In Walks a Woman

You think you know what happened in the American Revolutionary War. But how could you, when so many of the stories were left out? Did you know the Cherokee were involved? That women led boycotts? That enslaved people played a part in the war, and that Native Americans showed up to fight at Bunker Hill? So many people did so much, despite how little power was given to them. Denise Kiernan has spent...

You know how the Hindenburg story ends. Or you think you do. This week, historian Catherine Grace Katz, acclaimed author of The Daughters of Yalta, joins us to talk about her gripping new book, Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War (Viking). Written in the vein of narrative history master Candice Millard, it reads like a thriller, even though you know exactly wher...

Women make up half the population, but only about 28% of Congress. What would change if more women held office? At In Walks a Woman, we believe stories shape reality, and if we change the stories, we can change who gets a voice. This episode asks what happens when we rewrite one of the biggest stories of all: who represents us. Our guests are Lauren Reinhold, the Democratic candidate for Kansas’s...

Our guests today have just released two eye-opening books! In Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy , economist Misty Heggeness uses the stories of trailblazers like Taylor Swift to reveal how everyday American women shape the economy, often in ways the numbers never capture. In A Gun of Her Own: The Everyday Lives of Women Who Shoot , sociologist Margaret S. Kelley shows tha...

Content note: This episode discusses sexual violence, which is depicted in the Netflix series. Please make sure this episode is a good fit for you. In a spoiler-filled review of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's eight-part series MONSTER: THE LIZZIE BORDEN STORY, ax expert Rachel McCarthy James joins us in the studio to discuss how closely the show follows the historical record. Were Lizzie and he...

Clay Wirestone, award-winning opinion editor at the Kansas Reflector, was so generous to join us in studio for a great interview about his new book, Opinionated: Kansas Journalists Who Proved Why Commentary Matters — Then and Now , published by the University Press of Kansas. In his impressive tour of Kansas journalism from the 1920s to the 1970s, Clay honors some truly remarkable women who helped...

Content Note: This episode discusses war, physical trauma and injury, PTSD, and suicide, as portrayed in the novel and in the historical record. Please take care while listening, and feel free to skip or pause as needed. IWAW Welcomes Guest Reader, Carmen Caffey RN: This episode takes a closer look at Kristin Hannah's #1 bestselling novel THE WOMEN (St. Martin's Press, 2024), the story of...

You know the story: Eve came from Adam's rib--a variation on a theme. Science has believed some version of that for centuries, treating the female body as simply a lesser version of the male body. The belief in this story means researchers have long excluded female bodies from studies because hormones make the data "messier”--and besides, the thinking goes, bodies are bodies, regardless of gender....

In Part 2 of our analysis of John Steinbeck’s EAST OF EDEN, we look at the third and fourth parts of the novel.  Adam Trask makes Cathy his Eve. Sadly for Adam, John Steinbeck openly said he made Cathy "Satan." And yet, regardless of how things started, was Steinbeck able to sustain Satanic Cathy/Kate for 600 pages?   Yes…and no.   If you are wondering how Netflix can build a whole series focusing...

In this 600+ page, semi-autobiographical epic by John Steinbeck, the Genesis story unfolds a little in Connecticut and a little in the Salinas Valley in California. Adam (Steinbeck's not subtle) meets a beautiful woman with a complicated but mysterious past...and he instantly makes her into the woman he wants her to be: his Eve. What could go wrong? REFERENCES: Kate Manne Down Girl: The Logic of M...

Consider this your back-to-school episode!  Time to shop for lunches and snacks, hoping we can find things that will appeal to our thoroughly picky children. We know picky eaters exist.  No one denies that, but is it “natural” for kids to be picky eaters?  Is there a biological cause?  What if the answer is no? Join us for a fascinating episode with author Helen Zoe Veit, who spent over a decade r...

First, if you have not read Emily Hauser's   PENELOPE'S BONES , remedy that immediately. You've never read anything like it. It is revolutionary. Why? Because we all grew up with the story of Indiana Jones finding treasures he'd read about in ancient texts and then he'd invariably hustle said treasures back home. But what if generations of male historians and archaeologists had...

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 Ag...

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 to...

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)....

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 contro...

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 story...

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...

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 feat...

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 m...

Hallie Rubenhold’s THE FIVE sheds light on the lives of the 5 women who were murdered by Jack the Ripper in London in 1888.  So much of history has focused on these women’s final hours, their deaths, the macabre nature of their wounds, and the assumption that they were all bad women who put themselves in harm’s way.  In other words, since they were seen as fallen women, they were in essence blamed...

Please note that this episode deals with a historical account of sexual assault. Spoiler note: there are a couple of spoilers about the historical events involved, but even if you are aware of the outcome of this case, Sweet's recounting of the story and the context he uncovers and explains is fascinating and so, so worth your time. If you pick up a copy of John Wood Sweet’s 2022 study, THE SEWING...

IWAW loves a great mystery/thriller, and if you do, too, you should treat yourself to reading Laurie Dove’s 2025 novel, MASK OF THE DEER WOMAN There will be NO spoilers in this show!  Sonja and Vanessa visit with Dove about the compelling issues underpinning this gripping story.  There are so many positive reviews of the novel, so here’s just a sample:  “A beautifully written tale about the Indige...

In his famous 1841 essay, “Self Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “To be great is to be misunderstood.”  Emerson was a great writer, but to think he accomplished that all by himself would be a significant misunderstanding of how self reliant he really was. In his brilliant study of five female Transcendentalist thinkers, BRIGHT CIRCLE, Dr. Randall Fuller pulls back the curtain to show that behi...

Mary Roach has created a nonfiction writing lane all her own, and in her 8th book, she embarks on a world-wide tour of the scientific quest to replace pretty much every part of the human body.  Her book,  ⁠REPLACEABLE YOU⁠⁠ , came out this month--April 2026--and it's already a bestseller. While she was visiting Lawrence, Kansas, on a trip sponsored by the Lawrence Public Library , Mary sat down wi...