton in this episode…believe us, PARADISE LOST and Milton’s WILD version of the Eve story deserves its own episode!

If you’re gonna do GOSSIP GIRL, you gotta reveal the gossip girl herself: Cecily von Ziegasar.

In her FIRST podcast interview ever (XOXO!!!) Cecily tells IWAW what it was like to write for teens back when no one else was writing for teens. In addition to many personally inspiring experiences, Cecily shares the classic novel that helped her write GOSSIP GIRL. And guess what? That 1920 novel features a fallen woman!

In Season 5, we’ve gone from MUCH ADO, in which Hero finds her virginal reputation ruined by gossip, to GOSSIP GIRL, in which characters swim in gossip. Amidst the constantly changing currents, the girls rise, sink, and swim to the surface again. Does GOSSIP GIRL demonstrate female resilience? Does it mean the fallen woman trope has died? Or does it mean fallen women are society’s main spectacle?

This discussion mostly focuses on the book series from the early 2000’s, but we do touch on the television series at several points. And, yes, we do talk about Chuck Bass…because, well, he’s Chuck Bass.

Along the way, Sonja shares a Christmas tradition, and Vanessa & Cecily are rather surprised.

You know you love us! XOXO, the IWAW Girls

Sharon is–deservedly so–America’s Government Teacher. She joins us today to talk about her eloquent and beautifully-illustrated children’s book, WE ARE MIGHTY.

Join Sonja and Vanessa in finding out how Sharon adapted her work for a younger audience, her own experience in high school history class, finding her writing voice, how to find untold stories to tell, and why she dropped pre-med as her major…in a surprisingly eerie story.

Along the way, Sharon shares her love of pigeons and feeds Sonja and Vanessa some baby carrots.

REFERENCES:

To learn more about Emma Lazarus, the poet Sharon mentions, click here.

To learn more about the American Exchange Project that Sonja is involved in, go to the American Exchange Project website.

For more details on Sharon McMahon’s banned commencement address, check out this Newsweek article from April 2026.

To read the address that Sharon had prepared to give: Sharon McMahon: My Message to the Class of 2026