Sonja takes Vanessa down a rabbit hole to the 12th century for a scandalous romance, starring a very learned woman named Heloise. If you’re tired of the passion ending at the altar, this episode’s for you: spicy letters, secluded country estates, lots of reading, divine and carnal love, and keeping passion lit–even in the face of late-in-life eunuchism. IWAW celebrates that love can be messy!

Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Pierre Bayle

Sonja and Vanessa visit Circe’s Island, both in the Odyssey and in Madeline Miller’s brilliant novel. For those keeping score: time with Calypso + Circe = 80% of Odysseus’s 10-year trip home is on Love Islands with gorgeous, immortal women. Vanessa quizzes Sonja on ancient Greek witchcraft and why women keep giving grown men baths, and Sonja, as always, knows a thing or two. Spoiler Alerts for Madeline Miller’s Circe!

Works referenced:
Circe by Madeline Miller

“Bias, She Wrote: The Gender Bias of the New York Times Bestseller List,” by Rosie Cima

“Patterns of Persecutions: ‘Witchcraft’ Trials in Ancient Athens,” by Esther Eidinow

Theogony by Hesiod

“Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” by Joan Scott
“Circe’s Etruscan Pharmaka: Reconsidering a Fragment of Aeschylean Elegy,” by Jessica Lightfoot

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Sonja and Vanessa pop some popcorn and dive into Uberto Pasolini’s 2024 film,The Return.Who gets the spotlight more, Odysseus or Penelope? In terms of power, would we rather be poem Penelope or film Penelope? Is Telemachus even a little less whiny? Does Argos the dog get his moment? And although all the gods are cut from the script, how did they convince Athena, the goddess-of-glow-ups, to be 60-year old Ralph Fiennes' personal trainer?

Other books referenced in the episode:

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

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